Blank Check with Griffin & David - Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

Welp, our Kevin Costner series ends not with a bang, but a whimper. With the pulling of Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 from theaters, we are left to only speculate what the future holds for Costner’s self-funded crazy passion project. What we can tell you is that Chapter 1 doesn’t really feel like its own self-contained movie. Plotlines are established, characters are introduced, and then…Giovanni Ribisi shows up.     Watch Kev on The Rich Eisen Show  This episode is sponsored by: DrinkTrade.com/Check (CODE: CHECK) Zocdoc (zocdoc.com/check) Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! 

Blackjack with Griffin and David Blackjack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blackjack The American podcast begins this summer. This movie has no quotes page. No, it's brand new. David that doesn't stop IMDB user editors most of the time. People are usually adding shit the second a trailer comes up. I don't think.

Adding it to the quotes page and then putting in brackets from the trailer. I don't think anyone who's seen this film. Was there dialogue in the trailer? Yeah. Not much. Dialogue like I'm gonna get seen this film. Was there dialogue in the trailer? Yeah. Not much, but I like- Dialogue like, I'm gonna get on this horse. I don't think anyone who's seen this film

knows how to operate IMDB. They might know how to go to it. It's possible. But like, knows how to edit IMDB? That's so true. The tagline for this movie is the American Saga begins this summer. Well, no lies detected. No lies detected. Okay, great, the American Saga begins this summer. Well, no lies detected.

No lies detected. Okay, great. The American Saga does begin this summer. Okay, what's next? I can say that unilaterally about this movie. It absolutely begins. Does it end? We're not sure yet. I think this movie does not end. I'm gonna I'm gonna say that this Nice Cinemark exclusive trailer. Mm-hmm calls it the story of a nation unsettled Not not I mean once again no lies detected no lies detected Now I'm looking at the character posters. Whoa, there's a lot of them really

Like even just searching horizon and American Saga quote, I'm not finding anything on any site. Who's your favorite? Tag yourself. I'm Abby Lee. I know I'm Abby Lee. There's no question about that. There's no question you're Abby Lee.

Yeah, I'm like, I don't want to go. Where are we? We got to go somewhere? Like, her whole arc is like, what? Can't I just hang out? I still am not. We got to go. Is the baby hers or Jenna Malone's?

No, it's Jenna Malone's. It's Jenna Malone's. Yeah, it's Jenna Malone's. The whole arc is like, what? Can't I just hang out? I still am not a go. Is the baby hers or? No, it's Jenna Malone's. Yeah, it's Jenna Malone's baby. She is looking after the baby. I think this whole episode is gonna be a lot of this.

Wait, what? Who is that guy doing though? What now? Is that the same kid or is that a different kid? Same kid. No, no, I'm saying- Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure. This is how Griffin and I watched the entire movie with hushed voices going,

did we meet this person yet? Did we already know this? Yes. You spent 30 minutes thinking Abby Lee was Anne-Lynn McCord. That is very true. I'm so embarrassed about it, and I wasn't going to bring it up.

Who's Anne-Lynn McCord again? She's like the crazy lady from the Beverly Hills 90210 reboot, who like read some poem about- The first reboot, not the second. The one just called 90210. They did a second one? Which was the original cast in a meta show.

It was almost like a Cobra Kai. Oh, weird. But they're the actors. That cultural moment completely passed me by. But yeah, I thought it was Anne-Lynn McCord. And I was like to Griffin, I was like, this woman's a crazy person. And he was like...

Anne-Lynn McCord does a lot of stuff on social media that's a little on hand. Yeah, I mean, she seems a little like Q adjacent. She references the storm a lot, which I don't know if she's referencing the Q storm or some other storm, but like that's like a great way to start first line in bio, but anyway, talking about someone who's not not in the movie in this movie. And then, and then Griffin was like, Oh, is Abby Lee crazy? I was like, Oh, it's at it's

Abby Lee. Sorry. My mistake. I apologize. Marie was looking with great concern, like from the moment Abby Lee entered on screen, I was like, what's going wrong? Yeah, I was upset. I was like, we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel here casting wise, but you know. I think about how the 90210 reboot, titled 90210 on the CW.

Yes, which was very much a post-gossip girl. CW is trying to build out. Ran for five seasons. And Anna Lynn McCord was tapped much a post-gossip girl. CW is trying to build out. Ran for five seasons. And Anna Lynn McCord was tapped with a similar kind of like Blake Lively energy and then that show very quickly did not become a full phenomenon even though it lasted five seasons and she sort of disappeared other than being the world's best poster.

I remember that Tristan Wilds was on it. Who's Tristan Wilds? He was in The Wire. He played Michael Lee, one of the great characters in The Wire that's introduced in the school season. And it was just so funny that he had gone from that character in The Wire to, I assume, someone who sits in a pool a lot of the time

in 902, it's just like, it's like, hey, you gotta shoot in Baltimore. It's gonna be a lot of like really dingy stuff. Like you're on the streets, the above. And then it's just like, what's your role on 902 and a pool man. What does it been? It's just before we start to record, gotta make this one a short one. We got to go. We got to start. We got to get into it. We got to get,

we do got to get into it. And I'm just losing it unfolds before my eyes. You kidding me? Okay, I'd be the Poster I'm looking at the Tom Paine character poster. He has my cock energy He's the only one who he's a little glasses guy. He's the British guy. Oh, yeah He's like he's a loser 50 drugs of order a day here, right? Come on

50 drugs of order a day here, right? Luke was like, come on, man. Sorry to be a bother. Would you mind not looking at my wife's snips? Can we all just say this right now? I want to just see if everyone agrees. The best plot line is Luke Wilson's Wagon Train. No question. Yes. That it comes in two hours and is kind of almost an L

because you're like, I could have been with this wagon train the whole time. I was so in every time they went to the plot line and I'll say like the Tom Paine and Ella Hunt characters are kind of driving me crazy, but driving me crazy in a way where I felt really engaged. You were engaged. I wanted to see them killed.

I was like, they better get scalped by the end of this movie. Do you disagree? I saw this movie last night in the middle of the night. So it's kind of a blur to me. Welcome to Blank Check. This is Blank of a blur to me. Welcome to blank check This is blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Who else is here? Marie

Barty and Ben This is a podcast about filmography's directors who have massive success early on in their careers such as making dances with wolves I like that. You said directors directorsctors. Like director actors. Sure. That wasn't intentional but I'm gonna own it now. But it's really cool. Yeah. Directors who win best picture and best director and make a film that grosses hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide and then basically spend the rest of their careers as a filmmaker chasing that to a certain extent. Kevin Costner looks out on the horizon and goes I think I know where I'm going. Everyone follow me. Everyone does for a while.

They get a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear, sometimes they bounce baby, and sometimes you're not given the check. Sometimes you have to whip open your own checkbook. Yes. Put the money down.

Sell a couple of waterfront properties maybe. And insist upon the public that you are making four of these they were talking about one of the wildest gambles in a long time horizon an American Saga chapter one Mm-hmm Colon and an em dash uh-huh and this is our of course our series on the films of Kevin Costner podcasts with wolves Thank You Marie our series on the films of Kevin Costner podcasts with wolves. Oh, thank you, Marie. Thank you, David. You saw this movie at a screening.

I did. I saw it at Warner Media. Was it an afternoon? Yeah, it was a 1 p.m. screening, a mercifully scheduled 1 p.m. screening at the Hudson Yards. Marie and I saw on 1130 a.m. at the Alamo. See, you had what I really would have liked,

which is essentially a meal break. Yes, so that was intentional. Of course, that's how I would have done it. We did not see this film on a big screen. No, it was a little shoeboxy. It was in one of the little shoebox theaters. All those Manhattan ones are small. But I mean, the screen's still pretty sizable.

You're close to it. But we sacrificed the vistas for the sustenance. But there was this question question you had seen it I was like hey Ben Marie. Let's figure out when all three of us can go see horizon together I don't want to leave one sad soldier fighting horizon alone And it was a thing where it was just like Marie can only do Saturday Yeah Sunday Dave Ben could only do Saturday, and I put my thumb down and I was like,

Ben, I'd rather do the daytime Sunday than the evening Saturday. So we went, we saw the right time, which is you wake up. Get some coffee. You have five cups of coffee. You order three more cups at your seat. You watch Horizon. Ben?

I went on my Halonesome to go see a screening at 10 p.m. So it technically started at 1030. And Historia Queens, right? At 1030. You had to sit through trailers. You texted us at 1027, the title card coming up. Yes.

And I said, that title's just getting started. Because what you texted us was just the word horizon. There's more to come. There's more to come. There's more to come. So we got a text from Ben at 9.58 PM. My private horizon. Just Ben.

Empty ass. Completely empty theater. That's correct. I was the only soul in the theater. And that remained true? Yes. Wow. Paul Rubin's dream.

No one even came in into like have some anonymous sex or something like an employee came in and was like, Oh, surprised to see you there. Kevin came in and shook your hand personally. David threatened to show up at 1130 and rob your sleeping body. I see you'll be asleep by then. I'll just just get a lift your wallet. You said you had bought popcorn and I said that Costner paid for the Colonel's himself And then this this quote from Alex X Barron is funny Kevin Costner has the wide open expanses of the American West then has theater five at the Kaufman Astoria The UA Kaufman Astoria, which I love United Artists the theater chain has long been owned by regal

That is the one that is still just like, we haven't bothered to reprint it. It's the UA. Relax. It's the UA. You get it. I love that theater. It's great. I mean, they've done it up, it seems like, in Regal, Finery, at this point. They've got the recliners and all that. That theater is a little hidden gem. It's just, if you're in New York City and you want the suburban movie going experience,

that's the place to go. It absolutely feels like a mall movie theater. Like the people that work there are not like currently at NYU studying to be filmmakers. They are like pimply high school kids. Surrounded by by eggheads like us. Yeah, you're with the real America, the America that Kevin Costner dreams of. It's really funny that he's a California guy.

Kevin Costner? The man that literally grew up in Compton. Right. I just think he there's something I don't think he's disingenuous. I don't think he's ever pretending. But his spirit, you're like, did this guy emerge out of a literal tumbleweed?

Out of like an eagle's eye? Right. In Montana, did he crawl out of the rocks? No, like so many Montana residents, he moved there once he got rich. And by the way, I mean, you know, people who own vast waves of land in Montana. Kevin Costner has directed Horizon American Saga for Chapter One for us. We've all seen it. He did it for us. He did it kind of for us. We have done a little Kevin Costner series and we've had fun with this silly, silly man.

Look, we decide these things fairly far in advance. A couple months ago we were like, should we fucking do it? We've talked about Costner for a while. He's such a fascinating figure and Horizon's such a big gamble. And the question was like, how is this thing gonna pan out? We're committing to doing him before we get to see it. This is one of the weirdest things

He's had a really fun press tour that's been justified our decision. Absolutely And I think talking about the previous movies, I think you're seeing a lot of movie podcasts doing this Big picture did their fucking great Kevin Costner Hall of Fame episode that almost broke out into fisticuffs. But like just Amanda and Sean trying to interrogate like what is he? He is such an endlessly fascinating figure as like this weird like American West Sphinx. And like at his rise, at his peak in the 80s and 90s when he has his moment of kind of inarguably being the guy for a couple years, he was throwbacky at that point. He was like an 80s 90s movie star who's like we got to roll

things back to the way they were in the 40s and 50s. And now in the 2020s he's like we got to roll things back to how I did them in the 80s and 90s. And it's like, you mean when you were then throwing back to the 40s and 50s? And he remains so adamant of like, I don't care what anyone thinks, I'm not chasing trends. I gotta do things my way. And Fran, our friend, Fran Hoffner, wrote this great fucking piece about him.

I've seen this from a lot of people where there's something so square about him that when we were growing up, our people, our generation, our age, he seemed kind of lame. He was like, this is the ultimate dad movie star. And now I feel like there is something that almost feels transgressive about how square he is, where he is so against the tide of what's happening, which has made the idea of like, wouldn't it be great if Horizon just proves fucking everyone wrong? If like his audience just rolls out in droves

and it's this kind of success that no one could anticipate, it's an artistic triumph. I had not seen a Costner directed film until I watched Dances with Wolves this week. Oh, so you still haven't seen? The postman. The Tandua litter. Put on a hair. And you still haven't, I mean.

I had the open range, is that what it's called, open range? Yeah, Griffin told me I would really like open range, but unfortunately. It has a monologue about chocolate delivered by Robert Duvall. It definitely will. That sounds great. And I didn't even realize like Annette Benning's in it.

She's all over that fucking thing. You kidding me? Sounds great. Yeah. Sounds great, and I am, so I will watch by, I meanette Benning's in it. She's all over that fucking thing. Sounds great. You kidding me? Yeah. Sounds great and I am. So I will watch by, I mean, by the time- Michael Gambon plays a mean Irishman? Right, that's how, that's how we love to see him.

I mean, by the time this episode airs, I will have seen every Kevin Costner movie. But you're still really trying to wrap your head around it. I'm trying to wrap my head around him. Whereas David Ben and I are deep in it. You guys are deep in Costner. You have worked with him as we've talked about. Yes, the close, your close personal friend.

One of my best friends. I've worked with him in the, I find watching his movies to be like work. Same. I love the guy. My experience of Kevin Kossner is mostly through Madonna, Colin, Truth or Dare. Sure, a film with one of his better performances.

Correct, where he goes backstage at a Madonna show, tells her her show was neat, and she immediately, like, doesn't know how to respond, gets totally grossed out, and then does like the, ugh, like vomit thing, neat. What kind of loser is Kevin Costner? That, to me, was Kevin Costner. Sure, that has framed your perception.

And you were talking about Madonna right before this episode about seeing her at a restaurant once and not being able to eat because you were so transfixed. Correct, that has framed your perception. And you were talking about Madonna right before this episode about seeing her at a restaurant once and not being able to eat because you were so transfixed. Correct, I was. So you follow what Madonna does. Madonna framed your perception of Kevin Costner. So, and I'm, you know, I'm a woman. Not to be gender essentialist or whatever,

but like, Westerns have never really been my thing unless they're like, revisionist Westerns have never really been my thing unless they're revisionist Westerns are like commenting on masculinity or American power or whatever. But we were talking about this walking out of the theater how like Costner sort of in this very self-mythologizing press tour he's been doing for Horizon, both pumping up Horizon and looking back on his career and patting himself on the back for all the times. He was correct, right and

His sort of strategy he always talks about like I'm not afraid to make the kind of men's movies that people don't make for men anymore But also the reason I'm successful is because I think about my female audience and you watch it and you're like, here's the thing Marie's making a face that I don't disagree with. I'm making like the Robert De Niro like, ah. But I also think- They showed up more than men. If you- In the box office.

They did this weekend. And if you look at like the six years of his like absolute dominance, that was clearly the X factor going on with him. And sometimes a lot of the ways it felt like, I mean, he does try to establish these strong female characters. He, like, sort of objectifies himself

in an interesting way. Yes, in a lot of his movies. Right, and there's something very, like, arrogant about it, but you watch him in his movies be like, well, obviously, women are coming to see my butt. I gotta show my butt and we're hopping on. One more shot. Let's get it into For Love of the Game. Really, Kevin? Right. What?

I have never the only time I've ever been attracted to Kevin Costner was in that clip from Tony Scott's Revenge that was circulating on Twitter. Then driving normally in their car. Madeline Stowe being normal, having a normal drive and doing normal things to a massy, massy, mass. You don't think. Being normal in the car. Having a normal drive, and doing normal things too. Massey, massey, mas! You don't think he's hot in No Way Out?

He's really hot in No Way Out. Boulderm! Boulderm, he's really hot. Boulderm is when he's hot. He's just... He doesn't do anything for me. But I will say, the one thing that helped unlock Kevin Costner for me, and I don't know if you've brought

this up yet, because I haven't listened to the episodes You know because the way we're recording this that he is like Barbara Streisand, but her boys Did you talk about this? No, okay? I don't know if we have I look this was not game I mean, he's like Barbara Streisand and the reaction from our reddit was very similar to us doing him correct So but but I think these two careers are paired in a lot of ways And the reaction from our Reddit was very similar to us doing him. Correct. So... But I think these two careers are paired in a lot of ways. It's interesting that we're covering them both within the same year. And I think there are certain, like, everything that's powerful about him also feels very

in conversation with his, like, humongous blind spots, which is also Barbara. You know, where you're just like, there are the ways in which they are like, this is what I, the story I need to tell. And then there are the things they are saying even louder than their intent, that are so reflective of their mind and their worldview, that are so fascinating to me. We get to, not to jump way ahead in this movie,

but we get to the scene where Abby Lee basically, as a thank you, as a return act of kindness, fucks the sleeping Kevin Costner. I think she's kind of trying to like distract him too, right? I mean, it is- I thought it was like a farewell. I think that was the part. We're gonna fucking dissect the scene at length,

but Marie goes, what is this sex scene? And knowing she hasn't watched the other Costner movies, I was like, Marie, get ready, you're gonna see this scene play out two more times. Kevin Costner has like a fetish for like laying there. There is some thing going on here. Because Postman is going to give you six minutes of this. Yeah.

No, Postman is very normal. And the way that happens is regular. It happens all the time that a husband approaches Kevin Costner and is like, please, your sperm. The amount of Kevin Costner movies where a woman comes up to him and is like, I assume you want sex. And he's like, no, I'm not interested. I'm looking out into the distance right now.

I'm gonna get naked. It's happening. But then, no, the water. He's like, I could never. An hour later, the woman comes back and she just starts fucking him. Okay. And he's like, why are you doing this?

And they're like, cause you didn't want it. Right, and then they're like, and you're good at this somehow. I know. And also, your cum is our gold. Ah, David. Yes? Ants. Ants?

Ants. Ants. Ants. Ants. Ants. I hate getting cornered by him. We all all do i knew that was going to be a relatable conversation starter why aren't you getting married what's going on with that promotion why haven't you moved out of mom and dad's basement griffin

oh those were directed at me i thought they were oh now i feel attacked get out of the basement griffin uh i guess she doesn't listen she just judges, judges, judges. You're getting together with your family. You might have to be in a barrage with

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Yeah, or in the middle 48 hours in Ulti Murphy, which I accidentally said is Ulti Murray twice. In 1988, a couple years after the success, mild success, of Silverado, the film he was in. Starting to become successful. I think Silverado was an MGM film, a United Artists film? Back to the UA Kaufman Astoria with you. He's talked about how him popping in Silverado.

No, it was Sony. It was Sony. Columbia. Okay. They came to him and were like, it was Sony. It was Sony. Okay. They came to him and were like, we want to actually be in business with you. Here are scripts we have, we feel like you're a leading man on the cusp. So he's starting to already think about,

I'm developing my own projects, even though he hasn't really been tested as the guy yet. I just know that he had made Silverado and he wanted to make another Western, a darker one. He was like this, I made my Saturday matinee Western. I made my sort of the for fun kids Western. Can I make my searing epic? He turns to Mark Kasdan.

Brother of? Lawrence Kasdan, director of Silverado. And he turns to him and says, do you want to write me maybe like a two-hander Western? And like, we can see where we go from there. And out of that comes the character Hayes, Hayes Ellison, that Kierkemen Kastner plays in this movie. Right, you might've noticed that he, his son is in this film

in a primary role and that his son is named Hayes Costner and a lot of people surmised, oh, he must have named his character, the one that Kevin plays in Horizon, after his son. And the reality is he named his son after the character that was written for him in 1988 that he is- He's had this name for a long time, it's true. This character Hayes lived in a town called Sidewinder.

Eventually that would become Horizon. Right, I mean this is one of the early concepts he's really into is all these Westerns are built around this small town, this local economy, this America that's building itself. I wanna make the movie about the town, how the town comes to exist. Sounds like a TV show to me.

Well, certainly in the 80s, that would not have been less of a thing. And no one wants to produce the script. He said it was a single movie, it was a two-hander, a conventional Western with a beginning, middle, and end, and I couldn't get anyone to make it. Time passes.

Other Costner movies that are Westerns come along, Dances with Wolves, Wyatt Earp. He makes himself, he wins the Oscar, it's a huge hit. Do you know who gives the best picture Oscar to Kevin Costner? Barbara Streisand. She sure did. She sure did. Wyatt Earp for another cast in project.

The Postman, which he makes himself. Open Range, which Costner directs and is wonderful. Marie and I were talking about this on Sunday. Kevin Costner recently came up in the Cinematrix and the grid was Western. Pick a Western with Kevin Kostner. And we were like, ostensibly there are only five that are actual Westerns.

Yeah, we just named them all. But yeah, you could argue that like 75% of the movies this guy has made feel like Western. Western vibes. What are we talking about, James Mangold over here? Secretly. Secretly a Western. That's the thing though.

A perfect, is it a perfect world? Perfect world feels very Western-y. Of course. Revenge, wherever it takes place. Feels Western-y in some of the tropes. His very presence feels Western-y. Dragonfly? Haven't seen it.

A death Western. Is that the one directed by Tom Shadia? Yeah, we covered it in 10 years. After Open Range, Costner goes to Disney and says, come on, I've got this script. Open Range was just kind of like a solid on base, double or triple. They're like, you know what, you found a good model,

you kept this movie, sort of, he kept it the right size. I think Kevin's still trying to overcome his reputation for being an out of control. you found a good model, you kept this movie, sort of, he kept it the right size. I think Kevin's still trying to overcome his reputation for being an out of control, over budget, over schedule maniac from the 90s, especially as a star is dimmed. And OpenRange, it's like he delivered it, it did well. It's gonna continue to do well on DVD.

They're like, can you give us another one of these? He said they had a $5 million difference when it came down to budget, and they didn't make the movie. And this point, it's still the two-hander script. Yes. One movie. And then it dawned on him, every Western always has a town.

These towns are fought over. There was struggle. The land was important. The Native Americans had already picked the best places to settle, and now us white people go, we'll just take this. And I want to think of the idea of what if we reverse engineered it and said, let's go to when there's no town.

How did it start? What's the mythology? And so all of this starts churning in his brain. In 2011, he seriously restarts this with a writing partner, John Baird, who had written some sort of illustrated novel called The Explorer's Guild with Kisner? Kostner bankrolled this, said it was going to be a four-part book, only the first one has ever come out. I just ordered it, I only found out about it the other day,

so I will have read it by the time we get to our Horizon Chapter Two episode. It is like, yeah, a book series that never concluded or never continued about the American frontier that is apparently indebted to Tintin in its illustration style. Sounds cool. It sounds very fascinating. Koster says a Baird who apparently was in the band Lustra who had the song Scotty doesn't know and you're a trip.

Oh, wow. But I think JJ made a point of saying we're not sure play on that we're not sure We're not credits are unclear was part of that band But perhaps not for their biggest moment Costner says John's big research guy I'm a human behavior guy. He goes back and forth between us So I assume John does all the work and then Costner's like, yeah, but he would fuck Abby Lee at this point. Let's write that. He's coming out of his mouth, but she's coming really hard. I just can't get over it.

All of the, everything I just said is alleged for all I know. Kevin Costner writes and flames come out of his pen every time he does. I don't know. Everything I just said is a direct quote. Their vision for the project, America's expansion to the West was one that was fraught with peril and intrigue from natural elements, interactions with indigenous peoples who lived on the land and the determination and ruthlessness of those who

thought to sought to settle it. Horizon tells the story of that journey in an honest and forthcoming way. story of that journey in an honest and forthcoming way. Now I just want to just restate he spent 20 years that spanned the absolute rise and fall and then sort of vague rebounding of his movie star career and his currency in Hollywood trying to get a focused two-hander off the ground and after 20 plus years the takeaway was I should make four of them no one's giving me money for one the problem is this is too contained I should make this unwieldy he's been in interviews basically saying this like I'm such an idiot that everyone told me no and I figured well

if it's hard to get one of them made I should make it four instead it's almost like it's a bit of a blank check project. Uh, also he, there's lots of quotes where he's like the story involves lots of women. Uh, you know, uh, the West doesn't carry on without women. And if they, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, uh, you know, uh, does that play Kate, you, Marie actually women are at the center of this story. I said to you guys, I was like, if you pointed a gun at me, I would call Sienna Miller the quote unquote

most important character in this movie. But that's a huge stretch, because there's really just multiple parallel storylines. It's really hard to pick a, there's no real lead. Women at the center of the story, if you pause this movie at one hour and 30 minutes There might be a woman on screen No, I guess I just went into this movie figuring Costner would be the center of gravity

Then you realize like now he's kind of like a C plot like character Structural thing where the movie is like intertwining plots from the beginning. It's not broken up into like sections intertwining plots from the beginning. It's not broken up into like sections. You could absolutely see this being more Buster Scrooge-y. Right, chapter one. Like this whole movie is chapter one, correct? That is correct. But it's not divided like, you know.

No. That's why it's weird. The first hour, we're cross-cutting between a couple different narrative threads. And then one hour in, you introduce Costner. So and now he's getting worked in as are a couple other side threads. We don't meet the wagon people until hour two. So it's very regimented.

One thing I just want to just so the audience, you know, listeners feel like they're there with us. Griffin, at one point, 40 minutes into the movie goes, I really have to be. Yes. But I'm not leaving. Well. Until I see how Costner is introduced.

We've told this story on our Batman Begins episode where similarly I had a horrible nosebleed and I wouldn't go to the bathroom until Batman came on screen. I turned to my friends and said, I'm not leaving until he says I'm Batman. And I had the same thing of like, I need to see how Costner shoots himself.

If he's taking an hour before he brings himself on screen. I think the shot's in the trailer, but honestly it was thrilling to see. We both kind of gasped and you were just like, that's movie star shit. That's movie star shit, yeah. An hour in, new fucking establishing card, a line of horses,

and then without the focus shifting, Costner just rides directly into the center of the frame perfectly in focus and just holds a look for like 15 seconds. Yeah, it was good. And you feel some juice of like, that is an undeniable movie star on screen now. And then I proceeded to take a shit.

I took three shits during this movie, I want to say, which speaks to just kind of... It speaks to length, but also, I would say it speaks to you more than the film's length. That's crazy, Griffin. Okay. I don't care. I don't go to the bathroom at all during this movie.

But I did have horrible acid reflux when I got home. Well, what'd you eat? Philly cheesesteak. Philly cheesesteak. And a coffee. At the Alamo Draft House. Yeah, so... That eat? Philly cheese stick. Philly cheese stick. And a coffee. At the Alamo Draft House. Yeah. That might do it to you.

Yeah. Oh boy. But yeah, it was really painful. I thought I was having a heart attack. Yeah. When you got home. Bad acid reflux. No, it happened like two hours after I got home from Horizon. Yeah. But I was really like, I was really scared.

I couldn't feel my hands. I was like, wow. Yeah. But no, it was just really bad acid reflux from Horizon. Are you sure you weren't just deep in thought of how America was formed? And how, let me read another quote here. I'm not looking for kudos because women are in it. For me, they're not in it.

They actually dominate the movie, to be honest. Each one of these women dominate while they're on the screen. That's like him saying like, anytime a woman's on the screen. She her whole body is Screen I am laying down and she is mounting me as a thank you Like heaven Yeah, there's honestly plenty of women in the film

You do not need to suddenly be like if anything there aren't any men in the film. Like going on like a reverse. For the podcast, I'm like, Kevin, never stop talking. Don't censor yourself at all. He I've just been watching, listening to like every interview of him I can find. And it is a point made on Big Picture this week. The fact that Horizon Part 2 comes out only six weeks after this one, is he just going gonna stay on the campaign trail for the entire summer? Great question. There's so many more banana smoothies for him to try. That's a good shape.

He was saying that, obviously he put up most of the money for this movie, or at least a chunk of it, a good chunk of it, a good percentage of it. He is just a pure distribution deal with New Line of Warner Brothers for this, but the film plays at the Cannes Film Festival and it was going to be on his dime, any of the sort of Cannes related expenses, and he went to the men of the cast and he was like, look, I'd be the one paying out of pocket to fly people out and I think the right thing to do if all of you agree is I only bring the women out. And so I can, it was just him walking the fucking staircase, walking the croisette or whatever, with all of the women in the cast.

Sure, so. And I think he presented it as like, I want to give them their moment. Sienna Miller, Jenna Malone, Abby Lee, Ella Hunt, Isabel Fuhrman, other people, I assume. Right, and so his read is just like, this is the generous thing to do, this is the gentlemanly thing to do. And I listen and I'm like, that is also huge divorce guy energy of being like,

you know what, if I'm paying out of pocket, I just want to be surrounded by eight beautiful women. Leaves and ball gowns. Now, I'm going to tell you some more Costner quotes here, because he's normal. There's drama and people help people cross this country There's always this tendency to think it was a simpler time. It was infinitely more difficult Does anyone think it was a simpler you're dealing with unknowns every you didn't know where you were going You had to arbitrate your own problems when you were confronted by issues

You had to make up your mind very quickly in tough situations Sometimes life and death situations try that on a daily basis and see if you don't want to live with your computer and shit. I mean, come on, you brought it home. Speaking of computers and shit. I mean, my childhood, we had a whole fucking computer game about how hard it was to move westward. But it made it seem hard, but it also made it seem like you just pushed a button every so often that once in a while you would die.

Yes. They're also like, we're gonna can of bullshit. Yeah, and then remember when you had to hunt and it's like you're like shooting in a circle. It's really hard to get those guys. Ben knows. I was very into the American Girl series. Yes. People are always fucking dying. Well, that's part of why little girls-

Kirsten's best friend got color or whatever is fucking dead might be one of them Yeah, the most tragic toy line of all time. Yeah. Yeah They should do that in home story the home story horizon story toy story I have some American girl show up. Yeah, I'm telling saving that for its own movie. Well, they made one didn't they kick good rich? I mean American girl another doing something like Lena Dunham doing an American probably pocket. Okay, never made one, didn't they? Kit Kiddredge, American Girl. But now they're doing some bigger. Isn't like Lena Dunham doing an American Girl? She's in Charlie Pocket. Oh, OK, never mind. With Lily Collins, of course. Hollywood onward and upward. Let's also say Oregon Trail is being made as a comedy parody musical movie.

Great. So I think Pasek and Paul are writing an Oregon Trail comedy movie. I think they should do that. I want that to be released in my favorite Cinemblex. Hell. All right. Costner says, look, there was great injustice in the West. And there was, but that doesn't minimize the courage it took for ancestors to cut loose and go out there. Minimizes it a little bit, but whatever. That's my editorializing.

But I do think that's kind of what Costner is going for with Horizon, colon, and American Saga, M-Dash, chapter one. He's kind of what Costner is going for with Horizon colon and American saga M death chapter one. He's kind of like this, what they were doing was kind of awful. Yes. And they kind of were walking into, you know, death almost deservedly. These people going like far beyond America at that point. Right. But at the same time, there's, there's something stirring about it.

They're going at it. Like he's trying to balance an old Western and a neo-Western. And it sort of works. At times. At times. Let's just get this out of the way. 34 minutes into the episode.

That's it? Only 34 minutes? I think let's wrap it up. Right? We've talked about the scene where Abby Lee fucks Costner, and I feel like that's all we needed to cover. Honk shoo, honk shoo. No, and I feel like that's all we need to cover. Hong shu, hong shu.

No, I didn't say let's end things. No, what do you want to get out of the way? This is in many ways less of a movie than any movie we've ever covered on the show. As much as in many ways it's so much movie, it is almost impossible to actually engage with this thing as a complete object because it isn't. It is the most incomplete. It is essentially four to five. Story fragment. Right.

Stories that begin and don't even really get to a middle. No. And then the movie ends in that there is no longer pictures on the screen, but the movie doesn't end like, even with the kind of like, looking over the horizon type, Empire Strikes Back type, oh, well, what awaits us next? It just stops telling the story.

It doesn't even end with like, Lost-style cliffhangers of like, holy shit. No, it ends with a sizzle reel. I said out loud to Griffin, this season on the horizon. It does have a sizzle reel. This montage begins at the end of the film that at first I was like well

This is this kind of multi-part story ending that you're used to where they do a montage to just remind you where we're leaving all The characters Captain America does this the matrix? Reloaded does that it feels like it feels like you're watching the montage. That's like keeping tabs on everything So you bookmark place and then you realize you're seeing stuff from the next movie, which Maria is like a new place. You know, right. And then the seasons are changing. It goes on for like seven or eight minutes. It's kind of a mess.

I honestly I'm not being rude here. I almost thought it was the most gripping part of the movie. It's 100 percent the most gripping part of the movie, which is a huge problem for the movie. Correct. But and we can we can circle back to this and explain it. I Watched this thing and I'm just like You feel like you've almost watched the prequel to a movie that doesn't exist yet, right? I understand that we're watching like part one and he's telling us like buckle up

This is I'm gonna take my time to spill this out But you're like this feels like an entire movie, a backstory, it feels like three hours of watching someone read word for word, cover to cover the instructions to a complicated board game. And you're like, so next time we get to play, there are scenes in this that are super gripping. There are character ideas, there are notions,

there are images that like got me. But the whole time I'm watching it, I'm like, this is like the thing we need to get out of the way to figure out if he's actually pulling off what he's trying to do. Yeah. I, in theory, like the idea of spacing, giving yourself enough time to explore the fringes, the side characters. Fringes? You're talking about their jackets? Hm. Well, it's watching this movie, I'm like, oh my gosh, there are people of color in it.

Sure. And I'm like, OK, that seems interesting. Oh, we're going to talk about Chinese immigrants building the railroad? All this stuff gets dangled. We're going to see them. And then I'm like. I think that's Costner's extent.

Even in terms of the, oh, we're gonna spend a lot of time on the Native American perspective, are we? It's a storyline of five. Four. More. How many storylines are there? So we've got Kevin Costner, Abby Lee. Again, that is not even one of the most important ones, but...

No, but they're also like, this is the thing, there are like fragments of them, where it's like, so are Anne Urono and Jenna Malone, we're including that as part of the Costner, Abby Lee thread, but they have multiple scenes that don't engage. And they have separated. Right, Sienna Miller and her daughter

are connected to the Worthington and Rooker, and Houston of... But they also are connected to the Worthington and Rooker and Houston of England. They also are connected to the Apache Tatanka Means. Right. Like each sort of. They're like five main story groups, let's say. And within those groups, there are multiple strands and none of them intersect with each

other. Well, but some do. But like, so, okay, you have, there are really three main storylines, which are the settlers led by Sienna Miller, et cetera. And they are attacked by Apaches and Sam Worthington eventually shows up to pick up the pieces. There is Jenna Malone, who has a baby, runs away from Wyoming, is chased by her husband. Well, I think it's the guy she's having an affair with. who has a baby, runs away from Wyoming, is chased by her husband. Well, I think it's the guy she's having an affair with. Like, I thought she was the mistress.

Possibly. I think you're right. Yeah, she kills the man who she has a child with. But who it seems like was sort of essentially abusing her. Correct. But I don't think that he dies. He doesn't die.

No, he doesn't die. She tries to kill him. She shoots him. They also imply that their father was abusive? Or did I misunderstand? That's their father. That's their father. No, he doesn't die. She tries to kill him. She shoots him. They also imply that their father was abusive? Or did I misunderstand? That's their father. That's their father. He's the Sykes' patriot.

So there's like the Sykes' family. And their sons go after her. Yeah, that's like, yeah. And then Abby Lee and Kevin Costner get mixed up into that plot. So like is Dale Dickey his wife? Yes. Okay, and Jenna Malone is the mistress.

Right. Okay. And the bad boys are John Beavers and Fuckin Campbell Bauer right who's pretty having a good time. Yeah, they're both having a good time Yeah, John Beavers who I spent 20 25 minutes being like Patalecki put on some weight I thought it was Patalecki to look so much like Jerry Patalecki just kind of like hit it What is it with this movie and likes CW? And then the third storyline, my favorite storyline is,

there's also randomly a wagon train, we assume kind of heading towards Horizon. Luke Wilson is there, he's stressed out. There's some low lives, there's some priggish, you know, rich people. The entire movie could have been this for me. Yeah. Sure. I was most into that storyline too.

And then there's sort of a floating fourth storyline that I actually struggled to keep track of, which is Jeff Fahey and his band of like scalp hunters. Right. Who kind of emerge out of the first storyline, right? And now they're kind of just going off on their own by the end. It's kind of the prologue.

I mean, this movie literally- Forget the prologue. Let's not even talk about that right now. We have to talk about that later. But the boy- It's too stressful. But also like where is the Native American story? Well, this is what I'm saying That's you would say that's sort of part of plot one

But really to me is its own thing because there's complicated politics within that story line for yes So I would really say four to five. I just wasn't the prologue thing, right? And then there's a really starts with a stake being driven into the ground, right? Like a planter like here's the new town. On top of a bunch of crawling ants, like ooh, metaphor alert. This is Horizon, and here's where it will be, somewhere in Arizona. Right, this sort of bookish man and his child

sort of mapping out the land, measuring, and building out. Everyone's gonna converge on this. This is where we're ultimately heading. And then you cut to Apache children on a mountaintop, on a cliffside, let's say. Yes. And they're sort of like, what are these guys doing? And they're like, they're setting out their land.

And they're like, what do you mean? It's not their land. What does this mean, putting a stake in the ground? And I'm like, this is interesting. It is, this is why this movie is interesting. I'm just gripped by the movie at the beginning where I'm like, is Kevin about to pull this off? Because here's the whole fucking back and forth I want,

which is the idea of like this whole formation of a town thing, who owns the land? And you're like, what is this? This is all conceptual. This is people saying it's my land because I'm telling you it's my land. He might still pull this off. And then we introduce this character of like a priest. Yes. Yes. Who happens upon the decomposing body of the father and son.

Yes. Who is Angus the father and son. Yes. Who is Angus McFadden? Yes. Great actor. Great actor. And we, you know, I was like, ooh, it's dark. You know, this is crazy. And then the movie keeps going.

Well, then we basically are like, years later, this settlement has begun to flourish and there is an Apache raid led by like sort of a section of a pet. Like we later learn like this is sort of like a politically unstable thing. Yes, this is like the bad actors. Right, these people are more like,

we need to just take this out, we need to clear this out like rather than let it encroach and there are other people who are like, you're only gonna bring- It's kind of a hotheaded song. Right, you're only gonna bring, no, To Talk of Means is kind of in the middle. But that, yeah.

It's Owen Kroshoo plays Yon Sane, who's the one who's like, I'm gonna get out there and get those guys. But they have genuine motivation, which is that their food source is being disrupted by this settlement. And the chief is basically like, look, if we, doing this will bring, you know, the, essentially the army, the government, you know,

The white eyes, they call them. Correct. Like the really, you know, bring stuff upon us that we are not ready to deal with. But Piaz Zane is like, no, we have to do it. Build the whole movie out of this. I'm watching this and I'm like, I could watch 12 hours. Griffin, this is what Costner is thinking. I know.

Because you just said that about the wagon train and I kind of agree with you on that too. There's a lot of things you could build movies out of here. I think all of these storylines are interesting. I like the Worthington Sienna Miller storyline. That's actually my favorite. Yeah, I think he's hot. I think their relationship, I'm like, wait,

I wanna see this. It's nice seeing an old potato hat. I think she got over her dead husband real fast. I get over that guy who sucks Okay, I don't even get a character post. He seemed great Like 40 of those those like this costner would tell you hey back down you had to get over husbands quickly Costner might be coming around the corner and he's sleepy. I don't know I mean the whole time I'm watching I have dances with wolves in my back, my head and the whole thing about like Mary McDonald needs to like be approved that she

has done mourning her dead partner or whatever. Sure. To be able to fuck different culture. Americans were not that classy. People overboard and fucking planting stakes where they don't belong.

Horizon in American Saga Chapter one. We can I'll get back to Dusty in a second, but just to complete the sort Horizon in American Saga, Chapter one. I'll get back to Dossian in a second, but just to complete the sort of, you know, it's like, like you said, there's this prologue and then this kind of like prologue part two with the priest. And then we're in this settlement and I'm like,

oh, okay, we're here. All right, I guess the movie has started. And then it is an incredibly long and devastating sequence of like battle that you're kind of like, this is just going to keep going. Yes, keep going. And you see insane shit like this family gathering and like blowing up their tent. Like, you know, like obviously like Sienna Miller, like barricading and like, you know, running into this tunnel with her daughters and like going crazy.

From the perspective of the white people, this is shot like it's The Strangers, right? I think it's very well done. It's scary. But most of these sequences are like home invasion sequences. It's that sort of language of that kind of horror movie. And what I love is that when Sam Worthington shows up like afterwards, he's like, what are you doing here? You don't belong here. It's not your land. We can't protect you here. You've gone so far beyond. So crazy you're European and sold you land that he didn't own.

Right, like you can't just be here. Like we'll try to help you get out, you know, to safety. But like, I like that Koster immediately gives us the, you know, the people who are furthest west in the American government, right? The people in the forts that are all in the Midwest and stuff are just like, this is way further than we are. And you can't like, yeah, you can't just assume

that you can fucking put a tent here and be like, I own it now. And it also introduces this thread that we get some payoff at the ending of these mysterious flyers that are showing up. Which RBC obviously, searching for an obtainium. The twist of the... We up. Which RBC, obviously, is searching for an obtainium. The twist of the... We assume it's RBC, right?

Because we see in the trailers. Oh, it's definitely RBC. It's montage. They're building up the intensity of everything that's to come, and the camera's pushing in on the back of a man looking out a window, and you realize these flyers you've been seeing the whole movie that are driving. All our characters, we assume, nine nine hours from now will all arrive in Horizon and all the plot threads will meet. The man who's been building the flyers, who's been

printing them at his own printing press, is Giovanni Robisi and I turned to Murray and went East the Thanos. And I hate to just use the same six pop culture references over and over again, but Costner drops it with this intensity of I bet you wonder where the flyers are coming from Yeah, and we're BC looking out the window has the intensity of him being like I'm five infinity stones away from my Mastermind and it's he's very clearly in an urban setting somewhere. He's not out there in the West. So I'm like, okay He's kind of driving people out there. Right? He's a classic Western intellectual Yeah, which I'm like, oh, I love this and I'm immediately like I've been wrestling with this movie the whole time. I get to that reveal and I'm like, God, I'm excited to see Chapter two. And I'm like, what if he's not even in Chapter three?

I don't know. No, because they filmed Chapter two and he's in it. And he's filmed parts of three. He started three, although it seems like he's kind of doing it with his own money. And so like, who knows what that means? And he's doing a kind of eraser head style piecemeal over weekends David yes, you were sleeping. Oh, I really want to be nodding off on Mike again, huh? You gotta change your life David. Okay, you gotta pull it together Okay, and you know what in fact you got to change the way you experience coffee at home. How do I do that? Well, a lot of coffee out there is dull, stale, and

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Use code check at checkout to save. He started his press tour for this movie and he was rocking the mustache and the weird haircut of Hayes Ellison. And I was like, Oh, clearly he must truly be filming chapter three right now. And you get to the banana shake video and he looks like classic Kevin Costner. And I'm like, you're saying you're filming this now, but you've been doing 18 interviews an hour for the last two months And you don't look like your character when he wants to sell a movie. He doesn't have acid

He is trying like going to like small markets and like appearing on like local. He's been doing He's like been going full PT Barnum like my circus is coming to your town except it's like PT Barnum who fucks which I guess is what the greatest showman was but anyway Kevin Costner, I just want to give you this quote. I'm going back to the dossier a little bit I realized the content was for movies. It's like when I did half fields of McCoys. They thought it was two nights I said it was for if you like every scene that was written in them in half fields of McCoys And I'm saying this is the executive at the time, then it's four nights. Well, we only do two nights.

And I said, it's only going to be two nights. I'm not going to be able to be in it because I'm not going to have all these scenes edited because they'll go away. Kevin Costner, he's like it's like inside out or something. He's like, if you don't shoot the scenes, they vanish and then they're dead. Why would you just make one horizon when you could put all of the stories into four horizons? I saw him on the Rich Eisen show,

my secret favorite talk show. You loved the Rich Eisen show despite not liking sports. I know. I agree with you that Rich Eisen is a good professional interviewer. Yeah. Rich Eisen's kind of my guy. Who gets good guys.

Were you familiar with Rich Eisen from the I Love the Decades? I'm sure that endeared me to him, but also you have to remember that my entire childhood was fighting every day, every morning, every night for control of the television. And James just wanted, my brother James, he just wanted to watch Sports Center. And I very early on was like, Rich Eisen and Stuart Scott are fun. If they are on Sports Center, I'm like 5% engaged with what's happening because these two guys I find funny and charismatic. So I always I think had an affinity for him. I Love the 80s probably just intensified that. I really like when he has movie stars on his

show. Because he likes movies. He's a big movie fan. Right. He actually cares. Yes. But he, Eisen said like, I've heard you say that you don't think you're a big movie fan. Right. He actually cares. Yes. But he, Eisen said like, I've heard you say that you don't think you're a very good director to Costner, and for how bullheaded Costner is. And Costner was like, look, like, you know, I mean, it's just like not my primary identity. And Eisen was like, but you won best director, you beat good fellas. And he was like, there's no doubt that like Scorsese knows how to use his camera better than I do I Think my primary function as a director is I know story. I know drama. I know character

I know what I want these stories to be he did say I'm TNT. I'm also very funny He's basic cable Like that's he is basic cable, but he presented it as like I think my main Value as a director and why I choose to direct movies Sometimes is like as a wedge to use my power as a movie star To make sure no one stops the way I think the story needs to be told and always breaks down into this shit with him Where he's just like you need these 20% of scenes that everyone else would cut. You need the length, you need the runtime.

It is very weird watching this movie that feels like it's all sort of like appendix backstory information. It's a three hour film that's the first of four that also feels kind of rushed at times. Like it moves really fast when you're like- That's what's jarring about it. It's not like there's a quote in the dossier where he was like,

I really wanted to be deliberate and not rush the introduction. Like the, and I'm like, it's sort of true and it isn't or there's action at least where you're like, wow, this is happening. Okay. I think this is the argument we made for open range in our episode. And I said this to Maria as I was selling her and why I think she'll like open range a lot. That's a very simple story that could be told in 85 minutes.

And the extra hour that cost norms fighting for there is all just letting you live in the details, the character moments, the death, the specificity. Somehow you're watching horizon and he's like saying like, I need 12 hours to tell the story and you're going, did you actually need 20? Right. Or did you write a 20 hour story that you're now did you actually need 20 right or did you write a 20-hour story that you're now? scrunching into 12 Look my hope is that horizon part two which has been made in 20 hours

It's kind of a season of time just ask a really quick question about that Reviewers that can saw both no they just have part one. They just saw part one No one has seen part two. They just saw part one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So no one's seen- No one has seen part two. I mean, I see somebody's seen it, but not me, and not critics. Yeah. Okay. No, they just screened part one.

That seems stupid to me. Right, because he's saying- I mean, it's all they had done. He's saying, hopefully I'm back at Cannes with part three. He's presenting a universe in which part one and part two come out one summer, part three and part four come out one summer. They only screened part one? This is exactly what they saw they saw you can't okay. I just feel like you Marie

This is what they released Like I it just feels like so clearly part of a whole yes It does it more so than any other movie I've ever seen correct correct. Yes, that is why this movie's weird Yeah, yes, what you just said is true. Sorry, Ben I'm excited to go back. That's the thing. Will you go at 10 p.m. No never again Sacrifice we're gonna have to do it together. No, we have to do it together Costner does fund the movie himself a little bit He does get a couple of mysterious financial backers to put up some money.

Yeah, Saudi people. I just remember Tim Simon's dear friend at the show, world's greatest texter, during the filming of Draft Day, being like, he has a lot more money than we realize. He has a lot of money. There was just this feeling of not just like, oh, clearly he has a lot of money, he's a movie star who is very successful. There was just always this vibe where he would invoke certain things where it's like he clearly invested his money well, saved it well, put it into certain

things, where just assets would get referenced sometimes. And it also just feels like he like runs in very wealthy circles. It doesn't feel like he has movie friends that much. You never hear about like... you know. Because he's not in Hollywood. He hangs out in Montana and Wyoming or whatever. Like, you know, that's where he is. Right. And they're just sort of quiet billionaires

that I think he's friends with who he got to pitch in. And he put up. Apparently a couple of quote unquote middle Eastern businessmen also put some money in. I don't know. I'd love to see those meetings though. Costs are being like, rise. The most interesting thing about this movie is that he does own it outright.

And so much of his argument, there's obviously been an immediate doomsday of like, this movie's opening weekend was bad. That's bullshit. Right. But he, this is what he's always said, and I do think he's right about this. He's like, people view the cost of a movie as a bet on the opening weekend. It's an asset. It has a life of its own. If you make this thing correctly, it lives forever. And it's like in his mind, whatever version of this movie, whatever version demands, you know, how many parts he

actually completes, this is a movie he gets to like resell every three years. Yeah, look, beyond that, I mean, I- He gets to sell it again to streaming services, into television, on DVD, and whatever it is. Like, these contracts will just renew. The reaction to, like, the box office of Horizon is just so demonstrative of how poorly the trades can handle box office reporting at this point. Where they're like, the $100 million movie opened to 11,

like, small, and I'm opened to 11, like small. And I'm like, the film cost a hundred mil for two, not one. Fifty million dollars can be your number for one part. Number two, like. He owns the movie outright. No one is like this is a passion project. This is not some Warner Brothers like stock razor. Right. You know what I mean?

Like so upfront that he's like, I didn't do this as a bet to get rich. This is not some Warner Brothers like stock raiser, right? You know what I mean? Like so upfront that he's like, I didn't do this as a bet to get rich. It was driving me crazy not making this movie. And I do think there is, especially guys like him and Coppola and I even would put like a fucking Seinfeld done frosted and some of these weird passion projects made by incredibly rich, incredibly famous old men.

Right. Who have no reason to, you know, put anything on the line, right? Why risk it? Yeah, exactly. And what's fascinating is them making these weird misshapen things, and you're like, you thought this would be commercial? It's like, no, these guys didn't think

this would be commercial. Seinfeld got Netflix to give him money, and probably laughed all the way to the bank, but I do think there is a commonality that I don't see being discussed, and I'll hear it in other areas of like the arts world, but guys of a certain age who I think during the pandemic were like, what if I never got to make anything ever again?

Yeah, that's probably driving it a little bit. Right, what is the thing I've been too scared to bet on or that always feels a little out of reach or I'm not ready for? And I think we're seeing now when it's like, why is there all this energy in the air of these guys who could be retired instead taking their biggest swings? And I do think it's all these guys were just like, well, if I die tomorrow, what's my regret in my career?

Eddie Murphy talks about that. Eddie Murphy, yes. In that profile in the Times. What a normal guy that is. Super normal. What was it called? Like soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, it called? Like Soul, Soul, Soul? Soul, Soul, Soul, but that is crazy because that's him saying, I cut professionally a trailer for a fake movie, but a movie that I'd like to make someday.

Everyone who sees it, including David Marchese, who is like, wait, you should make this. Like this is really funny and this is so perfect for you. And he's like, I don't know if everyone would like it though. Like, that's his reaction. But then in that same interview, he's like, how much do you think about your audience? He's like, I don't serve the audience at all. I don't care. I do whatever I think is funny.

He says, like, six different contradictory things. He's such a liar. He's fascinating. He's obviously intelligent. He has made amazing movies. Here, this new one is good, which is great news. But that interview is so telling of, like, what a weird one is good, which is great news, but that interview is so telling of like what a weird fun house mirror his brain is.

But look, these- And then moments like when Marchese is like, both fingers one of your best works, he's like, anyone could have done both finger. And it's like- Yeah, like absolutely not. No! Like what? I was the only person who could have done

all of those clumps. Like, all that hair. That's so much harder. His comedians in cars getting coffee, where he's like, fundamental at the end of the day, I'm a comedian. That's my primary identity. Right. And Mervi's like, what?

I'm not a comedian. I've done stand-up in years. And then he's like, then what are you? And he's like a very sensitive artist. And he's like, why do you think your career has sustained? He's like, because I'm very funny all the time. But this is, I mean- He also says Pluto and Ash is the only bad movie he ever did.

Well, earlier he says he's had a handful of flops, and then when he's litigating he's like... He's like, Pluto Nash is really the only piece of shit. Like, he starts, it's true, he does start kind of like, differentiating, and you're like, Eddie, Pluto Nash might not even be one of your five worst movies. Like... I've still never seen that. Like, but like, there's so much competition. But here is the point This is why we're not going off subject here, right?

Costner and Eddie experienced a similar level of fame a similar level of you control Hollywood. You can do anything Everyone is begging you For your attention for your time to like sprinkle a little bit of your magic dust on everything, right? I do think that fundamentally warps people's brains. I think you cannot hit the absolute top of the mountain and like come back down to normal altitude ever again. Even if your star wanes, even if your status changes, the perception around you changes,

if you make it to the top, it does kind of like rewire you. And you watch both of these guys and the way they talk about themselves and their career and what they want to do and who they aren't, you start to build these like weird walls around yourself. And a lot of Eddie Murphy is clearly him protecting his like very apparent vulnerability, right? He's a sensitive guy, definitely. As he says, no question. Yes. And Costner has just always been like, I just have to like, true North, know exactly who I am and not listen to anybody. That's how I last for decades.

There was an interesting comment on our Reddit about Yellowstone. It's like the perception of Costner's relationship to Yellowstone. People assuming that Horizon would be a big hit because his audience would roll out. Right. But that actually Taylor Sheridan and the Yellowstone enterprise saved Costner. Yeah, I saw that post. I did not totally agree with that. I think it raises some interesting points. I think it is true that people like us who talk about Yellowstone and people in the industry

who talk about the Yellowstone phenomenon largely do not watch Yellowstone. I've watched Yellowstone. Isn't it just like a succession? Not much because it was awful. Okay so, I think Costner was crucial to that movie, that show having a big footprint. Landing with prestige. And as the show has gone on he's become less and less central to the show in terms of the narrative the

ensembles got larger. And obviously Sheridan has built out this Empire spin-offs and all that. Yes but he's right and what if Sylvester Stallone ran a bar let's talk about it right stuff like that. He's playing rancher Logan Roy it is not him playing classic Kevin Costner cowboy archetype. It's very Dallas-y. Right. He's JR. Yeah. No, I agree.

There's not a straight line between them. And Chris Ryan was saying in the Big Picture episode, like, there is this version of Costner being strategic that is like, stay on Yellowstone. Every one season of Yellowstone you do further could basically fund another horizon. Possibly. Right? Like, space them out, this and that. One season of Yellowstone You Do Further could basically fund another Horizon. Possibly. Right? Like space them out, this and that.

I get where he's coming from. Not that we need to give a ton of fucking time to the whole, like, Costner Yellowstone fallout. Right. But it is like no one should ever make a TV show shit that I think got fucked up even further than the pandemic. Where, and the Sheridan Empire expanding, and now he's running like 20 shows and he claims he writes every single episode himself and they were just like they kept saying, hey, you're on hold. We're going to film the next season in four months and then they get to four months and they go, we're going to push it back another six months.

And Costner's like, I'm sitting around. I'm doing nothing, I'm near in 70, I have to fucking make this. That is so much. The big thing in his press tour for this, it's part of it is, yeah, a lot of money. I'm spending a lot of money, I can't tonight. And the other part is like, I had to do this. I was running out of time. And there's this line he has about like, I saw my son

and I was like, I have to make this. He's 13 now, I want to play the 13 year old. I knew his son was in the movie, but I had never seen a picture of him before. He clocked him. Yeah, that's one one face I knew. I was like, oh, that's definitely Lil Costner, isn't it? Can I guess? Because I don't think I know. But you get a character.

Is it the boy who rides the horses and gets away? No, it's Santa Miller's son. Oh, wow. Yep. OK. Yep. And if you if you Google Kevin Costner, Kittredge High School, it kind of looks it looks just like him. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many Kittredges

because there's Kit Kittredge, an American girl. Exactly. And then there's so there's the orphan is sorry, I keep referring to Isabelle Furman as orphan. She is orphan because she's orphan. Apparently Orphan is a kid. Sorry, I keep referring to Isabel Fuhrman as Orphan. Of course she is Orphan. Because she's Orphan. But her last name is Kittredge. As is Will Patton's.

So it's like there's Kittredges everywhere, you know, coming towards each other. This is a movie that could use, that's a future episode, but a Lynch's Dune style glossary pamphlet in theaters. Or a pamphlet, right? And not to just repeat everything Big Picture said, and usually I'm against things that are this didactic,

but like they made the argument, does this movie need like fucking Game of Thrones map transitions? There's so many action movies we watch where you cut to the Eiffel Tower, and then a chyron says Paris, France, and you're like, yeah, I'm not a fucking idiot. You don't need to tell me we're in Paris, France now when the line before this was, we're going to Paris, and the first line after you're in Paris was, so this is Paris. But this is a movie where I could use a greater visual sort of like template for letting me know

where characters are in time and space. Because every time they're just sort of like this region this year, I'm like, I can't remember where we were before I'm so respectful of the movie going experience Much like Kevin Costner. I am yes and Ben Hossley, of course I think this green, you know the only I guess I did have my phone open during Skinner Mouranq because I like had trouble Well, you were also hiding it. I was hiding in my told us you were inside your had trouble. Well, you were also hiding in a I was hiding in my jacket. You told us you were inside your coat. Right. But I had to open fucking Wikipedia. You were a cross during this movie. Yeah.

To keep track of who everyone was. Right. I was just trying to raw dog it like the world's bravest airplane. My friend Kate wrote that story. Yeah. And when she told me about it, I was like, that is everyone is going to be talking about. It is the ultimate our men. Okay. Story. I, we, we try it for my other job.

We tried to do our own thing with that and, uh, we were really proud of our post and it got taken down by PR. Uh, can't be raw dog and nothing on official social media sites. I'll say this. Like I went into, I was like, I got to commit to just trying to engage with this thing just as what it is. It had helped me that you and a lot of other people

I know had told me, hey, this thing is shapeless. It's him throwing a bunch of shit at you. It has no ending. Threads are picked up and dropped in seemingly absolutely chaotic order. So I was not trying to wrestle my understanding of this movie to fit into how I normally Yes, perceive stories that are told visually to you in a theater. But it is a fascinating

Where you know who is who and what is what We introduced a screening of Cloud Atlas recently Yeah, I was about to bring that up A film I had not seen on the big screen since it came out. It was my third time seeing the movie, period Marie, you saw it for the first time. I feel like you had the reaction most people have to Cloud Atlas the first time, which is like, blblblblblblblbl.

But I do think that movie very skillfully, even just from the beginning, interweaves the plots, where when you're moving between six very different storylines, directed by three different people in two different combinations with different styles and different sensibilities, it does from the beginning make you feel like they're all in the same movie. But they also have the advantage

of having very different visual languages so you know where you are. Totally. They do. And also they do this interesting thing that you guys might not have picked up on, which is they use the same actors in every storyline, but they're wearing makeup and stuff. Yes. It is subtle.

Right, like Tom Hanks actually plays the gangster who throws someone off. I don't know if you noticed that was Tom Hanks. The Irish guy? He's not Irish. But it doesn't feel like... What is he? He's like a cockney gangster. It doesn't feel like there's a schematic, like we go story one, story two, story three, through to six, and then back to one. And the bulk is organized in a specific order.

I think Sienna Miller could have played Jamie Campbell Bauer. Could have played Hayes. Could have played both people in the shootout. I'm kidding. Oh, we're doing a Cloud Atlas? Cloud Atlas will cut between them, it'll keep you in one story for a while, go back to another one, but it'll also have these moments where they're sort of shaking hands and you're seeing the echoes. Obviously that's textually part of Cloud Atlas as a story.

Beautifully done. But as Marie says, of course, it does have the advantage of all the stories look different. I'm not saying we should have done it. It's just because that's another film with multiple threads that I saw recently at an epic length. Kevin Costner. He doesn't do that. He just like, and he doesn't break them into totally isolated segments, but the stories aren't really commenting on each other. He's just setting up things in motion, right? Well, are they? I don't know, I'm trying to think. Cause in Cloud Atlas, it's like,

okay, there's different archetypes in each plot line, but I guess it's not. Cloud Atlas does those montages where it's sort of are characters at similar moments. There's a lot of emotional arcing at the same time. But I don't think that's, they're- No, none of this is happening in Horizon. Here's a great quote from Kevin Costner.

I'm saying Horizon does none of this. Kevin Costner, why did he direct the film? Why not let someone else do it? He's never meddled with the director, for example. Might be a great choice by him. But Kevin Costner can protect the little stuff, guys. This is his argument on the rich eyes. I'm sure I felt like this movie has a tone and it has to be maintained.

I don't know that I could have lived with myself if I saw scenes where a female character is bathing and someone said, we need to cut that out because women's desire to be clean and keep their families clean was utmost. Well, that's why he included that sensuality or just a plain idea. Can I get this dirt off me turned into a sensual moment in the film until it was busted by a voyeuristic situation and we suddenly saw the scene for what it was,

which is that they ruined it. Him talking is a roller coaster. That's also the wildest example he could choose. Women want to be clean in all times. Marie, can you confirm? Women be clean. Yeah, that women Women want to be clean in all times. Marie, can you confirm? Women be clean. Yeah, that women's desire to be clean and keep their families clean was utmost.

You don't have to answer this question. It's so crazy that he's just like, they tried to cut the peeping Tom scene, but I'm here to protect it. I, Kevin Costner, director of film. And that scene is actually really interesting. I think it's interesting for the menace that it presents, but not for the first part of it.

What do you mean? That scene is clearly until the menace about women's desire to keep themselves clean throughout history or whatever. Yes. That scene actually rocks. I don't know, the other women in this movie are dirty as hell. That is about Furman especially, loving her look.

The dirty orphan, yeah. But that scene rocks, not the peeping Tom scene itself, but the Luke Wilson confronting them scene where you're like, this has juice. Like, this is crazy. I feel it reminded you of how hard it is, and you're dirty and it's hot. You're on a fucking wagon train.

And you stink. I think the conservation of water, like this is something that's really, really interesting, but like he already introduces the conservation of water part with when she takes the cup of water and treats it like it's a water delivery service. Right. So it's like we already get that. So I mean, I don't know. I think like that sequence, especially all the fallout of it, Luke Wilson. Come on, man. Right. This is annoying for me. Costner's shootout with Jamie Campbell Bauer. The rate at the beginning of the film we're talking about, right?

You missed this part, but I liked the scene when Sienna Miller squashes some scorpions with a boot. That was fun. I think I did see that. There's also the big shootout. I thought it was just some other squashing. She's always squashing. There's a, you know, women have been squashing

throughout history. Women be squashing. Women be bathing. Since women stood up bright, they have squashed to protect their families. Griffin, you missed it. They invent squashing. Oh, that's cool.

And she changes her name to Lady Squash. It's crazy. There's also the big crazy horseback battle in the end with Jeff A and all that. That they largely cut away from, and you watch the boy watching it. It's kind of a cool oh but the sort of uh uh pressure cooker standoff in the general store yeah that scene was really intense. The four sequences in the movie that are undeniably

gripping are the ones that are most conventionally playing by the western playbook. They are scenes that feel like they could come out of any western It's your classic two guys squint at each other and the tension builds and is it gonna boil over or not. What's a little interesting is that in two of the big cases he avoids the conflict. It does feel like he's letting it simmer. But like in those moments the movie is fucking cooking with gas and that's not him dissecting the Western and the mythology. It's not him dissecting the Western and the mythology. That's not him getting into the types of scenes that movies wouldn't have time to cover.

It's him hitting the big scenes. He hits the big scenes well, but I was often intrigued by smaller scenes like the Luke-Wilson confrontation, like the conversation between Teutonic Amiens and the chief. Like, there's even the Jenna Malone stuff, which was the most Twin Peaks The Return-coded stuff.

I did refer to that in my review. You've seen Twin Peaks The Return. Nope. Okay, nobody's seen it. Okay. We'll be watching around the time this drops on Pope's. I'm making my way through season two of Twin Peaks Now. Which David Lynch, undeniably, did basically make as like one big giant thing that he then like cut into pieces.

Mm-hmm. Does kind of have this quality where it's suddenly you're just cutting to an entirely new thing that's not seemingly connected to anything. Sure. With a Luke Wilson type actor that you recognize. Yeah. And it's jarring and it puts you out of place and is kind of cool in Twin Peaks, often very cool in Horizon, maybe often more just jarring, but the experience is interesting and

unusual, right? Why am I watching Luke Wilson right now? He wasn't here before. And now is he important? It's two hours in. Is this a cameo? Or is this guy someone I'm gonna spend time with over the next couple years of these movies getting released? In Cloud Atlas, say, it's like, well, I'm like, I know this is gonna kind of relate to another story somehow. They all have handshakes.

In Horizon, I'm like, all I know is they generally are kind of going in Horizon. That's the only thing really linking these. Where you're like, is he doing something that's almost abstract or is this just sloppiness? That's why it always, you will wrestle within me, Horizon American Saga Chapter One. Like the Michael Anogaro, is that how you say his name?

Angarano. Angarano and Jenna Malone and you know, like that whole sequence, it's suddenly out of nowhere. He's like, well, gentlemen, if I could just sell you my house and they're like, we mean to shoot you. And he's like, well, gentlemen, if I could just sell you my house, and they're like, we mean to shoot you. And he's like, well, scuttle that and here's the documents. Like he's not even listening to them. It's such a weird, funny scene.

It's also dark. But this is so much like the cult of late Clint as well, where you're like, is this so traditional that it becomes transgressive, or are we projecting something onto this? So that's a good call on late Clint traditionalism. Clint is really good at setting out an idea and communicating it really simply and effectively.

And sometimes the idea is perhaps that, choo-choo, what happened here, there was a railroad, and it went right through somebody. Yes. But he also, I think, is just better at, like, this movie, even though we're talking about little scenes, I'm not really getting as much of the texture. Could be sort of a better director.

No question. No, no, no. I agree with you, and I think, like... But I know what Griffin means about, like, you're engaging with something that's so traditional or straightforward or whatever that you do. Is it a horseshoe theory? Armin's gotten so complicated that,, is it a horseshoe theory?

It's gotten so complicated that yes, it's horseshoe all the way around. Where I look at this and I'm like, it's insane that he's not building this in a way where the pieces add up to something greater. And you- Maybe they will. Well, right, so there's the part of it which is like,

is it too soon to say, which then makes it impossible to talk about this movie in the present moment. But I see people arguing like, this thing's either just like a drafts folder that he's just relaying to me in some chaotic order, or there is something daring in him not choosing to spoon feed it to you in a way. And then it's like, are we now

narrativizing what is in fact? I am so jealous of the listeners who will get to, because these are coming up back to back, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Get to listen to this as, because all our listeners- Is Trap now fucking breaking this up?

No, it's not. We're having them back to back. Okay, great. No, because Trap moved up, it actually made it easier. Yes, no. Next week is gonna be fasting for you folks, and unfortunately it's five weeks in the future for us. Yes.

Horizon and American Saga Chapter One. So what haven't we talked about here? Not that I'm saying we're wrapping it up. So we talked about the first chunk. The attack. But just another thing to add on to the attack is my favorite scene in Dances with Wolves, that obviously it's Buffalo. And that is a scene that I think is just like really, you feel the texture of it.

And I think the closest he gets to that in this is when they're in the dirt. We were all a little perplexed by Dances with Wolves. But I've seen it before. That's inarguably, yeah, but I'm saying in that episode, in our, watching it again for this show, right? I think that is the inarguable thing though is like that movie has a sweep It has a style it has an emotion, but there it has a detail

but it's also it's also like an Experiential moment where you as the viewer are like, actually, you're feeling what the character is feeling. And I thought the claustrophobia and terror of Sienna Miller and her daughter in The Little Hideout, particularly the getting the shotgun through the dirt. I was very, yeah. I was like, oh man. In it.

I'm in that. This is great. This is gonna be like her crawling out of it. But that was a, I was like, all right, I'm in that. This is cool. This is gonna be, and like her crawling out of it, you know, but that was, I was like, all right, I want more of that. But this goes back to the core thing for me of like, he's made a lot of movies where everyone else is like, this is a 90 minute story, and he's like,

no, it's a three hour story. And then he's allowing you to live in those details versus this feeling like a 20-hour season of television squished down to 12 hours and you're losing those details at times. When those details do come up, when there is a moment that feels more visceral, then I'm like excited,

but a lot of it I was just sort of like, this is all just information he's trying to, he's laying so much fucking track, and I don't know what's gonna like return the investment or not. I was not bored watching this film. No. I was a little less engaged than I wish I could have been.

I wanted to be fully gripped more often. I let go of the rope at times. There are scenes where I'm just kinda like, I, okay, you know, and then there are other scenes where I was very engaged, such as like the showdown with Michael Angorano. Like, suddenly I was just like, this is, this is a crazy dynamic. What is this? The Faye General store scene happens like two and a half hours into the movie. Is that

the first time we're seeing Faye in the whole film? Possibly. Yes, I don't know. I don't know if he was in. Maybe we saw him before. They did have that moment in when they're deciding to like, oh, some of us are going to go off and get revenge.

Can we explain that a little bit more? I was so confused. Why? The kid in that sequence is the kid who rode, who Ben thought was Costner's son. So that kid is orphaned by the raid we see in the beginning of the movie. Right. And as they are, as the settlers are taking stock of what they've just experienced,

and then the the Union Army comes with Michael Rooker and Sam Worthington. They're like, you know, you guys, we're going to bring you to our outpost where you'll be safe. It's not safe for you here. And you guys were stupid to settle here, but we're going to we're going to move you guys. Come back. We can't defend you if you decide to stay here. We can't defend you. So so the group of settlers splinters, the women and children go and-

They're like, will we out? They're like, we're going to be with Sam Worthington. With Worthington. And then- That potato head, it's so easy to follow it. How can you not? Exactly. The square of skulls.

As long as the sun's in the sky, the shadow it casts. And then there's a faction of the group, all men, and I guess it's supposed to mirror the faction of the group of the Apache who commit the raid in the first place. Let's escalate. Like, we're gonna escalate. We're going to get revenge on... You know, we're going to avenge our lost family members

and fellow white people. There's quote-unquote, scout-punting, because they're like, we're gonna get money for every person we kill. You know, like, they're talking about it amongst themselves. lost family members and fellow white people. There's quote unquote scalp hunting, because they're like, we're going to get money for every person we kill. You know, like they're talking about it amongst themselves. There's like a scalp currency, and they even talk about basically scalp counterfeiting,

where they're like, you find an Italian guy that's dark enough that we... Right. It could be some other, you know. Yeah. I think Costner is trying to show you like, how this is building to like all out war. Right?

Rather than like, maybe there's a way we can all share. No, like. There's zero honor to it. Well, certainly. It's just disgusting. On the settler American side. And you see it through the eyes of the young boy who is like, you know, trying, a young person.

Trying to be a man. But also like what path is he going to go down? Like, is he going to choose violence? Is he going to turn away from violence? You know, like we see him not shoot the father and son in the general store when given the opportunity. But what did the father think was gonna happen that he was gonna miss in that scene?

I think, no. Why is he not running for his life? Because the guy whispering to him who can speak Apache, the translator was like making a judgment that the kid wasn't gonna go through with it. That it was going like stand your ground, the kid's not gonna do it. So he, the guy just like guessed that the kid wouldn't shoot.

What's interesting about that scene is you're trying to figure out if he's trying to psych out the Apache in order to save his son's life so he can get the first shot. But in reality, I think he was making a correct judgment call. I mean, this is, I swear this is not me

just saying it from the fucking vantage point of being like a woke liberal on a mic, but I just feel the narrative imbalance on the perspective in this movie, especially relative to the prologue, where I'm like, well, if this is all about the land, then this is, I want to see more of a back and forth versus it feeling like we are like 80 to 90% settler perspective, 10% like indigenous perspective. Maybe 15 if you want to be super generous.

And anytime the movie kind of shadows the two sides it feels like it's getting at something That's what I'm saying about like right if there's really three big storylines They're kind of half of one and then the other two obviously are So far completely disconnected right and half of one is even being a little jealous I'd say it's maybe a fourth of the one maybe And half of one is even being a little generous. I'd say it's maybe a fourth of the one. Maybe a third. But the trail storyline could use a counterpoint.

Correct. There are there are indigenous characters that are introduced. Maybe we're going to get to part three and there's going to be fucking 90 straight minutes. Yeah, I don't know. Which way? It's impossible to talk about it. Yeah, right. It's it's also the reason to like fucking make this movie in 2024. It's like this is what they wouldn't have done in the 40s.

You know, we watch Dances with Wolves now and it feels a little like slight on this scale. A little paternalistic and you know. But the reviews at the time and people were just like, there has been no American Western that has spent this much time in the perspective of the Native American. I get why it won the best picture. At the time it was seen as revolutionary in the perspective of the Native American. I get why it won best picture. At the time it was seen as revolutionary. It was like the important movie. It is weird that this movie does less than the movie he made 30 plus years ago on that

front. And I understand he's trying to tell a much broader and more expansive story, but it does often feel like an afterthought in this. I almost wish it was more of an afterthought because then you could just be like, it's just an afterthought. There's just enough and enough interesting performances in not great actors doing exactly that you're like ah, there is actually something to this I want more and Sure, I can hold out. Hope that chapter four maybe you know, like I have no but like I

Don't I assume that it will stay balanced like this. Another thing he said on the Rich Eisen show. He was talking about how the story went from the one movie script to the four parts, right? Right, and he's like, so what was the central movie and what expanded, what wasn't it originally or wasn't it originally? And he was like, look, when it was one movie, my character Hayes had a line where he mentioned some trouble he got into in the past. Right, right. And now we're in that. Trouble. We're halfway through the trouble. So the movie he had originally built around this character that he loved so much he named his son after him. We're still in prologue territory. We haven't even gotten to that starting point.

You're like maybe Abby Lee is just backstory for him but certainly everything with John Beavers and Jamie Kimmel Bauer and like him having to fight off these guys which seems like it's maybe gonna be resolved in the next movie. I told this to David Rothmeyer, I just want to say this to Ben Murray because it's kind of nice. When I was at CalArts my very brief tenure at film school there was a horrible wildfire and they asked everyone to evacuate the campus in the Santa Clarita area. My friend who lived down the hall, Stevens Gaston, who was a drama student, was like, I have a friend who's got an apartment in Hollywood, we can sleep on his floor.

And me and two of my friends went there and the guy whose apartment we were standing at was John Beavers, who was a struggling actor who had gotten no work and was like, I'll take care of you guys. And he was like, can I show you my favorite movie of all time? And he played us his VHS of Fandango. Kevin Costner's, Kevin Reynolds, first starring role, major film that kind of starts his career, starts the relationship. Can you tell me this when we saw the movie?

I want you to say it for the mic so you can have the reaction you're having right now. And he was just like, I watched this movie 40 times, Costner's so good at this and that. David sees this movie, he's like, good at this and that David sees this movie He's like there's this guy in it. I don't know I thought it was panel lucky John Beavers, and I was like fucking John Beavers did it For movie he pops and he's he's good lucky you and you big great boy

He's a big tall guy and always seemed like kind of a sweet goofy dude After I knew him very briefly hung out with him a couple times 20 plus years ago He then was on like a Nickelodeon children's show where he was part of the fresh beat band as like a Wiggles type performer Wow, and I was like good for John getting work doesn't seem like what he wanted to do But he's doing it without shame and now his like into like, it feels like the exact character actor career he always wanted. Shout out.

Yeah, rules. Made me really happy. And I think he's one of the best performances in the film. Although I think most of the performances are good. Again, you're getting this kind of like, report card incomplete, but I like where you're going with this. Now Marie.

I didn't love Abby. Oh, well she's got big saucer eyes. I like Abby.'re going with this. Now Marie. I didn't love Abby. Oh, well, she's got big saucer eyes. I like Abby. She's fine. I was more teeing you up for what you said afterwards, which is like, it feels like this movie needs movie stars. And I don't know if it's a production value thing. I don't know if it's that it's like.

Well, the fact that I like, I keep confusing people for people who are on CW shows. He's not Nolan, okay? He can't just get everyone. He can get Sienna Miller and Sam Worthington. But they are just like the most milk toast like... Dude, what do you expect? This is a self-financed film. I don't know. It's just the part of it that you're like the epic of it.

I mean, he loves How the West was Won so much and cites it so much as an example and clearly that kind of multi-part story telling. Which is right. How the West was Won is essentially three movies. Exactly. But I was like, okay. But you're watching that movie and even though the guys don't cross over, you're like, man, this movie has all of the leading men in it. But How the West was Won, which is long, overstuffed, and stupid, super indulgent, is a lot shorter than Horizon and American Saga Chapter One. It's less than three hours long. It's like, yes, movie stars, but mostly just like faces.

Like, I needed like Jamie Campbell Bauer, that's his name, right? Correct. He has a face. I think that there were a lot of good faces. Beavers has a face. Beavers has a face. Friggin' Rooker, man. Rooker has a face. There's a good Rooker, man

Rooker has a face. We said brookers like weirdly kind of touching in this way. I needed I needed it like at least 40 minutes with his wife. This is David's right though. This is the problem that anything We ding this movie for kind of boils back to I wanted more of that right? Where you're like, are we proving Kevin right? Here's my hotter take. We've spent years suffering, watching pretty good television shows that were clearly movie scripts that got stretched a little far

so that they could cover eight episodes on Hulu or whatever, right? Movies have been turned into TV shows for too long. It's time for movies to get their revenge. We're gonna have TV shows turn into movies for no good reason. Movies will just have TV qualities to them to confuse and annoy people. I need a bottle episode about the death of Michael Rooker's child. What a great performance he's given Michael Rooker. He's having, you liked that.

I just said that. I know he's having fun. No, but I just, I was just thinking of- Rooker with a soft look. A soft, he's having fun With a soft look a soft eyes great I for you know for my other job I spent a lot of time rewatching killers of the flower moon and those are not necessarily There are there's are two movie stars in that movie Sure, but the faces are very these faces are distinctive of every Small character and you can keep track of who's who yeah, no, I think I think Sure, but the faces are very distinctive. But the faces are distinctive of every small character,

and you can keep track of who's who. Yeah. No, I think, I think, uh, I'd say for 50% of the characters, he succeeds on that front. And for 50% of the cast, it tends to be with smaller roles. But in a movie like this, it is disorienting if in some of the smaller roles, you cannot keep track of, am I meeting this guy for the first time? Jeff Faye, you are not familiar with. He comes in over two hours in.

I said, who is this Pierce Brosnan looking guy? Right, and I was like, that's fucking Jeff Faye. I'm excited that Jeff Faye is in this movie, but I'm also immediately going, was Jeff Faye in an hour earlier, but was it in a three shot where I didn't get a close enough view at his crystal clear piercing blue eyes? This movie also does like a weird job of like,

I recognize someone and then my expectations are that person's going to be a main character, like with Michael Angorano, and he gets killed off immediately. Right, and that feels more pointed. Jamie Campbell Bauer, oh, this is gonna be the main antagonist, gets killed. But will Kaden just kind of being here?

You're like, is this just a favor for Kev? No, he'll be. Is he gonna stick around? He'll have some importance later on. He will, presumably. He's also a Kittredge. It's also just the law for him to be in any movie shot that's west of the Mississippi. Will Patton has to be in it. I'm looking at the cast list.

And there's a lot of faces that I am fine remembering. You're Danny Huston's, you're Jenna Malone's, right? You know, where it's like, yeah, I know who that is. Great, great to see him. Who's the Chungus on the Santa Fe Trail? The Chungus on the wagon train? The voyeur? Yeah.

Who is that? Oh yeah. That guy stuck out of my mind. I thought he looked familiar. Both of those guys are good. Cause the other one... Let me get this right. Cause there's...

I think there's Charles Holford? I don't know. I know, he's one of the... He's the dad. He's the dad that they shoot. Okay. Is it Tim Gunny? Gwini?

No. That guy? No. No, he's a... This guy, Roger Ivins. Okay. Is it Tim Gunny? Gwini? No. That guy? No, no, he's a he's a Roger Ivan's. Yes. Roger. Well, I don't even see him in the castle. He plays blindfolded man in Love, Lies, Bleeding. OK, he plays helicopter sniper

in Stranger Things. Am I wrong in thinking the younger of the creepy guys guys the smaller one is Douglas Smith who we were recently shitting on in our we J episode I Think he's a little peeper. Yeah A little peeper. I just don't love that actor. I think he's good in this. I think you know effective in this he's in vinyl He's his vinyl which we talked about I think he's in vinyl. He's in vinyl, which we talk about, I think, and he's in Terminator or something. Genesis?

Is he doing an accent? Are they both not American? This is another thing. This is another thing. I'm putting figure out where they're from. Roger Ivins is the big guy. I think they're almost like doing Russian. Right.

One of them felt like German and one of them felt Slavic. And I'm like, is that going to get explained? It must. I'm also like, I need to know more about the British people. Like, is he an illustrator? Like, is this part of like... You know, he seems like he's an artist. So are they...

He talks about how they're gonna print his illustrations. Right, so is he like, you know, like a Remington or someone? Like, along to like, kind of document what's going on? You know, like, I'm just... These are like threads that are dropped and I'm just like, I... I absolutely said this when we did the original episode at the time, but when I went to see Matrix Resolutions

with my, I'm sorry, Revolutions, Resolutions is the next one, the Drew Goddard one. You mean Resurrection? No, I'm joking, I'm making a bad joke after I fucking misspoke. When I went to see Matrix Rel reloaded, the second one. The second one, okay. When it came out, and my friends were like,

was that disappointing? I remember my take as a 14-year-old being, that movie just threw a bunch of balls into the air, and I guess the real question is if the third movie's gonna catch them. My view on those two movies is different now than it was then, as David has forced into my brain. But I do feel this way with Horizon where I'm like, so many of these details we're talking about.

I'm like, man, if fucking part two pays some of these things off, if it sees them through, if it digs deeper, if he gets to make three and four, like does all of this seem better? But I also could just imagine a world in which part two just introduces 80 new things, where he just keeps piling stuff on. And this is often the risk of what happens

with passion projects that people have live in their mind for decades, is they start to go like so deep into their own universe that it no longer becomes like translatable to an audience. It is the miracle of Fury Road that that works. But when people talk about the people who've seen Megalopolis, it's described in very similar terms to this movie, not for being the same movie,

but having the same, this guy's thought about it so deeply that he's worked past the version that makes sense to us. Yeah, and obviously, as much as we love to deride studios and studio notes and all that stuff, we're mostly watching movies that were shaped by that. So when there is especially a ostensible blockbuster, which this sort of is, and Megalopolis will have some semblance of,

that doesn't have that loose boundary around it, it's gonna often feel weird. This movie feels very weird. For a very normie dad movie in many ways, it does feel strange and quote unquote, avant-garde, kind of. I wish it looked more interesting. I agree. I think it would be great if, again,

I assume this is economics. As you said to us before we started recording Marie, this film shot for only 52 days versus 100 plus for... Yeah, Dances with Wolves. Dances with Wolves. Obviously, it's not shooting on sumptuous, you know, beautiful, you know, grainy film. It's... Yeah. Looks fine, I would say.

It looks fine. You know, it's fine. There are moments that are very striking. I would say this movie just... Kind of looks this one just not have a consistent visual language. And a lot of it feels out of necessity. There are times where I would just feel like the visual language would change within a certain scene. There are shots that look like it was shot on an iPhone where they're like, we just have to get this quickly.

I'm not saying it was literally shot on iPhone, but I feel the circumstances in some of the setups. They're on location now, right? They are, and I feel like they take advantage of that. Just sometimes looked a little flat. The guy who shot this shot open range, it's J. Michael Murrow. It's not like he has incompetent nobodies behind the camera or whatever, but you know.

Give me some green. as incompetent nobody's behind the camera or whatever. But, you know, just, give me some, you know, some green. Are there other things we have to say about this movie? I mean, we kind of jumped around with the plot and it already jumps around so much. I don't really know where we would pick up or where we left off. Do you know that Ella Hunt, who's the British lady, the British bathing lady, is playing Gilda Radner

in Jason Reitman's SNL movie? I can see that. Could you? Sure. She's got a face. She's a woman. You are right that Gilda Radner was a human woman with a face.

Yes. I just think I watched this movie, and I'm not saying this was her audition for SNL that she walked in and went, hey, a cup of water please. Yeah, it actually sounds like something Gilderand or somebody would have fun with. And then Jason Reitman went, you are my Roseanne Rosanna Dana. It is just kind of funny. She came on screen, I turned to Marie and I said that to her. Yeah, and I was like, what? It didn't process. So the Kastner shootout, leading up to it, the brother hitting the kind guy, Michael Angarano.

I'm mad. Yeah, because he's a sweetie, and he's been sucked into something he doesn't really understand. Exactly. And he's so small. These guys are so big. Next to Beavers, he looks like a fucking little minion. You would have played that role, Griffin.

Yeah, I would have played that role. He is kind of the Rick the Intern of Horizon. Yeah. I want all my picks back. That's like the Costner just in that scene. But also, I like got- You hotcake eating motherfucker. What?

I was asked, again, like in real time asking you questions when he can cons Costner confront each other I'm like is this completely ran? What is what is Hayes Ellison's backstory? We don't know right. This is what I what is so my read of what he's getting at here But you're watching this movie trying to like fill in blanks going like I guess I'm supposed to infer this and then certain times You're like no, I guess I wasn't I'm supposed to know nothing. I'm supposed to just be reading only what's happening I guess the idea is that Hayes Ellison is your classic like fucking man with no name. I ride into town I have no attachments. Yes, he finds himself in this moment Accidentally placing himself at the center of a conflict which ties him to this woman making an emotional decision to help people

while also being like You know, this is the world's a cruel place man. We got to get out of here I can't protect you forever blah blah blah I think the moment of greatest like visual triumph in this movie is you're having this pressure cooker these two guys Centering circling around this what you call trough Yes, that's the best that's the best shot in the movie and you're you're like a little visually disoriented And then the camera goes over Jamie Campbell Bauer's shoulder, and you see the reaction of costar in the water shooting Yeah, that was cool, and it's like incredible. I mean, I think it's so crystal clear what's happening.

The dynamics and- I'm saying in a good way. OK. That he's purposely throwing you off a little bit of like, these two guys keep moving around. Where are they relative to each other? Who's going to pull the gun first? And you're waiting for your classic,

like it cuts to a close up of Costner lifting the gun. And instead, you're seeing the shootout happen in a reflection of the other guy's shots. Right, right, right. It somehow captures the feeling of being caught unawares, rather than needing to telegraph to the audience and here's the impactful moment. Like, that genuinely made me gasp. Yeah, that was cool. Yes, David.

Horizon and American Saga, Chapter 1. Wanted to say it again. Horizon and American Saga, Chapter 1. Just wanted to say it again. Horizon and American Saga, Chapter 1. This episode's kind of the opposite of Horizon and American Saga, Chapter 1, because I keep checking the clock and being like, what, we've been going for four hours? And we haven't. How long have we been recording for?

One hour and 40 minutes. Who needs it? Who needs anything else? I mean, what else is there to talk about? This is the problem. There's so much in this and yet it's so overwhelming that you end up just talking about it in sort of large abstract swaths. Or we also are talking like individual scenes we like, we like the characters. I'm excited to see what we- I mean, we didn't hear Ribisi talk at all, right? No. So what voice is he going to do?

He's going to make a choice. No. What? You know who else is apparently in chapter two? I don going to make a choice. No. What? You know who else is apparently in chapter two? I don't. Thomas Hayden, sure. Oh, fuck yeah.

Yes, I know, which I'm very excited for. I did know that, yeah. That's cool. Hopefully he's playing sort of the Ronin the Accuser of this universe. I think he is, yeah. Rabeci's the Thanos. Who's the guy that...

I'm sorry, I can't keep track of names. Who's the guy that what? Marigold Sleepswift? Oh, great question. Oh, yeah. Perfect example of a scene where I'm like, I don't understand if I'm supposed to understand. Marigold being Abby Lee's character.

I asked Griffin, like, is she fucking turning tricks? That was my review, but who's this guy? Like, what the hell is going on? I said, I think he's a John, and then he starts referring to their backstory and almost speaking in a way like she's running a con on Hayes, where it's like, when's he going to find out about you? How long is he going to stay by your side? Then he hits her, walks away, and then she fucks Costner and slips away in the middle

of the night. And I'm like, where'd she go? And she leaves the kid behind. She leaves the kid with the Chinese people. I could not understand, is this supposed to be a little bit confusing and a mystery for me, or am I supposed to get what's happening here? Yeah, I didn't know what was going on.

It's not that I didn't get it, it's that I didn't get whether I was supposed to get it, which is a little bit of trouble. I don't know that we're supposed to get half this movie's plot movements, really. Which is a huge thing to ask of not to speak ill of our older citizens, but costner is kind of pitching it at the 50 plus crowd. And he's essentially saying to them, watch my movie, then come back in six weeks and you're going

to have to remember kind of who everyone was and where they were. And then we're going to do more. And then I'm gonna try and make the third one to get it to you pretty soon. But it's like, not like TV where it's like, yeah, you can binge this. Or yeah, like once a week, we'll do like one check-in. Do you think he's going to do a previously on Horizon and American Saga, Chapter One,

sizzle reel to beginning of part two? Couple minutes. A couple minutes. Come on, Griffin, a couple minutes. No, I agree. Can we talk about how good Giovanni Robisi's agent is? Oh, yeah. Because of his fourth billing?

Yeah, he gets the end. Here's the billing on this movie. Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, and Giovanni Robisi? Let me see if it's on the poster. My memory is that everyone else is on a split card. Yes. I think that's it. Like, Wilson, Danny Houston.

It goes two cards to three cards quickly. Malone, Ingenaro, Lee, Bauer. Yeah. Robici also had single card billing in Avatar, The Way of Water, a film where he appears on a video screen that someone else is watching. Everybody's in the rest of them. For five seconds. The Way of Water, a film where he appears on a video screen that someone else is watching. Everybody's in the rest of them. For five seconds.

We should remark upon the fact that, you know, of course, Avatar. Yeah, Dances with Wolves. Often compared to Dances with Wolves. And now Costner is using multiple Avatar actors. This is true. In his part one of a multi-part saga, Cameron-esque vanity project that will have all kinds

of future plots that you'll see later. But this is always been Cameron's thing where he's like, look, there's a larger 18-part story I'm telling across these Avatar movies. Similarly, keeps on getting bigger and bigger. But he always keeps saying, like, the movies will stand on their own. There will be self-contained arts. Yeah. And they do. And what we were saying about... Which Cambridge could have. What we were saying about Costner, or not a Costner, about Eastwood being able to, like... Focus on the one thing. Focus on one thing or distill it to some... I was waiting for some spying here of, like, is there clearly a main thematic concern

that makes these scenes we're seeing part one? You know, the correlation or whatever it is. Because it is just so bizarrely organized that it does just just feel like here's the start of it. Yeah, here's the beginning of all my pieces I do hope pyocons in the next one. I forgot that you painful. It's too painful I've got the glint urban also is in the Coming up this season on horizon love glint one of my favorite guys glint urban. I like him already Put him in a hat, I like him even more. He's just sitting in a chair in a hat and I'm pumping my face.

When you Google him, the first picture comes up. Him with hat? Him with a hat. Looking great. He looks incredible in a hat. And it's a picture of him with a hat and then a picture of him not wearing a hat and he definitely looks better in the hat.

He looks better in the hat. What else do we have to say? The daughter of Sienna Miller. Looks a lot like Sienna Miller. She does, and I think she's great in it. And I really like, I found it heartwarming when she cuts the flowers. Sure.

With the soldiers going off to fight in civil war. Are we going to see civil war battles? No, I think that's like something that the idea is it's more like, this is almost happening more because of what's happening in America. Right. Of like, we both don't have the manpower militarily to really be on the West. Right.

Yep. And no one's- It's stalling expansion. It's stalling it, but also it's making it wilder and that the people who are going out there are kind of completely just doing it, you know, willy-nilly. That's why I assume it's set at this point. And it's also just this kind of moment of like, like there's that conversation Worthington has with Rook over there, like, when do you think's going to happen? And they're like, I don't know, man, but like whatever happens, like

this is next out here, right? Like it's going to be that, but then it's going to be this, which is dances. Wolves is the same vibe of like, it's coming for us, man. We don't really know exactly when. No, it starts with the Civil War. Dances with Wolves is also set right at the end of the Civil War, but yeah, but it's more, just that vibe of everyone who's out in the open plains

is like, we know this annihilation wave is approaching. Like from the East, basically. Like we don't know exactly how. The great white wave is coming. Elegant. Except this is, Dances of Wolves is about a culture that's being lost. This is more about, right, like something that's being planted here forcefully, violently, somewhat destructively. Right culture does be full, right?

Right, you know, and we're watching how that works. It's an interesting idea. I think- It doesn't totally work. You're not wrong in that it's very imbalanced of settler versus indigenous. Man, the massacre by the bounty hunters is a disgusting scene.

And I found it vile and awful and necessary. Yeah, exactly. It's not romantic. And it's, you know, what happens to those settlers is not right, of course, in the beginning of the movie, but this is women and children. They're waiting for the men to leave, and they are going to scalp these... This is women and children. They're waiting for the men to leave and they are going to scalp these innocent victims.

That is a good point though. That it is a kind of impressively unromantic movie. Right? Like I think Kastner is the only one who is like in his performance and it's just in his bloodstream serving up the like kind of idea of the western in his character. But even so- But he's an old weird sad broken man.

That's the thing even so he's not in the main storyline. He's playing the blue bonnet in this basically. Yeah it's a little clownish in a way this like plot He gets wrapped up in that He doesn't even really want to be a part of and you don't really get how it's gonna relate to horizon But you know what I'm saying that like what you're saying. Yes. He's got a hat on No, but also and a scarf. Yeah Looks like a pashmina scarf that my aunt gave to me for Christmas 12 years ago

That's why he put that there. The Pharrell hat. We're gonna need a picture of that, Marie. I'll see if I can find one. I just think most of the actors in this movie and even the style of the filmmaking, he is not like riffing on western movies as much as he is just like, this is what things were actually like in the west. I'm not saying it's like incredibly gritty and stripped down and realistic, but he's not in love with the romance of the thing.

Not entirely. He's in love with the, like he said, the struggle and the grit of it, but no, not really romantic. Ben, you bringing up that scene reminded me of a very, like a really impactful moment where one of the guys takes blood from the scalp and rubs it on the little boy's face as like a, I don't know, some machismo, like war paint or whatever. And I was just like, this is like disgusting. You know, there's some powerful stuff in it.

It's just such a long movie that, you know, I mean, yeah, look, you'll all tune in next week and we'll have a better sense to some degree of what this is or isn't. I kind of think we said this a bunch already, but do we want to say maybe what we want to see in the next one? Good. This is good. I'll start. Beans. I'll start beans. I can do bees.

Yep. Cost us to shoot some bees. Yeah. No, beans are so important to the West. Yeah. Someone just sitting down with Luke Wilson, let's say. Yeah. Yes. And cooking a pot of beans. Yeah. And holding his spoon a weird way like this or whatever. You know, I want to see a big keg with three X's on it I would be good and maybe also at some point someone loses all their money and has to wear that keg like a barrel Yeah, we suspended trap suspenders

I don't have a joke, but I just I want to see more of Isabel Fuhrman. I think she's a very talented actress She's such a talent and she's so perfect for this. Yeah. So, you know, more of her, please. Did you see The Novice? I did. She's so good in that. She's great in that. Great movie.

Shout out to The Novice. I'm hoping the film in the middle, they just show The Novice. Koster comes on screen and is like, I know a pause. And he wheels out a TV. He's like, do you like her? She was in another movie. I'm going to load the VHS. It's the brand Alejandro's bit he used to do about how long Atlas Shrugged was where

he says in the middle of the book they just read another book. It's funny. In the middle of Atlas Shrugged, one of the characters reads Moby Dick and all of Moby Dick plays out and then it just says wow that was a good book Good book. Call me Ishmael am I right? Yeah, he could just start putting other movies into Horizon Yeah, I hope to see more of the many plot lines in Horizon And I hope they continue to not interweave or end in any way

Stick to the plan Kev There's one full speed ahead I won't say I want actually new stories. There probably are! It's fucking Glenn Terman or whatever. I was telling some of my girlfriends that we saw the movie and one of

them who has a friend who is an actress who I will not name but she was asked to read for the saga. A part that was in this film or not yet? Unclear, because she mentioned that there was a lot of sexual violence. Interesting.

And that I did not really see as part of part one. So I'm curious to see if that's a big part of part two and how that will be handled. Because, I mean, Costner keeps talking about women and their, you know, their role in Westward expansion. And I'm like, hmm. Are we gonna get more explicit about that? Like, whatever they're setting up with Ella Hunt

is going to come to a head in some way. Throughout history, women have longed to clean themselves and their families. That's what he says. This film came out June 28th, 2024. And a great weekend for Hollywood. Yeah, it just feels weird not to release a movie on July 4th. I've complained about it before, I'll complain about it again.

Griffin is really upset about July 4th weekend this year. I'm really angry about it. What comes out? Dyspical Me 4 and Maxine is the second widest release of July 4th. And there's so many movies that feel like they should have gone onto July 4th instead, leaving other weekends empty instead. Number one at the box office, Griffin. Number one at the box office is still Inside Out 2.

With $57.5 million in its third week, it's made $1 billion in the globe. A movie that I think is pretty mid. I still haven't seen it. I was not very impressed with it, but you know what? I'm happy that it keeps. Saves cinema, basically. Yeah, Disney breathing down. It is funny, it just feels like for the foreseeable future,

two movies a year are gonna get credited for saving cinema. And in between those two movies, time people are going to be like, is this the last stand? Yes, exactly. Instead of seeing inside to how about go outside? Number two at the box office. I thought that was funny, Ben. No, it's just a genuine like, come on, guys. Well, let's all go outside by wrapping this episode up.

Too hot. I like being inside with air conditioning. Well, I think that's part of why Hollywood is back better than ever, baby. All of its films are shown with air conditioning. Probably gonna leave this studio and go to a movie theater. Maybe to see the number two film at the box office. Which is?

Quiet Place Part II, which if Inside Out were not fully fucking dominating, I think would even be getting more credit for like, is this movie saving so much? Yeah, it made a lot of money. In my opinion, a pretty good movie. It looks good. You know, know Deadline who is so fucking cynical with their box office reporting every single weekend I would load your Alamo app and see if you can get some some tickets to this if you're gonna go right

Engage with the episode at hand quite place for that Sorry day one what I was going to say is this weekend when you were so expecting deadlines Just fucking dunk on the horizon number which of course up number three with eleven million dollars. That's great It didn't even make it to twelve. It was down from the early Eleven yes American they were like look is this a great number no, but it's nice that there are Multiple types of movies at the theaters right now. Like they were just like... There's four movies making over ten!

Like it's like yeah yeah. They were just like this is the first weekend that looks a little normal in a while where we're not even gonna ding this for underperforming because you're like here's a movie for one audience, here's a movie for another audience, they're all coexisting. That part of it's... One assumes it is hoping for a bit of a July 4th run, you know, in a mild way. But the Quiet Place movies,

shh, sorry, there's been a growth in opening for all three, right? Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Look, it's just, I don't think it's a masterpiece or anything, but I think like, the amount of interest I had in a Quiet Place prequel was so little. And...

I only just found out it's the pig guy, like, three weeks ago. Right, so the pig guy to essentially just make a small movie about grief and dealing with your cat while the world is ending is exactly what I wanted him out of this. All these big bets that people feel like are failing and are showing that audiences don't care about cinema and, you know, fucking whatever. I'm like, quietly, Godzilla, Modern Apes, and Quiet Place are these franchises that do not dominate the fucking like blogosphere. We're not breathlessly reporting on everything that happens, every development, every fan theory. In between the movies, people kind of just chill out and then when they come

out everyone goes to see them and then moves on. I'm happy to exist. I guess we're gonna have another quiet place at this point but okay. I wonder what the next one if they're gonna I'm sorry I wonder if they're gonna keep building it out in other directions or go back to the Ellison Simmons saga. Number four at the box office. A film we both like. It's a movie we both like. That's number four at the box office.

It's called Bad Boys Rider Guy. Fun. It's making it kind of moly. Number five at the box office. New this week is an Indian film. Oh yes, I do not know the title. It's called Kalki 2898 AD. It's some sort of sci-fi epic.

Looks kind of rad. It's, you know, Telugu language, you know, much like it's from that sort of sphere of Indian cinema, yeah. So, I don't know, it looks kind of cool. Looks sort of, oh fuck, rebel moon coded. God, I had to struggle to make my stupid joke because I already forgot the name It's good. It's exciting stupid

Fucking thing. Can I get some credit for that joke? It's giving scars. I love it Yeah, very funny Oh, the only problem with it of course is that the R rated cut of the scar giver has a different name Jesus yeah, it's called like strawberry tails forever or whatever. I mean like I don't I can't keep track There's four different titles such a funny title to give someone because you're just like you mean the guy who cuts people No, they give scores Also in the top ten the bike riders aka dry turkey dinner You know what I'm coming out on record right David David hates the bike riders

I really like the bike riders. David's also been mean about this movie for it feels like four straight years. I just didn't like it that much. You guys are acting like I'm beating someone up in school. I want you to say, I want Austin Butler to look you in the eyes. David, David. And then I need you to say that to his face.

I would be like, ah, A, B, you're great. You know what's quietly, even though, even though it's gonna be profitable and no one's complaining about it, what I think is quietly kind of an embarrassing box office number. Is it number seven? I think so.

The Garfield movie? Yeah. Considering... It's made 90. It came out in May when everything was flopping and people were like like the sky is falling It had two weekends at number one with very little competition and it's going to crawl to a hundred I think there's two reasons for its failure inside out exploding where you're like clearly

There's a family audience that was very eager to see things and even still a lot of parents were like wait a month for inside out We don't need to go see Inspiring it was just sort of like correct that you want to see another Movie you fucking idiots and as much as Garfield has endured I think Garfield's peak as a sort of pop culture figure was long ago at this point, right? Like yes, does anyone really get excited about the idea of Garfield? I don't know, do you, Ben? You like cats? I don't, I mean, I just like-

Are kids into Garfield? I don't think so. I don't think they're that into Garfield. They're into a cartoon cat, and so that's sort of enough to get you over the line. But that's like the bare minimum number. It does kind of feel- I'm a Heathcliff guy.

Well, yeah. Wow, that guy's weird. A lot of our listeners are Heathcliff guys. Number nine at the box office. Sorry, number eight is King During the Planet of the Apes. I do know that because one of them got me subtly featured in Heathcliff. Oh, right.

Yes, they wrote in a letter. Bannon, his cat pig from. Well, my cat Fletch likes to get wet. Right. That's what it was. Yeah. King's the Planet of the Apes, a movie I, you know, I was sort of like mildly into. It's definitely a little slow at times.

Is a movie that feels like it has three different movies in it. One really fun one. Number nine in the box office, God bless it, is Yorgos Lanthimos's Kinds of Kindness, which is almost three hours long. A crowd pleaser. And makes Horizon look like sweet syrup going down.

You know what I mean? Have you seen it yet? I have not. Are you interested? I am interested in it. I want you to see it. Has anyone here seen it? Nobody?

No. I got a lot of stuff on my to-see list. I mean, it's rough out there. There's so, and I was out of the city for a while, and so I'm trying to pick and choose what to see. I had to see Horizon. We've been recording a lot of episodes, too, for a couple of reasons. Yeah, but like also, you've got your evenings.

Go see a cinema. You know what I do in the evenings? Honk shoe. You get like, I get. Sorry. I don't know. No one to the box office is a film called Jatt and Juliet, which appears to also, I think it's a Punjabi movie. I don't know much about it,

but you also got If hanging around. It's made it $110 million. Another example of the Garfield effect of like, family audience is so hungry that it feels like any family movie you put in theaters will basically crawl to 100. Right. And then Thelma, which is like,

obviously going to be like a nice little sleeper hit this summer, which is a lovely movie. So I saw Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth. Last night at MoMA. That made $48 million last week. Gone to Earth? No, I'm joking. I've never seen either.

It's been recently restored. It is incredible. Is it playing somewhere? It's MoMA's doing a full Powell and Pressburger retrospective. It's playing again on August 15th, I think. But anyway, I bring this. But that's, we have tickets for midnight showing of Horizon American Saga chapter two that night.

That's the 15th is the midnight Don't worry. Go see it leave 10 minutes and watch the power pressure where we go back horizon will still be going you'll pick it up So either I bring this up Jennifer Jones, right? It's the star and this is a famous like David O'Sullivan amphetamines like sending them a lot of studio notes Making them, you know do a lot more closeups on Jennifer Jones, re-editing the movie two years later, and releasing it under a different title. But anyway, incredible film.

And Michael Powell's widow is Thelma Schoonmaker, the great editor, and she has been responsible for, I guess, shepherding his legacy and getting, she ends course as he have spearheaded a lot of the restorations. And she was in attendance at the screening at MoMA last night, just in the audience. She didn't introduce it or anything.

And she was sitting behind me a couple of rows. And I was like freaking out. And I was taking a lot of selfies just to like get her in the background, but it's like you know it's Little blurry, and I kept sending to people oh my god Thelma's behind me Everyone's like She owns the name then. Squib's rockin' it right now, man. We love Squib! Star of Scent of a Woman, June Squib.

June Squib. June Squib's also the lead of Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut. Is that right? I just feel like there's all this press about Thelma's her first time in a leading role at like 94. She's not 94. She's 94 years old. David! She's 94? This is what I'm saying. I think she might be playing

For is so fucking old she's Kind of like needs to tell me her diet Given if that she's doing this well at 94. She's got another one in the camera She's the lead and you're saying Scar Joe directed this? ScarJo directed a movie that June squips the lead in that they just finished filming in New York. It's called Eleanor the Great. Yes. And it's about a 90 year old so once again she's way out of this is actually terrible casting. Floridian woman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 19 year old student in New York City. Sounds a bit like Lost in Translation, perhaps.

Who's the 19 year old again? Erin Kellyman, who's the girl from Solo and stuff. Yeah, she was in Solo, right? Yeah. Enfus Nest? The very freckly one, yeah, she was Enfus Nest. Enfus Nest? And she would tell OG04 and Jessica Hecht?

I mean, it's a good character. Jessica Hecht! Yeah. This episode's over. This has real... Episode has been over energy. Everyone's looking at their devices. David's typing a very long email.

Yes, no I'm not typing a long email. How dare you? Next week on the show, Horizon, an American Saga, part two. Yeah? It's weird to think about. I feel like we're time traveling in a way. That it's coming this soon, right? Yeah.

It doesn't feel right, but nothing about this movie feels totally right, I guess. So that's the magic trick of Horizon, colon, an American saga, hyphen what? After two? I guess that's just, you know, that's just what he did. Is this a battlefield or a level disaster for him? No.

Is it a dances of a world of triumph for him? Certainly not. It's something weird in the middle. No, he also keeps talking about the $100 million investment and people took that as part one is a hundred million. And then it started to sound more like, no, him shooting part one and part two are a hundred million. And then recently I read a quote from him

that almost made it sound like a hundred million is the whole endeavor. A hundred, but it's a hundred million. And then recently I read a quote from him that almost made it sound like a hundred million is the whole endeavor. But it's a hundred million of his own personal investment. I believe what he was saying. I think he was kind of saying like, I think I'm gonna end up a hundred million in the whole when all is said and done. But I also just don't know how much we should be listening

to him about this. Like I assume he has accountants who are drinking many poisons as he continues to make these movies. But like, they are the ones who actually know like what's at stake. He's been clear like, look, my children will not be penniless. They just might not have my fancy waterfront properties. He's also as we have now mentioned, in the middle of a divorce and possibly he's just kind of draining the account. I don't have any assets.

So I'd love to give you money, but that might make its money back. I'll give you a chapter. You want one of the chapters? What if the divorce settlement is she gets chapter three? Yeah, exactly. You might try and take it all the way to chapter 11 Then that was a little bankruptcy joke from old I was a hoster very funny from the hoster. What's Kevin? What's this Kevin Costner name? We have one more part to figure this out. Fuck. Didn't we figure out what it was? Yeah, I think so. Well, it's again, we've been recording

these also like scattered stands with a vape. I don't think he doesn't vape anymore. I don't even freaking smoke anymore. Stands with a chain. The post-production man. That's kind of funny. It's kind of funny. It's sort of a thinker, but it's pretty good. Thinker. The post-production man

Thinker but it's pretty good thinker Ben Hossley in American Saga part one Now that I like What was your joke you owe you? When Marie and I bought tickets for Sunday afternoon, you wrote, horizon alone. Yes, that's right. You did. And we were all like, huh? What does that word?

Ben, what did autocorrect do to you? It didn't make sense visually. No, and it wasn't horizon. Hold on, let me see if I can get it just perfectly right. And this is going to pay off in a huge way. Absolutely. Thank you all for listening. Thank you to Marie for being here,

helping to produce this show. Thank you to A.J. McKeon for editing production, coordinating. Hello. Wait, Hallowsen. Hello. Griffin, whatever Griffin said was

better. I Guess so You put the a after the H. Well cuz alone is right in there, right? Hello Thank You JJ Burch for doing the rare new release dossier for a movie that has 30 plus years of development Very good. Good. Very good. Thank you to Pat Reynolds, Joe Bone for our artwork, Lamar Garvey, the Great American Aalifar, our theme song. Thank you to Kevin Costner for being the last true American.

Tune in next week for... ... ... ...Record Scratch? Which... That's what Ben wanted to do. I thought you were going to place the noise and then afterwards I'm'm saying record scratch to make it clear what happened. Okay, cool So I think people have heard a perfect sound effect of a horse

And by the way, all this is staying in course and then me saying record scratch and everyone's confused Oh my god. Oh the blank check guys fucked up They recorded an episode when they thought horizon part 2 was gonna come out one week later, and then they never bothered to update it. Well, you're wrong. Here's the addendum. Here's the fucking epilogue. We're back in the studio.

Not the epilogue. The intermission. Addendum. Addendum to Chapter 1. No, this is an addendum slash epilogue for Chapter 1, of course, but it's like, it ain't over. It ain't over. It's just taking a break.

A week ago, we were rattled. We received the news that Horizon, colon, and American Saga, colon, chapter two, had been removed from the schedule. Not postponed. Not postponed. Not put on max. Just we're going to just whoop for a minute while we figure this out. Date announced. That was the energy, right?

I think a lot of people interpreted it as this movie is never coming out. The movie has been cancelled. No, that's not true. Right, it'll come out in some form. I saw some people doing that kind of hand-wringing, which is wrong, which is part of why we're doing this to talk about the state of Horizon. They said, we're removing it? The important line in the announcement was, like, we are rushing this thing to PVOD and Max.

Chapter one is being put on PVOD and Max tomorrow actually when we're recording mid-July. Yes, it will have been out for a while by the time this episode comes out. I think there is the assumption that it possibly could do quite well on television. Right, I think correctly their feeling was well this absolutely didn't work in theaters. If we're putting the- It's weird. Because when I went to see it at 10 o'clock at night in a theater in Queens by myself-

Well no, it wasn't, it was filled with ghosts. That's the thing. Coster always has to remind us, his biggest audience is haunting audiences, ghost audiences from like Frontier Times. Right, his key audience is ghosts who still buy DVDs at Walmart. And women! And women!

Female ghosts who still buy DVDs! Horizon has made 28 million worldwide. 26 domestic, 1 point something foreign, okay? Yes. Doing okay? I think they are correct in that they were like, look, we don't know if this is ever going to work, but if we release chapter two in a month, it is going to die a deeply embarrassing death.

If you have to assume that no one's seen chapter two hasn't seen chapter one, and that some of the chapter one audience isn't returning for chapter 2. I do think Costner's correct, which he's always said that his audience is not necessarily an opening weekend audience. They're an older audience. And I was throwing out as an example, I was talking to Ben Simpson, producer of Thelma, a movie you and I both liked quite a lot. Yeah, fun movie. That movie is very, very similar to the relationship I have with my grandmother, who is 94, would fucking love that movie. It would probably make her cry.

And she loves movies more than anything else and has not been to a theater in five years. And I cannot get her to go back to a theater. She just, and I have this with some of my older relatives as well as sort of like, I kind of just got used to not going and it's on my TV eventually anyway. Absolutely. And I keep yelling at them and they they don't listen to me. And also I'm like, what else are you fucking doing? Well, this is my thing. But whatever. But Ben was talking about like, oh, you know, it's going to VOD and streaming soon.

And I, you know, it's always a bad sign if you announce the things to her. I'm not relaying anything that's untoward here, right? But like this battle that we're constantly talking about of like, if you announce the streaming date the week after your movie comes out, are you shooting yourself in the leg? And I said, no, for Thelma, there's genuinely a huge audience for that movie

that was never gonna go to theaters. And that movie has done very well in theaters. It's been one of the few successful, like genuine, indie summer counter programming releases since the pandemic. But no question that movie is going to explode on streaming and VOD. And that might happen with Horizon, or it might not.

But it certainly is smarter to push it over to those platforms and let it play out that way for a bit and see if there's a way to drum up more excitement for chapter two. When the news hit, my phone blew up. I imagine you guys, David certainly had a similar thing, certainly all the various Blinkchad group texts were blowing up and people, a lot of people I know

were like, oh, you guys are fucked. Did this fuck you over? How much are you stressing out right now if best thing to ever have of course? It makes it all way more interesting and some people are gonna say like cope shit. You're fucking coping You're you're saying I'm not big mad Genuinely, this is the best outcome. I agree. Yeah, I think one it's fascinating there You know like immediately I'm starting to see on like, you know, film, Twitter and letterbox and stuff, people being like, you know, they came for Horizon and I will now speak out. Horizon has now gotten a new level of underdog status.

Right. Like weird kind of vanity, like dad movie to like, like instant weird cult classic. We thought there was a binary. We thought either this movie is gonna have some weird sound of freedom out of nowhere over performance, which would have been an interesting cultural narrative, but not that interesting to our podcast other than Kevin proved them all wrong, or it's gonna just belly flop. And it felt like that's where we were.

And it was kind of a sad note. And you're like, does he get to make the other two who fucking knows this is the most interesting note much like horizon chapter one our mini series now is on an indefinite cliffhanger exactly and we'll be back but who knows when who fucking knows and will we see the theaters or will we watch it on max or will it get shuttled over to a crackle like who knows and I'm not being insane here But like I was talking to a lot of people who were like I kind of feel bad for him The thing is a conclusive failure. They'll eventually put part two in theaters or streaming or whatever, but the dream is done He'll never make it to part four

I'm not betting on him But I think it is stupid to bet against him. And part of his strategy always for this shit has been like, if people don't like it as a movie, I recut it as a TV show in two years, and then I resell it and I make more of my money back. I could totally see a scenario in which, I'm not betting on it, but I could see a scenario wherein this does better than expected on VOD and streaming.

They put chapter two on VOD or streaming. He spends a year or two building up the money to basically be able to sell back to Paramount Plus or someone. I will cut the first two chapters into episodic if you give me X amount of money to do the rest of the story that I want to play out in TV and I'll just design it for TV at that point. Wait, hold on.

I could see that happening. But you're saying he would put out part one as a movie? Part one went to theaters as a movie. Then he would re-release it as a series, including part one recut? Maybe. People have done this. Chop it up like Tarantino did that. Tarantino did it with Hateful Eight.

He's been saying he's going to do it once upon a time in Hollywood. He did it very quietly as an experiment for Netflix. Boz Lerman just did it with Australia, a movie he shot 15 years earlier, recut as a mini-series for Hulu. It's a thing that's been happening on a low level, and so many people, I feel like their response to Horizon was, if this is what he wanted to make,

why didn't he do it as a TV show in the first place? And I think the answer is what David fucking said in our main episode Chunk which is like fuck you movies are better than TV Everyone's been saying TV is like long movies. He should make a movie. That's like long TV It's time for like the revenge, right? But I also think there's a certain strategy to it where it's like he always could have sold this as television Oh for sure Why not try to make it a movie and if it fails then it's like I guess I make a TV instead.

Versus if he made a TV in the first place that'd be depressing. Here's my question Griffin. My Costner rankings of the four films he's directed. Oh right which we had put off. Which we had put off because we assumed part two was coming. Yeah. Do I put Horizon over Dances with Wolves? Is that a weird thing to do?

I think one cannot. So it's open range Dances with Wolves, Horizon, American Saga, chapter one, The Postman? That's what I'm doing. Yeah. I'm tempted to put Postman over Horizon, but only because Horizon is not a complete movie. It just kind of can't be judged. I do think that- I felt like it resolved all the different threads.

My only question is, and we'll find out, I think, one day, does Chapter 2 have a little more of an ending? Because at least Costner knew- Or storylines. No, no, no, but like, chapter one ends with a trailer for chapter two, which they were filming concurrently, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They have that footage.

But chapter three obviously had just sort of started work. When, you know, so it's like, does chapter two have a little more of a like, okay, there's more we can do and there's more story to tell, but here's the end. This is my big question. My big question is, in his grand narrative, do all the plot lines converge?

Does everyone make it to Horizon in part two and then the story is cooking for parts two, three, and four? Or is Horizon everyone converging the endpoint of chapter four? Is it the beginning of chapter three? So the first two movies are set up. Like, there is no clarity on this. When he's been saying I've already started filming chapter 3

I have since heard that possibly what he has shot is what would be the coming soon Montage at the end of chapter 2 that he basically shot He like put up enough money to do like a week or less of like grabbing some elements To tee up chapter 3 which then he was hoping to get the money from the first two to make. I don't fucking know, but I think this remains one of the weirdest experiments in the history of Hollywood. And I think it's a weird liminal space outcome right now makes it even more interesting. The one thing that's absolutely happening is some version of chapter two is coming up because it will have your fucking thing

Oh, yeah, no, we've seen it. There's no clarity on what level of cut exists But something's gonna come of it. I think It's going to be Released direct to a streaming service likely max I think because there is sort of an existing relationship with WB for these two movies. It's possible it could be released first direct to PVOD and then Max. The chances of a theatrical release seem slimmer.

I will say that I have heard that Costner's original take was let's release chapter two more like four months later. His original, yes. Not six weeks apart. I heard that Costner's original take was, let's release chapter two more like four months later, not six weeks apart. His grand dream was to have four movies come out in the span of 12 months, four months apart. And that's when he hoped he'd be able to make all four straight through.

And then instead it became two movies, six weeks apart, which is really close. Is really just only allowed if your first part is gonna really smash. Like the second Horizon underperformed, the idea of releasing chapter two, like basically a month later, seemed suicidal. Like that's crazy.

Like you're not giving anyone time to really get to it. Almost every time someone has done the split-sequel thing like this. It's like spring and fall, like summer and winter. Make sure you reload in revolutions is May and November. May and November. Pirates did that too, basically, right? No.

What I'm saying is almost every other time, it's different calendar years. Oh, sure. Pirates did two years apart. Pirates was July and May. Right. Right? I think back to the future, two and three were like summer, 89 and then spring 90.

That sounds right. They're usually less than a year apart, but they put them in different years. Right, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, all those things, it's like same season every year, like clockwork. The six weeks thing is kind of insane. Infinity War and fucking End game were like one year exactly apart. Six weeks was going to be bold.

Whose decision do you think that was? Who decided on six weeks? What was the strategy? I think it was Warner Brothers. I think it was them kind of being like, look man, we've got our schedule. We've got trap. We've got Beetlejuice. We've got, you know, so like Horizon is going to go where we want it to go Also, their exposure is limited because Warner Brothers just has a distribution deal on this So for them, I think it was some degree of like can we use this as a guinea pig for experimentation? right and

Uh, I think the other part of it was truly that they were like if they're six weeks apart we save on marketing spend Um, you basically have one market campaign for the two movies you just decide one poster yeah uh uh fear street which was the netflix trilogy based on aural stein books that at one point uh our friend alex ross perry was in uh uh was attached to direct that movie was originally developed at fox before disney acquired fox and that was supposed to be. That movie was originally developed at Fox before Disney acquired Fox, and that was supposed to be this grand experiment for them of we're filming three movies

with three different directors back to back to back. The three directors will run their own post processes so that we can get them all finished at the same time, and they will be released in three consecutive months in theaters. And this was back in 18 or 19, and it felt like a radical idea and it was like Fox just wants to try it. They want to see what in this weird mushing between

film and television is there a way to make a movie that feels like TV and has people come back every month and the question has always been... Can I ask? Yeah. Have people come back every month? Well what happened was instead in the pandemic they sold it to Netflix, and it just went up on Netflix. And I think they were released two weeks apart or some shit, but it didn't have the same thing. And I think the feeling with these things being so close together is like, either the thing flops, and by the time the second one comes out people are like, what?

Or if the first one's successful, are you cannibalizing it by having the second one come out and take screens away from the first one comes out people are like what or if the first one's successful are you cannibalizing it by have the second one come out and take screens away from the first one and the only thing I can really think of that's kind of like this in like mainstream popular wide release studio theatrical strategy is the Star Wars re-releases of the special editions in 97 where they were like Star Wars comes out in January Empire Strikes Back comes out in February Return of the Jedi comes out in March but it was very different because those are archival movies right it's different yeah putting myself in the viewer myself my shoe myself in the shoes of the viewer which you were alone at a theater in a story that's

right like I'm like oh I love movie. And then the sequel comes out the next month. Yeah, I guess if I really liked it, I would maybe want to show up. I would be probably more motivated. But wouldn't I just also be motivated if I like the first one to go see it a year later? I just I don't understand

it. Like even from like a financial standpoint, couldn't you make more money by holding back and then having just the first go out and be streamed or, I don't know, I just sold physically. That's why that's what they're doing now, which feels like a course correction to like, oh, we've actually made a mistake by setting these movies up to not let chapter one have a full life cycle.

And this would only work if Chapter One was an out-of-the-box phenomenon in theaters and the excitement was so high that basically people were like, I gotta see Chapter Two immediately, and or by the time Chapter Two came out six weeks later, people could be like programming marathon screenings. Where it's like there's a higher ticket price for six hours of Horizon, you sit, you watch both of them. But I think the answer is, there was not a lot of confidence in this movie. They were like, look, if it's a low key phenomenon,

if it has a rabid passion, but it's smaller, why not just get them twice in two months? Why not fold in the marketing campaigns? And especially if you're not the studio that made the movie, all of this is interesting. It's very interesting. It's going to work out in some way. In some way.

And 100% chance chapter two will be seen. In some form, somewhere. The over-under on three and four, maybe, maybe, I hate to say this, Kevin, is there some compromise where you can just do one finale movie? Sure. Rather than two? Yeah.

Maybe that's the conversation people start having? Yeah. He obviously had this whole pitch of like, you'll see, and you'll be hungry for more, and the ball will keep rolling. And now it's more of a sort of like, okay, how can we get this done in any way? But that pitch was as if chapter one

would be the greatest appetizer you've ever had and you'd be like, bring on the fucking main course. And especially, essentially, it feels like chapter one was handing out napkins and silverware and being like, I swear to God, what we're cooking up in the kitchen is gonna be delicious. And you're like, Kevin, I'm so fucking hungry right now and you've not fed me any there's not even bread on the table

I want some bread. I'm hungry. I'm hungry too. Goodbye. I'm wrapping this We don't know well, here's what I want to say and I do think this is important to say Here's the other message I got from a lot of people that went along with like are you guys panicking right now? There was a lot of people that went along with like, are you guys panicking right now? There was a lot of hypothesizing about, well, what are they going to do? How are they going to fill this blank spot on the schedule? And here's the answer. Next week, David Lynch. Yep. Enjoy.

We're going straight into a race right. People thought we were going to use this to put Waterworld on main, to do a Ben's Choice, to do any other kind of thing. Yeah. Ben's choice, do any other kind of thing. No, guess what? Actually, our schedule was a little crunched and stressed in terms of fitting all this stuff in. By the end of the calendar year, and this has given us a little breathing room, it's worked out great. Also, quite possibly, we will have to loop around and schedule Horizon Part Two sometime in the fall.

Yep, it happened. Or next year, who knows? So right now, everything is just moving up one week earlier. Eraserhead starts next week David Lynch twin pods fire cast with me horizon chapter two question mark question mark question mark But whenever it happens, we will cover it. You're Kevin Costner ranking. We said Mike Evan cost ranking I said Yeah, I think he's been fun kev. He's the weirdest normal man in American history I'm spinning this oil right now.

Yeah. Spinning, I'm spinning. I just think he's gonna, anytime people are like, he's done, he's cooked, Kevin's like five years away from like a surprise and a second win. Big Kev, the cause. What sandwich should I pick up on my way home? That's an incredible question. What are you in the mood for? I don't know. Turkey? Too bad Blosie's closed. Ham? We had one of the last blimpies that was mere blocks away from

our studio and it closed. I don't think a blimpies is being good. I was joking. The point is it's maybe the worst up. The worst ever. It is the funniest thing in the 30 Rock season finale or the series finale. Okay. When they're trying to tie up all of the narrative threads and they devote 30% of the running time of the finale to in the lunch rotation of who gets to pick the lunch order it landed on lots and he wants blimpies right and they just do everything they can to block his choice that sounds funny it's so good I should rewatch 30 rock yeah it rolls okay you know what's another funny one? Quiznos. Yeah.

Well, Quiznos is like gone? They are. So both of them barely exist. That was just the weirdest one where they were like, the sandwiches are bad. And I'm like, okay, but they're toasted. And I'm like, but they're bad? And they're like, yeah, but we did toast them.

And what about your mascots? They're ugly. So they look bad, yes, but also they sound annoying. Do you guys like subway? No, oh, oh Shit, okay. Well, it is that but we did toast it though and I'm like Here's the thing. It's the toasting thing really worked on me Of course it did it worked on everyone for a year or two and then that was the head one visit I went too many times Quiznos is one of these things where I feel like the parent company has shut down but individual franchisees exist and they're basically lawless

The last time I was kind of like a horizon situation. Exactly gone beyond the borders There was a quiz nose near the AMC 34th Street that I think finally closed. Sure. That was like the one still left in Manhattan that I would go to sometimes if I was seeing a movie there. And the last time I went, the guy who was working the register was not only not wearing any of the like Quiznos like shirt hat, the things that signify that this person works here, he was wearing his backpack. Oh cool. He was just standing at the register with the backpack and I was like, did you just get here? Are you about to leave? Do you just not care? And it, Quiznos felt like Horizon. It felt like a town of possibility. He had to keep his stuff on

his back. That's why he had the backpack. Sure. I just looked up the nearest Quiznos. Where is it? It is in Connecticut. Great. How far? Western or Eastern? What's how it is in? Orange, Connecticut. Oh, that's not that close. No orange is pretty pretty far That's got a near New Haven like that's in the middle of there and so by car it is It's a good two hours. Yes. That's a patreon app. That's a slot filled in 2025 Because we brought it up in this episode Enough of a reason kind of question is that it's lower now. We brought it up in this Now wait a second. This is weird. I just got an old flyer

From a mysterious source, and I'm looking at it, and it just says quiz knows Orange, Connecticut, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna pack up my fucking wagon. Rebici did that. And journey. That's just Rebici. Rebici did that. He just printed that out. This guy is fucking printing flyers,

he's shooting movies, he's fucking lensing indie horror. Oh, that guy lenses like no other. Yeah. David is on his phone, truly ordering a sandwich. I'm literally just like, what should I get? Thank you all for listening to our Kevin Costner series. Yep, we will see you.

The same sense of closure that the last Kevin Costner movie had. We leave you. We leave you with nothing but a sort of whisper of exactly. Yes. Of what could happen next. Yeah. Just imagining the kind of sleepy time sex scenes that might be coming should Kevin ever finish his saga

Oh god, he's gonna get laid so weird next time. I Don't know how but it's gonna happen Tune in next week for a racerhead That's right. No, you're not wrong I'm not gonna repeat the credits because we did it before in the original part of the episode Honestly, you just need to record the credits and we put them at the end of the episode Marie was supposed to be here. She showed up in studio and then she puked a bunch. Yeah for an episode That's coming out in fucking December. We miss you Marie. November. Yeah. Yeah, miss you Marie. We'll see you soon

And as always I think Kevin's gonna pull it off. We're getting all four