You Were Never Really Here with Sean Clements

Draw a wake-up. It's a beautiful podcast. So this is-- It's the last line of the film. That is true, but this is a dialogue like movie.

It is. I was like, what's he doing to say? I guess that's true. Lynn Ramsay testing me on the opening quotes. Was there a tagline?

What was it? Get ready to meet Joe.

“Like, how do you, like, what's the, like, worst tagline you could do?”

Joe does things a little differently. There's a quote. There's a poll quote on the poster that is taxi driver for a new century, which is a way to attempt to sell this movie with the moodiest poster of all time. Just like walking Phoenix looking tortured and a girl like drowning, superimposed inside his body. Right, that was the poster.

And like one car, why lights? I think it's a great poster. It's a pretty evocative poster. Like all of hers. But I mean, there's like, there are more quotes here.

Duck and it's him, he's swinging a hammer. Just be funny if they marketed this like nobody, too. It's hammer time. It's like Joe was having a very bad day. And it's about to get even worse.

When Joe's on the clock, it's always hammer time.

There are more quotes for this than there are, then there were for more of her in calendar. And you look at them and you're like, well, isolated. These feel like quotes that could be out of taken to. Right. Right.

Like, McLeary said you were brutal. I can't be. I want you to hurt them. There's a version of that that you see is like that. He is like that kind of fucking Europa corp thriller.

“That's like also being like putting down his sandwich and being like, alright.”

Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I'm really back in our muscle. Do you know what paradise is?

It's a lie. A fantasy. We create about people in places as we'd like them to be. That's like, that could be a fucking Steven Segal. Like, there's also a distance.

It's making me realize. It's like when watchmen, the movie, watchman, the scientist, watchman. You know, would just, would just paraphrase dialogue. Yeah. There's a lot of notes and stuff from the comic.

Mm-hmm. And it's like, you can't speak that aloud seriously. Right. Like, it'll sound ridiculous. Now in this, it's all mumbled or it's all like, you know.

That's the magic of it. Right. It's like, you know. They sound way with it. They sound way with it.

He always sounds embarrassed to be saying what he's saying.

If he's saying that. Why it's one of his best performances. He is an artist. That, that aspect of him is an actor. That always feels a little embarrassed to be acting.

And you're divisible on him in general. You have often referred him as a ham sandwich. I mean, maybe introduce me before you start putting words on my mouth. But yes, I occasionally have called walking Phoenix a ham sandwich. But you will agree with me.

Mm-hmm. It is perhaps his best performance. And it's certainly in that conversation. Yeah, it's a good performance. And it's, it's the mode I, I, I often like him.

“Is it the last one before he went so hard to stay in?”

Before he took to stay in? Kind of the same thing. It's a little bit because he, this premieres a can in 2017. Sure. It comes out in the States in 2018.

Right. And 2019 is Joker. Yeah. In 2018, so sort of in, in between him making this and in Joker coming out. He's got some weird stuff.

He does has the Jesus movie nobody saw. Doesn't exist. He has, don't worry. He won't get far on foot, which is like buried for gotten stuff. Great.

I saw it too. Mm-hmm. It's pretty bad. It was okay. It was, yeah.

It had some charm. But, uh, and he does, uh, sisters brother, which I really like him in. Have you ever seen that? Yeah. Pretty fantastic movie.

Yeah. But, yeah. Obviously was sort of DOA audience-wise. Yeah. And then, yeah.

I mean, but that's like an interesting range year for him. Yeah. When you think about this coming out in 2018, sisters brothers don't where you

were never really here is like that, that's an interesting range of three different

projects with three different really interesting directors and different modes. And he's not to overdoing any of them. No, I mean, this one is so, you know, obviously this one in particular that we're all saying we like is very, very understated. Yeah.

And I know, you know, it's, it's light on dialogue. You read the book too, right? Yeah. I, you do, I watched the movie first. Yeah.

And then I read the book and you're getting so much of his. In Toronto, a lot of Oregon and what, you know, what is going on from. And it's amazing to me how much that is coming through without any voice over. Yes. The same trick she posed with more of her in color, which is another movie of hers that's

based on a book that's all internal monologue. You know, it's a thought I had. None of it in the movie. I thought I had a watching us and then reading the book which I only read recently. I finished it last night.

It was a slim voice.

“Not as like a Kindle single, but it was like an experimental ebook novella.”

When that was a medium people were trying to test out.

And then now since the movie, it's been published as like a 97 page thing. But reading the book after seeing the movie and I've been trying to do this with her other films as well. It's, it feels like the book is like the backstory and actor creates for their character. Right? We're like really prepped kind of studious actors will be like, I'm going to write this whole fucking thing.

I don't need to communicate it in the movie. It helps me ground it and place it and know what I'm playing internally and hopefully not feel the need to like actually communicate it in an overstated way. And she somehow knows how to like reverse engineer that extrapolate from these books that are so much about the internal life. Without the plot of your elements. The thing I saw in a review of dye my love to, which I haven't seen yet, but was like somehow her camera movements make you feel the internal life of the camera.

Yeah, and like the sort of the way she chooses to like show the violence or like even show moments of him at rest and how restless he is in those in those spots is like, you know, the way that it's shot just like really makes you feel what he's feeling. And he's great. Yes, I will add on to that. The additional trick in this movie that feels unique in her filmography is so often her movies are like you are 100% in the head of the character. You're seeing the whole movie from their point of view, you're placed in their inner life and the film is like expressing that this movie in it's sort of handling of PTSD and a sort of dissociation is going between being really close and on him and feeling really distant removed.

And the violence is a fascinating part of that where this feels like a really brutal violent movie where you almost never actually see.

They don't show the action which is also is obviously a very a huge stylistic choice that different from the book which the book. Graphically explains a lot of the brutality, but like when he goes through the like, you know, brothel or whatever and you're just getting security camera footage. And it's sometimes cutting to a different angle of like the bottom of the stairs and then it cuts back and you just see like what he has done. What you don't see him do it. That sequence is fucking awesome. It's not even in a like you want to you wish you were seeing it. It's like, oh, I like like I have such a sense of what's going on and also like how scary it would be everything about it.

Yeah, this is a podcast called blank check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin and we were never really here. It's a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. Yes, as many series on the films of librarians it's called we need to pot about test van and today we're talking about my favorite film of hers and one of my favorite always the last 10 years you were never really here.

“Yeah, I feel that I've seen twice and really like and I feel that I think for you is basically like sleepy time happy once a week just like I need any time wine it's time to meet the hobo assassin again.”

It's not quite that often. I do have some strange comfort movies that are in a real study rotation. This is one that's more selective when I want to feel a certain way. Yeah, but I also I just I find the filmmaking in this movie astonishing there are choices she makes that still every time I watch it and I've seen it many times I think I saw three times in theaters. You know for a long time it's an Amazon movie they bought it, so it's just always streaming on the world or streaming service. And now I finally have a physical copy of it thanks to Australian distributors outside of Amazon's reign.

Yeah, I think it's a totally slept on movie and as it's told Amazon thing, but yeah, everyone who would listen that I was doing this pod. Just scrabbing people on the street, I'm going to be on blank check. Have you heard the news?

Is person and they said and they said what movie you're doing and I'd say you were never really hearing they go.

“What is that in who made that? Even people who I think would love the movie.”

Yeah, I'm just like you got to watch it, but I also had kind of missed it. Yeah, the poster which I agree is cool didn't sell me on it. I was like, oh, okay, this looks like a moody thing. Maybe I'll try it sometime, but I don't know why I threw it on on some streamer, but maybe like a half hour an hour and I was like, I got a text-gryffin and David.

Yeah, I was just like, holy shit, it's awesome. Like, walking's unbelievable in it. The directing's incredible and it's like, I mean, it's tight as a fucking drum. It's like there's no fat on it. I really appreciate it. It's so it flies. Because you could sit in this misery and that's a different decision and I don't know if I would love that.

Instead, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, just kind of like little pokes in your eye. Like fast. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you just like counted up the scene, like it's like so, so efficient, which I have so much respect for.

“It's, I think like 80, one minute before the credits.”

Yeah, basically. I think it's listed as like 90 minutes, but it's, it's really pretty well. Like, yeah, or 20. Yeah, which is, which is great. It, it also feels smart in the sort of, we discussed when we covered a train spotting on this podcast. The Danny Boyle's big rule going into that movie with all the key creatives is like, we got to sign a blood pack. This movie has to be under 90 minutes.

We are not going to be able to sustain this. If we hit 95, it's going to become oppressive. Yeah, and I think she very smartly makes the same choice here.

When it played a can, it was an earlier cut that was longer that has never been released in any form since that.

We're never really released. You were never really released. I guess today, from Hollywood handbook. Screenwriter of the Dink. That's right.

Which will be coming out. I think it has a release date. Let's, this summer on. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Summer 2026. Q2 is a Q2 release. Q3.

Ah, what, I don't get my Q's mixed up. I don't get your P's and Q's.

“That's the problem for a couple more of us.”

A Q3 if it's. I've been told that date. I don't know if I'm allowed to say. Okay. But it's summer time.

It's coming out. It's summer time. It's going to be 2026. Summer, big fun summer comedy. Get ready to laugh again.

Can we have funny laugh? I mean, I'd have fun at all. In this administration. And hold us the comedy was legal. I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of that.

Yeah. Well, it's legal again. It's legal.

I'm actually going to be the first one to stand up and not get arrested for doing it.

Sean Clements. The clam dog. The dog's here. Wow. Wow.

The friends were following me. The friends were following me. We had a group text for a while called the Cinematic Club. We're at post our Daily Cinematic Scores. The two of you weirdly have decided to spend more time raising your children in less

time playing Cinematic. It was pulling me away from my family in a very significant way. But especially because you guys are so good at it. And I can't be like totally humiliated every day. And I would like really like grind on this thing.

And I was like, I'm not enjoying it. I was starting to not enjoy it. That was sort of my problem. And that's no offense to the people who made it. Of course.

It was a daily ritual which has because it also gave us like an excuse to once a day check in and throw in some some spare movie thoughts. And things like you texting that's why.

I'm watching you were never really here for the first time.

Do you guys fuck with this movie? I don't think it would have happened if we weren't Cinematic's friends. You were, you know, in touch basically every day for a while. If we weren't clubbing, which we were. Yeah.

And then the text thread has has become more sporadic. Mm-hmm. I saw the trailer for the family McMillan. The finally Ed Burns 30 years later, Lego sequel.

And I texted to you and say this feels like it's demanding a teaser freezer. Yeah. And in honor of that, we have renamed the group text. The friends McMillan. A teaser freezer is something we do on Hollywood handbook.

Let me tell you things where we will break down a movie trailer. And, and, and, look, put it at the foibles. But we David had, I'm going to credit David with the observation of.

“He said, is Ed Burns the Irish American Tyler Perry?”

Yes. And incredible. Which is like a kill shot. Amazing. Yeah.

And it really stuck with me. Um, laughing at my own joke, but it is a good one. So funny. Because we were going through all his movie titles. It was like the McGillacati brothers.

It's like staggering amounts of movies. The Fitzgerald family Christmas. I don't know. It's just, I'll read because like the first, you know, Roosevelt and she's the one.

People are watching these movies. Well, first of all, this great party trick of how many movies do you think Ed Burns has directed? It's no good. I didn't.

I didn't even go. My girlfriend and I were watching the chair company on Max. And it auto played a family Macmolent trailer because I guess it's about to go to Max. Yeah. I'm sure.

And she was like, what? And I was like, Sean. I'm just going to message like the speed of light about this for weeks. And then I paused it. And I said, just quick test.

How many films do you think Ed Burns has directed? And she went, I'm going to guess it's a lot. Like six. Oh, she's got 15. She's got 15.

She's got 15 under his belt. Which is probably about six regular movies. Right. Kind of like average amount, you know, of squeezing together. But I just love that you're like, well, three I've heard of.

And you're like, there's 12 to three.

Oh, you've never met a nice guy, Johnny.

Why met him? Or you've never attended the Fitzgerald family Chris called that one out. Which weirdly has Connie Britain as well. But he's not Macmolent. Right.

It's Fitzgerald. But then there's another one with another Irish family name. Yeah. And Miller's in marriage. And that's another one with a poster is like 14 actors.

You kind of know that clearly Ed has their phone number.

“And is like, do you have six days I've rented a house?”

It's a good time to remember. Like, like, or what? You know, like, we'll do it. I don't know nonsense. Gretchen Mall, Julian.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. It does busy people.

It does feel like there's some Tyler Perry thing going on, where you're like, I want someone to crack up in the books of what the financing scheme is for these.

You know, how is it getting access to these sets? Right. There's some constantly giving him keys. Right. Yeah.

I mean, it was like the brothers with Malone was such a famous story of like he was like working. Worked for adoption company. Yeah. Or if he was working. He was stealing the cameras night and like using their, you know, using their copy machines or whatever the thing was that, and it was like this real run and gun like, but now he's got a budget.

There you go. There you go. But name actors. This is true, but I, there's gotta be something going on with some things going on. Some things going on.

I mean, my, my ultimate assumption obviously is that they are made very quickly. Yeah. It's like talking dramas, right? Yes. And maybe I should just watch them all.

I mean, maybe I should put my money where I'm out of his and check in with Ed. We also called out that he's also done like two TV shows. Directed three complete seasons of television himself. Three seasons of two different shows where he directed every episode. I'm saying the man keeps getting away with it.

It looks pretty good. He looks pretty good. He looks pretty good. He looks pretty good. We had really a lot of fun batting this around.

Oh, God. That was a nice text and then I got to talk about my podcast. Here we are talking about it again. But we're the friends with Mullen. He hasn't acted.

We're the friends with Mullen. He has not acted in a movie that he, you know, didn't direct. Since Alex Cross. Okay. Rob Cohen, you know, sort of restoring.

Tyler Perry. That's not Irish Tyler Perry. Did he take some notes to Tyler Perry? Good one. Come here.

Where he is the third guy.

This is crazy. He's been playing some kind of like detective sidekick. I don't know if that bird's going to pull something like that. It seems like a murder or something. I'm bringing all this up because the first ever teaser

freezer, of course. And the first episode of Hollywood Handbook Ever was Don John John. A movie that you and Hayes Davenport came on to discuss on this podcast. Yes. I don't know if you saw the news.

Oh, I did. New Joseph Gordon Levitt movie in production. My feet on it back. Train. Might be time to run it back.

“I think we got to call the shot right now.”

We got it. We got to complete that series. I mean, we're continuing the JGL mini. What is this movie? Do we know what it's about?

I'm going to Kendrick and it's a. Is it about AI? I feel like. Hit record Joe. I feel like.

Maybe I'm going to get in trouble for saying this like. I'm feeling kind of warm to JGL of late. I feel like he's going to get in trouble for saying. I mean, I mean, you know, Lord knows he's. He's done something bad trouble with who bane.

He's not bad, but something cool. I think bane's thinking about you. That's oh my god. Wow. That's actually pretty self involved David.

Bane's got so much on his plate right now. Isn't he. He's like, oh, is out there saying, like, AI sucks. I don't like it or whatever. Life is like a scientist.

Yeah, he seems like he's. And it's kind of like the shoulders. He's like, hey, Joe, here like 20 bad things that are about to happen as society. And he's like, cool, I'll use my like star power to communicate my platform going.

“And then I think his movie is about that.”

I want to say. So like that's kind of fun. Yeah. I like that. Am I crazy?

Joseph Gordon Levin quote, not a punk rock thing to use artists work to train AI for free. I mean, he doesn't need to say the punk rock part, but sure. It's Rachel McAdams and Joseph Gordon Levin. I love Rachel McAdams. For Brian Johnson's for nomination is producing it under wraps for the AI movie.

It's an AI movie. Interesting. Wait a second. Share story credit with Natasha Leone. Okay.

She's. She's brush. She's pretty normal. Yeah. Yeah.

I just think not only is the JGL series and ongoing project that we are serious about. I almost think you and Hayes need to be locked in for every time. He makes it.

I mean, we may have been too hard on John.

I might be. I've been watching the movies that have come out since. Yeah. I've seen everything in the last 15 years or so. John might have been the last good movie.

I've picked it. We were so spoiled. We were. We felt that we had permission to go in on John. And we didn't know how good it was going.

I think this movie is approach to like the pick thing. masturbation habits is very strange. And now we live in a world where masturbation is rarely depicted on screen, which is a much worse way of handling it. It's missing. It's missing.

“Well, so aren't we in a world where Gen Z is like the only way to know how to masturbate is like in like a VR cave or whatever is not like what.”

Gooning is or whatever. That's what's been going on. Yeah. So now I'm like Don John is like that was a blue collar masturbator. You know, I just cracked open a Dell laptop and solved the air.

It's masturbating to human. When he was on shitty cameras. He was like boobs into Google or whatever. Like for John John did fuck. And then like scar Joe's kind of mean to him.

He's like, oh, I like it. You know what I mean? It's just jeans. It's such presaic hornyness. Like compared to whatever the you know, zoomers are doing.

Who is a simpler time? It was a simpler time. And we're part of the problem. We made times complicated. Well, we, yes, we shamed him.

We shamed him. And that has now driven all of youth into a VR cave. It's the only way they can get on. The girls stuck in a post on John. VR cave.

Yeah. Because we made it. We made it embarrassing to be Don John. And the, and where the, you know, it was playing off this Jersey Shore aesthetic. Like.

“Also has like encapsulated this one moment in time.”

Right. That is now like show preserved. Right. That is just so quaint and old fashioned. The Jim Tam laundry kind of thing. But also does Jersey Shore get revived in the time in between when we did the episode.

And now I can't even revive revive. Revive. Revive like that didn't last. I know. I mean we got some.

Then you spread it over here. Snookie's podcast. I don't know if you know this. That's true. Jesus Ben.

I'm sorry. Yeah. I didn't know. I feel like such a fucking asshole. Dude.

Congratulations, man. That, that, that rocks. Thank you. I mean. Snookie?

Yeah. Not a lot of the call. Not a lot of one name. Superstars coming out of reality TV these days. No, especially in the podcast world.

Who are the one named podcasters? DAX. We had Seth Rogan on the show. And it was, I, I kept falling into this problem. Where I go like, yeah, and we have Rogan doing Big Lebowski on the pot.

And people would go Joe. And I was like, Oh, you can't, within the context of pod. Can't say Rogan. You can't say Rogan.

But that, he's a one name, but not the first name.

I think if you say Joe. Probably. But, but not definitely. The, all these terror. You say Joe.

I'm thinking about Biden. Same. And when's he going to start his podcast? I love hearing that guy talk. I really was got a Mac for it.

A, a link. No, but he should do a fucking serial style podcast about corn pop. Yeah. Where he's like, I'm going to prove to you that this guy. I'm going to interview everyone and knew him.

I'm going to go deep like full investigation on whatever pool he used to hang out and Wilmington or whatever it was. Or it could be called a bad dude. I took to the right. I mean streets of Delaware.

Yeah. I think he's like walking around.

“You should plant a bunch of hidden mics in Joe Biden's home.”

Right. Not a crime. And just record him, putter him in murdering. And release those in one hour installments. I think his monologue out loud to himself on a daily basis is would probably be the best podcast.

I listened to. Where he does the model where like Obama and Bruce paired up. Sure. Who would Biden pair up with musician wise? Well, like who's the musician of Biden's age?

The guy from Smashmouth. Ryan Adams. Brian. It's like Frankie Valley. Like who is Joe Biden's favorite musician?

It's this. I was trying to tee up. Yes. Some kind of really old.

The problem is if we ask Joe who's the musician you want to do a podcast with.

He'd be like, "That's a polaroid rose." What's he done recently? Oh, man. His favorite band. What's his favorite band?

It seems to be just like some kind of like Irish folk banders. I'm trying to figure out. Oh, like good. Yeah. I mean just him and Michael Flattley.

Yeah. Is Michael Flattley still picking? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

He's still doing stuff. You know, the whole thing with him is that he broke off from Riverdance. Yeah. When I lived in England, Riverdance was like 40% of like economy in that country. And like so every five minutes when you watched TV, there would be ads for Riverdance

or Michael Flattley's Lord of the Dance.

His rival company.

“Same deal in the United States in the 90s.”

I guess it was just a time where those two things were just playing alternate. Did any of you ever see Riverdance? Absolutely not. No, but I feel like I did. It's kind of like Irish rockettes.

It's like again. I'm making a lot of Irish stereotype sort of jokes on this podcast, which is a little little rich for me. I'm not Irish. Hey.

I'll give you a pass. Yeah. Okay. He's pushed it over a bat. His hand and you a clover.

It is one of those things. Four like ten years you could have play and a character breaks into some sort of like steps. That's punchline. That was punchline. That's all I need to do.

And it would hit every single time any character breaking into Riverdance for five seconds. What is this is me to my dad. And right. And now if I like to. If I told anyone about Riverdance, they would be like,

What is that? No, that and the chanting monks seeded our parents got into a one point felt like just this moment where it was like, maybe you're greedy. Maybe another culture. But just for a minute.

And just one thing they do. Yeah. Well, it's like, is it a nigma who did the chanting monk song or, right, you know, they're like, your moods. Yeah.

The pure moods. The mix that would come on right. Yeah.

“Just like those guys, whoever was just like, what if we did a monk song?”

Right. And then they hits. And then another guy's probably like, could I do a monk song? It's like now like doors closed. Like there was one monk opportunity in 2018.

Michael Flattley wrote, produced, directed and starred in an espionage action thriller. Sounds good. Called Blackbird.

Called Michael Flattley as you've never seen him before with Eric Roberts.

It's a Casa Blanco ring. We think of Eric Roberts. And it didn't actually see release for four years. That's what he's up to. Well, it movies made in the editing bay.

And nobody knows that better than Flattley. It seems to be in pre-production for Blackbird too. And let me get us, I'll get us back on track with this. If you look at this poster. Uh-huh.

Kind of a, you would never really hear by. What do you even know? You know? Yeah. It does look like Flattley is maybe, you know, someone who could wield a hammer.

Uh, Michael Flattley is you've never seen him before, not dancing. Feet planted. You're never really, really here. So I did see this film on theaters. I thought this is, this is that golden early age of Amazon.

Yeah. Humping out. Uh, otore content from guys who were sort of striking out at major studio. So, like, Spike Lee wins still. And this, uh, this, uh, Lin Ramsey.

What do you have on who else? Uh, what was in that kind of early way? I was on Todd's along. Uh, Hal Hartley. Yeah.

That was crazy. Did three with him? I feel like. I mean, because he just, he's Edwards. He just seems eight.

Yes.

But he like, he had a fucking, a little mini second win.

And like, loving. I can't, can't, can't honor again. Obviously. Yeah. That was one of their biggest hits.

Yeah. That was an acquisition. But that, but it was nonetheless. It was like, the bridge was consistent. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's the kind of kind of, like, let's buy up this kind of American art house stuff that used to be common. These are the kings of Sundance of like 1980 to 2002 who have gotten pushed out of the studio system. The death of the mini major specialty arm. We got to get these guys back.

And this is one that they, they buy because it was independently financed. It was, uh, run in variety that A24 was going to buy it. Which, and then total, total sense. And then during production, Amazon sweeps in. And outputs them and gets the rights swoops and swoops.

And it's fine. It's whatever. But I thank you. I need these corrections. Uh, Michael.

It's close to the vester close to the chest. Michael. That's a little. Okay. Is another one.

Michael.

“You know, like, where they're kind of like, do you want a little bit more money?”

Or will, or will, like, you know, we'll sort of bigfoot someone at a film festival. And we've, we've talked about a bit of the shit that like, uh, Netflix did when they started out. Uh, although not as successfully. And, uh, an opponent was sort of based on a, like, what's the thing that's gotten rejected everywhere else? Yeah.

What's the thing that no one else will let you make? And we can build our reputation as seeming so artist friendly by supporting you. And they did. They did. And they didn't make any money.

They made no dollars. They made no dollars. And no cents. It's, and it's almost interesting because, like, they made Manchester work commercially. Yeah.

That movie made, like, fucking 50, 60 million dollars.

There's one of the master arguments of, like, you really can put, you know, these things and theaters and get them Oscar knobs and they will grow and they'll, like, you know, have a good ride. They got big sick to, like, 50, 60. Uh, love in friendship. They got to, like, 20 something.

And it was sort of, like, this is the model. Why aren't the other streaming services doing? Britney ran that mayor around the marathon. And she ran that shit right into the ground. Uh, Jen Solky took over the company, made some decisions that affected me personally.

I will.

“But then also went to Sundance that year and spent, I think, a combined 50 million dollars on late night.”

Britney runs a marathon. And, uh, the report. Yeah. It's got zebra and some chicken moving. And I tried to give all three wide releases and was astounded when public audiences didn't flock to those films in mass.

And the next year declared my takeaway is that movie going is dead and people don't like movies. If you seem to renew on some earth on. Yep. Hey, so it's your story. You know that?

You believe that? Uh, I'm, I'm starting to come around to that being possible. Now, well, I don't, I can't just accept that at face value. Like, people say that picture. You know, Fargo says that.

Fargo says that. That's true. And you can't. And it's like, oh, it's far by this kind of thing. Both have been, but I've been tricked before.

Yeah. I'm hanging, I'm hanging on. What?

We'll never forget being in Sundance.

Yeah. Britney runs a marathon. The Viennes, the credits roll, then they give you the black and white photo. Like, and here's the real Brittany running there. And someone behind me being like, Oh, it gives up shit.

“Like, just truly the most frustrated junior exactly.”

Look at the fuck out of here. Yes. So what? She didn't even become a state senator anything. She just, it's a funny man.

It's a funny man. It's a funny story to do a side-by-side photo with like the real version. Yeah. Usually, that's like some historic. Yeah.

It's like fickened Nelson Mandela. Yeah. It's real Brittany. I'm like great, oh, lady. Guess what?

I go to the marathon every. I watch them go by. There's lots of people who do this. Do you think if Jen Salkey goes to the marathon? She's like, this is a development dream.

Fifty million stories. They're all here. We'll have to discuss this recently on this feed. But Bradley Cooper says this thing on. Is another movie that ends with a big, based on a true story.

As if the audience is going, God. I mean, that was unrealistic.

Such a thing could never happen.

I need the assurance. And adult man trying to stand up. Impossible. Getting divorced.

“You're telling me this comedian was feeling a little bit of drift.”

Sorry. It doesn't trash. Sometimes comedy comes out of misery. It's a way to process our pain. Um.

But like pretty like comfortable white collar pain. [MUSIC] David, what? This episode. Don't act so surprised because it's a familiar friend.

Okay. This episode's brought to you by movie. Y'all. Just kidding. Comfortable.

No, no, no. We love them. A global film company of Champions, great cinema. I connect directors, emerging our tours.

Always something you to discover with movie.

Each and every film hand selected. So you can explore the best of cinema. Nothing more to say, I guess. [MUSIC] There's a new film coming to theaters.

Yeah. Movie theaters February 13th. The first Nigerian film ever in official competition again. That's pretty wild. This is a film by Akinola Davis called my father's shadow.

It was baffed and nominated. Poetic. Tender portrait of a father's son bond. Framed within a political landscape of 1993 Lagos. In Nigeria.

It is about a father and two young son. Hmm. As they journey into and around the violently rendered Nigerian metropolis, reckoning with their relationship. Navigating the city that's in the middle of a democratic crisis.

Written by real-life brothers, Akinola Davis Junior and Wally Davis. Love it, brothers. Uh, co-wrote this groundbreaking feature debut. And you've got, uh, Sophie de Risu.

Oh, from slow horses. I love him. I hope I'm still saying his name, right? Um, but he's a really good actor. Uh, and he's the star.

It's worth seeing. It's in theaters. It's in theaters. It's in theaters. We love the movie puts movies in theaters before ultimately ending up on their wonderful platform.

Dang right. I'm just looking at some of the stuff they got right now. Die my love, of course. Yeah. An important watch in this story.

Thank you so much for any blanky, uh, Lagraza, Lagraza, the new Palace Ornstein movie, which I missed in theaters. Good moment to catch up with it. Uh, the great shall we dance? Oh, the classic.

The original. Oh, my goodness. That's fun. Like a restoration. Yeah.

And look, they got a collection called Heart Throb Nicholas Cage. It's young dreamy game. Well, still dreaming to me. Hey. You're very open-hearted.

Anyway, to stream the best of cinema, you can try movie free for 30 days at movie.com/blankcheck. That's mbid.com/blankcheck for a whole month. A great cinema for free. And then go see my father's shadow in theaters.

Please. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you. Very kind. I am going to open the dossier. Because I do feel like this movie does have kind of a complicated...

It does. Or Lynn Ramsey has a complicated journey from her last movie. We need to talk about Kevin. Yeah. To hear.

I feel like we need to talk about Kevin is her biggest hit. Yeah. It was a lot of life. Especially for a telescope, which was a small distributor. Right.

I feel like that was very much their highest-grossing film at the time.

“Are you guys going to address the Lynn Ramsey backlash happening in the Blankcheck community?”

Are we even going to deal with that? You've been checking the Reddit? Yeah. Great. I'm on there.

What's the latest on the background? Which is basically the least Blankcheck where the director you've ever done. Like what's her Blankcheck? Like they're literally not good. They're like...

So it's just like... There isn't one. So like I guess it's your podcast to do whatever you want. But... Yes.

Yes. We can address this. Look. And we also just for the record, do their voice more like the bug man and men and black. Look at Denofferyl.

I mean, she's never even...

I don't even have one. I don't even have one.

“I think that thread, which always always happens every single time we pick a female director.”

It does happen that time. No offense to whoever started that thread. Because that thread is obviously totally correct. Or that discourse is totally correct in that, yes. Lynn Ramsey has never been handed anything remotely akin to a Blankcheck to make a movie.

Absolutely. But Lynn Ramsey has been able to make the movie she's made, which are strikingly independent and dark and commercial movies, with major stars. Increasingly bigger and bigger stars. Yes.

A bright right to the her latest effort, of course, being heard like most expensive, I guess, especially if you include this sort of acquisition of it. Yeah. So, I think that's a starlight and without ever, seemingly ever really compromising what she wants to do. Now, she's always like, oh, this happened, I wish this could happen.

And there's always unrealized projects or whatever. But that speaks to in fact, her not compromising, right? I mean, like, we will have covered this in other episodes and we'll keep covering this. But there's so many movies she walks off of, you know, or let's fall apart because she's just like, this is going in the wrong direction. I'd rather not make a movie than make a movie.

I can't stand by. Speaking about all that, let me tell you that after she made, we need to talk about Kevin. She wanted to make mobiestick. Correct. I mean, it's got various titles over the years. Mobiest being the most common one, but they sort of sci-fi,

mobie dick epic. Ken, this is Lynn Ramsey's dream project. Her ultimate blank check. It's like a spaceship movie, but they're chasing a line of space whale. It's a giant space whale.

“I mean, now probably if she could get piochan attached, she could probably get financing, right?”

It helps if there's a bankable space whale in the kind of commercial ecosystem. Where a piochan will do it for scale. I mean, that's a gopiste.

She's never been out there being like, I need $90 million to make my space movie.

She's always said I can make it a small budget. I assume it's sort of like clear Denise's high life of like, yeah, this is mostly psychological. It's mostly set on a ship. But small budget.

But you need some. It's still like effect. 15, probably. I'm guessing. I who knows.

She has generally worked with small budgets. And then the blank check is. It distributors keep over paying for her movie. Sometimes. Being surprised when they're a little bit hard.

Nobody wants to see this movie. And for Lawrence is hitting her head into every wall in mirror and window. She can see movies rubbing their hands in there. Like the memes we're going to make out of this. So while she's planning that, she gets attached to a film called Jane got a gun.

Which I assume, Sean, you have maybe heard of this project. This is the kind of infamous she walks off. Was it like a day before production? Well, the day we can talk about it. You know, so she says, like, movieist.

That's like her Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon, right? Um, like where it's like, that's the thing I vote.

I'm always going to want to do, but it might always be impossible.

But Natalie Portman, who I think admires her, is like, I am developing this like girl Western. I'm going to star. It's called Jane got a gun. And it's got based on a, is it based on a comic book or?

No, no. It's, it's a, it's a spec written by Brian Duffield. Right. Right. Uh, who now has made, um, like no one will save you and stuff like that. Yes, and spontaneous and love and monsters.

I think he wrote as well. I mean, has a tremendous amount of credits as writer and director. But it was a blacklist script in 2011. The Natalie Portman gets as a producer kind of coming right off of her like, black Swan Heat. It is a thing that like, Natalie Portman has been called out for a little bit,

that she never worked with female directors.

So we're sort of talk about like the need for women to stick together in Hollywood, and people would kind of side eye her being like, yeah. Why don't you do it? I'm just fucking do it. And so like, here she is.

She's trying to do it. She buys a script with her own money, attaches Len Ramsey and Michael Faspen. It's going to be her Michael Faspen, or Jude Law is going to be the villain.

The shooting in Mexico in first day of shooting.

Natalie Portman shows up. Michael Faspenner has exited because he has to play Magneto again, like the third time or whatever. He's going to be replaced with Joel Ederton, Jude Law, and Len Ramsey both quit.

Len Ramsey just does not arrive. It becomes this kind of disaster variety story kind of thing of like, you know, producers being like, there's 150 crew members who are getting left in the lurch here. Like, it's a whole legal battle and stuff.

The crazier thing also. I'm accused of not delivering a shooting script. She's apparently, they said that her behavior had gotten kind of bizarre. Like, whatever.

“I think she was clashing with producers.”

What do you, what do you, what do you do? Joel Ederton was like attached and then replaced and then came back in a different role. There was a lot of musical chairs with this movie. You and McGregor is the ultimate choice to whatever filled the third role.

They sue her for like quarter of three quarters of a million dollars,

which is her fee. It settled out of court like three years later. Len Ramsey finally says when she talks about many years later, it's like at the 11th hour, it was just like the guys financing this movie, just do not want the movie I'm going to make.

Right. And so she quit. I mean, I think that basically completely cement her relationship is someone who's very difficult to work with and just doesn't play like Hollywood games well. Right.

Yes. And I think the other part of it is it was like catnip for deadline. In my memory, it was like there would be three stories a day. Because it's like this movie is up and running and the director has gone, the lead actor has gone.

The lead day, there were like three new stories about, I mean, I'm even just reading here where it's like on April 5th, it was announced that Bradley Cooper would replace law on the role of John Bishop.

“On May 1st, it was announced that Cooper was withdrawing from the film.”

Yeah. Cooper was brief. You know, every day it was like a new actors and talks and new actors dropped out. They're meeting with six new directors. I know.

I know we don't get like two inside baseball on the on the business here, but to make a feature film. You know, I've only really been directly involved with one. But to make a feature film without the director and star is like a dreamly channel. Really.

That is just a very bad set environment. Yeah. Yeah. It dysfunctional. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, I don't, yeah. I mean, that's got a negative connotation. Yeah. But I think that's fair.

Let me rephrase. Non-functional. I would say it's going to be pretty tough to make a movie function. With neither director nor star. No.

No, movies have done a missing one or the other. Sure. The weird thing is. Yeah. The movie was eventually made Gavin O'Connor directs the final version.

Uh-huh. He came out it made like $2. Yes. Like it was dumped so intensely by the Weinstein company. Yeah.

In 2015. Right. I've never seen it. Everyone was like kind of shopping around it. At one point it had like Weinstein relativity.

CBS and focus features all like hovering and then taking pieces and then dropping out and someone would replace it. Like it was this movie with all this energy that they wouldn't let shut down. Yeah. And they kind of kept the corpse alive and got it finished and no one gave it shit. Really surprising that all those people leaving does it just make it not get done.

Yeah. Great. But yeah. And object emotion. But it cost 25 million dollars.

Right. 100. Yes. Well, yeah. Cost lot of money.

I'm sure a lot of that was kind of the overruns of people on hold and whatever. But if she had done this, this would have been her biggest budget thing. Now, to this the complaint of the Reddit right or the questioning. It's like you could say, well, how has.

How can you define her as a blank check director when she's never had a budget over.

Yada Yada. Right. Yeah. Which by the way. I'm just telling you what red it's.

No. I know. And at the end of the day. I'm opening a speel about what we want to cover, that is I would say the number one thing this podcast is about and she's one of my favorite filmmakers and specifically from the moment that I see you are never really here, I'm like fuck. The next time she releases a movie, I want to do her on main feed.

“But I think she is interesting in how she has kind of refused the blank check that would come with a lot of strings attached.”

And even some people more strategically might be like, look, if I make Jane got a gun and it's got four big stars and it's a western and it's got more sellable elements and I lose half the battles to the financiers, but it gets released and becomes automatically my highest grossing film.

She's moved to Santorini, which is of course a Greek island in the agency, falls in love with a Belarusian chef because she has divorced her husband, Roy Stewart Kneer, has a kid with him.

And then Jacques Odiard's company, why not, sends her over a copy of you were never really here in 2013.

Now, I never read the book written by the board to death guy, Jonathan Aims. So I usually think of him of course writing about like, I don't know, I'm in Brooklyn, he was, yeah, for I just to give a little bit of background. He was sort of like a pervy, straight David Sidderer. And it is actually a really good description of it. Dead on like he would write about and it was like, yeah, it was, you know, famous essay about like his late puberty, where he talked about like not having pubic hair for a long time and then like, you know, whatever having his first sexual experience with the prostitute, but it was all like,

“able gasey, sort of rod. I come up with a share. Yes, like confessional work and then I haven't read many of his novels prior to this, but there's this, which I think is his first time dipping his toe into, because even board to death,”

that is sort of like, what if a neurotic writer was like solving a chapter in super pasty. She, I mean, I enjoyed board to death back in the day was fun time. He was like a brilliant self promoter and that he made himself a figure, which helped him kind of cut through a bleak moment in the literary world.

It's the family poets thing. It's like, if you were just funny and you live in New York and you can just like do panels and do do panel chatty shit do readings where he would like

to hire an opera singer to read his book out and he was like boxing on the side. You quirky self deprecate. You kind of feel good about yourself that you're like, oh, it's got a real problem. It's like you're like, I can, but me while he's like a famous, you know, successful person, but it's not threatening to anyone.

“This book does feel like a radical departure from everything he had done up until this point. So Graham and Bruton, there's nothing self referential to his life at all.”

It's just the imaginings of like this like, you know, this man who has this job rescuing like women who are like in like child sex trafficking situations. But then he, he breaks off in a doing the series of like noir detective books these doll books that are like incredible that feel very much sprung from that like a happy doll series got three of them. Yeah, a man named doll Carma doll in the wheel of doll three books and they're they're fucking awesome. I have not read those you those are good. I love them, but it's like it's just very surprising that this guy who I was aware of and had this very specific voice just has this whole new chapter.

Well, he said when he wrote this, we never really hear he's like, this is sort of an homage to first the Richard Stark that Donald West Lake wake.

Yeah, the dollar is like Parker series. Just like Lee child, Jack Reacher books and all that. So he knows he's sort of doing not a past each with an homage to like a genre. Yeah, yeah, the book is fairly honest. It is not tongue-in-cheek in any way, but there is something pasty she about it in that it is very much the book reads as more of an awara riff than the movie does.

“And I think what the book is interested in is like what is the kind of like really disturbing subtext under these stories that we skirt around, right?”

Not just like the intensity of the crimes, but also like what is the inner life of a guy who does this kind of shit. Yeah, and like what told us this take on you and what drives someone to that point versus being this kind of like cool above it all vacant. You know, they're complete loner drifters and you just go like, because they're too cool and there's no strings to tell. They can leave forever and he's like, no, but internally this guy is like constant suicidal ideation like just like the only thing keeping him going is that he has this like one purpose.

He's identified that he can do that he thinks helps people and that just like keeps pulling him back from the brink. I mean, you would never really hear the title comes from the repetition of the suicidal ideation and the book that's the thing he says to himself when he imagines killing himself to kind of alleviate the pressure of the idea of like that's why he doesn't need to do it because he would never really hear anyway. Right, which is what this guy's struggling with he's also physically described in the book as being so much more of a traditional Jack reach type.

He'd come to believe that he was the recurring element, the deciding element, all the tragedies experience by the people he encountered. So if he could minimize his impact and his responsibility, then there was the chance the slight chance that there would be no more suffering for others.

“It was a negative grandiose delusion, narcissism inverted into self hatred, a kind of autoimmune disorder of his psyche, but there was an undeniable element of truth to Joe's paranoia state where he went pain and punishment followed.”

And it's like that's the animating idea of like a guy doing this would not really be able to live with himself even of what he's doing from the outside seems heroic.

And what would drive someone to do the right thing in such extreme circumstances has to be a little bit warped because no sane person with any self protective instincts can kind of live in this and survive it. Yeah, he goes into the worst places where the worst people are doing bad things and then he does bad things there and then one good thing comes out of it maybe. Right, and we love these kind of fictions of the like the one guy who's willing to stand up to the bad in the world. Yeah, and ask these questions when these things happen in real life of like how did no one stop it and you're like, because it's super fucking difficult to stop it.

Not just in terms of like breaking down these system and challenging these people, but also you literally just have to go into the depths of hell to even confront these things and most of the time people don't come back out of that. And he's a guy who is living with so much from his background in the military and whatever else he's done. Pain and flashback and PTSD already that sort of like might as well get more like there's no escaping it for him. So it just seems like he's just like, okay, well, I'm the person who can go and do this because like it doesn't matter what I see I've seen it all.

“The book is really tough, but it makes sense as something that someone could read and go like there's a halfway commercial movie in this.”

You know, there is a kind of like inverted our house taken in this and it kind of makes him such a specific striking character, but it is like the book is more in the worry in terms of being in his head.

It's not written first person, but it's describing what he's thinking and what he's doing.

And it's very like methodical and process based on how he goes about these missions, but also it's like explaining him putting the pieces together and solving the mystery, which is a thing the movie does not do. It doesn't have him like on the case. You see the kind of thing to fit the piece of the case, right, but this has a sense in terms of there's versus there's more a kind of like pulpy wicked web of intrigue and drop some way that Phoenix is playing this character also obviously it's not this is not Batman the world's greatest attack that this is not a deductive guy in that way.

No, no, you see him like put it together almost as just because he understands suffering. No, he's less yeah he's less savvy in the movie because like in the book he's like being careful about, you know, certain. He's cracking in the movie. It's like he calls the guy who's his contact right away. You don't like to be like, hey, yeah.

So Lynn's like, I kind of want to do this and people keep being like, why this isn't the kind of thing you would do it. She's like, that only maybe wanted to do it more like I live, you know, I've got that energized me. But so it is sorry, it's some ODR who reaches out to her. ODR is production company sent her the book. Okay. Yeah.

And they didn't even have the rights, but she's like, I'm fucking sitting in Greece with no internet and like there's nothing to do and I just start writing the script. Yeah. And then I just like get connected with Jonathan because we know, you know, people, people and we start chatting about it.

And I start basically saying this is what I want to keep, you know, these, this is the bone to the character that I like and he's all for it.

And, you know, she's got a baby.

“So I think like it's like almost a sort of like, I remember down to name drop by like, I'm not sure I'm on saying the same thing of like when you have a baby.”

If you're trying to write something, it actually focuses you because you have like two hours to write because the responsibility is there versus the kind of like, Yeah, I've got all day. Let me sit at the desk and see what fires up. Well, same with podcasting. Now you have the focus of knowing you only have four hours to discuss a movie. It does, I think it does. David smiling and he's giving me thumbs up and he's blown kisses really. I love you.

So I think you're not having crazy acid flashbacks about the red it. Well, that's all being said. Yes. Yes. He likes this a lot. I agree that you, you do end up using your time more efficiently.

And I had a boss once who said, like, your creativity will expand to fit the container.

“You give, you give it like, it's like the actual boss theory or whatever.”

It's that's interesting and surprising because I have zero kids and I use my time horrible. I actually couldn't manage it worse. I almost have nothing but time and get it. So what's the other thing against dinner? Like, what are you with? You're in like my culture. Exactly.

I always have negative children.

You certainly can't say to a one year old, like, daddy's got a right escape. Yeah. That diaper's just gonna have to go on change. Yeah. So Kevin obviously, which is her last adaptation that's a big book.

It's a pistol area. It's all these letters and stuff like, you know, that's a complicated thing. This, she's like the book you could read in 90 minutes. Like the movie should be just as palpy and like fast in a way. Sure. But her version of that, I would say.

But she, she just, she makes the sparsist version of what is already a sparsist text. She's like, look, I'm trying to make it palpy.

“It does turn into what I always do, which is a character study.”

Right. I feel like this guy's had this full of broken glass. He's suicidal. He's sickening around just because of his mom sort of. Yeah. He's like a ghost in his own life.

Basically, you know, she thinks about movies like La Samurai or whatever about similarly kind of like people who just don't. Have like a personal life, right? Like these stuff like that. But this La Samurai is obviously about the coolest, most handsome. The fuck are you ever seen?

Who's so well dressed? And the American too, which is, which is an awesome thing. Same movie and I really love incredible. Yeah. But I feel like this is closer to, we've covered a few movies like this.

And I always, it is something that sticks with me.

It is a type of narrative that I find very effective, which is a guy who. Who passes his breaking point. You know, and a movie where even if the characters able to resolve the ostensible narrative. They're never coming back from this. Well, and yeah, and they do.

I mean, it's explained in the book too, but he's a guy who's. He's a best dude. Yep. And he. But he kind of like does the job.

And then he goes home and he has this little life with his mom. Right. Yes. And that is not related to what he does. And it's not.

Pleasant.

It's not like, like, it's not like amazing.

But it's like he has a purpose at home as well when he's not working. Yes. To take care of his mother. And they both like suffered abuse. You know, in my hands of his dad.

And so he's got this like, I am. I am like a of value in the world, even when I'm not doing this thing. And then that gets taken away and you're just like, okay. So what? Like who am I now? What is he? And he's just that going to be like a fucking berserker.

Right. Yeah. Cause just to spell it out. And you start basically with the kind of his internal chaos. This guy who's head is full of glass is constantly like ideating on drowning in things like that. But also these constant flashbacks, which start with him being a child as father physically abusing

him, but also the feeling of being in the closet, hearing his mother being attacked and not being able to protect her, which makes a ton of sense as like a motivating force that defines the next step of his life, which is he goes into trying to ostensibly help protect through the professional like arms of the American government. Right. And he ends up becoming a specialist.

All this stuff is not like spelled out. It is like pieced together really well in these like horrible traumatic flashbacks of just like

“glimpses of images and association, the things he can get out of his brain. They keep playing him just that one line of going, what the fuck are we doing?”

Yeah. Like what if we did it's like, I've assumed a really great summation of like if you work in a unit that recovers people for me. Right. Right. If you're in the military and so especially that it's like, wait a minute, what are we doing here?

Like it's just like, things are getting so fucked up. Guys like two main recurring images are being in a closet trying to suffocate himself with a dry cleaning bag, basically just to stop the pain and to stop himself from screaming, which he now does like as a ritual almost every morning. And the other recurring image is like the feeling of kicking down a door being admitted to a to recover like a pile of body.

Seeing like glassy-eyed sort of like numbed young women, right? You get the sense that it's been like the times that he became a sort of task force specialist and trying to retrieve victims of sex trafficking, knocking down the door when it's too late, but also the feeling that when he was in the military, he probably was the one knocking down the door on innocent women, you know, invading homes and whatever towards some greater and which then makes him go, what are we doing here?

Well, yeah, and who are the bad guys and who are the good guys, he's as the military flashbacks were there, you know, like whatever. It just feels like yeah, he's very much lost in terms of like how do I do good in a world that's so dark. And it's broken me and the book is sort of getting at this feeling of,

“the only way I can actually do good is if I cut out all the middle man, if there are rules around me.”

Yeah, she's very anti flashback, but then she sort of has that approach like if it's like post traumatic stress, it's a trauma that he's reliving, it's a little different from like a full flashback. Which I think this is very clever. It depicts like incredibly well. Yeah, so I have a, I'll share a quick story, which is I was, I was in a car.

And I think it was like 2003, I was a long time. 2003, I was driving in my mom's Nissan Quest mini van to my the connect to massage therapy school as one does. Wow, it is going to become a masseuse.

I was a licensed massage therapist a few years while I was like first trying to be an actor.

A rocks. What would it take to get that license back up and running day? How easy is it to get reactivated? You know, I haven't done my continuing education units. I haven't done my CEUs, so I'd probably have to do a little bit.

I love massage. Um, yeah, it was a school. I mean, just whatever to take another detour. It's like, I think my mom had heard an interview with John Corbett saying that he was a hair stylist. Oh, yeah.

“He was a struggling actor because once you got a client base, you like didn't have to work 40 hours.”

You kind of schedule them around your life. You could audition and stuff. You're like, that's how interesting. And being a caterer bartender or whatever.

Yeah, it was like a maybe, maybe there's a job like that.

And there was like a very good school. This Connecticut Center from massage therapy was like a good accredited school for it. It was really close to me. So I went check that. I was like, okay, so I learned a lot about, you know, whatever.

The body, I learned rakey. I've done it all. And I worked in spas and I worked on the Cirque du Soleil acrobat at one point. Like because I was like traveling, just doing like backstage work for different shows. Yeah.

So it was interesting. But anyway, I was driving to school. I had snowed recently. I'm in this old minivan that like the dials on it don't really work. And suddenly the speed drops.

Like I go from going 65 to going like 35.

I don't know what's going on. I hit the brakes to kind of like pull over the brakes don't work. So I'm just rolling down the highway. And then the car starts to fill through the vents with like the darkest, thickest, most foul, smelling smoke.

I've ever smelled it in my life. Yeah. And I rolled down the windows and people are pulled up alongside of me. And they're waving at me. And this one's going, you're car is on fire.

You're car is on fire. And I turn and go, I know I can't stop. Now luckily it had sort of recently snowed. So without really being able to see. Yeah.

I kind of am able to drive off to the side up along a snow bank and skid along the snow. It wasn't just the guardrail. There was like a pile of snow. Yeah. I skid along that until it slowed down enough.

That I got out, jumped out, ran out of the car. Also not thinking for some reason leaned in, leaned back in and turned the keys and turned the car off and took the keys out, which like you think just felt very stupid. Later. I remember this now.

I remember it now. But I just like, but I like had gotten out and went back into it. And then I kind of jog up the shoulder and the fire was going. And the windshield exploded. I don't know the physics of it.

Yeah. If it was cold or whatever. The fire exploded. But anyway. And then I went back to like, yeah, my shit out of the car later.

And I see the driver seat that I was sitting in. And that I'd also like leaned back into for no reason. And it's covered in scorched like triangles, which I assume are just shards of molten glass. That like shot into the seat that I was in. And you know, and blank check tie and there's a waking life D to V D on the ground.

That was, you know, you don't want to lose that. That was that was like all like melted and burned. And so I'm just like, Oh, I almost died in like the most gruesome like horrific way. Look, the final destination death. Totally.

Yes.

“And for months afterwards, I think this movie just depicts really well.”

Like I'd be in moments of total like peace and rest, like about to drift off to sleep. It would just be the smell and the heat and back in the car. And like really classic like flashback PTSD. And then the other thing that would happen that they also do well is when I was just hanging out. Whatever with with friends, it suddenly would be like, I can't be standing where I'm standing right now.

And things that we all know is like a panic attack now, but I at that time was just like,

I'm going to move up over here. I'm going to do this and nothing's going to solve it.

“Because this guy even when he's staking out and like waiting, watching the brothel door.”

There's a restlessness inside of him. Yes. At rest poking at his skin when he fucking punches the like guy who was late to give him his keys back. Yeah, the parking attendant. Yeah.

And you're just like, there's just something exploding out of him that he can't control. And he doesn't understand. He almost sounds like he's about to cry when he punches the guy. Which that's a sort of Phoenix, especially if he's really good at that. Yeah.

Don't make me wait. Right. But it's like he's like a little kid in that moment. He's like, you know, and he can fight back now. And it's just, but I, whatever.

I went through that like very classic kind of PTSD thing. And I do think like this movie really puts you inside the head of like that kind of experience in a way that's like very visceral. I think a big part of it. Did we know when the car exploded?

So yeah, there was there was apparently an oil leak inside the car that had created a pool of oil on top of the catalytic converter. Which you don't want. And the catalytic converter also was like running very, very hot. And I guess enough oil built up on there.

And the converter was hot enough that it sparked a little fire inside the thing. And it's based, it's a grease fire. It's like an oil fire inside. And it just burned out like all the guts of like the hood of the car.

“So that's why then the brakes didn't work, et cetera, et cetera.”

But it was just, you know, kind of a fluke thing.

And one more detail that I'll never forget is then I'm sitting in a cop car

like waiting to like, you know, for like my parents to come and get me or something. And I kind of try to make a light joke. And I point at the car that's like, you know, exploded. I go tough morning. And the cop points at the line of traffic goes, well, thanks to you.

It's a tough morning for a lot of people. Jesus. It is weird that people just say shit like this to you all the time. I feel like this is a running theme in your life. Maybe it's just you have a sort of face that invites people to be sarcastic.

I don't know, man. We, Ben and I were in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. And Ben is like, I'm going to go out. There's like a 7/11, three blocks away and get some like beer and some water or whatever, right? And I'm sitting on the couch with Ben's wife and Ben comes back like 10 minutes later on the phone,

talking like really effusively to someone, right? About like, and I just don't understand what motivates people.

“And I was just like, oh, someone very close to Ben and his life is called.”

And his in a bad situation where something really bad happens to them, interpersonally, and Ben is being a good friend and talking them through it. And instead, what I find out that is the inverse that Ben called a friend to check in while he was on this 7/11 run. And then a guy made like a mean joke to you, a bounce right outside a bar. Yeah, a talk shit.

And he was like, also such a fucking lame mother fucker. He's wearing those the ones that'll do that. I'm trying to think of the dumb band t-shirt that he was wearing. It wasn't creed, but it was. No, it's like some so-called shit-ass punk band.

Fucking Pennywise or something. It was Pennywise. It was Pennywise. And he was just like, I don't even remember exactly the comment. Just like something because I guess I was, you know, dressed weird even though again, I'm wearing the most normal clothes.

He's hat-brew or something like that. Something like that. And I was just like, what man? He was just like, you're just a cool looking dude. Something like that. And just wanted to obviously start some shit and had some friends standing nearby. I want to ruin your night and you gave him just what he wanted. Exactly.

And then unfortunately, that is, I get a lot of people to just fuck with me. So I think you and I share. I do have that. I do for some reason. Look at Mr. Guy with his shoes on. Like you're just walking around, but people want to say this to you.

I feel like the same thing is that you make the self-deprecating joke and then someone very poofase response to you being like, it's actually worse than you think. You are so thoroughly the problem.

What I've invited and I always feel guilty.

I've opened the door. Exactly. Is there like anybody want to shit on me? People are like, absolutely we've been dying. I agree with you.

Plus a hundred minus humor. Like it would have been me walking by that guy going like, well, some hat I got on. It'd be like, it's not just the hat, man. It's a whole fucking thing. But how do you feel about that?

I hate your gait. It's not just what you're wearing. It's your personality and your rocking face. Yeah. There's something really toxic just emanating from you.

Yeah. I definitely invite a lot of people to interact with me in a very aggressive way. Yeah. Yeah. That's when I don't know.

It's who you have that in common.

Why are you like so hair triggered with this? And that night you were just like, this has been happening my entire life. Right. Just guys just say shit to me. It's just not happening to me at all that truly thing.

It's because I'm tall. Now I think you guys are short. Like an hour in like tall and broad or whatever. Yeah. People are just like, I don't know what that a guy will do.

When people do this to me and it does piss me off. It's condescending. Right. Like a buster. Right.

It's that sport. How's it going? My fucking like dentist receptionist asking if they should send the bill to my mom. And then I'm like.

So I just wanted to tell you that this film was picked up by Amazon for 3.5 million dollars.

They're like now mad again. They have been age 24 who had bid two million dollars. This is a point of time where age 24 is very fledgling obviously. It is on the rise. And this 2016, so it's the year they're going to have moonlight.

Right. Oscars and all that. They're a thing, but they're smaller. Because like a year later, I feel like regardless of what the financial offer is. They sell this movie to a 24 because everyone knows a 24 is the place that's going to be able to sell this thrust.

Oh yeah. They're they're the Joaquin movie factory.

“I think I think I think 24 would have been a better place for this movie.”

But obviously I get you just sort of take the highest bidder. This is the year that Amazon has five movies that can. The handmade and so speaking of some other. Yeah. So part of what's handmade and Patterson term is another in that kind of like established

Otor that they're giving a check to give me danger. I don't really remember what that was. I don't either. The neon demon with the whining reference movie. Yeah.

And Cafe. Yeah. Cafe. Oh give me danger was the Jim Jarmoosh documentary about the student. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so Lynn Ramsey she just. FYI she wrote this with Phoenix in mind. She'd never met him.

But she was just like no brainer is just exactly who I imagined for this. Phoenix is probably unsurprisingly very into it. I mean, I feel like he's usually drawn to these kinds of directors. And this just does feel like the kind of role that would. But they have been talking about retaining for a while.

There were sort of false reports that they'd already shot something. But it seems like it's kind of perpetually her next movie. Mm-hmm. Dime I love got knocked up because of Lauren's being attacked. Oh, my God.

Not knocked up and that's sort of the story. Twice. Yeah. Yeah. You can read all about it.

But yes, she had said that she had such a good experience working with him. When he is notoriously a very difficult man who tries to quit productions. Yeah. And is very us with directors. Someone who could have production maybe the two of them would just say, yeah.

Exactly. He is a guy who thrives on tension and is fighting himself and is fighting the production

and is questioning himself and is always trying to kind of like wiggle out.

“It feels I think it's what he's relating to in this movie, not in the intensity of the work.”

Yeah. But this guy who is like, I kind of hate what I do. I mean, yeah. She sent him, this is so funny. An audio file, not visual file, like not a video of fireworks.

Just like, and she was like, this is what's in his head all the time. And Joaquin Phoenix was like, yeah, I get that. Like rather than Joaquin Phoenix, like what? Like Joaquin Phoenix is like that really clicked from the field really some patico. She just talked so glowingly of how little tension there was and how collaborative everything was.

And then he like promoted this movie hard. It was a thing. She called out where she was like, I know he hates the shit and he's low to do it. And usually he's doing interviews with a gun to his head. And he was like going to like, in jealous screenings opening weekend and doing Q and A's and shit.

Because he was like, I'm proud of this and I wrap people to see it. Yeah, he's incredible in it to talk about you mentioned that in the book. His physicality is described a little more like traditional like action hero. This is a thing that you and I talk about a lot. The way he uses his body in this movie.

The like, first of all, he's got like a punch. Yeah, and like a very broad scarred back. And I genuinely think if he had been like shredded. He wouldn't be nearly as scary or powerful looking as he is in this movie. One thing I love in the book is when he's describing his exercise routine.

And he says that one thing he works on a lot is his grip strength. Handball because his favorite thing once he's in a fight is to break someone's fingers. Because he's like, even the toughest guy in the world when they look down and see their finger facing the wrong direction. It really gives them pause. Like, yeah.

“And he's like, fighting is like a dance and you need to hold hands with your partner.”

It always ends up happening.

You always end up holding hands with your partner. But he's like the only exercise he does is like squeezing like handles. But I believe that from like the the walking version.

You know, it's interesting. It has that detail and then it says like, but in spite of that being the only exercise he does. He's 190 pounds. He's got zero body fat, you know, whatever.

And like you and I always go like this is one of the smartest physical transformations.

And actor has ever done because it is counterintuitive. And so often it feels gimmicky. It feels like actors needing a place to put their energy. Yeah. But then also kind of wanting the the law that's from like look at how much I took on.

Yeah. And what I need credit for like the preparation has to be visible to you. How much I did to get ready. And there's there's a vanity to it. Even when the vanity is look at how much less attractive I made myself for whatever it is.

And this is just like really fucking logical story stuff in a movie where this guy's not going to talk much.

“And where you need to just build up a sense of like who is from every movement in a history.”

You're like, yeah, this this is actually the scariest version of this guy. His strength isn't rippling muscles. Well, he's just yeah, he's he's just this solid mass person. Yeah, he rams. He puts his like he shows up because they talk about it for the proper whatever and walking is like I do want him to feel big.

But not like in this Hollywood body way and this like. Yeah. It's the bear midlife way. And rams is like he looks like a maintenance worker. I was like so happy.

I loved it.

He wanted to keep the belly and like wanted her to show it.

You know what I mean, like he was like, can you show the belly as much as he can? Yeah. But Lynn calls it like body armor. She says he's kind of like hunchback in Notre Dame. He's kind of like Harvey Kytel in the piano.

This kind of like girthy guy. Yeah. Like who's just kind of like solid as you guys are saying. And he like looks like a guy sleeping in a train station. You know, he looks like he's like wearing he is a he's not quite a full.

I'm crossing the street in New York. Yeah, guy because there's a lot of guys in New York and you can kind of. But like he's a I might keep like one eye on him. If he was more or not. Or not.

Right. You plan to go. Okay. Let me just not draw attention of this person at all. We'll just I will need to cross the street.

But we're just going to hopefully not exist to one another.

And one of those guys where you're like is the threat to me or to him.

You know, is like is this guy hair trigger in a way where he could like within five seconds turn an attack me.

“Or am I about to watch someone have a mental break?”

Yeah, if something about how he walks that communicates. Yes, and I don't know how, but it is just a thing where he's like, is he's up on this. Right. This guy. He's walking happy.

He's no, he's because he's walking with he has a single purpose. Yeah. Yes. And he and that's just communicated through every like inch of the way he moves. And also after he becomes injured in the movie.

Yeah. And his face is fucked up. Yeah. And the way that he talks and also the way he holds the pain in his gate. And in the way he moves to the other interactions of like, I am moving.

I am wounded. Yeah. But I am still driven. Right. Is like so fucking again.

Like. It's it's perfect. Like I feel it. I feel what's feeling. He's he's an actor who can do a lot.

I feel like that's where you sometimes bounce off him David when you feel like he's overly mannered and manic and just kind of being weird for the sake of weird if he hasn't identified a realistic center. Is that what is your has a team with me? Let me.

Let me talk if I could. Yeah. You know. Because I'm trying to think like when was I getting really sick of him when I was sort of throwing out my.

My hand. It was sort of immigrant. I feel like you have a face sort of postmaster. Get to go with the master performance as well. I mean, I really love that movie.

“Obviously it's and I think his performance is good.”

But it is. I think about that one. It's a lot in juxtaposition to this one where it's like there he he looks pretty frail. Yeah.

He's sort of like crazy and also like violent, but he also feels like he's could be a victim at any moment to like. Yeah. He's sort of in this in this weird in between space and then this he's completely different physical human.

He sure is. I mean, I don't like her. Right. He's bad in that movie. I also have not seen that movie since 2013.

So I don't love that. But I couldn't. But this is all the post. I'm still here. Well, yeah.

Three. I'm still here. I think my take on Joaquin was like he's like, you know, he's like a sort of. Interesting star who puts the little English on it. Like, you know, like and I like the science performance.

Yeah. I like the village performance. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's those that the movie where the boys are kind of.

Is it pretty heavy? No. What's the wife? Yeah. I really love we.

That's the wife. He also feels like that. He's like a sort of tough big enforcer guy in that. Yeah. Yeah.

And kind of can also feel. Yeah.

“I'll break off the screen in that movie.”

Like Robert's like bad. But Robert's pretty like kind of doing a standard thing in it. And Joaquin's pretty interesting. James Gray obviously isn't one of the other guys. He is just like completely in sync with.

They get each other. Yeah. He's always. Yeah.

He's always been a handful.

But he really does seem like he's become quite a handful. I really like him in Bow and Napoleon. I like to mull out in Eddington. I can't really stand the joke performances. They like the joke performance is the bad version of what we're talking about.

It's like just trying to get him to do the tricks. I didn't really like come on. Come on. But that wasn't. I mean, he's fine.

That felt like kind of time stored Phoenix to me or he's just like. And I was just like this is fine. But like. I'm not strong. I think it's all.

It's all just joke or lash back that you're feeling. Well, I don't. That the Joker is so. Yeah. He's in so beloved by some of the worst people.

And that what he is doing in that as you said is just like. Just a bag of tricks without substance underneath.

And it is some of some of his master physicality and some of his, you know, like you were never really here damage.

And it's just this like, you know, collection of parts that don't really work together. Right. But it's a lot of acting. And I also think like it is very. Uh, that tough Phillips is kind of exploiting him in that movie.

Like it feels like he's pushing him to do things and scenes that do not dramatically make sense. To show off the range of what he can do in a way that's just like, well, that's like an engaging three minutes of footage. That makes this character make less sense than he did a scene ago.

“Would you feel differently if I told you that he didn't think the Joker was very good?”

I have heard similar things. I have heard quite a few stories about him seeing the first cut of the movie or or rather, you know, the the near final cut of the film before it had been seen by people at large. And being like, well, we fuck this one up. I guess that's like dead in the water.

And then it proceeds to win the gold line and well, it's best actor at the Academy Awards. Well, and it was right the first time. There was a bunch of media controversy around it. Yes. And I think he was like, oh, that narrative is what's going to drive people to see it more than what it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. But I just I don't know. But sure, I'm speculating. We're just speculating.

I do like I'm inclined to say this is a single best performance.

And it is just interesting. She's I think really smart about knowing that he could do all of these things. But that the power comes from holding all of that back. Yeah. [Music]

David. Yep. You don't have a lot of shared interests. Sure. Common interest film. The movie comedy podcast. Life. New York City. Bagels. Sandwiches.

These are all true? Sleep. Oh, I love sleep. Sleep rules so much. It is kind of wild.

How sleep is constantly underrated.

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Uh-huh. My kids sometimes will pile into it. I need this much. I need as much square footage as possible on this subject. Yeah.

You need hop on pop space. I too. And so I got a Lisa. A mattress from Lisa. Yeah.

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Yeah. And they donate thousands of mattresses each year to those in need. That's huge. Partner with organizations that clean up to remove harmful plastic waste from the ocean. It's nice to hear that they care.

And it's nice to hear all those endorsements.

“But really, I think there is no stronger endorsement than David Sims.”

The sleepy king. The most tired man in America saying that Lisa hits just right. I love it. And I use it. And this is a true endorsement.

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A mattress fit for a roll. [MUSIC PLAYING] Should we talk about his choice to use a hammer?

“And is this one of the greatest hammer violence performances of all time?”

Yeah. Obviously we have to think about, you know. There's an old boy as well. Yes. Oh, yeah.

The raid too. Yeah. The hammer girl on the train. Very impactful. I'm now I'm trying to think, okay, like what else?

Because like this, you can't even Google this really. Hammer movies? Because of course hammer horror. Right. Sort of dominates here.

Okay. There's a, there's a, what culture list? Movies where characters use a hammer? All right. It's saying Ann Wilkes and Misery.

But that's a sledge hammer which feels very different to me. Because to me like the fun is that it's a claw hammer. There were a ball hammer. Yeah. Like that's just a hammer.

This is not a claw hammer in the movie. Right. I can't remember if it is in the book or not. But he does say he likes to use a hammer. Because it's sort of like a very normal like daily household object to have.

But when you see it in someone's hand in the context of a fight all of a sudden, it really people take a moment of pause that it's like different than like holding out a knife or something. Right. Like why the fuck do you have a hammer?

And he's like in that one second of hesitation, I can hit them with the hammer.

Right. There's this. Yeah. There's this. I know it's totally different.

Yeah. I feel like it's expressing the book. Dress drive has a big answer. Oh, yes. Yeah, dry.

Good one. That was, yeah. There was another. And another kind of close quarters hammer thing. Yeah.

And of course. Of course. The owner itself just hardly clean count. Sledge hammer. Oh, right.

You write or same like Ramona and Scott Pilgrim when she was out big hammer. Right. We don't, we don't, we're not talking about a buster. I think it should be comic book. This is actually a hammer.

I forgot about hammer. I'm see hammer. I'm see hammer. It's one of his top kind of talkies and talk feature length films. I mean, hammers are one of those objects that yes, I have in my home where I'm like,

should I be allowed to have this crazy? It's crazy. That first man. I'm like holding one while we're doing this episode. And I feel a little dangerous a little on it.

Like any time like being a kid's instructions, like, all right. Now hammer snails. And I'm like, why shouldn't we do a match? Right. Like has some sort of like a PhD should do this.

Leo and Django. Although he uses that more like a demonstration of threat of violence. Then tacking someone with it. Yeah. Yeah.

No, he explains in the book. It's everything is just like logic with this guy. Right.

“How do you get it done in the cleanest, simplest, most unshoey way?”

I love he keeps going to hardware stores abying the same three items. Like a, right. Yeah.

And they pull out basically that it's like a hammer hanging at a hardware store is going to have

that paper sleeve around it. That's used as the hanger tag that he can grab. So the fingerprints are only on that. Then he gets in a car, puts gloves on, takes that off. And it's a clean weapon.

And he's like, in terms of light. He gets a role of duct tape, which he can use from multiple things, including like patching himself. Open and gets hurt like in terms of the work, I do.

But you can't hide and act in a jacket, you know? Yep. And that there is that transformative aspect of the hammer of like you're not immediately looking a scant of a guy has a hammer until he's holding it in that way that close to you.

And he's styled himself as a sort of contractory instruction worker looking guy where he always has

on like, you know, sort of like car heart jacket, hood, low baseball cap. It's one of my favorite moments in the movie is just that that extended shot of him unloading from a plastic bag just all his supplies. You know, like the wet wipes, the hammer, the two cans of soda, which is such a bizarre kind of like lift driver.

Do you want to water? Yeah. Yeah, he gets a orange soda and a grape soda because he's about to rescue a young girl. He's just like, I want to be able to offer her a soda.

“What you have to imagine is it's routine.”

Like, yeah, I need to earn their trust in some way in this moment after they've been victimized by so many men to feel, let them feel a little bit safe. A soda would probably calm a kid down, but also the choice would help. That they feel like they have the agency of the flavor. Yeah, it's like such a nice little detail.

And the banality of all of this, you know, of just like he's just got a shitty shopping bag. And it's just a bunch of like $3 products.

Yeah, I mean, the tall you need, if you feel comfortable running it someone and hitting him in the head with a hammer,

I guess totally. Almost anyone can be in a sense. Yes, you mean think about it. I mean, what some fucking state senator in an Epstein villa going to do to you. He's just an naked asshole who doesn't, you know, right?

Like he's just an naked asshole. Yeah. I remember when this film came out. So the film is about a guy called Joe who, yes, rescues traffic to girls by usually by hitting someone with a hammer.

He's going to be checking them. Right. That a middle man hires sort of as a go between security form. It is very hard to imagine. It is completely implausible.

You just kind of have to roll with it. It doesn't matter. Right. He's your way guy like this. He hits man or something.

Yes. This is like a rescue guy. Right. But I mean, like anyone like that who's like, yeah, I pick up traffic to girls. It's like you would immediately be killed by a mafia.

Traffic to girls. You're talking about people under the auspices of the scariest organized crime rings. Yeah. So it would be like, oh, yeah, there's a guy with a hammer who gets the girls. They're like, how about you shoot him with a shotgun until there's a hole inside his body?

He'd be dead. Doesn't matter. So you think the movie is smart about being like these are like small webs. Not like a huge large interconnected web event. What's the thing?

They're people in power, but they're creating smaller circles. So that's what I was going to say. So I saw this film I loved it. But at the time, I was the junior critic at the Atlantic. And I was under Chris or who was sort of an established veteran there who was in D.C.

And wrote a lot about politics too. And I saw this movie and I loved it. And I was like, got this fucking rock scene. Yeah. And he saw it and he was like, this movie is so.

You know, it's like feeding into all the like pizza gate shit about Hillary. And all this kind of conspiratorial thinking and all that. And I was like, huh, weird. I was kind of like, I didn't clock that at all. I mean, I guess I get what you mean.

“But like, I don't think that's what it's going for.”

But I guess I could see that especially if you had like a real politics brain. Like a kind of a D.C. brain. Yeah. You could look at this and be like, this is the last thing we should be depicting is this kind of, you know, you know, nonsense about all there's childcare.

All the power out there. That all the politicians are. Yeah. Now it's 2025. Oh, it's 2026 when the stuff was coming out.

And it's basically like, yeah, well, that shit's all true.

It's not pizza. No, but pizza. But that's the Epstein list. There are lots of terrible conspiratorial things that people could very easily discuss now. Yeah.

I mean, like the, the Epstein arrest is 2008. Oh, the original sure. Yeah, I'm not. I am not somebody who's so far. I'm not.

I'm not. I'm just, I'm, I want to create.

“But 2019 is when this was become public conversations, right?”

Yeah. Because like pizza gave basically rises with any force in 2016, which is the time they are shooting this move. Right. The Epstein thing, of course, the whole thing that was so insidious about it was it was like out there and not discussed. Yeah.

Not just that, oh, these people were letting it happen kind of way. But truly, like people would report on it, but just not with a lot of force. And a lot of that, of course, is like institutions killing this story. You know, like networks of connections and power and whatever. Galker was one of the only publications, one of the only outlets that was like really reporting on like this guy is being reintegrated into polite society in New York City.

This guy just served a sentence and is now back to like cocktail parties. And this constant kind of drumming of like, why is no one talking about this? And then there was the one New York Magazine piece that has the famous Trump quote.

All this stuff is out there, but it wasn't really like metastasized into the same kind of Dan Brown conspiracy theory game.

Yeah. And it is what I find so bizarre and like depressing and overwhelming about this cultural moment. It's something that it's been turned into like a political football. But it's been turned to this odd, narrativeized force to try to create some new, almost like religious system of pure evil and pure good. Existing in the world.

This notion of is there a definitive like Santa Claus naughty list of everyone who is doing the worst of the worst things. And then we want to believe that there is a secret cabal of people who are just pure good trying to take this down. Well, and you, I mean, you can see that obviously immediately after you learn that Malcolm Gladwell is on the flight logs for the Epstein playing. Right, that there's got to be shades of gray here. Of course.

What are we just trying to get his hours in? Just to know, does means can do he's got no. You make it so little editing points here, Benny. I've given it a thumbs up. Yeah. To Malcolm Gladwell, your favorite writer.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that guy. Do you remember, I mean, 10,000 ever? He's my favorite podcast.

Right. Sean, an important question. Sean, have you and I ever discussed in person?

“I think I'm sure you've thought about which is when Malcolm Gladwell went on the seventh podcast.”

And talked about how like Nigerian players specifically.

They were like, like, the most important basketball players.

He was making, he was making the, like, all. After the porn player team. And I think he included Steve Nash. He, he said, he correct. He said, so I'm, I'm putting together a team that's team Nigeria and Bill Sims is like,

Okay, and he's like, you know, so Hakeem and Bill's like, yeah, Hakeem, right? Absolutely. And he's like, caveat Tim Duncan. Bill's like, wasn't he from the criminal? He's like, yeah, but like, I've done some like racial math. And he sort of descends from Nigeria.

So all those island countries are actually direct descendants. And then he's like Steve Nash and Bill's like, isn't he Canadian? He's like, yeah, but he was like, born in South Africa and that kind of counts to. And it is one of the rarest, like, where Bill Simmons clearly is just at a loss for words. Bill does not know what to say.

He just lets him quote unquote cook for a while. The king of going on like pretty stupid theoretical tangent related to basketball. It's like fun. But it's just like, truly I can't get there with you. Just go off and then we'll do the show when you're done.

And my God, well, it's defense. He was just trying to log his 10,000 hours towards being a fucking moron. He needed to keep saying don't shit into the forms. Not important to this episode, obviously. And I'm not saying that all conspiracies are true.

Certainly that maniac who went into a pizza place with a gun was not on the level. And had been mislead, but I am just sort of like, this movie only feels, you know, whatever. It continues to feel resonant. Yes.

“And I guess I think the way unfortunately the culture has progressed since this movie has only made this movie better in this way to me.”

I was tempted. I couldn't fucking get myself to do it. I was tempted to watch sound of freedom in prep for this episode as a comparison point. And then I had the OG's this moment as I was like queuing it up of like am I really going to fucking sit? It's especially because it's like we don't really need to talk about that for more than a minute anyway.

Like you don't need to devote all that time to it. No, but I just like, I wasn't surprised that this movie didn't become a film that like church groups were sending. It's to the theaters, right? Right. But it was so weird to me when sound of freedom became this like weird vaguely money laundering.

Box office phenomenon based on like finally someone is saying it, right?

Yeah. And even the guy that that movie is based on who's been discredited in a bunch of fucking ways. And the director and everyone involved is like like vague jumping off point. And then we created like a revenge thriller. You know, that tried to have like a human heart at the center of it.

Right. But this is like a movie about Jesus going in and just fixing all the problems. And the great bill camp is, you know, Mr. Burns and going like, "I love kids suffering." Right.

And this movie is just like, well, first of all, the guy who lives in this world is just going to be broken. And as in the excerpt I read from the book, like even if he's coming from a pure place,

“there is something narcissistic about thinking that you need to do this.”

Even if it is speaking to no one else is doing this or someone needs to do this. And why not me? Yeah. And I do, obviously it's all, you know, it's fictional and it's a pretty easy like line to draw of like, well, the people doing this are people in positions of power.

And like so a senator and a governor and all these people being involved. And that being tied into some kind of like weird organized crime thing makes sense. But I also do wonder as we talk about, you know, Jonathan aims and his history and his

like fetish personal ads and stuff like this. Yes. If some of this is like, he has heard some album and this is how this is how, this is how some of this world operates. And then I'm making it into this like crime movie thing.

Right. But that it's not, you know, it's not just plucked from thin air. Once again, there is like a banality to it. I like it's just a fucking like townhouse in East Midtown, you know, with five rooms. And it does feel like this is a very tight web.

Even if it's connected to some other tendrils. And the core kind of drama of this is like basically between two guys. Yeah. And but yes, like some arm of some regional mafia in between them. As you said, it's a pretty simple story.

Like Joe has this handler played by John Dome and who's a great actor.

I love him right from the wire and a million other things.

He's got like an even in between bodega guy. Who that guy is right is kind of the go between who son spots him and he freaks out. And it's just living in this constant state of paranoia. So he's now going straight to the guy who he's not really supposed to communicate to in person. It's just bad.

It's very bad timing. Yes.

“He's entering his home through the back alleyway, which is the only way he goes into his house.”

And he looks up and he sees this kid on a balcony who knows who he is. And he says now this person who knows who I am knows where I live. Yeah. Which means someone could torture him and find out where I live. Right.

It's all vulnerabilities. How he runs through everything. And the book, the John Dome and character is not sleazy. But more kind of sad sackies. You know, in a cramped office next to like injury lawyers.

And is, you know, a perpetual bachelor and whatever. And this is like, there's the illusion.

I mean, he's like referencing his dead daughter, right?

He's got the picture on his mantle. This is a guy who's experienced some tragedy in his own life. Right. Maybe he's directing himself. That is motivating.

I want to do that. But he's also in like a very nice office with a great view and a model of a yacht that he owns. And he's saying to like Joe like, hey, and on the other side of this, I'm going to take you on the yacht. We're going to see the fireworks and eat nice sticks.

Where he's almost like, even if we're driven by a good. The work we do is so bad that the other benefit of it is they have to pay us so much to do it. That shouldn't we enjoy that? Yeah, we have to have to have some kind of reward. Totally.

And that's in the in the book as well. There's this very clear thing of like this guy wants to be friends with Joe. Right. Like he's like, right. We are both in this sort of off the grid world.

We never hang out outside of work.

And I just wish, you know, like, I just see you for this thing.

“But like, can we just have a fucking beer together?”

Right. And Joe and the movie Joe's literally not listening. Squeezing jelly. I was going to say, right, he doesn't strike me as a each steak kind of guy. And what not Joe eat?

Jelly beans, the green one. Okay. But like, where's he getting his protein food? Yeah. Like chips.

Right. Right. Gas station food. And as we said, he's got this. And he just has 200 squeezes.

Right. The tummy hardens again, or whatever. He lives with his mom and his childhood home. Yes. She's in pretty advanced stages of dementia.

She's kind of lashing out at him all the time and misremembering things. Judith Roberts, who's so good. Who's really good. I think of her. She's in the racer.

She isn't a racer. She's a pretty woman down the hall. Right. Yeah. She's in a bunch of other stuff.

But she's really good. Yeah. And he has this almost like, it almost feels like there's a, like an ab and castle economy dynamic to them. They've got some like old, like songs that they used to do.

Right. They were, which by the way, I mean, as you said, she has dementia. Yeah.

“So like, I think part of that is probably intentional.”

Like, I know my grandfather who had Parkinson's in dementia came to live with us for a while. Yeah. And it was that thing that somebody told me, like, he won't know what he had for breakfast this morning. Right.

But if you ask him about something from 30 or 40 years ago, yeah, they're, they're long-term memories in town. Yeah. So it feels like they're doing, they're, they're engaging in these sort of playful conversation activities they did as when he was a kid.

They're routine. And that that is still like fresh for her and she's able to like stay with it. Yeah. And even when she's like, when he's dealing with the exasperation of her having lapses of things like running the bath and whatever. He's kind of like yelling at her in a comical way.

You know, he's like kind of like angry. Yeah. Yeah. There's the darkest little strain of comedy to it. Yeah.

Even though you are the whole time, you're like, oh, this is gonna end in some fucked up way. Which it does. But it is the dry water all over the floor. What were you doing?

Yeah, forget it. You know, yeah. This guy whose entire life was animated by not being able to protect his mother when he was young. Yes. And now is like, she cannot take care of herself.

is because she at least deserves this. Right.

“And he's constantly just like suicide ideation.”

But also like the little bits of him like holding the knife over his open mouth. That's played for comedy when he keeps. Well, and when he keeps dropping the knife on his foot. Right. Just pulling his foot away just in time.

Yeah.

Just like dual like staying sharp because I'm always like in a situation where somebody might try to kill me.

And I also want to hurt myself. Right. I would like the release from the pain. Yeah. She's asking him about his ex-girlfriend from 20 years ago at how she would have been a good mother.

And you're like, that must have been the last relationship he ever had. I think you should. Well, the movie kind of gets there. Well, I don't think that's going to work that way. But yeah.

So I mean, you're right. You're right. I don't think it's as cut and dry as this way. I'm a parent, right? You are.

Congrats.

“And in my parenting strategy, definitely, I have no time for garbage bag closet experience.”

You know, like, I can't kick in that habit by the end of the movie. I can't, you know, be like, hey, I need 20 minutes. I kind of put the plastic bag over my head and you might be kicking that habit. I hope you.

The other thing is at the end, we'll get to the end.

Yeah, get to the end because I find the ending very emotionally powerful.

It is. But yes, he gets drawn into this thing. There is a senator who is kind of being tapped as maybe a future power player. His wife committed suicide some years back, there's sort of this tragedy surrounding him. And his young teenage daughter has gone missing.

Yes. The book gets much more into the web of the narrative of how it happened, how much that was false and whatever. But it really is just, she's been gone for a weekend. I need you to find her. And in the movie, it's like, he has just gotten a text message from someone who says,

She is at this address and the book it goes much more into, like, the text message is clearly from someone he knows who has just gone to a brothel last for an underage girl. And, you know, presumably slept with his daughter. It's a stereotype about it. So that's like much more regret. This is like just kind of thrown away.

“He got a text message with an address and there's no other details.”

And you got to go to this address. And the book has this very sobering disturbing passage about the kind of pragmatic reality of this type of thing existing of just like, There are, you know, 700,000 millionaires in New York City. Sure. And then if you add other like, you know, hubs and the Northeast, it goes up to this.

And if even 1% of the people with that level of money had a predilection towards this, There's a lucrative business to be built around it, even if the business isn't a billion dollars. And feel crazy that a politician's daughter would be kidnapped. Does the book explain this? Yes.

Like, versus like some, again, some person traffic from another country or whatever. Like, why would that be? So the, the book basically is that the backstory is that this guy, his father was a powerful politician who was then disgraced for all these ties that he had to the mafia. Right.

And like, a reigned, but he was still, the name was still beloved in the city. And so then he's going to run on his dad's name. He decides that he wants the power. He goes to the same like mafia group that, you know, Help put his dad in power and says, like, I want this.

And they say to him, you've got to give us something.

And basically, like, you can be the most powerful person in the state if we have your daughter.

It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like sort of an old fashioned pulpinist thing. It's like a very, like, he's so craving and hungry for power. And he's got this, like, he, you know, this terrible relationship with his teenage daughter. And just kind of goes like, he thinks, the books as he thinks in the moment that they're trying to make sure that he really wants to go all the way with them.

And then it's just a bluff on their part. And he goes, fine, I'll do it. Like, I'm in. And then when they actually take his daughter, he's like, no, no, no. Like, yeah, I thought that was like, gamesmanship.

Right. And then he can't find her. Sure. So Joe's got to find him. Dreamfousing bar.

Again, I could, that's not all of that is just deep background. I feel like it's not even part of this story. I'm just going to say my, I don't think it's a story here. Different. I think she's changed.

I mean, there's like, when Joe is having his version of putting the pieces together, there's the flash of the father sitting in the bed with the daughter with her back turned. And it feels like there's some implication that perhaps there was some, like, incess within the home that this is connected to the wife committing suicide. Right.

It's that because the main evil pedophile is Alessandro Navola, who's like the governor. Yes. But you get the impression that the state center, Gavato, right. That we're who's down. He was also in this world.

And right. It's, what it feels to me like is at some point he willingly gave his daughter to this man. And then in exchange for feeling that that was how to. That like, to climb a ladder or whatever. A secret is a wonderful thing to keep thing.

there was a sense that she was.

You know, because he already had this, like, you know, insisting the book goes into the, the horrific value of the idea of a child that has successfully been Stockholm. And how you kind of like neutralize them to be willing to. All right. Not willing.

Actually, but I think that's sort of what's going on here. He comes across this girl who you're from things like taken and such, expecting to see be like a crying mess. And you're like, you know, there is a numbness to the degree of trauma. Yeah, she's, yeah, she's got this like countdown thing that she does to just like sort of exist through these moments.

The most heartbreaking moment in the movie is him coming across her. And she just can't even clock that someone is there to save her. Yeah, because she's just in front of me. She passes the time as these things. David, have you?

“Because you have to watch all these movies.”

Sure, your job. I find that like, as we're talking about, like, this Lynn Ramsey series.

And I always had intended to watch.

We need to talk about Kevin. And then once I became a parent, I said, I don't think I can watch it. I don't want to think about you. You actually don't want to talk about you.

Do you, yeah, do you? I just kind of have a transformation. Yeah, yes. And there's certain things where I'm like, I don't want to watch that. But I, I know I have to for my job.

We did. Mark Chan book when your daughter was like two and you were very open about that. Being a particularly tough one for you because that has a lot of things. It's like, like, like, right, a little huge dreaming and being tortured and stuff. That's the most extreme thing.

Yeah, I have. I'll confess not watched our friend Alex is segment in VHS. Halloween.

“Because I'm told that is like literally just all kid torture.”

Uh-huh. Which I know he's. I, I appreciate what he's going for and all that. But so I'm just kind of like, I'm not sure I want to do that right now.

Uh-huh. But you know, I'll watch him with me like ham net. Because I love ham. Uh-huh. And that's of course.

And I know like this is about like this is this movie is like the crux of this movie is a kid dying. Well, that's just like dying off screen and some like kind of poetic way. But like a kid like suffers and dies on screen. And I'm like, I'm just kind of have to kind of endure that. Like I know I won't love that.

It's glaring to me how much prestige TV drama, et cetera. And it's all hinges on like a kid that's been killed. Yeah. And I don't think I saw it before. It doesn't mean my voice turned into a lot.

And how many movies that I enjoyed. And I do obviously, I like this movie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

How many movies even in this genre that I enjoyed and used to think were cool. And part-channel stuff like that I now. And so uncomfortable with and can't watch. And I, you know, people are whatever about this. But I have a theory that I developed while I was watching this and think about.

We need to talk about Kevin, which is, of course, there are movies where. Someone's wife gets killed or someone's, you know, like other loved ones disappear. But with adult relationships, both the character in the movie and whoever, like your partner is in your life,

have such a distinct identity that I don't think it transfers the same way as kids are always used as just like a symbol.

Where they don't really have a personality and your own kid is always like unformed in this way, where it's like, even if it's totally different circumstances and like a totally different like, um, world than you're in, you cannot help but think about what if this was my kid. Yeah. You can't do it.

There's some side of you that's absolutely right. It's really, yeah. I do try to just like click on critic brain and critic brain loves this movie. And this is not a movie that's as triggering for me, I guess, because it's so stylized and. Will in somewhat part of the way is like possible.

You can just the thing of like, the story is like, this guy was voluntarily involved in this thing. You know what I mean? Right. Right. It's not like a normal person who's something horrible happen to them.

It's like a person situation of his own making it the most extreme foul scene bar. Yeah. It's an evil person who was making really bad choices. Um, I also think it's like the power of this movie,

which is, it's restraint in showing things and even saying things, is I think largely driven by a, there's no way to depict these things realistically, emotionally, visually, what have you without. Insane risk of being insensitive,

glib melodramatic, silacious, all of the above at once, you know, and even a movie like taxi driver,

“which is like a little bit analogous to is all about like, is this guy insane?”

Is this in his head? You know, the question of like, how much you connect to whoever is the protagonist of a film and all these sorts of things. And get his movie that was like misread horribly by the wrong people. And I'm not, I'm not talking about some sort of responsibility.

You know what I'm saying? Right, fair. And I think this movie, in how it like pulls back from both the violence and the sex as the physical acts,

There's nothing really super graphic in it for how violent.

And look, and talk to the story. There's nothing graphic, super graphic, sexually, it's all left to you. It pulls the two people setting to that. Yeah, I mean, like, to me, the iconic image of this, there's many iconic images of this movie. But, you know, and in the plot of movie, he rescues Nina from a hotel or whatever.

Oh, and the picture. Right. But then like, is then like him opening the door to the guy who then gets shot onto him. They've led someone to him. And just the globs that lay on Phoenix's face.

That's just the big ol' bloody globs. I would try to take it back. I look, he loves, like, I love that kind of gore unfortunately. Sure. I don't know what's the matter with me on that. But I mean, I'm a movie fan, and I enjoy, you know, movie violence in a way.

But like, I feel like-- Obviously, it's very, very, very other moment of violence in the movie. Is either fairly obscure, you know, like the security camera rotation, which I just love that it's like a fucking five nights at Freddy's thing, where it's like, it's just going to switch every three seconds,

and you might be on the action or you might not. Or you're very often seeing the aftermath. Like the glorious things are like him walking into the James Domingo's office, and like seeing his destroyed hands, you know? And you're holding--

Those hands are tough. Not only prosthetic for a while, you know, Alice Andrew Navola's like slip throat. Discover this mother's mom's eye. But you don't see the violence being committed.

No, but the corpses are nasty. But it is a reframing of like--

“No, you have to like lie with the aftermath of these things.”

Versus these movies that often have this kind of like-- somewhat exciting expression of violence,

and then you cut away the second-the-bloody thing happens.

What if instead it's like you start on the reveal of the bloody thing, and then he's just lying on the floor next to this. He's piecing it back together. Can I tell another very quick story? Did you guys hear the story about the big giant dog

that we found the Malamuth that was running around the neighborhood? So we found this Malamuth running around the neighborhood, and my wife and I bring it home. It's like a last-can-husky car. Yeah, it's like a 95-hundred-pound dog.

Like a big giant husky, and we're trying to find the owner, and we track down the owner finally. And it's this guy in the neighborhood, much older, like sort of frail older guy. And he comes to pick up the dog,

and it's this huge dog, and we're like, what's going on? Like, how do you have this dog? Why was the dog loose? And he's like, my son just rescued my dog died two years ago.

My son just dropped this dog off. At my dorm was like, you have a dog now, dad, and then left. And my wife is like concerned about the man in the dog, and you know, can you take care of him?

And she's like, so can you like control this dog? Like are you able to walk it on a leash? Because I was getting dragged on the street by it, and I'm famously strong. And he, as he's answering, he's like,

well, not really, and a cat runs by, and the dog lunges, and the guy falls. And he like smashes against the ground, and he like breaks his glasses, and he has a cut on his head, and he goes to push himself up,

to stand up. And both he and I see at the same time, that two of his fingers are pointed, just 45 degree angles and opposite directions. And it's one of the most chilling,

like gruesome things I've ever seen.

“But I think about it with both that guy tortured,”

like, and the like, how he says, like breaking someone's fingers at a fight. I was like, yeah, something about this. It's not like, there's no bone sticking out there. There's nothing, it was just like the joints are facing the wrong way.

This is wrong. And it's like, and he looks at it, and I look at it, and we're just like, I was like, that's, that's very bad. You know, and then we really tried to get him

to go to the hospital. And then he said, brother, it's so much worse than you think. He said he was, dude, and you're the problem. I know. Though he was, he was just like,

we called the ambulance farm, and he kept telling us not to. And then he insisted on driving himself, and the ambulance people were like, there's, we can't force him. He said, he said he's going to hospital.

He told us the address of the hospital, I guess he's going to go. That's another part of this is these movies often have these, these kind of rigged prosthetics, right? Right.

Yeah. That you see for each and a part of what you enjoy. One second shot. As a movie fan, like watching how those things work. But you didn't think about, like,

you see half a second of fucking Emilio,

Estevez's head getting crushed in the elevator shaft in the first mission impossible. And I feel like that is a thing. People are age or like that's one of the fucking nar, that haunted me as a kid, right?

And it's crazy. And if you watch it frame by frame, it is crazy. But it's not that graphic or visceral. And you don't have to sit with the aftermath of it.

And by cutting to these things, either him discovering the bodies in these states, or seeing the people after Joe has attacked them without seeing them attack, you're left with the lingering image

of what's going to stay in his head.

“That's sort of what I think she's communicating”

so much like you're saying.

You're going to have that image in your head for the rest of your fucking life. It's true.

“And that's not something you did to this guy.”

And that's not something that was done to one of your ultimate loved ones. And this guy has to experience both of those things happening all the fucking times. Yeah.

And it's something you saw and you're like, okay, that could happen. That could happen to me. Could I see it happen to someone? Yeah.

Yeah, you're just walking around with it for a while.

Yeah, he has a million of them.

The thing with his mom like, and they have the scene where he like goes to like dispose of the body himself too, but in the book that they don't explicitly say here, but that they,

they put a pillow overhead before they shoot her. You see a pillow with a bullet hole. Yeah. And that he in the book is like, basically is obviously very upset

that they killed his mom, but it's also like their cowards. Like, they couldn't look at what they were doing. Right. Right.

Right. That's almost more offensive to him. Yeah. Yeah. And then, right.

You have this like a moment,

“I think only Lynn Ramsey would put in a film”

where he like discovers the body. See as the pillow takes it off. You know, blurry, deep background. You see him removing everything.

Her glasses that they clearly shot through holding it on the lens. You see her like bloody head in the background, but not to explicitly, and then he hears the creaking of footsteps. And he like has the gun.

He goes downstairs. It's, did you do this or did the other guy do it? You know, he's immediately like this would have taken two people.

Yep. Who's the other guy you working for him is he working for you. He's sort of interrogating him. But then the intimacy of him like giving him the water to keep him alive.

So we can get more answers out of him. Also is like, this is a man who is trained to do this. And then you like, and the guy taking his hand as he's dying.

And then they just lie on the floor together and sing the songs on the radio. Yeah. And it's like,

“this is I live with the weight of taking people's lives in a way”

that you don't because you wouldn't even look at her fucking face and you left her upstairs. And I'm going to lie here with you because no matter what, I'm stuck with the image of you dying forever for the rest of my fucking life.

You know, and then he has this kind of like, elegant, a funeral for his mother. He puts on a suit. It's the only time he dresses nicely in the entire film and like brings her into the woods into the water.

Johnny Grimm would score in this movie. He's fucking on the music. Yeah. I used to listen to a lot. I just threw it a lot.

I would sort of like, this isn't the best like kind of just sitting your desk. But there were the couple. There are the trees tracks. Yeah.

What is it like tree synthesizer and tree acoustic and whatever that are the more kind of like, It's like, yeah, this beautiful like a femoral sound. Like, and then there's also like that sort of like percussive thing when he's like walking down the hallway

like out of the hotel that's just like, so fucking cool. We should also call out.

It's basically like an hour of the movie

is like understanding this guy, watching him go through this case retrieve her. He brings her to the hotel before the door gets knocked on and he sees the guy get shot. And this like SWAT cosplaying guy comes in and extracts her.

They see on the news that her father committed suicide. And Joe's immediately like, this whole thing is kind of, this is bad. I'm in something bad.

Yeah. I mean, something I don't understand. I'm in over my head. I did not just get hired by this guy to recover. He's in the middle of something much bigger than the right.

I mean, the fact that the cops are involved. Yeah. They're not SWAT cosplay, right? They're their cops. They're cops.

Yeah. You're right. You're right. You're right. Yeah.

That was like he, because in the, in the book again, like he goes to this thing of like, they didn't have time to hire professionals, like professional hitmen to come and kill him.

But there's always some dirty cop in town

that they can just like have come to the job. Yeah. By the way, a smart choice that in the book, I feel like the father is made a little more, overtly nervous defensive on edge.

Yeah. And here it's like a guy with a tremendous amount of contrition and concern that as an unfolds you're like, oh, a lot of this is guilt. It's not just worry.

Yes. It's both, right? But he's sort of like trying to console her in this moment, as he's realized like her entire life has just collapsed. I just hit the microphone with the hammer.

That's what I'm talking about. So it's interesting. That really scared me. microphone needs to know the power structure of this podcast. I just wanted to know what's going on.

Let's not see that again.

Safe. This is what you're talking about. Let's see. Safe, this is what you're talking about. He's like immediately clocking like there is no normal life for her to return to.

And I don't know how to keep her safe. And then within like a minute, she is taken. And then he goes home and his mother is dead. Everything, right? It's just a death wave is rolled across.

“Can we collapse of like, I might basically buy default be her primary caretaker and also my entire life is collapsed.”

And they know everything about me and they know where I am. No offense to his life. But his life was shitty. It just took a lot of work to blow up his life. In any other circumstance, if he had come home and if he had come home and his mother.

I have a Patreon. I can't be judging Joe the assassin. His patreon numbers are really bad. If you look him up on graph that was that was the saddest part to me. Yeah, we're seeing him go to check his witty checks.

Double digits low double digits. Yeah. And the tiers are really vague where you're just like too many tiers. Too many tiers and you're sort of like, if I come up with something fun, I might put this here. And they're redundant.

Like some of it is like, well, what is the reason for this tier existing when you get like basically 90% of that in the next tier.

Can you always have that luxury tier that's like for a hundred dollars.

It's all the same things as the fifty dollar tier. But you give me more money, wink. You know, kind of. Yeah. I just love when there's nine tiers.

And you get to the ninth tier and it's like everything in the last eight tiers. And I'm like, I have to go back and read every other tier. Yeah, give me the bullet points. Come on, Joe. You can tighten the language on each tier, but just remind me, speed run them.

“No, I think if he had come home and his mother had died in her sleep a day earlier, he would have just killed himself.”

Right? But it's the double whammy of there's a person out there that I'm responsible for. I'm the only one who knows this person is in danger. I could go and help. And they make that clear.

Like he has a flashback to her. He's like, okay, I guess I'm done. And then he's like, nah, fuck, I have a job still. Here's a guy who's defined by the fact that no one was able to keep him safe. You know, in his childhood and he doesn't want that cycle to continue as much as he's not like.

It's a chance to test being a dad. He does fall into this. I'm the only person who can solve this. And I actually just feel enough of attachment to her as a person that I can't just turn a blind eye to this. And then you have what in 99 out of 100 other movies feels like the ramp up to oh shit.

The next 40 minutes we're going to get the most cathartic. He takes them all down. Yeah. And he goes there and it's over. Well, yeah, it's like another kind of security camp thing where like you just seem to take out the like guard on the way.

Yeah. And but you just you kind of are just seeing like the like lawn footage of like, okay, that guy's down. And then goes in and then the person who he came to have his big confrontation with that is going to be so satisfying. Yeah. Is already dead.

Alessandro Navolo who's like the only other recognizable major name actor in this movie. Yeah. Like oh shit, he's the big bad. We're going to get some awesome fucking monologue and then like walking is going to take him down. Doesn't have a line in this film. He sure does like doesn't speak.

You need a guy who's that much of a that guy to have the sense of power he holds and to have him stick in your brain. But then he gets there and there's no fucking resolution for him right. She has just killed him in self defense. Yeah.

It's all incredible to sort of piece together as your as a viewer.

Absolutely. It's really it's disorienting in a great way you're in his head where it's like, It's guys dead like I don't get to do you know my revenge. And then he goes downstairs and then she's sitting at her hands are all bloody. And she's just like finishing a dinner that was just on the table like eating.

It's so. And he's like taking a shirt off when he gets in there. His bird crash her mode. He's like you're ready for like him to go like fucking warrior mode on these people. Yeah, and then instead it's just like he's got this fucking swollen sheek right.

He's kind of just like stumbling around. And when he sees the body, there's the first like. Well, why was this taken away for me immediately? He follows. Yeah.

He's like he's like cries for himself. That he's not going to get like the release. I can't complete this arc for myself. Give myself closure.

“And I think the additional thing is he very quickly does the math of she did this in self defense.”

And now she lives with having killed someone. And I hate that. And I, I should have been the one. I don't know. So she wouldn't have to stop from doing this.

Yeah. And she's downstairs trying to just like be normal. Eat dinner while covered in blood with a switch blade knife next to her. Or like a shaving straight razor. Straight razor.

And she shaken.

It's like the first time in the movie where you see her having the physical

attracts effects of trauma rather than just kind of going. Yeah.

You know, it's almost like, oh, you got bitten by a vampire too.

“Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, you got you got the the same virus that I do.”

Exactly. We're living with the same thing. And then she says it's okay, Joe, right? In the diner. Oh, it's later in the diner.

It's so they go to the diner. Because I mean, who doesn't want to go to the diner after all this. You've got some pancakes or whatever and maybe 40s, 40s, 50s pop music playing. He imagined shooting himself, which just like instant Twitter meme. Yeah.

And but right, like, you know, that's become like this kind of like joky, like way of people, like, you know, the fucking mettelews. And someone just wants to walk into a sighting in a diner. But also it is like in this way that winter ends. It can take very literal things from books and express them like into a

mood that doesn't turn it into a plot point or like an overt statement about the moving.

It is like this is the visualization of the line of thinking of you are never really here.

That isn't even said in the film. You know, there's no internal monologue. There's no him whispering that to himself where his fantasy is, if I saved her, my mom is dead, can I just fucking shoot myself? And if I shot myself in the middle of this diner,

everyone act like I never even existed. Yeah, all the conversations continue at the same volume. Right. No one has any reaction to the fact that he just shot himself. He doesn't matter.

The first time I saw this, I first second thought it was real. Right. And then you know it's a fantasy when the waitress is still serving. Yeah. Because of the conversation.

Yeah. And that's that's what gets it right. That no one fucking reacts. And then she comes back to the table. And he's just resting his head on the table in the same position as if he had shot himself.

And she says it's OK, Joe, it's OK. And for the first time you're like, she has grown up. Right. There's obviously like her childhood has completely been taken from her. But rather than like existing in a self-punishing state,

she is reaching out because she understands him for the first time. And even if it is not like an obvious father-daughter relationship, there are two people who are maybe going to give each other a reason to like, stay alive because they share a horrible language that can maybe help each other work through this.

“And I think the moment of outreach, which is like the first and the only time in this movie that you see”

anyone try to do anything to help him emotionally coming from her is like so profound and emotionally overwhelming to me. Yeah. Well, and he's this guy who has, you know, really wants to stop existing. Yeah, but has this, this core inherent singular sense of duty that he can't put to the side. And then her coming to him and being like wake up, Joe, like, is like three people there.

You've got, yeah, it's a beautiful day. You still have something, you know. The thing that he feels like he has to live for at least that he forces himself to live for is a guilt and a burden and an obligation. And part of his mother being seen aisle is that when he's trying to take care of her, she yells at him right in that everything's a fight.

You know, that he can't even get the satisfaction of fascination of helping his mother and her old age and having some emotional closure on that. So everything is just like a fucking weight on him. And this is like the first time someone is just saying to him kind of like, I see you. I know it's tough. It's another day.

You know, you just have to, it's a beautiful day. That was the title. It was released under in some countries. Yeah, I know. Yeah, sure.

Just keep living. I'm very, so much support that. I don't support some of the actions in this film, though. Which one?

“Well, I think he's a little hard on these guys.”

Maybe like, you know, marketplace of ideas first. Just discuss. Hear them out. Uh, no. It's, uh, it's.

What's a huge bummer of a movie. I recommend. Yeah. But like, okay, anything you're talking about is about things that are incredibly sensitive and tough, so like, if anyone ever said to me, like, I just don't want to watch that.

I would be like, you never put it before.

Yeah. Don't do it. At the same time, I find. And it's also light on plot. Basically has very little dialogue.

And it's a little inscrutable for a while. Like it's like a movie where you're like, I totally get what's happening. I still think it's basically just like, kind of super watch. Yeah. Well, it is.

I know that's. Yes. It is a very pulpy sort of like classic story. But then because it is with this. With an inscrutable artist.

You know, intentionally disorienting in spots and you're piecing it together, it does feel like an elevated version of that kind of thing. And I love that kind of thing.

There's no way, like, I'm not like, I made like nine or ten million dollars worldwide.

I think I made a little bit of money. Yeah. It's not a movie where I'm like, I can't believe that wasn't discovered on a big scale. It's like, no, that's a. That's a 10% or not a question.

It's a question in the spirit nominations, that tradition of pen and film nominations, it's a one screen play and actor it can. Even it was then dramatically re-cut after that. That's her.

Like her movie is a debut a cannon and then she's like, they ain't done by the way. But it got a rapturous response. It can't. It's pretty friendly to her. And he won best actor there.

It's true. Like, and he's. Yeah. I mean, I do think it's a major movie in his over even if it's not much discussed now. Like, yeah.

In a spirit way, it's, it's the totality of the 2018 and the range of it. Then like, makes Joker, which is such an obvious dumb showpiece. Have everyone go like, yeah, I guess it's time to just get in the fucking Oscar. He has can and Venice. He doesn't have Berlin.

I'm always interested to know.

I need to like do a project on this some time. Who has the triple code? I have like people who have gotten best because you can do it with like who's won the top prize. Phenis case and best actor for Joker. No for the master.

Oh, with Phillips. They shared it. Yeah, they gave Joker the golden line, which is interesting because it's a dark shit movie. Yeah. But like, yeah, it's just like, you know, those kinds of rare actors who do a lot of movies

that would get to festivals and then get, you know, it's just a rare thing. I think. Here's my other thing I want to say about this movie. Is that like the thing I find gross about. The politicizing the narrative.

The politicizing. Of these types of things. Is that very often it is based in this like, I want to see like vengeance. I want to see like vengeance executed. I want to see all these guys taking down.

I want someone to fucking call them out. And there's so little fucking discussion of the people who like suffer inside of these systems. And we're seeing it happen like right now. We're recording this month before it comes out, but I guarantee you whenever this episode comes out, the same fucking shit will be going on.

And this is a movie that like makes you think of the people, right? In a real way that's like characters inside of the characters who are suffering. Is not fishestically obsessed with the powerful men doing the terrible thing.

Which I always didn't really get to know them at all.

There is this like perverse kind of like more bit fascination with like how can anyone be capable, something that evil. But spending more time thinking about them than the people who are on the receiving end of their actions is like part of a fucking giant cultural problem.

“And I also think you saying David like, I understand if I were to say to someone like you should watch that thing.”

Go like, I don't want to see movies about stuff like that. I couldn't push back on them. But you're also like anyone who would say that has probably seen 20 generic action movies that all about this in a glib way. You know?

Yeah, I mean, it's very similar to taken. It's super similar. It is. It really is. It's just a completely different mold of it.

But it is like, yes, a shadowy ring, kidnaps of, you know, a dot. Yeah, but it's it's removing the distracting pleasures that give you an easy way to process these types of things, right? Well, also making you think about the harder things, not in a sort of torturous graphic way. And I think to that extent, it is kind of a movie about our relationships to these kinds of stories. And which parts of them we want to think about which parts we don't.

Sure. And that like makes it feel remain very sticky to me. Uh, even though I do feel like it has disappeared a little bit. But Ben, have you seen this movie? You'd seen this.

Yeah, no, I went to see it. And theaters just griffin. Yes, was my favorite movie there.

“And I feel like the two of us were just like, I think it like.”

Yes, it's got a little shabby. This is so low guy. But I hadn't revisited it since. No. It's, it really affect to be.

It's a weird way to kind of kick a day off. It is. And we haven't been doing much podcasting in the last two or three days. So it's like... Get them in the real crunch. Look, Lina Ramsey, one of my favorite filmmakers.

People saying if you were the of having this series. There are other people who didn't have learned on the red. It's saying like ready for five weeks of the bleakest shit in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've only seen Ratcatcher as like one of our other movies.

Also. I think you're going to dig. Pretty unpleasant. Yeah, yeah. I think you're going to, I think you would dig some of the other ones.

Yeah, for sure. I think all I'm sure. Or like this where they're not punishing. And they're not chores to watch. I understand that like you might have triggers that make you just incapable of

getting any enjoyment of watching a movie out of this.

And I would never argue that with people.

But like I tend to exist at these extreme polls of my favorite movies. Either tend to be like incredibly functional, poppy. Plotty storytelling entertainment. Yeah. Or like vaguely plotless mood pieces about the worst things in fucking humanity.

“And I think I'm really like my obsession with fucking baby movies is like”

comes out of what I find fascinating about the mechanics of being able to convey. In the ones that are good to me, a larger emotional idea that can speak to an inner life of a child in a way that is like so clearly communicated and clean and economic. And on the other side of that, it's like, can you tackle an idea that is so big? It's almost abstract and unspeakable and get that across without those kind of storytelling

Those are like my two favorite types of movies. And there are other filmmakers that we've talked about who I feel like do this kind of thing. Like Robert Brasson, who's like one of my favorite directors ever. And years ago, I pushed on David the idea of doing it. And David just correctly responded with like, I want you to imagine doing 15 episodes.

I love Robert Brasson. I love Brasson so much. The goat. I would say the other problem with doing Brasson is it's like, that is a man who is so completely devoted to his like, you know, way of telling stories and making movies. Yeah, there isn't much variance.

“No, great. If you're going beyond the stories he's telling, but like, and what did he do with this?”

So he was like, oh, he did the same shit he always does.

Yeah, like, which is why he was good. Like, like, to me, this is the perfect moment to cover Ramsey. Five is the exact right amount. You know, there's like enough of a body of work there across almost 30 years that is meaningful. And if it was six episodes in a row, it would maybe break us. I'm excited to be able to like follow up with her when she makes other films.

Yeah, check back in the same way we're going to do with JGL. Yeah. And we are going to do that. They're equally important. And I hope he's not. Yeah, I got to tell him. He's got us.

I think we got to book more flights. We got to issue the bad news. It's like it's like we're like process servers informing him. Just like post dating something where it's like 2027, like, you know, you're going to be flying in New York. It's the whispering in George W. Bush mean ear meme.

Right. But it's a sur. We have just received notice that a second, and Joseph Gordon left it film has gone into production. Um, so this film, right, where was it the camp film?

Film Festival, as you mentioned, and it was the last film shown in competition, which piss frames the awful lot. I don't know, I think, just partly because the movie wasn't done. And they were probably punishing her a little bit. But then it went to awards.

Right, her total surprise. But often that's a little bit of a dumping spot because maybe the picks have already kind of calcified. This can is so political with this stuff. That's the weird can here.

Pedro Alamovar is the jury. The head of the jury will Smith was famously on the jury.

And the somewhat scurrilous rumor was always that a lot of people

including Pedro wanted the French movie about like day politics and the 80s and France to win and will Smith resist to that. That may be completely made up. I have no idea. But that should take Pedro Alamovar's name out of my mouth,

so Will doesn't slap me. That's true. They instead gave it to Ruben Oslo in the Square, which is not a bad movie, but it was kind of like, you know, felt compromising.

And then feel like more absurd when you gave it to him again for making a very similar movie. I prefer this to that movie, certainly. I prefer this movie.

“I think to pretty much anything in competition that you're,”

but there's some good movies, like good time, this affdy movie is there. You know, the big guy old. It's okay, movie. She will give a sacred deer is there.

Is that right? That's a field one director for that. I find out, fish lords. Yes, she won best director. BPM won the Grand Prix, which is second prize. This one screenplay tied with sacred deer and Phoenix won actor.

And then he came out and made a couple million bucks in America.

But we're going to do the box on Amazon release in April. April 6th, 2018. And that's on limited screens, obviously. But it opened kind of big. You know, 44,000 per screen average, very good.

Walking show enough for the show. The show has the juice. Yeah. Number one of the box office, though, is a franchise starter. It's a new movie.

It's a huge hit. It's not a film. It's a film. It's a film. A franchise starter.

It's a start of the franchise. I know. It's perfect. It's hard to get. But is it 2012?

I don't know. I'm sorry. Yeah. It's closer to either 2013. That's perfect.

It's kind of an overwhelming era movie. And this is more of a kind. I was on work a hollocks at the time. I remember Adam coming back from filming it.

“I think in between seasons three and four of the shows.”

He had that book around. Got the Bumper Bumper Bumper. Yeah. Yeah. That feminist stuff for Amber Lynn.

No. This is a film that I feel like that a hit big was not surprising because it had like a really robust good advertising campaign had a really hokey premise. But it did come out of nowhere a little bit. It's like Kingsman.

Yeah. It's a first equalizer. It's a horror movie. But like epic horror. Like big scale horror.

Epic horror. Big scale. April. Is it based on anything? Well I'll tell you this.

It's not. I'll tell you this that the the the the the word that it had open to 50 million dollars. And it's first week. It's probably some good news for the director of this film. Oh my gosh.

It's a quiet place. There we go. That was an incredible clue. Thank you. Where were some good news?

By the way. That we were active development. Yes.

Gold cooker.

Hollywood Hollywood Hamburg recently did an episode about how we purchased.

We got some good news. The problem was they green lead it and then good news stopped happening. There's no material for this. The well ran dry. I'm just picturing.

John Krasinski is sitting in front of a blackboard saying news is all bad. How do we find good news? What do you guys think of a quiet place? It was one of those things where I saw the trailer. And I was like, John Krasinski directed a no talking horror movie.

And then he watched it and he was pretty good. I'm somewhat low to give it to the guy. But I do think he kind of got to give it to the guy. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah.

I had a great time seeing him beater. Everyone was quiet. Yeah. I saw it with Ben Rogers and hello. Ben Rogers.

Ben Rogers always have a funny reason that he. He hates something. Yeah. And he was like, it's basically post-apocalyptic. They look like they stepped out of a fucking J crew catalog.

The fucking clothes are so nice. Yeah.

It's like, oh, I'd never for a second did it enter my mind.

But I was just like, yeah, you're right. There's a little bit of man of the woods in the styling of that movie.

“But I think it's, it's an effective film.”

I thought it was pretty good. Yeah. Number two of the box. Has to be rampage is not rampage. And I'm not sure they must have come out a little later.

They said film we covered on the podcast, though, a new release from one of the more famous directors who ever lived. Solid hit big genre movie. It's made about a hundred million dollars in two weeks. It's ready player one. Steven Spielberg's ready player one.

I was going to say next week, rampage comes out and kind of. Dwayne has a bit of a meltdown about being beaten by the second week in a quiet place. Oh, ha ha, got to give it to my friends. Love-cras dog and a blunt-myster, whatever. And then like posted seven things about like, I made this movie because the conversation between an animal and a man.

It's the most important thing that could happen. I remember my dad pointed to the gorilla and a cage. Number three at the box office is a new film as well. That is a comedy. And I remember at the time thinking this number was underwhelming.

Now I look at it and I'm like, this is sensational.

It's opening the 20 million dollars.

That's awesome. No. Okay. No, not tag. I would've told you it was based on a true story.

It was tag. I would've told you it was a true game. You want to give me a birthday marathon? No, that's a great movie. Right.

Okay, but yes, this is this.

“But I remember I think I saw this at a screening.”

And I was like, oh, that was so much fun. Like, that's going to be a big hit. And then it was like in my memory kind of just an okay hit. But the interesting thing about tag, right? And just to take a quick detour.

Please, people genuinely believe that we stop playing because we grow old. When, in fact, a tag prove this. Yeah. We grow old because we stop playing. Yes.

And that's actually why the audience needed to know it was a true story. Because if they thought it was just from the pen of some Hollywood fabulous, they go, these are the lies they sell us to, you know, comfort or soul become on. Let's get real. And you need to know, like, no, no, no, these guys walked the talk and they tacked the tag.

It's my, it's my favorite. It's my favorite comedy. Where a major set piece is a pregnant woman faking a miscarriage. So her husband will win a game of tag. Oh, wow.

I have seen tag. I went there. I played the game. Did not remember that. I remember something we can't serve.

It helps dies. But yet, the game doesn't end. He's actually sick.

“Because that's why he's like, guys, we got to play tag.”

But that's like a twist that you find out. Yes. But it's all urgency. It's almost telegraphed. It's about time.

What do you think I was pulled over by? I feel like it's like two hours and 20 minutes long in the last 40 minutes or drama. I think I felt that it was that long. It's listed as an hour or 40.

I remember it being Satan tango like. It definitely felt like. Duration. Yes. I, I remember they were all real friends.

Absolutely. Well, you can tell. These are guys who are the same age. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Have the same vibe. I mean, when a bull John hand went to me. My friend Jane a little bit. I think who's wonderful. He's great guy.

Good actor. Sure. By the way, did a good job in tag. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is my favorite comedy. I've ever seen. But where one of the biggest. Pivotal moments. There's a little bit.

He's been. It's going to get tagged. And so she pretends to have lost. The pregnancy. Who's the woman?

Can you tell me? I do not remember. All of their wives and that movie are overqualified. like I want to say Rashida Jones is in it Leslie Bibb and a bell wallace is the the journalist who's covering them as a story now you guys are what playing Tasha I love Fisher I love Fisher's in there. Yeah, yeah, she's in there. She's on the she's on the program. She's on the pregnant one is Leslie bibb's there. Yeah, yeah

I've I've told this anecdote before but my Max girlfriend and I were on a plane and we were like let's like find a movie

And we're watching tag and are like parallel back-to-seats screens and then like 35 minutes in we both took the headphones off and turned to each other And we're like I don't know if there's been a single joke in this movie so far It's acting like a company. It's not the game, but I kind of can't identify anything that would be classified as a

“Love you Jake Johnson come on the pot anytime. I think it I think it is Leslie bibb that does it. It sounds right yeah um number three of the box office”

You guys have not guessed the 2018 comedy. I'm talking about tag is a 2018 comedy Oh, oh, oh, oh, it's not neighbors too No, but you thought it was pretty good. I thought it was fun and you were a little surprised it didn't perform better

But then but then I have the member looking back performing on but I'm like I don't know 20 million opening 60 million domestic stop

Right like by 2015 the narrative is the comedy movie has died and all there's not doing a gang over number We're going to 20 and making 60 and now you were like all the goodwill in the world gotten a good gun to like a 17 opening weekend Okay, wait a second It's a sex comedy It's a sex start a bunch of guys

It starts a bunch of guys Guys and gals. It's not it's not that awkward moment. No, it's good It's good. I did come out of that awkward moment. I'm telling you. It's pretty good There's a bunch of gals and girls that we love who's the distributor Universal fine folks that you appeared at South by so it's got that classic sort of

South by March premier to an April release Some hype and people thought it was gonna hit Yeah, you fully see Gary Cole's penis. Does that help? Oh, fuck. Yes. What is this movie? I remember the penis That one trying to zoom out for the context. You fully see Gary Cole's penis It's a universal picture. It's a sex comedy with a bunch of gals and girls that we like

If you name the director will give it away for me. Okay, can't. Oh Yeah, blockers. There we go Not a bad movie. Not a bad movie Totally fun, but yeah, you're right. There's a scene of years. Yeah, he's trying to block them

“Oh, yeah, you should have seen he's got to do some blocking there were years of”

R-rated comedy plays at South by blows the roof off murder mouth translates into 40 million opening weekend hundred million dollars And that was the first one that was like it's okay. Okay, and then like good boys. I think was the next year

That one did stupidly well that one did pretty well because children had never cursed before

That's true number four the box up. This is one of the most successful films I mean I guess ever made really kind of It's not Avengers Infinity War. No, but it is a superhero film. I guess it's a you know It's maybe not quite of the top top level. No, okay. That didn't make a billion dollars It did in this made $1.3 billion dollars, which is a lot of money. It's a superhero film. It is

Very good. You think it's very good arguably the best movie Marvel ever made It's a rack no rock no It's part of the best movie Marvel and I might know are you up with some wood some wood But I really like this movie. It's really good and it's not Avengers no It's not

It's not a thore. It's not a guardians. No It's not spider man. Black Panther. There you go. Oh sure. Oh still in their Jesus

“That's why I wasn't fucking thinking of it because that's a February in out for two months”

It's made you know six hundred and seventy million dollars. Yeah quite a big hit

Number five now what is this? This must be a Tyler Perry or something like a paste it's a Tyler Perry film But not faith-based. Okay, one of his more you know dark dramas Huh It's not a Sexy thriller, you know, I can erotic drama. I don't know. No good deed isn't Tyler Perry right? I just have that title

I'm not sure, but that's not not okay. Okay, I like Perry the non I know that's not totally But you know what this movie shares a star with no good deed So it's a taraji taraji p-henson. It's a taraji and it's not I can do ban all by myself It's him going a little more thrillery. Yeah I think it's the wife. She's a wife and she's

stalking and killing her ex-husband because like they get divorced and then he gets successful after And she'd like supported him the whole time. So she's gonna kill him. Is it like a one word title with a colon and then up? It is just a one word title. It's Because it's not notation confessions of a marriage counselor. It is not no marriage counsel confessions have. Yeah It's a one word title. It's not like betrayal. Is it? No, but you're closer. I'm close. It's like a divorce word like kind of

Yeah, it's kind of a legal or yeah There we go. Okay. I was like, I want to say Alamoni, but there's no way it's that yeah It's just one of those things where they're like plop taraji and a chair She looks mad. It's called acrimony people like yeah 50 million dollars to this one When you talk about just like the box office still hasn't gotten back to where it was before the pandemic

Automatically open a 15 or 20 and make 60. You know, which is do a quick blockers number number six is a Christian movie called I can only imagine Based on the song by the group mercy me of course Dennis quades in that one. Yeah, sure that movies make a normal number seven is the kind of underrated not bad political drama chap acquittic About how Ted Kennedy is a no good nick

But it's not very good either. It's okay. Isn't that one also? We're like Byron Allen bought it for a ton of fucking money out of Tiff

“I believe it was an entertainment one that released yes, and thought it was going to be a big Oscar player”

I mean because it's sort of got that sheen to it He would have been hard to spent that money on some leashes for some of these comics These comics here. I mean

They're about that over the way. They're going crazy on that show. It's crazy that David the dog's never been on this show because

You know, we like to say sometimes that Sims is off the leash bow out. Wow. Oh, okay. That's yeah Well, not to buy her because I don't know guys. Yeah, I do want to get this under control Can I say I do sometimes feel like Byron is asking for a thought a hundred percent Griffiths a hundred I'm like Byron. You won't get it. He's raised it into this if you don't want to know Then don't ask I would just think about airblind food. Yeah, you know you've been so you've been talking a lot about hockey and basketball

Byron you have taken the leash off with your words in that moment. Oh, yeah, you might as well be unhitching the little Thank you. Oh, the little thing

“Might as well be unhitching the little thing. I mean with that question. Yeah. Yeah, you're asking”

Reach apiquidic Jason Clark plays Ted Kennedy crack. Take Kennedy a famous cucker of people

He was always having affairs and such. This is actually why the film doesn't work. Yeah, the public they couldn't put their finger on it

At the mind, but it felt wrong Clark plays a Kennedy He needs to be getting cheated on. What are you trying to prove? I'm not paying it number eight of the box office is sure lock no Of course the sequel to know me on Julia right there you go Number nine is Pacific rim uprising which is a true like straight to memory hole sequel Number ten is I love dogs was Anderson's I love dogs

Which is expanded this week and is doing okay? Yeah, that's the box office. That's the box office. It's a pro box office. Yeah, and This is a good movie and the clum dog was here with us today and this clum dog we talked about you were never really here In a business business. We get we should put a leash on you can't leave this work down here. I know because you were gonna come on no matter what Like but you're busy guy you're in LA you have kids like you don't travel to New York that much and when you do you're kind of like hey

In New York for any evening. I assume that's not gonna work. I am here for like 36 hours every time I come And that is the case again today You get call them as like a work comedy writer in like a crisis situation to rewrite a thing for like six hours And we've had one schedule for a couple things for last 18 months and we kept holding off being like It'd be great to get it right. Yeah, I kept it was there was like twice that I had to come here

But then when I came it was like a get like this where it was what I'm here for two and a half with which loser was one that oh Yeah, and another one. I feel like a couple times you've been and the man who wasn't there

“I think that would have actually been beneficial for us, but we can”

I did yes But I also feel like we would show you the schedule and you'd be like

These five I have an in on this. I have a fun story experience with this the second we committed to Ramsey

We were like iron lock no matter what that was You love that movie. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great movie. It's just really fine. Well, yeah, a fucking hammer Pito movie. That's you But that's in ink That's me man if it's whether it's 127 hours

Don John or the or the hammer the big threat of our vengeance movie You know that the climb dog is already Yeah, let's you know super he goes. It's a really regular actor next time. I mean those were all different kinds of sort of like Oddball actors, but that is a good point. It'd be funny if next time we were just like we just do like a George Clooney movie Yes, well, the American your favorite. Yeah, I love the American for our Anton Corbin. Yeah, when you see I love control

Yeah, you were talking greasy about it I haven't seen it since 2007 or whatever, right whenever it comes out. Yeah, control so good. Yeah controls awesome. We've watched control climb dog anything specific you want a Plug other than obviously start getting excited for the dink now. Yeah, I get ready get ready for the dink please do Watch that movie when it comes out

Listen to Hollywood handbook Patreon to the flagrant ones to Season three of severance, you know come out some time and in this decade and

Cooking up some freaky stuff. Yeah, I can't give away too much, but I watch the show and I know severance It doesn't exist and that was a joke the whole time and we were making fun of you I see a lot of pieces and the numbers are just math you add them together to make other numbers They equal your birthday. It's a joke on you. I see a lot of think pieces that are alike

We analyze the mysteries of severance, right people are going on the rabbit holes trying to solve it And I only got one question when I'm watching severance, which is what are these writers smoking and where can I get

“What do you guys smoke in the writers room and could you give me the contact information at the person you get in from?”

Yeah, so I will I will get in touch with you, but we smoke dried banana peels there we got that we read In high school on the internet could get you as high as weed and so we put them in the oven and then we rolled them up and it just kind of made you feel like pretty gross. It's a crazy thing that when you're 15 you can buy into something like that even I was like oh I have bananas right you're like it's so hard to get weed if this gets you higher than weed than everyone would be smoking

Banana peels all the time they're legal. Yeah, you did you had to dry them out in the oven first

Was like what was what the article told us? I remember my friends We found out about morning glory seeds You could take them and they would like make you feel high. Yeah moon brother The thing that you know no one said in whatever Booker fucking early internet sighted read it on is that if you buy seeds they come coated in like pesticides

And fertilizers is that they are flowers. We got all so sick. Yeah, just puke him just just puke him and that first we're like maybe it's working Yeah, okay

“That's what we're just saying a bilitely ill those experiments where you go like well I'm supposed to feel weird”

So like maybe feel horrible is actually good. Yeah, this is the whole thing. I like this actually yeah Every so often on reddit cooking someone's like I poisoned my whole family because I didn't cook the beans for very long because like if you get dried beans You can have to cook them. It's like soak them and then cook them for like some amount of time and it was like yeah Don't you know like if you don't soak them and like you'll just get like insane food poisoning and like you could die And it's like why is that on every can of fucking beans that would stick around there for me? She's this anyway

Give me a beans just happens on every once a month someone's like hey, I poisoned my family. Yeah, yeah, so that's what you did I guess version of that. I'm done. Jesus. We have to record that's oh right. Okay, uh, thank you for being here Clem Dog if I can just throw an additional plug Your co-host a haste haven't ported an episode of the

“Since ended podcast high in mighty years ago about a newspaper comics that I think it's just really good”

And I revisit a lot long tail real a lot of people still checking that one out. Hey, you know won't quit So yeah, please do go listen to that. Yeah, we'll link in the description. Yeah, absolutely if we can just use our platform as much as possible to boost that That's actually just throw to the episode at the end. Can we can we do a feed room? Can we maybe look in the lights? I said they ended high in mighty because he just sort of looked back a couple years and went like we're not top on this thing

Thank you for being here. Clem Dog. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I see you. I'd always great to see you

Next week tuned in for diamond love. I believe so, right? Yeah, I mean, I'm right. There's no new release in between No, let's double check next week is diamond love. Okay, Lyn Ramsay's newest release another very normal very fun probably on movie by this point I would assume I think almost definitely streaming on movie. Yeah, so why not pull that up give it a watch in time for next week's episode over on patreon coming up in a few days for doing our annual mail bag episode That's the plan. I think yes. I can't wait. I love the smell of an envelope an open envelope

And we're gonna have it many times over. Yeah, if you're interested in that you can subscribe at patreon.com/blinkcheck. I don't hear the female bag episode. Hey, my brother. Hey, come on. Hey, I'm married. I ain't dead.

We're all about that. And as always

It's hammer time Link check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims Our executive producer is me Ben Hossley our creative producer is Marie Bartie Salinas and our associate producer is Ajama Kean this show is mixed in edited by Ajama Kean and Alan Smithy Research by JJ Birch our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the great american novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell

Special thanks to David Cho Jordan fish and Nate Patterson for their production help

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