Blank Check with Griffin & David - Always with Richard Lawson

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Is it possible for Steven Spielberg to make a movie that doesn’t exist? Well, he sure tried with 1989’s Always, a film where John Goodman plays Monterey Jack of the Rescue Rangers, Richard Dreyfuss riffs to no one as an annoying ghost, and Holly Hunter falls in love with the most dull hottie at the Plane Depot. Our beloved Richard Lawson joins us to talk planes, boy bands, Marlboro merch, and the enduring mystery of what happened between Kathy Bates, Holly Hunter, and Fran McD in that famous apartment.  Listen to Little Gold Men Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your  pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I know now that the podcast we hold back is the only pain that follows us here It's a good Dreyfus. Thank you. I was about to say just fucking nailing that Dreyfus I mean this that's why I went for that look. It was a little more Crippendorf than always. It was a little Will we be saying Crippendorf? Season right so I talked about this in another episode Recently Richard I did a triple feature of Disney's triple horn a triple horn We're doing the whole Jenna Elfman season, right? I talked about this in another episode recently, Richard. I did a triple feature of Disney's... Triple horn.

A triple horn. Walt Disney Pictures 90s culturally problematic comedies. Jungle to Jungle. Jungle to Jungle. Crippendorf's Tribe. And the third one is... The Heir Up There? Man of the House.

The Heir Up There is kind of too culturally sensitive to make. Kripendorf's tribe makes the air up there like a documentary. It's Margaret Mead's the air up there. But the sneaky one is Man of the House, which is Chevy Chase tries to bond with Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who is the son of Farrah Fawcett. Right. And it's all about they do some weekend, like, quote unquote Indian group thing, where it's all like George Wendt explaining the principles of the Native Americans.

And Trevue Chase being asleep. But Cribbendorf is the peak. Speaking of series. It's the peak of American culture. Correct. Speaking of series, this is the second film in your Hap series, right? After Insomnia? Correct. Okay.

Richard, this is why we bring you on. Look at that, David's threading his fingers together. Hap, Hap. Hap good in The Apprentice last year as Fred Trump Sr. Hap great in The Apprentice. Not an obviously big role, like probably just a few scenes, but he really nailed it I thought.

A classic, I mean, just like killer supporting turn. Just pure Hp, yep. Happen all over the place. This, look, I was a little tempted, Dreyfus is the one I have in the pocket, it was kind of T-ball waiting there for me. But this is a movie where looking at the quotes page, you're like, you got a couple big swings on voices you could do. Do you have a hunter?

Do you have a hunter? I was trying to, I was last night night I was trying to do it a little. I was like, I was trying to parrot it back. But it's, there's something about, her voice like transforms within a sentence. It does. She has this almost like beetle juicy thing of like, she kind of has four voices or Pee Wee Herman, you know those characters where it's like Sometimes this right there sometimes is it like she's like it's it's tough to pin down

It is and she's and she's selectively southern depending on the movie. She's in yes. I think it was in the piano episode I talked about how odd it is that that is her like Oscar-winning performance and is so out of step with yeah the rest of her Filmography she's like a firecracker. I mean, she's literally in a movie called Miss Firecracker. I refer to her as a Texas firecracker. And then a bunch of our listeners said that she is from Georgia. Georgia. Is that correct? But she was in a movie called Miss Firecracker and then the Texas cheerleader thing. I just needed to address that.

She is of course a Georgia peach. She's a Georgia peach. Yes. Who used to live in an apartment with Frances McNorbent? Well, we talked about that fucking apartment But you know this can we litigate this if you don't know this I probably don't we can briefly let it get this We have there were three people who lived in that apartment. Okay Fran Holly and Kathy Bates my good and the question we ask and

Asked when did this come up? I think at the Ramey series Must have been. Because Ramey was friends with the Coen brothers and all that everyone's in that apartment That's the thing the Rameys and the Coens all cross-pollinate with that apartment Why has Sam Ramey and the Coen brothers never used Kathy Bates if they were like pals with her? Did Kathy Bates leave her hair in the shower? Then we started going through him where like Holly Hunter and Francis McDormand have basically never worked with Kathy Bates leave her hair in the shower? Then we started going through and we're like, Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand have basically never worked with Kathy Bates. Right, right. Is everyone just like, don't let me near Kathy Bates?

Did she shit in the shower? What the fuck happened? Didn't Holly Hunter play Bill Clinton in Primary Colors, though? I did not have sexual relations without women. Wow, okay. That's the most interesting thing. You're like, Kathy Bates, she must have been in four Coen brothers movies. This is a spin-off investigative podcast. Get Matlock on it.

Kathy Bates' Matlock. That's not the real Matlock. Twist for Matlock. Were the Raimi brothers and the Coen brothers going over to this apartment and staying up late drinking with Holly Hunter and Francis McDormand and Kathy Bates comes in with a broom. She has her curlers in.

She's like, I'm doing Night Mother in the morning. Will you stop dreaming up criminal schemes for idiots to get involved in in your stupid movies? But what if a guy is really dumb and he has a coat? A lesbian road trip comedy? Let's backburner that for 40 years. Wow, how did we get on this? Oh, Holly Hunter.

Holly Hunter. Star of always. The star of always. What's the podcast? The podcast is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies.

Yes. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. Yes. I would argue. This is not a and sometimes they bounce, baby. Yes. I would argue.

This is not a bounce, but it's close. It is. It's kind of a bounce, obviously by his standards, it's a bounce. But it's not a 1941 style actual bounce of like, oh no, you've spent too much money and made not enough. Right? Like this is more of a sort of like,

well, that kind of got ignored and was a bit of a waste of your time, but it made some money. Yes. I think 1941 is the only outright calamity of the run we're covered. And even 1941 made money and stuff. Sure. But like, this absolutely came in under its budget

and got bad reviews, right? This movie. Well, you said 1941. Over its budget, you're saying. Not under its budget. 1941. Made less than its budget or? Oh reviews, right? This movie. I'm saying 1941. Over its budget you're saying. Not under its budget. 1941. Made less than its budget or? Oh, oh, wait.

But I'm saying the movie went over budget and then of course yes. Yes. Right. I'm saying like always and Hook are kind of in a similar zone of like, it feels like sky high expectations. Sure. And then people are kind of like, eh. And then Hook has become the most beloved movie of all time.

And Hook also made lots of money, at least. But, I'd send you guys that 60 minutes clip, and we'll talk about when we get to our Hook episode. But I watched, like, you read the press from Hook two weeks in and people are like, it's doing well, but it's not doing really well. The man had set a high bar, this is the thing. And I think Always was a similar thing, where it's like, this didn't lose money, crooks weren't like savaging it, but it does feel like it is his single most forgotten movie. Without question.

And I was doing the ranking on Letterboxx and it is far and away by some margin his least watched feature film, or least loved. Yeah, no, of course. It feels like the one that people actually just don't know exists. Dawson has it hanging in the closet, right? Yes, that's correct.

Dawson has every Spielberg poster in his room, but always is in the closet. Right, kind of a main drop. But the weird thing is for me, it was one of the few VHS tapes that we owned as a child. I think my mother had seen it and liked it or something. So for me, it was like Spielberg's biggest movie other than Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park.

Yeah, do you wanna get the bottom five, Spielberg's biggest movie other than Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park. Yeah. Do you want to give the bottom five feature just Steven Spielberg movies on letterbox in terms of like log? I know this because I checked this last one. Yeah, but tell me. Okay. Well, so we're not counting Twilight Zone. Not counting Twilight Zone and not counting obviously any of the TV movies.

Right. Wicked or something. Okay. So it's Sugarland. So it always is the least. Then 1941. Oh, right. Then Sugarland. Then Sugarland. And then the two the least. Always. Then 1941. Oh right, then Sugarland. Then Sugarland.

And then the two above that are. Slightly more surprising, only slightly. Yes, yes. Yes. Do, do, do, do, do, no, cause I know, cause I was. One we did a perfect episode on with no notes. Homestead. Homestead. And the other we did a perfect episode on,

but some people don't like the episode because we don't like the movie. Homestead 2. People don't like it cause we, it's not the movie. Almost dead too. People don't like it because it's not the warhorse episode. It is the warhorse. Like as much as people generally like that episode of ours because we're having a lot of fun, some people sort of meekly I see sometimes being like, I actually like warhorse and I feel like they're not very nice to it.

Look, I think I... And I think warhorse has spectacular stuff. When I saw warhorse... Such as that horse. Well, God, if I could Horse. Such as that horse. Well, cut. If I could get my dick on that horse. That's a callback that doesn't make sense if... That sounds like I made a huge leap if you haven't listened to the episode.

The episode we talk about, everyone's really in love with that horse. Maybe a little too much. That it feels like the movie is sexualizing the horse. Alright, let's cut to a montage. Let's cut to a mon... I think Ben's right. Of like us yelling. Some of them really want to fuck that horse yeah great episode

Everyone in this movie really wants to fuck this even in war like we're all gonna want to fuck the same You never made a movie where people are trying to cock a horse. It's just hot. It's just like a hot horse This is the human condition. He raised that we want to fuck this What is the deal with the horse? Fuckability. Everyone wants to fuck the horse. John Ford brings me to his office and he goes, I heard you want to be a picture maker. And he goes, yeah.

And he goes, let me ask you a question. You want to fuck this horse? You want to fuck this horse. Ah yes, now that you have that context. Great. Let me finish the intro. This is a clip show by the way, we're not gonna get to you Let's play the clips from all my appearance On the early works of Steven Spielberg the first half of his career. We're calling it pod rassic cast

They're been your bottom dollar a lot of notes. This is the first episode I want to say we've recorded since the artwork and the title was announced, and people are not happy about it. Why not? It's not a fucking problem. Jerkastic pod, they want pod encounters of the close cast. Can I ask you, where are you seeing criticism? Cause I'll say, the Blanky subreddit,

honestly has kind of just become a movie discussion board, which is fine by me. Fine by me. Like it's not even, it barely touches on movie discussion board, which is fine by me. Fine by me. Like, it's not even, it barely touches on our podcast anymore, which is A-OK. So where are you even, I guess I'm not on Twitter anymore. Ben Brantley took us to task. Did you think about cast encounters of the pod kind? Yeah, I thought about all of it.

This is the thing people don't understand. I think about all of it. There's never one that I'm like, oh, fuck, I should have done that. And a big part of the calculation is I just need to say Yes, I type them out. I write them out. I go what looks funny, and then I go let me say it out loud Yeah, right. How does you're gonna have to say it out loud several times, right? And it's like sometimes there's one that's funny, but is actually gonna be impossible to pronounce right I want it to be a Clunky, I don't want it to be too clean. Of course, I want it to be funny, bid attention.

Right. But this is, Podrassic cast, a really nice thing to say. Just rolls off the tongue. The first half of Spielberg's career, because two presidential terms ago, we covered the latter half of his career. And now we've circled back. In that series, our guest today covered Saving Private Ryan. One of his absolutely most essential films.

And I believe we recorded that the week after a certain election. Who? There is an upsetting direct mirror on the timelines of these two series. Yep. But today he is returning for another one that loomed very large in your life. It was before Private Ryan. We had another guest booked, a friend of the show who will have on for something else, a friend of all of ours. We're excited to have on. Katie Rich, you can just say it.

And we were just sort of like, we should just have Katie do Always. I don't think anyone cares that much about Always. Katie will probably be a good guest for always and then we booked it And then you texted me and we're like who's doing always always is really important Yeah, yeah, and I said Katie and you went that'll be great. That'll be great. No, I support Katie being on this episode So goodbye Katie's New York trip plans change. Yes window You get to mount the case for always. Richard Lawson of Antifair.

Hello. Little gold man. Thank you for having me. Twelve timer? Oh, I think that's more than that. Here we go. But ten years for you guys. A decade of dreams.

That's a big show. Decade of dreams. Saving Private Ryan. Lady in the Water. Big guys. Yeah. All right, wait a second. You're...

I'm not going in order. K-19 The Widowmaker. Everyone's favorite. I'll go in order. I'll go in order. Lady in the Water. Mm-hmm. Vanilla-er-sker. Vanilla-er-sker.

Sherving pervert-er. Sherving pervert-er. Ger sperms. Totally forgot that you were on the K-19 The Widowmaker episode. Probably because my brain has erased that trauma. I remember... Not of your part. No.

I remember why you claimed that episode. Why did I? A lot of my boys in it. Oh, that's right. remember why you claimed that episode. Why did I? A lot of my boys in it. Oh, that's right. That's right. Those were my boys' projects. That's because you love the fatherland.

Yeah. Sprengler. Sprengler. Perm again. Yeah. Big eyes, as you say. Yeah. So that's seven.

We're at seven there. One, two, three. Philadelphia. Philadelphia. Oh, another one my brain has erased. The witches. Robert Temeckis is the witch. That was our Richard's drinking during this recording.

We were all drinking during that recording. That might be the single least existent movie we have covered on the show. Truly. Like he made Pinocchio as a challenge, but it could not exist less than the witches. It still exists slightly more than the witches Right. He was trying to get below the witches and he couldn't Martin breast a of five projects Exist more like the early ones that are lesser seen at least they have like a story should I just took More seen movie. That's Robert's of megas is the witches with fucking in half away the purr of the dirk. Oh, right

Yeah, Oh This is the witches with the fucking Anne Hathaway. The Purr of the Durg. Oh, right. Yeah. Spur-de-curr-sh. Yeah. The Curious Case of Benjamin Burton. Mm-hmm. And we met him. We loved him. Black, Mr. Black.

Mr. Joe Black. We did meet him. Yeah. So. Is this 13? I think it's 14, isn't it? When... Oh, that's amazing.

A Lawson's dozen. That's more than one year. This is the 14th. And of course, let's never forget that on our Patreon, you did experience the trolls. You experienced the trolls. We did, yeah. Or you let us experience your trolls.

Yeah, I welcomed you into my world. How many trolls have there been at this point? I know you completely lost control of your trolls longer ago, but there's only been three? Yeah, they unionized and it was a disaster. You tried to crush them. So World Tour and then they banded together. Not sure that I saw Band Together.

I did see World Tour. Band Together came out last year, kind of underperformed, kind of way. I reviewed World Tour because that was like at the start of the pandemic. And I was like, I have to find something to write about. World Tour was the first studio movie that had not gone to theaters

That announced $25 iTunes rent. That's like it was the canary in the coal mines. Does this work? Right. The answer was not really but sort of sort of right, right But I remember world tour being like a huge step up from trolls one Mm-hmm, but I did not see trolls. I already forgot that they've been together We have a lot to talk about today But I just want to say that I need to complain about this and this is why I refuse to see band together at a protest Yeah, the big thing was Justin Timberlake plays a fucking grump branch in those movies branch. Yeah, I know his the character's name is branch I'm saying he's a grump. He's playing against Timberlake to that. Sure. I think I've talked about the experience where my therapist related

My own psychology. Your outlook to Branches. Yeah, sure. Said you needed some poppy in your life. Right. She said, it's just because my kids have been watching it a lot, but I'm hearing what you're saying and it's reminding me a lot of Justin Timberlake's character in Trolls. I went, yes, Branches.

I know what his name is. That would be a gut punch if my therapist said that to me. And David's 10-point joke in response to that was, you need to stop going to Lights Cameron Jackson for therapy. I mean, the drive to Albany alone. Ten point joke in response that was you need to stop going to lights camera Jackson for therapy. I Mean the drive to Albany alone doctor doctor give me the news But he's a sour puss grump right right guys bad case. It's kind of Timberlake playing against type Yeah, and the hook to band together was we're gonna do a meta commentary on Timberlake's boy band pass

You're gonna find out that he was a member of a trolls boy band with his brothers And the big announcement was in syncYNC is reuniting for this. NSYNC is recording five new songs for the Trolls Band Together soundtrack. They're gonna do live performances. NSYNC is back. David, what are you looking at? I'm just looking... So NSYNC kind of passed me by slightly. I was like a little too old for NSYNC, right? By then it was... I was a more poppy,

pop-domistic kid than some, the teen than some, right? But I didn't really know NSYNC that well. Chris Kirkpatrick, what the fuck is going on there? I genuinely don't know. Is this his general look? Yeah, because usually you see their look and you're like, I can see what the idea was here, right? If I can be mean, sort of, is that that was the interesting innovation of One Direction, which was like, oh, all five are cute.

Right. Yeah. Because it used to always be like, two are cute, one's okay, one is busted in an interesting way, the other one does not exist. Well, there's an old one. There's always an old one. And just that thing where it felt like they were like, we saw 80,000 people to be in this band and we ran out of good ones after three. This was like the together thing of like what the formulation is

of the weird balance of the thing, you know? I mean, because like the Better Man read the Robbie Williams biopic, like doesn't really touch on Take That... you know, lower members, no offense to them. Are they depicted at all? No, Take That's a huge part of the movie. As humans or other animals? As humans, of course. Only Robbie is a champion.

Kind of offensive to the other members of Take That. But Gary Barlow is obviously the main part of the... Have you seen Better Man? No, I've not, actually. Great movie. Gary Barlow was the head, the front man, and Robbie was kind of the cute one off to the side. Okay, there's another cute one And then there's the two other ones now no offense to the fans of the two other ones But it's true like they would always just kind of have like to spare fucking guys

I feel like the 90s version of that was Patrick Singh was he could Kind of nothing one was a good it is my understanding that he was really instrumental in bringing the group together and he kind of like... He just dug out. I think it was how he could wear dreadlocks. Right. I think that's really what...

Which he didn't initially, but then he brings those out? He brings them out, baby. T-Cut also had a dreadlock guy for a while. See, I was gonna say those groups all needed one guy who was sort of like a weird Alt subculture he was the AJ McLean from Backstreet Boys But then in Britain you would have boys owner Westlife or whatever It was truly just like it looked like they just cloned people. Yeah, like it's just all kind of like blonde With spiky gel hair and I was I would argue that was part of what didn't make them stick Yeah, cuz you need some spice or some...

And I also think having the weirdos would make the Nick Carter or the Justin Timber like pop a little more. Was it really tough to be like, I'm an 11-year-old girl and I love NSYNC and I'm one of the one percent that's like Chris? I was always fascinated because my sister, you know, well, I was into the bands too, but like her friends, they would talk about it. And one of her friends was like of the Backstreet Boys, she's like, no, I'm a Kevin Richardson girl. And it was like, whoa, Kevin was like, he's the one who kind of brought them together and held them together.

Sir, my James E. My little brother, James Newman was a big Backstreet Boys guy. And I think I had like posters on his wall and was watching them. We were a Backstreet Boys household. Right. It's like a Pepsi family. Yeah. The videos would be on the TV or James would be like, you know, having a poster. My dad would just walk by and look at AJ and go, that guy's such a greaseball. He just would never not comment on it. He goes, what is up with this guy? In my house, we drank RC Cola and listen to O town. Okay that way Right, we were ginger ale and backstreet boys Canada dry and backstreet boys

How did we get on? Oh cuz you're talking about trolls. Well cuz Holly hunter was originally she worked with Lou Pearlman in Orlando How did we even get on the fucking troll? Oh, we're counting on your episode. Yeah, this is episode on always. Yeah. Yeah This is the episode on Steven Spielberg's 1989 romantic fantasy pseudo remake always yes Which starred Richard Dreyfuss mm-hmm Holly Hunter mm-hmm John Goodman on the poster although You know kind of not a big character in a weird way to the movie pin in that we're gonna talk about it about it. And of course, I have a lot of things to say about that. Everyone's favorite movie star, Brad Johnson. Ben. So.

I assume you weren't doing any kind of ancillary digging or checking of the dossier and that this was your first time seeing him, that actor. You watch the movie always, I assume. Yeah. Brad Johnson, that's his name, right? Brad Johnson, who plays the new love interest after Dreyfus is gone. Kind of the himbo.

Right. There you go. To your awareness, this is the first time you've ever seen this guy, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you had to guess, and I told you this was his first movie, how do you think he was discovered? What do you think he did before they were like, hey, should you try acting? Like in a movie acting?

Sure. This isn't like I set up for a bit. I just think you might get this right. Chippendales. You're close. He was a literal Marlboro man. Like an actual, like put the hat on this fucker. He was going to sell some cigarettes. He was a rodeo performer who then was spotted and became the Marlboro Man for a chunk of years. Sure. You know, was one of many Marlboro Men, but had it. Well, because that was like being Lara Croft, right? Or Ronald McDonald.

Right, right. It would cycle, yeah. But he was a Marlboro Man, and then it led to a straight-to-video horror movie, and then this. And all the Marlboro Men, they lived in an apartment complex together. They had fun. They would have fun fights. Misadventures.

They would do last-due competitions. Yeah, they were dating together. They had fun. They would have fun fights. Misadventures. They would do last year competitions. Yeah, they were dating and it was fun. But it's so weird. Like, it is a part of this movie. I'd never seen this film before. It's a part of this movie. Oh, you've never seen it? I've never seen it before. It's a part of this movie's legacy that always fascinated me was like part of the framing of this movie was like we're introducing a new movie star. Spielberg has found a guy.

And there's like a lot of people, magazine press of like the co-stars talking up, like this guy's got a huge career ahead. We're gonna have him do impressions, like we're gonna show a range of talent. We're like crafting the role around this guy's innate sort of like charisma. And he does like a couple other movies and some TV.

Yeah, I mean, he worked. I think he mostly was in kind of, you know, straight to video kind of stuff eventually. And then became a real estate agent and died of COVID. He did die from complications from COVID. And the real estate he worked in was specifically ranch real estate. So he went back to the Marlboro roots.

Marlboro man is one of those things that I will like explain to my kids and they will be like, the fuck are you talking about? Where I'm like, so cigarettes started to get filtered, right? And they're like, okay. I mean, if cigarettes are even so legal at this point. You might as well wheel a penny for the bicycle

into the living room. And people thought filtered cigarettes were feminine. So Marlboro came up with this brilliant idea of like, what if a cowboy was like, mmm, so good. And it was the most brilliant Advertising campaign anyone ever heard of that a fucking cowboy smoked this shit. Like that's all Marlboro man is yeah Well, yeah, cuz you know what the rival campaign was that fucking penis face camel

Bill your tolls It's just so funny. Okay minimum was like what if it's a handsome dude. They were like, yeah that might push Obviously, it's what madman, you know, the pilot is about. But like, you know, like, right, all these companies are like, we all make the same basic thing, which is a deadly product that you're addicted to. How do we find an angle on selling this to people? Just eight different companies with just like, yeah, one guy's like, oh, you should have a camel.

Newport's had the market cornered on people smiling while playing tennis. That was their marketing. Yeah. God, it's so fucking weird. Anyway, we were a Marlboro household. So I was very acquainted with the Marlboro man and I had lots of sports illustrated and he was the Marlboro man was always in those.

Was your dad collecting the points? Were you having things like that? It was a whole fucking moral dilemma for my mom because we would get free shit. Yeah, what kind of stuff? I remember I had a sleeping bag. I would take that thing to kids houses, write for sleepovers and shit, and it had the fucking Marlboro logo on it.

I will say this in all honesty. It was like a red sleeping bag. It probably looked like a lit cigarette. It was full of cigarettes when it arrived at the house. I remember going to a friend's house with parents who smoked heavily and would have the catalog and I'd look through it. I'm surprised to hear this. I like stuff. To be clear, for people who don't know, you would send in box...

Marlboro Myles. Marlboro Myles. And you would get points and you could get free shit out of a catalog. And you could go to the Marlboro Myles at the airport. My dad smoked two packs a day. It was an expansive catalog that contained almost every type of product you could imagine branded with Marlboro. And it was like, as you said, from an ashtray to a fucking motorcycle. I think you could save up and buy a private island or something.

And as a kid who loved catalogs, I'd like leaf through them at parents' friends' house and be like, God, I wish my parents were chain smokers. If you saved enough of them, you could get a part in the movie Always. You could. Always. Spielberg's like, I'll cast you. I mean, it was, no, I think I've said this to you guys before, off mic probably, but my mom would, we would go through duty free when we started living in England.

And then we would travel to America, you know, and in duty free, you could buy cigarettes so much cheaper because they were tax free and cigarettes are taxed up the ass as they should be. Right. And... Like walking out with long boxes. My mom would walk out with like, right,

20 cartons of Marlboro's. And my mother never smoked a cigarette in her damn life or whatever, barely ever did. And she would just, it was this, he's gonna, your dad's gonna buy the fucking cigarettes. Do we save hundreds, thousands of dollars right now and indulge his deadly habit or do we not? And in the process also.

Get some fucking box stops, get a sleeping bag. It's so evil. This is what I'm saying, my kids are gonna be like, what are you talking about? Like how is any of this allowed? But that's like part of this cultural moment where like fucking Spielberg's casting director sees a Marlboro ad and is like, what about this guy?

And this is a movie where it's like, I feel like at one point he tried for years to get Tom Cruise to play this part. Yeah, Cruise was the, we'll dig into that. It's just such a big move for like Spielberg to be like, you know what? I'm anointing a face here. And we talk about it in our later Spielberg series and we've had to come back to him in like new release movies that it feels like from the 2000s on, Spielberg really kind of

kept whiffing on picking new leading men. He kept on trying to identify people, none of whom had as little of a background as Brad Johnson. I think you're Jeremy Irvine's. You're Eric Bana's. You're Eric Bana's. Which was a little different.

Eric Bana kind of almost got there, not just through Spielberg. I think it's even more the younger dude, the Ty Sheridans, where I like some of Ty Sheridans work. He's still around? A lot, yes. Yeah, he's notidans work. He's still around? Yes. Yeah, he's not a bad actor. But that was sort of framed as the moment

of like Spielberg's about to elevate him. Yeah. And in fact, it caused him to go like, I gotta go back to smaller stuff. What is the Belgian actor, Tintin, what has he been in? The Boy Reporter? Yeah. Well, he's currently on assignment.

There's a big asteroid with a mushroom on it. Oh, okay, okay. He's checking that out. His best pick in the 2000s was Shia, and then Shia attacked him. Basically, like a dog bit back at him. Honestly, his best find of late is, well, Gabriel LeBell is a great find for him,

but is Rachel, friend of the show Rachel. That's untrue, I found someone out of nowhere. But I'm talking about the male leads. Were the thing that he was kind of struggling with? He found this rando fucker that Ben's friends would call Dan for Lincoln, I don't know. Dan L. Yeah.

Yeah. I think Dan did a good job. We were all just at the New York Film Critics Circle. I was stuck with you. We were all just at the New York Film Critics Circle, where David put together a very nice evening. I did, it went fine. As this year's chair.

I was this year's chair. And the final award was Best Film for The Brutalist. Yes. And it was presented by Robert Pattinson. Our pats. And we were sitting very close. Yeah, you guys had the best seat in the house. We were about two feet away. And Ben just turns to me and goes, Bob looks great.

He did. I will say this. Bob. I'm wearing a really, like, nice suit. His suit was out of control. The angles on the guy. Oh, I mean, if I can briefly rant about this. I got a perspective on him too.

I mean, we both did, where you could just see how pronounced his jawline was, like we were seeing his profile. It was crazy. I've interviewed Robert Pattinson when he's in, you know, catch clothes. And even then, obviously, he's incredibly handsome and charming and, you know, you get, you know, a star vibe.

Him walking into that room, the critic circle, where there's lots of famous actors and Hollywood people and such, and he walks in there in that perf... Where you're like, this is another level of, like, people paying attention to what he wears and how he dresses perf, where you're like, this is another level of, like, people paying attention to what he wears and how he dresses and what his hair looks like, and just his inherent quality. This is a fucking A-list movie.

He had an Elvis entrance, too. He did, he came in from the back. There was, I can reveal, I guess, off, you know, I was telling Richard this already, he was supposed to come at 10. He was our big get, you know, and he's like, I'm gonna drop in, I'll just drop in to present. And we're like, well, it's the last award of the night. We'll ballpark around 10 o'clock show up.

The ceremony starts and I immediately am like, oh shit, like, we're running fast. No one's rambling. No one's like, whatever, like whatever we budgeted for in terms of like, eh, one thing will go long or one thing. I realize I'm not rambling. Some, I think, hosts ramble more than I do. I'm kind of just like, now we're onto this award and now we're onto this. You know, like, I'm not like... I bet I turned to each other and said, you were, your hosting had the energy of you trying to in real time edit JJ's dossier.

This is what David's introductions felt like. Uh, the movie was made for five million bucks. It came out, got decent reviews. So, anyway, let's talk about it. I had to bring people on. There's a lot of awards. And then you start, so there was a frantic behind the scenes, like, we need to rush Pattinson to, like, you know, he needs to get here half an hour earlier.

And he did, God bless him. But here's the point. It is fascinating that, like, Spielberg has there there are your your Zeglers, right? But I feel like especially with male stars stuff He has broken very few people in a way that's kind of interesting and in the 2000s He started having more roles that felt like this is an opportunity for a young guy to pop Even like Justin Chatwin of the world is another one We talk about you know sure you look at like he was not like pinning

Pattinson Harris Dickinson, you know Jacob Elordi like I mean I'm saying the guys who did end up getting the right parts that made them Spielberg is in theory a guy who should be able to just like put the scepter on someone's head Yeah, and have everyone just accept that they're real. And the Brad Johnson thing is just kind of fascinating because this movie is sort of built around like, we caught lightning in a bottle. We found this guy you've never seen before.

He is supposed to like bowl you over. Totally. With his charm. On a poster with like three very familiar faces to American audiences. The movie's secret is all this kinda guy. David? Yes. Have you ever browsed incognito mode?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm not gonna ask why, for what reasons, but here's what I'm gonna tell you and it's bad news. Mostly it's to try a different thing in Cinematrix. Well that's what I do as well. Look, maybe we can personalize this here and say that every morning sometimes you Submit your sin of matrix 9 and you're curious about that on what would that have done was there a better way to play this? But here's the problem That mode is not as incognito as you think oh no other people might be stealing your answers

You feel like you're invisible creeping around the web, but in reality you're like when the invisible man has paint poured on him. Oh no, the fields of optics. Right. Yeah. Hollow man with the rubber and you're like, well you're invisible but also now I can see you. That's kind of what incognito mode is.

All your online activity is still 100% visible to a ton of third parties unless you use Express VPN. 100% visible to a ton of third parties unless you use ExpressVPN. Google recently settled a $5 billion lawsuit after being accused of secretly tracking users in incognito mode. That's the opposite of what I want. So without ExpressVPN, third parties can see every website you visit, even in incognito mode, your ISP, your mobile network provider, the admin of your Wi-Fi network, like your school or your boss or your parents.

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You just open up the app, you click one button, you get protected, and it works on every device. So you can send it to your phone or your tablets or anything. You can use Stay Private on the go. Yeah, absolutely. And as we often say on this podcast, most relevant to our listeners, it's very good for checking out things on streaming services in different countries. That's true. But I use it basically all the time just to stay private because things are crazy out there. And it's a very very easy to use

something like ExpressVPN to just have an additional layer of security so protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com slash check that's e x p r e s s vpn.com slash check and you can get an extra four months free expressvpn.com slash check Free. ExpressVPN.com slash check. Alright, look. So you'd never seen Always? No. Ben, you'd never seen this movie, right? You weren't a big Always guy. You had seen Always because you owned it a dozen times. I was a Never guy.

Oh. Yeah, that's good. Five comedy points. The guy at Blockbuster is like, how about Always? You're like, how about Never? See you later. And then Ben would have to go to a different blockbuster be able to make the joke again without This guy fucking recommends always to me Why would he do that? Ben would go in and be like I'm looking for a movie that's like like ghosts

It's like ghost cucking kind of I guess you don't know what the word cuck means yet, but you'll find out. Did you guys like the movie? Clearly Richard had some fondness for the movie as a youngster. I think, so as of this recording, I've been working on something for work where I'm ranking all of Spielberg's films,

so I've been watching every single one of his films in chronological order. I did not do that with Always, I kind of skipped past it because I wanted to save it for this. But a lot of movies are just totally different through the lens of Fabelman's now, a lot of his earlier stuff, in a kind of profoundly strange way. It's been really interesting for us waiting this long to do the first half of his career

and being able to do it with the Fabelman's contract. Oh, that's what it was all about. It changes every single movie. I would argue except this one. Interesting. This one feels like its own little side thing that was just sprouted from a conversation or conversations with Richard Dreyfuss.

It is less like big and sweeping than I remember it being. It just, it really does feel like a kind of like one for me little project that, yeah. I like this movie quite a bit. I like half of it, I was like, do I love this? That's the thing. It starts really well. It makes any major mistakes. But it does just kind of peter out.

It's a lot faster than I remembered it being. Like it just kind of arrives at its conclusions pretty quickly. Which I think it takes a lot of time setting up its dynamics. Like, Dreyfus doesn't die, spoiler, until like 30 plus minutes into the movie. conclusions pretty quickly. Which I think it takes a lot of time setting up its dynamics. Like, Dreyfus doesn't die, spoiler, until like 30 plus minutes into the movie,

in a way that you feel like other movies would do that five, 10 minutes in. And I was like getting excited by how deliberate the table setting was and feeling like this is really drilling into these characters. And then the second half moves really fast. And just felt like it lost a little that sensitivity Here's what I want to say about it not changing with the context and the Goodman point I was making earlier

Have always been fascinated by this as the attempted launching of the Brad Johnson thing, right? But I always was just like yeah, it's a remake of like a guy called Joe. I've never seen that I know it's about like ghosts and planes and a love triangle and whatever. I just always assumed from the poster. Oh, right. Of course. I was like, and Brad Johnson, I guess must be some like hunky romantic rival. But I thought this movie... It's about getting Hunter and Goodman together. I thought it was...

I thought it was Ghost Town. I thought it was... Dreyfus and Goodman are best friends Dreyfus dies and so now Dreyfus is Leading Goodman right to romance his wife right instead. It's just kind of ghost Dreyfus going like hey hey Yeah, hey, come on Fucking at one point talking to the guy the neighbor guy from Home Alone. Yeah, yeah Fucking at one point talking to the guy the neighbor guy from home alone. Yeah Yes, right who I think he says what her mitts are like a radio to the who knows what the crazy old hobos He's just I think he calls them crazy old home crazy old home But I'm watching this I'm like I can't wait for Holly hunter and John Goodman to fall in love

I think I thought like Brad Johnson was the sort of like Rick Rossovich in the We like this right she's attracted to this hunky guy and Dreyfus is like now that's just my fault for letting that narrow my head Right, but I'm watching and I'm like if this were that movie and that's what happened in the second half I'd be like go into the mat for this so fucking well And I think the bro code would bar Goodman from well but bro code was not installed until 1990 so it was yes and you know it was a HW Bush brought that exactly you know what bro code also didn't bar huh Spielberg's family fable menacing out of control like that's the other

part of it is I'm watching this being like oh the interesting fable men's context is Dude convincing his best friend to fall in love with his Spillberg's like on the Oscar press door for the film. He's like well the thing that happened is my dad's best friend broke the bro code I needed to take him to Taz The broke code was violated. What if the film is had been called bro code? do you think it would have made more if the poster was? It was like it was called bro. No with his hands like in with like

With Michelle Williams and the monkey poking out you know from the diagonal right from behind yes Gabriel Bell has like pinoculars from the dudes who brought you always He's cooking him. Yeah I think the problem with the second half in terms of that Griffin is that the movie so well Establishes the rapport between this couple and their friend you see them in moments of suspense moments of pleasure and joy a Fight, you know about something substantial you really get to know these people and their dynamic.

And then he dies. And then this other guy comes in and you're like, wait, but who's that? Like, I kind of like in the abstract, this thing of him being like, I saw a woman one moment a year ago, right? That echoes the way the drive has felt about her. But I agree with you. That is the exact structural problem with the movie. Have none of us seen the original?

I haven't. I haven't wait I want to Ben. What did you think of always? Yeah, all right, so I think Ben and I are a little more aligned because sounds like you were just out on it I don't like always I've seen it a couple times and I think I have never liked always I you always dislike I have a huge problem with always and I think I think a huge problem. I'm discovering in myself interesting I don't like Richard Dreyfuss. I think he's an annoying little rat fuck man Cuz I feel like he's one of the most beloved people in the world

It only grows I've rented on this podcast a bunch about mr Hollens opus which I think is like one of the most demented quietly demented movies ever made because it's like an Holland's Opus, which I think is like one of the most demented, quietly demented movies ever made because it's like an inspirational drama about a teacher, but it's basically two and a half hours of this asshole yelling at everyone. And then at the end he's like, my Opus! And they play it and it's drivel. This is obviously, this is the third Dreyfus movie we're covering in this series. Of course. But this is the one.

And I think he gives it a wonderful performance in Jaws, obviously. And a wonderful performance in Closing Hours. And a wonderful, although very nervy and kind of frightening kind of performance, yes. But it just, I think this is the episode where we really have to unpack the Dreyfus thing. Not that we haven't been talking about him. That is totally valid. And I feel like the reviews I read of the movie at the time were just like, I don't want to watch Richard Dreyfus as a romantic leap. Not really. Not really. What I kind of like about the movie at the time were just like I don't want to watch Richard Dreyfus as a romantic lead

Not really what not really kind of like about the movie and Dreyfus sort of a pseudo romantic lead because he's he starts out as a romantic lead agree Which is what kind of works for me sure yeah I also think this movie's take is very similar to your take where it's like this guy sucks Just the movie has guys like an annoying arrogant like, this guy sucks. Does the movie have that take? This guy's like an annoying, arrogant piece of shit. Like this feels like the movie where Dreyfus is kind of, whether consciously or not, owning the exact thing that had like turned the American audience

off of him at this point in time. It is fascinating that this movie's 89. This movie's 1989. So 75 is Jaws, 77 is Close Encounters, 79 he's the youngest man to win, best actor. 77 he's the youngest man to win, it was Goodbye Girl. Oh, you're right, you're right. Right, right.

This is a little over a decade later. And he basically- His 80s, just to, you know, down and out in Beverly Hills, Tin Man, Nuts, like there are movies, but it's not. Here's my point. Bruce Philanche did a very good episode at WTF, and he was talking about his history with Bette Midler, and how when Eisner started Touchstone Pictures,

and were like, Disney, we're gonna make movies for grownups, their big thing was, let's find a bunch of dinged stars, and get them in overall deals. Let's get like, Mussersky, who the other studios have kind of gotten bored with but is like a solid Right steady hand great with actors, right and their big thing was like five picture deal Bette Midler five picture deal Richard Dreyfus These are people who have like Oscars or nominations But the public are kind of tired of right

Right and like bring them back and he was like, Down and Out Beverly Hills was basically designed as four people who couldn't get arrested in a movie that was just going to work. No, right. Right. Right. Midler, Dreyfus, and of course, Little Richard. I was the same as Erskine. Little Richard was popping at that point.

Yeah. But then I looked at it and I'm like, the space between Goodbye Girl and Down and Out in Beverly Hills is kind of fascinating. After Down and Out, he has a run of, like, mostly touchdown movies. Stakeout and Moon Over Peridot and whatever. And these movies that are, like, solid hits are, like, reasonable hits. The thing with Stakeout is that's the movie... That's the star vehicle for Richard Divers,

where he plays kind of a creep. Kind of an annoying guy. Like, and always is the wrong kind of role for him. But anyway, yes. I think the movie is hinged on his arrogance. And when I heard this Philanche statement, I was kind of digging into it where he was just like, Dreyfus just couldn't get hired for anything. Students just didn't want to fucking deal with him. And I was like, that timeline is so tight to him winning best actor. How go that wrong that quickly you look at the actual movies

They're not movies that have really lasted but none of them were like calamities when they came out. I can tell you what they were 1978 he was in a political comedy thriller called the big fix In which he played a police detective good name Moses wine Which was yeah a small hit. Yeah in It's like a sort of serious movie about a piano player, you know, gets a couple like below the line Oscar noms. In 81 he does Whose Life Is It Anyway, which is obviously like a big stage play that I assume makes no sense as a movie.

Because like that's very much a stage play. Yeah, it's a hospital bit. It's like a big stage play. It's like a big stage play. It's like a big stage play. It's like a big stage play. It's like a big stage play. It's like a big stage, which is obviously like a big stage play that I assume makes no sense as a movie.

Because like that's very much a stage play. Yeah, it's a hospital bed. Yeah, exactly. So I assume that's like an Oscar play that just doesn't work because nobody remembers that movie. Then he's not in a movie for three years. In 84 he's in a movie called The Buddy System with Susan Sarandon, Nancy Allen, and Jean Stapleton.

It's about a single mom who forms an unlikely friendship with a school security guard. Do you know this movie? Nope. That's it. Then down and out in Beverly Hills. So that run you just listed is what comes directly off the heels of this guy being the lead

or one of the three leads of three of the highest grossing movies of all time in the span of seven years. Seeing American Graffiti, of course, along with Jaws and Close Encounters. And then wins an Oscar for Good Life. And then wins an Oscar. And then immediately he's in this zone of like,

none of these are like calamities, none of these are like embarrassments, a lot of them are small hits and get kind of middling reviews or whatever. And then I was digging in interviews with Richard Reif as famously normal and chill things to read. And he was just like, I, everyone just hated me. Like he owns it where he was just like, I was out of my mind on Coke.

I was a fucking nightmare and everyone was annoyed by me. He's annoying. Sober. Imagine him on Coke. Right. But like by the time you're in this sort of like 80s comeback period, what he's trying to claw back from is understanding that everyone in Hollywood is like, it's not worth it to work with Richard Dreyfuss. And the American public is like, Jesus, this guy's a lot. The public had turned on him. Not even because-

He tends to blame people who are kind of a lot. Totally. But it was like, they were so into it for seven years. And then it is kind of like, the second he stops being boyish, people were like, this is just annoying now. And I think in this movie, which I don't mind him in this movie, but I understand the complaints, but in the context of what we're talking about, he does seem to be leeching off

of his co-star, who's one of the most radiant, appealing movie stars maybe to ever exist. A hundred percent. Uh-huh. And not only that, Holly Hunter's a very specific, magical thing. And he's drafting off that energy, and you're like, no, that's hers. You don't get to take that.

Well, also, he's like, I don't know if I want to say I love you to Holly Hunter, and I'm like, I hope you die fast. Your plane crashes into the ground. That's where I think he's kind of well-cast. Sure, he's well cast as an asshole. Other people could have done this better, and I don't think this is like a great performance from him. But I think there are other Richard Dreyfus comedies of this period where I'm like, Jesus Christ, can you cool it down?

And in this one, the frustration of like, this guy needs to fucking realize that he sucks. You know? Like he needs to eat shit. It means a lot of the movie is him yelling at people who can't hear him, frustrating to watch and annoying. I agree. Now the counter to that is as you said, like 10 minutes in I'm like,

you know what, this movie's an automatic three stars for me because any vehicle built around Holly Hunter in this time period is just playing with house money. It's unbelievable. It's unreal. And hey, Goodman essentially being blue from tailspin. Fine with that. Nothing wrong with that.

That's some great salt and pepper. If Goodman was romancing Holly Hunter, it maybe would be an automatic five for me. If the resolution- They are a physical mismatch. I mean, Goodman is- That's part of what I found compelling in this Minds High version of the movie. I guess it's kind of a Fred Flintstone Wilma. The physics alone. Kind of blue and Mowgli.

Well, it doesn't poke up with Mowgli. No, but they're very good friends. What version of you? Is that in the Favreau one? It's in the Indy Circus one. He went off the leash. No, I was watching her in this last night, and I was just, and I'd seen it before, and I was like, oh, right, when I was a kid, that, I mean, it was the playing stuff and her.

I was just like so mesmerized. I was like, who, I'd never seen someone be that way. Here's what's crazy. I'm gonna make an extreme statement, but I stand by this. She's like kind of as good in this as she is in broadcast news. Just in a movie that is nowhere near as good.

Like that was the part of me that was like, she is so powerful at this point in time that if you just give her this much runway, she will like motor an entire movie into feeling like it's kind of important anytime she's on screen. Broadcast news is also giving her like a perfect screenplay and a perfect structure with perfect castmates.

A more interesting character and also, like half of this movie is her having to interact with Brad Johnson who is a less compelling scene partner than Albert Brooks or William Hurt. But that's why I'm like, she's like making this feel like something out of nothing. Her character is not really written. Look, this movie features Keith David playing a character called Powerhouse.

It should be a five-star masterpiece. And it is not. It's also a Steven Spielberg movie, and he does set a high bar for himself. And this thing is curio at best to me. Every time I watch it, I'm like, come on, there's a gem in here. Like, this is... to me. Every time I watch it, I'm like, come on, there's a gem in here. Yeah. Because the world is so interestingly rendered, like the place, the setting, the profession. I just find the way that Holly Hunter rides her bike from her cabin to the airfield, you're

like, I want to live in this world. And then the story kind of just drags you away from it, weirdly. I don't know. Yeah. It's maybe his most frustrating movie on that level, but I feel like I hear a lot of people being like, obviously his worst movie. Obviously. I strenuously disagree. It's certainly not his worst movie.

Yeah. 1941 is his worst movie. There are at least five movies I have like underlined bold and below this. Like I even think the only... I only think I have like underlined Bolden below this. Like I even think the only... I only think I have a couple. The only other movie in his filmography I would argue is him trying to do this kind of thing again is The Terminal. Which I think is worse than...

I greatly prefer this to The Terminal. Although I rewatched The Terminal, it's got some stuff. And it actually like, it's not as bad as I remember it being. I don't hate it. But I do think I like the world this movie is building, even if it feels like it doesn't. But I will say... How to land the plan. I will say about always, I was watching it last night and I haven't written this ranking

that I'm going to do that'll be long out by the time this airs. But I was like, for that first 20, 30 minutes, I was like, is this going to be in my top 10? I was, yeah. And then it doesn't, you know, then it doesn't, doesn't deliver. But like that, yeah, the opening is, and that's what Spielberg is good at is being like, you know, compared to Jurassic Park, where you're like, I buy that every one of these scientists actually works here and knows what they're talking about.

And like it, I bought the world of always, you know, and, and then I just don't think he figures out what to do with that. We should crack open the dossier, but I also just find within the arc that we're covering here, this is such a fascinating movie because A, it's the first time he tries to do the Spielberg doubleheader year. Right. Uh... This thing he loves. Well, he loves or he just kind of ends up doing it, but he come this game out the same year's Last Crusade Yes, and but every time he does a doubleheader year. It's like that where it's kind of like two different types of movies

It's not just two movies that happen to get finished around the same can we run through because I know it's obviously Jurassic and Schindler Yes, warhorse and Tintin warhorse and Tintin anyone in the middle there And the one in the was more the work Report in Kashmir, if you can. And War of the Worlds in Munich. Right. Wild. Yeah, so I mean they're almost always kind of like serious and popcorn, you know? And on varying levels.

Sometimes it's a really wide gap, but they're sort of like... This is one of the narrower gaps. Agree. But I also think this is him coming off of Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, where he's done this swing of like, I want to prove to you guys that I'm a grown up. And everyone's like, just fucking cool it, man. Can you go back to being Steven Spielberg? Yeah.

He makes Last Crusade, which is like seen as a total commercial triumph. And it's like, you're back to just having fun. Yeah, but not that's... Yeah, but it's... but he's not reinventing the wheel at all and like yeah. But it's a sort of like welcome back you're doing the thing we've all wanted you to do. Sure. And then always feels like him being like can I make a grown-up movie infused with the things that people like about Spielberg movies rather than the Empire of the Sun color Color Purple, I'm trying to fight against some of my instincts.

Yeah, I think the answer is no. It's, you feel like he should be able to do this and it kind of hasn't ever worked for him? It hasn't ever really worked for him and this movie maybe was not as big an Oscar play as say The Color Purple or Empire of the Sun, but it's an Oscar play-ish. It could be, if this movie had hit, right, it would be an Oscar player.

It came out December 1989. Like, it was positioned... They shoot Holly Hunter in particular. He shoots her in a way that feels Oscar-y. I mean, like, you know... She's coming off a broadcast news nomination, a award she probably should have won. There is a feeling of like, hey, if someone gives Holly Hunter another great vehicle like that, they'll probably throw her the Oscar. And I think Miss Firecracker had gotten great reviews and maybe got like critics prizes or something But it didn't quite hit at Oscars So it's like yeah not overdue yet

But she was ready to be anointed and then they said then the industry said well Let's just wait until she plays a mute New Zealand person. She has to stop talking such a bizarre Oscar year 89 Yeah, so this is the driving mistake driving mistake. Yeah, bizarre Oscar year. 89? This is the driving Miss Daisy. It's the driving Miss Daisy year. Obviously, driving Miss Daisy winning Best Picture is a mistake by the Academy Awards. I don't think any of us can deny that. That's the only one they've made, though.

They never made a mistake again after that. Because it should have gone to Batman. The other nominees that year are... Born on the Fourth of July, which it's almost inexplicable that it hadn't won, but I assume it was kind of a like, we gave Platoon Best Picture four years ago, we're gonna give another Vietnam drama from the same guy. Going in was sort of seen as the front runner.

And it wins Best Director. Right. So like it definitely was the... It is the funny thing though that like people were like, it's probably gonna win Picture and Actor, and then it lost those two and instead they give Stone another. Another Oscar to vote, yeah, exactly. Dead Poets Society, which there's a world where that could win. It was certainly a big hit. A big hit.

With a beloved star. Beloved star, big director, but I guess maybe just a little too sort of small, but then again they gave it to the fucking car. And the beloved star is Robert John Leonard. Yes. Field of Dreams, which only gets two knobs, picture and screenplay, but is the best movie I've said so far, in my opinion. Is actually rude they didn't give it more, but that was sort of their kind of like tip

of the hat. It was kind of nommed in the way they would nom a lot of Spielberg movies where they're like we are acknowledging this is very effective. This went over well. And Field of Dreams is that Amy Madigan movie? Right, keep going. Just keep doing this. For effective popcorn. And Field of Dreams is that Amy Madigan movie? Right, keep going. Just keep doing this, for every movie. My left foot, the original Miramax has unearthed

a European or British or Irish or whatever movie. Yeah, a little story that could. Like, none of those movies in my, well, no, I would nominate Field of Dreams. Like, sure, I would nominate that. But like, they're ignoring. But this is the do the right thing, sn, no, I would nominate Field of Dreams. Like, sure, I would nominate that. But, like, you know, they're ignoring... But this is the do the right thing, snub your... They're ignoring when Harry met Sally, that's true.

They're ignoring crimes and misdemeanors, kind of insane of them, because that gets a bunch of other noms. They're ignoring Batman. Yeah, thank you. They're ignoring... Ghostbusters 2? Uh, Ghostbusters 2. Ghostbusters 2?

They're ignoring Henry the Fifth, which again gets noms, but not a best picture. But they stole that score and used it in every trailer for 10 years. I've never seen any of the other Henrys. Is he the only guy who can pull off that joke? Yes. Yes he is. And I was charmed. Not find it funny and charming coming from Beth. Let me tell you, as an expert expert or not, but as someone who knows about British history, Henry the third, that'd be a very boring movie. One and two, those are interesting. Okay.

Or obviously Shakespeare had his field day with that one. Three, no, no, no. Ben's been saying that he wants to get into playwriting. Maybe you should take on one of the earlier Henrys. Henry the third was sort of a Richard Dreyfus figure, right? He was crowned as like a nine-month-old like he's a weird anyway The point I feel like you're making here is this was a feels like the Oscars don't know what to do But also this is a field that if always was had even a little patch behind it It would have top. Yeah, who was it? Who is an actress? That's what I wanted to okay

Jessica Taney and then we'll crack open the dossier. Jessica Taney wins best actress. I don't think there's anything wrong with that win. She is number one good in the movie. She's number two an icon. I've never actually seen it. That's crazy. It's entertaining. That's what I assume. I almost avoided it because I don't want to be like, it's kind of funny.

It is an incredibly dated and silly movie. Did Dan Aykroyd get nominated for that? Yes he did. He's good in it. He's not amazing, but he's good. In the same year that he appears in the film always. He's not as good in 1941, just word of wording. Sure. He's had some peaks and valleys, old Accorick.

Tandy's really good in Driving Miss Daisy. I believe it. Yeah. She's playing a character who won't say her feelings. And so, she's good. And she's a legend, a living legend. Right, and she was the oldest winner ever. The Oscar, obviously, obviously,

should have gone to Michelle Pfeiffer and the Fabulous Baker Boys, which is like one of the great female screeners. And she had won every great screen prize, right? Yeah, right. But probably was just doomed with like, oh, she's young, we'll get to her, Tandy's gotta win this year, right?

The other nominees are Isabelle Adjani, the legend, for Cleamille Caudel. Wow, okay. So a bit of a boring, you know, kind of Tony Frenchy movie, but like Isabella Gianni, she rocks. Pauline Collins and Shirley Valentine, the charming, you know, British, you know,

little movie that could, right? Where she's like, ah! I have for whatever reason. Oh, that sounds great. watched the 1989 Siskel and Ebert, if we picked the Oscar special Oh, sure. several times.

They're just like perplexed. They won't stop harping on, we're really gonna nominate this? Like they keep on going like, it's fine. It's kind of an early version of the, you know, But like, what's going on here? the Billy Elliot's and the, you know, these little British movies movies that could like they would just charm the pants off of people. I don't remember who they were arguing. It should have been in that slot, but they were just like really? We couldn't find anyone else.

I should watch it. That sounds fun because the fifth nominee is Jessica Lang for Music Box, which is like a forgotten Costa Gavras movie. Like a very serious movie about an attorney and like a war criminal in Hungary and stuff like that. And this is in between her two wins. Right, but like, it does kind of feel like one of those ones where they're like, whoa, very serious. Like now if I, 100 people out of 100 have never heard of Music Box. I mean, like, you're Louis Fortel's of the world

who's had every single nominee since 1930. Even Louis might like take 10 seconds. Yeah,el's of the world, who know every single nominee since 1930. But even Lewis might, like, take 10 seconds. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, there would be a... But he did produce Music Box. Yeah. Yeah, the question... So, does Jessica Lange play Mariah Carey? Oh.

Cute. Thank you very much. Well done. Like, and if I look at, like, the Golden Globes, where you're sort of like, who else is in there? Okay, Sally Field for Steel Magnolia. It's kind of weird that she whiffed on that. Like she's good in that.

But Roberts gets the nomination. It's strange. Wow, she fucking rocks. It's really weird though, because they liked her. Yeah, they really liked her. They really liked her. Andy McDowell in Sex, Lies, and Videotape got a Globe Nom, an amazing performance in my opinion.

Meg Ryan got a fucking Golden Globes Nom. Maybe throw her a bone. That's what they should have done. And Meryl Streep got a Golden Globe Nom for She-Devil, but that wasn't getting an Oscar nomination. Yeah, do you know She-Devil is one of the best movies ever made? She-Devil rocks, but obviously was, you know, not a hit. Yeah, but she rules in it and the reviews at the time were so fucking mean to her. Was She-Devil 89? Yeah, 89. So this is the movie Goodman got after one season of Roseanne and that's what she got. That's what Roseanne got. Yeah.

That's interesting. And Kathleen Turner for Wars of the Roses, which is a good movie that she's good in. Maybe that movie was just a little too like poisonous. Do you think if when Harry met Sally in, I mean, obviously it wouldn't be as 80s, but like if that quality were meant to comedy with that kind of central performance came out now, would Meg Ryan get an Oscar nomination? I think yes, assuming it was a big, big hit. Because I think sometimes history, like Academy history, it was kinder to comedy, but in some

ways it wasn't. I don't know. I think at this point, they're really starting to trend towards the more prestigious stuff. This is the late 80s, you're out of Africa as your last emperor. It's the era that defines what we still like shorthand think of as quote-unquote Oscar-based. Right, and Dragon with Daisy is a comedy sort of, but it's like a waiting comedy about issues. Exactly. Who is it like in the 70s, is it Marcia Mason who got like three nominations for Neil Simon movies?

You know, and like, but then the 80s were like no more of that. We're not doing that. Yeah, well maybe we'll get like Diane Weist something in supporting, but like, we're not, yeah. Right, and like broadcast news was just heady enough, as good as it gets, it's just dramatic enough. Working Girl was just dramatic enough, yeah. That was the thing they loved was you start out like funny comedy of manners, characters, and then it gets really dramatic at the end. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm cracking open the dossier. Please. Steven Spielberg, now I don't know if you guys know this, but he had a childhood. Mm-hmm. And he would watch movies. It was great, right? He was happy and settled. Okay, no cooking.

And... Were there any monkeys? No, right? Like the graph of his childhood was like, zero monkeys, zero monkeys, zero monkeys. One monkey! Uh-oh, things are really bad. We had Brian Michael Bendis on for the Rares of the Lost Ark episode, and he just called out the monkey.

Which we were like, holy fucking shit, I can't believe we never thought about that. An evil scheming monkey. Yeah. Yeah. So when young Steven Spielberg was a lad in Arizona, he would watch old movies sometimes on the television. And there was a movie called A Guy Named Joe,

a 1943 wartime MGM drama directed by Victor Fleming who definitely never screamed anything at Judy Garland. Scripted, as you may know, quite damply by Mr. Dalton Trombo. Get these bubbles out of the way. Clickety clack, splishety splash. I had to put down the ducky for a moment in order to type out the rest of the script. Spencer Tracy, who let me tell you, makes sense in this role. Yeah, makes sense as the Richard Dreyfuss of his time.

Richard Dreyfuss wishes his ass was Spencer Tracy. Irene Dunn, the great Irene Dunn, and Van Johnson, no relation to Ben Johnson or whoever it is in all ways. What's his name? Van Johnson, let me say, I like Van Johnson, but it kind of was more the Richard Dreyfuss of his time. Sure, and then Ward Bond as the John Goodman. Uh-huh. Anyway, it's about a World War II fighter pilot.

He dies and then he comes back to Earth as a ghost and sort of tries to get his former lover together with her new beau. And Spielberg said it was the second movie after Bambi that made him cry. I didn't even understand why I was crying, but I did. Like the Tracy character being powerless. He's like this piece of furniture, but he's trying to affect things anyway.

As a child, I was frustrated. Maybe I saw my own parents in it. This is the part of it that I do think has the fabled man's lens. The other thing that says a lot is that like, you know, his father who was kind of like a Paul Dano type. It was a bit of a Paul Dano type, but fucking flew planes in the war. This is the thing.

And like didn't want to talk about it and didn't know how to relate to Spielberg on his own shit. Right? That Spielberg would watch this movie and feel some emotional connection to like, this helps me understand my dad. Now, this, I'm sure JJ got this wrong because I don't think Richard Dreyfuss would ever behave this aggressively Spielberg would watch this movie and feel some emotional connection to like this helps me understand my dad now right this I'm sure JJ got this wrong because I don't think Richard Dreyfuss would ever behave this aggressively

But on the set of jaws they are making Spielberg's working with Richard Dreyfuss and they they find that they both love this movie My name is guy called Joe. My name is Joe as a Ken Loach movie, which is really good They both seen it dozens of times and Dreyfuss says if you ever remake that film and cast anyone else as Pete, I'll kill you. Now that can't be true. Dreyfus would never talk that way to somebody. No, I can't imagine. Was he wiping his nose at the time? Rubbing his teeth. Yeah. Was he smoking four cigarettes at once? He was crying, Pope.

Right, his body was like, we're full. You're going to start sweating it out, buddy. You want to catch the runoff. You can sell this shit. Spielberg at MGM does start to work on maybe remaking the film. It was an MGM picture. They had the rights. Dreyfus, he, Spielberg in his infinite, is like, Dreyfus makes absolutely no fucking sense for this movie. I want to cast Robert Redford. Yeah, no shit. Good job, Steven Spielberg. Well, but here was the problem. His idea was great opportunity to do another Newman and Redford team.

Yes, he wants to team up Redford and Newman, I guess, with Newman probably as the deceased pilot, and Redford as the new beau, right? The whole issue was... That's interesting. They both want to be the pilot. They both want the new beau. The whole issue was... That's interesting. They both want to be the pilot. They both want to be the pilot. They couldn't settle.

Other actors considered? Harrison Ford in the John Goodman role. Interesting. That would have been disorienting. No, I mean, you also just don't want to let Harrison Ford near planes. He's going to start just randomly picking people up. That would have been how Audrey Hepburn died. Also, Deborah Winger makes a lot of sense early on.

A ton of sense. The exact person that Holly Hunter replaces for broadcast news. Yeah, and of course, another person who never, ever did cocaine. Could you imagine? I know these are different versions, different eras. But could you imagine if Deborah Winger and Richard versions, different eras, but could you imagine

if Deborah Winger and Richard Dreyfus made a movie together in the 80s? The poster is like covered in powder. People have to like, what's the movie called? The director is still missing to this day. The poster is a mirror. You could just sniff off of it. All right. So first draft was written by this guy, Jerry Belson, who I think has the sole credit on the movie. Well, we'll talk about it. Okay, he did end up getting the sole credit. There's a weird thing where in all the early marketing materials,

it's a co-credit, and then the final film, it's a single. Diane Thomas, who wrote Romancing the Stone, does a subsequent draft. And as you say, some promotional materials include her name, but only Belson got credit. Tom Stoppard did a pass at it. Yes. Whatever.

We talked about Dianne Nelson, our Mancing the Stone episode, has this, like, insanely tragic life. A story where she dies under horrible circumstances right after Mancing the Stone kind of makes her the toast of the town. And you feel like she would have been one of the major screenwriters of the next four or five decades and She doesn't write jewel of the Nile because Spielberg plucks her for this Suddenly and then like she was the original writer on last crusade in a different version

I should say on Indiana Jones 3 like it was like that was a much different plot It was a haunted house movie right like Spielberg and Lucas basically did the Kasdan with her where they were like It's a drunk driving. I said it's very tragic. It's a haunted house movie. Right. But like Spielberg and Lucas basically did the Casdyn with her. Right. Where they were like... It's a drunk driving accident, very tragic. It's a horrible, horrible story. But yes, I think a lot of her work does end up in the final film. Sure.

But she never got to complete it. Spielberg says no script though could really find the right balance between humor and sensitivity and romance. Some are too funny, some are too sappy. And so it takes him a while to find a screenplay he really likes. In my opinion, he should have kept looking. Uh-huh. And... What I want to make is I just almost feel like

had she lived, she might have been someone who had gotten there eventually. Maybe. I mean, Spielberg's... The interesting thing is that the earlier elements were... scripts were like Spielberg-y. So like he walks through walls and shit. They were like, let's give us a chance for some VFX. Like he's a ghost. And when he finally does make the film, he is going through his divorce from Amy Irving, which he doesn't talk about too much, but clearly was very, very hard on him.

And so on and so forth. Let's also just make it clear, obviously, the MGM version stalls out. He walks away from it for a while. He has a big deal at Universal now. And he comes back to his thing he wants to do. There's a rights acquisition. Suddenly, it becomes like, we're fast tracking this.

I'm getting, I mean, it's interesting because acquisition, suddenly it becomes like we're fast tracking this. I'm getting, I mean it's interesting because he had a weird 80s. Yes. Right? Like not an unsuccessful one, but it's just interesting that he, I mean I guess what am I saying? Of course he had the clout to get this made. It just arrived at such a weird time in his career to be able for a studio to be like,

yeah sure, go go. This one 60 minutes interview I'll keep referencing and I'll make sure we post on the social media But it's in the hook moment, which is fascinating me because it's right before the year It's the last moment before his Schindler Jurassic year, right? Where it's like this guy can kind of never be questioned again, right? Right, and he's showing them this like giant compound That is the Amblin offices this huge house that has like 80 arcade cabinets and multiple floors and just like looks like a luxury villa, right? And it's at Universal and they make it very clear that Universal just built this for him

unprovoked and said, hey, we don't have you under contract. You don't owe us anything. Just feel free to stay here on the lot. If you you want and anytime you want to do a movie with us We'd love to hear it like his power was so great even within a weird 80s. Yeah, that's what they do after ET, right? It's that that moment where they're just like we just want to be closest to him Geographically whenever he has a new idea for a movie We're even coming off of a few that didn't connect that hard right if he goes to them and is like, what if I want to make all ways? They're like, absolutely.

Well, buy the rights. Who do you want? They're still just like... Because I would imagine also they were like, well, that has some commercial potential. There's plane scenes and explosions. Especially coming off of him making two very heavy dramatic movies. You're like, this is like a supernatural romance. Right.

Great. Spielberg says he also couldn't find the right guy to play Pete, and then he watched Stakeout and was kinda like, I guess Dreyfus has aged into the role. He's kind of experiencing a second wind at this point. Holly Hunter, he sees broadcast news and is like, that's definitely the person I want.

I would say that was a pretty good call on his part. That's a good call. Yep. And he didn't wanna make the movie with like, you know, big, glamorous stars. No offense to Richard and Holly. He wanted the more earthy, real type people anyway. Which is a great choice, I think. John Goodman, obviously, he'd seen Roseanne and loved him and Roseanne.

I mean... Had not seen Raising Arizona. Interesting. Or at least had not thought about Raising Arizona. He said only once he starts making the movie, he realizes like, oh realizes like oh right Holly Hunter and John Goodman were already in a movie together Yeah, I mean this is weirdly one of the other pieces of this movie's legacy one of the only reasons it ever comes up in conversation is John Goodman one season of Roseanne gets cast

He's gonna be above the title with his fucking face on the poster in a Spielberg movie He goes for the first table read he like feels so validated fucking face on the poster in a Spielberg movie. He goes for the first table read. He like feels so validated, like I'm being recognized by like the top people in the industry. And he gets to the table read and Spielberg stands up and he was like, I want to introduce my cast, Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfuss. And ladies and gentlemen, I have found my live action Fred Flintstone, John Goodman. And everyone applauds and Goodman's like, oh my god, he only fucking

Called me because he wants to do a Flintstones movie and like Flintstones takes five years to happen Right, but Spielberg had been like what'd it be cool to do live-action Flintstones? Right and Goodman just talks up feeling so demoralized about like he views me as a cartoon character Which this movie uses him in a very earthy way but right It he like was like I didn't want to do Flintstones. I had no interest in ever doing Flintstones. And in that moment when he made everyone applaud, I was like, I guess I can't not do this.

The world is telling me I have to do this. Right. And Spielberg was right. It was very, very cool to do a live action Flintstones. Very cool. What a cool movie. Yeah. So Audrey Hepburn, in the original movie, Lionel Barrymore, it's a male, whatever,

angel, voice of God character, whatever it is. A male half? Male half, right. Who'd he want? Sean Connery. Sean Connery. He's like, oh, that's Sean Connery. Sean Connery's like, I'm under the sea right now.

He's making Red October. Which he jumped onto like three days into filming. And Audrey Hepburn, I mean, when had she even last been in a movie? They all laughed. And like, is basically just like a UNICEF ambassador, right? You know, like. She got paid one million dollars for this movie

and gave that one million dollar check directly to UNICEF. Good for her. Basically said like, I have been soft retired. Yeah, they all laughed, which is 81. So, you know, it's eight years prior. And the gaps had been big. Like she, Robin and Marion is like 78. That's 76.

She does like two movies in the 70s. Like, you know, yeah. She's good. I mean, it's, you know, it's all kind of just like, oh shit, that's Audrey Hepburn. I was gonna say, it is effective stunt casting. It is kind of the thing where he talked about, Connery doesn't wanna do it,

and he was talking to Holly Hunter and was like, who would represent God or an angelic force on screen? A calm benevolent God. Wasn't thinking, right, and then it was just like, oh, duh, Audrey Hepburn. And it it's you know more weight lent to it by it her being her final film Yeah, and it's not like an incredible performance, but it is like I find it to be remarkably effective stunt cast It's her final film, but she did two seasons of Roseanne. She did two seasons. Yeah She played the lunchbox. Yeah, she was on Bobby's world

She played the lunchbox. Yeah, she was on Bobby's World. I'm just trying to think of the most relevant cartoon I could have. Hey, that's a very relevant cartoon. It is fun that forever John Goodman will have been in a movie with Audrey Hepburn. Yeah. It's a strange pairing, but it works. Do you think they like, obviously they don't have scenes together, but like did they like talk at Crafty?

I would hope so, or at the cast party my favorite actor I saw is Audrey Hepburn provided her own wardrobe. Oh sure and they were deeply tracks. Yep. Yep, and they were Silver was very intense on like she has to have this heavenly glow around her, you know And she's brought this delicate white cashmere We can't sully it so crew guys would have to carry her to and from her marks on a stretcher Not cuz she couldn't walk but they were like you can't touch dirt on this In the woods, but you cannot touch the woods until the moment we roll

Like I just say I mean she's 62 in this yeah, is that right? She's that yeah? Yes, and she died the next year, right? Yes, and she had already kind of like, I mean, it's what we were talking about in the Color Purple episode of like, legendary movie stars used to just kind of like slowly retreat. Yeah, she had like a very rare kind of abdominal cancer came on suddenly. The big change he obviously makes is it's no longer

World War II movie, they make it contemporary and they sort of make this interesting pick of like, yeah, fire, you know, a plane. What else uses planes? Right, yeah. I love it. I think it's really interesting. It's very interesting and it's got an odd niche, you know. That's the thing. It's got that like, this is like a very specific subculture.

I just don't see depicted. But also, I'll just gonna call out not to be a bummer. We're watching people try to put L.A. out. It is the week of the tragic kind of incomprehensible situation going on in Los Angeles. And there is something, it was, there was no circumstance in which I could watch this movie, especially the first 30 minutes and have it.

No, it, yeah, sort of jolting. It's jolting, you feel such a catharsis when they're able to put stuff out. You feel the stakes of it so much. For sure. And I think it's such an interesting choice. And it's referred to directly in the movie where they're like, you're not fighting in the war. It's about hotshot ace fighter pilots without a war to fight. Yes. And how it makes Stryphus a little more reckless. And I think it's actually kind of about a generation in a way.

I agree. And I'm like, this... Dreyfus would be disastrous casting if he had to be a military man in any way. Yeah, no, he wouldn't fit that at all. There's something about him being... He can be the elder of a tribe, but not in the military. Yeah. And he, like, right. He can't have that sort of like valor to him. Right. Yeah, that's the problem.

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Quip! Quip. Uh, the big challenge for this movie is filming, like like forest fire sequences is fucking hard. Just ask Cally Lohm. Yeah, they would bring in like fake trees to set on fire. They would sort of, I don't know, like, re-burn areas of the Yellowstone fire. Is it a lot of model work? They photograph some actual forest fires, right?

They go to Montana and shoot actual forest fires. A lot of it is sound stages. And they do have fake trees that they set on fire and stuff. I don't know. The whole thing seems pretty... There's something, despite the fire feeling very real and visceral and scary, there is something very kind of like Golden Age Hollywood to the way he films the planes and theceral and scary. There is something very kind of like golden age Hollywood to the way he films the planes and the cockpits. A level of artificiality that I like.

I couldn't tell how much of it was sets, you know, on gimbals and how much of it's models or whatever, but I liked that quality to it. Yeah, yeah. And it's like a good level of like Spielberg doing Spielberg whizbang without also turning it into too much of a Spielberg stunt show. Yeah. I think the sound design is really crucial for balancing the kind of artificiality with the realness. I agree.

The sound of the propellers, the engines, like when a plane crashes through a fiery tree, like it does register. I mean, as a kid, I was like, I was in awe of it in a kind of terrified way. Before we started recording, I asked the question, is this the movie with the most overhead plane sounds? And I was like, it genuinely might be more than like shit like Top Gun, because something like that has like peaks and valleys. And this, it just feels like you're constantly hearing. DP is Mikkel Solomon, who had shot The Abyss and was recommended to Spielberg by Jim Cameron, but does like backdraft out of this and then basically becomes a director.

He's directed tons of Spielberg television stuff and other TV stuff. He did Band of Brothers, Rome, Alias, you know, a bunch of stuff. But it's funny that he only worked with Spielberg the one time. Yeah. Well, because, I mean, right after this... Because Janusz is about to pop up. Well, Hook is shot by Dean Cundy. Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah. But anyway, always. And yeah, then they make the movie, and we'll get to its release,

but it certainly is forgotten by current generations because it just kind of went over okay and was quickly forgotten. Like, I think, I don't think it was like the hardest movie you ever shot or anything, but like it was like, you know, it was a real movie and they had to figure stuff out and do stuff and then it comes out and it's just everyone's kind of like, meh.

It was, we were entering an era then when like earnest romantic dramas were kind of falling by the wayside. Yeah. It's kind of caught between two eras in a way. And I do think it's like too sappy. And Spielberg caught between like two poles. A little bit.

Yeah. So it doesn't, like it's like, who's this movie for? It is funny to me. I don't know if funny is the right word, but like... This sort of Spielberg, you're not profound, you don't have serious adult thoughts, don't try to do this. You're out of your depth, right? And then he like immediately like cracks the code on Schindler.

And you know, seven years ago, we covered the second half of his career where like no one questions when he announces, I want to make a World War II film, or a film about the Munich Olympics or whatever, you know, seven years ago, we covered the second half of his career where like no one questions when he announces, I want to make a World War II film or film about the Munich Olympics or whatever, you know? Like the growth, like the internal development in him is fascinating. And obviously he still is capable of making like super sappy, kind of sugary, emotional grownup movies like this. But it does feel like for the first half of his career, it's like there are things you were good at and things where you're out of your depth.

And then even though he makes good and bad and great and terrible movies after that point, post-Schindler, it's like you can do anything you want. We trust you to work in any genre, at any size, at any tone. And also like at any visual palette. Like you can make movies look very different. Yeah, it's just, in some ways, I mean, there's a lot of technical skill in this one, but this, right before his kind of King of the Universe thing, this movie does not have a ton of brand identity to it.

No. As a Spielberg movie, it's just kind of like a solid studio release from 1989. Yeah, it almost feels like the answer should be this was directed by John Turtletop or whatever. Is John Turtletop around right now? At this time, I think it's a little early. Like if you had told me that this was like Ed Zwick or something, I'd be like, sure, that tracks.

Zwick-a-rooney. And excuse me, he's, Turtletop is about to poke out of his shell with Think Big in 1990. That's a sequel to Music Pog? You know what it really kind of feels more like, and I know the timing is just a little off because this is the same year that that guy activates in a certain way, it really kind of feels like a Reiner movie. Sure. Right?

Yeah. Like you can just see this being a castle. Carl Reiner, you mean. Yes. I could see Ron Howard making a movie like this around this time. Absolutely. Again, like where it's like Ron Howard made sturdy sort of C plus B minus star featuring movies

that cost like a middle amount of money. Yeah. That could be sappy. Yeah. But not like, you know, so sappy. Well, kind of sappy. Yeah. This movie is that.

Yes. With some Spielbergian flair in the aerial sequences. And even just in, like, the, the, his classic, the blocking, the fucking. Well, the blocking is good. Yeah. Oh, it's, oh, it's also, because I'm, you know, I've been watching all of his movies. I noticed this. It's yet another of his movies, kind of from from his era where Mark Helgenberger is treated terribly

No kidding that mark. There's no other movie that that happens in but Mark really forgets the business She really what that when she shows up you're like, oh mark. It's a pleasure to see you. Oh, he's like no No, no, it's not a pleasure. She's pathetic and no one like don't lead her on You know and no one likes it. Don't lead her on. Um, you know, the movie starts in this, I mean, like, what, Top Gun's just a couple years before. Yeah. And Richard Dreyfuss is the fucking maverick of this, you know, band of Oregonian, you know, fire aerial firefighters, right?

It's like, you're always, your plane's too close to the trees, you crazy man. You always let your fuel tank run out. The, this, the stuff I kinda like about Dreyfus in the role, right, is that... This guy's kinda like King of Shit Mountain, right? Right. Like, the work they do is important. Right. But he feels like he's a rock star.

Well, and she says... And you're like, you have gray hair. Right. And she says in the movie, she's like, she's like, if he was saving actual people, if their actual lives, then maybe I could understand it more. He's largely saving trees, I suppose. The movie frames it more as a conservation effort than a right.

But he does do something that is daring, obviously. He flies these big fucking things and, you know, gets skilled. You have to dump fire material. I don't know. It's kind of cool. And there's a sort of pretty dazzling opening sequence that, you know, is him not dying. You gotta get one sequence of him seeming like he might not make it, but he makes it. And scaring her, she bends a spoon in her hand from stress. Right. And she's kind of like, look, I love you, I want to drink Budweiser out of a champagne

glass with you for the rest of your life. And he's like, yeah, look, you're great, but my heart belongs to my plane. I have some notes about that dress, you know? Please go ahead. I mean, I know, I know, no, I mean't Nothing specific. I just I know it was 1989 but like Because the movie is like Right, there's that vibe too of like did you know Holly hunter could like look hot in a dress and everyone's like, yeah Fucking of course, she just wore the best dress in a history of movies like two years ago

Of course she looks good in a dress. Yeah, of course. She just wore the best dress in the history of movies, like two years ago. So she is kind of like, why don't you just take a teaching job? We can settle down. Like, things can be a little arse-risky. And he's like, ah, but I just love wearing sunglasses. And she says actually, well, okay, then I'm going to go become a pilot myself. I mean, she can already fly, sort of.

But she threatens basically to start doing what he does. And he says, no, you can't do that. And then they do one last run. It takes a while, like you say, Griff, but there's also, it's sort of, you know, opening sequence and then let's get to know Richard and Holly. And hey, Goodman's there having fun. But like, I'm gonna throw out a weird analog, right?

Sure. And then sequence where he dies. Yeah. A movie like Jack Frost, right? Where the whole thing is like this guy's gonna die And then maybe a snowman right and then he's gonna have he's gonna be struggling to connect with the people He he didn't quite love enough. He's gonna go into the fly machine with some snow and snow money. Yes In my memory he's alive for like less than 15 minutes in that movie. There's like one scene where he's like, you know I gotta go on the road. I'm a rockstar. Jazz music. I got a scarf. Yeah, she's a jazz snowman. He plays like white man blues.

Oh, no, it's white man blues, he's a snowman. No whiter man. You see him do like one concert sequence over opening credits. There's gonna be a Fableman's-esque movie in 30 years in which a young Damien Chazelle watches Jack Frost In awe That that movie just does the alternate like family comedy shorthand of like this guy doesn't spend enough time with his family, right? It's like one scene of him being like I gotta go then you see him play a bad fucking concert. And then he's like oh shit the snow! Overopening credits, truly. And then like tour bus flips over.

Whatever the fuck. It's like so quick where you're like I mean this is Michael Keaton I don't care about this guy. You're like going through the motion so much. Yeah make him a snowman already. Right. I like that this movie basically spends gives Dreyfus's character 30 minutes to like provide him the motions so much. Yeah, make him a snowman already. Right, I like that this movie basically spends, gives Dreyfus's character 30 minutes to like provide him the rope to hang himself. Well here's my problem, I don't like him. But this is-

When he dies I'm like, yes! And then he comes back as a ghost and I'm like, boo, finish him to the shadow realm! I ask you, knowing the promise of the premise, does that not kind of work in the movie's favor that you're like this movie is ultimately gonna be about this guy needing to fucking Let go that we know we're not rooting for them to be together That this movie's kind of about him being wrong for her in my opinion It should work in the movies. Yes, and I guess I kind of just get hung up to be clear

I think this movie's kind of like a five or six out of ten like I think it's like a disaster Yeah, but I'm not saying this of like a five or six out of 10. Like I don't think it's like a disaster. Yeah. But like I think- And I'm also not saying this is like a great performance or even necessarily a particularly good performance. But I think it uses his weird status in a way that I think is kind of interesting. Because as you're saying, it's like,

there's the moment you think he's gonna die, he doesn't. And then you as an audience member, knowing what you bought a ticket to, are so frustrated that you're like, this guy won't fucking admit that he loves her. He needs to turn everything into some sort of snarky joke. He needs to play cooler and above it all. Yeah.

I just kind of don't like hanging out with him. Is that he, that the Dreyfus unlikeability maybe carries that characterization too far. I would agree. And I think some of the way that like he talks to her pretty, like not misogynistically exactly, but like something close. And maybe with a more like traditionally charming leading man actor, that would play a little bit better.

This is the era where Paul Newman is really successfully transitioning into being a salty dog, right? Where he's really like loving playing kind of shitheal parts and broken men And you could certainly see if this movie was Newman and Redford, right? Yeah, sure. It would it would probably totally work. Even if the script isn't perfect I think it would totally work as just kind of like a movie movie. I think Newman would be able to play the same kind of like glib arrogance where you're like, dude, get out of your fucking way. But also there is a base level charm from watching Paul Newman and being like, I know this guy

isn't a monster in a movie star coded way. Paul Newman would have been old though. This is the problem. You wouldn't be able to cast cast Holly Hunter. You need to put someone else in there. Yeah, you would have the weird problem of Newman and Redford being in scenes together, but unable to interact Yeah, kind of like a weird arm behind your back thing like like Hoffman and Hackman and runaway jury Yeah, well, that's why they had to give him the urinal scene The urinal scene. Right, exactly. The urinal scene is the diner in heat scene

of Runaway Jury. Yeah, they talk about that they were like halfway through filming and they were like, wait a second, we don't have them in my scenes. Well, what the hell are we thinking? Yeah, it's, I mean, here's the other thing. Dreyfus plays so old in this movie and then you do the math and you're like, he's 38?

Like, how old is Dreyfus when they filmed this? That's a great question because Dreyfus's age is always kind of hard to pin down because he went gray early and all that. But all right, he was born in 47. So he's 40s and early 40s. Yeah, so he's like early... Goodman was like 35 when they filmed it, I think. 36.

Yeah, so Dreyfus's early 40s, which yeah, it doesn't... And Hunter was only what, like 32, I think? Yeah. Which, yeah, doesn't... And Hunter was only what, like 32, I think? Yeah. Good call. Hunter is... Because I guess Redford and Newman would have both been... Hunter's a full 11 years younger than Dreyfus. And Redford and Newman are like 10 years older than Dreyfus.

Right. Sure. And Goodman's kind of in the middle of them. He was born in like the early 50s. Yes. You'd have to cast that part differently. Right, right. But in terms of like actor charisma, you're right that it would work very well.

Yeah. Yeah. So... The Goodman thing is also just destabilizing. I mean, my mental movie is the most extreme version of that and is on me, but also, like as you said, it's only one year into Roseanne and yet this movie knows that America loves this guy so fucking much that his face is on the post.

It acts as if everyone is like deeply familiar with him. But like, I think Goodman is... He's gonna be more important than being the supportive friend. He's certainly gonna like, exceed being the Harry Connick Jr. in the Independence Day of this triangle. Right, right. It's funny because it's like, Goodman is... obviously good in the movie. Yeah.

Because he's rarely bad. And at this point. He's one of our finest screen actors. But especially at this point, he can't really miss. And of course, Goodman made movies like the Babe Ruth movie that did miss. We were like, John Goodman is Babe Ruth. That's like the easiest shit in the world. It's like, yeah, but the movie stinks.

But it's not like Goodman's bad in any of these things. Goodman's always good. Is it a mistake to have someone who's almost too good? There's that thing where like I remember watching Revenge of the Nerds for the first time on Comedy Central and John Goodman pops up like six minutes in and I was like, oh my God, cracking my knuckles, John Goodman movie. And then the movie proceeds and you're like, oh, this must have been before he got famous. I'm ready for John Goodman to be all over this movie, but the movie doesn't

understand what it has yet. Yeah, exactly. But always in the way it is sold, clearly knew they had something. And yet the part is like too small for him. He is like too compelling. It's a problem almost, right? He's overheating the movie in a weird, like not without trying to. Basically is just like a sounding board for the other characters.

And to have him in this supporting friend instructor role, and to have the new shiny guy who is supposed to sweep all of us off of our feet, along with Holly Hunter, to have him be like pretty inert. He's okay. Yeah, he's fine. But it's not like, you know, I'm trying to think of like someone who walks on screen and you're like, Jesus Christ, like, those people do I mean, you know, Brad Pitt and Thelma Louise or something. Sure. And but to have like then good and you're like, can we just go back to Goodman? That's the wild thing is watching this, it almost feels like the movie is framing him to be a Baxter.

Right. And when I get to the point where I'm like, oh wait, no, this movie's working towards them ending up together? That's what we're supposed to be rooting for? It feels wrong. Like, it feels incorrect. Yeah, yeah, I agree. The calculation is off or something. And I'm like so much more into even removing

my projection of it leading in a romantic direction, Goodman, like, reconnecting with her and being like, you have to come back to the world of the living. Like, I'm like, if you almost just remove the element of her falling in love with someone else, and it is just like the best friend and the lover of this dead guy working through their grief as his ghost kind of hovers around,

that also maybe works a little better. Yeah. Yeah. There was the part of this all coming from a movie that Dreyfus and Spielberg have watched 37 times and, like, live so large in their head that I don't think they were ever gonna consider reworking... the story that much. No. Whatever. I mean...

It's just sort of the quandary of of like, it's Steven Spielberg. He can get anyone. So of course, Jon Grubin wants to do it. Yes, Jon Grubin will eventually be crestfallen that he thinks Spielberg just sees him as a big old, you know, guy in an orange and black... He just wants him eating Brontosaurus eggs. But you're not going to say no to Spielberg. So Spielberg can get kind of an overheated cast.

And I think Spielberg often wisely avoids that problem. And has guys in his movie where you're like, well, that's a great actor who I don't know as well. And like Spielberg's picked well, you know, for these small roles. His casting is fascinating in that he like, I'm just off the top of my head, like watching Minority Report and you're like, dude, I was literally about to bring up Minority Report. Yeah. Like, like Catherine Morris. Okay. that's Francis O'Connor in AI. Timbaland Nelson.

Minority Report's a great example. It's like you got Cruz. So you don't need anyone else, right? Max Fonsido, he wants, you know, this like guy he respects. He was playing himself in that movie. He was doing that. True. Colin Farrell, they paid $2.5 million. This is a hot young thing. And Spielberg's like, I get it. He was doing that. True. Pretty crying. Colin Farrell, they paid him $2.5 million to see the hot cross. This is a hot young thing. And Spielberg's like, I get it. But then everyone else, it's like Neil McDonough, perfect.

Peter Stormare. Peter Stormare, perfect. But then also guys like Eric Gross and Daniel London, where it's just like, these are not guys who necessarily, like you could get a bigger person for that role, right? But like they're perfect. No, he's usually really good at that and I also think he's usually good at it not being Destabilizing like he has such a big picture notion that he's like if you're putting an overqualified person in a small role

It has to be like a small high-impact role You know it has to be like one scene in which a surprisingly big person shows up, right? But you understand why you cast Audrey Hepburn in that way. Because for those five minutes, the movie is all... Well, they didn't have the budget for any White Cashmere, so they were like, well, Audrey has some that she'll bring. She fortunately has a briefcase filled wardrobe. She opened the door to her room and it was all sweaters.

I'm watching this and like the moment when Dreyfus explodes... And he do blow up. And I think that set piece is very effective before he blows up. And the way he blows up is really, it's great because it's just like, it's not overplayed. It's just this moment where suddenly Dreyfus realizes like, oh, I'm for real fucked. And then that's that.

And he fucked himself saving Goodman's life. Yeah, yeah, he did the right kind of daring do. Right, and he like suddenly just completely explodes and they cut to Goodman's life. Yeah, yeah, he did the right kind of daring do. Right, and he like suddenly just completely explodes, and they cut to Goodman pushing his face against the glass of his cockpit, reacting to having just seen this guy die. And that's why you cast Goodman. And this is what I'm saying.

Like, there's the automatic Goodman warmth that's just like a fucking... That guy can heat a house. Totally, right? It's a hearth. And the goofy sidekick is supposed to die Totally not the big hero There's like a shock in his face where he's like, but that was not what was supposed to happen That part of it is is fun He's good at all that shit and setting up and like this is the warm cuddly guy who you don't want to see dying Whatever, but then it is like moments like that moments like him trying to sort of shake Holly Hunter back into reality

It's almost like as beloved as he was, people didn't realize how much depth he had. Yeah. Where you're like, oh, Goodman can actually sell any emotion you want. He's not just a fun guy. Clocking into work at the rock factory. Sliding down, tails, lunch pail that's made out of stones. All those emotions. Being near a bird that says it's a living.

So that sequence is cool. Ordering ribs that are too big and they destabilize you. All those emotions. Being near a bird that says it's a living. So that sequence is cool. Ordering ribs that are too big and they destabilize you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Dreyfus Dying is very not Yabba Dabba Do. We could say that. It's a Yabba Dabba Don't. It's pretty Yabba Dabba Dire.

And I like cutting right to the forest and he's just walking through there and then tenet. Whistling. All that Audrey has for him is a word. I do love that. Which is such a stupid layered joke that I'm only making because of Richard Flossett. That Hap also plays the guy in Tenet who says tenet. Decade of dreams. I just love Donovan's just sitting there in his armchair.

And like 20 years later, Nolan's like, hey, can you say Tenet in my movie Tenet? It's like, I've been waiting for this phone call. I'm gonna put forward, is Donovan another when's he bad guy? Has he ever been bad in anything? I don't know that I've seen every Martin Donovan movie, but what I love about Martin Donovan is that he's in like the Hal Hartley movies, right?

Like, you know, you watch early Donovan you're like fuck this guy rocks, you know And then he's great and like Portrait of a Lady Older character actor Martin Donovan Range of what he's been asked to do and he kind of always fucking nails it inherent vice. Oh, yeah. Love that. Yeah So he bow up and Audrey's there and she's sort of like, you're dead but you are here to sort of guide, I guess. You can't really talk to people. But you can kind of like, kind of really throw a vibe.

Well, she's like, you'll become a spiritist, you'll become inspiration. Well, she's like you'll become a spiritist. You'll become inspiration Yes, the divine breath. Yeah, and a cleverness a clever like sort of quiet thing that they do is like time has just moved on Yeah, because I think this movie would stink really hard if it's like the day after and he's just like sitting at his funeral Right, like in Holly hundred just crying and there's even an eleg to, I mean, she says like five months and he goes, it's been five months already and she's like, wait, sorry, it's six months now. Wait, I said that the romantic drama was on the wane, but actually Ghost was about a year away. Yeah, Ghost is the year after this, right? It's 90 or 91?

Ghost is 90. And that really digs into the moments after the death in a way that this movie kind of skips past which Yeah, ghost is a more effective movie than this movie ghost is also just like kind of stupid, but ghost rocks Has rocks in his brains, but also ghost is like it's like trying to be every type of movie simultaneously It is something like kind of work of like thriller comedy romance drama. Yeah, it's what a weird movie It's the movie you knew his sucker brother was gonna direct something, you know It also just has lots of subway, which is why I prefer goes to all ways I just did my annual rewatch of all three naked-gun movies pretty good

Yeah, the first second and third funniest movies ever made I mean, yeah, and and not right. And Jim Abraham's died, sadly, very recently. That's true. Very shortly after we in an episode talked about is there any way we actually could cover their combined works. It is just so bizarre the kind of like... It's surreal. ...trifurcation that happens between the three of them.

And then all three of them, like, the one who who directs ghosts and gets fucking like a best picture nomination makes One of the highest grossing films then just sort of like slows down to a crawl makes two more movies over ten years Never does it again. Yeah, Jim Iberhenz close way the fuck down and the one you want to stop working won't stop making Exactly. Yeah. Yeah So six months have elapsed so because You know Dorinda sort of moving past his death a little bit, she's at the flight school now. John Goodman took the job that Pete was supposed to take, Dreyfus was supposed to take.

And who's at this flight school but Ted Baker played by Brad Johnson. Oh, this guy's poppin'. Who we encountered briefly played by Brad Johnson. Oh, this guy's popping. Who we encountered briefly earlier. We did. Right, he sees them dancing. Who's kind of truly just a shitty Pete, like where it's like he's also a bit of a hotshot, and he's also kind of like a little too big

for his britches in the plane or whatever, but like none of that reads. No, also. Like people are telling us that, but I don't get it from that guy at all. No. He just kind of feels like an empty This is the part of him that makes him feel like a Baxter where you're just like there's something just a little blank about this

guy You know and like he's pretty fucking blank the selling of him in the media and the lead-up to this movie is like you're Not gonna believe how sexy this guy is and it's like he is incredibly handsome Yeah, you know yeah, and he's like he is incredibly handsome. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And he's like charming enough. He like holds the camera enough, but there's not like an electric charge there. And here's the thing, it just kind of hit me now,

is I don't buy Dorinda being attracted to him. No, neither do I. No, you know why? Outside of it, just sort of like, eh, I might as well move on. Like he's hot, she's like, yeah, he's beautiful. Yeah, he's good looking. But I don't think she'd be attracted to his personality No, and here's another reason why she wouldn't the first 30 minutes of the movie show her staying with

Richard Dreyfus who looks like Richard Dreyfus and is the most Man in the world. So I'm like, okay, she has very specific taste in men I'm not saying she's only gonna fall for someone else who fits the Richard Dreyfuss type, but if you're that hung up on Richard Dreyfuss, I don't think your panties drop for fucking Brad Johnston. No, exactly. I think you're like, that guy's kind of boring. You might fuck him, but I don't think you're gonna be like, this is my next great love affair. Right. Yeah, she's clearly interested in difficult men.

Now here's the other thing. Yeah, she's clearly interested in difficult men. Now here's the other thing. The rest of the movie is Dreyfus yelling very hard at people who can't hear him to kind of try to influence them. And a kind of boring romantic drama playing out between Hunter and Johnson. Goodman kind of vanishes from the movie, which is like a real problem. To my great disappointment.

Like it's like, he should, there should be more space for him, there's less. I'm kind of into the Dreyfus yelling stuff just because it's sort of fun that the movie is cucking him. That it's like making Dreyfus... I get your read. Yeah, right. But for me, it's just like the moment where I go like, oh, it's not a secret masterpiece is when the romance becomes the central thing.

Right. And I do feel like the movie just kind of runs out of steam. It does. And he's not really interested in staging really more than one or two romantic scenes. You know, like there's the big dinner thing, and then he's like, okay, like, there's a little impediment to this relationship, but I'm not really gonna spend much more time on that. You know? And I think that's a problem, because we need to fall in love with this guy, and we don't.

We do, and... would a better actor, who's a good actor for this role? Like who fits? Is there someone who fits? I think Tim Robbins would have been fun. Tim Robbins. He was kind of cute in Bull Durham around then, you know? Yeah, I mean that's sort of the vibe you want is a guy who's a little bit of a doofus, but in a way that is like bizarrely compelling.

Yeah. I mean, so this is the role that he wanted Cruz for originally, is that right? But in the earlier MGM version, right? Before Cruz became mega-mega. Look, it's not in the dossier, but according to one book, yes, Cruz was considered for that role.

I mean, Cruz is obviously way too famous now, but right in the early 80s, you could, I guess, see it, although he'd be really young in the early 80s. But he was hot, I mean, Cruise is obviously way too famous now, but right in the early 80s. You could, I guess, see it, although he'd be really young in the early 80s. But he was hot. I mean... Yeah, I do think you're onto something that he needs to be funny. He can't just be hot. Yeah, he needs to have a personality. It's a really strange choice to cast, like, a stone-cold Marlboro man hunk.

Yes. And I know it's supposed to be offset the dry dry facet at all, but like it's just, he's too alien in the world of the movie that like someone like Tim Robbins or someone shaggy like that could, who also has an appeal, a youthful appeal I guess at that time, like that works so much better. Well even, it's complete opposite direction,

but the reason I keep going back to the Newman Redford idea in my mind is like Redford's obviously one of the most beautiful men in the history of movies but also is just like a prick like there is that like difficult sort of thorny nature to him that like makes him more complicated yeah which right you need the guy to be like right goofier or more serious yes something you need you need a you need a strong personality. Yes, thank you. You need a strong personality.

And I also think you maybe need something more dynamic in the plane sequences because the plane sequences get a little samey. And there's the sort of big water landing at the end of the movie is like the big sort of new set piece idea, right? And it's kind of effective, but right? Don't you feel like after the first part of the movie where the plane stuff is kind of arresting,

you're sort of like, well, I'm kind of used to the plane stuff at this point. As a kid, you know, because when you're a kid, like a two hour movie feels like it's six hours long in kind of a cool way. Like you're really in it for a long time. I remembered like the buildup to Holly Hunter jumping in the plane and flying off on her own

to be much bigger. Watching it now, I was like, oh, she kind of just decides to do it and then it happens and then she crashes and then she's fine. I wanted more of occasion. Like what is this particular fire? Why is it so bad? Like there's a slightness to this movie.

There is. And maybe that's what did it in is like Spielberg's kind of like, well, I'm making kind of more of a regular person movie and like, it's not a big epic and it's in between two giant projects of mine, right? I want it to be smaller and it just kind of feels smaller. Yeah, I think that's what I kind of like about it, is it's the first time he's able to really try that,

you know? Yeah. Yes. I guess, yeah, like what's... to really try that, you know? Yeah. Uh, yes. Um, I guess, yeah, like what's... Yeah, there really isn't... I mean, honestly, ET is the closest example before this of him making a smaller scale movie. And he always calls ET like a tiny epic.

Like, because ET really is... I mean, that's the miracle of ET. Right, exactly. It takes place in a suburban house. Yeah, and like it's mostly just about kids, but obviously ET also does have like a spaceship and an alien as visual effects and flying and all this stuff. Right, but it's in service of a very small intimate story.

It's about putting a little alien in a wig. That's what that movie's about. God, he looks so good. What if that's our bit on that episode? Rewatching that movie... Is ET hot when he's in the wig? Luga! Luga! Re-watching that movie, I was like, I cannot believe how funny this visual is. It is astounding. It is astounding. And it's so cute and it's, I just like.

You know what's crazy? And look, we'll have devoted a full episode to it. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. At this point that you'll all have listened to is probably 20 hours long. It's the greatest movie ever made it is ET in the fucking bed sheet dressed as a ghost is almost as funny as Like a lady, it's so good But just the weird et walk under a blanket and knowing that the whole time drew Barrymore thought it was real Yeah, you know movie rules E.T. The extraterrestrial

It's good. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah always on the other hand is just okay Yeah, are there other things in always we need to talk about plot? I truly just kind of want to point out on on Apple I don't know if this is on the Blu-ray if this is on other streaming versions of it right now but if you watch the Apple TV version of Always, at the end of the credits, the very end, after the Amblin logo and such, in what is clearly a more modern font,

this is the final image on screen, just very dire black, white text, quote, "'Caution' in haaling of helium from balloons is dangerous, comma, and can cause serious injury or death, period, end quote. Like a modern content warning as if it was Disney Plus being like, don't smoke cigars. So the impressionable kids of today who no doubt have watched always all through the end credits and were like, okay, now we're going to do the thing from with the helium. They see John Goodman talking in a squeaky voice and they're like, this is going to become

a fucking TikTok trend if we don't warn children. You haven't, it already is, alwaysing. I've done that. I mean, you guys have done that, right? Everyone's done the old, the old. I tried it once and it didn't work. And I was embarrassed because it was, I was the only one it didn't work for. Can I say something?

Go ahead. Real helium voice, not done in post, but really actually sucking helium and saying something serious afterwards? Almost as funny as ET dressed up as the lady. There's a really... I believe it. It kind of always works for me. Always. Um, there's a, um, this is so obscure, but I'll just say it. In the early 90s or the, there was like a BBC, there was a rule that the, uh, the Irish Republican party, sorry, the Irish Republican army, uh, and then, and thus Sinn Fein its

political wing could not be like shown on the BBC. Because like the crown, I guess, you know, because Britain's state, it is Britain's state, whatever. They were like, that is an enemy of the state. We cannot. So like, they would have to have weird workarounds where like a shadowy person, you know, would be like, and this is what Gerry Adams said, would like recite his words, right? Like they couldn't, and it was like this absurd kind of illustration of like how Britain did

not know how to deal with Irish independence and all this stuff, right? And in the day to day, Chris Morris is brilliant. Have you ever heard of the day to day? I have, I've never seen it, but I know it. Satire of news from the early nineties. Steve Coogan does Jerry Adams and they're like, to combat the IRA, Jerry Adams must take a hit of helium before he says, you know, anything on camera.

And it's just Coogan taking a hit of the helium, you know, Shin fan is a legitimate political party and like in the helium voice. And it's so fucking funny. And it's a funny piece of satire. And I always think about that. I have bad news. What's that?

Hold on. What is happening? As featured on the recent blank check, sub stack holiday gift guide, I purchased a new toy replica of of Willem Dafoe's pumpkin bomb From the same Remy spider-man movies. Yes, but the thing that activates it is if you roll it I accidentally hit it with my finger and it does a countdown and then has a fake default You're saying that you pulled a bit of a Denzel you rolled it

You were feeling alright and then you were like, I'm gonna roll it. I'm realizing now for the first time this might be my version of you giving David the slinky that I have a thing on the desk that at very little prompting can suddenly make a ridiculous series of noises. Yeah, and maybe we move it. Yeah, to my lap.

So, yeah, is there... Dreyfus is yelling at folks. Like, what do you want me to say? I was gonna bring up that... Although maybe it's not worth it because it's depressing. If you look at what Holly Hunter's career was after this... I wanna do Holly Hunter's career rundown.

It gets depressing fast. Yes. In a way that it was like, oh, she was an actress who they were like, you're how old, you're 40. Okay, goodbye. I want to talk through this, okay? Thank you for bringing this up. First of all, can you gentlemen guess what Holly Hunter's last theatrically released

film was? Was it Bad Members? No, well, Incredibles. Correct. Right. Which was seven years ago. 2018. She's not appeared in a movie in seven years.

She's done lots of television. She's done a lot of TV. She's done a lot of TV and has reprised the voice of Helen Parr in like seven different video games. Has she done TV recently? She did her work on Succession. That was great, but that ended in 2019. Oh, duh.

Right, of course. She did two episodes of the Comey rule in 2020 She did mr. Mayor the weird ill-begotten Head which was a nice idea in theory, but didn't quite right nobody really 2018. She did here and now which was that Alan Ball? Here and now is the yeah, it was the own ball thing. Yeah, but it's like Incredibles 2 in 2018 is her last theatrically released movie 2017 song to song which is obviously a strange case, but then big snick She's in a bizarre movie with Carrie coon Is it called strange weather or yes breakable you it's called strange weather and it's about a woman who's grieving her son

Who wants to get revenge on the person who stole her son's idea for a hot dog business. Legitimately, that's what that movie's about. That, I will agree with you, that does sound bizarre. It's not good. But my realization watching this of like, does any movie with Holly Hunter in this era immediately gain a star and a half from it, right? Right. Her first film's The Burning.

Then like, Uncredited Voice and Blood Simple. Yes. Swingship, which she covered and she is incredible She's awesome in three shift where you're just a meat like who the fuck is this right raising, Arizona obviously she is Incredible in that yes end of the line a film my father worked on oh, I don't that I've seen this movie You would actually probably like it's a fucking railroad movie with Kevin Bacon Holly Hunter Great Brimley and Mary Steenburgen. What? And leave on hell from the band? I've not seen this before.

Yeah. Then after that, broadcast news. Yeah. Yeah. Miss Firecracker. Yeah. 1989 is something called Animal Behavior. Karen Allen, Armand Asante, Josh Mistel, and Holly Hunter are the four names on the

poster. The big four. The big four. And then Always 89, right? Mm-hmm. 91 Once Around, I don't know what that is. Once Around is a Lassie Halston movie. Starring?

Richard Dreyfuss. Dicky Dreyfuss. About a woman who falls for and eventually marries an overbearing older man who proceeds to rub her family the wrong way. I don't know who played that role, the older man. Yeah, I can't imagine. 93, she wins best actress for the piano, the same year she gets a supporting actress nomination

for the firm. And credit, great, great credit to Jane Campion for seeing some of those remarkable performances that could not be more different from what the piano asks her to play and being like, oh, no, there's something in there. She is the least obvious casting choice in the world for that film. Fascinating. And whereas the firm is very like up her alley and she's wonderful.

It's an interesting, because she is not someone I think of as being chameleonic at all. You hire her for the Holly Hunter thing. Yes, exactly. There is a wide range of how the Holly Hunter thing can be applied and within that she can hit any emotion you want.

But she's not someone who transforms or disappears. No. And part of that is probably just how distant of her voice is. Yeah, just the voice and she's got a particular physical, you know. You take that away in the piano and suddenly it like frees her up in this way that she, it's just, we talked about it for a full episode, but you're like, it is so bizarre. That's her only Oscar win and there was no other performance in her career like that. But then you're like still on this good fucking run of copycat, home for the holidays, Crash, I would say the moment

where it starts to go a little pear-shaped, another film we've covered, a life less ordinary. Right, but Crash is getting her in trouble. As much as I like that movie. Masterpiece. It's a fascinating movie, but that movie at the time, people are like, you are insane for being in this film. It pushes her too far into like esoteric, yeah. Right, to be clear. It's a right a fascinating movie, but that movie at the time people are like you are insane for being in this film

It pushes her too far into like esoteric. Yeah When was Living Out Loud? Did you say that one? That is the following year 98 She there was like she had like some mild awards buzz for that and it never materialized so to Queen Latifah I believe Yes, but then that was kind of it in terms of that for a long time. I feel like she enters this phase basically starting at that point, which has now continued for like 25 years plus, where every couple of years she will pop up again and people will be like, oh right, Holly Hunter.

Holly Hunter is one of her best living actors. And then immediately forget her again. It was like she got the 13 nomination and then many years later. Right, fucking Holly Hunter, we should use this. and then like the big sec didn't quite materialize but almost these sort of like and a lot of is just like a lot of movies that kind of like Don't totally exist is there's not a movie where she drinks piss and then gets blown up. What is happening? I have some terrible news for you. Oh, there is one. There's one. Is that what living out loud is about in her defense? She thought it was granny's people. Can we discuss something about Holly Hunter

that we think haven't discussed? Maybe we have, I can't remember. Okay. She was the original voice of Chicken Little, right? In this sort of original formulation of Chicken, of Mark Dindal's Chicken Little? I'm so excited about where this episode's going. You just watched Chicken Little for the first time,

is that correct? I wouldn't say just, but I would say like, so you know, I'm at the mercy of Disney plus's carousel sometimes where like I'm trying to show my daughter X movie and she'll see a picture of Y movie. And she sees a picture of a cute little chicken with glasses wearing a shirt. And she points at it and goes, I want that.

And I was like, you know what? I don't think I ever saw Chicken Little. How bad could it be? Mark Dindal, director of the Emperor's New Group. I put it on on what the fuck happened Not just dog shit. Yeah is a movie. Yeah, which it is. Yes Insanely terrible looking. Yeah, everything about it's embarrassing Everything about it's bad. She doesn't love it to be clear either

Good, I mean I am so happy. I love I love kid logic. She didn't really like it We only watched it seven times pretty much. I have terrible news. My knee just hit the desk. That thing has got to go. Okay, I'm going to push back. We have to let the laugh play out. David? Yes? Time for a quince check-in. I know you love your quince. I do, I love quince. I, you know, wear all these nice things from quince now. Tell me what you've been rocking lately. I cashier sweaters. On you? I never could have believed such a thing. I have some nice shirts from them that are really soft. Wow. And look good. Because you usually wear those like very hard, rigid wood shirts.

And I feel like I've sensed a new ease, a lightness in your steps since switching over to Quince. Absolutely. Because, you know, with Quince, it's high-end versatile stuff, but it's affordable. Yeah. You can get all these luxury essentials that sync with your vibe and your wallet.

Sure. I mean, it sounds like you're talking around the best part. What I call the best part, that all Quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with Top Factories, Quince cuts the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. Yeah, so Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, responsible manufacturing practices on top of that.

They got those nice premium fabrics and finishes. And I keep keep on swinging back to Quince. I got to be honest. You've been another scoop. Yeah. Of those sweaters. I might get a pair of pants.

Yeah, I noticed you've been calling up Quince and saying, give me another scoop of pants. And they go, that's not how our service works. No, what you should do is indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quince.com slash check for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash check

to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash check. There we go. 25 day returns, quints.com slash check. There we go. Chicken Little only makes sense through the prism of its moment, right? Which is they're losing Pixar. That is the moment where like Eisner had gotten cocky

and been like, Pixar is gonna have a flop and Once they have one movie fail will have them over the barrel in terms of renegotiations And then they kept succeeding and they hated Eisner so much that they were like we are going anywhere else Mm-hmm, and that's sort of Eisner's last bid before they push him out largely because of him fucking up the Pixar deal Right and that movie is them being like we need to figure out how to make our own Pixar in-house. Right. And yes, it was originally supposed to be Holly Hunter with an entirely different premise. I almost want to say a different design style. Probably.

I think it was Dindal from the beginning, but Emperor's New Groove is obviously like a very serious sort of like My- epic that wasn't working and then they bring in Mark Dindal and he's like what if it's all funny bits? And reworks the movie in one year and does this like a mage and salvage job? Holly Hunter, Chicken Little had a big bow on her hair. Right. They like, they made Dindal Dindal his own movie. Stop using the word Dindal. And they just kept being like I don't know more aliens. Who's on sitcoms right now?

It's such a weird movie because it's like, he thinks this guy is falling and then he's humiliated. Ben Richard, do you know what the plot of Disney's Chicken Little is? I mean, I know the story of Chicken Little. Okay. Right. No. He thinks this guy is falling,

he runs for everyone to save their lives, he causes all this chaos and it turns out that like, everyone thinks that potentially just like a tree branch landed on his head and he was just freaking out. Right, or a pebble or whatever. Then, 45 minutes of the movie is him trying to join the baseball team to impress his widowed chicken father played by Gary Marshall.

Yes. While like original Bear Naked Ladies song play. It's the arrow part, and he's like, we can't do musicals. My wife, Ford was like, is this Bear Naked Ladies? And I was like, it can't be. One little miss. And Jessica Lange got an Oscar nomination for this?

For Chicken Little. For writing. There is an original bare naked ladies song. There's a whole sequence that's like just them playing baseball for ages. You haven't mentioned that the chicken is Zach Braff. Zach Braff is the chicken. Peek Scrub, Zach Braff is the chicken. So you're watching this and you're like, where the fuck is this all going? The hook to the Disney Chicken Little

is that Chicken Little was right about the sky falling. What he witnessed was a malfunctioning of one of the video screens that aliens have placed in the sky to obfuscate the fact that they're getting ready to invade us. And Chicken Little is the only one who's aware that there's an alien invasion happening and no one believes him.

As I'm listening to this, I'm just picturing an empty desert and just like wind blowing. It's one of those movies, like Twin Peaks, like ominous whooshing. It's one of those movies where you're like, God, this is interminable. And it's like 70 minutes long.

Yes. It's so short. It sucks. But yeah, I feel like there are, you can see online the animation tests of Holly Hunter as Chicken Little. That I would like to see. I mean, I'm sure that was good. But we need to see more of her. We need like another big movie role or something because she's like this movie is a lot of her stuff is a reminder, but watching this movie, I was like, I think that when she's really on, she's my favorite actress.

I had the same thought. Yeah. I had the same thought. I was like, unquestionably, she's in my Hall of Fame 10. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Easily. Yes. Of course. Yeah. Look, the first time I watched this movie,

I was like, I love this performance so much, I would like nominate for an Oscar, like even though the movie doesn't totally work for me. And like on rewatch, I think I got grumpier that it sort of doesn't do enough with her, that she is kind of the girl. Like as much as they try to kind of get beyond that, like in the second half of the movie,

she's always kind of defined by the boys she's, you know, quote unquote, falling for or resisting or whatever. And worried about and yeah. I think that's the other part of it is like, she has so much energy on screen. And even if with Richard Dreyfuss, a lot of that is negative energy,

when the second half of the movie asks her to just go gaga for Brad Johnson, you're just like, this makes her feel small. Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. Like why is she becoming reactive to someone who's like sturdy? Versus like Dreyfus is at least

conjuring emotion even if the emotion is I want to strangle this man right you're like you can't be passive about him yeah exactly and it's like I'll just settle down with some boring guy you know and I don't know it's just it's a bad match and it's weird that like I guess I don't know I mean maybe they did see it when filming and we're like well it's too late now like we have this marble contract and we can't get out of it but I don't know but I mean, maybe they did see it when filming and we were like, well, it's too late now. Like we have this Marlboro contract and we can't get out of it. But I don't know. But he did. Yeah. But what if it is that Marlboro is like, this is the girl. Like, you know, like the fucking actual Marlboro man comes in and Spielberg's like, I can't argue with big tobacco.

Is it Flight of the Intruders? Sure. That's a movie. That's like the only other Flight of the Intruder with Danny Glover and Willem Dafoe and Brad Johnson. Right, I was going to say. It's like the one movie... The John Milius movie. Where his name is above the title.

And I feel like it was the one time after this that they were like... Even though that wasn't a hit, I guess Spielberg appointed him. It makes sense as a guy that Milius would be like, I love this guy. Like, he's American as hell. Even that name sounds made up. Every time I say it, I feel like I'm saying the wrong name. Right, yeah. That I'm correcting it to something more basic.

But it is like, right, he does that two years after this. And then he's basically immediately like a TV direct to video guy. It's one of Spielberg's strangest bits of casting. It's definitely one of his biggest misfires, because as you say, Griff, like a Ty Sheridan or a Jeremy Irvine, I'm like, you know, those are guys who have been good in movies. Like, Ty Sheridan obviously starting with Tree of Life

or whatever. Like, Jeremy Irvine, I don't think... I think Jeremy Irvine is like one of the worst actors who works. I really apologize to him if he like ever hears me say that. Because I feel bad saying it because I'm sure he's fine. Let me just say Blincheck Decade of Dreams, right? There's a part in which we still just feel like this show is only listened to by the people on our Reddit. And increasingly we will find out people are listeners

and immediately David and I do the calculus of what is the worst thing we've ever said about that person on the show? You need that Tina Fey, I don't think so honey, like you're too famous to be saying... Just try not to take stray shots of people who aren't the explicit subject of the episode. And most people who we say something negative about, I've always said we will also say something positive about in the grand balance of the thing because there's very few people we holistically disregard. I agree with you that I think Jeremy Irvine

is maybe the most boring actor in life. But if you want to offset that, I think unfortunately you've just kicked open the door. I am gonna come on and do a Stonewall episode with you guys. Kidding, never. I'm also, like they're finally making another Silent Hill movie. Kristoff Gans, who made the first movie,

which I think is like kind of a masterpiece. He's coming back? Yeah. Because he didn't do the... He didn't do the like truly excruciating sequel, which I think is like kind of a masterpiece. He's coming back? Yeah. Because he didn't do the... He didn't do the like truly excrucible sequel, which is one of those... Presurgence, redemption, retribution. It might be retribution.

Reawakening. I truly have to look it up. Revelation. Which is one of those like if we do it on Patreon one day, which hey, if there's a third one, we probably could. It's one of those, after the first movie, we're like, that was pretty, that was awesome. Like, this is it. And then you keep the second movie in one minute and you're like, we've made a huge

mistake. Like, what the fuck is going on? It's Crock-Dell-Dundee, too. Yes. Yeah. But fucking Jeremy Irvine's the star. And I'm like, God damn it. Like, we couldn't get something better.

Anyway. Well, look, this is what it boils down to, right? Like, you saying people with personality, Dreyfus is such a good example of like, what an unlikely movie star. In a way that like, removed from context, I think it's just kind of confounding to people where you're like, why was this guy so big and so celebrated?

And it was like, he was cast very well a couple times in seismic movies where he was kind of kept on rails and what you needed was someone coming in with a lot of personality, right? Yes. Like he is not an obvious movie star, but like those parts demanded someone with a weird energy that does just kind of make you lean in. The complete unknown like freak show thing, right? And I think sometimes in this like corridor of like when Spielberg falls into the boring

boy problem, it's that he picks guys who like on a surface level are like, this guy seems like a movie star. He's got good shoulders and a good jaw and a healthy voice and he works well on camera, but there is just kind of a blandness. And sometimes it is like someone like Ty Sheridan who can really come alive in smaller projects, but when you put them in the machinery of that kind of thing, they can't figure out how to build a character

in that structure, especially when the character on paper is just kind of like the hero or the cute guy, you know? And it's why like Shia, it did feel like was him sort of finding a new Dreyfus. Where he's like, this guy isn't a normal leading man. There's something kind of annoying and manic about him. They both are people who seemingly have severe mental illness that can manifest in a way that is sometimes electrifying on screen.

But it does feel like he specifically has a problem whenever he's trying to cast quote unquote like a new movie star, like a new matinee idol. And the Labelle thing beyond him being a good pick is like, well, he's casting someone to play him. He's a weird, complicated character. He's not looking for someone to just be handsome and charming. Right. And like you can only find, and he didn't even find him, one Harrison Ford every fucking

fifty years. With established movie stars, he can do it. He's very good at seeing someone do something while another movie. I know exactly what project to give that person. But he wouldn't be good at minting Harrison Ford. No. Weirdly. Yeah, it's sort of funny.

Weirdly kind of, right? Because he's even taking Dreyfus from... You could argue he minted Harrison Ford. In that Star Wars obviously mints Harrison Ford, but there's a world, I guess, where it's like, he was just Han Solo and no one could ever figure out what to do with the guy. And it's like Spielberg using him correctly

is what makes Harrison Ford Harrison Ford. I think I would argue he is very good at solidifying people. Sure. Right? Like he can't kind of like build someone from scratch or like locate it in a vacuum. But he can sort of go like, you know what they should do? They should go 20 degrees off from what they're doing right now and placed into this context they might come alive and expand. Right. They should go 20 degrees off from what they're doing right now and placed into this context,

they might come alive and expand. And he's done that a lot where he's helped movie stars unlock new chambers. The lowest Smith before minority report is not the lowest Smith after minority report. Right now, that's like guaranteed $20 million opening because people saw. Yeah, because she's going to be the new king. Yeah. Actually, wait, that sounds great. Always, I'm just reading from the dossier's sort of release part.

It opens Christmas season 1989. Gross is just 3.7 million on a thousand plus screens. So it has legs because it ends up at 43. I think it's kind of DOA in like a... What did it cost? 30. Yeah. So, you know, it kind of made its budget back worldwide probably you know plus you know I received two Saturn Award nominations and nothing else from anybody

David Denby who used to you know fucking execute some kill shots says was there no one among Spielberg's Associates with the intellectual stature to convince him that having cried at a guy named Joe when he was 12 years old was not a good enough reason for him to remake it. Damn. Critics used to be really mean, man. Yeah. Uh, Sheila Benson had the obvious, but I think necessary, a better title would be Forever, which is roughly its running time. Okay. Whoop!

You might want to set off the Goblin Bomb again. Don't tempt me. It is, it's basically two hours on the nugget, right? Yeah, it's like two hours, five minutes. It's pretty much the exact same length as a guy named Joe. Yeah. I mean, there is this sort of sub-genre it falls into, and I've been thinking about this recently

because of the movie I'm about to cite, but remakes that are directors who have been obsessed since childhood with a movie and sort of make their own version of it to try to work through why am I so hung up on this? And like I think Eggers NOS4A2 is that. I think Jackson's King Kong is that. Like movies that almost feel like them expanding the lore

of like when I was a child I interpreted it this way. Or I didn't know why this movie made me cry. And you're sort of doing this like, very loving, faithful expansion, you know? And like blowing it up to a bigger scale in a way that almost feels like making a big budget, like dissertation. Yeah, and I think it's why,

that's one of the reasons why Spielberg's most profound and I think best movie ever, AI, is saying goodbye to that. Yep. He's like, okay, you get to do this one more time, you get to return to the childhood thing and kind of try to excavate something, but then we're saying good night, it's over. I mean, he didn't quite do that with the rest of his career, but like, you know what I mean? Just like, he did recognize that something like always was like, I was trying to grasp for something irretrievable.

Yes. Yeah. No, it's like, it's just fascinating how completely the Schindler experience, like, just connects him to something deeper. And I do think when we covered the second half of his career, the times post that, that he tries to go back to more of a like Amblin Spielberg, are always, I'd say other than Tintin, which is kind of its own weird beast, I think sort of being activated by the different technology,

when it feels like now this is kind of the insincere version of him, versus the color purple, where you're like, stop pretending to be a grownup. Right. You know, it's like, it does feel like he is firmly in a sort of world of grownup ideas now. And when he's like, I want to make a classic movie for children, it feels a little hollow. Right.

There's no like watching Empire of the Sun, there's really not much indication that that same person would make Munich. Right. You know, which maybe is a weird comparison, but like. No, but I think is a good point. Yes. And like the version of always he makes after Schindler is totally different. But then you're also just like, post Schindler, why am I trying to remake this? Schindler forever complicated his nostalgia. Yes. Where he's like, oh, actually, all that that

era that I pine after was horror. You know, there was so much horror happening in the world. Yes But yeah, that's and again, that's why I think AI is really like the key Not maybe even more than fable bins in a way, although the two are in dialogue with each other. I think but yeah Should we play the box office game? So I did see what was number one because in reading pieces about the movie at the time I saw people being like it's pretty Embarrassing that the Spielberg movie was beaten out by this. Okay. Well always opens number five reading pieces about the movie at the time, I saw people being like, it's pretty embarrassing that the Spielberg movie was beaten out by this. Okay, well, it always opens number five,

so it was beaten out by four things. What are you thinking? Tango and Cash? So Tango and Cash is new this week, but it is number two at the box office. Okay. Tango and Cash is, is that Mel Gibson? No, it's Stallone and Russell. Stallone and Russell, that is a really crass movie,

if it ever serves me. It's crass, but a lot of fun. And Stallone was coming off a bit of a bad run, so people were, I think, underestimating that movie and overestimating, like, it's Spielberg making a Weepy, this thing's gonna own the holiday season. What's the joking community where, like, Joel McHale sees Rob Cordray,

and they're like, Tango, Sundance, and he's like, we were in two different duos. I can't remember what, it's something like that. Yeah, I think so. Anyway, number one though is a holdover comedy big hit. Big hit comedy. Sequel. It's not Ghostbusters 2.

That was a summer place. But it's a sequel. It's not Beverly Hills Cup 2. No Big is it a 2 I think it is it is the second I'm pretty sure but it's not doesn't have like a 2 in the title dropped a deuce, but it's the not music box 2 Not yet. It's not jewel of the Nile. No, no, but it doesn't have a 2 in the title No, huh? Oh, you know what? I take it back. This is the third entry. No, but it doesn't have a two in the title. No. Huh? Oh, you know what? I take it back.

This is the third entry. I'm so sorry. Oh, okay. Well, thank you. I had to triple check because it doesn't have a number. I appreciate you doing the work. I appreciate you doing the work. Doesn't have a number.

It's the third. I'm sure Ben's seen it. You're sure Ben has seen it. But I don't feel like Ben loves this franchise. It's not Cheech and Chong. No, but it's a star. We've talked about how much you love that franchise. We've covered another movie with this star

that Ben did love. It's a Chevy? It's a Chevy Chase. Ah-ha. Is it Christmas Vacation? It is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I mean, a big movie. I love those movies.

Yeah, okay. I wasn't sure where you were on that. Christmas is the best one, I think. You think it's the best one? Yeah. Well, it's the one I've seen the most. I mean, we'll never talk about this them. We'll never talk about this franchise We'll never talk about this franchise. Now. This one is directed by your shitter will never be full. Yeah, Jeremiah check Yes, this is the movie that Chris Columbus famously quit

Days into filming or days before filming basically being like I cannot fucking work with Chevy chasing Chris Columbus seems like basically the nicest man in Hollywood I have only heard that he might be the nicest person on planet Earth. I have met Chris Columbus seems like basically the nicest man in Hollywood. I have only heard that he might be the nicest person on planet Earth. I have met Chris Columbus. Yeah. Like, he is a truly, you can just tell, like a truly menshy dude. He seems a really great guy. He seems borderline saintly. Yes.

You're talking about the explorer? Yeah. Only do good things. And everything he did was good. Yeah. And all of his discoveries were his alone. In my opinion, I think we should give him ten days. I think we need more statues.

He's a credit to the Italian people. Columbus month. Um, and right, he quit it. So it was directed by Jeremiah Chechik, who has like one of the most insane filmographies of all time, because it's this, and then Benny and June. Yeah, sure. And then Diabolique, the remake of...

Speaking of Isabella Johnny. Yeah. And then the not-Marvels, but Brit but Britain's The Avengers with Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, and Sean Connery, which is a classic, like, half the movie is gone. Right? Like where it's like, it's 82 minutes or whatever, and you're like, what just happened? And they're like, we don't know. We don't know what just happened.

It's 82 minutes, but then you check your clock and you're like, were they counting the time I was online for concessions? Are they baking the trailers into the runtime of the movie? Like just such a weird directorial career. Anyway, but that movie's- And that basically ends his career? Yeah, he directed the like ESPN Bronx is Burning mini-series, like he still worked, but anyway.

That movie's number one, Christmas Vacation. Okay. A hit, Tango and Cash's number one Christmas Xmas vacation, okay a hit tangoing cash It has certainly like lasted. Yeah, I feel like it's become a kind of a tradition stable Yeah, I watch it most most Christmas. Yeah Tangoing cash. I meant yeah, of course. Yeah number three. It's a film. I actually mentioned a very very dark comedy Yes, Danny Devito's worth of the roses, that's a film I actually mentioned, a very, very dark comedy, um, uh, directorial career. Yes.

Danny DeVito's War of the Roses. That's a great movie. Yes. Uh, and obviously DeVito is someone we will one day do on blank check. He's not like someone rushing to, but it's an interesting career. It's a fun short one. That's the other thing. It's a, it's a nice little slobbing. He is fun and short.

I mean, that's my friend, Sarah Rubin, the great Sarah Rubin Past and Future Guest said, Rub sent the text, have you guys ever considered Danny DeVito colon, short series for a little man? Good call. I just watched the Abbott Elementary crossover episode, It's Always Sunny, which really did a perfect job

watching It's Always Sunny and kind of being like, this is what every character would do. And it's like, yeah, Mack would go with the principal because they're both schemers. Like, the nice teachers would try to teach Charlie how to read. And it's like, Danny DeVito, what does he do? He gets in a fight with a janitor

and starts putting batteries in the garden. Like, it's like, Danny DeVito's having fun. I saw, I read an interview with Kinta. I've not watched the episode yet. But I read an interview with her where they were like, were you worried at all about how you make These two times compatible and that shows so much more explicit and has very different audience And she was like here is the thing we cracked immediately our shows a mockumentary

Which means these characters know that they're on camera, right? Which means they're behaving slightly better Oh that works the best version of that joke is that Glenn Howard and his character spots the cameras immediately He's like I can't be filmed. And just like runs off camera. Oh my God. That's so smart. And then every other time he's briefly on camera, he once again, he clocks them and he like runs away.

It's really funny. Have you seen the sunny episode with the other people? I have not yet. I think that doesn't air. I think it hasn't aired yet, but I'm very excited. There's seasons until the summer. There's a weirdly long gap between the two. Very excited for whatever that is.

And also within the world of Avento Elementary, it does make sense that they're just like, are you the guys who run that terrible bar in South Philly? Like, I've seen you on TV, on the news. Very much want to do DeVito. DeVito is a real, like, one year off of a March Madness winner, we're gonna look at the schedule and go like, you know what, we could just knock DeVito out in five weeks

and then do this. Yeah, it'll happen. It'll happen. Also, the fucking War of the Roses remake. Oh, what's that? Well, of course you remember. Well, there was that musical or whatever with Brian Darcy James, right?

You're forgetting the very obvious. Oh, no, that was Dave Wynne's. That's, yeah. Yeah, sorry. You're forgetting the very obvious announced War of the Roses remake starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman. That is real and not a thing that Richard made up as a joke for the podcast.

I'm forgetting who's directing it. It's the guy who made The British Avengers. I think it's literally they're calling it like The Roses now or something. It is called The Roses. It's directed by... Oh no, the roses now or something. It is called the roses is directed by oh No, he just made a face David. He made a really safe face of all the names. He did the deepest inhale Jay Roach What the fuck is happening in our culture?

Here's the here here is the thing okay, were like, J. Roach is remaking War the Roses with Ben Stiller and fucking Reese Witherspoon or whatever, right? I'd be like, sure, fine, whatever. That makes sense. To do the Tony British casting of it and then cast J. Roach feels so at odds with itself. And it's gonna take place during the 2008 election. I don't know, man. I don't know. Maybe it'll be great.

Look, at least it's seemingly stopped him from making Oceans 2. Is that a thing that was gonna happen? Yes. The Gosling and Margot Robbie. Okay, number four of the box office, a sequel, we covered it on this podcast. It's a sequel that we covered on this podcast.

It's a big movie. In 1989. 1989. It's once again not Ghostbusters 2. No, but it is a two. It is a deuce. They dropped a deuce. It's a, wait, that's, don't give me that look.

Rolling my eyes at the poop joke. Don't give me that look. It's eyes at the poop joke. Don't give me that look. It's a big sequel. It's a big sequel to... it was a big hit, not a hit on the scale of the original. Did we cover it, Main Feed or Patreon? Yep, Main Feed. Main Feed.

Main Feed. Main Feed. 89. You like it more than I do. I like it more than you do. Oh. Oh. It is Back to the Future, Part Two.

Part Two. Part Two. They dropped a de two. Part two. Part two. They dropped a deuce. Number five always. Number six is Disney's The Little Mermaid. Incredible movie. Yeah, how long has it been out? When did that happen?

Been out for six weeks. It's very early in its run. It's made about $30 million. It's gonna make more than 100. No, it ends up below 100. I guess the re-releases put it above 100. Back then getting, you know, more than 100. No, it ends up below 100. I guess the re-releases put it above 100, but back then getting, you know, inflation. No, it did well, but it's one of those things

where you read the press at the time, people are like, I know I'm gonna sound crazy, but the new Disney movie is good. And it just kind of hung in there for months, and then like primed the pump for Beauty and the Beast to be a hit. Then explosion, then the next four are all like mega hits. Number seven is Steel Magnolias, for Beauty and the Beast to be a hit. Then Explosion, then the next four are all like mega hits. Yeah.

Number seven is Steel Magnolias, another big hit of the fall. Number nine is the sort of satirical comedy Blaze. Oh, I've never seen that. The Ron Shelton movie with Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovitch. As Earl Long. Yeah. See, I've never seen that. Ron Shelton maybe with Paul Newman as Earl Long. Yeah. See, I've been interested in, I've been meaning to watch that in my interest of like old CAD Paul Newman, like salty asshole Paul Newman.

I would like to fill in some Newman gaps. That's certainly one of them. Not like a hugely remembered movie. I'm sorry, I know this is moving back a film, but I'm doing the math in my head. Is there a Patreon series that is like, Steel Magnolias, Pride Green Tomatoes, Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood? Oh, like Southern...

Ensemble. Yeah. I think there's something there. Right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You'd probably have to watch some pretty bad movies. Not the ones you name necessarily.

Yeah. And we curate. Number nine is the, I would say, fairly forgotten Sidney Lumet movie, Family Business with Connery, Hoffman, and Broderick. Yeah. Now, if I were casting a movie in which I had to cast three generations of men in the same family, grandfather, father, son, I think the first three names that would come to me that just fit really well together are

Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, and Matthew Broderick. Three people who absolutely share. That is related! DNA strands out. It's almost as good as that movie where Glenn Close plays Mila Kunis' mom, which totally syncs up. Absolutely. No, the poster for that movie in my memory is sort of like ones at a desk, ones over

the shoulder. Connery is sitting and the other two are over the shoulder. It's kind of a great things come and bears What is it about? Is it like a crime thing? It's it's they're they're like a media family. Is that right? Is do they work in the news? I don't know because the tagline is there's nothing like a good robbery to bring a family together So let's find out what this movie is. I just feel like that's a movie where the poster just sets up Hey one of these guys fathered one of these other guys and fathered the other guy. And America's just like, absolutely not.

We are not buying that. Nope, nope, nope, nope. We refuse. Yeah, it's like Sean Connery is a gangster and his son V, Dustin Hoffman. Because Sean Connery has a Sicilian wife. Sean Connery's Scottish in the movie. Hello, this is my Italian son Vito.

I can feel the screenplay like going. I'm gonna rob a bank. Like he has a Sicilian wife. Dad, grandfather, what are we doing here? And Vito, again, Dustin Hoffman plays Vito, has a son, Matthew Broderick, who he's trying to keep away from the business. But so Broderick doesn't know even

that his dad is grandpa's against him. And his name is Miguel Sanchez, Matthew Broderick. His name is Adam. And I guess they all get involved into some like heist that they do. This movie sounds insane. People did not like the movie. It got bad reviews. Number 10 at the box office, a film we'll never discuss.

Look who's talking. That's me looking at who's talking. Yeah. And none of us were talking at that moment. That was me doing my Holly Hunter and the piano impression. That's really good. You know, always. Yeah, I have to say I have very fond memories of loving it as a child that were a bit tarnished,

but I still hold that those first 30 minutes are great. I'm with you and I kind of like, I think Hunter pushes it over the edge to being a gentleman six for me. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. Yeah. I would give it three stars on Letterboxd. Yeah. That's where I put, I'll say this, like halfway through the movie, I like logged it on Letterboxd

and gave it a heart. Yeah. And then like 15 minutes later, I was like, I'm going to take the heart back. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, that's a thing. I don't do storks, but I truly was just like, you know what? I'm enjoying this so much. That heart is going to last an hour from now. And then I was just like, you know what? I'm enjoying this so much. That heart is going to last an hour from now.

And then I was just like, yoink. BOWEN Is anyone else craving the smooth taste of a Marlboro cigarette right now? AARON So badly. You know what I would love to do? I'd love to just, especially in this brutal winter, I'd like to get snug inside of a Marlboro sleeping bag. BOWEN Oh, God. AARON With a long box of duty free packs. BOWEN The lining is just crushed cigarette. AARON That's so crazy.

What were the other, do you remember other items you got? No, the sleeping bag is the thing I remember. My guess is that most of the items were useless, like to a family. Exciting news. There's some available on eBay. Ranging. Yeah, ranging from 80 to even down to $20. What about like the motorcycles?

Can you find the motorcycles? Oh God, then that is it. That's it. That's the one? The next blank check live is just gonna be, everyone files into town hall, David is just asleep on stage in a Marlboro sleeping bag, and that's the whole show.

What I want in my life is a used sleeping bag. I mean, that's what I'm really trolling eBay for. A used cigarette sleeping bag. How many people have slept in this? What could go wrong? How many people have smoked in it? And it's got a cigarette logo on it? Good.

Because you want to associate cigarettes with sleeping. Two things you should have together. In my opinion, the cornerstone of a great sleeping bag is the mileage. I have a cool tent if you want to go camping. So I have to pee. Griffin, take us out. I'll be back because I know how long you take. I was going to ask Richard for his plugs and it's going to seem really rude if you're pissing

while he's testing. I don't really have any plugs. Pissing all over his plugs. He can piss on Ricky's plugs? Don't piss on my plugs and tell me it's Marlboro. I don't know. Little Gold Man. Little Gold Man, still going strong-ish.

Wait, I have a joke to finish. Marlboro Golds, because piss is gold. Oh, there you go. I used to smoke this. This will come out after the Oscars have happened. Do you want to put any bold predictions? Oh, I think Timmy Moore is going to win. I think based on the SAG nominations,

I'm swinging back to Timmy winning over Adrian. There's just something in the water there. Yeah, and also, Bangal getting the DGA nomination. I just think the reaction to Timmy's performance was like universally like, I didn't know he had it in him. And I really think that's what kind of gets you an Oscar Can I say it on mic now and I might be proven very wrong But I just want to say because I feel like it's a position no one's taking I still think Ray Fiennes is gonna win

This has been your take. I just like contention is lacking in buzz currently what he needs to do in order to win is Sucking the new wave of excitement in the time between this episode recording and the ceremony in two months, but I sort of think it's going to happen. That would be fun. I was at the NBR's, the National Board of Review dinner, and I was at their table. I didn't get to talk to Rafe much. I mostly talked to Edward Berger, but on stage they won an ensemble award and Rafe spoke for a bit and he was quoting D.H. Lawrence. He quoted T.S. Eliot and I was like, oh wait a second, I want more of these speeches.

Like he is like very nice on stage. And he's showing up at the fucking New Year's Eve thing. I was like, oh he's kind of maybe campaigning. I think Chalamet, if Chalamet doesn't win, I would not be surprised if he wins. If he doesn't win, I almost think it's's a like do we want to drive this him thing? Right, you know where it's like is the thing We thought him this much this early when we know he's on a track to continue doing good work for decades with Brody It's like do we give him the second Oscar for the second good lead performance? He's given. I don't think Brody wins

I think it's probably they did it with Hillary Swain. All right, that's what I'm saying Yeah, I think it's probably shot at that. They did it with Hilary Swing. All right, that's what I'm saying. And they, I think, regretted it a little bit. And the Zellweger thing as well. I feel like they feel embarrassed when they do that. Yeah. After a couple of years. And like he won the Globe, but then I reminded myself like, right, he didn't win the Globe for the penis.

Not that the new Globes really care about who won old Globes, I guess. I don't know. And then Saldana and... I doubted Saldana for a while because I wasn't sure what people, how the industry actually thought about Amelia Perez, but Odyard getting the DJing and stuff, yeah. I think Selena's road has ended though.

I would agree with that. Don't let the stints hear you say more. I mean we'll never see, yeah exactly. So that, those are my answer to the question. Oh, by the time this is up, I will be months old, I think. I do have a full ranking of Steven Spielberg movies. Like a paragraph for each thing explaining my reasoning. I'm excited to dive into the writing of that. Can you spoil? Do you know right now what your dead top and dead bottom are?

Dead top is AI. I think I'm almost positive. That's my dead top. I watched it again for probably the fifth time. Yeah, like last week. And I cried for the last 30 minutes in a way that was like genuinely cathartic and meant something It wasn't just me responding to stimuli. You know, did Jigalo Jogo? It's an incredible movie and then number one or the last place with an absolute bullet is 1941 Which is a complete catastrophe of a movie. Yeah for some scheduling reasons. We have not gotten to that episode yet It is recorded almost all of them. It's been the thing at the end of the road

Yeah, it's it is really his only fully irredeemable movie I have never been able to make it past maybe the 15-minute mark it well I've seen it a strenuous slapstick farce that is not for one second funny is Incredibly painful. It is the worst kind of like peanut butter and Olives like yeah. Yeah. All right. Anyway, that's that. Thanks for having me. You're the best Richard. I'll see you for 15 Whatever that might be. Yeah, you're gonna text us like an hour saying the episode was bad. No, I was thinking about I'm not gonna do it I yeah great up. Yeah, let's just say that Decade of Dreams that you text us Usually evening of or the next morning after almost every episode and go,

guys, I feel like I let you down. I'm so sorry. And then I wait for months for the episode to come out. And we respond, you did and you shouldn't. What are you talking about? And the only reason I'm bringing this up on, Michael, though David was the one who opened the box, is that you are one of the most important people in the history of the show. And you're always great.

100%. And I always am so excited when you're coming on. Me too. And I really appreciate that you guys often do get an annoying text message from me and actually are like, okay, you can do that. Because I know it's your show, not mine. But it always, every time, every episode you've ended up on feels like, oh, that makes sense. And sometimes there's another plan that shifts.

Sometimes it was always from the get-go. You were supposed to go there, but it's- You think K-19 and you think me, you know? It's the thing I always look for. I love you. Love the episodes. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Congrats on 10 years. Love our time together. I just have one last thing to say. Please. Happen. Happen. Thank you for listening. Tune in next week for Hook. For Hook. An episode I predict our listeners will be really, really normal about.

No one's going to get angry at me. And as always- Well, wait, over on the Patreon. Over on the patreon over in the patreon because when this episode comes out it will be the last day Of our March Madness voting that's wild to think about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay So hopefully listeners have been following along with that Yeah, the you'll have had a high value month of all the extra March Madness content over on patreon As well as you know voting for our main feed.

Yeah. And we are in the midst of our Star Trek Picard series on Patreon. So that will be fun. Check that out. All right, now wrap this up. And as always, please, please do not murder me for what I say on The Hook episode. Blank 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 Bardy Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Burch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Olly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. than is Minick.