Who's That Knocking at My Door / Boxcar Bertha

Knock knock! Who's there? MARTY, THAT'S WHO! Welcome to the first installment in PODCASTFELLAS - our supersized series on the films of short king and Italian-American asthmatic Martin Scorsese. This guy made some pretty good movies, huh. This week, Griffin, David, and Ben discuss Scorsese's Little Italy upbringing and his two first features - 1967's Who's That Knocking at My Door? and 1972's Boxcar Bertha. One feels like a film school parody of Scorsese movie. The other, a not-scuzzy-enough exploitation picture. Neither really feel like his true debut. Check out Mostly True: The West's Most Popular Hobo Graffiti Magazine by Bill Daniel Author https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/2238?srsltid=AfmBOorabJsXVgQpXe3oh8fSJIVNj6AHI0nEi3pcARw8GQVQHdGHCK37 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.

• 0:21Griffin Newman?

  A new podcast. A new podcast. I'm trying to put like a New York. A new podcast. Do you know what the tagline for Who's That Knocking At My Door was?

• 0:33David Sims?

  A new movie?

• 0:33Griffin Newman?

  A new classic.

• 0:35David Sims?

  Oh.

• 0:36Griffin Newman?

  That's fucking bold. It's a bunch of poll quotes, most notably Roger Ebert, who was an early champion of this movie and dined out on that for decades, as he should have.

• 0:45David Sims?

  As he should have.

• 0:46Griffin Newman?

  He gets credit for being like, I suspect this Martin Scorsese might be the most-

• 0:50David Sims?

  A new classic.

• 0:52Griffin Newman?

  Important figure in the next half century of American movies.

• 0:56David Sims?

  It's from Ebert.

• 0:57Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 0:57David Sims?

  He said, a new classic.

• 0:59Griffin Newman?

  The poster David has a big quote. It says, a new classic, a great moment in American movies. As a film, it has something to say to everyone, a stunning impact, the most evocative description of American life I have ever seen. And then it has a second poll quote, but then above the title itself, no quotes, it just says, a new classic.

• 1:16David Sims?

  Does say that.

• 1:17Griffin Newman?

  So it uses the poll quote accredited to a film critic. And then it also just says like, we're going to say it about ourselves. Now, of course, there's an alternate tagline here because this is a two movie episode. So excuse me while I reset. By the way, I'm, he mentions one other tagline for Who's That Knocking At My Door, which I have to imagine was for a re-release, which was Mean Streets was just around the corner.

• 1:42David Sims?

  Well, there's streets.

• 1:44Griffin Newman?

  A tagline-

• 1:44David Sims?

  Streets have corners.

• 1:45Griffin Newman?

  A tagline basically saying, this movie is maybe retroactively interesting if you know that this guy goes on to become-

• 1:51David Sims?

  That's exactly what it is.

• 1:52Griffin Newman?

  Yes. But excuse me, let me do a hard reset here. Blank Check in 2026 was a free podcast. Bertha was just a little bit freer than most.

• 2:04David Sims?

  Uh, yes, I know that tagline.

• 2:07Griffin Newman?

  America in the 30s was a free country.

• 2:09David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:09Griffin Newman?

  And it's Bertha was J E S apostrophe A.

• 2:13David Sims?

  Just a little bit freer than most.

• 2:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, it's a good, it's actually a good poster.

• 2:20Griffin Newman?

  It is. It's a great-

• 2:21David Sims?

  It's got a train on it.

• 2:21Griffin Newman?

  It's a great title and of course-

• 2:23David Sims?

  Train like exploding.

• 2:24Griffin Newman?

  This mini series is titled Podcar Birthcast.

• 2:28David Sims?

  No, no, no, no.

• 2:29Griffin Newman?

  We're spending the next five and a half months talking about Martin Scorsese. And of course, we are naming the entire series after his second film, Podcar Birthcast. David's eyebrows have hit the ceiling.

• 2:42David Sims?

  I'm waiting for you to be done and to introduce our podcast.

• 2:45Griffin Newman?

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

• 2:47David Sims?

  I'm David.

• 2:48Griffin Newman?

  It's a little bit freer than most. Uh, it's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. Today, we're not talking about massive successes. We're talking about two early primordial films that set the stage for next week. A breakthrough, the likes of which has rarely happened in American cinema.

• 3:17David Sims?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:18Griffin Newman?

  That then sets us off on a wild career of what we're discussing. Amongst the biggest careers we've talked about, it's him and Spielberg. I mean, these are the biggest guys we've talked about in this podcast.

• 3:27David Sims?

  I guess that's, well, James Cameron.

• 3:30Griffin Newman?

  He's the king of the world.

• 3:31David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Griffin Newman?

  He is the king of the world.

• 3:32David Sims?

  Christopher Nolan these days, I guess he's kind of making a run at that kind of a career.

• 3:36Griffin Newman?

  I guess my, my distinction is that-

• 3:38David Sims?

  Yeah, no, you're right.

• 3:39Griffin Newman?

  These, these are now elder statesmen. These are our living legends.

• 3:42David Sims?

  They've got the long body of work.

• 3:44Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 3:45David Sims?

  They are, they invented movies.

• 3:47Griffin Newman?

  Six decades of work now with these guys?

• 3:52David Sims?

  Uh, this is from the 60s?

• 3:53Griffin Newman?

  Who's That Knocking At My Door 1967? There were a couple, I think iterative releases on it.

• 3:58David Sims?

  Seven decades.

• 3:59Griffin Newman?

  He is in his seventh decade of making movies. He is currently filming-

• 4:03David Sims?

  He is.

• 4:03Griffin Newman?

  A film. He's filming a film, folks, in his seventh decade of being a picture maker.

• 4:09David Sims?

  He's filming a film that we will cover on Blank Check in 2027, I assume.

• 4:13Griffin Newman?

  Or 28. You never know. Sometimes he takes his time in the edit.

• 4:15David Sims?

  He be slow sometimes. That's true.

• 4:17Griffin Newman?

  If your movie is three and a half hours long, every test screening-

• 4:21David Sims?

  This new one's shorter, right?

• 4:22Griffin Newman?

  I don't know.

• 4:23David Sims?

  Okay.

• 4:24Griffin Newman?

  I, I feel very strongly where I'm just like-

• 4:26David Sims?

  He can do what he wants.

• 4:27Griffin Newman?

  He can do what he wants. He could do what he wants. Like if he wanted to make these movies 82 minutes long and have four hours of deleted scenes on the Criterion Disc, I'd be fine with that. I'm just like, Marty, show us everything you got now.

• 4:41David Sims?

  I obviously would like him to do whatever he wants, but it's just the pitch of the new one just sounds a little more-

• 4:47Griffin Newman?

  It does.

• 4:48David Sims?

  Intimate, smaller, maybe.

• 4:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. Yeah. Right. It's Transformers versus G I Joe. It's a very simple battle between two forces.

• 4:56David Sims?

  It's predominantly featuring TikTok stars, I'm assuming.

• 5:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Chris Hemsworth leads a ragtag team of TikTok stars to be the mediators between the Transformers and the G I Joes. That is his next film, right? For Skydance?

• 5:11David Sims?

  Yeah. Here, I'm just looking. I'm trying to find his last sub two hour movie.

• 5:16Griffin Newman?

  Uh, did Hugo crack two, right?

• 5:19David Sims?

  It's two and six, two hours, six minutes.

• 5:21Griffin Newman?

  Okay, that's probably-

• 5:22David Sims?

  Just a little over two.

• 5:23Griffin Newman?

  Is that his shortest film of the 21st century?

• 5:26David Sims?

  Yes, it is.

• 5:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 5:28David Sims?

  Bringing Out The Dead is two hours and one minute.

• 5:31Griffin Newman?

  Okay, so-

• 5:32David Sims?

  Though it feels longer, compliment.

• 5:35Griffin Newman?

  It moves fast. It's got a lot in there.

• 5:37David Sims?

  Right. But I think After Hours, oh, Color of Money isn't even two hours. And, and no, After Hours, King of Comedy, those are both under two hours. Obviously, After Hours is very, very short. That's sort of the point.

• 5:50Griffin Newman?

  80-

• 5:52David Sims?

  It's not quite that. It was like 90 something minutes. It's short, you know? Come on. By his 97 minutes, by his standards, that's crazy.

• 5:58Griffin Newman?

  I'll take as much as you got. I'm not complaining about his length.

• 6:00David Sims?

  Alice is under, Mean Streets is under.

• 6:02Griffin Newman?

  Today, we're talking about two, two 90 somethings.

• 6:04David Sims?

  And right, uh, his first two films were about 86 minutes each. So there you go.

• 6:09Griffin Newman?

  A humongous filmmaker.

• 6:10David Sims?

  But it's gonna be a lot of long boys for us.

• 6:11Griffin Newman?

  It is. It's a humongous filmmaker, a, a humongous career and a filmmaker who, you know, for how large he looms in the culture, his name is often mispronounced. And so we obviously just want to get ahead of this on this series and make sure we're communicating this correctly. We will be talking about the films of Marty Scorcheesey. Marty Scorcheesey on main feed Blank Check.

• 6:32David Sims?

  Martin Scorsese.

• 6:33Griffin Newman?

  In a series we're calling Podcast Fellas.

• 6:36David Sims?

  That's right. Yay.

• 6:38Griffin Newman?

  Yay. Ben.

• 6:40David Sims?

  Ben, yay.

• 6:41Griffin Newman?

  Producer Ben, yay.

• 6:44David Sims?

  Blank Check doing Marty Scorsese. Look.

• 6:46Griffin Newman?

  Scorcheesey.

• 6:47David Sims?

  Oh, I actually, I just am now remembering I have a new bit I want to debut on this first-

• 6:52Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yes. This is the perfect place to do it. Yep.

• 6:54David Sims?

  Hey, new listeners, welcome to the podcast.

• 6:58Griffin Newman?

  The bit is pretending like this show is still accessible to people who haven't been in it for years.

• 7:02David Sims?

  Well, I think what I'm gonna try and do-

• 7:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:05David Sims?

  Is I'm really gonna try to do some work to engage with some new listeners to try and just make them feel like they've got somebody who's just like guiding their hand a little bit.

• 7:15Griffin Newman?

  Sure. We're not trying to push new listeners away. In fact, we welcome them. I just understand it can seem daunting.

• 7:21David Sims?

  Yes. Yes. So guys, you're tuning in. Sometimes the episodes go a little long.

• 7:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 7:27David Sims?

  Okay. Don't let that scare you.

• 7:28Griffin Newman?

  No, it's like Martin Scorsese movies. It's rewarding.

• 7:31David Sims?

  But maybe. Given that we've recorded two, three hour plus episodes or like, we've recorded, I think, four three hour plus episodes in the last 10 days.

• 7:40Griffin Newman?

  There were some big movies.

• 7:41David Sims?

  Right. Maybe we can keep this one a little light. Oh, wait, we have to like talk about Martin Scorsese's entire like childhood and shit. Although you know what? He's done that plenty. You can just watch any of the documentaries. He's like, ah, I was born in Queens, you know?

• 7:57Griffin Newman?

  Interesting impression.

• 7:58David Sims?

  Yeah, I know. I gotta get there with him. Gotta get there with him.

• 8:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay, and guys- A little more like Rizzo the Rat.

• 8:03David Sims?

  Well, wait a second. They're not a million miles away from you. Hey, guys, so- Perfect example, new listeners. Sometimes we go off on tangents.

• 8:11Griffin Newman?

  Sometimes we go off on tangents. Here's another thing we should say to new listeners, vis a vis my Marty Scorcheesey joke. The thing about Blank Check is sometimes I mispronounce things on purpose because it's funny and sometimes I do it not on purpose because I don't know how to talk.

• 8:25David Sims?

  True.

• 8:25Griffin Newman?

  And I ask you to assume that it's always me doing it on purpose.

• 8:29David Sims?

  It's always a ha, ha, ha.

• 8:30Griffin Newman?

  Always.

• 8:32David Sims?

  So-

• 8:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 8:33David Sims?

  So here we are on Blank Check. Uh, you voted for him in March Madness over Tony Scott.

• 8:38Griffin Newman?

  The people's champion, the biggest loser in America, Martin Scorsese finally got his moment in the sun. He finally eked out a win.

• 8:46David Sims?

  And we decided in the interest of, I mean, we can't impose brevity on Mr. Scorsese, but you know, where we can, we will try to make this mini series not take over a year of this show. So we are combining his first two efforts. The, I guess you would call it, it's sort of an independent film-

• 9:06Griffin Newman?

  Independent.

• 9:07David Sims?

  Before such a thing really existed.

• 9:09Griffin Newman?

  The early days. Yeah.

• 9:11David Sims?

  Who's That Knocking At My Door?

• 9:12Griffin Newman?

  Who's That Knocking At My Door, he asked. Yep.

• 9:15David Sims?

  And then Boxcar Bertha.

• 9:17Griffin Newman?

  For higher work, right? New World Pictures, Roger Corman, or at this point it wasn't New World. It was American-

• 9:23David Sims?

  It's AIP.

• 9:24Griffin Newman?

  AIP.

• 9:24David Sims?

  American International. Yeah. And, uh, the, you know, the two films that are sort of the films before his, you know, real debut film of Mean Streets, much as like The Sixth Sense is kind of M. Night Shyamalan's real first film.

• 9:40Griffin Newman?

  We use the term in the Mean Street episode, the phenomenon of the second first film. A movie that crystallizes the director's thing so thoroughly that it basically in everyone's mind becomes the first movie because it's quote unquote, the first real one. And then there are a few examples of a movie like Mean Streets, early in someone's career where you're just like, there we go. There it is. It's fully realized. We're off to the races. He, he never makes a movie ever again that doesn't thoroughly feel like a Martin Scorsese movie. You can argue about the effectiveness of each of those as films on their own.

• 10:15David Sims?

  I said to my wife, who sort of came in halfway into me watching Boxcar Bertha, first I said, yes, I'm jacking it. No, I didn't say that. No, I said to my wife, like-

• 10:25Griffin Newman?

  This movie does have a lot of trains in it. It's fair to assume that David's pants were around his ankles.

• 10:30David Sims?

  Now I said to my wife, like, this is kind of the last one I'm gonna watch during this that's like arguably bad. And I don't even think Boxcar Bertha is like a, you know, terrible movie.

• 10:41Griffin Newman?

  Negative on it than I am, but it's not like, no.

• 10:43David Sims?

  But like, this is the last one where I think it's, in my opinion, you can kind of be like, ah, that movie just, you know, didn't work or is bad. You could, if you're saying that about the other ones, I mean, of course you can say like, oh, I don't like New York, New York. I, you know, I get that. Like, I'm not complaining.

• 10:58Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 10:58David Sims?

  But it's like, the, the rest are-

• 11:02David Sims?

  Interesting to masterpiece.

• 11:04Griffin Newman?

  I would say you basically have three types of movies for the rest of his career. You have masterpieces.

• 11:10David Sims?

  Master.

• 11:11Griffin Newman?

  You have movies that just work to some degree.

• 11:13David Sims?

  Masterpiece.

• 11:14Griffin Newman?

  Right?

• 11:14David Sims?

  Yes.

• 11:15Griffin Newman?

  Then you have-

• 11:15David Sims?

  Highly regarded films.

• 11:17Griffin Newman?

  Really interesting, risky, personal swings. You have something that might not quite hit, but it's, it's something that's coming out of his soul. Right? And is a very genuine effort and doing something very artistically daring. And then the third thing is what for most people would be a kind of strategic career move movie, a paycheck gig, you know, a favor gig. But all of those movies, I would argue, are defined by the fact that Martin Scorsese chose to make them. It's not just, well, he did this to get back in good graces. All of those movies become defined, not just by the idea that he made it, but what he contributed to that movie. Anything that would be impersonal ends up becoming very personal through him.

• 12:01Griffin Newman?

  Boxcar Bertha is the last impersonal movie he makes. Who's that knocking at my door is him making a deeply personal movie before he's figured out how to make an engaging film.

• 12:11David Sims?

  Right.

• 12:11Griffin Newman?

  And entertaining.

• 12:12David Sims?

  Right, where he's, right, he's, he's just getting his hands on the toolbox.

• 12:16Griffin Newman?

  Right. And Boxcar Bertha's got pretty good craft in it, but, but you feel that he, he doesn't have anything on the line. He's not putting himself in it in the same way. And, and from next week on, that's not the case. Would you agree?

• 12:30David Sims?

  I would agree, except I think Goodfellas sucks.

• 12:32Griffin Newman?

  Yes, well, of course, that's our take that we're working towards.

• 12:35David Sims?

  Yeah, our Goodfellas episode is five minutes of us going.

• 12:38Griffin Newman?

  Goodfellas sucks, Raging Bull, basic.

• 12:41David Sims?

  What if we put him on the bracket?

• 12:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:43David Sims?

  Encouraged like, like, yeah, yeah, no, of course we, we're excited to do Scorsese that we do. And we're like, oh, by the way, we think he stinks.

• 12:50Griffin Newman?

  We all agree, this guy's a fucking phony.

• 12:52David Sims?

  Every episode is us like, another stinker.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  What a jamook.

• 12:57David Sims?

  F.

• 12:57Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 12:59David Sims?

  Also, I don't like his personality. I don't find him charming at all.

• 13:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and why are you so short, Marty? You even make me look tall.

• 13:07David Sims?

  Well, no, no, my contrarian take would be like, I actually think he's too tall.

• 13:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 13:12David Sims?

  He should shorten up.

• 13:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, hunch up, Marty.

• 13:14David Sims?

  Right.

• 13:17David Sims?

  Talk faster.

• 13:18Griffin Newman?

  Stop snipping them brows, Marty.

• 13:23David Sims?

  I think there should be less women in these movies. All right, okay, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

• 13:28Griffin Newman?

  Marty, bigger glasses, please. I can barely spot them on your face.

• 13:32David Sims?

  Touch your cheeks. That's how big they are.

• 13:35Griffin Newman?

  Ah, this guy, he drolls on and on. Can't you speed up the conversation a bit, Marty? Get to the point faster and use your hands to express yourself. This fucking loser. Today, we're talking about who's that knocking at my door, Boxcar Bertha.

• 13:52David Sims?

  Martin Scorsese.

• 13:53Griffin Newman?

  JJ forgot to prepare a dossier for this one.

• 13:55David Sims?

  No, he worked really, really hard to get it to us in time.

• 13:58Griffin Newman?

  Lack of interest, he said. Also, there's just not any information out there about this guy. I think we are the first podcast to talk about Martin Scorsese.

• 14:07David Sims?

  Well, it's the first Marty movie you guys all saw before I start this.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 14:12David Sims?

  First one I saw in theaters must have been Gangs of New York.

• 14:14Griffin Newman?

  Same, and I'm wondering if that-

• 14:15Speaker 02

  In theaters or just saw, period? Or we can answer both?

• 14:19David Sims?

  I mean, you can answer both, because for me, I know theaters, the answer is Gangs of New York.

• 14:23Griffin Newman?

  Same, and I'm wondering if that was the first one I saw, period.

• 14:25David Sims?

  It was, I had definitely already seen Taxi Driver by then, because I was such a normal and well-adjusted kid. Um, I'm trying to think if I would have seen much else. Like, I don't think I had seen, I know, but I'd seen Goodfellas. I definitely saw Goodfellas when I was like an early teenager.

• 14:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 14:40David Sims?

  I guess that would be it.

• 14:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, no, I, I think that was the first one I saw, because I, I understood the weight and importance with which that movie was being presented. And I knew Martin Scorsese by reputation, as this is the guy everyone uses as shorthand for infamous filmmaker, serious filmmaker, but I think I saw it and then said to my mom, like, so where does that rank?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Now-

• 15:05Griffin Newman?

  And then started seeing others.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  As a kid growing up in North Jersey.

• 15:08Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm. Oh, yes, this is important.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Might surprise you that the first film of Marty Scorsese that I ever saw is Goodfellas.

• 15:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Now, Ben, we were talking about this the other night. You were saying you have a bit of an interesting relationship to Martin Scorsese and his films across your life, but that there's a, there's an interesting opportunity, there's potential in this series. Do you want me to say it?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Remind me.

• 15:36Griffin Newman?

  You were saying that you grew up with the most annoying people on earth.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 15:41Griffin Newman?

  Obsessively watching his most popular films.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:44Griffin Newman?

  And taking all the wrong lessons from them.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:46Griffin Newman?

  And reading them in the dumbest, most superficial way possible.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 15:50Griffin Newman?

  And that it did not cause you to resent those movies, but it did cause you to kind of push away from them.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Definitely. That you kind of reject him.

• 15:58Griffin Newman?

  A protective-

• 15:59Speaker 02

  And not, not in the way that I think he's, obviously, it would be crazy to think he's a hack. But it's just, it's, you know what?

• 16:06Griffin Newman?

  He thought he was a loser.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  I'll make, I thought he was a freaking loser. Now, it's this kind of the same way with Bruce Springsteen for me. Where it's like, obviously, the guy's an incredible songwriter. You know, put out incredible albums, but it just was so jammed down my throat. I was like, I can't, I can't engage with it.

• 16:26David Sims?

  I understand that New Jersey has a couple of Italian residents. Scorsese is not a Jersey guy.

• 16:34Griffin Newman?

  He's not.

• 16:35David Sims?

  So it's a little bit of like the classic Jersey thing of like, yeah, but he's making movies about us moocs. So you know, it's like, oh, yeah.

• 16:41Griffin Newman?

  They weren't owning him, but they were loving his work.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  It's like the Pope, Frank Sinatra, Scorsese are on the wall.

• 16:46David Sims?

  Springsteen, at least, it's like, that guy is Jersey, he's from there.

• 16:50Griffin Newman?

  And Ben, I don't know if you know this, but you know how most of us, we grow up in our childhood bedrooms, we have floor?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:57Griffin Newman?

  You can stand on it.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:59Griffin Newman?

  Bruce didn't have that.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Fuck.

• 17:01Griffin Newman?

  There was a hole in the floor of his childhood bedroom.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Not right.

• 17:04Griffin Newman?

  The thing we stand on, that we rely on, he didn't have that.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  For me, it was about not fitting in with the community where I grew up. So I felt like I needed to differentiate myself from the pack. And so I was drawn to outsiders.

• 17:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Artists, musicians, filmmakers that felt worlds away than the culture that the people around me engaged in.

• 17:49Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 17:49David Sims?

  Yes.

• 17:50Griffin Newman?

  Mmm.

• 17:53David Sims?

  Is that the Cine's Cow?

• 17:54Griffin Newman?

  The Cine's Cow is back.

• 17:55David Sims?

  Haven't heard from her in a while.

• 17:56Griffin Newman?

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

• 18:02David Sims?

  Okay.

• 18:02Griffin Newman?

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

• 18:07David Sims?

  Wow.

• 18:07Griffin Newman?

  The cow likes chicken.

• 18:10David Sims?

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

• 18:16Griffin 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.

• 18:29David Sims?

  Absolutely.

• 18:30Griffin Newman?

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

• 18:36David Sims?

  That is a line in the movie.

• 18:38Griffin Newman?

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

• 18:40David Sims?

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

• 18:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 18:45David Sims?

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

• 18:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh-huh.

• 18:52David Sims?

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

• 18:54Griffin Newman?

  Performances, friend of the show.

• 18:55David Sims?

  Friend of the show, Zach Cherry.

• 18:57Griffin Newman?

  Zach Cherry.

• 18:57David Sims?

  Also in it.

• 18:58Griffin Newman?

  This is true.

• 19:00David Sims?

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

• 19:10Griffin 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.

• 19:24David Sims?

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

• 19:28Griffin Newman?

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

• 19:40David 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.

• 19:53Griffin Newman?

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

• 19:58David Sims?

  Damn right.

• 20:03Griffin Newman?

  David?

• 20:03David Sims?

  Yes?

• 20:04Griffin Newman?

  Did you know there's a new place where you can let your nerdy freak flag fly? Video Game Town, and it's populated by some of the best freelance writers on the internet, where you can read compelling editorials, reviews on the latest pop culture releases, get exclusive interviews with tastemakers, and even get rankings of sexy mascots.

• 20:23David Sims?

  Wait a second.

• 20:23Griffin Newman?

  If you're into that.

• 20:25David Sims?

  Not at all. Don't let the name fool you. Video Game Town covers all things geek related, got coverage on meme culture, film reviews from friend of the show, Sedan Tedlocka.

• 20:34Griffin Newman?

  Past and Future Guest.

• 20:35David Sims?

  Eric Vanderwall and Josh Bell, articles just dissecting television, both new and old, uh, stories about gamers and cinephiles, and a weekly podcast with some stellar guests.

• 20:45Griffin Newman?

  Video Game Town is run by two friends, Grant and Jared. Wait a second, two friends?

• 20:49David Sims?

  Litigation incoming.

• 20:50Griffin Newman?

  Bring their decades of experience covering games, movies, and tech. They deliver the kind of analysis, editorials, podcasts, videos, rankings, and nerdy ephemera that you can't find elsewhere. So check them out at videogame dot town. I've never seen a dot town before.

• 21:07David Sims?

  You can do it.

• 21:08Griffin Newman?

  You can do it. And be sure to subscribe for their backlog of evergreen Video Game Town Hall episodes wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to support the return of fully independent web media, and who doesn't? You can directly support them on Patreon at patreon.com slash Videogame Town for exclusive articles and podcasts.

• 21:37Griffin Newman?

  David, crack open that dossier, please.

• 21:38David Sims?

  Martin Charles Scorsese, the great American filmmaker.

• 21:42Griffin Newman?

  Well, excuse me, we don't pay JJ to editorialize. We will decide whether or not he's a great American filmmaker. Don't tell us that. Don't shove that down our throats.

• 21:51David Sims?

  Was born November 17th, 1942. In Flushing, Queens. Did you know that?

• 21:58Griffin Newman?

  I knew he was a Queens boy.

• 22:00David Sims?

  Parents are Charles and Catherine Scorsese. Sicilian, the children are Sicilian immigrants. So they are, you know, they are the first generation born here. Marty's the second. Both of Marty's parents were born on Elizabeth Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Charles worked in like shipyards and then like pressed clothes, I think. Catherine, they both worked in like the garment district for a long time. Marty has an older brother named Frank. You may have heard this before, Griffin, but Marty had a bit of a bad pair of lungs.

• 22:29Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 22:30David Sims?

  He caught an illness when he was a tiny baby. Probably pertussis, like whooping cough or some, you know, like there was an epidemic. A nice doctor supposedly sort of, you know, saved his life when he was a tiny baby, but he thinks it basically like allergies, asthma, trouble breathing.

• 22:47Griffin Newman?

  Barely made it out of infancy.

• 22:48David Sims?

  His whole, but, but then it's like his whole childhood. He's got like a bad set of lungs, you know, like he's a little, you know, whatever. He's, he's a little fragile.

• 22:58Griffin Newman?

  Still to this day, it affects, I'm sure the way he was raised. You know, if you come that close to losing a child that early on, your parents are going to do everything they can to really try to keep you safe. And that fragility, I think, gets into the head of the child.

• 23:15David Sims?

  The, uh, great documentary that Rebecca Miller did last year. Is it called Mr. Scorsese?

• 23:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 23:22David Sims?

  That was on Apple TV. Talks about this. He talks about it in the Richard Schickel book, Conversations with Scorsese, which JJ wanted me to shout out because he's using it a lot for this stuff. And also, but I should shout it out anyway, because I've read it. It is fantastic. It is one of the great, like critic director discourse, you know, works ever. But like, he grew up in Corona in Queens, like, you know, back, back then, obviously that part of Queens, I think was very heavily Italian.

• 23:47Griffin Newman?

  And it was more suburban.

• 23:50David Sims?

  It's suburban, like there's no big buildings there and it's not like cramped like Lower Manhattan was.

• 23:55Griffin Newman?

  It's like front yards and yeah.

• 23:57David Sims?

  Two family house, they had a yard, they had a little tree. And they were forced to move back because Charles got in an argument, move back to the Lower East Side, move back to Little Italy, because Charles got in an argument with the landlord. And I feel like in the documentary Scorsese talks about like, what, you know, it was the classic kind of like, you know, was there maybe something shifty or was it just like, you know, ego bravado kind of stuff, right?

• 24:21Griffin Newman?

  Impossible to say, but something.

• 24:23David Sims?

  Face could not be saved.

• 24:25Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 24:25David Sims?

  Right. And he talks about it as being like cast out of paradise.

• 24:28Griffin Newman?

  Yes, paradise lost, that he was taken out of a place he remembers feeling safe and comfortable and thrown into what felt like an unstable, scary environment.

• 24:37David Sims?

  And it's a humiliation. They're moving back to essentially a tenement, this tiny two room apartment on 253 Elizabeth. Now, of course, you would have to be in charge of some sort of oil or aluminum deposit to afford an apartment on 253 Elizabeth.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  You're like a creative director.

• 24:54David Sims?

  I mean, I guess you could probably buy like a studio apartment for like $900,000 that has like a toilet in the middle of the room.

• 25:03Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say, the walls are made of toilets that don't work, but have unflushed shit in them.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  You could maybe get the room that's portrayed in Who's Knocking at My Door? That's just the fuck room?

• 25:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 25:15David Sims?

  Yeah, right. Exactly. Like for, for, again, it's still a very large amount of money.

• 25:20Griffin Newman?

  But also you gotta live there with the fuck room guys. The fuck room guys are still there. They can't kick them off the lease.

• 25:27David Sims?

  So 253 Elizabeth. So I work in Soho.

• 25:30Griffin Newman?

  Well, you work for Blank Check Production.

• 25:32David Sims?

  That is true, but I also work for The Atlantic and I work in Soho. And Elizabeth Street between Prince and Houston, you know, is, is where he grew up. And like, it's, you know, you know where Prince Street Pizza is, all the, all the tourists love to go there now.

• 25:45Griffin Newman?

  Around the box.

• 25:45David Sims?

  Around the corner.

• 25:46Griffin Newman?

  Square slices, they say.

• 25:48David Sims?

  Talking around the corner from there.

• 25:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 25:50David Sims?

  Anyway, uh, so his dad wasn't in the mob, but like definitely knew plenty of people who were. And I feel like was sort of like often mixed up in the local kind of scenery.

• 26:03Griffin Newman?

  At that time, entwined in these things. And even if you're trying to distance yourself away from them, there's a what do you think you're better than me? Kind of thing. I mean, it's part of what's interesting about the sort of mystery of them losing the house in Corona. Where you're like, was he too close or was he too far from these things?

• 26:22David Sims?

  He tells this story about like the landlord, maybe thought that dad was a little too mobbed up. And there was like a fight, someone picked up an axe, the landlord picked up an axe at some point. The dad is like this intense guy, according to Marty. And I feel like, you know, his parents are so present in his early work, right? Like he does Italian American, the documentary about them.

• 26:43Griffin Newman?

  They look so much like him.

• 26:44David Sims?

  They do.

• 26:45Griffin Newman?

  They look like him in old age makeup.

• 26:47David Sims?

  Right, like, yeah. And then, and his mother is just this like incredibly warm and interesting figure.

• 26:51Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 26:52David Sims?

  His dad is definitely a little more unknowable, like, or like a, you know, firm, kind of like soft spoken, right? Anyway, seven people living in three rooms, then they got some rooms down like in two, the first they were like 240. I don't know. He talks about all this, you know, like I, we don't need to go through every single apartment that he lived in.

• 27:08Griffin Newman?

  Has JJ included Zillow listing?

• 27:11David Sims?

  Well, I could look him up. Again, I bet you these days, pretty buddy.

• 27:14Griffin Newman?

  Price.

• 27:15David Sims?

  Um, Lower East Side is pretty rough, as he says, you know, kind of like the dead end kids in old movies. It's close to that kids running up and down the street. You had a garbage can, you would get a piece of wood. Now you got a sword and a shield, you play around.

• 27:29Griffin Newman?

  But also Marty's spending a lot of time looking out his window at kids acting up.

• 27:35David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Griffin Newman?

  Because his parents are so worried about his dang lungs. He, he talks about their being, uh, unknowingly trained into the act of being an observer, of being the watcher, of looking at everything through this frame. And also just like doodling a lot, drawing what he sees, the things he can't engage in, the roughhousing.

• 27:54David Sims?

  You can see in the Scorsese doc, the storyboards he made.

• 27:57Griffin Newman?

  Are insane.

• 27:58David Sims?

  And it's crazy.

• 27:59Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 27:59David Sims?

  It's not like, oh yeah, some stick figures. And you can see that this guy has like a visual sense. It's like these very, very complex, beautiful like drawings of like stories he's imagining and movies he wants to make or whatever.

• 28:10Griffin Newman?

  It was Rebecca Miller being interviewed by her buddy Sean Fantasy on The Big Picture. But she was saying like, you know, I have a difficult relationship with the idea of genius and I, I question the label. But when he showed me his storyboards as a child, I was like, this is a level of genius we're dealing with. It also takes effort and it takes craft and it takes intelligence. It's not like people are just gifted, but you look at the storyboards he was doing when he was like 12. And he's like drawing out full color Roman epic sequences.

• 28:39David Sims?

  Yes. Yeah. Right. There's a lot of Roman stuff. I mean, because.

• 28:41Griffin Newman?

  Right. He was like obsessed with, right, those kind of epics.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, this is really impressive.

• 28:47Griffin Newman?

  Cause it's not only is like his technical kind of mastery of illustration so strong, but you're like, he immediately just kind of got composition. He understood camera movements. He understood visual, visual storytelling. And he's not just like drawing a comic book. He's specifically like drawing out a movie. To some degree, this guy just like completely absorbed and understood this language and was able to spit it back out perfectly.

• 29:13David Sims?

  So Martin Scorsese, you know, hangs out with the kids, there's the rough kids, but he is often the kid with his back against the wall, trying not to get too much in the fight. Little Italy back then is for real. Little Italy basically like Houston down to Canal, Elizabeth over to like Mulberry, but like.

• 29:30Griffin Newman?

  Five foot six or under. Yeah. Sicilian.

• 29:35David Sims?

  The way he puts it, Elizabeth Street was mainly Sicilian. That's interesting to me. I wonder if it really did work that way where it's, because Little Italy is essentially three streets. It's Mott, Mulberry and Elizabeth, which are like, it's now you call, I mean, Little Italy barely exists. And you call some of it Nolita, which is a made up, you know, term. It is so offensive.

• 29:53Griffin Newman?

  That sucks.

• 29:53David Sims?

  Um, but like, you know, architecturally and culturally now, it's all kind of one thing. But imagine like just the like ultra parochialism of like, yay, you know, the northern Italians, they were, and then, then the Neapolitans, they're on Mott, the Sicilians, we're on Elizabeth. What, I mean, like.

• 30:10Griffin Newman?

  That's what Gangs of New York is about. And that was what New York.

• 30:12David Sims?

  Gangs of New York is 100 years prior.

• 30:14Griffin Newman?

  My point, if you let me finish my sentence, is that New York was like that for well over a century. Where it was like, people would immigrate and then they'd just be like, this is our block.

• 30:24David Sims?

  Yes, little bit.

• 30:25Griffin Newman?

  You know, like families would sort of mount and there was the sense of this weird, like, we know this is the great American melting pot, but there's also a sort of baked in defense of tribalism of like, this is where we come from and this is our family.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  I think that, that continues though.

• 30:39Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a little more.

• 30:40David Sims?

  It continues in new neighborhoods, but the block by block thing is what fascinates me. I think there's a little less of that now because there's less tenements.

• 30:47Griffin Newman?

  It used to also be like a fucking stronghold. It was like, the neighborhoods were really sectioned off.

• 30:52David Sims?

  No, but I mean, I mean, like when I worked as a labor reporter, you would, I would, you know, that's where I was sort of like, all right, the Guyanese community is like, you know, this little pocket here in Ozon Park or whatever, you know, like you would find, yes. It's all so fascinating to me. I'm a geography nerd. I'm a New York nerd. I love all this stuff. But mostly he would live in Little Italy, but he does say, sometimes you go to Staten Island or Queens, see other Italian community people. Sometimes you go to 42nd Street, catch a picture.

• 31:15Griffin Newman?

  A picture. You go to the picture houses. Oh, I like the sound.

• 31:19David Sims?

  So I don't know if you guys know this, but Martin Scorsese likes movies.

• 31:24Griffin Newman?

  This is going to be a recurring thing we discuss on this mini series about the films of Martin Scorsese. How much he likes films.

• 31:31David Sims?

  Movies. He says around the age of three, his asthma is not great. And his father would just take him to see lots and lots of movies. His father liked movies. His father had been a film buff in the 30s, so he's passing it down. The first image he remembers seeing, a true color trailer for a Roy Rogers movie, in which he was wearing fringes and jumped from a tree onto his horse. His father says, do you know who Trigger is? And then, and he went like, Scorsese goes like this.

• 31:57Griffin Newman?

  It's by the trigger finger.

• 31:58David Sims?

  And he's like, no, it's the horse's name. And I'll take you to see it next week.

• 32:02Griffin Newman?

  Do you know how much that horse makes? He's got a studio contract.

• 32:05David Sims?

  He gets a bucket of apples every day.

• 32:08Griffin Newman?

  And then he gets 10% of the apples they bring in at the box office.

• 32:13David Sims?

  I'll read some of this quote that JJ says is important, but it's like half of it's like so long. So I was made to think I couldn't do anything physical. I had to be very careful and was sort of coddled in a way. So the ritual going to the movies with your father, it didn't matter what film you saw became important to me. It was a matter of going to Lowe's Commodore on Sixth Street and Second Avenue, which is now part of New York University, the Fillmore East, but in between those two. The Academy of Music, which is gone now on 14th Street. We were always walking into the middle of a film. There was a sense of peace there too. There really was. You had faith when you went into the church and you had faith when you went into the movie theater too. Imagine, Griffin. That's what it should be. There should be a movie theater every 10 blocks in New York City, Griffin, and it should be playing movies all the time when you just walk in.

• 32:55Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 32:55David Sims?

  Walk in in the middle of fucking, what's out right now?

• 33:00David Sims?

  Project Hail Mary.

• 33:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there we go. Sure. It's, it is funny. You know, for how much Martin Scorsese now represents like the sanctity of cinema, right? And the purity of it. He talks about that every time he fucking walked into a movie theater, it was like an insane asylum. Like he was like in those days.

• 33:17David Sims?

  I think it was.

• 33:17Griffin Newman?

  It's just a bunch of like latchkey kids.

• 33:19David Sims?

  Especially if it's like a kid thing. Like, right. Yeah.

• 33:21Griffin Newman?

  Right. But he's just like, people just walk in and out at random moments. It's basically running movies all day and you have like shorts and newsreels and whatever. And so people just like buy a ticket, show up whenever, sit down for like five hours, leave at any point. People are screaming and throwing popcorn. There's the moment matinee I love so much, the Joe Dante movie, where you, you see them go into the movie palace for the first time and they open the doors and it's just like mayhem. It's like Altamont. I also, just to your point, I want to throw out, I imported this lovely Blu-ray box set from the fine folks at imprint in Australia, Martin Scorsese Films of Faith, which is Last Temptation, Condon and Silence put together,

• 34:02Griffin Newman?

  but I found it very funny just how blunt this is. On the back of the box, it has an image from Condon and then a quote from Martin Scorsese. My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.

• 34:14David Sims?

  I mean, I think he eats a meal once in Ohio.

• 34:17Griffin Newman?

  According to him, he eats faith and he watches movies.

• 34:21David Sims?

  I know very reliably that he loves the dumplings at the town downtown. So some of the early movies, Bad and the Beautiful, first movie he sees about the process of filmmaking. He loved westerns. Day the Earth Stood Still, the sci-fi film, one of his first great theater experiences at the Academy of Music. Couple thousand people reacting to it. The Howard Hawks Thing, that was an amazing experience. The shock, the humor, the overlapping dialogue, the monster, 2,000 people jumping at once. What an amazing experience. Now, his mother is responsible for one of his formative memories. She takes him to see Duel in the Sun, which had been condemned by the church.

• 34:56Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 34:57David Sims?

  The, that's a King Vidor movie. I don't remember why they condemned it, but who knows? They were condemning everything.

• 35:03Griffin Newman?

  Because you're supposed to duel under the moon.

• 35:05David Sims?

  Of course. And he was, it was too scary for him. I mean, I get, that's a 46 movie. He must have been, he was like four years old. What's he doing? Taking?

• 35:14Griffin Newman?

  This is what I'm saying. The people will just bring a baby into the theater.

• 35:17David Sims?

  I know, I know. She couldn't wa, he couldn't watch the end. It was also frightening, you know, and my mother kept yelling, look at it. You took me here to see it. Now watch it. So I guess even at four, he's like marching up to his mother and being like, I want to see Duel in the Sun.

• 35:31Griffin Newman?

  I love movies. I'm sorry, brief side tangent, Ben, I have some terrible news. I hadn't even told you this, but I just got a text that we had a cancellation for an upcoming George Lucas talk show date. We were going to have Doug Bradley as a guest, Pinhead himself.

• 35:48David Sims?

  Love Pinhead.

• 35:49Griffin Newman?

  And I was planning to get him to sign your lament configuration box and bring it back here. Apparently Pinhead booked a movie.

• 35:56David Sims?

  Well, you know what? But it's good that he's getting work. Good job, Pinhead. The whole fucking thing that rocks about him is he's a Scouser. He's from Liverpool.

• 36:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 36:05David Sims?

  And like, when you hear him in like a podcast where he's like, you know, he has a Scouse accent and like the idea of like, oh, I would, I would, I would get in trouble. I can try. I'll try. But like the idea of Pinhead being Scouse is just really funny. Anyway, 1948, Scorsese gets a television set. One of the first families on that block, a 16 inch RCA Victor. So now he starts seeing even more movies. Perfect.

• 36:32Griffin Newman?

  Good. This was the problem.

• 36:34David Sims?

  Old movies, I guess. Like, I mean, whatever on television. I think they show a lot of British cinema. He says like Alexander Korda, Beef of Baghdad, you know, and then some Italian film. On Friday nights, they would show things like Bicycle Thieves or Rome Open City, like these, you know, more challenging, near realist Italian films.

• 36:52Griffin Newman?

  I feel like filmmakers of his generation, this come up in other series, talk about this, that also, you know, far fewer channels, very few, but movies would replay.

• 37:02David Sims?

  Of course.

• 37:02Griffin Newman?

  Right. He says, a lot of these guys are studying one movie for like four weeks as a child.

• 37:07David Sims?

  That's the thing. He says million dollar movie, which was like a program in the 50s.

• 37:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:11David Sims?

  Would just show the same film, like five times a week.

• 37:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 37:15David Sims?

  And he would just watch it again and again.

• 37:16Griffin Newman?

  It would be the movie of the week.

• 37:17David Sims?

  His mother would be like, turn it off. And he'd be like, no. Tales of Hoffman, the Powell Pressburger film, which is so beautiful.

• 37:24Griffin Newman?

  One of the most beautiful movies ever made.

• 37:25David Sims?

  Now, of course, he saw it in black and white on a 16 inch RCA Victor TV with commercial breaks and it still mesmerized him. But obviously like a lot, Powell and Pressburger is maybe the one single most obvious influence visually on the work of Martin Scorsese. Like, you know, like it obviously, there's a million other things in the soup there, but like you watch New York, New York, you're like, he's trying to make a Powell and Pressburger like style. Like he's making the.

• 37:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The use of color throughout his movies and how important he talks about color being and how he conceives of things comes from them in so many ways. One of our favorite filmmakers, filmmaking teams ever, a series we're always threatening to do.

• 38:05David Sims?

  Yeah, we'll do them right now, actually. Series canceled.

• 38:08Griffin Newman?

  Marty, hit the bricks.

• 38:12David Sims?

  He didn't see Citizen Kane until he was 14 or 15. Fake fan.

• 38:17Griffin Newman?

  Gotta get those Letterboxd stats up, Marty. Basic ass taste.

• 38:22David Sims?

  He remembers seeing it at the Thalia Theater or Thalia, Thalia, I think, on 96th Street, along with John Ford's The Informer, another good movie. Look, he likes a lot of movies. Also, he write, he'd write, he draws those storyboards, as we know. So we referenced that already. He was very obsessed with like biblical epics, war movies, but his father is not seeing this and going, ah, an artistic streak. Perhaps I should foster this.

• 38:53Griffin Newman?

  I'm so excited. We have a picture maker in the house.

• 38:55David Sims?

  This is embarrassing. I'm throwing these away.

• 38:59Griffin Newman?

  The fuck is this? Who do you think you are? Martin Scorsese? It is funny to just be the guy that gets used as shorthand for great director for decades.

• 39:13David Sims?

  You're no Marty Scorsese. Marty Scorsese.

• 39:16Griffin Newman?

  Imagine his dad being like, Martin Scorsese, what, what, what, what do you have to, ever have to say about movies? No one cares.

• 39:25David Sims?

  So I guess, his parents are not deeply religious, he says, but he lives in Little Italy. And so he gets sent to Catholic school. He went to St. Patrick's Elementary, which used to be, it existed until, I think, I looked it up recently, like until 2015, maybe, but like it's, so this is what I want to talk about. All right. So I don't know if you guys know this, but there's St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. New York has St. Patrick's Cathedral, like the big ass fuck off cathedral. It's up, you know, midtown, right?

• 39:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 39:53David Sims?

  Exactly. But that was the second St. Patrick's Cathedral, guys. The first St. Patrick's Cathedral is in Little Italy. It's on Prince between Mott and Mulberry, right?

• 40:03Griffin Newman?

  Is this the thing you said you had to reveal in this episode? David said he was sitting on a hot scoop.

• 40:07David Sims?

  Yes. And you guys have definitely seen this, you know, maybe you haven't been in the church, but it's right there.

• 40:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 40:13David Sims?

  You know, in the middle of Soho, you're like, whoa, there's a big old church.

• 40:16Griffin Newman?

  It very much sticks out.

• 40:17David Sims?

  It's a very old church. Like it was built, I mean, by American standards, not by European standard. By European standards, it's like a 12 year old, but you know, it's like 250 years old or whatever.

• 40:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, impressive.

• 40:29David Sims?

  Yeah. It's called now St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, which is a little rude, I think. It's a technically St. Patrick's Basilica, but you know, that's, that's Pope language. Let's see, when was it built? 1815. So yeah, you know.

• 40:45Griffin Newman?

  It's just, it's so funny because of the neighborhood where it's like you pass a Luweve.

• 40:51David Sims?

  Right. You're, you're like, ah, yes. Where could I buy a belt for $800? And it's like, yes, but once this was like the seat of, you know, working class Catholic power. So it's an, so there used to be a school across the street. Now it's condos, but on Prince Street was the Catholic school across the street. That's where he went. He was an altar boy at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

• 41:11Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 41:14Griffin Newman?

  Where are we going with this, David? You said this was exciting.

• 41:18David Sims?

  And we all know that always works out for everyone just fine.

• 41:21Griffin Newman?

  Worried.

• 41:23David Sims?

  I, the other day, toured St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. You can tour it. There's catacombs underneath.

• 41:29Griffin Newman?

  Cool.

• 41:30David Sims?

  And you can tour them.

• 41:31Griffin Newman?

  Bones?

• 41:32David Sims?

  Now, but on this tour guide, which was led, I was with my friend Blythe. My friend Blythe was like, hey, you wanted to get dinner or drink? And I'm like, oh, sure. And she's like, or we could do something cool. And I'm like, what's cool? I'm trying to do fun New York experience.

• 41:47Griffin Newman?

  Catacombs much?

• 41:48David Sims?

  And she was like catacombs? And I'm like, there are catacombs? We go on this tour. First, we go around the graveyard. There's an ancient graveyard there. Again, by American standards, like, you know, hundreds of years old. Very cool. He's, you know. Our tour guide was, imagine like sort of an Irish guy from Brooklyn. Can you imagine this?

• 42:05Griffin Newman?

  Call it to toy to toy.

• 42:06David Sims?

  No, no, no, not an Irish guy from Ireland.

• 42:08Griffin Newman?

  Little, little green.

• 42:11David Sims?

  Hey, I don't know what you're talking about, but uh, you know, uh, ba ba ba ba ba, you know, that kind of guy, right? And at one point, he's like, who here has toured like catacombs in Europe? And I'm like, I've, you know, I've been to like the ones in Paris, right? With the bones. And he's like, all right, all right. So Oz are air conditioned. Okay. There's no skeletons down here.

• 42:29Griffin Newman?

  What? No skeletons?

• 42:31David Sims?

  I mean, there are skeletons hidden away, but you know, there's no like random bones.

• 42:36Griffin Newman?

  Have you ever been?

• 42:37David Sims?

  So American that there's air conditioning. Air conditioning.

• 42:40Griffin Newman?

  Have you ever been to the fucking catacombs in Paris?

• 42:43Speaker 02

  No, I tried going the last time I was there and I didn't make a reservation enough out from when we were in town.

• 42:50Griffin Newman?

  It is as extreme as you would imagine it to be, where you're just like, let me go through a tunnel. Oh, it's just an endless walk lined with bones.

• 42:58David Sims?

  Yeah. So cool. And the other thing with the Paris ones especially is you're like, right? If there was not someone with me, I would get lost immediately and die down here.

• 43:05Griffin Newman?

  It feels like a maze. It feels like a labyrinth. It goes on forever. It's so many skulls, like so many, and they're not like behind glass. You're just walking through and being like, that skull.

• 43:16David Sims?

  And they're like, don't touch the skull.

• 43:17Griffin Newman?

  Hundreds of years old. Anyway, and but on this tour, he was like, hey, anyone know Martin Scorsese? And I was like, yeah, I've heard, you know, yes.

• 43:26David Sims?

  And he's like, it was an altar boy here. And I was like, of course he was. Yeah. This was the church. This is the little church.

• 43:31Griffin Newman?

  This is the little church.

• 43:32David Sims?

  It's one of those New York things that you walk into like this grand cathedral. I mean, I took a fucking picture. Uh, you know, you just can't believe like that this is just sitting here in the middle of New York. Cause like.

• 43:43Griffin Newman?

  He'd do his prayers and then walk right across the street to Rice to Riches.

• 43:47David Sims?

  Like, look at that. It's gorgeous.

• 43:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 43:50David Sims?

  It's pretty.

• 43:51Griffin Newman?

  So nice. I feel like a thing he talked about and we're getting at this.

• 43:54David Sims?

  Catholicism, guys. What if that's my review?

• 43:57Griffin Newman?

  This is now, this is a trad podcast.

• 44:02David Sims?

  I'm, I'm into Catholicism in that weird J D Vance way.

• 44:06Griffin Newman?

  We all know Blank Check has always been a deeply spiritual podcast. Um, I was going to say, I feel like it's a thing that came up in the Rebecca Miller doc, but comes up in a lot of his talks of just like, he was a fragile boy. He was nervous, probably an extension of his physical fragility. He was in a rowdy neighborhood and the picture house and the church were the two places he felt safe.

• 44:32David Sims?

  They're the calm places. And the other, the thing about the church especially is the, uh, the rougher types, the mob, whatever, they're not messing with the church. No one's going to be mean to a priest.

• 44:40Griffin Newman?

  It's the one place that's basically safe.

• 44:43David Sims?

  He had a very influential man named Father Principay, who was like a young priest mentor for him.

• 44:49Griffin Newman?

  Kind of a hip priest.

• 44:50David Sims?

  I think so. I mean, he says like, he played the guitar and shit.

• 44:53Griffin Newman?

  Oh, did he really? Okay. Well, my joke's not funny. It was just accurate.

• 44:57David Sims?

  He felt that the, um, he was a big fan of, uh, On the Waterfront, introduced Martin to, just that he loves the Carl Malden character.

• 45:05Griffin Newman?

  Carl Malden's so fucking good in that movie.

• 45:07David Sims?

  Carl Malden? I'll say it. Pretty good actor.

• 45:10Griffin Newman?

  The original kinda, is Carl Malden the original Karen's boy?

• 45:16David Sims?

  Definitely because Carl Malden's like a good looking guy, but he's got that like big nose.

• 45:21Griffin Newman?

  Huge.

• 45:21David Sims?

  And like, it kinda just makes him sort of like, you know, like affable and interesting and whatever.

• 45:27Griffin Newman?

  But I feel like he's a definitional kind of formative archetype of the kind of guy that you and I lose our minds over, right?

• 45:35David Sims?

  I love.

• 45:36Griffin Newman?

  Have loved for decades.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  My guy's got a honker.

• 45:38Griffin Newman?

  He's got a honker. You really do feel like you could squeeze it and the noise would go.

• 45:43David Sims?

  Go augga, like those old cars. Yes. Um, Father Principay finally saw a taxi driver and said to Marty, I've always told you too much. Good Friday, not enough Easter, Sunday. And Marty's like, he nailed me. Anyway, so all very formative for him. Uh, he doesn't totally fit in. He wants to be a priest. He enrolls in seminary school, but he just can't take his studies seriously enough. Like you need to like fucking learn Latin and shit. And I just feel like all Marty wants to do is watch movies.

• 46:13Griffin Newman?

  It's funny when he talks about how close he feels like he came to becoming a man of the cloth. And then you hear from like his family and his childhood friends. And they were like, he was never going to fucking be able to pull this off. I know he feels like he was being pulled between these things, but it was just like.

• 46:28David Sims?

  It's pretty short-lived. At 14, he enrolls in a junior seminary called Cathedral College, which is on the Upper West Side. He's expelled after a year. He says he didn't have his mind on his work and he'd fallen in love with a young lady. These are not going, you were, you will not be a priest with this kind of behavior, my friend. But thank God, uh, the cinema claimed him. As he says, like, he's basically like, my parents were not religious. I liked Father Principay and I liked, you know, the neighborhood priests, kind of the neighborhood church thing, but like.

• 46:58Griffin Newman?

  That's just not pushed on me.

• 46:59David Sims?

  Yeah. Like, and I probably just didn't have quite enough of the drive, you know? So he gets kicked out of that. He goes to Cardinal Hayes, uh, which is a high school in the Bronx. Uh, he's still thinking about maybe going to like Jesuit University of Fordham up in the Bronx. Fordham's a Catholic, uh, university. That's where his friends are, but bad grades. He was interested in, he, in English literature and read lots of books and stuff like that, but he says it wasn't easy for him to read. Says it wasn't part of our cultural makeup, but I was ready to delve further. I don't know. I just feel like he's, you know, he's, he's not academic, right? Like he, he figures this all out later. Like he's just not.

• 47:38Griffin Newman?

  Right. Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Comes from a working class family.

• 47:41David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 47:41Griffin Newman?

  Not even that, there was this.

• 47:43David Sims?

  A lot of working class kids who were, you know, climbing, you know, rapidly shooting up, right? You know, this is what happened in America.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Seeing it in his day to day life.

• 47:53David Sims?

  Says like, it's like there, it wasn't a culture of it in his family, right? Of like, you should read fucking Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens or whatever. And he loved, and he loved movies. Number one thing he loves is movies, not, not books.

• 48:09David Sims?

  He makes a short film called Vesuvius Six, uh, an eight millimeter thing, which is shot on the roofs of Mott Street with white sheets. I'm going to guess he didn't completely recreate Mount Vesuvius.

• 48:22Griffin Newman?

  They show clips of this in the Rebecca Miller thing, but it's him doing his, yeah.

• 48:25David Sims?

  He says he basically like learned some things about camera angles. You know what I mean?

• 48:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 48:30David Sims?

  And then he gets a catalog from the New York University, Washington Square College. It's not even called NYU back then. Uh, and they have a department called TMR, Television, Motion Pictures, Radio. And he thinks, I'm going to go into radio. Just kidding. But, uh, but you know, it's in the village. It's right where he grew up. Um, it's just, you know, one neighborhood up.

• 48:50Griffin Newman?

  What if we found out that the, the great, uh, the, the great pain of Martin Scorsese's life is that he wanted to be a drive time radio guy and he couldn't hack it?

• 48:59David Sims?

  Uh, it would be so funny if he wanted to be like right on Howard Stern.

• 49:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 49:03David Sims?

  And he's still, do you think he's ever been on Howard Stern?

• 49:06Griffin Newman?

  Well, I'm going to look it up. Keep digging through the dossier. I'm sure he has.

• 49:09David Sims?

  So Haig Manugian?

• 49:13Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yes. Yes.

• 49:14David Sims?

  Very influential early like teacher for him, uh, Armenian, American professor. Um, he's in Who's That Knocking at My Door? I think briefly. So he shows him Lumiere movies. He shows him great train robbery, greed, maybe all the way up to like early Fellini. Uh, it's like, these are the kinds of movies he's showing him. Scorsese, they had to do a report on a movie he liked. He wrote a report on the third man and he gave me a B plus. Because he said, remember this is only a thriller. We were opposite ends of the pole in a way. He perverted like Open City. I liked everything. And this is important to Marty and all the movie brats. I feel like the movie brats are like, we love westerns. We love noir. We love fucking Hitchcock.

• 49:57David Sims?

  Whereas like the older guard are like, well, yeah, but that's, that's, yeah, but that's terrible. That's entertainment. Right? You know? I mean, sure. It's fun.

• 50:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 50:06David Sims?

  It's funny to say about the third man too.

• 50:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes. Well, what, what were you about to ask Ben?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  I wondered, does it maybe have something to do with TV, growing up with having access to all of these different kinds of genres?

• 50:18David Sims?

  Maybe, but I think TV is so, so new. It's more the picture house thing of those movies would just show the, like the trashier movies.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  You could just sit there and just watch.

• 50:27David Sims?

  All day.

• 50:28Griffin Newman?

  I, I think that's a lot of it, that these guys really dug in and studied the kind of form and construction of these things. And there's like, there's artistry here. While, while not presenting themselves as, uh, serious, uh, does not seem he has ever been a guest on the Howard Stern Show. There are many clips of other people talking about.

• 50:44David Sims?

  Coward.

• 50:45Griffin Newman?

  Coward.

• 50:45David Sims?

  Baba movie.

• 50:47Griffin Newman?

  He, he has done Adam Friedland.

• 50:50David Sims?

  Should.

• 50:51Griffin Newman?

  You should do hot ones.

• 50:52David Sims?

  That might kill him.

• 50:53Griffin Newman?

  Would he die if he?

• 50:54David Sims?

  Let's, let's, let's be careful. I don't know what Marty's diet is.

• 50:58Griffin Newman?

  Just sniffing those hot sauces might be dangerous.

• 51:02David Sims?

  French New Wave is happening while he's in film school. It's very, very liberating for him, he says. Hiroshima Mon amour, Jules Jim, uh, Viva Savvy.

• 51:12Griffin Newman?

  My opinion is that those are good movies.

• 51:13David Sims?

  They're good movies. He just thinks about things like Anna Karina's reading a letter and then there's a jump cut to a man folding it up. He's gone up and taken it out of her hand. You're breaking narrative, right? You know, I mean, obviously this is the whole thing with the French New Wave where you show people now and they're like, I don't get it.

• 51:28Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 51:28David Sims?

  And you're like, yeah, but dude.

• 51:30Griffin Newman?

  Literally had them.

• 51:31David Sims?

  Right. And then, you know, Cassavetes is out there.

• 51:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:34David Sims?

  Shadows has been released.

• 51:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:36David Sims?

  Right?

• 51:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 51:36David Sims?

  Like by then.

• 51:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, and this is happening in New York.

• 51:39David Sims?

  And he made that on a 16 millimeter camera in New York City, so it can be done.

• 51:44Griffin Newman?

  And it was a scrappy iterative movie. He shot it twice.

• 51:47David Sims?

  Over a bunch of years and all.

• 51:49Griffin Newman?

  Right. It's like this guy just kind of eked it out.

• 51:51David Sims?

  Yeah. So, uh, he works on some student, student stuff. He's a cinematographer or the photographer for a short called Iniesta. And then his first short is called What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This? Now, we're gonna.

• 52:05Griffin Newman?

  Excellent title.

• 52:05David Sims?

  We're gonna talk about these early shorts, including this one, right?

• 52:08Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 52:09David Sims?

  That's all on his. Kind of box set, right?

• 52:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes. That's on their Italian American Big Shave.

• 52:15David Sims?

  Right.

• 52:15Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 52:17David Sims?

  In 65, he also marriages, uh, marriages.

• 52:19Griffin Newman?

  He marriages.

• 52:20David Sims?

  He marries his college girlfriend, Lorraine Brennan. They have a daughter Catherine, his oldest daughter, who is very present in his life, but clearly has a complicated relationship with him when she's young. Cause he's like divorces her mother and then they've divorced in 71. And then he's like, you know, being really regular through all of the seventies.

• 52:38Griffin Newman?

  It's a big thing that, uh, who's that knocking on my door is about, but he still talks about how much shame there was associated with the idea of even like socializing with women and how kind of sinful it was unless you were immediately just gonna make an honest woman out of her and, and get married and start a family, you know? And I think Marty was always a little bit horny and felt the need to be like, well, then I guess I just gotta get married again.

• 53:07David Sims?

  He got married a bunch. There's some marriages.

• 53:10Griffin Newman?

  There was some marriages.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  How old was he when he became a dad?

• 53:13David Sims?

  Well, of his, of the first child, uh,

• 53:17David Sims?

  yeah, I mean, geez, yeah, he would have been like 23, 24, I think.

• 53:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 53:22David Sims?

  So pretty young, not like insane, but.

• 53:24Griffin Newman?

  And he still talks about like, when he was like, you know, if I want to date someone, I felt like I had to marry them.

• 53:29David Sims?

  Who's that knocking on the door? It was actually written as the seven, second part of a series of films meant to explore his adolescence. The first was gonna be called Jerusalem, Jerusalem. It's this sort of half finished screenplay he wrote where his protagonist called JR, later called Charlie. It's, you know, Mean Streets is the main character is called Charlie. In which they like spend three, he and his boys spend some days in a religious retreat. You know, sounds a little less exciting. Hi, Manugian, uh, is his first producer, you know, helps him make this movie. His father raises $6,000 for him from a student loan. He thinks it's the first student film shot in black and white, 35 millimeters on the East Coast.

• 54:11Griffin Newman?

  Interesting. That's, it is wild to think about.

• 54:14David Sims?

  It's that early.

• 54:15Griffin Newman?

  Things being that nascent.

• 54:16David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Griffin Newman?

  Cause even just like film school is a new thing.

• 54:19David Sims?

  Part of the.

• 54:20Griffin Newman?

  The idea of training.

• 54:21David Sims?

  Of course. And I think it was mostly technical. Like it was mostly like, yes, well, we now make film and television and stuff.

• 54:27Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 54:27David Sims?

  Here's how to do that.

• 54:28Griffin Newman?

  Right. Cause it used to be like.

• 54:30David Sims?

  The new wave is happening. So like the art is so exciting and it's challenging. It's different.

• 54:35Griffin Newman?

  Not to, not to generalize, but it used to be more like fucking joining the circus. Like you would just like get on a fucking bus to Hollywood and get off and be like, what can I do? And then you just learn everything, you know, from like carrying crates and shit.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  But even though the technology has been around for, at that point, 50 years.

• 54:54Griffin Newman?

  It's not very accessible.

• 54:55David Sims?

  I think basically we're very early in like, you could get your hands on a 16 millimeter camera, maybe that's more portable. And you could maybe like make a movie for not as much money, right?

• 55:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 55:07David Sims?

  Like you develop a film yourself, it's still gonna be harder. You're gonna have to cut it with scissors and shit.

• 55:11Griffin Newman?

  A 35 millimeter camera is still a thing that's like kind of locked behind gates, you know? It's, it's really hard to get an opportunity to work with something like that.

• 55:19David Sims?

  They're smaller.

• 55:19Griffin Newman?

  There are very few film schools. They're all very new.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  And it's so expensive. There's a barrier of entry.

• 55:26Griffin Newman?

  And you gotta buy.

• 55:27David Sims?

  Correct.

• 55:27Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but it, yes, yes. And it's a complicated process. But these things had basically been built around like institutional knowledge. Like there wasn't really a pipeline and it also was, and it speaks to what we're saying of like the sort of snobbishness against commercial cinema. There was this battle of like, is this a fucking serious thing? You know, do we need to be like training people and how to make movies? Is that like an intellectual exercise or is that like learning how to work in an auto plant?

• 56:04David Sims?

  Harvey Keitel.

• 56:06Griffin Newman?

  Harvey Keitel.

• 56:06David Sims?

  Answers an ad they put in a publication called Show Business. And, uh, he comes in and Marty has a friend called Bill Minkin, who's a comedian. Sit behind a desk for this, Harvey comes in and Bill Minkin's like, Marty has coached him to be like, what are you doing here? Harvey's like, I answered an ad and he's like, there's no ad. It basically goaded him into an argument and then they like watched the argument. And then, uh, Marty is like, that was great. And Harvey's like, why didn't you fucking tell me like to improv something? I can do that. Like, why, why are you doing fucking Jamie Kennedy, Kennedy experiment on me?

• 56:43Griffin Newman?

  Marty did X. Marty did. It sounds like he X'd the hell out of Keitel.

• 56:48David Sims?

  Keitel was working as a court stenographer.

• 56:50Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 56:51David Sims?

  So I think that, that tends to be kind of a nine to five job. So I think making this movie was really annoying.

• 56:56Griffin Newman?

  Harvey Keitel's the kind of guy, just his, his vibe, his look, his, his generation where I'm like, you could tell me he was doing any job before he became an actor and I would believe.

• 57:08David Sims?

  Yeah, right.

• 57:08Griffin Newman?

  There was no job.

• 57:09David Sims?

  He was a sea captain. I'm like, sure.

• 57:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, of course. And then he, he docked and he started acting in movies. He was a lion tamer.

• 57:18David Sims?

  They shot it over the course of many months, right? Like they had so much trouble matching scenes. They said they would shoot in a building, they'd blow the lights, they'd have to wait for hours to like reset everything. They didn't know what they were doing. The first version is 65 minutes long. It's called Bring On The Dancing Girls.

• 57:34Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 57:34David Sims?

  They screen it for people. It's terrible.

• 57:36Griffin Newman?

  Right. And this was just, I want to make a film about like male camaraderie. I want to try to capture what I see in the guys I grew up with in my generation and all of that.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  So we gotta make a movie out of this, man.

• 57:48Griffin Newman?

  But Ben, it's, it is basically that. It is basically Marty going like, this is the web series. This conversation we're having right now, none of the girl stuff is in it.

• 57:59David Sims?

  Yeah, it doesn't have the girl stuff. It's just guys hanging out.

• 58:01Griffin Newman?

  Written, she's not cast, it's not shot, that's not part of the conception of the movie.

• 58:05David Sims?

  There's no, I mean, there's like a girl in it, but there's no confrontation.

• 58:09Griffin Newman?

  I'm, I'm, I'm saying the character of the girl.

• 58:11David Sims?

  Right, right, right.

• 58:12Griffin Newman?

  All of that is a secondary shoot later. This movie is just guys being dudes.

• 58:16David Sims?

  It's just guys being dudes. So in 66.

• 58:18Griffin Newman?

  People don't like it.

• 58:19David Sims?

  He says, he has no money. His marriage is already falling apart.

• 58:23Griffin Newman?

  He's got 50 minutes of a dude hangout movie that no one wants.

• 58:26David Sims?

  Right. He teams up with Martik Martin, who's an early collaborator of his and works on Mean Streets and other things. There's, neither of them have any money, but they start thinking about things and somehow they get $37,000 from Hi and from Joe Wile, another student who was a lawyer, to finance the rest of the picture, which involved scenes with a girl. They needed an actress. They needed a 16 millimeter camera. They were gonna cut that in with the some 35 millimeter stuff they had shot. And, uh, they start shooting in some real locations. He said, the way he puts it is, I realized I was in the process of combining two styles.

• 59:06David Sims?

  Let's say Cassavetes with Ford, because it's like these two movies essentially get turned into one movie are very differently made. Cause he's learning. Previously tried to shoot sequences without dialogue, tell the stories through images, but it didn't work. They find this actress, Dina Bethune, they call Harvey Keitel back.

• 59:24Griffin Newman?

  Her mother was like a big actress of the early American theater and radio. She was on the original Superman radio show. Eva Bethune was also a dancer. I'm sorry.

• 59:34David Sims?

  No, I'm saying Ivy was the mother.

• 59:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes. And Eva Bethune was also a dancer. She later started her own acting school company that sort of became her legacy, but didn't have many acting roles.

• 59:46David Sims?

  No, she's only got a few, um, right, film credits.

• 59:51David Sims?

  Keitel's like back to working as a court stenographer. They cut his hair and stuff and he's like, I fuck you. This is annoying.

• 59:56Griffin Newman?

  You also have to imagine this is like, what, a year, 18 months later? And it's like, I gotta do more of that shit with the guy who fucking X'd me.

• 1:00:04David Sims?

  This is around the time he also makes the big shave.

• 1:00:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07David Sims?

  That wins.

• 1:00:08Griffin Newman?

  His breakthrough.

• 1:00:09David Sims?

  Right. That wins a prize at a festival of American cinema, experimental cinema.

• 1:00:13Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:00:13David Sims?

  So that gets him a little bit of attention.

• 1:00:15Griffin Newman?

  We, we will cover it Ben, but it's, it's a, a true, short dialogue free film. That is pretty experimental and allegorical, metaphorical. But it has like a really big impact. It is talked about as like a calling card thing as they're sort of arising like film intelligentsia, you know, and the sort of critical community of New York city. He's immediately kind of propped up as like, this guy's interesting.

• 1:00:42David Sims?

  Now, he has a new cut. He calls it, I call first. He screens into the Chicago film festival. Roger Ebert of the Sun Times gives it a great review.

• 1:00:52Griffin Newman?

  Am I wrong in thinking it is literally Roger Ebert's first published review?

• 1:00:56David Sims?

  Not sure about that.

• 1:00:57Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:00:58David Sims?

  But I can tell you that he said, he called it a marvelous evocation of American city life announcing the arrival of an important new director. He did kind of nail it from the half court with that one.

• 1:01:10Griffin Newman?

  Roger, Roger Ebert dines out on this for the rest of his life. He has many accomplishments, but being able to brag about like, I fucking called it. I saw this at the earliest possible showing and I was like, I put my money down on Martin Scorsese having a good career as a film director. And Scorsese also says that it like, kind of made him, or at the very least empowered him.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  David, do you have your own version of that?

• 1:01:35David Sims?

  Oh, like the movie I say, I called my shot or I don't think so.

• 1:01:41Griffin Newman?

  I think I was the first person to say Hijo de Transylvania is good, right? That was, that was a risky position at that time.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  I wasn't actually literally asking, it was, I was.

• 1:01:51David Sims?

  You were being funny.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I was hoping that you would come up with like, I don't know, something dumb. But there's still a chance later. And new listeners, we do this sometimes.

• 1:01:59Griffin Newman?

  We do this sometimes. Sometimes we seed a bit.

• 1:02:02David Sims?

  So he tries to get in the New York film festival. He claimed, he says, they told me I was living aesthetically beyond my means, which is funny.

• 1:02:11David Sims?

  He goes to Europe, you know, takes it around there. He meets a Italian direct, sorry, Italian. Joseph Brenner Associates, a softcore porn distributor. Says, if you add a nude scene, we'll distribute this. So he adds the nude scene.

• 1:02:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes. It was not Ebert's first review, but it was the first review Scorsese got. It was the first review that movie got. Yes. But this is very illustrative of this era of filmmaking of if you were making an independent film.

• 1:02:41Griffin Newman?

  You could screen it for someone and they'd just go like, if you can find a way to throw like five tits in this, I can get it on like five screens.

• 1:02:47David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:02:48Griffin Newman?

  Truly, they'd be like, I'll give you $20,000, find a couple of boobs, edit them into the movie. And that's like, I can make my money back on that.

• 1:02:59David Sims?

  They're in Amsterdam. They fly Harvey Keitel, who I assume is in the middle of like, you know, your honor, I object. Right. To Amsterdam. They got, as he puts it, a bunch of girls and did the crazy nude scene. To get that in there. And, uh, you know, they, he looks back on the film and sees its flaws, but you know, it's part of he, in, in the context of the late sixties, free love, the sexual revolution. And here's this guy who can't like fuck a girl because he likes her and like, is too afraid of sex. He's like, it's, it's like, it's out of sync, but in a good way. Right? You know what I mean?

• 1:03:36Griffin Newman?

  I think this movie is fascinating. I actually like it a lot. I think it is one of those movies where its failings and its limitations actually kind of give it more power because it's sort of about how unsettled it is with itself. And all the things this guy has not yet worked through in himself. It's such a like pure primal scream of Scorsese. And I also think past Mean Streets, his movie stopped being about him. They become about his obsessions and his worldview, and they're all very personal.

• 1:04:04David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:04:05Griffin Newman?

  And Mean Streets is about him.

• 1:04:06David Sims?

  Hugh is about him. He did live in a train station in Paris and meet a robot.

• 1:04:09Griffin Newman?

  Well, those are his best friends. They got time and time. They write all of his favorite things.

• 1:04:16Griffin Newman?

  Mean Streets, as we'll talk about next week, is this fascinating sort of pivot point where he has a self-insert character played by Keitel, but then it feels like he goes like, wait, what if I build the whole movie out of the De Niro guys, the guys I know, not me at the center of the story? And who's that knocking at my door is like a movie about him. It is like Scorsese, like, like almost as a therapy session of a film. Working through all of his concerns and like spilling them out. And the form of the movie, even in its weird, like, uh, you know, segmented production and it's like development across years and all this sort of like wedged in pieces.

• 1:04:57Griffin Newman?

  Feels like it, it's a representation of what he's battling inside of himself in that way, you know? Like it's messiness to me is not me saying it's a perfect film or that's a masterpiece, but that I think it's a really engaging thing to watch. I, I like this.

• 1:05:13David Sims?

  I think it's, it is mostly interesting as a movie made by Martin Scorsese. You know what I mean? Like, it's just an interesting blueprint for him. And the music is good and the camera work is interesting. But it is not a good movie. Like in terms of like, if you just showed it to someone who'd never seen a Martin Scorsese movie, they would be like, I loved that. It's an interesting first work.

• 1:05:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36David Sims?

  It's got some stuff in it. And because you know of the, who made it and like, you know, where it's like, it has all this fascinating, like blueprint material. Yes. Right. You know, like, which is, which is interesting.

• 1:05:46Griffin Newman?

  One could call it a bit of a Rosetta Stone.

• 1:05:49David Sims?

  I think that's almost a stretch. He thinks that's a stretch. He's kind of like, I don't, I don't know. Like, you know, he's like, I didn't get the emotions right. I dislike the movie. It's a rough sketch, but you know, Keitel's good. I think Xena Bethune is good. I think the camera work is good. I like what I, you know, the music stuff.

• 1:06:11Griffin Newman?

  He's, he's got Thelma editing this one and then they don't re-team again for another couple of pictures.

• 1:06:16David Sims?

  For more than a couple. Yeah. For a little while.

• 1:06:18Griffin Newman?

  But especially knowing that he gave her such a weird batch of footage, you know, shot across years and different formats and different eras. She's doing really interesting stuff in the construction.

• 1:06:28David Sims?

  The stuff with the boys hanging out, you know, like some of that is fun, but like you have Mean Streets. Which does it a lot better. So like, you can always just obviously see Mean Streets in a little bit.

• 1:06:39Griffin Newman?

  But this is, yeah, you know, all these guys. Movie where those things are like fighting each other. It's not even like, well, here's a rough version of this and a rough version of that. Like the nature of how it was made means that you have these scenes that are just the uncut form of guys roughhousing and then cutting to like an entirely different mode of filmmaking with these like more intimate dialogue scenes shot in an entirely different film format. And the two sides of the movie like clashing against each other because Thelma's actually using new wave editing rather than like invisible editing and, and making something out of the juxtaposition between the two.

• 1:07:16David Sims?

  I love Thelma. You guess who else likes this movie?

• 1:07:19Griffin Newman?

  Roger Ebert.

• 1:07:20David Sims?

  No. Guess who else?

• 1:07:22Griffin Newman?

  Who?

• 1:07:22David Sims?

  Cassavetes.

• 1:07:23Griffin Newman?

  Well, yes.

• 1:07:24David Sims?

  He digs it.

• 1:07:24Griffin Newman?

  He, he notices.

• 1:07:26David Sims?

  At least, or at least he notices the talent.

• 1:07:28Griffin Newman?

  Senpai notices.

• 1:07:29David Sims?

  So that is, who's that knocking at my door? Before we move on to boxcar birth.

• 1:07:34Griffin Newman?

  That's all we're going to say about who's that?

• 1:07:35David Sims?

  No, I'm saying that's the end of the dossier.

• 1:07:37Griffin Newman?

  On who's that knocking at my door? At the movie a little more and then do the boxcar dossier section?

• 1:07:42David Sims?

  We should also, we can do a box office game.

• 1:07:45Griffin Newman?

  I think we should do a little, yes.

• 1:07:47David Sims?

  And then, but no, no, no. I'm not saying we're done with talking about the movie, although it is, it's a slight movie in terms of narrative, obviously, but, um, no, it's, you know, I saw it years ago when I was like, I'm going to watch every single Scorsese movie, right? You know, like, so then I was like, let me clear it, clear it out. And I found it very interesting.

• 1:08:07David Sims?

  This time I was a little kind of like, I had just watched Mean Streets because we did just record that episode. We've only recorded one other episode.

• 1:08:15Griffin Newman?

  We just take one leapfrog.

• 1:08:18David Sims?

  And I was just the whole time being a little bit like, right. Well, there's Mean Streets.

• 1:08:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. But that's okay. That's maybe, that's maybe you problem that Mean Streets is fresh and you know how.

• 1:08:27David Sims?

  Three years later.

• 1:08:27Griffin Newman?

  I know. So you know how good it's going to get.

• 1:08:29David Sims?

  Right. Ben, what did, had you seen this film before?

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  I'd never seen it before.

• 1:08:33David Sims?

  What did you make of, who's that knocking at my door?

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  Well, uh, the boys reminded me of a lot of characters I grew up with. In particular, Smart Joey reminds me of a bunch of guys where they're always mad, but seem, and like seemingly don't want people to be around, but also want people around. It's really interesting that now I know the process of how this film was made.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Cause it did feel really disconnected.

• 1:09:06Griffin Newman?

  Right. You kind of have to know that it was made that way to get any enjoyment out of it. Cause otherwise you're like, what are the fucking swings this thing is doing?

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14David Sims?

  Right. Cause it's just kind of, I mean, it almost feels like someone made a parody of a Scorsese movie with no money, right? Where they're like, let's do some music. And then it's like a bunch of guys go, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? You know, and you're like, right. This is like what these movies are like.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  The parody part.

• 1:09:32David Sims?

  And then the guy's like, but I love Jesus.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  The violence being so corny.

• 1:09:37Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  And not well thought out. And yet it looks like they're kind of really hitting each other in an amateur way.

• 1:09:45Griffin Newman?

  It's also like every piece of the puzzle though, you know?

• 1:09:48David Sims?

  I mean, like one of the first scenes is him, a guy just talking to a girl about fucking the searchers.

• 1:09:55David Sims?

  So long that you're like, you have her attention. You're losing her buddy.

• 1:09:59Griffin Newman?

  Like there's that, there's, you know, that thing of like the theory that filmmakers are always just remaking the same movie over and over again. Hopefully they're refining it and stretching it and, you know, morphing it and whatever it is. And it's like, this isn't like the, the model for in final form, what his movies will be from here on out. But it is him identifying every single thing he's gonna do. What the sensibility is, what the style is. Like just dumping all the puzzle pieces out on the floor is kind of fascinating to me.

• 1:10:33David Sims?

  Yeah, totally. It's a very interesting thing to watch. And yeah. I mean, Harvey's good in it. I mean, obviously again, it's the building blocks of better Harvey stuff, but like, he's so compelling.

• 1:10:43Griffin Newman?

  It's also, this is the only time he's playing Marty this much in all the scenes with the girl.

• 1:10:49David Sims?

  Sure. You mean, he's doing a little bit more like Marty than.

• 1:10:52Griffin Newman?

  Right. Where it feels like he's like, I get it. I'm, this is based on him.

• 1:10:56David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:10:57Griffin Newman?

  You know, which I think is a common thing. You hear about this all the time. Lead actors who are kind of sort of mirroring their director, even in cases where the character isn't an, an evident kind of self-insert. And this is the only time where I feel like I've seen Keitel take on the qualities of Scorsese.

• 1:11:15David Sims?

  Right. Because the mean streets character is more thought through, a little quieter, more reserved.

• 1:11:19Griffin Newman?

  It feels like he's building a character based on the thing that Scorsese wrote.

• 1:11:24David Sims?

  I, I do miss a De Niro type. Like he doesn't have a good guy to push against.

• 1:11:29Griffin Newman?

  No, as, as you said, the kind of rough guys are all a little generic, you know? It, it is, it, the moment he finds De Niro, it changes the entire course of his career. You know, like that guy walking into the bar is just like, oh, wait a second. If I have something like this in the mix, my movies can suddenly like, it's gasoline in the tank.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  I like Xena Bethune a lot. I think she plays the character with some depth and agency, even though again, I don't feel like she's been given very much.

• 1:12:00Griffin Newman?

  I mean, let's say what this movie is.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Down to not have it given a character name.

• 1:12:03Griffin Newman?

  She is the girl.

• 1:12:04David Sims?

  She's girl.

• 1:12:06Griffin Newman?

  They give her, they give her a proper title. She is the girl. Oh no.

• 1:12:08David Sims?

  Oh, I think she's just girl. I mean, I'm seeing here girl.

• 1:12:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, maybe. I thought I saw the girl in the.

• 1:12:13David Sims?

  It's also the kind of classic thing of Marty is like, well, we need the boys need different names. Cause there are multiple male characters. The girl could just be called girl.

• 1:12:20Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me, there's a second female character.

• 1:12:22David Sims?

  His mommy.

• 1:12:24Griffin Newman?

  I'm sorry. In the, in the sort of sexy.

• 1:12:26David Sims?

  Yeah. Well, that's.

• 1:12:27Griffin Newman?

  There are multiple girls in dreams, but they're not even numbered.

• 1:12:31David Sims?

  They are not. They are just girl in dream.

• 1:12:32Griffin Newman?

  There is also a couple of girl at party.

• 1:12:35David Sims?

  There you go.

• 1:12:35Griffin Newman?

  Yes. This is the only Scorsese movie that's only on DVD. And even like on iTunes, it's a standard deaf version.

• 1:12:43David Sims?

  I don't know that he's ever cared to like, you know, refurbish it.

• 1:12:47Griffin Newman?

  No, there was, there was an early 2000s, like Warner Brothers Scorsese box set where this was an exclusive DVD for a while. And it was like, that's the one way we're getting that film back in circulation. And it basically feels like that DVD master is what is still rentable.

• 1:13:03David Sims?

  They never like thought to like, put it on a Blu-ray with Mean Streets or something. You know what I mean?

• 1:13:08Griffin Newman?

  That's the kind of move they do.

• 1:13:09David Sims?

  Like, right. Like you just kind of throw it in.

• 1:13:12Griffin Newman?

  I mean, we'll, we'll talk about, you know, boxcar Bertha, which was the other sort of like abandoned one for a while. Just got this big cinematograph.

• 1:13:18David Sims?

  I bought it. I watched it.

• 1:13:20Griffin Newman?

  Same. But that, that feels like, well, that has more of a curio aspect of being a Korman movie and fitting into that era of genre pictures and whatever. It feels like inevitably someone's got to put out a better version of Who's That Knocking?

• 1:13:34David Sims?

  I'm sure.

• 1:13:34Griffin Newman?

  It's just important American film history.

• 1:13:37David Sims?

  I, I agree with you, but I think that is largely how it's regarded, right? Like no one's, I don't know. I mean, even Shyamalan told me he's remastered and worked on Praying with Anger.

• 1:13:47Griffin Newman?

  It's still not available.

• 1:13:48David Sims?

  Well, because I was like, are you going to release it? And he was like, I don't know.

• 1:13:51Griffin Newman?

  Embarrassed.

• 1:13:52David Sims?

  Yeah. He was like, I wanted to show it to my kids in like that format. I have no idea if I want to do anything more. And I'm like, I get it. Cause it's like, it's a very amateurish movie in so many ways.

• 1:14:01Griffin Newman?

  I was looking up, I was like, what are there other holes I need to plug in my like blank check disc collection of the main feed episodes? And I was like, am I wrong about this? And I double checked, like praying anger never got any.

• 1:14:13David Sims?

  Didn't get even like a VHS?

• 1:14:15Griffin Newman?

  I don't believe so. It certainly never got any DVD or anything.

• 1:14:18David Sims?

  I certainly don't. There's no way it got a DVD, right?

• 1:14:22Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:14:23David Sims?

  You can watch it on the internet archive.

• 1:14:24Griffin Newman?

  I mean, that's where we watched it. I believe 10, 10, 11 years.

• 1:14:27David Sims?

  Long time ago.

• 1:14:28Griffin Newman?

  Years ago. Yeah. Now I want to see if there is a VHS and do I need to buy the VHS and is praying with anger a porch movie? These are important questions that will be settled later. It does seem like there was a VHS.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  Are you really encouraging him right now?

• 1:14:44Griffin Newman?

  Sound insulation.

• 1:14:45David Sims?

  I need to encourage him. He's.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 1:14:48David Sims?

  He's snowballing down the hill long ago.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's not even bidding. He's just buying now.

• 1:14:53Griffin Newman?

  What will be, will be.

• 1:14:54David Sims?

  Oh yeah. He buys it now.

• 1:14:55Griffin Newman?

  Excuse me. The thrill of the hunt's a big part of it for me. I don't buy it now.

• 1:14:58David Sims?

  I'm actually kind of lazy enough. I'm more the buy it now type. Griff is kind of the like, best offer, eight cents lower. What do you think?

• 1:15:06Griffin Newman?

  You don't understand how much time I waste a week trying to like.

• 1:15:09David Sims?

  Put that in your cart. They'll notice and then they'll contact you.

• 1:15:12Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. That's my real strategy and it does it all the time.

• 1:15:15David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Griffin Newman?

  I saved dollars this week. At least six.

• 1:15:22David Sims?

  Fantastic. So, um, what else? Yeah. There's, there's a nude scene.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. What else?

• 1:15:30David Sims?

  It's like, again, the camera stuff is fun. He's doing camera stuff. Like there's moments where he's like, doing like bird's eye view shit where you're like, I mean, it's the kind of first film stuff where you're like, you didn't need to do that. You know, it's not, it's not really suggesting anything, but clearly you just wanted to see what would like, what that would look like.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  Some close up kissing.

• 1:15:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. The eyeball close ups.

• 1:15:51David Sims?

  I don't think people should kiss in movies.

• 1:15:52Griffin Newman?

  Can we say this movie does have.

• 1:15:54David Sims?

  Just kidding.

• 1:15:55Griffin Newman?

  The story of this movie.

• 1:15:56David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:15:56Griffin Newman?

  Is a guy who.

• 1:15:57David Sims?

  JR.

• 1:15:58Griffin Newman?

  You could say is trying very hard to fit in with the boys, right? There seems to be something a little more thoughtful, a little more sensitive within him. He likes just sitting in nature and taking it in, but he knows that's, you know, maybe that's not.

• 1:16:13David Sims?

  It's not cool.

• 1:16:13Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:16:14David Sims?

  Sally Gaga is not gonna like that.

• 1:16:16Griffin Newman?

  Right. So he goes out and gets drunk and they punch each other and they talk about who was. And he meets a girl that he likes.

• 1:16:23David Sims?

  Yes. He's going to go on the Staten Island ferry and he's talking to her like he's about to fucking, you know, go to Antarctica. He's like, yeah, I mean, Jesus. But he, right. He meets her at the, like at the ferry station. I feel like that's where he talks your ear off about the searchers. They, they mentioned Jeffrey Hunter. Does, you know, who, do you know who he is?

• 1:16:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 1:16:44David Sims?

  Jeffrey Hunter's in the searchers. He's also Captain Christopher Pike. It's his other famous role.

• 1:16:49Griffin Newman?

  Captain, Captain Christopher Pike was the captain of the Enterprise on the original pilot of Star Trek. And they recast him because they thought he didn't have the juice and they replaced him with William Shatner.

• 1:17:00David Sims?

  Who did have the juice.

• 1:17:01Griffin Newman?

  He did. Captain Kirk has the juice.

• 1:17:03David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:17:04Griffin Newman?

  He is almost like Mr. Juicy Juice in terms of how much juice he had.

• 1:17:08David Sims?

  But it is basically like.

• 1:17:09Griffin Newman?

  They recut the pilot footage into a later two-part episode.

• 1:17:13David Sims?

  That is true.

• 1:17:14Griffin Newman?

  Where Captain Pike was the kind of rejected and scorned. Well, he, they canonically made him the captain that Kirk had replaced.

• 1:17:21David Sims?

  Right. And he got burned up in an accident.

• 1:17:23Griffin Newman?

  And he's in a big kind of robot body wheelchair.

• 1:17:25David Sims?

  Yeah. Pretty cool.

• 1:17:26Griffin Newman?

  He's actually a really cool guy. And Bruce Greenwood plays him in the JJ movies. Excellent performance, steady hand. Who plays him in Instant Mouth?

• 1:17:33David Sims?

  He's really, really good.

• 1:17:35David Sims?

  But it's just funny that in Martin Scorsese's first movie, someone says Jeffrey Hunter.

• 1:17:39Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:17:39David Sims?

  I'm like, Captain Pike.

• 1:17:40Griffin Newman?

  Captain Pike.

• 1:17:41David Sims?

  Anyway, yeah, he meets a girl and he likes her.

• 1:17:44Griffin Newman?

  He's having kind of a secret romance with her and it feels like he both is trying to shield from his boyfriends that he has feelings, that he has a romantic attachment to a woman who he wants to talk to, whose brain he is interested in. And also his overwhelming Catholic guilt.

• 1:18:00David Sims?

  Well, cause also at that time, he's still living at home. We talked about this a little bit on our Mean Streets episode and he's, he, you can't bring your, your, um, your, this girl around your mom.

• 1:18:14Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 1:18:14David Sims?

  You get in trouble.

• 1:18:15Griffin Newman?

  No. And, and people who live alone at this age are seen as deviance. The only reason you could possibly want to do that is so you could have premarital sex. The worst thing in the world.

• 1:18:26David Sims?

  I actually love it. Big fan.

• 1:18:29Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Wild coming from the two married guys in the room. You guys fuck that one up.

• 1:18:34David Sims?

  Um, so what was I going to say? Um,

• 1:18:37Griffin Newman?

  They have this attachment and then

• 1:18:39David Sims?

  He won't have sex with her.

• 1:18:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:18:41David Sims?

  Cause he doesn't want to spoil her.

• 1:18:42Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't want to spoil her and she reveals to him.

• 1:18:44David Sims?

  A bit retrograde. Yes.

• 1:18:45Griffin Newman?

  Yes. That she is a survivor of sexual assault.

• 1:18:48David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:18:48Griffin Newman?

  And he has a very negative response to it.

• 1:18:51David Sims?

  He owns, he's not mature enough to grapple with that in, in a good way.

• 1:18:56Griffin Newman?

  That she feels dirty and tarnished. What did you do to encourage that? Why were you even with that guy in the first place?

• 1:19:03David Sims?

  He's so selfish and has no empathy. It makes me very mad. He just doesn't. He's not mature enough. He cannot handle it. It's all about him. There's a part of him that could have empathy, but he cannot access it at all.

• 1:19:17Griffin Newman?

  Right. If, if we can parse this for a second, right? I mean, this is the whole kind of like tightly wound, uh, Catholic guilt ball of wax is like, all I want is to have sex. I am told that if I have sex, that's the worst thing I could possibly do. So there's this, you know, the, the Madonna and the whore bifurcation, right? Of like, I can go rent out an apartment and have my own fucking like boom boom sex orgy, because that's the way I get my rocks off without tarnishing the sanctity of a woman I actually care about. And then the notion that she has had sex in any form, when he feels like he cannot allow himself to have sex with her, even if the sex she had was a rape, was violent,

• 1:19:58Griffin Newman?

  was not of her own agency, is a thing that he can't process because all he wants is to have like intimate relations with her, which he feels like he cannot do without ruining her. It's, it's, it is a movie about his immaturity. This is not a plot driven movie. This is the closest thing the movie has to like an emotional arc or a story. And it's basically not developed into over halfway through. And I, I think like the note of maturity in this film, the thing that shows a little bit of understanding from Scorsese, who at this point has just not processed his own shit enough to be able to make a film with enough objective distance. I give him credit for understanding that the end

• 1:20:43Griffin Newman?

  of this movie, when he goes and tries to do the like, you know what? I apologize. I forgive you. That she's like, fuck you.

• 1:20:50David Sims?

  That's what I like. Right. He's like, I'll marry you anyway. And she's like, you clearly cannot handle like what has happened to me and do not have like the right feelings for this.

• 1:20:59Griffin Newman?

  You watch a movie from the 1960s and you're worried that the guy is going to be rewarded for saying, I will accept you, even though you are tarnished goods.

• 1:21:07David Sims?

  The thing you told me and I have, well, yeah.

• 1:21:10Griffin Newman?

  Right. I accept you.

• 1:21:11David Sims?

  No, instead she's like, fuck off. And he goes to the church and doesn't know what to do with himself. It's classic Scorsese.

• 1:21:18David Sims?

  Right. What's up Ben? Let's play the box office. Well, yeah, thankfully we've gotten to the end.

• 1:21:26Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:21:27David Sims?

  Uh huh. And we're not talking about the end, which is the needle drop.

• 1:21:32Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:21:33David Sims?

  And it's a song that stinks by a group that also stinks. Go on, The Doors.

• 1:21:39Griffin Newman?

  Oh.

• 1:21:40David Sims?

  It's just, I had this note where I'm just like, ah, good. The doors are in this movie. Just what I need. I guess they were, they were hot stuff, right?

• 1:21:48Griffin Newman?

  He was at the tip of the spear on this one. You do have to give him credit. Like people were pointing out.

• 1:21:53David Sims?

  They're only a couple of years old at this point.

• 1:21:54Griffin Newman?

  It's credited as, uh, it's listed as like a 67 movie, but I think the final sort of round of shooting they do to add the boobs and the boom boom in maybe happens in 68.

• 1:22:06David Sims?

  I'm not sure about that. It was released in American 68, but it was screened in Chicago in 67.

• 1:22:11Griffin Newman?

  But I think what Ebert saw was a slightly earlier version.

• 1:22:13David Sims?

  That is possible. I don't know.

• 1:22:15Griffin Newman?

  I saw someone interrogating that the, this is the end comes out in 1967 and they were like, that's a really fast turnaround, but it seems like maybe the song was only added.

• 1:22:24David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:22:24Griffin Newman?

  When the film got proper distribution in 68.

• 1:22:27David Sims?

  Anyway, uh, come on baby, light my fire. And that's not the song, but uh, He walked down the hallway of the ancient gallery.

• 1:22:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Just, just, Ben, just take a step back and think of him being the first one to ever be like, hey, you hear the song from the doors? I'm not saying you gotta give him credit.

• 1:22:44David Sims?

  No, no, this is the real question. Right. Ben, it's 1967. You are Ben Hozsley. Bloop, you've been dropped in there. Someone puts on The Doors.

• 1:22:54Griffin Newman?

  Bell bottoms or whatever.

• 1:22:55David Sims?

  Do you like it? Someone's like, hey.

• 1:22:58Griffin Newman?

  If you've never met.

• 1:22:59David Sims?

  I'm gonna spin a groovy tune.

• 1:23:01Griffin Newman?

  You've never met a guy who likes The Doors, right? You've never met a guy who's built his personality.

• 1:23:06David Sims?

  You've never been in a college dorm room and seen a poster of Jim Morrison.

• 1:23:11Griffin Newman?

  Right. You're a high schooler, let's say 1967, you're walking around Greenwich Village. You walk into a record store. It's playing. No one even introduces it to you. No one recommends that you're not associating it with a person. You're hearing it fresh. What's this I hear? I'm hearing this for the first time. Wow. What is there to say? Do you think you hate them that much just from the music alone?

• 1:23:34David Sims?

  I'll give you that I wouldn't hate them.

• 1:23:37Griffin Newman?

  Sure. It wouldn't be your thing.

• 1:23:38David Sims?

  It wouldn't be, I, yeah, but I would be at least interested because they have a unique thing going.

• 1:23:47Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48David Sims?

  This fucking drunk poet idiot and an organist.

• 1:23:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:03David Sims?

  What do you think was number one at the box office when this?

• 1:24:05Griffin Newman?

  Well, Jim Morrison was kind of an organist as well, if you know what I'm saying.

• 1:24:07David Sims?

  When this quote unquote came out in, in America.

• 1:24:10Griffin Newman?

  What do I think was number one at the box office in 1968?

• 1:24:13David Sims?

  September, 18, you know, 16th September, 1968. I can give you a hint. It's a film that features an actor who liked this movie. He was also director, John Cassavetes.

• 1:24:23Griffin Newman?

  The Dirty Dozen?

• 1:24:24David Sims?

  Nope.

• 1:24:25Griffin Newman?

  Uh, Rosemary's Baby?

• 1:24:27David Sims?

  Rosemary's Baby.

• 1:24:28Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 1:24:29David Sims?

  Which was number one for a million weeks. Like, you know, like it was such a big hit. Number two at the box office, a film we've covered on this podcast.

• 1:24:35Griffin Newman?

  Number two is a film we've covered on this podcast.

• 1:24:37David Sims?

  It's something of a totemic film.

• 1:24:39Griffin Newman?

  Huh. Is it a 67 picture or 68?

• 1:24:41David Sims?

  It's 68.

• 1:24:42Griffin Newman?

  It's a 68. It's a totemic film. Is it a Kubrick?

• 1:24:46David Sims?

  Yes.

• 1:24:47Griffin Newman?

  It would be. 2001?

• 1:24:50David Sims?

  That's right.

• 1:24:51Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:51David Sims?

  Quite totemic. Do you agree?

• 1:24:53Griffin Newman?

  You said it, not I.

• 1:24:56David Sims?

  Number three. It's really crazy to think that this movie we just saw came out at the same time as that movie. That's why that movie is the craziest thing in the world. Yeah. It really is.

• 1:25:07Griffin Newman?

  It's not just that that movie looks good for 1968.

• 1:25:10David Sims?

  Looks good for 3068.

• 1:25:13Griffin Newman?

  And everything else, you know, was, was just like on a different planet.

• 1:25:18David Sims?

  Number three at the box office is a romantic comedy film. It stars Sidney Poitier. Uh, that's what I'm giving you.

• 1:25:27Griffin Newman?

  To stir with love?

• 1:25:28David Sims?

  No. Good guess.

• 1:25:30Griffin Newman?

  And it's not, uh, guess who's coming to dinner?

• 1:25:33David Sims?

  No. It's a lesser known.

• 1:25:35Griffin Newman?

  It's a lesser known.

• 1:25:36David Sims?

  But I mean, like.

• 1:25:37Griffin Newman?

  Do you think I know it? Is it a known title?

• 1:25:39David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:25:39Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:40David Sims?

  I'm not sure. I'll give you more hints. Directed by Daniel Mann.

• 1:25:43Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:25:44David Sims?

  Uh, you know, made a lot of movies.

• 1:25:46Griffin Newman?

  Who's the leading lady of this picture?

• 1:25:47David Sims?

  Abby Lincoln, but I can, who's, you know, a great, great African American singer. I can tell you the bow bridge is in this film. Carol O'Connor. Oh, did he have some opinions on a character in this movie?

• 1:25:59Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59David Sims?

  Uh, I can tell you the score was composed by Quincy Jones and he wrote the title theme song as well, which was nominated for best song at the Academy Awards.

• 1:26:07Griffin Newman?

  And it is the title of the movie. It's not like, fucking love is a many splendored thing.

• 1:26:12David Sims?

  You're not that far off. I'm going to give it to you. It's For Love of Ivy.

• 1:26:16Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:26:17David Sims?

  Here's another film, number four at the box office. Let me look it up here.

• 1:26:21Griffin Newman?

  Look it up here, please.

• 1:26:22David Sims?

  Is a 1968 British film starring Oscar Werner.

• 1:26:27Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:26:28David Sims?

  Good actor.

• 1:26:29Griffin Newman?

  I love Oscar Werner.

• 1:26:30David Sims?

  And Barbara Ferris.

• 1:26:32Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 1:26:32David Sims?

  I can't say I've heard of this one.

• 1:26:34Griffin Newman?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:35David Sims?

  Yeah. Directed by Kevin Billington. I don't think you've got this.

• 1:26:37Griffin Newman?

  Does there seem to be a genre attached to this picture?

• 1:26:39David Sims?

  Drama.

• 1:26:40Griffin Newman?

  Drama. That's helpful.

• 1:26:41David Sims?

  A famous male conductor gives an interview to an attractive female reporter. He speaks to frankly, and ends up being given an unwanted sabbatical from conducting. So far it sounds like tar.

• 1:26:50Griffin Newman?

  I was going to say.

• 1:26:51David Sims?

  He begins an affair with a reporter during his blank, which is the title of the movie.

• 1:26:56Griffin Newman?

  Sabbatical?

• 1:26:57David Sims?

  Close. Interlude.

• 1:27:00David Sims?

  And the accumulation of difference in their ages and background begins to mount. I don't know. Sounds okay.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  Oh, he was like a, like an orchestra.

• 1:27:07David Sims?

  Yeah, not a train conductor. It would be funny if she's like, tell me about how you drive the train.

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12David Sims?

  Number five at the box office is a sixty seven film, Griffin. That's how successful it's been. Been in the box office for thirty nine weeks. It is another totemic movie. It is a romantic comedy drama. It is the. Graduate.

• 1:27:25Griffin Newman?

  The highest grossing film of nineteen sixty seven.

• 1:27:27David Sims?

  Graduate.

• 1:27:28Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:29David Sims?

  Uh, yes.

• 1:27:29Griffin Newman?

  I mean, nineteen sixty seven, obviously, is the, the, uh, pictures of revolution year.

• 1:27:36David Sims?

  That's the, that's the Bonnie and Clyde graduate.

• 1:27:41Griffin Newman?

  And then Dr. Dolittle, of course.

• 1:27:42David Sims?

  Great. The most revolutionary film of all.

• 1:27:44Griffin Newman?

  But I was, I was just looking at my, my sixty seven letterbox. It is insane how good that year is.

• 1:27:50David Sims?

  Sixty seven.

• 1:27:51Griffin Newman?

  Even just for international cinema, when you take away like sort of what was happening at the Oscars.

• 1:27:55David Sims?

  Fucking great movie year. But you know what? Every movie, if you throw a, you know, dart at an old movie, you're like, god damn, like, it's the best. Playtime came out in sixty seven.

• 1:28:06Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Weekend came out. Lou Weekend.

• 1:28:08David Sims?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a regular ass movie.

• 1:28:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:28:10David Sims?

  My wife almost divorced me over that movie.

• 1:28:12Griffin Newman?

  Really?

• 1:28:13David Sims?

  No, no.

• 1:28:13Griffin Newman?

  But you took her to see it?

• 1:28:14David Sims?

  I took her to see it. She was like, the fuck? And I was like, sorry. I remembered this being a little, a little, a little more narrative than.

• 1:28:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, no, it's just what if.

• 1:28:23David Sims?

  Just like people, well, though, that's the first part, but then it's just people talking about communism while they eat sandwiches.

• 1:28:29Griffin Newman?

  He loved doing that.

• 1:28:30David Sims?

  He did love. Well, it's really the start of him being like, what if this is a lot of the movie? Anyway, uh, some of the other films in the top ten are, uh, The Odd Couple. Fun. Rachel, Rachel.

• 1:28:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, the Paul Newman.

• 1:28:44David Sims?

  Mm hmm. Directed.

• 1:28:45Griffin Newman?

  I've never seen it.

• 1:28:46David Sims?

  Neither have I.

• 1:28:47Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:28:47David Sims?

  Hang 'Em High, uh, which is, which is a Clint Eastwood film.

• 1:28:52Griffin Newman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:52David Sims?

  He didn't direct, but like Ted Post, it's kind of like, you know, in the Eastwood sort of universe.

• 1:28:58Griffin Newman?

  Just announced they're putting it out on four.

• 1:28:59David Sims?

  Probably did.

• 1:29:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Those fuckers, like, probably.

• 1:29:02David Sims?

  A film called Prudence and the Pill, which is a British comedy, a Ronald Neem, uh, film.

• 1:29:08Griffin Newman?

  It's a really good title.

• 1:29:10David Sims?

  That I assume is kind of like your classic, like, British kitchen sinky kind of comedy, like where they're like, well, it's like, ooh, the pill is new.

• 1:29:18Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18David Sims?

  And it's about the contraception.

• 1:29:20Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20David Sims?

  And then a movie, a Lee Van Cleef called movie called The Big Gun Down.

• 1:29:24Griffin Newman?

  Now, can I turn about as fair play? Can I throw a little game at you?

• 1:29:28David Sims?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:29:29Griffin Newman?

  Do you think you can?

• 1:29:30David Sims?

  Like a spaghetti western.

• 1:29:32Griffin Newman?

  Guess the top five highest grossing films of the year nineteen sixty eight?

• 1:29:36David Sims?

  Nineteen sixty eight in film.

• 1:29:38Griffin Newman?

  And I will say two of the films that were just in the top five.

• 1:29:40David Sims?

  I was about to say, uh, two thousand one's in there.

• 1:29:42Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Where do you think it is?

• 1:29:44David Sims?

  One or two.

• 1:29:45Griffin Newman?

  Two. What do you think would have beaten it? And.

• 1:29:48David Sims?

  Sixty eight. Is The Odd Couple in there?

• 1:29:50Griffin Newman?

  Odd Couple's number three.

• 1:29:51David Sims?

  There you go.

• 1:29:52Griffin Newman?

  Odd Couple made a robust twenty million dollars. Two thousand one did twenty one, and one film beat them both with twenty four. It is a film that won one of the major acting categories this year.

• 1:30:03Griffin Newman?

  It's the arrival of a giant star and a star we're very familiar with on this podcast.

• 1:30:08David Sims?

  Oh, Funny Girl.

• 1:30:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09David Sims?

  That was the number one movie?

• 1:30:10Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's funny that a local New York act like that could somehow be the highest grossing film.

• 1:30:14David Sims?

  Well, it's funny that there was a girl. Premise of the film.

• 1:30:17Griffin Newman?

  People were laughing just when they saw the mark.

• 1:30:19David Sims?

  This is a funny girl.

• 1:30:19Griffin Newman?

  They didn't see the poster.

• 1:30:20David Sims?

  Is Rosemary's Baby in the top five?

• 1:30:22Griffin Newman?

  Rosemary's Baby is number seven.

• 1:30:23David Sims?

  Okay, but it was so big hit.

• 1:30:25Griffin Newman?

  It was, oh, it was a very big hit.

• 1:30:26David Sims?

  Is Planet of the Apes in the top?

• 1:30:27Griffin Newman?

  Planet of the Apes is number six.

• 1:30:29David Sims?

  Okay.

• 1:30:29Griffin Newman?

  Both of those did fifteen.

• 1:30:31David Sims?

  Okay. Give me a hint.

• 1:30:32Griffin Newman?

  Can you guess four and five? Four is, I don't want to use the word, but it's, it is a, it is a giant action film classic. It weirdly did not become a franchise, but has often been threatened with a remake.

• 1:30:47David Sims?

  Oh, Bullet.

• 1:30:48Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:30:48David Sims?

  Oh.

• 1:30:49Griffin Newman?

  And number five.

• 1:30:51David Sims?

  Fun.

• 1:30:53David Sims?

  Not my favorite.

• 1:30:54Griffin Newman?

  Number five.

• 1:30:55David Sims?

  But very sexy.

• 1:30:57Griffin Newman?

  Is a musical.

• 1:30:59David Sims?

  It's a musical.

• 1:31:00Griffin Newman?

  I don't want to.

• 1:31:00David Sims?

  Not Funny Girl.

• 1:31:01Griffin Newman?

  I don't want to give you the obvious hint, but it's a musical.

• 1:31:04David Sims?

  Sixty eight. Oh, well, is it Oliver?

• 1:31:06Griffin Newman?

  Correct. Oliver is the fifth highest grossing film of the year.

• 1:31:08David Sims?

  Cause that's the whole thing with the Biskin book, where he's like, wow, you know, Hollywood's, and then it's like, yeah, well, let's not forget the next year, they're like, Oliver, bring him over.

• 1:31:17Griffin Newman?

  And Funny Girl for Best Actress.

• 1:31:19David Sims?

  And right, right. It was. At least Funny Girl's a little more like.

• 1:31:23Griffin Newman?

  But the next year.

• 1:31:23David Sims?

  Fresh.

• 1:31:24Griffin Newman?

  Was more classical. You have, you have Rosemary's Baby there at seven, you have two thousand one at two, but then, you know, Funny Girl, Odd Couple, Planet of the Apes is the beginning of something new. Number eight was, uh, the Ziff Relli Romeo and Juliet, normal film, no legal problems there. Number nine, of course, was yours, mine and ours.

• 1:31:45David Sims?

  I have heard of it.

• 1:31:46Griffin Newman?

  The Peter Fonda Lucille Ball movie that's basically riffed on in Licorice Pizza and was remade with Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo.

• 1:31:54David Sims?

  Right. That's my favorite movie of all time, the remake.

• 1:31:56Griffin Newman?

  Right. But it's, the movie itself was a Cheaper by the Dozen ripoff that then got remade as a ripoff of the Cheaper by the Dozen remake.

• 1:32:04David Sims?

  Of the sequel.

• 1:32:05Griffin Newman?

  And then, uh, number ten was Lion and Winter.

• 1:32:08David Sims?

  Which is also a Best Picture contender, I guess. Yeah, but not the winner. Right. Right. I always forget. I always, Man for All Seasons is the one that won Best Picture. Lion and Winter just wins like acting awards, right? Cause Hepburn wins, she ties with.

• 1:32:23Griffin Newman?

  With Streisand.

• 1:32:24David Sims?

  Streisand, yes. Let's talk about Boxcar Bertha.

• 1:32:27Griffin Newman?

  Let's talk about.

• 1:32:28David Sims?

  Now, I have also only seen this film once before I watched it for today's podcast.

• 1:32:32Griffin Newman?

  Saw it in high school.

• 1:32:33David Sims?

  Out of a sense of completionism again. Yeah.

• 1:32:35Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36David Sims?

  It is a film directed by Martin Scorsese.

• 1:32:39Griffin Newman?

  He did make.

• 1:32:39David Sims?

  In nineteen seventy two.

• 1:32:41Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:41David Sims?

  Now, I will tell you that after Who's That Knocking? He was hired to film, to direct a film called The Honeymoon Killers. It was brought to him by an agent, his agent, Harry Ufland. His script was very long. He couldn't connect with the material and, uh.

• 1:32:57Griffin Newman?

  He said he wanted to try to make it in the style of a Carl Theodore Dreyer film, but I'm sure the producers loved hearing.

• 1:33:03David Sims?

  Interesting, uh, news is that he was fired one week into shooting.

• 1:33:06Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:33:07David Sims?

  Essentially because he was like shooting master shots with no coverage. He was an artiste. He was not going to make, you know, whatever the people wanted him to make.

• 1:33:16Griffin Newman?

  This is a business kid. This is when they're starting to say, we don't got time for your fancy stuff.

• 1:33:21David Sims?

  So he picks up some odd jobs, writes some dialogue for a Dutch thriller called Obsessions. He does some editing work, uh, street scenes.

• 1:33:31Griffin Newman?

  Does camera work for, uh, uh, Woodstock?

• 1:33:35David Sims?

  We're gonna get to that. I'm sure. Cause that's a big one.

• 1:33:38Griffin Newman?

  A huge one.

• 1:33:39David Sims?

  Uh, he was the artist and resident to the Film Society Lincoln Center, did some instruction at NYU and, uh, Oliver Stone, one of his, one of his students. Uh, Michael Wadley, who photographed, uh, Who's That Knocking? Comes to, and Thelma's just a screen maker, right? Wadley is the director of Woodstock. So he brings him and Thelma in, right, to work on that movie. It's a significant American film, I would say, Woodstock, right? Like, it's like, it's like, again, one of those things where you're like, well, sure, this is the Woodstock movie with like the movie with this, but you're like, yeah, but like, this kind of concert movie didn't exist.

• 1:34:17Griffin Newman?

  The movie itself is major. It's not just that it was a, like, a pro shot of a famous concert.

• 1:34:23David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:34:23Griffin Newman?

  Have you seen the Woodstock movie, Ben?

• 1:34:25David Sims?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:25Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, like, uh, cause it's, it's got really experimental, abrasive editing style, and it has like, you know, it's fucking like Scorsese and George Lucas operating cameras and shit. Like, there is this sort of weird thing of, right, because it was made by an NYU professor, it's got the, like, the future of movies working in all the crew positions, influencing the language and everything. And then it also sort of works as like a, a cultural moment, document, documentary of the phenomenon of what's happening there. Like, all of the sort of talking head interviews of the concert goers are fascinating.

• 1:35:02David Sims?

  Would you have gone to Woodstock?

• 1:35:03Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:04David Sims?

  Sounds like a pain, though.

• 1:35:05Griffin Newman?

  It does.

• 1:35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it was just so worth it.

• 1:35:08Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  Like, I know my dad, he regrets not going.

• 1:35:12Griffin Newman?

  Ben, I know you feel like, oh, man, the concert must have been the exciting part, like going there, seeing it, watching it. But what if I told you the closeted gay man who rented out his parents' backyard for the festival has a story of his own that might be interesting enough to fill an entire film?

• 1:35:30Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 1:35:31Griffin Newman?

  Well, in order to take Woodstock, Dimitri Martin had to offer an eye.

• 1:35:36David Sims?

  Might is the strong, might be enough to fill.

• 1:35:38Griffin Newman?

  Sure.

• 1:35:39David Sims?

  I.

• 1:35:39Griffin Newman?

  You couldn't just take it. He had to give it to you first.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  I really did forget all about that.

• 1:35:43David Sims?

  How could you forget?

• 1:35:44Griffin Newman?

  That's the most interesting part of Woodstock. We all wanted to see the movie about Woodstock.

• 1:35:50David Sims?

  Who owned the field?

• 1:35:52Griffin Newman?

  Where the guy doesn't watch any of the performance.

• 1:35:56David Sims?

  Scorsese ends up out in LA. Who's That Knocking's being shown there under the title of JR? Roger Corman sees it. So Roger Corman, obviously, at this point is already a very established figure.

• 1:36:09Griffin Newman?

  Right. He had already directed tens of movies. By the seventies, you're getting to the point where he focuses more on producing and running his own studio.

• 1:36:17David Sims?

  The sixties is the, the height of, you know, Little Shop of Horrors and Man with the X-ray Eyes.

• 1:36:21Griffin Newman?

  When he's personally directing, like, you know, yeah, four movies a year.

• 1:36:25David Sims?

  Yeah. Um, and he sees it and says, I like this. Would you want to direct a sequel to my film, Bloody Mama?

• 1:36:31Griffin Newman?

  Have you ever seen that film?

• 1:36:32David Sims?

  Never.

• 1:36:32Griffin Newman?

  I have.

• 1:36:33David Sims?

  Sally Winters, I know.

• 1:36:34Griffin Newman?

  I have because one of the two demi Roger Corman films is only available on a double feature Blu-ray with it. I think.

• 1:36:44David Sims?

  Uh huh. Uh, Crazy Mama?

• 1:36:45Griffin Newman?

  I think Crazy Mama and Bloody Mama, maybe?

• 1:36:47David Sims?

  Funny, cause two mamas.

• 1:36:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Am I right about that?

• 1:36:50David Sims?

  He's like, it's got guns, it's got costumes. Scorsese's like, I'll do it. Corman says, I'll see you in six months. I'll have a script. And I was like, oh, jeez, okay.

• 1:36:58Griffin Newman?

  You know what? I'm wrong about that, but I've seen the movie anyway. It's interesting. Mama goes bad.

• 1:37:03David Sims?

  You know, whatever. Instead, you're supposed to say like six months, ugh, forget it. And instead he does some post-production on a documentary called Medicine Ball Caravan, which is about a hundred and fifty four person bus and truck tour. Bus and truck? Rex Reed?

• 1:37:20David Sims?

  What did, I can't remember.

• 1:37:22Griffin Newman?

  You know what?

• 1:37:24Griffin Newman?

  He referred to something as a bus and truck.

• 1:37:27David Sims?

  It's a Spider-Man thing.

• 1:37:29Griffin Newman?

  Did he refer to Spider-Man as a bus and truck Superman? Is that what it is?

• 1:37:35David Sims?

  I can't remember.

• 1:37:36Griffin Newman?

  I think that's what it is. I think it's his review of the first Spider-Man movie.

• 1:37:41David Sims?

  Yes, Batman, bus and truck. I considered Spider-Man a bus and truck version of Batman.

• 1:37:46Griffin Newman?

  We probably spent seven minutes on that in that episode. I just remember it boggling our minds and we couldn't rest until we figured out what bus and truck meant.

• 1:37:53David Sims?

  Rex is the best. He's an insane person.

• 1:37:55Griffin Newman?

  Which it basically means second tier touring performance of a previously Broadway show?

• 1:38:00David Sims?

  Isn't that what it is? It's like you take it out of, but like, right, like you're lower grade.

• 1:38:03Griffin Newman?

  Shitty enough you can fit the entire set.

• 1:38:05David Sims?

  Put it on a bus and a truck. Guys go in the bus, that goes in the truck. Here we go.

• 1:38:09Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Bus and truck Batman. That's my take on Batman, by the way. If James Gunn is accepting pitches.

• 1:38:16David Sims?

  Anyway, Madison Mall, Kevin, it's a bus and truck tour, spreading the gospel of flower power out in the 60s. You know, it's another kind of like hippie-ish documentary. He says, working on that was a huge pain in the ass. Almost kills him. But he gets back to California. He meets Georgie Lucas. He's making THX 103.

• 1:38:32Griffin Newman?

  Georgie Portman.

• 1:38:33David Sims?

  Or he already knows him, but like, you know, George is, hangs out with George. Francis Coppola is there. Okay? Brian De Palma, he'd already kind of worked with in New York a little bit or known.

• 1:38:43Griffin Newman?

  Sounds like a group of brats.

• 1:38:44David Sims?

  Seriously. We also got to know Steven Spielberg, who is making television shows for Universal. Okay? He's doing a little bit of helping Cassavetes do some sound effects for Minnie and Moskowitz.

• 1:38:55Griffin Newman?

  Hell, yeah. That movie rules.

• 1:38:57David Sims?

  It does rule. It does rule.

• 1:38:59Griffin Newman?

  That movie's a little out of circulation. Am I wrong?

• 1:39:01David Sims?

  Is it?

• 1:39:02Griffin Newman?

  I feel like there's been like five years of a certain corner of the internet that's like.

• 1:39:07David Sims?

  Many people just aren't talking about it.

• 1:39:09Griffin Newman?

  No, I feel like it's not available.

• 1:39:11David Sims?

  Maybe it's not.

• 1:39:12Griffin Newman?

  And people are constantly crossing their fingers and hoping Criterion's about to announce it.

• 1:39:16David Sims?

  I watched it not that long ago, but I guess it's kind of like, must've been on Criterion or something. I don't know. At one point he did sound effects for a fight. So, uh, Scorsese just holds Cassavetes while someone punches him and then record it.

• 1:39:30Griffin Newman?

  That sounds like some real Cassavetes stuff. Yeah.

• 1:39:32David Sims?

  Then Roger Corman calls. It's been a few months and says, I have a script, Bloody Mama 2, which is then, is boxcar birth.

• 1:39:40Griffin Newman?

  His wife, first, there's a demand for Bloody Mama 2 because Bloody Mama has performed well. They start Marty developing that. And then his wife locates a book.

• 1:39:51David Sims?

  The book is called Sister of the Road.

• 1:39:54Griffin Newman?

  And basically sort of Yankee swaps goes like, what if what we have pegged as untitled Bloody Mama project becomes boxcar birth? This feels like a better way to service the same sort of niche.

• 1:40:07David Sims?

  The script does end, as the movie does, with a crucifixion. I had nothing to do with that, says Martin Scorsese.

• 1:40:13Griffin Newman?

  This is, this is actually a revelation.

• 1:40:15David Sims?

  Yep. Cause you figure you watch it, you're like, was Marty just like, and you should get crucified again?

• 1:40:19Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:40:19David Sims?

  Like Jesus, my favorite guy. Uh, he gets a bunch of $600,000 and he's basically told, do what you want. Stay under that number. So he throws in some references to the archers. He throws in some Wizard of Oz, you know, winks.

• 1:40:31Griffin Newman?

  The, the cinematograph release has, uh, you can watch it with the TCM intros.

• 1:40:37David Sims?

  Yes, it does.

• 1:40:38Griffin Newman?

  As part of a Corman series where Corman was interviewed by Mankiewicz himself. And Corman said that Scorsese was literally the first filmmaker he ever worked with, who had storyboards, had storyboarded them himself. And had done the entire movie. Not just all three of those things, but any of them. You know, Corman was like, we're running gun. I, how do I approach a day? I gotta get a close up of the main actor. Once I'm done with that, I should probably get the other person's close up. Maybe a shot of the two of them together, moving on, right?

• 1:41:07David Sims?

  All right, now take your bra off.

• 1:41:08Griffin Newman?

  Right.

• 1:41:09David Sims?

  It's because the, the, don't spend over the budget. Make sure you have a little bit nudity. Nothing crazy, but you know, we need some boobs.

• 1:41:16Griffin Newman?

  The fascinating thing about Corman, I don't know if you've ever seen him, Ben, because we use him a lot as like shorthand for stuff. He is the most kind of like square patrician man. He's like a sitcom dad from like Leave It To Beaver. And was just like, very much like, well, that's what the kids want to see. You know, like he wasn't Russ Myers where he felt animated by his love of the boobs or the blood or any of these sort of like things. But, but he was just like very open minded. You know, he was very like, you gotta chase the trends. And the whole classic thing with him was like, here's the exact amount of money you have. Here's like the locations. Here are the things that need to be in the movie. What I need on the poster, you know, the title.

• 1:42:01Griffin Newman?

  But like, outside of that, I, I leave you, you know? He would sort of go like, you got 10 days and $4 to make whatever you want. And, and he would always say to people, and this is why there's sort of the shorthanded Roger Corman film school that so many people graduated from. He's like, if you make this movie well enough, you'll never have to work with me ever again. You know, you graduate off of me, but this is a way to like get the experience under your belt. And so many people rise out of his ranks.

• 1:42:28David Sims?

  Scorsese says the movie's part of like a sort of exploitation genre that starts with Bonnie and Clyde.

• 1:42:33Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say.

• 1:42:34David Sims?

  The Outlaws, very on the road kind of movie.

• 1:42:37Griffin Newman?

  Yes. The young lovers.

• 1:42:38David Sims?

  He's like, slasher movies are still four, five years off. This is the kind of gory exploitation movie of the moment. And indeed he did have 500 storyboards. He did that because he didn't want to get fired again. He was afraid of a honeymoon killer situation. Then he shows up with the storyboards. And Corman like sees, like takes a quick look. He's like, do you want to see these? And he's like, no, that's fine. Like whatever you want to do.

• 1:43:00Griffin Newman?

  He did say in the Mankiewicz thing, he was like, it was the first time a filmmaker ever came to me and I could see the entire movie before it was made. That he had so clearly worked it all out and it played.

• 1:43:13Griffin Newman?

  But I also imagine he was like, you're overprepared. Throw out 300 of these storyboards. You're not going to have time to film them.

• 1:43:20David Sims?

  That is true. They did not have a ton of, uh, they shot it in Arkansas. Uh, he said, it still kind of looks like the depression back, you know, at that point. 24 days straight shooting. Now you fucking make, you know, an A24 movie with that. But back then that wasn't a lot. Roger at one point, Corman takes him aside at one point and says like, you know, you don't have a chase scene. Like audiences do like those. Like this is a kind of Bonnie and Clyde thing. And then, and so Smarty's like, okay, can I have another day if you want me to shoot a chase scene? And he's like, no, no, no, no. Just figure it out.

• 1:43:57David Sims?

  He's doing some camera movement stuff that I feel like is very proto Marty.

• 1:44:02Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 1:44:02David Sims?

  He loves to move the camera.

• 1:44:04Griffin Newman?

  Especially the final shootout into the crucifixion, or I guess off of the crucifixion.

• 1:44:09David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Griffin Newman?

  Feels like a real, a true Marty sequence.

• 1:44:13David Sims?

  They.

• 1:44:14Griffin Newman?

  Pretty fully realized in my opinion.

• 1:44:15David Sims?

  Film previews at the Pantages Theater.

• 1:44:17Griffin Newman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:17David Sims?

  Audience loves and applauds. Corman comes out smiling. Sam Arkoff looks at him and says, I gotta tell you, it's almost good.

• 1:44:25Griffin Newman?

  He's feeling good about himself. No one's going to be able to burst his balloon.

• 1:44:30David Sims?

  And Scorsese says, that's pretty good. And he says, I don't get you excited. Almost good.

• 1:44:34Griffin Newman?

  Almost good. But that's, but that's what you want out of the Corman experience, right? Good job, kid.

• 1:44:39David Sims?

  Oh, 100%.

• 1:44:40Griffin Newman?

  Your days, you delivered, it plays for an audience. You're, you're moving up the ladder.

• 1:44:45David Sims?

  He shows now, it's to be fair, it is Cassavetes, he's shown a rough cut, two hours. And, uh, Cassavetes says, Marty, you just spent your whole life, your whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It's a good picture, but you're better than the people who make this kind of movie.

• 1:45:02Griffin Newman?

  That is the part that usually gets left off of the story.

• 1:45:04David Sims?

  You have done a fine job with this. You are not going to be an exploitation director. You've got something else in there.

• 1:45:10Griffin Newman?

  You're wasting your time. And this is clearly not a movie that matters to you, you know, like, so what? Do you want to be a guy who can deliver for other people? And I think part of that is Scorsese's whole thing, or Cassavetes' whole thing, excuse me. There's like the infamous radio show where he starts like ideating and comes up with the idea for shadows in real time. And it's an extension of him complaining about everything he found frustrating about American filmmaking as an actor. And how he felt like things were too dramatically safe, that they were not, they were limiting actors, you know? That the camera was dictating everything and stylization and a sort of hollowness and a sentimentality and all of this, right?

• 1:45:50Griffin Newman?

  And who's that knocking at my door? For all of its failings, its limitations, you know, it's, it's roughness. Has some of that quality. And, you know, it is a movie that is touching third rails. It is talking about things that aren't talked about. It is depicting unappealing characters, you know, with uncharismatic behavior. Things like this that you're just like, a guy like Cassavetes is going to look at it and go, you actually have shit to say. You're not just here as someone who's going to technically service whatever piece of material. There's clearly stuff you're working through. Imagine if this guy could refine what he's saying. And then he sees this movie that's like, great job. Who gives a fuck?

• 1:46:30Griffin Newman?

  You took some assignment and you did okay. Are you really going to get stuck wasting your life for 20 years doing that?

• 1:46:36David Sims?

  Obviously clearly resonate with Scorsese because he's telling the story 60 years later. The answer is that the movie is a pretty good exploitation movie, but my problem with it has always been like, because I think Scorsese is not suited to making this kind of movie.

• 1:46:54Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:54David Sims?

  It's not fun.

• 1:46:55Griffin Newman?

  I agree.

• 1:46:56David Sims?

  Like, the really good Corman movies are like fun and like wacky, like, you know, have the shaggy energy you kind of want.

• 1:47:05Griffin Newman?

  Right. This kind of like live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse, like, you know, like wanton sort of countercultural thing is so outside of his milieu. He doesn't totally know how to dramatize people who would not be racked with guilt over every one of these decisions.

• 1:47:23David Sims?

  It's so early in his career and he's right. He hasn't gotten to tell these stories properly yet. It's about Fox Car Bertha, played by the great Barbara Hershey, who I love. And of course, he works with, again, in Last Temptation of Christ. Did you work with her any other times?

• 1:47:39Griffin Newman?

  It's just that, but she gives him the book when they're filming this movie. That's what starts his obsession with, oh, I gotta make Last Temptation as a film someday. So putting her in that is a real kind of full circle moment. She rules. We talked about her a lot on Portraits of a Lady, because that's her one Oscar nomination, but it is fascinating, because we were sort of talking about where she was at in the 90s, when she got that nom, when she had had this sort of like second wave of her career, relative to what her reputation was at this time, which is she hits the scene as part of this couple with David Carradine. They were like flower children and everyone's like, is this person actually a good actor? Or is she just like some hippie who keeps giving weird interviews and getting press?

• 1:48:24David Sims?

  There's a few actors like that, I feel like, in that era.

• 1:48:27Griffin Newman?

  But it feels like she really got tagged with this.

• 1:48:29David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:30Griffin Newman?

  And sort of became like the hippie version of like Sydney Sweeney or something, where they're like, why the fuck are we talking about her? There was like a real like anger and animosity towards her. You see, like, her interviews are like very defensive. Some of the stories are. Her and David Carradine do a Playboy spread when this movie comes out, basically restaging their nude scenes from this film. That's people like, why are you showing us like your private lives, you know, when the movie already exists? They have a child together. She breastfeeds that child, I believe, on the Dick Havitt Show. One of the movies she does after this, there's a sequence with a bird that she has to keep

• 1:49:13Griffin Newman?

  catching. And after like 10 takes, she realizes that she's accidentally broken the seagull's neck. And she is so affected by this emotionally that she changes her name professionally to Barbara Seagull. And keeps being like, I must honor this seagull. We had an emotional connection.

• 1:49:31David Sims?

  I don't like that.

• 1:49:32Griffin Newman?

  And his spirit should be remembered. And would like get into arguments with producers where they're like, we're not putting Barbara Seagull on the poster. That sounds dumb. All this to say, it's this era where it's like, she's compelling on screen, but is she just naturally kind of charismatic? Or is she actually a good actress? And also, every time she says stuff, she annoys us. Why is she this hippie lady? It's just interesting to me that this moment is kind of like the ground zero of that. Which then by the 80s, she like sort of wins back everyone to like, oh, fuck, has she become one of the better American actresses for a couple of years?

• 1:50:08David Sims?

  Entity. She's so good.

• 1:50:10Griffin Newman?

  She wins back to back Best Actress Awards at Cannes? Is that right? One of the major festivals. She won two consecutive Lead Actress Awards.

• 1:50:19David Sims?

  Here I go, looking on her IMDB page to answer your question. You are correct. It's Ken.

• 1:50:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25David Sims?

  She won Best Actress for Shy People.

• 1:50:27Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:50:28David Sims?

  The Kunchelovski.

• 1:50:30Griffin Newman?

  That was the one where people went like, have we been sleeping on Barbara Hershey? Is she actually an interesting actress?

• 1:50:35David Sims?

  And then she wins a sort of tie award for the film World Apart with the other women, like the three leads of that film, Jodie May and Linda Muzi, I think her name is. Never seen that film. I have seen Fox Car Bertha. Did either of you ever want to be a tramp?

• 1:50:54Griffin Newman?

  No. Now, Ben, you brought some interesting, you did your own research for this episode.

• 1:50:58David Sims?

  We talked in our mosquito coast episode about living off the grid. It's not appealing to me. I love the grid.

• 1:51:03Griffin Newman?

  I want to live on the Tron grid.

• 1:51:05David Sims?

  Call me Clue.

• 1:51:06Griffin Newman?

  And I'm sure we did that bit in that episode. I don't even remember.

• 1:51:08David Sims?

  Digital frontier.

• 1:51:09Griffin Newman?

  Right. Bio-digital jazz.

• 1:51:11David Sims?

  Well, a younger, a young Ben was quite thrilled by the idea of adventure.

• 1:51:16Griffin Newman?

  You pack a bindle?

• 1:51:17David Sims?

  Pack a bindle. Because I had have gotten obsessed with Bob Dylan, which led me to Woody Guthrie and reading all about his escapades. There's just, there's, there's romance there. And yet, you know, thinking about taking a shit in the woods, right?

• 1:51:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:51:35David Sims?

  You know, add that to the soup.

• 1:51:37Griffin Newman?

  No, that's the part that really scares me off.

• 1:51:39David Sims?

  Yeah, that seems rough.

• 1:51:41Griffin Newman?

  Kind of a deal breaker for me.

• 1:51:42David Sims?

  For sure.

• 1:51:43Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. There's not enough AG1 in the world to make that a smooth process.

• 1:51:46David Sims?

  I think, you know, we're coming up on two hours. I don't want to spend too much time on this. I think I want to just maybe more shout it out. But I did in fact bring a hobo book, which it's called Mostly True, The West's Most Popular Hobo Graffiti Magazine. It's published by Microcosm Publishing. It's available now on paperback. We'll put a link in the description. It's basically a book that spots, spotlights beloved railroad artists. There was a whole kind of scene and community of people who would ride the rails and would, using chalk, draw these little cartoons, as well as leave little messages for other writers.

• 1:52:26Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:26David Sims?

  Here's a little diagram. I'm holding the up and showing them.

• 1:52:29Griffin Newman?

  The Hobo Code.

• 1:52:30David Sims?

  That had like different little, you know, messages and, you know, little secret hidden meanings to these symbols that they would leave for other writers to know.

• 1:52:44Griffin Newman?

  I'm just realizing, you've invoked how important Dylan was to you, recurring up many times. And people may not know that most times we try to throw a Ben's Choice on the schedule, you have thrown out Don't Look Back as an option.

• 1:52:59David Sims?

  The Penny Baker.

• 1:53:00Griffin Newman?

  We're obviously not going to get to cover this, but we are going to get to do a fucking Dylan Scorsese episode on Patreon. We're going to get, let's, let Ben go off on Bob.

• 1:53:08David Sims?

  I'm so excited. Going to go off on Bob.

• 1:53:12Griffin Newman?

  Ben's gonna talk about Bob.

• 1:53:15David Sims?

  I'm a hobo. But the whole thing with Dylan, obviously, is that Dylan had a relatively normal, middle-class upbringing in Minnesota. Then he appears and he's like, yeah, I joined the circus when I was a kid.

• 1:53:26Griffin Newman?

  This way of playing.

• 1:53:27David Sims?

  From the cowboy in New Mexico.

• 1:53:30Griffin Newman?

  Talk like this. It fucking works.

• 1:53:34David Sims?

  Totally.

• 1:53:35Griffin Newman?

  Can I say it? Incredible bit.

• 1:53:37David Sims?

  He was kind of a complete unknown, if you think about it.

• 1:53:39Griffin Newman?

  Huh. How would that feel, though?

• 1:53:42David Sims?

  So.

• 1:53:44Griffin Newman?

  Anyway, Boxcar Bertha.

• 1:53:45David Sims?

  Boxcar Bertha. She's a girl. Her dad's plane crashes. Kind of an arresting start to the film.

• 1:53:51Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a really good opening. And Bernie Casey.

• 1:53:53David Sims?

  He doesn't actually crash. Of course, he's abducted by aliens later. He will defeat the aliens at the Battle of Independence Day. We all know that.

• 1:54:00Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:54:00David Sims?

  Because Randy Quaid's a crop duster.

• 1:54:02Griffin Newman?

  Yep, yep, yep, yep. Took a second. Got it.

• 1:54:04David Sims?

  Um, you know, that's, that's in that movie.

• 1:54:07Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:54:08David Sims?

  I remember when I walked out of Independence Day when I was 10, you know, because, you know, they defeat the mothership.

• 1:54:13Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, it's very satisfying.

• 1:54:14David Sims?

  And they, and they say.

• 1:54:15Griffin Newman?

  That's the reason you're still free.

• 1:54:16David Sims?

  Exactly. And they say like, now send the message to the other ones. And I was saying to my dad, like, what they said, like, make sure you have like a spare crop duster weirdo to fly into the fucking ship? Like, what's the message they said? Like, they said, like, you won't believe it. It was kind of a day of sex mocking. Right at the end there, we were out of missiles. But Randy Quaid, we didn't even want to give him a ship. He's so crazy.

• 1:54:41Griffin Newman?

  He wasn't even meaning to fly into the ship. He was just trying to get away from the Hollywood bushwhackers.

• 1:54:46David Sims?

  The bushwhackers were after.

• 1:54:47Griffin Newman?

  The bushwhackers were after him. I had like a Mandela effect. Last time I watched Independence Day, sometime in the last 10 years.

• 1:54:53David Sims?

  I recently rewatched it, hence my bringing it up.

• 1:54:55Griffin Newman?

  And I was like, ready for the satisfaction of the Randy Quaid moment. And I was like, what the fuck? I vividly remember there being a shot of him in like an old timey.

• 1:55:06David Sims?

  They filmed that and didn't use it.

• 1:55:07Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 1:55:07David Sims?

  Yes. They, they filmed that.

• 1:55:09Griffin Newman?

  In my mind, I had edited the deleted alternate ending that was deemed too goofy. So then they put him in like a proper fighter jet.

• 1:55:16David Sims?

  I think, yeah, I think he was deemed basically like hat on hat on hat, you know, where it's kind of like, don't tell me that like, we've already got all this shit going on. And then he's like, by the way, I'm also in a crop.

• 1:55:27Griffin Newman?

  And his plane's like.

• 1:55:28David Sims?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:55:29Griffin Newman?

  Clear into the gas tank.

• 1:55:37David Sims?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:55:38Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:39David Sims?

  Oh, my God. Anyway, her dad dies.

• 1:55:41Griffin Newman?

  Her dad dies.

• 1:55:42David Sims?

  The Depression hits and she starts freight hopping, which I guess is like a cooler version of fucking hitchhiking. It's just freight car comes by, I get in.

• 1:55:52Griffin Newman?

  Can we call out?

• 1:55:52David Sims?

  Where's it going?

• 1:55:53Griffin Newman?

  The great Bernie Casey.

• 1:55:54David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:55:55Griffin Newman?

  Who I feel.

• 1:55:56David Sims?

  Football player?

• 1:55:58Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 1:55:59David Sims?

  He played for the 49ers, I believe.

• 1:56:02Griffin Newman?

  He often later becomes a very kind of stern, stoic figure.

• 1:56:06David Sims?

  Gone.

• 1:56:08Griffin Newman?

  This movie, he gets to sort of be the wild card.

• 1:56:10David Sims?

  Sure.

• 1:56:10Griffin Newman?

  Which is fun to see young Bernie Casey.

• 1:56:13David Sims?

  Vaughn Morton, who is like a bank robber who I guess worked with her dad or whatever. Like, I can't remember, you know, like, and then she like hooks up with Big Bill Shelly, played by David Carradine. A striking man.

• 1:56:27Griffin Newman?

  He has one of the most interesting faces.

• 1:56:30David Sims?

  Slender sort of figure and right, yeah, his face is cool guy.

• 1:56:34Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Crazy acting dynasty. His father, Ben, appears in the movie as well.

• 1:56:38David Sims?

  Right, of course. John Carradine, he's Sartorist. I mean, John Carradine is like your classic, like, he's in all those like monster movies and stuff.

• 1:56:47Griffin Newman?

  John Carradine, I mean, this is the crazy thing. I believe.

• 1:56:50David Sims?

  Cecil B. DeMille guy.

• 1:56:51Griffin Newman?

  Did Bela Lugosi only play Dracula one time?

• 1:56:54David Sims?

  Maybe. He played Dracula in three different movies.

• 1:56:58Griffin Newman?

  Lugosi or Carradine?

• 1:57:00David Sims?

  Carradine.

• 1:57:00Griffin Newman?

  Right. That's what I was going to say. I think Lugosi only ever does the original and then Carradine does most of the like Dracula meets movies.

• 1:57:09David Sims?

  Right.

• 1:57:10Griffin Newman?

  Like Abin Cusello meet Frankenstein. It's Carradine is Dracula.

• 1:57:14David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:14Griffin Newman?

  He was, he spent more time playing Universal's Dracula.

• 1:57:18David Sims?

  I'm excited to watch Dracula.

• 1:57:19Griffin Newman?

  I am too. That's why I'm making this connection point. But it's just funny that that guy takes over.

• 1:57:24David Sims?

  We're going to do it on Patreon. We're doing it on Patreon. We're doing it on Patreon.

• 1:57:28Griffin Newman?

  We are doing.

• 1:57:29Speaker 03

  Commentaries.

• 1:57:30David Sims?

  Don't forget, you must watch Dracula.

• 1:57:35Speaker 03

  And when you watch the Dracula, you must do this with your.

• 1:57:38David Sims?

  I am horny for you, Ben.

• 1:57:40Speaker 03

  He is very horny.

• 1:57:41David Sims?

  Come to my castle.

• 1:57:43Speaker 03

  He wants to have the sex.

• 1:57:45David Sims?

  Boxcar Bertha is a flawed film. Uh, yeah, you got Barry, Barry Primus and Bernie Casey as the other members of a kinda, kind of a train robbery crew that kinda knocks together. Bill, Big Bill is a union organizer, but they, they start busting up trains.

• 1:58:05Griffin Newman?

  I just wanna connect the dots stuff for Ben. Ben, my favorite Bernie Casey role and the thing that he looms largest in my mind for doing is he is of course the teacher in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Who warns them that they will not get a passing grade on the class unless they do the greatest history presentation of all time.

• 1:58:25Speaker 02

  Haven't you brought this up before?

• 1:58:27Griffin Newman?

  I brought up that Napoleon.

• 1:58:30David Sims?

  That's true.

• 1:58:30Griffin Newman?

  In Bill and Ted was of course Ricky Callum Mary.

• 1:58:34David Sims?

  He's also, um, I believe he's Felix Leiter in the, um, Never Seen Ever Again, the sort of off brand bond. Uh, he's in, uh, Spies Like Us.

• 1:58:44Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's a great actor, but Bernie Casey basically is like the inciting incident in Bill and Ted. He has the stakes and he has a couple of my favorite line deliveries of all time. Cause he's reading off to them how insufficient their essay was or their paper was.

• 1:58:59David Sims?

  Oh, yeah, that is funny. He is funny in that.

• 1:59:01Griffin Newman?

  And he said, so Bill, what you're telling me essentially is that Napoleon was a short, dead dude.

• 1:59:10David Sims?

  Funny.

• 1:59:11Griffin Newman?

  And he also has, it seems to me, the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a quote salad dressing dude.

• 1:59:21David Sims?

  Uh, that's pretty funny, too.

• 1:59:22Griffin Newman?

  Some of the funniest shit of all time.

• 1:59:24Speaker 02

  Also, the Caesar salad dressing was invented in Mexico.

• 1:59:28David Sims?

  Thank you for saying that.

• 1:59:29Griffin Newman?

  The bit Bill and Ted don't know what they're talking about.

• 1:59:32David Sims?

  Did you think it was invented by Julius Caesar?

• 1:59:34Griffin Newman?

  Originally?

• 1:59:37David Sims?

  He was like, Vinnie, Vinnie, Vichi, we should cross the Rubicon. Also like, I'm thinking like mayo, vinegar, maybe some anchovies.

• 1:59:44Griffin Newman?

  While I'm at it, while we're here.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  But you gotta mash the anchovies up.

• 1:59:49Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, really fine.

• 1:59:50David Sims?

  Cause they, but they, they dissolve when you mash them up and that's so nice.

• 1:59:53Griffin Newman?

  Uh, but yes, this movie basically becomes, you know, a ragtag gang led by a sexy couple.

• 1:59:59David Sims?

  Right. Isn't it so funny that it's called Boxcar Bertha? Before I saw this movie, when I was a teen and I heard that Martin Scorsese, he had like a sort of bad movie called Boxcar Bertha. I was like, is it about like a, a big old lady who like drives a train? Like Boxcar Bertha sounds like a sort of six year old lady with like a frying pan. Right. Yeah, exactly. Not like the sexiest, you know, hoochie gangster he ever did see, right? Like that, which is what she is. She's.

• 2:00:25Griffin Newman?

  Beguiling. She is very appealing in this film.

• 2:00:28David Sims?

  Yeah, she's, she's a fucking hottie.

• 2:00:31Griffin Newman?

  She's a handsome lady.

• 2:00:32David Sims?

  She's a handsome lady.

• 2:00:34Griffin Newman?

  She's a handsome hippie lady, I say.

• 2:00:37David Sims?

  Is it hippie before hippie, right? Cause it's like the thirties or whatever.

• 2:00:40Speaker 02

  But it has the time.

• 2:00:43Griffin Newman?

  She is an actress. Yes, is bringing, yes, much like Bonnie and Clyde. It's a period film that's bringing the vibes and the feelings of the era in which it is made.

• 2:00:51Speaker 02

  Cause it's nice to see that they're, they're not passing judgment on her character.

• 2:00:56Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:00:56Speaker 02

  No, I mean.

• 2:00:57Griffin Newman?

  That's what they thought the kids wanted. They're like.

• 2:00:59David Sims?

  The Korman movie is right. Yeah. And the Bonnie and Clyde rip offs are like, yeah, they're free spirits.

• 2:01:04Griffin Newman?

  I was gonna say.

• 2:01:05David Sims?

  The bank.

• 2:01:06Griffin Newman?

  I find the seventies Korman films and especially like the ones of this stripe, just they are weirdly comfort food watches for me. There is something to, and I was trying to crack why I find them so appealing and relaxing to watch. There was something to the kind of like post BBS and Bonnie and Clyde, like, okay, fuck, like Easy Rider is a hit. Bonnie and Clyde's a hit. These kids want weird shit. They don't want morals and ethics in their movies, right? Is everything sort of like a political statement or is it just about like a vibe and a feeling? And so a guy like Korman, whose job is just deliver things into like proven genres.

• 2:01:46Griffin Newman?

  The genre that he's trying to emulate now is like, I don't know, like actors having interesting moments. You know, like energy bouncing off each other, doing some shit, you know, like it doesn't have to lean too hard into genre. Plot mechanics. And you have these filmmakers who most of whom like rose into becoming their own people. Who had a solid understanding of craft and then they're just kind of like accidentally very interesting vibe hangout movies.

• 2:02:16David Sims?

  Yeah, this has some, this has some vibes.

• 2:02:19Griffin Newman?

  I, I find the air of these films very, very comforting.

• 2:02:22David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:24Griffin Newman?

  I do. This is what I'm saying. It's like a weird like.

• 2:02:27David Sims?

  Yeah, I don't find this comforting.

• 2:02:28Griffin Newman?

  It's not that I find the story of the film or the emotions comforting. I like, I like the, the, the style of filmmaking.

• 2:02:34Speaker 02

  I like hobos.

• 2:02:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:36David Sims?

  Well, we know you like hobos and you would wanna be a hobo and follow the hobo code.

• 2:02:40Griffin Newman?

  Yes, make the symbols.

• 2:02:41Speaker 02

  I love rail culture.

• 2:02:43David Sims?

  But they are mostly bank robbers.

• 2:02:46Speaker 02

  Well, that's the thing.

• 2:02:46David Sims?

  Right. They're not really just like, hey, wherever I lay my hat, that's my home. They're more like, give me your money. I have a gun.

• 2:02:52Speaker 02

  They start out with good intentions. They're trying to go against the.

• 2:02:57Griffin Newman?

  Right. This means something.

• 2:02:59David Sims?

  Yeah, you got, uh, H. Buckram Sartoris played by John Carrotine.

• 2:03:04Griffin Newman?

  That's the John Carrotine character. A phenomenon I love when close relatives are in the same movie, not playing relatives.

• 2:03:13David Sims?

  Sure, but they are playing, you know, opposite figures, which is exciting.

• 2:03:17Griffin Newman?

  But not father and son.

• 2:03:19David Sims?

  Uh, no, he's, you know, he's got a tie and a big beard, a mustache or whatever and he's mean.

• 2:03:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, he's a grumpy old man.

• 2:03:26David Sims?

  Um, and yeah, I mean, what happens in this movie? He ends up in a chain gang.

• 2:03:30Griffin Newman?

  They get arrested.

• 2:03:31David Sims?

  Yeah, they get arrested and Bill, Bill and Vaughn go to the chain gang.

• 2:03:34Griffin Newman?

  Bertha becomes a woman of the night.

• 2:03:36David Sims?

  Lured into, yes, into doing being.

• 2:03:38Griffin Newman?

  And in fact, a character refers to her as a whore.

• 2:03:42David Sims?

  This is true.

• 2:03:43Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:03:43David Sims?

  This is true. And, uh, it kinda goes on for a bit and I'm kinda like, you know, watching.

• 2:03:50Griffin Newman?

  But I'm just like, I'm, I'm, I'm down with this hangout.

• 2:03:52David Sims?

  And then she runs into Vaughn at a bar. And he's like, Bill has broken out of jail and she goes back to Bill. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course that ends in him being crucified against a train car.

• 2:04:08Griffin Newman?

  Pretty broken. He's aged a lot.

• 2:04:10David Sims?

  They fuck a lot as well in like the hay.

• 2:04:12Griffin Newman?

  Yes.

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. I was gonna ask you guys.

• 2:04:14Griffin Newman?

  A lot of fucking.

• 2:04:14Speaker 02

  First time you had sex on a bail hay?

• 2:04:17Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:17David Sims?

  I, I just wasn't ready for a mattress.

• 2:04:19Griffin Newman?

  I rented a hotel room. Then I said, hold on, I'll be back in one second. Went around the box to the bodega. Said, where's your hay?

• 2:04:25Speaker 02

  Do you have straw?

• 2:04:26Griffin Newman?

  Isle three, laid it out gingerly on the bed.

• 2:04:30David Sims?

  I have obviously been to like events where you sit on a bale of hay.

• 2:04:33Griffin Newman?

  Some candles.

• 2:04:34David Sims?

  Right. You know, like, have you done that?

• 2:04:35Griffin Newman?

  Too close to the hay.

• 2:04:36David Sims?

  You know, you ever been to like an event where like you're sitting on a bale of hay?

• 2:04:39Griffin Newman?

  Like a hootenanny?

• 2:04:40David Sims?

  Yeah, yeah, your classic hootenanny.

• 2:04:42Griffin Newman?

  Haunted hay.

• 2:04:42David Sims?

  I went to like a couple weddings that were like kinda outdoor, kinda farmy weddings where it's like, hey, we're just putting down some bales that, you know, like. And every time you sit in the bale of hay, you're like, you know, chairs rock.

• 2:04:53Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, chairs are really good. One of the better inventions.

• 2:04:55Speaker 02

  A little itchy.

• 2:04:56David Sims?

  Yeah. You know what? Just cause this is a square, it doesn't really mean it should be sat upon.

• 2:05:00Griffin Newman?

  We just ordered new chairs for the office and I'm so fucking excited.

• 2:05:03David Sims?

  When are they coming? Soon.

• 2:05:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, we've had the same chairs for years, which we've inherited and we just suddenly were like, what if we got new chairs?

• 2:05:12David Sims?

  We've got like fucking nice chairs. Now, of course, Griffin briefly suggested we get like the emperor's chair.

• 2:05:16Griffin Newman?

  I want to be really clear about this.

• 2:05:18David Sims?

  So mad that I brought this up. He's mad. He's mad. He's mad.

• 2:05:23Griffin Newman?

  I'm not mad. I just don't like the framing of the story, which is after we all agreed on getting chairs that are actually comfortable and won't hurt our backs.

• 2:05:31David Sims?

  Sure.

• 2:05:32Griffin Newman?

  I, as a self owned said, I want you all to know that I considered recommending these. It was after agreeing.

• 2:05:40David Sims?

  It was made by some company that's called like Bob's Rip Off of Nerds.

• 2:05:44Griffin Newman?

  It's called Regal Robot and they have an official license with Lucasfilm. This is a high quality product.

• 2:05:51Griffin Newman?

  And I, I no point tried to sway the vote. I had already signed off on the grown up chairs.

• 2:05:59David Sims?

  Looking at the other shit.

• 2:06:00Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure that Marie, I think said something like, how about we get three nice chairs and one stupid chair for Griffin?

• 2:06:07Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And this is what I don't like is acting like I'm saying.

• 2:06:11David Sims?

  The one who put it in the chat.

• 2:06:12Griffin Newman?

  As a self owned, I said, I was going to.

• 2:06:15David Sims?

  You're cell phoning and then you're like, oh no, I'm being owned.

• 2:06:19Griffin Newman?

  I just, I want credit for, for framing myself as the joke rather than acting like I did something earnestly.

• 2:06:26David Sims?

  It's just funny that you showed us that shit.

• 2:06:29Griffin Newman?

  Cause I done the fucking.

• 2:06:31David Sims?

  Sixteen hundred dollars.

• 2:06:33Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, well, real craftspeople have to work on that. You think the emperor is sitting on bullshit? It's a high quality chair.

• 2:06:41Speaker 02

  Okay, um, anything else about Boxcar Bertha we wanna discuss?

• 2:06:46David Sims?

  It's just crazy that she's like, anyway, what's up with you? And he's like, I don't know. And then they're like crucify this man. Well, I would say, and this is something that you see with stories from this era. It's crazy how Americans were so anti-communist that it like essentially, if you were an Amtrak employee, you could just murk people and get away with it.

• 2:07:13Griffin Newman?

  It's a wild time.

• 2:07:14David Sims?

  Yeah, it's crazy to me.

• 2:07:16Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Um, no, I, I mean, I just like, I like these movies. I felt the same way watching the, the demi, Corman's and when Corman sort of swings later this decade, more in the eighties into more creature features and Star Wars rip offs. I find those movies compelling in a different way. But this, no, this moment of him trying to figure out how to replicate the youth picture and the rebel picture, the new Hollywood shit. I, I just find the weird like middle ground of Corman doing that with a limitation on budget and developing filmmakers. And I think there's just some weird energy that comes out of those movies. So I find this compelling to watch. It's not a great movie. As, as Caspino said, like he, he did the job well.

• 2:08:01David Sims?

  He sort of.

• 2:08:03Griffin Newman?

  Delivered a movie that cuts together.

• 2:08:05David Sims?

  That is true. I mean, there's no question that, right? Like it's, it's a functional movie and like,

• 2:08:09Griffin Newman?

  it's a functional movie.

• 2:08:10David Sims?

  Stuff and all that.

• 2:08:11Griffin Newman?

  But you can feel the lack of understanding of the characters and personal investment.

• 2:08:16David Sims?

  And I just feel like junkier might be better.

• 2:08:19Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:20David Sims?

  Like it's, it's just one of those things where like, right. The artiness almost gets in the way of.

• 2:08:23Griffin Newman?

  And Scorsese can go junky, but this isn't the type of.

• 2:08:27David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:28Griffin Newman?

  He doesn't really, he doesn't know how to push this to the more expressionistic limits, if that makes sense.

• 2:08:34David Sims?

  It's the debate over Shutter Island. All those years later, I feel like where some people are kind of like, this is kind of junky. And I'm to, you know, it's like, well, that's the point. And some of the stuff he's inspired by, but like, he has such a prestige sheen at that point. And like, he's so, such a gifted filmmaker that people are like, I can't see past that. Like, so the junkiness like clashes with it. Doesn't work. That, that, that's not a problem I have there. But I remember that coming up.

• 2:09:00Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:01David Sims?

  Shutter Island or even like Wolf of Wall Street or whatever.

• 2:09:03Griffin Newman?

  Also, I think there's some stuff in Shutter Island. Well, we'll talk about.

• 2:09:07David Sims?

  We'll talk about it.

• 2:09:08Griffin Newman?

  Thoughts for four and a half months from now.

• 2:09:11David Sims?

  Can't wait for that.

• 2:09:11Griffin Newman?

  So it's not to repeat myself. Yeah, that's one of your favorites.

• 2:09:14David Sims?

  I love that. Yeah. I love all his movies, except for Boxcar Bertha, which is just okay.

• 2:09:19Griffin Newman?

  Do you put it dead last?

• 2:09:20David Sims?

  No, I put, yes, I put it dead last. I mean, not to spoil my list, but I do have a dead last.

• 2:09:24Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Cause I, I'm right. I, I'm more engaged by who's that knocking?

• 2:09:30David Sims?

  Yes, I would have Doosan knocking above it just as right. A little bit more like this is the real Scorsese here, even if it's primal clay or whatever. Um, so the box office though, this film comes out in June, middle of June, 1972.

• 2:09:45Griffin Newman?

  It's number one at the box office.

• 2:09:46David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was that disclosure day spot.

• 2:09:53David Sims?

  Number one of the box office is the film that's going to win best picture of 1972.

• 2:09:57Griffin Newman?

  French Connection?

• 2:09:58David Sims?

  No.

• 2:09:59Griffin Newman?

  Is that the year before?

• 2:10:00David Sims?

  I believe so.

• 2:10:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay. So 72 would be The Godfather.

• 2:10:04David Sims?

  That's the one.

• 2:10:04Griffin Newman?

  Interesting that these are coming out at the same time. So Francis was.

• 2:10:07David Sims?

  He's met Francis. Obviously Francis, right? Got started in making movies earlier. But imagine being like, hey Francis, what'd you think of Boxcar Bertha? He's like, oh yeah, yeah. Not bad. What do you think of The Godfather?

• 2:10:18Griffin Newman?

  I'm too busy literally making The Godfather.

• 2:10:20David Sims?

  Yeah, I get.

• 2:10:21Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. And also it's not like The Godfather, which was like, well respected at the time.

• 2:10:28David Sims?

  It was like the most financially successful film ever made.

• 2:10:31Griffin Newman?

  The gate, the widest theatrical release of all time. And it immediately exploded at the box office.

• 2:10:35David Sims?

  And yet look at where they're at now comparatively, comparatively. Making films of equal quality.

• 2:10:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:41David Sims?

  Pillars of the Flower Moon and Megalopolis.

• 2:10:43Griffin Newman?

  Ben, you sound like someone who hasn't lopped it off yet. When you make a comment like that.

• 2:10:48David Sims?

  Oh, I've lopped.

• 2:10:49Griffin Newman?

  You've lopped?

• 2:10:49David Sims?

  I certainly have.

• 2:10:50Griffin Newman?

  But you haven't seen the new, what, what, what does he keeps calling it?

• 2:10:54David Sims?

  My impression it doesn't.

• 2:10:54Griffin Newman?

  He's like, I'm working on a new wilder cut. I feel like what I released theatrically was a little too restrained and reserved. Yeah.

• 2:11:02David Sims?

  Jim's dad's in it.

• 2:11:03Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Unrated and out of control. He said he's working on a new cut. I hope there's so much more Megalon in it.

• 2:11:08David Sims?

  Yeah, they need more. I need more explanations there. Absolutely. Or what if he was just like, I, I got an MGM original series greenlit. I don't know. They'll, they'll greenlight anything. Like, you know what I mean? Megalopolis, the show.

• 2:11:22David Sims?

  The reporter's name? I don't remember the names. The only ones I remember are Shamwell.

• 2:11:28Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah. Well, Platinum.

• 2:11:29David Sims?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:11:30Griffin Newman?

  Which is actually, it's really funny that.

• 2:11:31David Sims?

  Wow, it's pretty close.

• 2:11:32Griffin Newman?

  No, but it's funny that you bring that up, Ben, right? Because the character's name is Well Platinum. And on the Doughboys podcast, we're friends with the Doughboys, right? The great podcast. On their podcast, they say the word wow a lot. That's one of their most frequently uttered words. And also the Platinum Plate Club is their highest honor that they bestow upon chains. And so when I was watching the movie and they keep saying, wow, Platinum, I was asking myself, is, is Coppola actually secretly a Doughboys fan? Which would actually, it would make sense because there are Coppola goofballs.

• 2:12:03David Sims?

  You almost lost it there. I could feel you kind of like.

• 2:12:07Griffin Newman?

  I didn't. I had it. I was so focused.

• 2:12:10David Sims?

  Number two at the box office is an animated film that's for grownups.

• 2:12:16Griffin Newman?

  It's, is it Fritz the Cat again? Didn't that just come up in a box office game?

• 2:12:20David Sims?

  I don't know.

• 2:12:21Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a.

• 2:12:22David Sims?

  I think a different back she did, but we've definitely talked about it before.

• 2:12:24Griffin Newman?

  I think it was a Fritz the Cat double feature.

• 2:12:26David Sims?

  That might be true. That might be true. Yes. Number three at the box. Have you seen Fritz the Cat?

• 2:12:30Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:12:31David Sims?

  It's kind of a Benny movie in a way.

• 2:12:33Griffin Newman?

  I think it was still in the box office for Mean Streets re-released with something else.

• 2:12:37David Sims?

  I think you're right.

• 2:12:37Griffin Newman?

  We'll see if that happens next week.

• 2:12:39David Sims?

  Spoiler.

• 2:12:40Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:41David Sims?

  Number three at the box office is, I assume what had to be a filmed version. Yes. A theatrical release of a very famously risque theatrical review.

• 2:12:54Griffin Newman?

  It's, it's a, what?

• 2:12:56David Sims?

  It was, you may not know what this is, but it was like a British theater review.

• 2:13:01Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:13:01David Sims?

  Review like R E V U. That had sketches on sex related topics.

• 2:13:10David Sims?

  That was like, kind of a Broadway sensation in the late sixties because it had total nudity.

• 2:13:16Griffin Newman?

  And jokes?

• 2:13:18David Sims?

  And can you believe it? Jokes.

• 2:13:19Griffin Newman?

  That sounds pretty good.

• 2:13:21David Sims?

  And a filmed version of it was shown in theaters on 1972, but many cities banned the screening.

• 2:13:28Griffin Newman?

  Like the secret policeman's ball, but it's like something like that.

• 2:13:32David Sims?

  But that's an arty movie.

• 2:13:33Griffin Newman?

  Right. It's more, uh, what, what, what is this called?

• 2:13:38David Sims?

  It's called O Calcutta.

• 2:13:40Griffin Newman?

  Oh, I know the name. I did not know that's what it was.

• 2:13:43David Sims?

  It's still the eighth longest running Broadway show ever.

• 2:13:46Griffin Newman?

  I actually.

• 2:13:47David Sims?

  And it's been just, you know, there's stuff like Chicago.

• 2:13:49Griffin Newman?

  I think that's awesome.

• 2:13:51David Sims?

  It ran for 6,000 shows.

• 2:13:54Griffin Newman?

  Good.

• 2:13:54David Sims?

  You know, for like 15 years.

• 2:13:56Griffin Newman?

  Bring it back.

• 2:13:57David Sims?

  Yeah, maybe bring it back. In Britain, there was a thing called Puppetry of the Penis.

• 2:14:00Griffin Newman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:00David Sims?

  Where it was one of those things where it was like, at a certain point, you know, ran for years.

• 2:14:04Griffin Newman?

  That crossed over my.

• 2:14:05David Sims?

  I know, but it never took on here like it did in Britain. I feel like.

• 2:14:08Griffin Newman?

  It didn't set the world on fire. It was big here and they, and they did an HBO special. Yes. Tree of the penis. Do you know what that show was about, Ben?

• 2:14:19David Sims?

  Yes, I do.

• 2:14:20Griffin Newman?

  Two gentlemen walked on stage.

• 2:14:21David Sims?

  Yeah. Explain it to the listeners who may not.

• 2:14:23Griffin Newman?

  And they would puppeteer their penis. It's not like a play that has a clever title. It was two guys being like, here's how you make your penis and balls look like a burger.

• 2:14:33David Sims?

  Would they, would they speak?

• 2:14:35Griffin Newman?

  Number. Yeah. They'd explain. They'd be like, and here a goose.

• 2:14:39David Sims?

  But the characters don't like.

• 2:14:41Griffin Newman?

  They're not characters. The guys come out.

• 2:14:43David Sims?

  The goose doesn't talk?

• 2:14:44Griffin Newman?

  No, I don't think so. I don't think, David, does the, does the penis have any dialogue in that show?

• 2:14:48David Sims?

  I never saw Puppetry of the.

• 2:14:49Griffin Newman?

  I didn't either.

• 2:14:51David Sims?

  Never saw it. Uh, I did see like, there was like the, uh, fuck, it was like the Shakespeare one. Not the improvised one, but there was like, you know, another, Britain would just have these long running things.

• 2:15:02Griffin Newman?

  Where.

• 2:15:03David Sims?

  It was called like, no, there was no dicks, but like the ridiculous Shakespeare company or whatever.

• 2:15:07Griffin Newman?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:15:07David Sims?

  And it would just be like, in some little theater, I guess, it would just run for 20 years of people just doing puns and shit. I don't know.

• 2:15:13Griffin Newman?

  Figured out.

• 2:15:14David Sims?

  Yeah, they had it figured out. Number four at the box office is a disaster film.

• 2:15:19David Sims?

  It's plane centered.

• 2:15:21Griffin Newman?

  It's plane, is it airport?

• 2:15:22David Sims?

  No.

• 2:15:23Griffin Newman?

  It's prior to that.

• 2:15:25David Sims?

  Maybe.

• 2:15:26Griffin Newman?

  It is, it's plane centered.

• 2:15:28David Sims?

  The first airport is 1970. So this is two years later.

• 2:15:31Griffin Newman?

  And it's not an airport sequel. So it's an airport ripoff.

• 2:15:34David Sims?

  Well, it's a set on a plane, I think, rather than on, in an airport.

• 2:15:39Griffin Newman?

  Interesting.

• 2:15:40David Sims?

  It stars Charlton Heston.

• 2:15:43Griffin Newman?

  It's not Earthquake, is it?

• 2:15:45David Sims?

  No. It's a little lesser known one. I don't really know this movie. I can tell you that it was directed by John Gillerman.

• 2:15:51Griffin Newman?

  Uh huh.

• 2:15:51David Sims?

  Guillermo.

• 2:15:52Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:54David Sims?

  Who directed King Kong, you know, the, the King Kong movie.

• 2:15:56Griffin Newman?

  And didn't he direct one of the Planet of the Apes sequel? Or no, he directed Shaft in Africa?

• 2:16:01David Sims?

  Uh, not seeing that one. Don't. Yes. No, he did.

• 2:16:05Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 2:16:06David Sims?

  There it is.

• 2:16:07Griffin Newman?

  Um, this isn't, what, what's.

• 2:16:10David Sims?

  Charlton Heston, James Brolin. The film is skyjacked.

• 2:16:14Griffin Newman?

  Good title.

• 2:16:15David Sims?

  Pretty good title.

• 2:16:16Griffin Newman?

  Pretty good title.

• 2:16:17David Sims?

  Uh, and number five at the box office is a film directed by and starring Sidney Poitier.

• 2:16:24Griffin Newman?

  Directed by.

• 2:16:25David Sims?

  And starring.

• 2:16:26Griffin Newman?

  And starring. Hmm.

• 2:16:29David Sims?

  It is a Western.

• 2:16:30Griffin Newman?

  Okay. Oh, oh, ah.

• 2:16:32David Sims?

  What's it called?

• 2:16:33Griffin Newman?

  What's this movie called?

• 2:16:34David Sims?

  Harry Belafonte is the other star.

• 2:16:36Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Is it, is the title their names?

• 2:16:38David Sims?

  Yes.

• 2:16:38Griffin Newman?

  You've got to just tell me. I'm not going to pull it.

• 2:16:40David Sims?

  Buck and the Preacher.

• 2:16:41Griffin Newman?

  There we go.

• 2:16:41David Sims?

  Ruby D is also in this film.

• 2:16:43Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:16:44David Sims?

  I think kind of a, you know.

• 2:16:47Griffin Newman?

  I've always wanted.

• 2:16:47David Sims?

  It's not like a masterpiece, but like, you know, an important movie in, in both Poitiers, kind of like emerging, like, you know, it's like his first, like, kind of good movie that he directed. It's his first movie that he directed. There you go. Um, yeah. And like a revisionist Western black characters. Very interesting.

• 2:17:02Griffin Newman?

  David, I now ask you, can you guess the top five highest grossing films of 1972?

• 2:17:08David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:17:08Griffin Newman?

  Number one, you already called.

• 2:17:09David Sims?

  They got.

• 2:17:10Griffin Newman?

  Of course. $86 million in domestic rentals that year. It was the highest grossing film of all time, of course, until Jaws broke 100.

• 2:17:18David Sims?

  Right. Just on initial.

• 2:17:19Griffin Newman?

  A couple of years later. Right. Number two.

• 2:17:21David Sims?

  Cabaret?

• 2:17:22Griffin Newman?

  Cabaret is down at number six. Made a robust 20, but this is Godfather 86, the number two movie 42.

• 2:17:30David Sims?

  Godfather, but I mean, yeah, that Godfather.

• 2:17:32Griffin Newman?

  It made 42 million. It's a big, big disaster movie.

• 2:17:35David Sims?

  Hmm. Disaster movie. Okay. Is there a sway?

• 2:17:38Griffin Newman?

  It's one of the biggest ones.

• 2:17:39David Sims?

  Okay. Poseidon Adventure.

• 2:17:40Griffin Newman?

  Correct. Yes.

• 2:17:41David Sims?

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

• 2:17:42Griffin Newman?

  Number three, it is a comedy and it's a comedy starring kind of a local New York act.

• 2:17:52Griffin Newman?

  It's weird. They sold this many tickets in New York alone. Correct.

• 2:17:55David Sims?

  How was that big a hit?

• 2:17:56Griffin Newman?

  Movie. $28 million.

• 2:17:59David Sims?

  Okay. All right.

• 2:18:00Griffin Newman?

  The next.

• 2:18:01David Sims?

  Great movie.

• 2:18:01Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:02David Sims?

  Very fun.

• 2:18:02Griffin Newman?

  Number three, four, and five are all films from the fine folks of Warner Brothers. So number four is a Warner Brothers. It is.

• 2:18:11Griffin Newman?

  It's a very new Hollywood version of a revenge film. It's a real movie of its moment, movie of its time. I wonder if this movie, it was such a reference point and I wonder if it's a thing that's a little bit lost now, but it's a big movie.

• 2:18:26David Sims?

  Big movie, it's not like Rolling

• 2:18:27Griffin Newman?

  It's a shorthand movie. It's a

• 2:18:29David Sims?

  Oh, Deliverance.

• 2:18:30Griffin Newman?

  Correct.

• 2:18:31David Sims?

  That movie's a masterpiece. I love that movie.

• 2:18:32Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, but I do agree with me that it feels a little

• 2:18:34David Sims?

  Ah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, whatever. The scandal, like the scandalousness of it is, is a little Western, but Deliverance rocks. I love Deliverance.

• 2:18:42Griffin Newman?

  But basically created like 30 years of punchlines and bad jokes. The number five movie of 1972 is a Western picture. It's not Buck and the Preacher.

• 2:18:53David Sims?

  Uh, Western in 72?

• 2:18:56Griffin Newman?

  Yep.

• 2:18:57David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:18:58Griffin Newman?

  Bit of a

• 2:18:59David Sims?

  Have a movie then?

• 2:19:00Griffin Newman?

  Revisionist, you could say.

• 2:19:01David Sims?

  Oh, revisionist.

• 2:19:03Griffin Newman?

  Neo, maybe. Certainly

• 2:19:05David Sims?

  A Neo.

• 2:19:05Griffin Newman?

  A new Hollywood restaurant. It was a film that famously the studio did not believe in. I believe it had sat on a shelf for two years and then became a very big hit.

• 2:19:13David Sims?

  It's okay. It's not like Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid.

• 2:19:16Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:19:17David Sims?

  It's not like High Plains Drifter. It's not a Clint.

• 2:19:19Griffin Newman?

  No.

• 2:19:21David Sims?

  Revisionist.

• 2:19:23Griffin Newman?

  Revisionist is the right way to put it. It definitely doesn't feel like a conventional Western. It's a big director and a big star who will work together many, many times. And I believe this isn't even their first film together, but it's, it's a milestone film for both of them. I think it helps kind of make their careers.

• 2:19:40David Sims?

  It's a big, oh, it's, um, the GIF movie, Jeremiah Johnson.

• 2:19:44Griffin Newman?

  Jeremiah Johnson, the king of the nod himself.

• 2:19:46David Sims?

  Right, right.

• 2:19:47Griffin Newman?

  Cabaret is number six.

• 2:19:48David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:19:49Griffin Newman?

  Deep Throat is number seven.

• 2:19:50David Sims?

  Hey.

• 2:19:50Griffin Newman?

  Open Wide.

• 2:19:51David Sims?

  She, she, she's got deep throat.

• 2:19:53Griffin Newman?

  The Getaway is number eight.

• 2:19:55David Sims?

  Good movie.

• 2:19:55Griffin Newman?

  Number nine is Brother of the Wind.

• 2:19:58David Sims?

  Never heard of it.

• 2:19:58Griffin Newman?

  It's an independent film. A mountain man saves four wolf cubs after their mother dies.

• 2:20:03David Sims?

  Took some pictures of animals for you.

• 2:20:05Griffin Newman?

  Truly.

• 2:20:05David Sims?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:06Griffin Newman?

  It's Wikipedia entry is two sentences long. There's like nothing about this movie. It was released by Sun International. Number 10 was Lady Sings the Blues.

• 2:20:14David Sims?

  Oh, you know, I've never seen that.

• 2:20:15Griffin Newman?

  I never have either.

• 2:20:17David Sims?

  I remember my mom just talking about that movie though, where she was like, we all thought Diana Ross couldn't pull it off. And then she did.

• 2:20:22Speaker 02

  Okay, I have a, I have a game for you. Uh, do you guys want to guess the most popular drugs of 1972?

• 2:20:29Griffin Newman?

  Absolutely.

• 2:20:29David Sims?

  Sure. Marriage Juana.

• 2:20:30Griffin Newman?

  Marriage Juana coming in at number one.

• 2:20:34David Sims?

  Okay.

• 2:20:35Griffin Newman?

  Fuck. That's teaky.

• 2:20:39Griffin Newman?

  Devil's lettuce?

• 2:20:42Griffin Newman?

  Where does a jazz

• 2:20:43David Sims?

  I guess acid is, is getting pretty hot.

• 2:20:46Speaker 02

  On there.

• 2:20:46David Sims?

  Do you have a list?

• 2:20:48Griffin Newman?

  Is LSD, are we counting?

• 2:20:52Speaker 02

  What about, um, what about like over the counter drugs?

• 2:20:55David Sims?

  Oh, like Ludes, Quaaludes?

• 2:20:57Speaker 02

  Ludes.

• 2:20:57David Sims?

  Let it go.

• 2:20:58Griffin Newman?

  Okay. But they're not counting things like aspirin, right? We're talking like mind expanders.

• 2:21:03David Sims?

  It's a hard one on your liver.

• 2:21:04Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Okay. Is cocaine, has it cracked the 10 at this point or is it cocaine?

• 2:21:08David Sims?

  Yeah, it's in there. Cocaine's sort of right. It's sort of the doors of drugs then. It's, it's just entered the scene.

• 2:21:15Griffin Newman?

  They've taken it out of soda.

• 2:21:16David Sims?

  What about, uh?

• 2:21:17Griffin Newman?

  And they're putting it into little baggies and it's about to have a very successful rebrand.

• 2:21:20David Sims?

  It's had a lot of names, you know, we smoked it in dens. We injected it in our bloodstream.

• 2:21:26Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:21:27David Sims?

  Heroin. Show me heroin.

• 2:21:30Speaker 02

  Ding ding ding.

• 2:21:31Griffin Newman?

  What number is heroin? Give us the numbers on these.

• 2:21:33Speaker 02

  It doesn't have like a top to bottom.

• 2:21:36Griffin Newman?

  Okay. How many?

• 2:21:37David Sims?

  Valium?

• 2:21:37Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:40Griffin Newman?

  How many of the 10 have we gotten so far?

• 2:21:42Speaker 02

  Uh, I didn't specify 10.

• 2:21:44Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:21:45David Sims?

  Missing anything?

• 2:21:46Griffin Newman?

  You're missing, it looks so relaxed. He's loving this game.

• 2:21:49Speaker 02

  You're basically just missing one last one. You've hit all the

• 2:21:52David Sims?

  Magic mushroom?

• 2:21:53Griffin Newman?

  There's one big one.

• 2:21:54Speaker 02

  No. What was, uh, what was like a, a biker, truck driver?

• 2:22:00David Sims?

  Oh, Speed?

• 2:22:02Speaker 02

  Bingo.

• 2:22:02Griffin Newman?

  Okay.

• 2:22:03David Sims?

  Straight up amphetamines.

• 2:22:05Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, they didn't have five hour energy yet. You needed to just

• 2:22:09Speaker 02

  Just another thing you could just buy over the counter.

• 2:22:11Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. Well, right. Cause cocaine used to be in Coca-Cola, but Speed used to be in Sprite. Isn't that right?

• 2:22:16David Sims?

  I think that's made up.

• 2:22:17Griffin Newman?

  That's me making, I had attempted a joke.

• 2:22:20David Sims?

  That's good stuff. Love it. Uh, yeah. So Boxcar Bertha, you know, and who's that knocking? The pieces are there. It's all very interesting, but next week we will talk about Mean Streets. And I would say it's just a bit of a jump.

• 2:22:32Griffin Newman?

  I think it's a good movie.

• 2:22:33David Sims?

  It's just, but I mean, it's also, it's just a bit of a jump.

• 2:22:35Griffin Newman?

  It's a bit of a jump up. I prefer it.

• 2:22:37David Sims?

  It's just funny how Scorsese is like, yeah, I'm working things out. And I'm like, you made Mean Streets one year later.

• 2:22:43Griffin Newman?

  That's the second first film thing where you're just like, where the fuck did this come from?

• 2:22:47David Sims?

  And obviously watch who's that knocking? You're like, okay, sure. I see the building block.

• 2:22:50Griffin Newman?

  How long does it take him? Seven movies before he figures it out?

• 2:22:53David Sims?

  And then it's like, no, I had it all actually in my, you know?

• 2:22:56Griffin Newman?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:57David Sims?

  And that episode is out next week on Blank Check with Miriam Bale.

• 2:23:01Griffin Newman?

  The great Miriam Bale returning.

• 2:23:03David Sims?

  After eight years.

• 2:23:04Griffin Newman?

  Eight years. Eight long years. Not since Basic Instinct, uh, but tune in for that. And over on Patreon, we're investigating the Umbrella Corporation currently.

• 2:23:16David Sims?

  I think we are.

• 2:23:17Speaker 02

  Episode drops on August 9.

• 2:23:19David Sims?

  Yeah. And we started that August 1st. So yeah, we just, uh, just entered the rest of evil, but we'll be doing our Scorsese Shorts episode very soon.

• 2:23:26Speaker 02

  And also you can always refer to our social media, uh, check out our Instagram or subscribe to our newsletter on Stubstack where we always have our release schedule listed and up to date.

• 2:23:39Griffin Newman?

  But let's also just clarify this because we had, we had talked it out a little bit in the March Madness, uh, update and preview episodes. We are going to just do Scorsese straight through. There is a concentration of it seems like probably enough new releases towards the end of this year that that's gonna occupy the spots of where we previously had thrown out the idea of doing a palate cleanser, a little

• 2:24:01David Sims?

  We're not fucking doing that shit.

• 2:24:02Griffin Newman?

  We're not fucking doing it. So every narrative scripted film happening on main feed.

• 2:24:09David Sims?

  Oh, there's stuff on Patreon.

• 2:24:10Griffin Newman?

  Running chronologically, save for new releases.

• 2:24:13David Sims?

  And March Madness next year is probably going to be a bunch of shorties guys.

• 2:24:16Griffin Newman?

  It's gonna, oh, I, let's commit to it right now.

• 2:24:19David Sims?

  Shorties.

• 2:24:19Griffin Newman?

  Shorties.

• 2:24:19David Sims?

  Shorties only.

• 2:24:20Griffin Newman?

  Single digits.

• 2:24:21David Sims?

  Under 10, exactly.

• 2:24:22Griffin Newman?

  Single digits. Walt Becker finally maybe is gonna have his chance.

• 2:24:26Speaker 02

  DeVito, baby.

• 2:24:27Griffin Newman?

  DeVito. I mean, the short king.

• 2:24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, literally.

• 2:24:30Griffin Newman?

  Yeah. It's actually, do we fucking, do we put Beatty up in front of the firing squad again for shorties?

• 2:24:36Speaker 02

  Lose.

• 2:24:37Griffin Newman?

  Or is that rude?

• 2:24:38Speaker 02

  Lose.

• 2:24:39Griffin Newman?

  He needed to be humbled a little bit. That guy's had a lot of success.

• 2:24:42David Sims?

  Exactly. So full of himself.

• 2:24:45Griffin Newman?

  But yes, uh, tune in for many, many months of Marty, both here and on our Patreon. We'll be covering a lot of things like the music docs and the shorts and such.

• 2:24:54David Sims?

  I'm going to go to a Mets game now. I assume that by the time this posts in August, the Mets have turned everything around and are doing so good.

• 2:25:02Griffin Newman?

  Yeah, I've heard, um, things are bad.

• 2:25:04David Sims?

  Yeah, we've lost 12 games in a row.

• 2:25:06Griffin Newman?

  I, I put my brother and his friend Gabe on a group text with Sean Fennessey so they can commiserate about the Mets together.

• 2:25:13David Sims?

  Yeah, I'm also on a group text with Sean Fennessey about the Mets.

• 2:25:16Griffin Newman?

  I just asked that they not remove me. So even though I don't understand what they're talking about, I can see their emotional meltdowns and things have not been good in that text group.

• 2:25:23David Sims?

  I would say that I have a very different relationship to sports fandom than that, but yes, uh, we are objectively a bad baseball team currently. Maybe we'll be good someday.

• 2:25:33Griffin Newman?

  Do you want to say here that by the time this episode comes out?

• 2:25:36David Sims?

  Yeah, of course. Bo Bichette is raking by this point. I assume, God, anything I say now, it's just like those guys will, oh, like fall into pits like that Simpsons episode.

• 2:25:45Griffin Newman?

  We're putting on the board, Bo Bichette is raking. I definitely get what that means.

• 2:25:51Griffin Newman?

  Tune in next week for Mean Streets.

• 2:25:53David Sims?

  Yes. And as always.

• 2:25:55Griffin Newman?

  And as always.

• 2:25:57David Sims?

  Nine more months of this.

• 2:25:58Griffin Newman?

  Nine more months of hearing people say, hoo.

• 2:26:04Speaker 02

  Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hostly. Our creative producer is Marie Bardi Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lain Montgomery and the great American novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check special features for exclusive

• 2:26:46Speaker 02

  franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.