The Cars That Ate Paris

148 people live in the township of podcast and every one of them is a murderer. Where exactly is podcast? What kind of people live there? What are they trying to hide? Why do cars mean so much to them? What are these cars? They're the cars that ate podcast. So, the town's podcast, but the people are also podcasts at the end of the day. What, you mean what I just said? Yeah. You're wrong. I, in fact, kept the word people. No, but you said it's the cars that ate podcast. I guess instead of Paris. Yeah. The only word I was subbing out was Paris. Good job. Thank you. Damn it. All right. It was clean as hell. I, all right. I'm trying to fucking logic police me. My logic's airtight. I said this before we started recording. I showed up very late to today's recording session. And I, I checked with Griffin, Dave, and this has been, I just did. What is happening? Well, that's what I'm saying. We need to just provide some context that I was quite late. And I am shaming myself currently. at this moment. Shame! Shame on me. God, Steve McQueen must be here. Shame on you. He made a film called Shame. Yes. Oh, wait a second. Knock, knock, knock. Ding dong. Oh, no. Who could it be? It's Michael Fassbender's giant flaccid penis, and he's here to shame you, Ben. Shame! Wow, I almost said fame. This is his penis. Can I do my impression? I was trying to do kind of cheat flapping. Can I do my impression of it. Yeah, go ahead. These are such outdated jokes. Fassbender dick jokes? Jesus. It's 2026, guys. Is this how we start a new miniseries? It's great. So, yes, we're kicking off a new miniseries. David noted me. And I'm sorry. I wasn't noting you. You tried to cuck me doing the intro. Oh, boy. Love it. Ben shames himself. We all do impressions of Fassbender's penis. Just the sound. well I mean what else is there to do an impression and this is why we're not going to video and this is why listen up venture capital I know you all want to see David's impression of the whale poster you do and believe me oh fuck can I take a picture fast enough fuck fuck fuck did you get it no my phone was front facing fuck why was your phone front i don't know ben slept in okay well i want to say a few things but first i want you to just introduce this podcast right away well that's so kind of you to suggest you're a dear friend and i'm sure you would never ever try to run me off the road and take the intro just anxious because it's a new new mini series yeah that's why we're starting off strong we're starting off so strong I'm wearing all of my clothes backwards. Ben has shoes on his hands and gloves on his feet. He's got it's quite cold outside. So he's wearing a beanie on his butt and long johns on his head. It's quite a sight to see my friends. Yeah, my face is coming out of like the little back porthole. Yep. Yep. Yep. It's really good. And once again, this is why we're not going to video because it's theater of the mind. What's the podcast called? The podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. Thank you. It's a very professional podcast. It is rigid. It is formal. It, of course, is, according to Time Magazine, one of the 100 greatest podcasts of all time. Do you think they'll listen to this and rescind it? Yeah, take us off. And you know what? We're on a pretty tight ship. We do. And I'm not actually certain what a tight ship is. I'm going to say, when I look around, I say, yep. This is kind of pushback, and let me tell you why. A ship can both be tight and riddled with holes. We are doing today. They're two separate things. We're recording an episode that was originally, I think, scheduled sometime in, like, October or November. The first time it was bumped, it was bumped because I had had my, like, third dental surgery in 12 months. Yes, you bumped it then. Yes. Then it was scheduled for a couple days ago. You bumped it again. Ben and I had just flown back from L.A. the night before. You agreed. To the scheduling of it when you knew you were traveling. Here's another thing I do. I book travel and I'm like, yeah, I'll take a 6 a.m. flight. I said, this is a bad idea. You're correct. But I always think that tomorrow is the first day of me being the most high-functioning man in the world. Finally today, it's time to record this episode. Then Ben's an hour late because he slept in. Yeah. So I really feel like this episode. I was doing the Fassbender flight. this has been the episode that felt impossible for a little while which is dumb because it's like a guest free episode about a rather sort of small short movie it's easy to just spike it over the net in my opinion next week's problem again this is a mindset I don't share but okay so there's my little shame that's my shame fingers been pointed and wagged can I shame you for a second Yeah, go ahead. It's time for me to introduce the podcast. It's called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm sorry, I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. We are finally kicking off our miniseries on the great Peter Weir. One of your favorite filmmakers, one of your pet projects, I would say more a pet project than a favorite filmmaker. Obviously, he is a filmmaker I like a lot, and he's made a lot of movies I've made. He's made a lot of movies that you have made. That I've made. That I've liked. But I have long just also looked at him as a perfect blank check candidate because of the variety of movies he made. The kind of genre. Do you love an app sampler platter direct? I love a genre hopper. Your boils, your onlies. I love a poo-poo platter. I feel like those are the ones you love to push. Can I ask you, now that Weir is happening, who is your next... Someone else asked me this question and I couldn't tell them the answer. Someone asked me that. Like, okay, you got Weir over the line. That was your... And I was like, fuck, I don't know. I feel like I have in my head who I thought you would say. Is it Tony Scott time? Oh, that would be good. But he's the opposite of that. He could not shake his inheritance. Which I feel like the Griff picks are usually a person who does one distinctive thing so fucking well that I love and can't get from anyone else. Fucking puppet man. Excuse me. That miniseries would be comprised of two puppet men, one of whom eventually put the puppets down. The ones I've pushed over the line up until now as well are like Lin Ramsey and Bucketheed Tim Burton certainly yes like okay so when we did the you know we did our March Madness tournament a few years ago where we each got guys right yep so the guys in my region yeah let's see how many of them we've gotten done three of them okay we've done Peter Weir it's happening now Jane Campion and Danny Boyle right those were three guys on my my list give me your other five Karen Kusama who you know was an eighth seed and she's making another movie I hear. We could do her someday. Yeah, she might be on the bracket this year? Can't remember. No, because she beat Peter Weir, remember? Oh, right. Weird. Weird. And by the way, we're going to make it Weir this whole miniseries. The Archers, Powell and Pressburger. Make blank check Weir again. Yep. David, you're unhappy right now, but think about how happy you're going to be when those bumper sticker sales come in. They better come in high. They better come in. Are we charging $400 per bumper sticker? What's our plan here? Premium. Do a catchphrase too many times on podcast. Create bumper sticker? Profit. Ben and I covered in flop sweat. They're really premium. Look how shiny. We used a hollow sticker. Powell and Pressburger. We'd love to do them someday. That's a shared dream for us. Yeah, exactly. That's not quite a solo pressure. probably the closest answer I have to your question Steve McQueen I'm kind of disinterested in Steve McQueen right now I haven't loved the last couple things he made Mike Lee maybe my true answer but you know a hefty lift a big filmography a guy who you know made challenging movies my big takeaway from Burton is, if I'm pushing my guys up a hill, tight series. Right? Yeah, Burton really asks a lot. Where I'm like, double up the Keetons, Lynn Ramsey's five. Okay, wait, is that the rest of your... That's it? Okay. Who is on yours? Yeah, yes, please. He asks. Very simple question. And I said, please, like a gentleman. Thank you. That's a big thing in my house right now, so thank you. Oh, you're teaching the please and thank yous? We've been trying to teach it for a very long time. Feels like there's been some backsliding. From the boss baby? Yes, from my daughter, yes. Well, to be fair, time is money. I know, but maybe she doesn't need to, as she's almost five, point at her water bottle and go, empty. Maybe she could say, please, can you get me some water? Something along those lines. That's kind of funny. And I go like, what was that? And she goes, it's empty. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I wasn't asking for meaning. I was asking for maybe a different way, different tone. That is how the boss baby would act. That's some swimming with sharks shit. Your guys, as with some of your guys we've now done. We've now done Martin Brest. We've now done Lynn Ramsey. And we've now done Buster Keaton. Your remaining guys that you had on your... It's wild that this is like an even balance. It is. This is the job we do, right? This is the job we do. People think they pay us for the podcast. No. No. They pay us for the schedule. you had terence malick i think also a bit of a shared one for us yeah i'd love to do and and one that we've come close to we'll do it sometime we've thrown it on the spreadsheet where's my jesus movie terry that's the real thing where's my jesus he's making a jesus movie making it for 10 years that's like oh principal photography wrapped february february february 2020. Oh, shit. It is the last completed, unreleased film shot entirely in the before times. He's been tinkering away at it ever since. Because the guy doesn't really do reshoots. Presumably, he has shot no post-COVID footage. No, I think he's just in the edit forever. Finding his rhythms. But I just love that there's one movie that is still from the before times that we haven't seen. And so maybe that will be the moment for Terry. we've also got 70s Altman of course long a pet product view Cassavetes similar Joe Dante who we're always in this liminal thing I think again a guy we both kind of want to do but we're just like could he just make another movie please I transparently hate his most recent film and I don't want to end on it and then Preston Sturgis another I would say shared one a fun exciting one Ben by the way of your guys we have only done Ben won this year He did. He won this March Madness with John Carpenter. A very, very strong contender. Yeah. My number one seed. When we put the bracket together, we were immediately like Carpenter probably takes this. Yeah. Ben's winning. The other picks, I don't know if they're at the top of the list. David S. Ward, I feel, is never going to happen. We've ruled him out. We're kind of doing him piecemeal. Yes. We'll do Major League. We'll do Major League on Patreon. Can I see if I can guess the other ones if I can remember correctly? Sure, go ahead. Okay. So David S. Ward, Carpenter. Ernest Dickerson, I remember vividly being in there. Yes. Correct. Penelope Sphearus? Yep. Yes. Harmony Corrine, I assume? Of course. Harmony Corrine. Spike? Spike Jones. Yeah, Spike Jones. Another guy where I'm kind of like, can you make one more thing? Yes, it would be... That's what it feels like. It would be nice. At this point, we'd probably have to combine Spike Jones and Charlie Kaufman. Sure, but that's kind of fun. Yeah, it's kind of fun, but Spike's just working too infrequently. I feel like you dropped Linklater at the last second, or was he on there? Linklater was not on there. Mike Judge was? Correct. Okay. The other one, I did not remember that Ben picked this guy. One more. There's one more. Now, how could I... Oh, Danny DeVito. How do you remember that one? I didn't remember that was a Ben guy. I remember anything Ben has ever done. Oh, there you go. Thanks. I mean, and DeVito, I would say, out of the whole bunch, feels like the one that would be something we could do eventually as a like a palate cleanser between it's fun. It's fun. It's a nice little like four movie short little series. I would love to do it. As a shorty. As friend of my life friend of the show past and future guest Sarah Rubin said Danny DeVito short series for a short man. Yeah. And then there's some good stuff in the guest region. Yeah. We've never done any of those. We've done none of them. Oliver Stone, Jackie Chan, Joe Johnston, Kelly Reichert, Gore Verbinski, of course. That's five. And then the other three would have been, I'm trying to remember who we asked, Yoshida picked, oh wait, did someone pick Wolfgang Peterson? Richard Lawson did. Richard Lawson did. Yoshida picked, huh, tell me, I'm blanking. Cuaron, who's a big Yoshida favorite. And then J.D. Amato picked Jack Dottie. Of course. Obviously. Dumb. Haven't done any of those. Dumb for me to not put those together. That's fine. Peter Weir is finally happening. Peter Weir is finally happening. And what is the title of this miniseries? Griffin. The title of the miniseries is Podnik at Hanging Cast. That's so true. That is, of course, his guarantor, but it's a weird case where this is his first film, and yet, Podnik, excuse me, Picnic at Hanging Cast, happens kind of like irrelevant of this. It does, that's true, we will discuss that on this episode. He doesn't begin developing this Picnic when he has finished the script for this movie and is prepping it based off his short film work. That's right. And we can delve into all of that. But today on Podnick and Hanging Cast, we are, of course, discussing his first theatrical film. And an owner. The Cars That Ate Paris. I was going to say owner of one of the best titles in the history of film. It's a good title. And it's a more literal title than you'd think with a title like that. Here is my history with this movie. I'm a movie obsessed teenager. Can you believe it? we need some like you know fucking ass Woody Allen music over this right yeah some like Woody Allen music like a clarinet played via butt you know I'm a child in New York I love the movies you know I can't do it the digital set top box takes over for cable okay sure yeah so now they're kind of TiVo-esque device is what you're referring to yes and there's now also the ability to like uh scroll through the uh the digital guide the guide yeah and so what i do every day when i come home from school is i check out the next week of tcm programming very very very good little cinephile thank you because i'm getting activated and i'm like what's the furthest i can go ahead in the schedule and mark to record anything that feels like a good watch. And I'm going like, oh, Paper Moon, da-da-da-da-da, oh, this, oh, that, right? And then I'm like, The Cars That Ate Paris. Nom, nom, nom. I see that title, I hit record. Family Dinner, I go to my parents. Joe over here. I did hit record, Joseph. I go to my family dinner table and I say to my parents, I just found the movie with the weirdest title of all time on TCM. You're not going to believe it. It's called The Cars That Ate Paris. I guess they're playing some weird, junky, like, genre movie. That must be what this is. And my parents were. It's sort of true. But then my parents were like, that's Peter Weir's debut film. Well, they knew. And I'm like, Peter Weir, the director of Mastering Commander? Who at that point I just think of as, like, Tony Awards-y. Sure, you probably knew him for Dead Poets. Truman Show. Mastering Commander. I'm like, this is like a sophisticated grown-up director. who makes like popular films that are smart and literate. And so then I go, oh, the title must be metaphorical. Right, right, right, right. When you say the Cars 8 Paris. Right, this isn't going to be like a Roger Corman movie. I'll watch it and it will be about like a divorce. And for whatever reason, that's the title. And then I watch it and I'm like, oh, it is actually about a town called Paris. It's not Paris, France. it's a fictional Paris in Australia and a town where cars kind of eat up everything. So you watched this as a teenager eh? Correct. Because I didn't I did. I'd never seen it until Mad Max Fury Road came out which has the spiky cars and people were like ah as you might know that is an homage to fellow Australian new wave you know peer Peter Weir and his first film and I was like oh yeah right I guess I've heard it. You know when I was in college I famously did a course of New Zealand cinema and I had dug deep into that but I've never really dug into the author. Peter Weir ass music. Well except he's from Australia. I fucked up the whole thing. I should have said ass Peter Jackson music. Also what does Peter Jackson music sound like? Howard Shore? You're lost right now. I'm not going to help you. Go on with your story. Well I'm going to open the Dossier actually. I was going to say I didn't watch until then I checked it off I've never seen Peter Worsley when we cover George Miller it was a pre-JJ era a much lighter, easier era for us JJ our researcher who sucks and hates he's great he's like the ass Woody Allen music of men I was going to say JJ has done the podcast a great service with his research and when we did George Miller we didn't have his help He just makes our lives a lot more difficult because we have the added burden of needing to fire him every day. He's got a lot of paperwork. It's so... People don't understand. Our HR department is literally on fire trying to process the firing and rehiring every other day. Well, it's just a gerbil that Ben has. That's our HR department. We just stuff the papers in there and he just shreds them, which is great for the gerbil. He's building like a nest, but it's no good for us. Because then we have to hire an assistant to the gerbil as to tape the papers back together and file them. In theory, we should fire the gerbil. The gerbil is kind of the bottleneck of the whole process. No, we can't fire the gerbil. Gerbil's in a union. It's an intricate system we've developed. A close friend of his, and it's like a whole interpersonal mess. What I was going to say, it's the kind of context we probably would have had had J.J. worked on the show in the George Miller era. But George Miller, like, basically fully cites this movie as the thing inspiring him to make Mad Max. Right, because when he makes Mad Max, it's because he was out there doing, like, kind of DIY ambulance work or whatever, piecing together a little bit of money making this movie over the course of months. But it's both seeing Peter Weir and being like, fuck, this guy's from Australia. He just went out and made this. Right. I can do this too, maybe. Right. There's the sort of like kind of Richard Linklater slacker style activation that happened for a lot of young American filmmakers in the 90s. But also he sees like spiky cars and he's like, fuck, what do you build an entire movie out of it? But that's the thing. Because of the Mad Max connection and because of the Aussie new wave, Aussie exploitation, you know, I was like, right. So this is going to be like a gnarly car movie about fucking gangs and shit. it'll be Mad Max-y and then it's not quite that. It's an odd film. It's an odd little sort of social comedy. I like it a lot. With a bit of car, you know, antics. A bit. Quite a bit. A solid amount. It's like the core of the movie. But it has way more like fussy Australian guys than like Mad Max does. Although they both have Bruce Bens, of course. I joke that you think of and talk about Australia, the continent, as if it is really the world of Mad Max at all times. But in reality, I feel like this movie is what you think Australia is like. You're like, there's crazy, spiky crashing cars sometimes. Not all the time. We talk about this a little bit on the next episode because we just recorded that one. I was raised in England and I like I think I have like their prejudices you guys relax um towards Australia uh coded into me in a way that surprises me sometimes does that make sense you know England is so derisive of all like former British colonies or like you know whatever vassal states in a way that like is a little shocking sometimes it's the one time you activate like grandpa who fought in Vietnam mode. And you're like, the fuck is this? Where's this coming from? The thing I remember was my father, who was a very tolerant and liberal man, his disdain for the Welsh. I shouldn't laugh. Because it's not like he was racist, because of course the Welsh, it's a very tiny nation of people attached to England that are very, obviously, very similar in many ways. But he had this little kind of like, oh, they're so silly. Where I was just like, what did they ever do to you? You've never had a bad experience with Welsh people. And it was clearly just from his childhood. It had been like, you know, drilled into him like, oh, well, the Welsh are very silly. One of my favorite bits in Austin Powers. Yes, I mean, that's what he's making fun of. There are only two things I truly hate. People who are intolerant of other races and cultures and the Dutch. than the Dutch. I do 100% what he's making fun of. Just that thing of just like, also, it's like, you're English. You don't get to have this opinion. You know, like, you need to sit down. But that's why I'm saying this movie feels closer to your perception of the Australians because it's like, sometimes they're wearing a mayor's sash and being like, we were on a proper town! This is a normal town where nothing weird happens! A bunch of swastikas in it and they got ropes pulling in it. Oh, fuck. I'm going to open the dossier Ben, I assume you had not seen this before? No Did you like this? I did It's very weird though It's weird It's got a weird energy It's got like a weird pace to it That again doesn't suggest exploitation movie exactly It's a little weird Oh boy Oh boy So Peter Lindsay Lindsay Weir like from Freaks and Geeks. Yeah, JJ's rehired. That's the kind of shit we wouldn't have found out on our own. His middle name seems to be from his father. That is cool. His father was Lindsay Weir as well. So his father was this kind of like disaffected Michigan teenager in like an army jacket. That's interesting. Yeah, Lindsay Weir. Was born in 1944. Sydney, Australia. The capital. The capital. No, Canberra is the capital, but Sydney is the biggest. Canberra. The capital. Canberra. Canberra. I'm sorry. I apologize to all listeners if i fuck up australian pronunciations i i all i believe canberra which i'm sure i'm saying wrong right now is one of those classic like shibboleth words for australian accents you know like shibboleth words you know like a shibboleth is like um oh for fuck's sake i now have to explain this is it's from the bible it's like a password that you would say to prove your faith it's like uh what's the inglorious bastards where he holds up like if you say canberra wrong which I think I am continually. It's like one of those words that you say a little differently. I think it's pronounced Cthulhu. Anyway, his dad is a real estate agent, served in Australian throughout the Australian Army in World War II as an air raid warden. But obviously, Weir was born in 44, so near the end of the war. Both sides of his family are from Scotland, from the United Kingdom mostly, but they were Australian through and through. They were not like backwards looking they were fourth generation immigrants so you know they're very deeply australian he remembers at a certain point trying to dig through his family history just out of interest and was kind of astonished that like they didn't have records on where they came from where all this and he feels like this is an australian phenomenon he's like i've asked lots of australian what records they have and it's kind of like no they left their past like tabula rasa we left where we came from. Records are gone. We left our myths behind. He says, it helps me understand why many of our films are period films, why Australian audiences are so drawn to them because of this need for myth. We don't have lineage to be snobbish about. It's like we're rebooting. All interesting. Moved around throughout his childhood, mostly in the Sydney area. It seems they settled in a place called Vaucluse. Eastern suburb of Sydney. His dad was a real estate agent again, so they would keep flipping houses. He's kind of a house flipper. No television, pre-TV kind of generation, so he says he grew up on the streets bouncing balls around and I don't know, a gang of kids running about and jumping on trams and exploring caves. Sounds pretty fun. Yeah. Goonies-ass childhood. Yeah, seriously. They lived at the top of a little hill. There was a big suspension bridge. He says he was always in the water. He was snorkeling. He was fishing. He would watch the ships go out. This is so similar to your upbringing, Griffin. By water, of course, for Griffin, it was Fifth Avenue. Yes. The wild waves of Fifth Avenue. Also, obviously, never watched TV as a child. No, yeah, you weren't a big TV kid. My parents owned one, and I said, no, thank you. Here's something he might have shared with you. He loved comic books. Okay, we're back then. He loved The Phantom, our famous purple-clad hero of Pulp Adventure. He loved Scrooge McDuck. Well, the Carl Barks books. I guess so. I mean, it feels like he would have been too old for those, but whoever was writing Scrooge back then, maybe Carl Barks was. I think so, and if not, yeah. And he loved to have pictures. He loved to go see the pictures. He'd love to go see the talkie pictures. Westerns, the cereals, you know, all that stuff. Can we throw out our buddy Sean Fennessy, past and future guests, coming up on this very miniseries. Yeah. Was in New York. We went to a bar with him. We got drinks at a hollow nickel. Yeah, we did. That's right. And they have a big screen projector. Yeah. And they were doing a Pope series. We walk in. I mean, I think they didn't announce it or anything. No, but we walk in. They're playing Dick Tracy. Yeah. Cool. In the time that we're there nerding out about the dorkiest kid in the world. Yeah. And my girlfriend was like, how many drinks did you guys have? And I was like, two. Two. Over the course of like four hours. And then we sat at the table for an additional three hours after our second beer and we're just like, have you ever looked at the box office weekend? It was. This is true. Incomprehensible. But in the time we're there, they play Dick Tracy. They go straight into the Rocketeer and then into the Phantom. Yeah, as we were leaving, the Phantom was really just starting to pop off. But we're like, this is the fucking... I was like, is the shadow next? Seriously, we pitch in chronological order. I know. So if you work at the Hollow Nickel and you were programming that... Well, the bartender did, when I closed out, said, hey man, love the cast. Oh, wow. And he snapped and pointed his finger at me. And I had never heard anyone say apostrophe C-A-S-T before. Oh, like drop the pod, it's cleaner? he just went love the cast and I was like does it look like my arm is broken and I made him repeat it four times because I didn't understand what he was saying which then made me look like a narcissist sounds like a real Griffin story David this episode Don't act so surprised because it's a familiar friend. This episode's brought to you by MUBI. Yawn. Just kidding. Comfortable. Secure. We love them. They are a global film company, a champion's great cinema, iconic directors, emerging auteurs, always something new to discover with MUBI. Each and every film hand-selected. So you can explore the best of cinema. Nothing more to say, I guess. Wrong! There's a new film coming to theaters. Yep, movie theaters. February 13th, the first Nigerian film ever in official competition again. That's pretty wild. This is a film by Akinola Davis called My Father Shadow It was BAFTA poetic tender portrait of a father bond framed within the political landscape of 1993 Lagos in Nigeria It is about a father and two young sons as they journey into and around the vibrantly rendered Nigerian metropolis, reckoning with their relationship, navigating the city that's in the middle of a democratic crisis, written by real-life brothers, Akinola Davis Jr. and Wally Davis. love it brothers uh co-wrote this groundbreaking feature debut and you've got uh sofe dorisu oh from slow horses i love him i hope i'm saying his name right um but he's a really good actor and he's the star it's worth seeing it's in theaters it's great to go to a theater it's in theaters we love the movie puts movies in theaters before ultimately ending up on their wonderful platform dang right i'm just looking at some of the stuff they got right now dime i love of course yeah an important watch a necessary watch for any blankie uh la graza la grazia the new paulo sorrentino movie which i missed in theaters good moment to catch up with it uh the great shall we dance oh the classic the original oh my goodness that's fun like a restoration yeah and look they got a collection called heartthrob nicholas cage it's young dreamy well still dreaming to me? Hey, you're very open-hearted. Anyway, to stream the best of cinema, you can try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free. And then go see My Father's Shadow in theaters. Please, thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you. Very kind. Peter Weir loved comic books. This is where you pick up the film. Oh, yeah, and he loved the pictures. He liked American movies. He liked Hammer Horror films. He distinctly remembers seeing the great French film, The Wages of Fear. One of the greats. Did he watch a lot of Australian cinema? Not really, he says. He mentions movies like Bush Christmas and Jeddah. But I think like... This is pointedly a fallow period. Yeah, there's not a ton of Australian cinema, or maybe for him to even touch on. He loves Jacques Tati, right? And that actually suggested what his earlier interest was, which is performing. He wanted to tell stories, but like, you know, by performing them. And then he liked to plan these sort of elaborate games. He would play like war games with his friends that he would kind of set up. He was very creative. he talks about how he felt like he explored enough kind of um uh areas leading up to landing on film directing that helped him understand different aspects of it that he worked in plays he was doing sketch comedy he was doing all these different things that ended up feeding into filmmaking He went to a sort of all boys boarding school, which he didn't really like. He did about a year at the University of Sydney and dropped out. You know, he was sort of into the student life, but it seems like he wasn't that into, you know, whatever. Friggin' hard work. Yeah, exactly. He did have a cool experience with some professor who was teaching about William Blake. and he like took a poem apart in front of them and he was basically like deconstructing this William Blake poem and Peter Rick got really mad and was like I love this poem I hate how he's like dismembering it to like show us the technique and he's basically like that's Dead Poets Society like I put that as Dead Poets Society dismembering it like taking apart a structure or like gerbil style ripping it into it who knows I mean there's no mention of a gerbil but who knows Call that a callback. He leaves college. He goes into real estate, the family business, makes a little bit of money, you know, basically like 18 to 20 buys a one way ticket to Europe, wants to go just check it out, you know, and gets on a ship. I mean, back then. I think traveling by air from Australia was basically impossible because it was so fucking far, right? You would have had to stop to refuel so many times. So you would travel by boat. You would get on a boat that would go for weeks to get you to, you know, wherever you're going. My grandmother talks about this all the time. She is in her mid to late 90s. Yes. Right. Excuse me. Early 30s. She's maybe started to listen. But she is like, I don't know why you take all these expensive flights. It's so nice to go on a boat. I went on a boat to Australia and it's great. You just go to the docks with a suitcase and you wave at a man and you give them just whatever money you have in your pocket. and they give you a room and she just thinks that's a thing we could do. Unfortunately I think that truly doesn't exist. No it doesn't exist. There's only one passenger liner left which is the Queen Mary which goes from New York to London whatever like not even New York it's like Southampton to New York or whatever but that's the only ship that remains the cruise ship that remains that's like we go from one place to another all other cruise ships are like you know we go to a bunch of vacation spots and then we take you home. No I think she went on the Queen Mary once and most of the time she just like waved down the King Kong ship. She brings this up all the time. Good for her. You should do it. It's fun. I'm like, cool, do you have a time machine? So he arrives in England, and it's a cool time for England because it's the mid-60s. Flower Power, Anti-Vietnam, Swing in London, you know. He meets some cool guys like Austin Powers. Cool. Basil Exposition. Mrs. Kensington. The original. The earlier Kensington. Quite groovy. So he has fun, but then he says at a certain point, he just runs out of money and he decides to come back to Australia in 1966 with his wife-to-be. What? He has a fiancé. Humbleback? Wendy Sites. Who he's still married to. They're a long-running marriage. That's impressive. And basically, they sort of wrestle with it but they decide the way he puts it is we decided we could just deal with the shortcomings of Australia my guess is it's just like Australia is a less cosmopolitan place back then again just because like it's fucking far away and there's not jet travel as much well we're also talking about a guy who's like the tip of the spear in the Australian new wave which wasn't just oh here's like a new wave of voices in Australian cinema it was basically here's Australian cinema starting up again. A little bit I think. You know so like he there's not really a culture supporting the thing he does yet. So he comes back tries to do some TV work starts writing letters and shit starts working for Australia's Channel 7 and does like sort of news stuff I guess for them working and he says he kind of worked as a stagehand then he makes a tiny little short film. Basically gets his hand on a camera that he can use on the weekends. Right? A film called Count Vim's Last Exercise. Don't know much about it. Do you? No. Neither do I. Great. Moving on. It got him a promotion. He gets a job directing film sequences for a variety show called The Mavis Bramston Show. A sketch comedy show. I'm sure it was subtle stuff. I have no idea. then he produces a second little irreverent short film called the life and flight of reverend reverend buckshot which is the story of a birder turned christian evangelist it has not been widely screened but it won him a young filmmaker award and so he leaves channel seven he has no idea where his career is heading he doesn't have like a grand plan that's another job in sort of like government film unit doing documentary filmmaking does some of that. I mean, it's a real 10,000 hours thing of like, you know, he's really working with very little sort of money and like sort of semi-professional stuff and just like slowly building his craft and all that. Makes some little documentary movies. Makes a comedy television film called Man on a Green Bike. I don't... Jesus. What, David? Are you angry that he paid his dues? So angry. You're so impatient. very long dossier. Start making features already. Gets asked to direct a segment in an anthology television film called Three to Go. His segment is called Michael. I've seen this because it is on the there is a French Blu-ray of Cars that ate Paris and The Plumber. That is, I think, the only high-def disc that exists of either movie in any country. But it has the Michael segment on there. I have not seen the full anthology, but it's like three different portraits of the young person in Australia at the time. And Michael is interesting because it's kind of a bit of it's a little analogous to Ambling. Because it's about a countercultural guy? It's about a guy who can't hang with the counterculture. Right, he's trying to be a cool 60s hippie but he's a rich kid who feels like he should be engaged with the sort of like politically and John Travolta is an angel yes he chains smokes he's a little unconventional this guy hasn't shaved in two days so this film wins an Australian Film Institute award for best film can I finish my observation about this one quickly because I took the time to watch it of course uh Amblin you know is like a very short kind of like poppy funny stylish almost music video where the reveal Spielberg. That's the Spielberg short. The reveal is that this guy's like a dork and a poser. Right? And it's very much like I can't do this. Even though the girl wants to sleep with him, he like runs off and the guitar case is empty. And it feels very telling of Spielberg being like, I'm a kid like playing pretend. Michael does not feel autobiographical. Michael feels kind of satirical of a type of someone who does a dalliance with performative politics. Right, okay. It starts off kind of like docudrama style, a lot of newsreel footage and rock music and whatever, and then it goes into this guy trying to go to meetings and protests and things like that. And he just like, it feels interestingly kind of critical of people people who don't actually give a shit. For a guy who I think retains a socio-political interest throughout all of his films. He does. Yeah. So the film does pretty well. And so he gets some money to make another film, which some sort of argues his debut. It's a 50-minute film. It's called Holmesdale. Yes, this is what gets him both the juice to make Cars Day to Paris, but also gets him on the radar to be offered Picnic at Hanging Rock. So it's the real calling card. Holmesdale's 50 Minutes, as I said, it's about the staff of a hunting lodge that's kind of like torturing their guests. I think they made it for like a few thousand dollars. It was an unhappy process. Everyone was stressed out and tired and hungry and all this shit. But he says it probably kind of fed the story in a good way, like that they were all just like in this decaying estate, like at each other's throats. He says it's his closest thing to like a Hitchcock movie. Like it's like a, you know, weird little black comedy. You can watch it on YouTube. I think it's quite good as well. It is interesting that his early work and this kind of stops at Cars that a Paris is more kind of like heightened comedic satirical. It's not straight up comedy and it's dark and there's still some grounding, but there's a sort of stylization to these movies and tone. Yeah. After this, he goes on another trip. He wants to visit both, LA, he goes to America and London visits film he's trying to get more info, more skills, more whatever exposure to big stuff he goes to London, he works at Elstree Studios on Ken Russell's movie The Boyfriend the Twiggy movie God bless Twiggy, we love Twiggy he meets Alfred Hitchcock who's making Frenzy normal movie and Alfred Hitchcock, normal guy but it's like Frenzy is an amazing, interesting movie but it's like Hitchcock being like well, it's like the 70s and I was like I can just kind of be out in the open with what a fucking freak I am nothing has to be coded anymore and he makes it and everyone's like, whoa and he's like, code, code, code, go back to coding it's just so funny that he was like the king of like the visual metaphor and a fly illusion. Yes, right. And then he sees Brian De Palma and he's like, oh, I can tell people what I like. This guy jerk gets off on fucking strangling ladies and people are like, relax! Do you know what's one of my favorite bits of all time? The great Steve Martin gonna put on a show tonight, SNL opening monologue. In the 90s where it's like I've decided I'm gonna care again. It's maybe the best SNL cold open, like non-political cold open ever. But all the cast members come out one by one are inspired by the fact that Steve Martin gives a shit again and they're like reinvigorated and Farley does his bit of the song about how he's not going to get drunk and everything. And then Phil Hartman comes out and he's like, week after week I put on these wigs and these makeup, but tonight I'm going to let the real Phil Hartman shine through. And Steve Martin goes, that's not a good idea, Phil. And he goes, alright. It's funny. It's pretty funny. I like it. I don't know. It makes me laugh. so he works in all these movies okay look he meets Hitchcock I don't fucking know you do know in the dossier it's right in front of you it's a formative trip for him it's great for him to meet people like you know Hitchcock even though he's just like but how do you do and he's just like but nonetheless like Peter Weir is like this is this cements for me I want to make movies to be fair Hitchcock was attempting to answer the question but he had a full roast turkey in his mouth The man liked to eat food He was a big boy God bless him It's not just that he was big The stories are that he would have like fucking four dinners in a row That's the famous thing Where you would have a big Multi-course dinner And then when the waiter would come at the end He'd go let's do it again Just run that back baby All the courses again Go back to salad You know maybe people should do that more. Do kind of a like, we climb the mountain, then we descend. You know, start and end with salad. I mean, our version, our contemporary version is the bang-bang. Yeah, but the bang-bang is just, that's just like, that's like people being like, I'm awful, but I found a word that, so now it's okay. I got a burger, and then I got fried chicken, and I'm like, well, that doesn't sound like a good idea. But it was a classic bang-bang. Yeah. No, it was. But then again, I did a bang-bang recently. I did too. So, you know. I did a comedy bing bing recently I haven't listened yet, it's in the feed though I'll say this Reddit is calling it an episode Reddit has already ruled it out as a contender for the best stuff maybe one day I went to the Village Cafe which is a place in South Brooklyn it's Azerbaijani food got some lamb skewers some rice, I was like this rocks but I know it's so deep in Brooklyn I was like you know there's this pizza place I've been meaning to go to and like I'm never here and I went and got a slice of pizza what are you gonna do to me what are you gonna nail me to the cross no that's why they killed Jesus too many bang bangs bang bangs that's why they killed Jesse J as well while he's bang bang oh the song right bang bang what happened to her they killed her on the cross you're right six months in London he says he wrote the outline for the cars that ate Paris, the treatment for the last wave, and the treatment for the plumber. These are all movies he ends up making. I love these kind of lines. It's like a creatively fertile moment for him. It shows to him, yes, I am a director. I'm not, I don't want to perform. I don't want to write, you know, I like cement staff for him. It also shifts him away from comedy, because a lot of the early stuff he'd done was a lot more openly, nakedly comic. He never made Mod Night. He says he did, yeah. I'm going to whip this at you I'm joking I would never do that I would only throw something at David Early It was famously the last time you threw a wallet I needed him to be quiet You still haven't gotten your credit card back Wait a second One reason he says he moves away from comedy is when he's in London he sees Monty Python and he's like these guys are pretty fucking good I'm not going to do anything remotely approaching this it's also funny to imagine seeing monty python in tv and being like oh fuck so they did it they got sketch comedy on tv guess that's no longer an option sure um they're the ones who get to do that he returns to australia and in fact graham bond who's an old collaborator of his said i'm about to do something called the anti-jack show i mean truly i'm trying not to be on i think it sounds very good and of course a show where men had their hands taped to their thighs and couldn't jack off. I don't know what the anti-jack show would have been, but something they had done on the radio sometime. Yeah. And he's like, we got a 13 episode order. And Peter Weir is like, I'm out, man. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do sketch comedy. I want to concentrate on film. So he turns down what sounds like a fairly guaranteed thing. He makes one more documentary for the Commonwealth Film Unit, the sort of government group he was looking for, which is called Whatever Happened to Green Valley? which is about an area like a working class area where people had been moved out of the city into state provided housing. So he does a little documentary cars that ate Paris, though. Let's get to that. The idea came while he's traveling through Europe. He's driving through France. He comes to a little section of road. There's a barricade. There's a heavy miss. There's two frightening looking characters behind this barricade. They had highway jackets with like, you know, red crosses on it, right? You know, whatever, like they look official and they stopped the car. direct us down a detour and they go down this fucked up detour and are and then like as peter's driving he's like to his wife like why did we accept that you know like like we just kind of went along with what they told us to do but like why like they they barely presented anything to credentials or anything like that you know they didn't ask for the permit they didn't tell us why we were you know not allowed to go down this road and he just starts like inventing the crazy you know conclusion of that right he's like what happens if it's basically like a town is doing that for like a nefarious reason right the sort of like core hook to this movie if there is one is a town that is somehow benefiting financially and structurally from people crashing their cars yes it doesn't totally make sense no that is the idea it's not it's not a a literal it's sort of like what if you know you wanted to kill people but you knew you would get in trouble if you went around shooting them with a gun because you could get caught but what if you just basically made them all have car accidents then it's just like well they had a car accident not our fault and then there are like you know corpses that can be experimented on there are junked cars that can be rebuilt. Basically, the whole kind of societal structure of this town is built around the things they're able to pull from the wreckage of the cars. They're scavenging. Yes, one inspiration for him as well. There's an economy built around. But it's also not just like, oh, they make people crash cars so they can steal their wallet. If they wanted to do that, they would make David upset. No, but yes, there's this whole complicated system of all the different things they extract from the cars and how it feeds. There's this lore that this would happen in Cornwall in the British coast like long ago that they would like have lighthouses and then they would move them or turn them off to have ships wreck on the coast and they would go like loot the ships right it's the same idea it's a weird kind of scavengy piratey thing he writes out these like what he calls short stories but they're basically treatments they're intended to be turned into movies he would record the scripts onto tapes do all the voices and sound effects funny to think about because again I do think of Peter weir as a serious guy i was not like you know some special features yesterday you came into the office yeah not like deadly serious but like you know he's like a he makes these like prestigy movies he seems very smart and like sophisticated i got this interview up on the big screen we look at each other and we're both like i find him very relaxing he is relaxing he's got a very calm tone but he seems very like just kind of like straight focused blunt so it's sort of hard for him to imagine him like doing bits into a type recorder but that's apparently what he was doing yeah um and so uh that's how he's kind of processing this story he uh thinks it's gonna be a more of a comedy as it develops it's like gets darker and darker you feel him pivoting within this movie like starting it out thinking that he's primarily gonna be a comedy filmmaker and finding some other voice along the way. He takes it to Keith Gow, an old friend. They work on it together. They take it to a third writer called Piers Davis, who'd worked on Homesdale. They're the three credited writers. They all kind of build the script up together. He calls it eventually a thriller with an underlying social comment on Capitalist Way of Life and motor cars and how we place this importance on them in our society. But above all, I want to make an entertaining story. Australian film production. It's hit a low point, Griffin, in the decades following World War II. Australian Prime Minister in 1970, John Gorton. Let me look up. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? He pioneers the Australian Film Development Corporation to try and start making homegrown movies again, government subsidized. And this is sort of the beginning of what you call the Aussie New Wave. Basically slowed down to nothing. There's a real incentive to kickstart the industry back into gear. Seems like he was kind of center right guy. I can't really get into it. He's got quite a look. What was his opinion on Beef Tallow? That's the only... I think in the 70s everyone was pro. That goes away later. His vibe is Beef Tallow. He's a bulldog. He's got a bulldog kind of look. So the Australian Film Development Corporation invests about $125,000 Aussie bucks. The total budget was about $200,000. Small budget, but you know, they get to make a movie. They made a movie. They did in fact make a movie. And he talks about and his producers on this talk about how they learned a lot from Hal and Jim McElroy specifically. who work with him on the next couple of movies, how they learned a lot from how hard it was to pitch this movie, both in getting money and in getting an audience. That it's hard to explain. It's not really focused on a specific thing. And that's, you know, in a big way, not you have to make a movie with a poster of mine first, but... A little bit. They want something that will sell and that will matter to people. they shoot it in New South Wales about 250 miles from Sydney to a more sort of obscure backwater part of the country I guess and they make the film and we're going to discuss the film now the lead actor in it Terry Camilleri it is his debut film he's Napoleon sorry I took it from you did you recognize this? did you clock this Ben? no the lead guy in this movie is the man who delivered what might have been the finest supporting performance in film in 1989, Napoleon Bonaparte in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Nice. The only thing I remember is when he's bowling and he misses and he goes like, I remember that being really funny. I'm not exaggerating. That performance is top to bottom fire. It is unbelievable. He is a water slide pushing past kids to go down first? Not to spoil way ahead, but he is the guy in the bathtub in The Truman Show. Big time. You know how The Truman Show has all the viewers that we keep cutting to. He's the bathtub guy. He's got an incredibly distinctive look. He does. Weird to see him in this movie. It is. He's one of those guys where you're like... He's supposed to be sort of an everyman in this one. But also, you're like, wasn't he born 45? And you're like seeing him in like 30, and you're like, we're almost there. David, watch this. Watch this. Can you tell me what's going on? I'm trying to hit home. But it's a foolish effort because nothing hits home. Like home cooking. That's true. Oh, boy. It's really tough, man. Wait, Griffin, what are you doing? I'm trying to hit home, but nothing hits as hard as home cooking. I just need a way to beat the winter blues, not get delivery, something kind of unsatisfying. It's much easier if I could choose from maybe 100 recipes every week, cuisines from around the world. Let's see. I have 99 right here on my desk, but that's not 100. 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Only while supplies last, that's drinkag1.com slash check. all right so cars they pair so yeah how do we describe this film where it's a it's a it's a 90 minute movie although apparently there's a u.s cut that's 74 minutes what the hell is that that must be just like trying to get all of it you know like be as all action i think This was an early New Line release. They retitled it The Cars That Eat People. It was several years later. And they specifically sold it as a thriller. The fuck is going on in this town? The poster has so much information. Yes. But there are many posters. David and I were just going through this. As David put it when I walked into the office. On time, presumably? Griff was 15 minutes late. I was on time. You're not one to raise your eyebrows today. That's all I'm going to say. I guess who can raise his eyebrows? Yeah, David's allowed to. His eyebrows just hit the ceiling? Yeah, my eyebrows are perma-raised, I would say. David said, I've gotten your sickness. And I said, what do you mean? We both now, obsessively, methodically, choose the posters for every log on Letterboxd. Because Letterboxd gives you a default poster graphic, but very often it's not a true poster. No, it's a poster with all the words removed and all the title billing. It's sort of like an iTunes poster. It's not a theatrical one sheet. But then do you upload your own image? No, other people upload them. We haven't quite gotten to the stage of uploading our own. I believe you can if you truly can. You absolutely can. And sometimes I look and I go, these options aren't great. Do I go hunting? But the posters for this movie are wildly different. Some of them are very informational. that very long tagline I read some of them are super graphic the new line one the cars that eat people is like a car eating a guy like depicting things that don't happen in a movie but I feel like it's the spiky car the spiky car is the big thing which is so fucking cool it's very very fucking cool because it's a car but it's covered in spikes yes that is kind of the thing it has going on the movie opens with like a kind of like picturesque drive uh happy couple and then you watch them get into like a big wreck and you immediately see the way the town gets to work and extracting them and uh the the the vehicle the wreckage but the town doesn't call or sabotage it seems like it's just a a random accident. Am I wrong? Um, it's not... Like, his tire pops. What is your read on it, David? I think it's all... I mean, you're right that, like, it seems accidental, but, like, we do learn that, you know, this is their whole ploy, right? Right. So it does feel... Who knows? I read it as not that there's, like, something supernatural going on, but that they have perhaps... put shit all over the roads or something i don't know twisty turns like they're rigging it in a way that it's sort of like a skill course they're closing roads i guess so that you have to go on the bad roads maybe and they're just strewning nails about yes yeah maybe they are look this is a good movie but it also is like a first film and feels like a first film and it's one of those things where i wonder if you talk to peter weir he'd be like yeah i watched the cut and realized we didn't explain that. Truly no idea. Don't know what his, like, you know, I mean, I think he's fond of this movie. I remember us seeing Buckaroo Banzai at Nighthawk, a movie we both like a lot. I like that movie a lot, but that movie is more extreme than this one in terms of like, you're like, oh, they just didn't know how to make a movie for some of this. Right. And a lot of times when we cover first films on this show, there are varying levels of like fluency. And like Peter is absolutely someone who already at this point knows how to put images together, knows how to work with actors. But you hear these stories of first-time filmmakers who then watch the cut of their movie and they're like, oh, I didn't explain that at all. Now I understand storytelling. Buckaroo Banzai, which is a unique object, anyone can agree, is also just, right, a specific scenario where you're like, it's like someone trying to make a movie five times more ambitious than Cars in Paris in terms of the storytelling. Just in terms of like, there's aliens, there's government secret societies, there's musical sequences, there's where you're just like, guys, this is a lot to put on your plate for movie one! Complex visual patterns. The sort of like reveal of the true forms of the aliens. There's moments. Oh, there's... Just the looks. I mean... The rolled up sports jacket. The rolled up sleeves on a sports jacket. Cowboy Jeff Goldberg. Just the whole concept Baku Banzai has of like, he's a sort of intergalactic secret agent, and he has the coolest band in the world. What's his band? Well, it has three saxophones. You know what I mean? He's also a surgeon. Yeah, but I love the idea, of course, piling it on, but then they're like, and he's got the coolest band in the world. His band has three saxophones. And you're like, that doesn't sound cool. And they're like, does this look cool? And I'm like, yes, it does. It actually does. It's the coolest shit I've ever seen. That is a true 50 years ahead of its time movie where you're just like now the culture is caught up to a point where you're like here's the pitch it's like it's the 8th movie it's like we all know this character we're just diving into the middle meet Buckaroo Banzai but you already know him it's funny that he's everything at the same time I cannot imagine how insane that movie felt upon release you know I know like friends of ours like like Hodgman have talked about it like being the weird kid at school and seeing it and being like I get this this is like a transmission from a future I want. Right. Yeah. Everyone else is angry. Yes. I got it. Yeah. This has a little bit of that energy where you're like a little bit. You know, there are first films that are like the first album syndrome thing of like someone's been waiting to make a movie their whole life. They've got all their bangers. And they know like there's a very specific story they want to tell. And then their first movies that feel like a drafts folder and a little bit like you're still in film school in the sense where you're like, I got a bunch of ideas I want to try out. You know? Very interesting. And I think this movie is fairly cohesive, but it's also inscrutable at times. It's cohesive in that it has a good narrative engine, which is this guy gets trapped in this town. After you see this original crash, you see this guy and his brother driving. They get in a similar crash. His brother dies. He survives. Wakes up in the hospital. And it's him basically learning the fucked up thing about this town. This town's sort of bringing him in closer. And then weighing, do I participate in the fucked up thing about this town? It's a little... Right? Like, am I wrong? No, you're right. The narrative engine of it is like Twilight Zony, where it's like, you wake up in an accident, something weird has happened. It's a normal town that's inviting you in, and then you start to realize how many weird things are going on beneath the surface. It's just the weird things that happen are like varying levels of abstract. but do you think he's aware all along or when does the character figure out what this town is really up to? It's kind of when he starts working at the hospital maybe he starts to feel like right like it's sort of there right? It's unclear I like Terry Calamari He's a little bit of a dope too. I was going to say I like him a lot I think this is a fun performance it's another thing that you feel like you make one movie and then learn a big lesson from it which is He's a really passive character. He's really quiet. And he kind of goes with the flow, you know? He's sort of like in a trance with the whole thing. There's not a lot of him like getting seduced by the town, nor is there him being suspicious and like putting up his guard. So you don't feel like he's trying to solve a mystery. And you also don't feel like there's a clear sense of this guy that's getting corrupted. it does just sort of feel like he's sleepwalking through the whole situation until things get very scary at the end. It is not a movie, right, that's heavy on action until the big climax, right? No, but there are crashes throughout. Yeah. Yes, and they are excitingly constructed. You can see it's sparking Miller, not just, oh, look, someone shot a car in Australia. There's a language to the car crashes that is very visceral. Part of the thing he has to overcome is like, he's now scared of driving. So he can't escape because he's like, doesn't want to get back in a car because he was in a car car. So he reveals also that he hit someone. Right, right. He's, he's got like trauma. I think he says he hit and killed an old man. So very traumatic experience. In Australia, that just would happen all the time. I do think this is a part of what I like about this movie is it does feel like it's textually engaging with how scary cars are. Oh, that's what you like, right? Because you're like, I don't trust them cars. They've all got spikes to me. Right, but also that he's just like, I shouldn't have this amount of power in my hands, which is the reason I don't drive. It's the number one reason I don't drive. Like, my psychological anxiety about the act of driving is secondary to I don't trust myself to do it correctly and not cause damage. I love driving. It's so fun. Me too. it's all yours because my thing with driving is like I don't you know I think cars are bad for society I don't like the way the cities are built for cars the way the country depends on cars I don't like that they have eyes on the windshield very pro mass transit very pro we need less cars in our life but if I'm driving a car I'm like beep beep exactly I'm like here we go like I mean I guess I don't like being in traffic but I don't hate it that much I also just need to remind you guys that I grew up in New York City, the mean streets of Greenwich Village. My father was like pot committed to having a car in the city and driving, which is a terrible experience. Yeah, I mean, yeah, having a car in Manhattan that you actually want to use is dumb. And he was, you might be really surprised to hear this, an incredibly anxious driver. Well, it's Meyerowitz stories, right? Yeah, it's the opening scene where Sandler's just melting down looking for a parking spot. I've been trying to get him to just watch that scene since that movie came out. Yeah. But it's like the entire car became an extension of his tense body, and every part of it was stressful to him. Like, being in traffic was stressful. Anytime you've got some fucking hang-up, it's just your dad was stressed out as your kid all the time about the things. Yeah, buddy. But how does this relate to milk and eggs? No, you like milk. No, I don't like milk. Yeah, right, milk and eggs. Is your dad yelling about eggs? No, eggs I just think are gross and all of you are insane. I'm just trying to see if there's like a childhood. I told you the milk thing, right? I just did this on Dirty Laundry at SF Sketch Fest, the dropout show. Thank you for having me. Where you had to get people to guess whose dirty secret was whose. I loved the bottle. Much like your daughter, I'd tap the table, I'd go empty. Right? Yeah. and I wouldn't drop the bottle because I was such a creature to comfort and my parents were like you are too old you gotta drop this a classic moment that comes you gotta wean and they were doing anything to wean me and I was just I was immovable on this issue and one day I woke up and there was a glass of milk on the table and I was like the fuck is this and they were like this is milk and I was like no worries but you've made a mistake. Milk actually comes in a bottle. This is a cup of some shit I've never seen before in my life. Milk has a nipple at the top. And they were like, no, this is what milk is now. And I was like, oh, cool, I'm never drinking milk again. How old were you? I was like five. You were still drinking from a bottle? This is the point! And my parents were like, enough is enough. And I was like, I'm not drinking milk. And they were like, okay, you're five. Let's see how that goes. and I haven't had milk in over three decades. I would say by the time you're five, you certainly do not need to be drinking milk anymore. It's a personal choice at that point. I don't know. I'm five, six, and my bones are made of glass. Mistakes might have been made. When we were kids, the predominant thinking was, pump your kids filled with milk. Yeah, every celebrity had the fucking mustache. Now you are very much told, like, do not do that, because then your kids won't eat food. Why am I tiny? Because your parents are tiny. Oh, so it all goes back to my dad, doesn't it? Your mother is the tiniest person I've ever seen. People don't understand how tiny my mom is. And your dad is hardly Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He's not a huge guy himself. Although now it's funny to imagine my dad doing Dwayne the Rock Johnson shit. It is funny to imagine. It is funny to imagine. Ay, ay, ay. What if they announce Rampage 2, but we're replacing Dwayne the Rock Johnson with Peter Newman? Well, I'm into it. Yeah. So what happens in the Cars that Eight Pairs So our main character as you say It's Arthur played by Terry Camilleri The mayor is sort of taking him under his wing The mayor is named Len Kelly He's played by John Million Who's like I think a sort of Legendary at the time Australian character actor guy Had done lots of theater Did you know British stuff as well He's in Crocodile Dundee He is in Crocodile Dundee But he's also he's in Billy Budd. He's in The Longest Day. In fact, Crocodile Dundee 2, I think, is basically his last performance. He's like the buddy. He's in most of the iconic Australian movies. Oh, right. He's the dad in Walkabout, which is not an important role because they die. Tremendous amount of TV. Yes. He's playing a fucking cartoon idea of an old-timey mayor. Like Tom Pat holding on to his jacket lapels, big sash that says mayor. He's pretty funny. He's funny, yeah. But he's got a wife and two daughters who Arthur finds out are not actually his, that they are children that they adopted from wreckages. Okay, yes, that's right. Yeah, it's all part of the sort of weird scavenging that they're doing. One of the daughters has a scar. You can see that the mom insists she hide. That was clearly caused by an accident. Like however they got her. And then yeah, they give him the hospital job. Can we acknowledge? You can work at the hospital. It's kind of like Doc Hollywood. Yeah, it's exactly like Doc Hollywood. You know the movie Doc Hollywood? Michael J. Fox is a big shot plastic surgeon or whatever. He's like a doctor. From Hollywood. And then he's driving his hot rod somewhere. And he crashes it. I mean, it's also the premise of cars, obviously. He crashes it in a small town, and he wrecks some fence or a gazebo or whatever the fuck. And they're like, your sentence is, right? You got to work off your debt by being a local doctor. And he's like, what? I mean, I'm cool. I'm a big shot. I'm Michael J. Fox over here. I got sunglasses. You're telling me I got to fix this fence? And then he falls in love with the small town. He loves them. This one, instead, they're like, okay, you can work here. You can kind of get your strength back. You can wait to be ready to drive a car again. but he's in the worst town. And the movie Cars Ben is about kind of a hotshot car who's a race car. He's driving too fast. He wrecks a fence in the town. And the cars are like, you gotta stay here. And he's like, what? I hate this. And then he comes to love the town. And the cars don't eat Paris, but they do eat food. Yeah, so the town of course is called Paris. That's why it's called that. It's just very funny, and it's a thing we find in America as well. Of course. Where you'll, I mean, Paris, Texas. New York is littered with it where they would just be like, well, we need names for these towns of state. Let's just name it after famous old cities. Yeah. Paris Hilton. That's a person's name. That's true. Yeah. But she's American. One of my favorite examples of this is in Pennsylvania. There's a town called Jersey Shore. That's really funny. And so you'd see this road sign like Jersey Shore, 50 miles or whatever. Do you feel like you've gone through a wormhole? That's crazy. Didn't we pass that? We're so far away from that. I just want to call out one of the vehicle wreckage scavengers, kind of the main one in the film. Charlie is played by the actor Bruce Spence, and I don't know if you put this together, but he was the gyrocopter pilot in The Road Warrior. So that's one of our oldest bits, because you said that to me, I guess, when we were talking about Matrix. or was it Star? No, Star Wars Episode 3. Oh, it's T-On-Midon. Yeah. But then I bring it up again in Matrix Revolution. But the first time you brought it up to me, I was kind of like, okay. But then, of course, we have basically covered every iconic film that the unusual looking man, great actor, Bruce Spence, has been in, but for one, Griffin. We have more coming out. Well, of course, what do we have coming out? I'm not going to say it, but we have a Bruce Spence movie on the calendar again later this year? That's right, we do. We do. We do. But there's one guy, he's the voice of the mouth of Sauron in the extended edition of Return of the King. Which when we cover Peter Jackson, we have to do the extended, right? We do, although I think they are, it is very worthy of debate whether the extended editions are better. I think that's... It's probably a debate, but we have to do them. We do, but it's going to be an interesting bridge to cross because they're different. And it's interesting to consider the differences. And then you're going to have to do two cuts of every episode. I think there's an argument for something like that. The problem is that the Hobbits also have extended editions and no one's really out here being like those are all so good. I've never heard anyone say they're really worthwhile. I believe they exist because they were like we'll just do what we did with Lord of the Rings, right? Well, people love extended edition. What if Peter Jackson put out compressed editions of the Hobbit movie? I compressed it into one fucking movie. That might win people over. That I know it's been said a thousand times and I have no new observations. It is one of the craziest things that's ever happened. It's like three giant books, three movies, and it was hard to whittle the books down. And they were like, you're ready to adapt the Hobbit. And he's like, yeah, three movies. And you're like, you know, Hobbit is like a third the length of Lord of the Rings books and he's like it's gonna have to be three movies that it even went from two to three that we got two we got smog smog you mean we got him you mean we shot him yeah we got one of the finest performances mocap performances maybe it is the funniest shit of all time I watch that you always say this on the show I mean you both do you're like I watch that once a year like next thing I just I watch the behind the scenes of Cumberbatch in the motion mocap scene. But my favorite thing is all the people at Wetter were like, yeah, I mean, it wasn't usable. They do say, like, we did our best, but it's not like the dragon's face is this. Well, it's just like, they were like, look, Gollum is like, he's a hobbit, but he's got the basic anatomy of a human being, right? He's like a weird, like, zombie hobbit, but he's got arms and legs and a head and like eyes and nose and mouth in the right place. You can transfer those tracking dots and you're like Benedict Cumberbatch gets on his tummy and you're like well his mouth is 15 feet long. He doesn't have arms. He's the dragon. His legs are tiny. I mean you're like you can't transfer that data onto the model we've already built. No. He was always a dragon. Right. He was like some mocap right and they were like I think just like And he was like, we haven't even turned it on yet. He was apparently so enamored with the idea of what any circus had done that he was like, I've always wanted to do mocap. And they were like, cool. And just let him do that. And we're like, oh, it was helpful to like, we could reference it. We could look at it. I mean, they use the audio. Yeah, they did. And I'm sure that the audio compared to what you could have captured if he was just standing in a quiet room. No question. He's superior. No question. He does the necromancer as well. He plays multiple mocap parts in those Hobbit movies. Much like he played Dormammu in Doctor Strange. Remember he was a big head? Yeah. What's Dormammu up to these days? I'm sure we'll find out. I'm sure he'll pop up in Avengers Doomsday and be like, I'm still here. Jermamu will return in Avengers Doomsday. I'd be better. Jermamu rocks. Jermamu's good. So, the Cars that Ape Paris. What happens in this film? What do we need to fill in? Bruce Spence is rad as hell in this, and it's important because it's like George Miller sees this. Yeah, and it's like, I want this because Bruce Spence is in Mad Max's one and two, right? Yes, he plays different characters. Yes. But no, but there's like 100% a straight line to George Miller seeing this being like, oh my god. No, he's in two and three. I always hear this. He's not in one. George Miller had to feel like he had built up his bones enough to be able to ask the great Bruce Spence. The other films Bruce Spence is in just to shout him out. So the whole thing with him is that he's like, is he seven feet? He's not quite that, but he's really tall. He's got one of the longest heads. And he's got this elongated head. Yes. That like just is so interesting. He's got this sort of big mouth. And he plays, like I said, the mouth of Sauron. He plays the train man in the Matrix Revolutions. And he plays, what's the guy in Star Wars called? Tian Medan? Tian Medan. He's also, he's in Dark City. He's in Ace Ventura when Nature Calls. Yes, that I cannot remember. He's in the good PJ Hogan, Peter Pan. Right. He was in, apparently, Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Men Tell No Tales. can't say I remember that one I haven't seen that one Mayor Dix, Gods of Egypt he's of course in I, Frankenstein apparently he's in the Chronicles of the Narnia the Voyage of the Dawn Shredder which I will be watching because I'm going to watch all three in my Narnia project this year I'm reading all the books and he's the voice of Chum in Finding Nemo and he's done a zillion TV shows and stuff and he's just an interesting guy yeah he fucking rules and you should have been excited the first time I brought him up never gotten over it. It's taken you 11 years. You acted like what the fuck are you talking about? Who gives a shit? He's a legend. He is a bit of a legend. Yeah, he is. Thank you. He's good in this. He plays one of the freak guys in the city. Yeah, guess what? Good casting. He collects Jaguar the metal statue. The ornaments. The ornaments. I love how for the gang, the young people gang, their cars are all covered in graffiti all fucked up they look like they're they could be in a roller derby is that a roller derby? Absolutely yes do you mean like a destruction derby? although there's another word for it which is Gymkhana which is like an Australian motorsport it's the sport of driving as fast as you possibly can and it's an evolution of them, a history of doing the same thing with horses and it's not that it's like specifically like destruction derby it's that you're just like you just go as fast as you can and whatever happens happens and then at some point i think that evolves into like oh wouldn't it be cool if we just tried to wreck as much shit as possible and made it a little safer it's just wild that there was a sport that's just like how fast can this horse go and then they create cars and they're like i mean obviously let's just push it to the limit. Really fun. But what I wanted to say is the design of the Young People gang, they all wear car emblems that they've pulled from the various cars that have been destroyed. And what would yours be, Ben? What would my car be? I don't know. If you could design any hood ornament. If I could design any hood ornament. Hood ornament. I guess I would just do a pig. Yeah. Or a big bone? Or a big bone. Or a big bone. Also, if you were going to steal a hood ornament and have it be your totem. I just want to put that right on the record. That never happened. Do you want a jaguar? Do you want a little beamer shield? I'm trying to think of what the hood ornaments are. Yeah, I'm like a swan. I mean, they're all the logo. Mercedes were prized just because when you're a kid, you don't know anything and you're like, that's fancy. I think it is pretty fancy. Yeah, it is. I found one of Bugs Bunny holding a shotgun. That would be mine. But I just mentioned it because I think it's so visually striking and feels very proto Mad Max. Yeah, I don't admittedly know enough about Australian culture in the 1970s and what this movie is coming out of to completely parse what I think we're is working through. but it does feel like there is a through line in all of his movies of this sort of like clash of cultures that is very in conversation with the weird short history of australia as you said david that it's like a hard reset town of people just landing there like pushing the indigenous side and being like this is ours now and we're going to try to like model it off of other successful colonialist societies. And so this idea of there being this town where they're just like, yes, we know how to be a town. This is a town where town things happen. And then there's this weird shit going on. It is this town that is only in conversation with itself and hostile to the rest of the world, but also the town is at odds with itself. There is this kind of ongoing war between the older and the younger citizens of the town and the younger citizens feel more chaotic. They want to be crazy and the older citizens just want to have a nice fancy town where they can have fancy parties etc etc. But everyone's doing the crazy fucked up thing. The only disagreement is that the old people are like, let people die, rummage their bodies in their wreckages and then have a very nice dinner. Because it's all, the whole movie is building to this like party that they are doing this weird pastiche of like a fancy high society British sort of ball or whatever and like obviously it's all ludicrous but yes that's a little bit of what was happening in Australia in the 70s at the time and what his early film seemed to be commenting on is this idea of like much like in America there is like a new wave of politically engaged motivated kind of like boundary pushing young people who are questioning the structures around them. Sometimes you push boundaries and sometimes you miss. Yeah, that's what the movie's about. This movie's really about getting fired from SNL. If you watch it really closely, he was a sketch comedian. These young people, though, are also part of the murders. Oh, no, they're guilty. They're very guilty. They're just... It's more that the old people, to me, are pretending they're civilized. That's the commentary. The commentary is that everyone's doing the exact same thing and they're having a philosophical disagreement about like being hedonist and owning the chaos versus like trying to put airs on top of it. Which I think is like very in line with like hostily taking over a country, pushing the indigenous people aside and then being like, and we are a society of manners. we are now going to build nice houses and rules of like proper etiquette and this is a moment where I think like younger Australians are sort of carving out their own identity and being like why are we fucking doing these like impressions of like old British people from 200 years ago what is this shit? I don't know that's my read I think it's a good read I'm so tempted to connect it back to what's going on in America right now do it it's very i don't know make america great again vibes you have like the old guard people who are just like we need to go back to win right they're going along with it because they just have these right you know and it benefited me and then you have like the psychotic people who are extremely online who are basically also supporting that but wanted to go even more extreme this is my And they're black-pilled, one might call them. Yes. My take is that those people, whether they're conscious of it or not, what seems to be driving them is a desire to go back to, like, caveman times. Like, everyone is just looking backwards and being like, fuck, this isn't working, right? And there's, like, one side that's like, we agree, this isn't working can we push past this and like fix this And the other side is just arguing about how far back they want to go I disagree I think all those guys just have our best interests at heart Okay, so then everything's good. Don't you think so? Yeah. We should actually do an ad read. Young person's blood, if you put it into you, will make you live forever. Great read. Yeah. Yeah. We're so happy to be working with our new sponsors, Young Persons Blood. They're a scrappy little startup. And here's what they do. Well, we trust them. They're based out of a small town with winding roads. People get in car crashes. They take all the Young Persons Blood. And you can get it shipped to your door once a month in a box the size of a mini fridge. They'll spin it right into your blood. It's a lot of blood. But my favorite part is unpacking it and the blood just all kind of like unfurls. Some online mattress joke. Yes, that was funny. The conclusion of this film, the big party that I was referring to. Yes. The young people show up with some swastika cars. It is a subtle indication that perhaps they are not. Go now, offend! Of the most sound line judgment of morals. yeah and uh there's it's called the pioneers ball it's like their dumb you know fancy dress party or whatever everyone goes insane and starts killing each other i guess right uh and arthur finally like gets the guts to go behind the wheels of a car again yeah i mean we're not talking about arthur much because he just kind of walked through the movie well i think they kill each other but because there's been so much tension that's been building because the young people have continued to kind of fuck with the town. Keep driving through, honking their horns, crashing into stuff. The inciting incident for the final melee is the young guys damaging this aboriginal statue. And that is taken as this great disrespect and offense by the old people who also clearly do not care about the aboriginal at all. And then that kind of leads to the all-out war. Yes. It's exciting stuff. It's cool. It's cheap. I'm not mad about it, but it does not have even the bravura of Mad Max, where Mad Max is cheaply made, but because it's stark, empty, roads, deserts, where the car action is so striking. George Miller does the exact inverse of this, where he's like, that's the point. Exactly. I'm designing this entire movie around that stuff being as high impact as possible. and I'm marrying it to the simplest plot imaginable, which is Guy Needs Revenge. Guy Needs Revenge cause family dead. It's got one of my favorite things you find in low-budget movies. There's a part where our main character, he finally gets behind the wheel and he's being told by the mayor to keep crashing into one of the gang members. And it's done in this way where the gang member could just get out of the car because he keeps like backing up and then like putting it you know it's like a manual and then crashing into him again and he's just doing that thing of like no stop oh please stop you can't do this to me it's a low budget film thing i also think it's an inexperienced film thing i've certainly been on productions where you're like rehearsing the scene and you go like and it just human me for a second why wouldn't i just get out of the car and the director we have 10 minutes the director like looks at you with panicked eyes and smiles and goes like i think it's for this shot to work i think they just won't even the audience is even going to be thinking that and then you screen the movie and the first question everyone has is why didn't they open the door it's enough when i'm talking about these things you recognize only after you've made one film and then watch it back you know you and again you you can only budget so much time and you start to get like smart just you have the instincts in you from going through that process of like which things are an audience going to bump against and which things will they not care about david yes ah who's that no david in fact i see why you were confused it sounded like a doorbell or perhaps even the ringing of a phone to introduce an ad read character but in fact it's not an ad read character it's an exciting new ad read prop my hand chimes okay what oh um then why are you ringing those well i'm ringing my ceremonial chimes to announce our new sponsor on the podcast chime chime listen chime is changing the way people bank not like the old school banks that charge you when you overdraft charge you with monthly fees. 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Head to chime.com slash blank check. That is chime.com slash blank check. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secured Chime Visa credit card, and MyPay line of credit provided by the Bancor Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. MyPay eligibility requirements apply, and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com slash fees info. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise, 1.00% APY applies. No min balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. David? Yes. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. We're both stroking our chins. Okay. And narrowing our eyes and kind of staring off into the middle distance. Do you know why? I don't. Because we're trying to thoughtfully build a wardrobe. Oh, and we don't mean a piece of furniture. Put that hammer and nail down. We're talking about what goes inside the wardrobe. Close. And I'm not talking about a portal to Narnia either. I'm talking about the clothes. That's right. You know, you want premium fabrics and you want considered design. You want every... That makes well and last, obviously. That's true. And they should be everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear. Yeah. And dependable. Even as the seasons change, as they are doing currently in New York. They should be items that you love so much that you would be crestfallen should some snow from Narnia creep in. Oh, yeah. And Mr. Tumnus shows up offering you Turkish delight. I know the queen does that. It's like, can I borrow pants? And you're like, what's that going to do to the pants? Right. You have, like, horse feet. We just have different leg shapes. Okay, look. They've got lightweight cashmere sweaters. I've got a couple of those. They've got short-sleeved Mongolian cashmere polos. I think I might need to get some of those. 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And they're hitting? Yeah. They're the best. I love being in bed. Falling asleep well? Right now. Go to Quince.com slash check for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to Quince.com slash check for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash check let me see if there's anything here in the dossier that uh about the release of the film okay right okay a big thing about this movie is sort of suggests it goes to the film festival it makes quite a splash roger corman is interested cars that Dave Paris, that sounds like the kind of movie I would put out. He sees it. They're sort of talking about a deal. It falls apart. And then very shortly after, he hires the great Paul Bertel, and he goes, I have a title for you, Death Race 2000. Great movie. And obviously, this movie does not have a ton to do with Death Race 2000, but in much the same way that it sparked Mad Max for George Miller. I think Roger Corman saw this and is like I could take this and try to recut it into being more the kind of movie that I put out or what if I just made a movie with cars crazy shit the whole time fucking wacky races with guns right but I think this movie sparked him to be like oh you could do this in live action so the cars of the Paris you know we're says I made this to be released internationally like I'm trying to bust out of the Australian bubble a little bit. Film was shot in fall of 73. It premieres at 74. Probably the Sydney Film Festival opens in theaters. Was not a big commercial hit, but it kind of like just starts to play. Then it gets taken to Cannes. What you just described happens if Corman gets interested, backs out of the deal at some point. New Line Cinema releases it in America in 1976 titled The Cars That Eat People. They recut it. They add narration. I think they cut it to the bone. Weir's pretty bummed out by all of that But Picnic is already moving Absolutely Oh my god, right At the bottom of this dossier JJ has put our old employee and pal Nick Laureano, who's now a lawyer Went to law school Did a year of research for us And was like, think it's time for me to go to law school Went to law school, graduated, passed the bar Is a lawyer Love you, Nick Blank check? An incredible stepping stone. Seriously. What kind of lawyer is he? I'm actually not sure. I mean, I think he graduated maybe last year, so he's still doing, you know, he's still early. Didn't you have to write him a job reference? We got, like, emails from the bar. Yeah, just being like, he says he worked for blank check, you know, and I was like, he did? Right. I just had to confirm. You had to respond and be like, they were like, we're just curious. We know there were some mistakes on the Elaine May series. Was he on staff? No, not at all. Not at all. He was not. love you Nick, love you Masha they're doing great Nick's doing great but he did write a giant overview of the Australian sort of new wave in the film industry and all that but I am not going to repeat that because that would be crazy very kind of you I just think it's an interesting case where he designs this to be a calling card film but the picnic thing has already gone into movement because of the same short film he used to get this made. He makes two different calling card movies that speak to different skills he has. No, it helps him tremendously. Right. Because Last Wave feels like him, you know, pushing off of Cars That Ate Paris. Yes. Right? But also I've shown the range that now people trust me that I've done it twice. But then Gallipoli, the big prestigy stuff he's going to do next feels like it's pushing off of Picnic. And then when he arrives in Hollywood to make Witness, he is a full package and he makes witness have you made witness I hang your head in shame I am ashamed to say I'm ashamed to say I've not made witness even once I'm going to play the box office game Griffin this film came out in America so this is the new line cut I suppose so on the 11th of June 1976 so first of all let's say happy birthday to america oh that's true it was the bicentennial year uh fun i'm not seeing it in the top 10 here america is not in the top 10 america is always number one at the box office in my opinion number one however is a movie uh with wheels okay in 1976 is it uh is no wow i just said wheels and he's guessing let's know because I'm like, Smokey and the Bandit's 77. No, that's famously 77, of course, because it's the second highest grossing film. Behind Ben, what was the highest grossing film of 1977? I thought if there was any... Star Wars. There you go. He nailed it. I was right. That's the one you would know. Star Wars was the most successful film of that year, but Smokey and the Bandit, which I recently watched for what I think is the first full time, and Sally Field. Calm? Hot stuff. how is she going to call if she doesn't have your number okay and my number is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 the film this film I'm discussing though it's not a bird no it's a car movie it has a vehicle in it oh but it's not you wouldn't primarily identify it I've never seen this film and I know it mostly for its sort of memorable title it's a very interesting sounding movie in that like the director is interesting the stars are interesting. It's not like Tulane Blacktop. No, that's an awesome movie. I've seen that movie. That's like a crazy exploitation movie. The stars are interesting. The first star is a comedian. As with all comedians of yesteryear, nothing weird ever happened with this guy. Oh, actually, a bunch of weird shit happened to him. Is this one of the Sidney Poitier-Bill Cosby movies? You're right on the second in that the star of this film is Bill Cosby. No, it's not directed by Sidney Poitier. But they also did buddy films. I'm not talking about that, though. I was talking about it, and I needed you to tell me that it wasn't one of those. But Bill Cosby is the star. Can I tell you his other two stars? Yeah. Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel. Yeah. This movie is called... Do you remember? And it's about them running an ambulance service, but like an indie ambulance service. I know the poster. Yes. It's got a very memorable title. And let me tell you that Bill Cosby's character is called Mother. And Raquel Welsh's character is called Jugs. Interesting. And what is Harvey Keitel's character called? I've given you two of the three words of the title. Gnome, Speed. Wow. The film is called Mother, Jugs, and Speed. Oh, of course. There we go. Okay. Yes. Took me a long time to put that together. Yes. I have not seen it. It's directed by Peter Yates, who's like, you know, a real director. And I assume it's a bunch of crazy car antics and stuff like that. But I mostly I feel like I mostly know it because it's called Mother Jugs. Yeah, it's a good. What is that? Yeah. So that's number one of the box office. It's crushing. Number two, the box office is the film that will win Best Picture in 1976. Rocky. Nope. Rocky 75. Wait a second. I take it back. Rocky wins Best Picture in 76. Thank you. However, this film is nominated for Best Picture and wins other Oscars. It wins other Oscars. Is it Network? Nope. Good guess, though, because I think that is one. The Rocky Year is crazy. The five nominees are all amazing. Right. Because Taxi Driver's in there? Taxi Driver's in there, but that's not this movie. All the President's Men is in there? There you go. There we go. The fifth, of course, is Bound for Glory. Yes. Possibly the most forgotten, but still, good movie. A movie I like tremendously. Hal Ashby. And famous for early Steadicam and all that. It's like the first Hollywood steady camera. That camera's smooth as hell. Sure is. But no, this is All the President's Men. Okay. A terrific picture. Have you ever seen it, Ben? No. You're just like, why isn't every movie this? A little bit. Adding it to the list. Yeah. All the President's Men. So that's... Do you know what it's about that? Hilariously a summer movie. It's about what if we... It's The President's Boys. What if we couldn't trust the president of the United States of America? Oh. What if crimes were happening? Of course, journalists would be able to hold them to account. We'd fix the problem. David, what's next at the box office? So that's number two. Number three at the box office this week is a Western, kind of a, you know, kind of a revisionist Western. It's not a Clint. No, it is not. No, it's two major movie stories. stars. Oh, is it the two major movie stars? Young or old? One of them's on the older end of his career. But in the 70s, he's had his big comeback. He's won an Oscar recently. Is it a Wayne? No. No. It's not a Wayne. He's had a big 70s comeback. Yeah, he's not like a Western actor. Yeah, and then the other guy's young. Younger. Yeah, for sure. I would say he got his he became a star a little later like he's probably in his 30s but at this point he's a huge star at this point he's a huge star certainly it is not a film I've ever seen 1976 I think at the time it was a huge flop Missouri Breaks the film is Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks starring Marlon Brando Jack Nicholson And Jack Nicholson. Yeah. You've also got Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, Frederick Forrest. Yeah. Must have been a dry set. Good call. A joke about how all those people like to drink. Oh, sure. Right, right, right. I don't know. M. Night Shyamalan's old. We've got a second episode to record today. We do. M. Night Shyamalan's old. If you remember, Rufus Sewell keeps asking for the title of this movie. And it's like a sign of his dementia. Oh, sure. As he's getting old on the beach. Yeah. Just thinking about that recently. No one does it like M. Night. Missouri Breaks feels like a film I own on disc because like Radiance put out a gigantic box of it. I'm not sure if that's true, but even if it isn't, it will be at some point, right? You know what I mean? Yes. I'll look it up and I'll be like, yeah, this movie was a huge bomb. And I'm like, interesting. $60, you say. Number four at the box office. How you doing, Bear? How am I doing, Bear? Bear. Well. Great. Wait, that's the name? No. Florida Through the Box Office is a film I've never heard of. I'm looking it up. It is a crime drama. Prison drama. It's got a young Tommy Lee Jones in it. I can tell you that much. Okay. He still, of course, looked like an old hound dog. He has looked like an old hound dog since he was born. Is it the Tommy Lee Jones-William Devane movie? No. That's Rolling Thunder. That's the title I was looking for. No. It's a film I've never heard of. It's directed by Michael Miller, starring Yvette Mimou. the sort of ingenue of it's got Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Carradine. Is it called Lock Me Up Why Don't You? That's what it's called. It's called Lock Me Up Why Don't You? In the least surprising news of all time it was at one point selected by Tarantino for the first Quentin Tarantino film festival. Doesn't sound like his kind of thing. The film is called Jackson County Jail. Oh sure. Yes. And it's just one of those movies where I'm like does Quentin Tarantino scroll scroll scroll. Yeah he likes this one. Okay. It was like a drive-in movie, you know. And then number five at the box office is a film I have heard of but not seen. It is another sort of exploitation movie. It's like a rape revenge film starring Margot Hemingway, not Mariel. Oh, yes. Fuck. Because I think this is Mariel's first movie. I think so. She plays Margot's sister in the film. I believe we talked about this in our Star 80 episode, normal. that's an episode I definitely haven't erased from my memory at all I remember every episode vividly and part of that is obviously I re-listen to all of them every night I cue them up like that one Flaming Lips album on different players around my room and now I have a thousand players this movie is is it the character's name? no it's something a girl might wear lipstick that's right the film is called lipstick and uh i've never seen it lamont johnson movie uh was also quite controversial at the time i think because it's a lurid oh uh you've also got one flew over the cuckoo's nest which won best picture of the prior year still hanging out in june yep you have a film called and i'm gonna guess this film probably wasn't an oscar contender poor white trash part two Scum of the Earth. Who's got that IP? Is anyone working on that? I have no idea what the fuck that is. Wikipedia has never heard of it. It's Lauren's Olivia. It was initially called Scum of the Earth and then it was re-released under the popular title Poor White Trash Part 2. Great. Anyway, it looks like it's a movie about Beethoven or something. And then you've got new this week, the Dario Argento film Deep Red. Oh yeah. I recently watched my disc of that. I got a new disc of that one. Congratulations. Pretty fun movie with David Hemmings and those big bushy brows. I've never watched any of his films. Argento? No. They're fun. They're a good time. You like colors, Ben? Do you like women getting impaled? I would say I like colors. Okay. Not a big impale guy. Okay, well then you're going to be up and down on these ones. Come see, come saw. you've still got The Exorcist oh sure already hanging out and then you still have got a great movie The Bad News Bears, a baseball classic that's what's in the box office but it's a gnarly box office, it's a lot of fucked up 70s exploitation movies it's a grimy tent as much as you're like okay sure there's also all the President's Men One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest but even those are edgier movies and those are like disillusioned movies totally and then you're like okay and then what was the kind of sort of sillier fare. It's a bunch of really nasty stuff. Yeah. Movies with the one-liner, what if a guy got shot? What if a person was bad? Entirely true. What if crimes happened? What if crimes happened? Next week, pretty different vibe. Pretty different vibe. We don't have anything in the way. We're going right to Picnic and Hanging Rock Yes we're doing the vibe shift We're taking a picnic Jane Schoenbrunn the great filmmaker returning to the show That's right to talk about Picnic and Hanging Rock So enjoy that And then of course yes going forward We've got Peter Weir Peter Weir Peter Weir We're going to take one little break for Mandalorian Grogu but that's not until the end of May So we're on the Weir train We're on the Weir train Should we announce our Mandalorian guest? Yeah sure barring some future scheduling problem he's on the spreadsheet main feed Star Wars movie he's back and I'm going to promise all of you that we will spend 40 minutes at the top talking about Spider-Man 2 we're going to stay on topic yes we're bringing Geth in for that episode and Griff is promising to watch all of Disney's live action Star Wars TV shows to catch up I have watched Obi-Wan Kenobi Yeah, he watched that one and weirdly didn't feel motivated to watch a lot more. You know what's the worst feeling in the world? To, like, watch a third Obi-Wan Kenobi episode. Most boring shit I've ever seen in my life. And then be like, I'm still awake. Do you know what I'm saying? How am I not in my Odin sleep, my eternal slumber? To be fighting insomnia so hard, put on the most boring shit anyone's ever made, and then still be awake at 3 o'clock in the morning. This is the mistake I made. I put on Antiques Roadshow last night. Too exciting. Too exciting. Too exciting. Obi-Wan has the opposite problem. I'm going to do Obi-Wan. Yeah. I know. Yeah. It's like eating a turkey, Alfred Hitchcock style. Genuine question, what is next for you? Which one will you tackle next? I think it is, is it Andor Season 1? I'm going through in release order. Oh, you're trying to go in release order? Okay. I think that's right. Yeah, I would assume so. I think it's Andor season one then Mando season three because you sorry wait because like is the idea we're doing live action only live action only so you've seen Mando season one and two correct and you saw the book of Boba Fett I opened the book and trust me I closed it and put it back on the shelf yes so the next thing for you to watch is Andor season one that's happening folks you can stop haranguing me and then you're going to make the incredibly foolish decision of not just watching Andor season two, which is what you should do. I'm going to space it down. That's a terrible idea. I'm going to watch Mando. It is Mando three next. Then it would be Mando three. Then it's Ahsoka. Then it's Ahsoka season one. Uh-huh. As someone who did watch it. Oh, my God. Then the acolyte you have seen. Acolyte I've seen. So you don't have to watch that. Then skeleton crew. Yes. And then Andor season two. And or season two. I think. look I understand that I'm depriving myself of joy and forcing myself to crawl back through the fucking Shawshank Redemption poop tube but I think it will make it that much more satisfying the other side when I'm standing in the rain and the Thomas Newman music is blaring my fear is you'll just give up I'm not going to give up I never give up never surrender that's from Star Wars right anyway yes Peter Weir we're doing it Just with a little break from our friends, The Mandalorian and Grego. There you go. Yeah. Thank you all for listening. Please remember, rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Picnic and Hanging Rock with Jane Schoenbrung. And as always, ka-chow. David pushed his mic away in disgust. Link Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in The Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions. Okay, I'm rolling. Oh, wait a second, I'm not ready. I don't give a shit. That's okay. Fuck you. But we're ready to go. Fuck you. I don't give a shit. Fuck. This is the first in the mini. Fuck. God. Unfortunately. I'm happy to shame myself as a cold open. You might kind of shame yourself. No, no, no. That would be a little shame. There should be a little shame on the books. And what was the shame? It was like a Channel 4, like Eyewitness News. Oh, sure. Shame on you. Yeah. Remember this? The big cartoon finger graphic. I do not remember this. You don't remember this? I didn't grow up with them. It was like one of those classic things where the local news has some correspondent who goes to local businesses, struggling local businesses, and yells at them because they have a dirty bathroom. Or it'd be like, an old woman would be like, the pamphlet said bananas were 15 cents and I went to the store and they charged me 20. And then he goes in with a camera frame. What's the matter with you? He's like, you've ruined this lady's experience with getting bananas. Shame on you. And then a big cartoon finger. Yes, that's what I want. I want you guys to burst in with the camera crew and shame me. Big cartoon finger. With a big cartoon finger.