You Were Never Really Here with Sean Clements

music Joe wake up. It's a beautiful podcast. So this is... It's the last line of the film. That is true, but this is a dialogue light movie. It is. I was like, what's he going to say? I guess that's true. Lin Ramsey testing me on the opening quotes. Was there a tagline? What was I? Get ready to meet Joe. Like, what do you... Like, what's the worst tagline you could do? Joe does things a little differently. There's a quote. There's a poll quote on the poster that is taxi driver for a new century, which is a way to attempt to sell this movie with the moodyest poster of all time. Just like walking Phoenix looking tortured and a girl like drowning. Superimposed inside his body. Right. That was the poster. And like, one car, why lights? I think it's a great poster. It's a pretty evocative poster. It's a mood poster, like all of hers. But I mean, there's like... There are more quotes here. Duck and it's him swinging a hammer. Just be funny if they like marketed this like nobody too. It's hammer times. Joe is having a very bad day. And it's about to get even worse. When Joe's on the clock, it's always hammer time. There are more quotes for this than there were for more of him, Caller. And you look at them and you're like, well, isolated, these feel like quotes that could be out of taken to. Right. Like, McLeary said, you were brutal. I can be. I want you to hurt them. There's a version of that that you see as like a tense fucking Europa corp thriller. That's like Russell Crowe being like putting down a sandwich and being like, oh, oh, Kim. Yeah. Sorry. I'm really back in our Russell Crowe play. Do you know what paradise is? It's a lie. A fantasy. We create about people in places as we'd like them to be. That's like a, that could be a fucking Steven Segal. Like, Stair's also a distance. It's making me realize it's like when Watchmen, the movie Watchmen, the excited watchmen, you know, would just, would just paraphrase dialogue and quotes and stuff from the comic. And it's like, you can't speak that aloud seriously. Right. Like, it'll sound ridiculous. Now in this, it's all mumbled or it's all like, you know, that's the magic of it. Right. It's like, they get away with it. They sound completely get away with it. He always sounds embarrassed to be saying what he's saying. If he's saying, it's one of his best revolver. He is an harnessing that, uh, that aspect of him as an actor that always feels a little embarrassed to be acting. And you're divisible on him in general. You, you have often referred to him as a ham sandwich. I mean, maybe introduce me before you start putting words on my mouth. But yes, I occasionally have called Joaquin Phoenix a ham sandwich. But you agree with me. It is perhaps his best performance. And it's certainly in that conversation. Yeah, it's a good performance. And it's the mode I often like him. Is it the last one before he went so hard? Before he took the stage. Kind of the same thing. A little bit. Because he, this premieres a can in 2017. Sure. It comes out in the States in 2018. Right. And 2019 is Joker. Yeah. In 2018. So sort of in between him making this and Joker coming out. He's got some weird stuff. He does the Jesus movie nobody saw. Doesn't exist. He has. Don't worry. He won't get far on foot, which is like buried forgotten. The Gus Van Sam movie. I saw it too. It's pretty bad. It was okay. It was. Yeah. It had it had some charm. But uh, and he does. Sisters brother. Which I really like him. Have you ever seen that? Yeah. Pretty fantastic movie. Yeah. But obviously was sort of DOA audience wise. And then yeah. I mean, but that's like an interesting range year for him. When you think about this coming out in 2018, Sisters Brothers don't worry. You were never really here is like that. That's an interesting range of three different projects with three different really interesting directors in different modes. And he's not doing overdoing any of them. No, I mean, this one is so, you know, obviously this one in particular that we're all saying we like is very, very understated. Yeah. And I know, you know, it's it's light on dialogue. You read the book too, right? Yeah. I you do I watch the movie first. Yes. And then I read the book and you're getting so much of his into a monologue and what, you know, what is going on from. And it's amazing to me how much that is coming through without any voiceover. Yes, the same trick she pulls with Morvern Coward, which is another movie of hers that's based on a book that's all internal monologue. You know, as a thought I had none of it in the movie. I thought I had while watching this and then reading the book, which I only read recently finished it last night. It's not long. It was a slim, slim volume, not as like a Kindle single, but it was like an experimental ebook novella when that was a medium people were trying to test out. And then now since the movie, it's been published as like a 97 page thing. But reading the book after seeing the movie, and I've been trying to do this with her other films as well, it feels like the book is like the backstory and actor creates for their character, right? We're like really prepped kind of studious actors will be like, I'm going to write this whole fucking thing. I don't need to communicate it in the movie. It helps me ground it and place it and know what I'm playing internally and hopefully not feel the need to like actually communicate it in an overstated way. And she somehow knows how to like reverse engineer that extrapolate from these books that are so much about the internal life throughout the plot of your elements. The thing I saw in a review of Die My Love, too, which I haven't seen yet, but was like somehow her camera movements make you feel the internal life of the character. And like the sort of the way she chooses to like show the violence or like even show moments of him at rest and how restless he is in those spots is like the way that it's shot just like really makes you feel what he's feeling. And he's great. Yes, I will add on to that the additional trick in this movie that feels unique in her filmography is so often our movies are like you are 100% in the head of the character. You're seeing the whole movie from their point of view. You're a place in their inner life and the film is like expressing that. This movie in its sort of handling of PTSD and a sort of disassociation is going between being really close in on him and feeling really distant removed. And the violence is a fascinating part of that where this feels like a really brutal violent movie where you almost never actually see the thing happen. They don't show the actual one, which also is obviously a very a huge stylistic choice that different from the book, which the book graphically explains a lot of the brutality. But like when he goes through the like, you know, brothel or whatever and you're just getting security camera footage and it's sometimes cutting to a different angle of like the bottom of the stairs and then it cuts back and you just see like what he has done. Correct. But you don't see him do it. That sequence is fucking awesome. The rules. It's not even in a like you want to you wish you were seeing it. It's like, oh, I like like I have such a sense of what's going on and also like how scary it would be everything about it. Yeah. This is a podcast called blank check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin. I'm David. And we were never really here. It's a podcast about filmography's 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. This is a mini series on the films of Lin Ramsey. It's called we need to pot about cast Vin. And today we're talking about my favorite film of hers and one of my favorite always the last 10 years. You were never really here. Yeah, I've filmed it. I've seen twice and really like and I film that I think for you is basically like sleepy time. Happy once a week just like, I need I need to unwind. It's time to meet the hobo assassin again. It's not quite that often. I do have some strange comfort movies that are in a real steady rotation. This is one that's more selective when I want to feel a certain way. Yeah. But I also I just I find the filmmaking in this movie astonishing. There are choices she makes that still every time I watch it. I've seen it many times. I think I saw three times in theaters. You know, for a long time it's an Amazon movie. They bought it. So it's just always streaming on the world's world streaming service. Now I finally have a physical copy of it. Thanks to Australian distributors outside of Amazon's reign. But there are scenes in it. I'll watch but even every time I watch it I kind of there are things that still surprise me in it in what it does and what it doesn't do. Yeah. Yeah. Who's our guest? Who am I? Yeah. Okay. Our guest today shares with me. This is one of your favorite films in recent history as well. I love it. I mean, you were the first people I texted when I watched it. I think it's a totally slept on movie. He's a little bit. It's told Amazon thing. But yeah, everyone who would listen that I was doing this podcast just grabbing people on the street. I'm going to be on blank check. Have you heard the news? It's a person. And they said and they said, what movie are you doing tonight? You were never really here and they go, huh? What is that and who made that? Why are they talking about it? Even people who I think would love the movie. Yeah. I'm just like, you gotta watch it. But I also had kind of missed it. Yeah. The poster which I agree is cool. Didn't sell me on it. Like I was like, oh, okay. This looks like a moody thing. Maybe I'll try it sometime. But I don't know why I threw it on on some streamer. But maybe like a half hour in. I was like, I got a text griffin of David. Like, yes. This movie fucking rocks. Like I was just like, holy shit. It's awesome. Like, Joaquin's unbelievable in it. The directing is incredible. And it's like, I mean, it's tight as a fucking drum. Like, there's no fat on it. I really appreciate it. Because so it flies. Because you could sit in this misery and that's a different decision. And I don't know if I would love that. And instead, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like just kind of like little pokes in your eye. Like fast. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you just like, count it up the scene, like it's like so, so, so efficient, which I have so much respect for. It's, I think like 81 minutes before the credits fall. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, I think it's listed as like 90 minutes, but it's really pretty much like in our 20. Yeah, which is great. It also feels smart in the sort of, we discussed when we covered a train spotting on this podcast, the Danny Boyle's big rule going into that movie with all the key creatives is like, we got to sign a blood pack. This movie has to be under 90 minutes. We are not going to be able to sustain this. If we hit 95, it's going to become oppressive. Yeah. And I think she very smartly makes the same choice here. When it played a can, it was an earlier cut that was longer that has never been released in any form since then. We were never really released. You were never really released. Our guest today from Hollywood Handbook. Screenwriter of the Dink. That's right. Which will be coming out. I think it has a release today. It'd be this summer on app. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Summer of 2020. Q2. Q2 is a Q2 release. Or Q3. Ah, what? I don't get my cues mixed up. I want to get your pees and cues. That's the problem you throw. Probably more of a Q3 if it's... I've been told a date. I don't know if I'm allowed to sign it. Okay. But it's summer time. But it's coming out two or three years. Summer time. It's going to be 2026. Summer, big fun summer comedy. Get ready to laugh again. Want to laugh. Can we have funny laughs? I'm allowed to have fun at all. In this administration. They told us the comedy was legal. And I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of that. Yeah. Well, it's legal again. It's legal. I'm actually going to be the first one to stand up and not get arrested for doing it. Sean Clemmons. The Clem Dog. The Clemmons here. Bow wow wow. Wolf Wolf. The friends with Colin. The friends with Colin. We had a group text for a while called the Cinematic Club where we post our daily Cinematic scores. The two of you weirdly have decided to spend more time raising your children and less time playing Cinematic. It was pulling me away from my family in a very significant way. But especially because you guys are so good at it and I was like, I can't be totally humiliated every day. And I would like really like grind on this thing. And I was like, I'm not enjoying it. It was starting to not enjoy it. That was sort of my problem. And that's no offense to the people who made Cinematic. It was a daily ritual which was nice because it also gave us like an excuse to once a day check in and throw in some spare movie thoughts and things like you texting. Well, that's why. I'm watching you were never really here for the first time. Do you guys fuck with this movie? I don't think it would have happened if we weren't Cinematic's friends who were you know, in touch basically every day for a while. If we weren't clubbing, which we were. Yeah. And then the text thread has become more sporadic. Mm-hmm. I saw the trailer for the family McMullen. The finally Ed Burns 30 years later, Legas equal. And I texted to you and say this feels like it's demanding a teaser freezer. Yeah. And in honor of that, we have renamed the group text, the friends McMullen. A teaser freezer is something we do on Hollywood hand. But sometimes where we will break down a movie trailer, and poke fun at the foibles. But we, David had, I'm going to credit David with the observation of, he said, is Ed Burns, the Irish American Tyler Perry? Yes. An incredible one. Which was like a killing shot. Amazing quote. Yeah. And it really stuck with me. And so I'm laughing at my own joke, but it is a good one. So funny. I forgot about that. Because we were going through all his movie titles, which are all like the McGillicuddy brother. It's like staggering amounts of movies. The fifth Gerald family Christmas. I'll read because like the first, you know, Bros of Mullen, she's the one. People were watching these movies. Well, first of all, this great party trick of, how many movies do you think Ed Burns is directed? Directed. I didn't know anything else. Michael, friend and I were watching the chair company on Max and it auto played a family McMullen trailer because I guess it's about to go to Max. I'm sure it. And she was like, what? And I was like Sean Simmons. The thing's going to mess it like the speed of light about this for weeks. And then I paused it and I said, just quick test. How many films do you think Ed Burns is directed? And she went, I'm going to guess it's a lot like six. Oh, he's got 15. He's got 15 under his belt. Which is probably about six regular movies. It's kind of like average amount of you squeezing together. But I just love that you're like, well, three I've heard of. So I'm guessing there's three I haven't heard of. And you're like, there's 12 to 12. You've never met. Nice guy, Johnny. Why met him? Or you've never attended the Fitzgerald family Christmas. Called that one out. Which weirdly has Connie Britton as well, but is not McMullen. Right. It's Fitzgerald. But then there's another one with another Irish family name. Yeah. The Miller's and Miller's and Mary's and that's another one with the poster is like 14 actors. You kind of know. That clearly Ed has their phone number and is like, do you have six days? I've rented a house in my Maranette. Like you're right. You know, like we'll do it. Well, I have no nonsense. Gretchen Mall, Julianne, Margot, he's Mini, Driver, Arena, Bacar, and Benjamin Bratt, Patrick Wilson, Campbell Scott, Brian Darcy James. It does are busy people. It does feel like there's some Tyler Perry thing going on where you're like, I want someone to crack up in the books of what the financing scheme is for these. You know, how is it getting access to these sets? Right. There's some complicated keys. Right. Yeah. I mean, it was like the Brothers McMullen was such a famous story of like he was like working production company. Yeah. Or he was, he was like, he was a PA and he was like stealing the cameras at night and like using their, you know, using their copy machines or whatever. Whatever the thing was that and it was like this real run and gone like, but now he's got a budget. I mean, Yeah, it was up with name actors. This is true, but there's got to be something going on with things. Something's going on. I mean, my, my ultimate assumption obviously is that they are made very quickly. Yeah. Is there all just like talky dramas, right? Yes. And maybe I should just watch them all. I mean, maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and check in with Ed. We also called out that he's also done like two TV shows. Did three complete seasons of television himself, three seasons of two different shows where he directed every episode? Yeah. The man keeps getting away with it. It looks pretty good. He looks pretty good. Sorry. He looks pretty good. We had really a lot of fun batting this around. Oh God. What a nice text. And then I got to talk about it on my podcast. Here we are talking about it again. It's where the friends McMullen. He hasn't acted. Where the friends McMullen. He has not acted in a movie that he, you know, didn't direct. Since Alex Cross, the Rob Cohen, you know, sort of, co-starring Tyler Perry, the non-Irish Tyler Perry. Did he take some notes to Tyler Perry? I wonder. Come here. Where he is the third guy. This is crazy. He's gonna be playing some kind of like detective sidekick. I don't know if that bird's gonna pull something like that. It seems like a murder or something going on. I'm bringing all this up because the first of her teaser freezer, of course, and the first episode of Hollywood Handbook ever was Don John. Don John. A movie that you and Hayes, Davenport, came on to discuss on this podcast. Yes. I don't know if you saw the news. Oh, I did. New Joseph Gordon Levitt movie in production. Might be time to run it back. Train. Might be time to run it back. I think we got to call the shot right now. We got it. We got to complete that series. Oh, we were continuing the JGO mini. Is that what is this movie? Do we notice about? I think it's a Kendrick and it's a, is it about AI? I feel like it record Joe. I feel like maybe I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this like, I'm feeling kind of warm to JGL of late. I feel like he's like, you're gonna get in trouble for saying. No, I mean, you know, Lord knows he's, he's done something bad. Then trouble with who, Bane. Yeah. He's not bad, but something corny. You think Bane's thinking about you. That's, oh my god. Wow. That's actually pretty self-involved, David. Bane's got so much on his plate right now. Isn't he, he's like, oh, he's out there saying like, AI sucks. I don't like it or whatever. Is his life as like a scientist? Yeah, he seems like he's, and it's kind of like, he is like, hey, Joe, here like 20 bad things that are about to happen to society. And he's like, cool, I'll use my like star power to communicate my power. And then I think his movie is about that I want to say. So like, that's kind of fun. Yeah. I don't like that. Joseph Gordon Levin quote, not a punk rock thing to use artists work to train AI for free. I mean, jeez doesn't need to say the punk rock part, but sure, right? It's Rachel McCatams and Joseph Gordon Levin. I love Rachel McCatams. Uh, Brian Johnson's for Novice Generation is producing it under wraps for the AI movie. It's an AI movie. Interesting. Wait a second. Share story credit with Natasha Leone. Okay. And she's, she's, she's Russian doll. Pretty normal. Yeah. I just think not only is the JGL series an ongoing project that we are serious about, I almost think you and Hayes need to be locked in for every time he makes it. If he's going to make a movie, man, we got to come and talk about it. I mean, we may have been too hard on John. I might be, maybe I've been watching the movies that have come out since. Yeah. I've seen everything in the last 15 years or so. Don't you might have been the last good movie? I picked it. We were so spoiled. We were. We felt that we had permission to go in on John. We were love. We didn't know how good it was going. I think movies, this movie's approach to like the pickeding masturbation habits is very strange. And now we live in a world where masturbation is rarely depicted on screen, which is a much worse way of handling it. It's missing. It's missing. It's missing from my life. Aren't we in a world where Gen Z is like the only way I know how to masturbate is like in like a VR cave or whatever. Isn't that like what? Gooning is or whatever. That's what's been going on. Yeah. So now I'm like, Don John is like, that was a blue collar masturbator. Yeah. I just, he cracked open a Dell laptop and salt to the earth. It's masturbating to human women who had signed on shitty cameras. He was like boobs into Google or whatever. Like what? For Don John did. Fuck. And then boobs. Fuck. And then like Scar Jo's kind of mean to him. He's like, oh, I like it. You know, I'm like, it's a genius. It's such a priseous cornyness like compared to whatever the, you know, zoomers are doing. It was a simpler time. It was a simpler time. And we're part of the problem. We made times complicated. Well, we, yes, we shamed him. We shamed him. And, and that has now driven all of youth into a VR cave. It's the only way they can get on. They're all stuck in a post on John. VR cave. Yeah. Cause we made it, we made it embarrassing to be Don John. And the, and where are the, you know, it was playing off this Jersey sure aesthetic. Like also has like a encapsulated this one moment in time. Right. That is now, like, should be preserved. Right. That is just so quaint and old fashioned that the Jim Tan laundry kind of thing. But also does Jersey sure get revived in the time in between when we did the episode. And now I can't even revive. Revived. I mean, come on. Like that didn't last. I know. I mean, we got some. Ben you some pretty. I'm over here. Snookies podcast. I don't know if you know this. That's true. Jesus Ben. I'm sorry, man. I didn't feel like such a fucking asshole. Dude, congratulations, man. That, that, that rocks. Thank you. I mean, Snookie. Yeah. Nicole. Nicole. Not a lot of one name superstars coming out of reality TV these days. No, especially in the podcast world. Who are the one named podcasters? DAX. We had Seth Rogan on the show. And it was I kept falling into this problem where I'd go like, yeah, we have Rogan doing big Lebowski on the pod and people would go Joe. And I was like, oh, you can't within the context of pod. Can't see Rogan. You can't say Rogan. But that he's a one name, but not the first name. I think if you say Joe, probably. But not definitely. The all these terrible Joe, I'm thinking about Biden. Same. And when's he going to start his podcast? I love your neck. I talk. I really was got a neck for it. A link. No, but he should do a fucking serial style podcast about corn pop. Yeah, where he's like, I'm going to prove to you that this guy. I'm going to interview everyone and knew him. I'm going to go deep like full investigation on whatever pool he used to hang out in Wilmington or whatever it was. Or it could be called a bad dude. I took to the mean streets of Delaware. I think he's like walking around. Yeah. I should plant a bunch of hidden mics in Joe Biden's home. Right. Not a crime. And just record him puttering and murmuring and release those in one hour and so on. I think his monologue out loud to himself on a daily basis is would probably be the best podcast I listen to. What does the model where like Obama and Bruce paired up? Which are who would buy it in pair up with musician wise. Well, like who's the musician of Biden's age? The guy from Smash Mountain. Brian. Brian. That's like Frankie Valley. Who is Joe Biden's favorite musician? I was trying to tee up. Yeah, some kind of really old. The problem is if we ask Joe who's the musician you want to do a podcast with, you'd be like, what's that all about? Drossin. What's he done recently? This is his favorite. His favorite. What's his favorite band? It seems to me just like some kind of like Irish folk banders. I'm trying to figure out. Good. Good. Yeah. I mean, just him and Michael flatly. Yeah. Is Michael Fowley still kicking? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. He's still doing stuff. You know, the whole thing with him is that he broke off from River Dance. Yes. You know, when I lived in England River Dance was like 40% of the like economy in that country. And like so every five minutes when you watch TV, there would be ads for River Dance or Michael flatly's Lord of the Dances. By the way, the same deal in the United States in the 90s. I guess it was just a few years ago. Those two things were just playing alternate. Did any of you ever see River Dance? Absolutely not. No, but I feel like I did. It's kind of like Irish Rockets. Like again, I'm making a lot of Irish stereotype sort of jokes on this podcast, which is a little little rich for me. I'm not Irish. Hey, I'll give you a pass. Yeah. Okay. He's pushing over a bass. He's handing you a clover. It is one of those things for like 10 years you could have play and a character breaks into some sort of like step dance. That's punchline. That was punchline. That's all you need to do and it would hit every single time. Any character breaking into River Dance for five seconds with it? This is me to my dad, River Dance. And now, right, just say it. And now if I like, I did a joke. If I told anyone about River Dance, they would be like, no, no. What is that? No, that. That and the chanting monks, uh, seeded that our parents got into a one point felt like just this moment where it was like, maybe, maybe another culture, but just for a minute and just one thing they do. Yeah. What is it? Is it anigma who did the chanting monks song or right? You know, they're like here are moods. Yeah. The pure moods, uh, the mix that would come on right. Yeah. Just like those guys, whoever was just like, what if we did a monks song, right? And then they hit and then another guy's probably like, could I do a monk song? It's like, no, like doors closed. Like there was one monk opportunity. In 2018, Michael Flatley wrote, produced, directed and starred in an espionage action thriller. Sounds good. Called Blackbird. Quote, Michael Flatley, as you've never seen him before with Eric Roberts, it's a Kossa Blanca. Wait, think about Eric Roberts. Say, God Eric Roberts. And it didn't actually see release for four years. That's what he's up to. Well, the movie's made in the editing bay and nobody knows that better than Flatley. It claims to be in pre-production for Blackbird too. And let me get us, I'll get us back on track with this. If you look at this poster, kind of, you were never really here by... What a evening. You know? Yeah. It does look like Flatley is maybe, you know, someone who could wield a hammer. Michael Flatley is, you've never seen him before. Not dancing. Feet planted. You were never really here. So I did see this film in theaters. I thought this is, this is that golden early age of Amazon pumping out, uh, O'Tourre content from guys who were sort of striking out at major studio. So like Spike Lee, Winston and this, uh, this, uh, Lin Ramsey, uh, Woody on. Um, who else? Uh, what was that kind of early way? Thotsalon. Thotsalon. How heartly. That was crazy. He did three with him. I feel like. I mean, because he just, he's Ed Bird. So he just, he's eight bucks. Yeah. But he, like, he had a fucking, a little mini second wind and like, love and f*****. I can't, can't, can't, can't, long again. Obviously. Yeah. That was one of their biggest hits. Yeah. That was an acquisition. But that, but nonetheless, it was like, they were consistent. The brain was consistent. Yeah. Very savvy about this kind of like, let's buy up this kind of American art house stuff that used to be common. These are the kings of Sundance, right? Like 1980 to 2002, who have gotten pushed out of the studio system, the death of the mini major specialty arm. We got to get these guys back. And this is one that they, they buy because it was independently financed. It was run in variety that A24 was going to buy it. Which makes total sense. Total sense. And then during production, Amazon sweeps in and outpids them and gets the rights. Swoops in. Swoops in. It's fine. It's whatever. I, thank you. I need these corrections. Uh, Mike Lee's. Is it close to the Vester, close to the chest? Mike Lee's piece of the low. Okay. Is another one. Mike Lee's piece of the low. You know, like, we're there. Kind of like, do you want a little bit more money or will a quiet or will like, you know, we'll sort of big foot someone at a film festival. And we've, we've talked about it. It's the shit that like Netflix did when they started out, although not as successfully. And uh, Anna Pernum was sort of based on like, what's the thing that's gotten rejected everywhere else? Yeah. What's the thing that no one else will let you make? And we can build our reputation as seeming so artist friendly by supporting you. And they did. They did. And they didn't make any money. They made no dollars. They made no dollars. No dollars. No sense. Amazon was interesting because like, they made Manchester work commercially. Yeah. That movie made like fucking 50 60 million dollars. It's one of the last true arguments of like, you really can put, you know, these things in theaters and get the mosquins and they will grow and they'll like, you know, have a good ride. They got big sick to like 50 60. They did. Uh, love and friendship. They got to like 20 something. Like, they had quite a few that were working. And it was sort of like, this is the model. Why aren't the other streaming services doing this? Britney ran that marathon. She ran that shit right into the ground. Look, uh, Jen Salky took over the company. I know. Made some decisions that affected me personally. I will. But then also went to Sundance that year and spent, I think, a combined 50 million dollars on late night Britney runs a marathon and, uh, the report. Yeah. Scott Z Burns. It's a good movie. And I tried to give all three wide releases and was astounded when public audiences didn't flock to those films in mass. And the next year declared my takeaway is that movie going is dead and people don't like movies. Have you seen Britney runs marathon? Yep. Hey, sorry, sorry. You know that? You believe that? Uh, I'm, I'm starting to come around to that being possible. I will. I don't, I can't just accept that at face value. Like people say that. Picture Fargo says that Fargo says that. That's true. And you can't. You can't just fire by this kind of thing. Maybe that happened, but I've been tricked before. So I'm hanging. I'm hanging on. What? We'll never forget being at Sundance. Yeah. Britney runs a marathon. The VNs, they credit roll them. They give you the black and white photo. Like, and here's the real Britney running them and someone behind me being like, who gives a shit? Like just truly the most frustrated junior. Exactly. Like, look at the fuck out of here. Yes. So much. You'd like you would become a state senator. I think she just literally ran a marathon. Is it funny story to do a side by side photo with like the real version? Yeah. Because usually that's like some historical. It's like fucking Nelson Mandela or whatever. Like, if you're real Britney, I'm like, great. Oh, lady. Guess what? I go to the marathon every year. I watch them go by. There's lots of people who do this. Do you think if Jen Salkey goes to the marathon, she's like, this is a development dream. 50 million stories. They're all here. We'll have discussed this recently on this feed. But Bradley Cooper's is this thing on. It's another movie that ends with a big based on a true story as if the audience is going, God, I mean, that was unrealistic. Such a thing could never happen. I need the assurance. An adult man trying to stand up. Impossible. Getting divorced. You're telling me this comedian was feeling a little bit of drift. Sorry. It doesn't track. Sometimes comedy comes out of misery. It's a way to process our pain. Like pretty like comfortable white collar pain. David, is episode, don't act so surprised because it's a familiar friend. This episode's brought to you by movie. Y'all, just kidding. Comfortable. No, no, no. We love that. We're a global film company of champions, great cinema, iconic directors, emerging otters. Always something you discover with movie. 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 Akino Le Davis called My Father's Shadow is BAFTA nominated. poetic tender portrait of a father's son bond framed within the political landscape of 1993 Legos in Nigeria. It is about a father and two young son 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. Akino Le Davis, Jr. and Wally Davis. Love it, brothers. Co-wrote this groundbreaking feature debut and you've got a so-fade to resu. Oh, from slow horses, I love him. I hope I'm just saying his name right. But he's a really good actor and he's the star. It's worth seeing. It's in theaters. It's in theaters. It's in theaters. We love the movie puts movies in theaters before ultimately ending up on their wonderful platform. Dating right? I'm just looking at some of the stuff they got right now. Dime I love, of course. Yeah. Important watch, a necessary watch for any blankie. Lagraza, Lagraza, the new Palo Sornjian movie, which I missed in theaters. Good moment to catch up with it. The great shall we dance? Oh, the classic? The original. Oh my goodness, that's fun. Like a restoration. Yeah, and look at it. They got a collection called the heartthrob Nicholas Cage. It's young dreamy cage. Mm. Well, still dreaming to me. I. You're very open-hearted. Anyway, to stream the best of cinema, you can try movie free for 30 days at moobb.com slash blankcheck. That's mubi.com slash blankcheck for a whole month of great cinema for free. And then go see my father shadow in theaters. Please. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you. Very kind. I am going to open the dossier because I do feel like this movie does have kind of a complicated or Lynn Ramsey has a complicated journey from her last movie. We need to talk about Kevin. Yeah, to hear. I feel like we need to talk about Kevin is her biggest hit. Yeah, it was a little bit of a fact. And especially for a telescope, which was a small distributor, I feel like that was very much their highest grossing film at the time. Are you guys going to address the Lynn Ramsey backlash happening in the blankcheck community? Are we even going to deal with that? You've been checking the Reddit? Yeah, Greg. I'm on there. What's the latest on the back? It's basically the least blankcheck worthy director you've ever done. Like what's her blank check? Like, literally, it's not a blank check. So like, there isn't one. So like, I guess it's your podcast to do whatever you want. But yes, yes, yes, we can address this look. And we also just for the record, do their voice more like the bug man and men in blood? Yeah, it didn't offer you. I mean, she's never even. I'm sorry. I'm a hell of a truck. Pack cat. Um, I think that thread, which always, always happens every single time we pick a female director. It does happen every time. No offense to whoever started that thread because that thread is obviously totally correct. Or the, that discourse is totally correct in that, yes, Lynn Ramsey has never been handed anything remotely akin to a blank check to make a movie. Absolutely. But Lynn Ramsey has been able to make the movies she's made, which are strikingly independent and dark and commercial movies, commercial movies with major stars increasingly bigger and bigger stars. Yes. Right. To the her latest effort, of course, being her like most expensive, I guess, especially if you include the sort of acquisition of it. Yeah. And most starlight and without ever, seemingly ever really compromising what she wants to do. Now, she's always like, Oh, this happened. I wish this could happen. And there's always unrealized projects or whatever. But that, that speaks to, in fact, her not compromising, right? I mean, like we will have covered this in other episodes. We'll keep covering this. But there's so many movies she walks off of, you know, or let's fall apart because she's just like, this is going in the wrong direction. I'd rather not make a movie than make a movie. I can't stand by. Speaking about all that, let me tell you that after she made, we need to talk about Kevin. She wanted to make. Mobistic? Correct. I mean, it's got various titles over the years, Mobius being the most common one, but a sort of sci-fi, Mobidic epic. And this is Lynn Ramsey's dream project, her ultimate blank check. It's like a spaceship movie, but they're chasing some kind of space whale. It's a giant space whale. I mean, now probably if she could get Piacan attached, she could probably get financing, right? It helps that there's a bankable space whale in the kind of commercial ecosystem where it's lucky. If Piacan will do it for scale, I mean, that's a good picture. She's never been out there being like, I need $90 million to make my space movie. She's always said I can make it a small budget. I assume it's going to be like Claire Denise's high life of like, yeah, this is mostly psychological. It's mostly set on a ship. It's like, you know, but you need some is still like effect 15 probably. I'm guessing who knows? She has generally worked with small budgets. And then the blank check is distributors keep overpaying for her movies and being surprised when there are a lot of people. Nobody wants to see this movie. Then for Lawrence is hitting her head into every wall and mirror and window she can see movies rubbing their hands and they're like the memes we're going to make out of this. So while she's planning that, she gets attached to a film called Jane got a gun which I assume Sean, you have maybe heard of this project. This is the kind of infamous she walks off. Was it like a day before? Project was the day we could talk about it. You know, so she says like, Mobius, that's like her Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon, right? Where it's like, that's the thing I've always going to want to do, but it might always be impossible. But Natalie Portman, who I think admires her, is like, I am developing this like girl western. I'm going to star. It's called Jane got a gun. It's got based on a comic book or no, no, it's a it's a spec written by Brian Duffield right? Right. Who now has made like no one will save you and stuff like that. Yes. And spontaneous and loving monsters. I think he wrote as well. I mean, has a tremendous amount of credits as writer and director, but it was a black list script in 2011 that Natalie Portman gets as a producer kind of coming right off of her like black swan heat. It is a thing that like Natalie Portman has been called out for a little bit that she never worked with female directors. Yes. Sure. And we should have talked about like the need for women to stick together in Hollywood. And people would kind of side eye her being like, yeah. Why don't you then do it? Why don't you just fucking do it? And so like here she is. She's trying to go out of the square. She buys a script with her own money attaches Lynn Ramsey and Michael Fasbender. It's going to be her Michael Fasbender. Jude Law is going to be the villain. It's going to shoot in New Mexico and first day of shooting. Natalie Portman shows up. Michael Fasbender has exited because he has to play Magneto again for like the third time or whatever. He's going to be replaced with Joel Adjerton, Jude Law and Lynn Ramsey both quit. And Ramsey just does not arrive. It becomes this kind of disaster variety story kind of thing of like, you know, producers being like, there's 150 crew members who were getting left in the lurch here. Like it's a whole legal battle and stuff. The crazier thing also is accused of not delivering a shooting script. She's apparently, they said that her behavior had gotten kind of bizarre like whatever. I think she was clashing with producers. What do you, what do you know, Joel Adjerton was like attached and then replaced and then came back in a different role. There was like a lot of musical chairs with this movie. You and McGregor is the ultimate choice to whatever filled the third role. They sue her for like quarter of three quarters of a million dollars, which is her fee. It settled out of court like three years later. When Ramsey finally says when she talks about it many years later, it's like at the 11th hour, it was just like the guys financing this movie just do not want the movie I'm going to make. Right. And so she quit. I mean, I think that basically completely cements her relationship as someone who is very difficult to work with and just doesn't play like Hollywood games well, right? Yeah. Yes. Yes. And I think the other part of it is it was like catnip for deadline. In my memory, it was like there would be three stories a day because it's like this movie is up and running and the director has gone. The lead actor has gone every day. There were like three new stories about I mean, I'm even just reading here where it's like on April 5th, it was announced that Bradley Cooper would replace law on the role of John Bishop. On May 1st, it was announced that Cooper was withdrawing from the film. Yeah. Cooper was brief. You know, every day it was like a new actors and talks and new actors dropped out. They're meeting with six new directors. I know, I know we don't get like two inside baseball on the on the business here, but to make a feature film, and I, you know, I've only really been directly involved with one, but to make a feature film without. Yeah. Maybe Q3. Okay. But to make a feature film without the director and star is like it's extremely challenging. Really. That is generally a set environment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It dysfunctional. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's got a negative connotation. Yeah. But I think that's fair. Let me rephrase. Nonfunctional. I would say it's going to be pretty tough to make a movie function with neither director nor store. No, movies have done a missing one or the other. Sure. The weird thing is, the movie was eventually made Gavin O'Connor directs the final version. He came out it made like $2. Yes. Like it was dumped so intensely by the wine scene company. Yeah. In 2015, I've never seen it. Everyone was like kind of shopping around it. At one point, it had like Weinstein Relativity CBS and Focus features all like hovering and then taking pieces and then dropping out and someone would replace it. Like it was this movie with all this energy that they wouldn't let shut down. And they kind of like kept the corpse alive and got it finished and no one gave a shit. It's really surprising that all those people leaving does it just make it not get done. Right. Yeah. And object in motion. And it cost 25 million dollars. And it cost a lot. I mean, it could have cost 100, I guess, well, you had cost a lot of money. I'm sure a lot of that was kind of the overruns of keeping people on hold and whatever. But if she had done this, this would have been her biggest, biggest budget thing. Now to this, the complaint of the Reddit, right? Or the questioning, it's like you could say, well, how has, how can you define her as a blank check director when she's never had a budget over Yada, Yada, Yada. Right. Yeah. Which by the way, I'm just telling you what Reddit's, no, no, I know. And in the day, this is a podcast, despite my opening spiel about what we want to cover. That is, I would say the number one thing this podcast is about. And she's one of my favorite filmmakers. And specifically from the moment that I see you were never really here, I'm like, fuck, the next time she releases a movie, I want to do her on main feed. But I think she is interesting in how she has kind of refused the blank check that would come with a lot of strengths attached. Even some people more strategically might be like, look, if I make Jane got a gun and it's got four big stars and it's a Western and it's got more sellable elements. And I lose half the battles to the financiers, but it gets released and becomes automatically my highest grossing film. Doesn't that help me get mobius dick done? Isn't that worth it as like means to it? And she seems for better or worse incapable of doing that. Certainly. So she does what we'd all do, which is Moose to Santorini, which is of course a Greek island in the agency, falls them over the Belarusian chef because she has divorced her husband, Roy Stewart-Kneer, has a kid with him. And then Jacques Odyard's company, Why Not, sends her over a copy of You Were Never Really Here in 2013. Now I never read the book. It's written by the board to death guy. Jonathan Ames. So I usually think of him of course writing about like, I don't know, I'm in Brooklyn, the coffee. Yeah, just to give a little bit of background. He was sort of like a pervy straight David Siddharth. And it is actually a really good description of the name. That's right. He would write about, and it was like, yeah, it was, you know, famous essay about like his late puberty where he talked about like not having pube care for a long time. And then like, you know, whatever, having his first sexual experience with a prostitute, but it was all like naval gaysie sort of like, comical or fresh, you know, like confessional work. And then I haven't read many of his novels prior to this, but there's this, which I think is his first time dipping his toe into because even board to death is sort of like, what if a neurotic writer was like solving, I mean, I'm so I'd board to death back in the day. He was like a brilliant self promoter and that he made himself a figure which helped him kind of cut through a bleak moment in the literary world. It's the family, but it's thing. It's like, if you are just funny and you live in New York and you can just like do panels and do do panels, and he do readings where he would like. Higher and opera singer to read his book out and he was like boxing on the side. You quirky self deprecate. You kind of feel good about yourself that you're like, oh, it's got real problems. Exactly. It's like you're like, I can, but meanwhile, he's like a famous, you know, successful person, but it's not threatening to anyone. This book does feel like a radical departure from everything you've done up until this point of time. It's so grim and brutal. There's nothing self-referential to his life at all. It's just the imaginings of like this, like, you know, this, this man who has this job rescuing like women who are like in like child sex trafficking situations. But then he, he breaks off into doing this series of like noir detective books, these doll books that are like incredible that feel very much sprung from that like a, like it's like the happy doll series. He's got three of them. Yeah. A man named doll, a carma doll in the wheel of doll, the three books. And they're, they're fucking awesome. I have not read those. Those are good. I love them. But it's like, it's just very surprising that this guy who I was aware of and had this very specific voice just has this whole new chapter. Well, yeah, has reinvented itself. He said when he wrote this, we never really hear. He's like, this is sort of an homage to first the Richard Stark, the Donald, um, Westlake Wake, uh, the Donald, like Parker series, Bill, like, Lee Child, Jack Richard books and all that. So he knows he's sort of doing, uh, not a pastiche, but an homage to like the genre. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The book is fairly honest. It is not tongue in cheek in any way, but there is something pastiche about it in that it is very much. The book reads as more of an awar riff than the movie does. And I think what the book is interested in is like, what is the kind of like really disturbing subtext under these stories that we skirt around, right? Mm-hmm. Not just like the intensity of the crimes, uh, but also like what is the inner life of a guy who does this kind of shit? Yeah. And like what told us this take on you and what drives someone to that point versus being this kind of like cool above it all vacant. Well, Jack Richard, your character who's like so untouchable. Right. He's, you know, their complete loner drifters and you just go like, because they're too cool and there's no strings. They can leave whatever and he's like, no, but internally this guy is like constant suicidal ideation, like just like the only thing keeping him going is that he has this like one purpose he's identified that he can do that he thinks helps people. And that just like keeps pulling him back from the brink. Yeah. I mean, you were never really here. The title comes from the repetition of the suicidal ideation and the book, that's the thing he says to himself when he imagines killing himself to kind of alleviate the pressure of the idea of life. That's why he doesn't need to do it because he would never really hear anyway. Right. Which is what this guy's struggling with. He is also physically described in the book as being so much more of a traditional Jack Richard type. Yeah. Like huge this kind of like handsome. He's older than he looks. He's six foot two. He's a hundred ninety pounds of pure muscle, you know, and he looks like an avenging hero. And then the contrast is inside this guy just wants to fucking die. There's a paragraph I just want to read quickly. I'm going to read your point, which is the big thing the movie doesn't over explain. He had come to believe that he was the recurring element, the deciding element and all the tragedies experienced by the people he encountered. So if he could minimize his impact and his responsibility, then there was the chance, the slight chance that there would be no more suffering for others. It was a negative grandiose delusion. Narcissism inverted into self hatred, a kind of autoimmune disorder of his psyche, but there was an undeniable element of truth to Joe's paranoic state where he went to pain and punishment followed. And it's like that's the animating idea of like a guy doing this would not really be able to live with himself, even of what he's doing from the outside seems heroic. And what would drive someone to do the right thing in such extreme circumstances has to be a little bit warped because no sane person with any self protective instincts can kind of live in this and survive it. Yeah, he goes into the worst places where the worst people are doing bad things and then he does bad things there. And then one good thing comes out of it, maybe. Right. And we love these kind of fictions of like the one guy who's willing to stand up to the bad in the world. Yeah. And ask these questions when these things happen in real life of like how did no one stop it? And you're like, because it's super fucking difficult to stop it. Not just in terms of like breaking down these system and challenging these people, but also you literally just have to go into the depths of hell to even confront these things. And most of the time people don't come back out of that. And he's a guy who is living with so much from his background in the military and whatever else he's done. Pain and flashback and PTSD already that sort of like might as well. Yeah, there's no escaping it for him. Yeah. So it just seems like he's just like, okay, well, I'm the person who can go and do this because like it doesn't matter what I see. I've seen it all. The book is really tough, but it makes sense as something that someone could read and go like, there's a halfway commercial movie in this. You know, there is a kind of like inverted art house taken in this. And it kind of makes him such a specific striking character. But it is like the book is more nawari in terms of being in his head. It's not written first person, but it's describing what he's thinking and what he's doing. And it's very like methodical and process based on how he goes about these missions. But also it's like explaining him putting the pieces together and solving the mystery, which is a thing the movie does not do. It doesn't have him like on the case. Not at all. You just kind of kind of fit the piece. And they qualify the case. Right. But this has makes sense in terms of there's versus there's a kind of like pulpy wicked web of intrigue and corruption. The way that Phoenix is playing this character also obviously it's not this is not Batman, the world's greatest detective. This is not a deductive guy in that way. No, no, no. You see him like put it together almost as just because he understands suffering. No, he's less, yeah, he's less savvy in the movie because like in the book, he's like being careful about, you know, certain tracking in the movie. It's like he calls the guy who's his contact right away. You don't like to be like, hey, yeah. So Lin's like, I kind of want to do this and people keep being like, what? This isn't the kind of thing you would do. And she's like, that only maybe want to do it more like I live, you know, I've had that energize me. But so it is sorry, it's some Odeyard who reaches out to her. Odeyard's production company sent her the book. Okay. Yeah. And they didn't even have the rights, but she's like, I'm fucking sitting in Greece with no internet and like there's nothing to do. And I just started writing the script. Yeah. And then I just like get connected with Jonathan because we know, you know, people, people, and we start chatting about it. And I start basically saying, this is what I want to keep. You know, this is the bones of the character that I like and he's all for it. And, you know, she's got a baby. So I think like it's like almost a sort of like, I remember, Jonathan named up by like I'm my charm on saying the same thing of like when you have a baby, if you're trying to write something, it actually focuses you because you have like two hours to write. And then the other thing is the responsibility is there versus the kind of like, I've got all day. Let me sit at the desk and see what fire is up. I was saying with podcasting, now you have the focus of knowing you only have four hours to discuss a movie. It does. I think it does David smiling and he's giving me thumbs up and he's blowing kisses. He's really happy. Well, he's so happy. David definitely not having crazy acid flashbacks about the reddit. Well, that's all you said. Yes. He likes this. He likes this a lot. You do end up using your time more efficiently. Right. You're just like, okay, I just, I only have this window and I had a boss once who said like your creativity will expand to fit the container you give you give it like it's like the natural grass theory or whatever. That's interesting and surprising because I have zero kids and I use my time horrible. I actually couldn't manage it worse. I almost have nothing but time and yet. It's so what's the opposite of a good thing? Or like what are you in? You're in like my culture. Exactly. I almost have negative children. You certainly can't say to a one year old like daddy's got a right to scream play. Yeah. That diapers just can have to go unchanged. So Kevin obviously, which is her last adaptation. That's a big book. It's a pistol area. It's all these letters and stuff like, you know, that's a complicated thing. This, she's like the book you could read in 90 minutes like the movie should be just as pulpy and like fast in a way. Sure. But it's her version of that I would say. But she just, she makes the sparseest version of what is already a sparse text. Right. She's like, look, I'm trying to make it pulpy. It does turn into what I always do, which is a character study. Right. I feel like this guy's had this full of broken glass. He's suicidal. He's sticking around just, he's just because of his mom sort of. He's like a ghost in his own life, basically. You know, she thinks about movies like Lissamera or whatever about similarly kind of like people who just don't have like a personal life, right? Like these stuff like. But this Lissamera is obviously about the coolest, most handsome motherfucking you've ever seen who's so well dressed. And the American too, which is, which is an awesome thing. Say movie and really love incredible. Yeah. I feel like this is closer to, we've covered a few movies like this. And I always, it is something that sticks with me. It is a type of narrative that I find very effective, which is a guy who, who passes his breaking point. Yeah. You know, in a movie where even if the character is able to resolve the ostensible narrative, they're never coming back from this. Well, and yeah, and they do, I mean, it's explained in the book too, but he's a guy who's, he's a bad dude. And he, but he kind of like does the job and then he goes home and he has this little life with his mom, right? Yes. And that is not related to what he does. And it's not pleasant. It's not like, like, it's not like a me, but it's like he has a purpose at home as well when he's not working. Yes. To take care of his mother, who they both like suffered abuse, you know, at the hands of his dad. And so he's got this like, I am, I am like a value in the world, even when I'm not doing this thing. And then that gets taken away and you're just like, okay, so what? Like who am I? Now what is he? And he's just then going to be like a fucking berserker. Right. Yeah, because just to spell it out and you start basically with the kind of his internal chaos, this guy who's head is full of glass is constantly like ideating on drowning and things like that. But also these constant flashbacks, which start with him being a child, his father physically abusing him, but also the feeling of being in the closet, curing his mother being attacked and not being able to protect her, which makes a ton of sense as like a motivating force that defines the next step of his life, which is he goes into trying to ostensibly help protect through the professional like arms of the American government, right? And he ends up becoming a specialist. All this stuff is not like spelled out. It is like pieced together really well in these like horrible traumatic flashbacks of just like glimpses of images and association. The things he can't get out of his brain. They keep playing him just that one line of going, what the fuck are we doing? Yeah. Like what if we'd edit like, I've assumed a really great summation of like if you work in a unit that recovers people from your account or if you're in the military and some special unit that it's like, wait a minute, what are we doing here? Like it's just like things are getting so fucked up. These guys like two main recurring images are being in a closet trying to suffocate himself with a drunk cleaning bag, basically just to stop the pain and to stop himself from screaming, which he now does like as a ritual almost every morning. And and then the other recurring image is like the feeling of kicking down a door, being a minute too late to recover like a pile of bodies, seeing like like glassy eyed sort of like numbed young women, right? And you get the sense that it's been like the times that he became a sort of task force specialist in trying to retrieve victims of sex trafficking, knocking down the door when it's too late, but also the feeling that when he was in the military, he probably was the one knocking down the door on innocent women, you know, invading homes and whatever towards some greater end, which then makes him go, what are we doing here? I need to be fighting for the right people. But then he's stuck in the darkness of that. Well, yeah, and who are the bad guys and who are the good guys? He's got the military flashbacks were there, you know, like whatever. It just feels like, yeah, he's very much lost in terms of like, how do I do good in a world that's so dumb? And it's broken me and the book is sort of getting at this feeling of the only way I can actually do good is if I cut out all the middle man, if there aren't rules around me. Yeah. Uh, she's very anti flashback, but then she sort of has that approach like if it's like post traumatic stress, it's like trauma that he's reliving. It's a little different from like a full flashback, which I think this movie depicts like incredibly well. Yeah. So I, I, I have a, I'll share a quick story, which is I was, I was in a car in, I think it was like 2003. It's a long time. This is a 2003. I was driving in my mom's Nissan Quest mini van to my, the connect to massage there at the therapy school as one does. Wow. And it's going to become a masseuse. I was a licensed massage therapist for a few years while I was like first trying to be an actor. A rocks. What would it take to get that license back up and running? Do you, how easy is it to get react, reactivated? You know, I haven't done my continuing education units. I haven't done my C use. So I'd probably have to do a little bit. I love massage. Um, yeah, it was a school. So I mean, just whatever to take another detour. It's like, I think my mom had heard an interview with John Corbett saying that he was a hair stylist when he was a struggling actor because once you got a client base, you like didn't have to work 40 hours. You can kind of schedule them around your life. You could audition and stuff. So that's how interesting them being a caterer or bartender or whatever. Yeah, it was like a maybe, maybe there's a job like that. And there was like a very good school, this Connecticut Center for Massage Therapy was like a good accredited school for it. That was really close to me. So I went and checked it out. I was like, OK, so I learned a lot about, you know, whatever the body I learned, raky. I've done it all. And I worked in spa's and I worked on the Cirque du Soleil acrobat's at one point. Like as I was like traveling, just doing like backstage work for different shows. Yeah. So it was interesting. But anyway, I was driving to school. I, it had snowed recently. I'm in this old minivan that like the dials on it don't really work. And suddenly the speed drops, like I go from going 65 to going like 35. I don't know what's going on. I hit the brakes to kind of like pull over. The brakes don't work. So I'm just rolling down the highway. And then the car starts to fill through the vents with like the darkest, thickest, most foul smelling smoke I've ever smelled in my life. Yeah. And I rolled down the windows and people are pulled up alongside of me and they're waving at me. And this one's going, your car is on fire. Your car is on fire. And I turn and go, I know I can't stop. Now luckily it had sort of recently snowed. So without really being able to see, I kind of am able to drive off to the side up along a snowbank and skid along the snow. It wasn't just the guard rail. There was like a pile of snow. I skid along that until it slowed down enough that I got out, jumped out, ran out of the car, also not thinking for some reason leaned in, leaned back in and turned the keys and turned the car off and took the keys out, which like, you think, just like, you just felt very stupid. You need to remember this now. I remember it now, but I just like, I, and that, but I like had gotten out and went back into it. And then I kind of jog up the shoulder and the fire was going and the windshield exploded. I don't know the physics of it. Yeah, it was cold or whatever, but the tires exploded with it. But anyway, and then I went back to like, get my shit out of the car later and I see the driver's seat that I was sitting in that I'd also like leaned back into for no reason. And it's covered in scorched like triangles, which I assume are just shards of molten glass that like shot into the seat that I was in. And you know, and blank check tie and there's a waking life DVD on the ground that was, you know, you don't want to lose that. That was, that was like all like melted and burned. And so I'm just like, oh, I almost died in like the most gruesome like horrific way. Like a final destination death totally. Yes. And for months afterwards, I think this movie just depicts really well. Like I'd be in moments of total like peace and rest like a bachelors drift off to sleep. It would just be the smell and the heat and I'm back in the car and like really classic like flashback PTSD. And then the other thing that would happen that they also do well is when I was just hanging out, whatever with friends, it suddenly would be like, I can't be standing where I'm standing right now. And things that we all know is like a panic attack now. But I at that time was just like, there's something wrong that I'm going to solve through some external, I'm going to move up or here. I'm going to do this and nothing's going to solve it because this guy, even when he's staking out and like waiting, watching the brothel door, there's a restlessness inside of him at rest poking at his skin when he fucking punches the like guy who was late to give him his keys back to the parking attendant. Yeah. And you're just like, there's just something exploding out of him that he can't control and he doesn't understand. He almost sounds like he's about to cry when he punches the guy. Which is that's a sort of phoenix special. I feel like he's really good. Yeah. Don't make me wait. He's like a little kid in that moment. He's like, you know, and he can fight back now and it's just, but I, whatever I went through that like very classic kind of PTSD thing. And I do think like this movie really puts you inside the head of like that kind of experience in a way that's like very visceral. I think a big part of it. Do we know why the car exploded? So yeah, there was, there was apparently an oil leak inside the car that had created a pool of oil on top of the catalytic converter, which you don't want. And the catalytic converter also was like running very, very hot. And I guess enough oil built up on there and the converter was hot enough that it sparked a little fire inside the thing and it's based, it's a grease fire. It's like an oil fire inside and it just burned out like all the guts of like the hood of the car. So that's why then the brakes didn't work, etc, etc. But it was just, you know, kind of a fluke thing. And one more detail that I'll never forget is then I'm sitting in a cop car like waiting to like, you know, for like my parents to come and get me or something. And I kind of try to make a light joke and I point at the car that's like, you know, exploded. I go tough morning. And the cop points at the line of traffic and goes, well, thanks to you, it's a tough morning for a lot of people. Jesus. It is weird that people just say shit like this to you all the time. I feel like this is a running theme in your life. Maybe it's just you have a sort of face that invites people to be sarcastic in here. I don't know, man. We, Ben and I were in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. And Ben is like, I'm going to go out. There's like a 7-11, three blocks away and get some like beer and some water and whatever. Right. And I'm sitting on the couch with Ben's wife and Ben comes back like 10 minutes later on the phone talking like really effusively to someone, right? About like, and I just don't understand what motivates people. And I was just like, oh, someone very close to Ben in his life has called and is in a bad situation where something really bad happens to the mentor personally and Ben is being a good friend and talking them through it. And instead what I find out that is the inverse that Ben called a friend to check in while he was on this 7-11 run and then a guy made like a mean joke to you, a bounce around side a bar. Yeah, he talked shit. And he was like also such a fucking lame motherfucker. Mm-hmm. He's wearing like, I'm trying to think of the dumb band T-shirt that he was wearing. It wasn't creed, but it was. Oh, it's like some so-called shit ass punk band like fucking Pennywise or something. It was Pennywise. It was Pennywise. And he was just like, I don't even remember exactly the comment just like something because I guess I was, you know, dressed weird even though again, I'm wearing the most normal clothes. He seemed like a nice hat bro or something like that. Something like that. And I was just like, what man? He was just like, you're just a cool looking dude. Something like that. And just wanted to obviously start some shit and had some friends standing nearby. I wonder, Ru and your night and you gave him just what he wanted. Exactly. And then unfortunately, that is I get a lot of people to just fuck with me. So I think you and I share that. I do have that. I do for some reason. I do. I do have that. I do for some reason. Look at Mr. Guy with his shoes on while you're just walking around. But people want to say this to you. I also feel the same thing is that you make the self-deprecating joke and then someone very po face responds to you being like, it's actually worse than you think. You are so thoroughly the problem. But I've invited it always. I've opened the door. Exactly. Is there like anybody want to shit on me? And people are like, absolutely, we've been dying. I agree with you. Plus 100 minus humor. Like it would have been me walking by that guy going like, well, some hat I got on. He'd be like, it's not just the hat man. It's your whole fucking face. But actually, what is your problem? I hate your gait. It's not even just your what you're wearing. It's your personal. Your pores and your body face. Yeah. Something really toxic, just emanating from you. Yeah. I definitely invite a lot of people to interact with me in a very aggressive way. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. I don't know. It's who you have that in common. I see it happen with Ben. And like, I'm always like, Ben, why are you like so hair triggered with this? And that night you were just like, this has been happening my entire life. Right. Just guys just say shit to me. This has not happened to me at all. At all. At a truly thing it's because I'm tall. Now I think you guys are short. Like, or I'm like tall and broad or whatever. Yeah. Or people are just like, I don't know what that a guy'll do. Like, that guy might do something here. See, when people do this to me and it does piss me off, it's condescending. Right. Like, a bus. Right. It's that sport. How's it going? My fucking like dentist receptionist asking if they should send the build of my mom. And then I'm like, so I just want to tell you that this film was picked up by Amazon for $3.5 million. They're like now mad again. I'm sorry. I'm like 24 who had a bit $2 million. This is a point in time where a 24 is very fledgling obviously. It is on the rise. I mean, this 2016, so it's the year they're going to have moonlight and the Oscars and all that. They're a thing, but they're smaller. Because like a year later, I feel like, regardless of what the financial offer is, they sell this movie to a 24 because everyone knows a 24 is the place that's going to be able to sell this thrust. Oh, yeah. It's their, they're the Joaquin movie factory. I think I think 24 would have been a better place for this movie, but obviously it got you just sort of take the highest bidder. This is the year that Amazon has five movies that can. The handmaiden. So speaking of some other like, so partial moves handmaiden, Patterson, Jim, Germish, another and that kind of like established otor that they are giving a check to. Gimme danger. I don't really remember what that was. I don't either. The neon demon. Yeah. The one graphic movie and cafe. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Gimme danger was the Jim, Germish documentary about the student. Oh, just like very fun. Yeah. Yeah. And so Lynn Ramsey, she just, FYI, she wrote this with Phoenix in mind. She'd never met him, but she was just like no brainer is just exactly who I imagined for this. Phoenix is probably unsurprisingly very into it. I mean, I feel like he's usually drawn to these kinds of directors and this just does feel like the kind of role that would vibe with them. They have been talking about reteaming for a while. There were sort of false reports that they had already shot something, but it seems like it's kind of perpetually her next movie. Die My Love got knocked up because of Lawrence being attached to the real interest. I heard it got knocked up and that's sort of the story, huh? Twice. That's a good point. You can read all about it. You can read all about it. Yes, she had said that she had such a good experience working with him when he is notoriously a very difficult man who tries to quit productions and is very at odds with directors. But if someone who could have production, maybe the two of them would just like, yeah, exactly. I think he is a guy who thrives on tension and is fighting himself and is fighting the production and is questioning himself and is always trying to kind of like wiggle out. It feels, I think it's what he's relating to in this movie, not in the intensity of the work, but this guy who is like, I kind of hate what I do. I mean, she sent him, this is so funny, an audio file, not visual file, like not a video of fireworks, just like, and she was like, this is what's in his head all the time, right? Joaquin Phoenix was like, yeah, I get that. Like rather than Joaquin Phoenix being like, what? Like Joaquin Phoenix is like that really clipped her. It feels really simpatico. He just talked so glowingly of how little tension there was and how collaborative everything was. And then he like promoted this movie hard. It was a thing she called out where she was like, I know he hates this shit and he's loath to do it. And usually he's doing interviews with a gun to his head. And he was like going to like Angelica screenings opening weekend and doing Q&A's and shit because he was like, I'm proud of this and I want people to see it. He's incredible in it. To talk about you mentioned that in the book, his physicality is described a little more traditional action hero. This is a thing that you and I talk about a lot. The way he uses his body in this movie, the like, first of all, he's got like a punch and like a very broad scarred back. And I genuinely think if he had been like shredded, he wouldn't be nearly as scary or powerful looking as he is in this movie. One thing I love in the book is when he's describing his exercise routine and he says that one thing he works on a lot is his grip strength. Handball. Because his favorite thing once he's in a fight is to break someone's fingers because he's like, even the toughest guy in the world when they look down and see their finger facing the wrong direction. It really gives them pause. And he's like fighting is like a dance and you need to hold hands with your partner. It always ends up happening. You always end up holding hands with your partner. But he's like the only exercise he does is squeezing like handballs. But I believe that from like the Joaquin version, it looks like that kind of powerful. This is what's interesting. It has that detail and then it says like, but in spite of that being the only exercise he does, he's 190 pounds. He's got zero body fat, you know, whatever. And like you and I always go like, this is one of the smartest physical transformations an actor has ever done because it is counterintuitive. And so often it feels gimmicky. It feels like actors needing a place to put their energy. But then also kind of wanting the the law that's from like, look at how much I took on. Yeah. And what I put myself through for like the preparation, it has to be visible to you how much I did to get ready. And there's a vanity to it. And when the vanity is look at how much less attractive I made myself for whatever it is. And this is just like really fucking logical story stuff in a movie where this guy is not going to talk much and where you need to just build up a sense of like who he is from every movement in a history. You're like, yeah, this, this is actually the scariest version of this guy. His strength isn't rippling muscles. Well, he just, yeah, he's, he's just this solid mass person. Yeah. And Ramsay puts it, like he shows up because they talk about it from the proper whatever and walking. It's like, I do want him to feel big, but not like in this Hollywood bodyway and it's like, yeah, like mid life. Yeah. And Ramsay's like, he looks like a maintenance worker. I was like so happy. I loved it. He wanted to keep the belly and like wanted her to show it. You know what I mean? Like he was like, can you show the belly as much as he can? Yeah. Lynn calls it like body armor. She says he's kind of like a hundred back in Notre Dame. He's kind of like Harvey Kitell and the piano, this kind of like girthy guy, like who's just kind of like solid, as you guys are saying. And he like looks like a guy sleeping in a train station. You know, he looks like he's like wearing, he is a, he's not quite a full, I'm crossing the street in New York. Yeah. Because there's a lot of guys in New York and you can kind of, but like he's a, I might keep like one eye on him if he was like, or not, or not. Or not. Yeah. Okay. Let me just not draw the attention of this person at all. We'll just, I'm going to need to cross the street, but we're just going to hopefully not exist to one another. And one of those guys where you're like, is the threat to me or to him? You know, is like, is this guy hair trigger in a way where he could like within five seconds turn and attack me? Or am I about to watch someone have a mental breakdown? Yeah. If something about how he walks that communicates danger and I don't, it's so subtle. I don't know how, but it is just a thing where it's like, it's saying it's up on this, this ain't right. This guy walking happy. He's, no, he's, because he's walking with, he has a single purpose. Yeah. Yes. And he, and it's just communicated through every like inch of the way he moves. And also after he becomes injured in the movie, yeah. And his face is fucked up. Yeah. And the way that he talks and also the way he holds the pain in his gate and in the way he moves through the other interactions of like, I am moving. I am wounded. Yeah, but I am still driven. Right. Is like so fucking again, like, it's, it's perfect. Like I feel it. I feel what he's feeling. He's, he's an actor who can do a lot. I feel like that's where you sometimes bounce off him, David. When you feel like he's overly manored and manic and just kind of being weird for the sake of weird, if he hasn't identified a realistic center, is that what is your, has a tension with him? Yeah, let me, let me, let me talk if I'm going to, yeah, you know, uh, because I'm trying to think like when was I getting really sick of him when I was sort of throwing out my, my hand, it was sort of immigrant. I feel like you were a vice, uh, sort of postmaster, skeptical, the master performance as well. I mean, I really love that movie, obviously. It's, and I, I think his performance is good, but it is. I think about that one. It's so much stuff. Injective position to this one where it's like there. He, he looks pretty frail. He's sort of like crazy and also like violent, but he also feels like he's, could be a victim at any moment too. Like, yeah, he's sort of in this, in this weird, uh, in between space. And then this, he's completely different physical human. He sure is. I mean, I don't like her. Right. I don't think he's bad in that movie. I also have not seen that movie since 2013. So I don't love that film either, but I think he's good. But this is all the post I'm still here. For sure. Well, yeah, pre I'm still here. I think my take on Joaquin was like, he's like, you know, he's like a sort of interesting star who puts a little English on it. Like, you know, like, and I like the science performance. Yeah. I like the village performance. Okay. I mean, that's that, that movie where the boys are kind of pretty heavily cooked. What's the one? Yeah. I really love William. That's the one where he also feels like that. He's like a sort of tough big enforcer guy in that. Yeah. It feels like so substantial. And he kind of feels. He can also feel. Yeah, I'll bring off the screen in that movie. Like, yeah, yeah. But Walberg's pretty like kind of doing a standard thing in it and Joaquin's pretty interesting. James Gray obviously, one of the other guys, he is just like completely in sync with they get each other. Yeah, he's always. When's the last time they work together? I guess it's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, now he's in the immigrant. Yeah. He really does, I know he's always been a handful, but he really does seem like he's become quite a handful. I really like him in Bow and Napoleon. I like to malod in Eddington. I can't really stand the Joker performances. Like, the Joker performance is the bad version of what we're talking about. It's like just trying to get him to do the tricks. I didn't really like come on, come on, but that wasn't, I mean, he's fine. That felt like kind of time stored Phoenix to me. Or he's just like, and I was just like, this is fine. But like, I'm not, I think it's all, it's all just Joker lash back that you're feeling. Well, I don't like that the Joker is so, yeah, I'm so beloved by some of the worst people and that what he is doing in that, as you said, is just like just a bag of tricks without substance underneath it. And it is some of some of his master physicality and some of his, you know, like, you were never really here damage and it's just this like, you know, collection of parts that don't really work together. Right. But it's a lot of acting. And I also think like it is very, Todd Phillips is kind of exploiting him in that movie. Like it feels like he's pushing him to do things and scenes that do not dramatically make sense to show off the range of what he can do in a way that's just like, well, that's like an engaging three minutes of footage that makes this character make less sense than he did a scene ago. Would you feel differently if I told you that he didn't think the Joker was very good? I have heard similar things. I have heard quite a few stories about him seeing the first cut of the movie or rather, you know, the near final cut of the film before had been seen by people at large and being like, well, we fucked this one up. I guess that's like dead in the water. And then it proceeds to win the gold line and wins best actor at the Academy Awards. Well, and it was right the first time there was a bunch of media controversy around it. Yes. And I think he was like, oh, that narrative is what's going to drive people to see it more than what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. But I don't know. I'm speculating. We're just speculating. I do, like I'm inclined to say this is his single best performance and it is just interesting. I think she's really smart about knowing that he could do all of these things, but that the power comes from holding all of that back. Yeah. David. Yes. 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. Well, it's really tough, man. 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 a hundred recipes every week, cuisines from around the world. Let's see. I have 99 right here in my desk, but that's not 100. We might have to outsource this job to someone else. How about our friends at HelloFresh? Yes. HelloFresh is a place that makes it easy to do more home cooking every year with recipes that feel good and taste delicious night after night. They got more than 35 high protein recipes each week, Mediterranean options, GLP-1 friendly options. They've got sustainably sour seafood. They've got a hundred percent antibiotic and hormone-free chicken. They've got three times the seafood for no up to a while. That's just gorgeous. They're beefing up the seafood. They've got a grass-fed steak rib eyes. They've got seasonal produce, pairs, apples, asparagus. I love to entertain, of course, at my playlist state. Yeah, of course I've been there so long. My manner. I love nothing more than when I can impress guests by whipping out a great recipe that I have cooked all by myself for the dinner parties that I throw, nightly. And HelloFresh is great for that, but also great just if you want to treat yourself. Ben, any recipes you've been jamming on hard recently? Oh, yeah. Actually, I was just checking out old-school barbecue pork sloppy doughs. Ooh, that's the super high protein items. Slop it up. Yup. And we mentioned seafood. There is, of course, prep and bake, text mix, salmon tacos. That is exciting because I'm on a bit of a seafood diet right now if you catch my meaning. I see food, do you read it? No, I'm eating mostly, of course, creatures from the sea. So go to HelloFresh.com slash check 10 FM to get 10 free meals and a freeze-willing knife. So $144.99 value. $144.99. On your third box, offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That is HelloFresh.com slash check 10 FM, 1-0 FM. Uh, David? Right. Right? Right. Right. I am correct, that's your name. Mm-hmm. It's time to take a break from your school or work routine, but stay consistent. That's the tough balance. We shoulda school routine. Take me back to school, baby. Well, you have a school routine. 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I dump it into my shaker, filled with eight ounces of water. I shake it up and I drink it and it goes down real nice. Look, we've showcased that AG1 fits very deeply into your life. Yep. Okay. So go to drinkag1.com slash check to get an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 for free in your AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. Only while supplies last, that's drinkag1.com slash check. Should we talk about his choice to use a hammer and is this one of the greatest hammer violence performances of all time? Yeah, obviously we have to think about, you know, old boy, old boy, yes, yes, on trail, shirt, shirt, the raid, too, yeah, the hammer girl on the train, very impactful. I'm now, I'm trying to think, okay, like, what else? Because, like, this, you can't even Google this really, hammer movies, because of course, hammer horror, it sort of dominates here. Okay, there's a, there's a, what culture list? where characters use a hammer. All right, it's saying Ann Wilkes and Misery, but that's a sledge hammer, which feels very different to me. Because to me, like the fun is that it's a claw hammer. There are a ball hammer, but it's just like a real rare hammer. This is not a claw hammer in the movie. Right. I can't remember if it is in the book or not, but he does say he likes to use a hammer, because it's sort of like a very normal, like daily household object to have. But when you see it in someone's hand in the context of a fight, all of a sudden, it really, people take a moment of pause that it's like different than like holding out a knife or something. Right. They're like, why the fuck do you have a hammer? And he's like, in that one second of hesitation, I can hit them with the hammer. Right. There's this. There's this notion totally different. Yeah. I feel like it's expressing the book that Dr. Drive has a big hand. Oh, yes. Yeah. Good one. That was, yeah. There was another. And another kind of close quarters hammer thing. Of course, Thor. Of course. I mean, me older itself. Just hardly Quinn Cow. Sledgehammer. Or, you're right, or same as like Ramona in Scott Pilgrim when people start the big hammer. Right. We're not talking about a buster. It shouldn't be comic book. Just like, actually, you're a hammer. I forgot about hammer. I'm seeing hammer. I'm seeing hammer. It's one of his top kind of talkies and talk feature length films. I mean, hammers are one of those objects that, yes, I have in my home where I'm like, should I be allowed to have? This is crazy. It's crazy. I feel like at first, man, I'm holding one while we're doing this episode. And I feel a little dangerous a little on it. Like any time like the Akea destruction is like, all right, now hammer some nails in. I'm like, why shouldn't we do it? Right. Like, as some sort of like PhD should do this. Leo and Django, although he uses that more like a demonstration, a thread of violence than attacking someone with it. Yeah. But yeah, no, he explains in the book. It's everything is just like logic with this guy. Right. And in the cleanest, simplest, most unshwy way, I love he keeps going to hardware stores of buying the same three items that like a yeah, and they call out basically that it's like a hammer hanging at a hardware store is going to have that paper sleeve around it. That's used as the hanger tag that he can grab. So the fingerprints are only on that. Then he gets in a car puts gloves on, takes that off and it's a clean weapon. And he's like in terms of like he gets a roll of duct tape, which he can use from multiple things, including like patching himself up when he gets hurt. But like in terms of the work, I do. And acts as maybe the most efficient in terms of getting shit done, but you can't hide and act in a jacket, you know? Yep. And that there is that transformative aspect of the hammer of like, you're not immediately looking a scance of a guy has a hammer until he's holding it in that way, that close to you. And he's styled himself as a sort of contractor, construction worker looking guy where he always has on like, you know, sort of like car heart jacket hood low baseball cap. It's one of my favorite moments in the movie is just that, that extended shot of him unloading from a plastic bag, just all his supplies. You know, like the wet wipes, the hammer, the two cans of soda, which is such a bizarre kind of like lift driver. Do you want a water? Yeah. Kind of move. Yeah, he gets a orange soda and a grape soda. Right. Because he's about to rescue a young girl. Right. He's just like, I want to be able to offer her soda. Which you have to imagine, he says routine. Like he's like, I need to earn their trust in some way in this moment after they've been victimized by so many men to feel, let them feel a little bit safe. A soda would probably calm a kid down, but also the choice would help. Mm-hmm. That they feel like they have the agency of the flavor. Yeah. It's like such a nice little detail and the banality of all of this, you know? Yeah. It's like he's just got a shitty shopping bag and it's just a bunch of like $3 products. Yeah. I mean, it's all you need if you feel comfortable running at someone and hitting them in the head with a hammer, I guess. Totally. Almost anyone can be an assassin. Yes. You think about it. I mean, what some fucking state senator in an Epstein villa going to do to you. He's just a naked asshole. It doesn't, you know, right? Like, he's just a naked asshole. Yeah. I remember when this film came out. So the film is about a guy called Joe who, yes, rescues traffic girls by usually by hitting someone with a hammer and then getting them. Right. That a middle man hires sort of as a go between security form. I it is very hard to admit that he is completely implausible. You just kind of have to roll with it. It doesn't matter. Right. Well, it's like a guy like this man or something. Yes. Like, this is like a rescue guy. Right. But I mean, like, anyone like that who's like, yeah, I pick up traffic to girls. It's like you would immediately be killed by a mafia traffic to girls. Like, you're talking about people under the auspices of the scariest organized crime rings. Like, yeah. So it'd be like, oh, yeah, there's a guy with a hammer who gets the girls. They'd be like, how about you shoot him with a shotgun until there's a hole inside his body? Like, he'd be dead. Doesn't matter. Well, I also think the movie is smart about being like, these are like small webs, not like a huge, large interconnected web of everything. Also, they're people in power, but they're creating smaller circles. So that's what I was going to say. So I saw this film. I loved it. But the time I was the junior critic at the Atlantic and I was under Chris Orr, who was sort of an established veteran there who was in DC and wrote a lot about politics too. And I saw this movie and I loved it. I was like, God, this fucking rocks. You know, it's a bit of a can. And he saw it and he was like, this movie is so, you know, it's like feeding into all the like pizza gate shit about Hillary and all this kind of conspiratorial thinking and all that. And I was like, huh, weird. Did I? I was kind of like, I didn't collect that at all. I mean, like, I guess I get what you mean, but like, I don't think that's what it's going for. But I guess I could see that especially if you had like a real politics brain, like a kind of a DC brain, you could look at this and be like, this is the last thing we should be depicting is this kind of, you know, nonsense about all there's child kid. All the brain has out there. All the politicians. All the politicians are. Yeah. And now it's 2025. Oh, it's 2026 when the substance is coming out. And it's basically like, yeah, well, that shit's all true. It's not pizza. It's not fascinating. But that's the Epstein list. There are some terrible conspiratorial things that people could very easily discuss now. And yeah, I mean, what? The Epstein arrest is 2008. Oh, the original. Yeah. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not telling you. Well, I'm just I want to create 10 of the 2019 is of course when he becomes public conversations, right? Yeah. And it basically rises with any force in 2016, which is the time they are shooting this move. Right. The Epstein thing, of course, the whole thing that was so insidious about it was it was like out there and not discussed. Yeah. Not just that, oh, these people were letting it happen kind of way, but truly like people would report on it, but just not with a lot of force. And a lot of that, of course, is like institutions killing this story, you know, like networks of connections and power and whatever. Gawker was one of the only publications, one of the only outlets that was like really reporting on like, this guy is being reintegrated into polite society in New York City. This guy just served a sentence and is now back to like cocktail parties and this constant kind of drumming of like, why is no one talking about this? And then there was the one New York magazine piece that has the famous Trump quote, you know, Jeffrey enjoys his social life or whatever. All this stuff is out there, but it wasn't really like metastasized into the same kind of Dan Brown conspiracy theory game. Yeah. And is what I find so bizarre and like depressing and overwhelming about this cultural moment. It's something that it's been turned into like a political football, but it's been turned into this odd, narrativeized force to try to create some new, almost like religious system of pure evil and pure good existing in the world. This notion of is there a definitive like Santa Claus naughty list of everyone who is doing the worst of the worst things. And then we want to believe that there is a secret cabal of people who are just pure good trying to take this down. Well, and you mean you can see that obviously immediately after you learn that Malcolm Gladwell is on the flight logs for the Epstein plane, right, that there's got to be shades of gray here. Of course, we're just trying to get his hours in. Yes, and no. That means it's going to do. He's got no. You making some little editing points here, Benny. No, I've given a thumbs up. Yeah. Well, your favorite writer. Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember I mean, he's my favorite podcaster, Sean, an important crash. Sean, have you and I ever discussed in person? I think I'm sure you've thought about, which is when Malcolm Gladwell went on the Simmons pod, Bill Simmons's podcast and talked about how like Nigerian players specifically were like the most important basketball players. He was making the like all African-born player team. And I think he included Steve Nash. He said he correct. He said, so I'm putting together a team that's team Nigeria and Bill Simmons is like, okay, and he's like, you know, so Hakeem and Bill's like, yeah, Hakeem, right? Absolutely. And he's like, caveat, Tim Duncan, Bill's like, well, isn't he from the crib? And he's like, yeah, but like I've done some like racial math and he sort of descends from Nigeria. So all those island countries are actually direct descendants. And then he's like Steve Nash and Bill's like, isn't he Canadian? He's like, yeah, but he was like born in South Africa and that kind of counts too. And he is one of the rarest like where Bill Simmons clearly is just at a loss for words. Bill does not know what to say. Bill kind of just lets him quote unquote, cook for a while. The king of going on like pretty stupid theoretical dodges related to basketball. It's like fun. It's just like truly I can't get there with you. Just go off and then we'll do the show when you're done. In my class, well, it's defense. He was just trying to log his 10,000 hours towards being a fucking moron. He needed to keep saying dumb shit into non-importance, not important to this episode. Obviously, and I'm not saying that all conspiracies are true. And certainly that media who went into a pizza place with a gun was not on the level and had been misled, but I am just sort of like this movie only feels, you know, whatever. It continues to feel resonant. Yes, and I think the way unfortunately the culture has progressed since this movie has only made this movie better in this way to me. I was tempted. I couldn't fucking get myself to do it. I was tempted to watch Sound of Freedom in prep for this episode as a comparison point. And then I had the OG's this moment as I was like queuing it up of like, am I really gonna fucking sit there? Especially because it's like, we don't really need to talk about that for more than a minute anyway. Like, you don't need to devote all that time to it. No, but I just like, I wasn't surprised that this movie didn't become a film that like church groups were sending to the theaters, right? Right. But it was so weird to me when Sound of Freedom became this like weird, vaguely money laundering, box office phenomenon based on like finally someone is saying it, right? And even the guy that that movie is based on who's been discredited in a bunch of fucking ways and the director and everyone involved is like, like vague jumping off point and then we created like a revenge thriller, you know, that tried to have like a human heart at the center of it. Right. But this is like a movie about Jesus going in and just fixing all the problems and the great bill camp is, you know, Mr. Burns and going like, I love kids suffering. Right. Right. And this movie is just like, well, first of all, the guy who lives in this world is just, is going to be broken. And as in the excerpt I read from the book, like even if he's coming from a pure place, there is something narcissistic about thinking that you need to do this, even if it is speaking to no one else is doing this or someone needs to do this. And why not me? Yeah. And I do, obviously it's all, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's fictional and it's a pretty easy like line to draw of like, well, the people doing this are people in positions of power and like, so a senator and a governor and all the like, these people being involved and that being tied into some kind of like weird organized crime thing makes sense. But I also do wonder as we talk about, you know, Jonathan Ames and his history and his fascination in his early essays and stuff with like sex work and off the grid like weird like fetish personal ads and stuff like this. Yes. If some of this is like, he has heard some element, this is how this is how some of this world operates. And then I'm making it into this like crime movie thing, right? But that it's not, you know, it's not just plucked from thin air. And once again, there is like a banality to it. I like it's just a fucking like townhouse in East Midtown, you know, with five rooms and it does feel like this is a very tight web, even if it's connected to some other tendrils. And the core kind of drum of this is like basically between two guys. Yeah. And but yes, like some arm of some regional mafia in between them. As you said, it's a pretty simple story like Joe has this handler played by John Domen, who's a great actor. I love him from the wire and a million other things. He's got like an even in between bodega guy who that guy is right is kind of the go between who sunspots him and he freaks out and is just living in this constant state of paranoia. So he's now going straight to the guy who he's not really supposed to communicate to and person. It's just that it's very bad timing. Yes. He's entering his home through the back alleyway, which is the only way he goes into his house and he looks up and he sees this kid on a balcony who knows who he is. And he says, now this person who knows who I am knows where I live. Which means someone could torture him and find out where I live. Right. It's all vulnerabilities, how he runs through everything. The book, the John Domen character is not sleazier, but more kind of sad, sacky, you know, in a cramped office next to like injury lawyers and is, you know, a perpetual bachelor and whatever. And this is like, there's the illusion. I mean, he's like referencing his dead daughter, right? He's got the picture on his mantle. This is a guy who's experienced some tragedy in his own life. Right. Maybe he's directing himself. That is motivating. I want to. But he's also in like a very nice office with a great view and a model of a yacht that he owns. And he's saying to like, Joe, like, hey, and on the other side of this, I'm going to take you on the yacht. We're going to see the fireworks and eat nice steaks where he's almost like, even if we're driven by a good, the work we do is so bad that the other benefit of it is they have to pay us so much to do it that shouldn't we enjoy that? Yeah. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. He's a stopper. Totally. And that's in the book as well. There's this very clear thing of like this guy wants to be friends with Joe. Right. Like he's like, right, we are both in this sort of off the grid world. We're never hanging out outside of war. And I just wish, you know, like I just see you for this thing. But like, can we just have a fucking beer together, man? Right. And Joe, and the movie Joe is literally not listening. Squatting jelly. Kind of guy. I don't know what else Joe eat. Jelly beans. The green ones. Okay. But like, where's he getting his protein? The food. Right. Like chips. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. father who had Parkinson's and dementia came to live with us for a while. Yeah. And it was that thing that somebody told me like, he won't know what he had for breakfast this morning. Right. But if you ask him about something from 30 or 40 years ago, they're long term memories in that would so. Yes. So it feels like they're doing, they're, they're engaging in these sort of playful, conversational activities they did as when he was a kid. The routine. And that that is still like fresh for her and she's able to like stay with it. Yes. And even when she's like, when he's dealing with the exasperation of her having lapses of things like running the bath and whatever, he's kind of like yelling at her in a comical way. You know, he's like kind of like angry sick and there's right the darkest little strain of comedy to it. Yes. Even though you are the whole time you're like, oh, this is going to end in some fun to play, which it does. What it is, the drivetrain. Just water all over the floor. What were you doing in here? I'll forget it. Yeah. This is a guy whose entire life was animated by not being able to protect his mother when he was young. And now is like she cannot take care of herself. The reason I need to stay alive is because she at least deserves this, right? And he's constantly just like suicidal ideation, but also like the little bits of him like holding the knife over his open mouth. That's played for comedy when he keeps, well, and when he keeps dropping the knife on his foot, but just pulling his foot away just in time. Yeah. Just like dual like staying sharp because I'm always like in a situation where somebody might try to kill me and I also want to hurt myself. Right. I would like the release from the pain. Yeah. And she's asking him about his ex girlfriend from 20 years ago on how she would have been a good mother. And you're like, that must have been the last relationship he ever had. I think Joe be good dad. I think he should. Yeah. Well, the movie kind of gets there. Well, I don't think that's going to work that way, but yes, I mean, you're right. You're right. You're right. I don't think it's as cut and dry as this way. I'm a parent, right? You are. Congrats. And in my parenting strategy, definitely, I have no time for garbage bag closet experience. You know, like, I kick in that habit by the end of the movie. I can't, you know, be like, all right, I need 20 minutes. I got to put the plastic bag over my head and you might be kicking that habit. I hope you. The other thing is at the end, we'll get to the end. Yeah. Get to the end because I find the ending very emotionally powerful. It is. It's very powerful. Drawn into this thing, there is a senator who is kind of being tapped as maybe a future power player. Uh, his wife committed suicide some years back. There's sort of this tragedy surrounding him and his young teenage daughter has gone missing. Yes. Uh, the book gets much more into the web of the narrative of how it happened. How much that was false and whatever, but it really is just she's been gone for a weekend. I need you to find her. Um, and in the, in the movie, it's like he has just gotten a text message from someone who says she is at this address. Right. In the book, it goes much more into like the text message is clearly from someone he knows who has just gone to a brothel last for an underage girl and, right. And, you know, presumably slept with his daughter. It's a scary part of the story. It's a scary part of the story. So that's like much more, this is like, just kind of thrown away as like he got a text message with an address and there's no other details and you got to go to this address. Yeah. And the book has this very sobering disturbing passage about the kind of pragmatic reality of this type of thing existing of just like there are, you know, 700,000 millionaires in New York City. Sure. And then if you add other like, you know, hubs in the Northeast, it goes up to this. And if even 1% of the people with that level of money had a predilection towards this, there's a lucrative business to be built around it. The business isn't a billion dollars and high. Feel crazy that a politician's daughter would be kidnapped. Does the book explain this? Yes. Like versus like some, again, some person trafficked from another country or whatever. Like why would that be? So the book basically is the backstory is that this guy, his father was a powerful politician who was then disgraced for all these ties that he had to the mafia. And like, arranged, but he was still, the name was still beloved in the city. And so then he's going to run on his dad's name. He decides that he wants to power. He goes to the same like mafia group that, you know, help put his dad in power and says, like, I want this. And they say to him, you've got to give us something. And basically like you can be the most powerful person in the state if we have your daughter. And it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like a very like, he's so craving and hungry for power. And he's got this like, he, you know, this terrible relationship with his teenage daughter and just kind of goes live. He thinks the book says he thinks in the moment that they're trying to make sure that he really wants to go all the way with them. And then it's just a bluff on their part. And he goes, fine, I'll do it. Like I'm in. And then when they actually take his daughter, he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, like I thought that was like, gamesmanship. And then he can't find her. Sure. So Joe's got to find her. Again, that's not all of that is just deep background. I feel like it's not even part of the story. I'm just going to say my, my, my, I don't think it's a story here. Different. I think she's changed. I mean, there's like when Joe is having his version of putting the pieces together, there's the flash of the father sitting in the bed with the daughter with her back turned. And it feels like there's some implication that perhaps there was some like incest within the home that this is connected to the wife committing suicide. Right. Because the main evil pedophile is Alessandra and Nevola, who's like the governor. Yes. But you get the impression that the state center guy Vado, right? He's beholden to the. He was also in this world. And right. It's what it feels to me like is at some point he willingly gave his daughter to this man. And then in exchange for feeling that that was how to that like to climb the ladder or what a secret is a wonderful thing to keep thing. But also that perhaps if they're already wasn't a healthy relationship in that, there was a sense that she was. You know, because he already had this like the incest. Yes. The book goes into the horrific value of the idea of a child that has successfully been stock-homed and how you kind of like neutralize them to be willing to not willing to. But I think that's sort of what's going on here is it's he comes across this girl who you're from things like taken and such, expecting to see be like a crying mess. And you're like sure there was a numbness to the degree of trauma. She yeah, she's got this like countdown thing that she does to just like sort of exist through these moments. The most heartbreaking moment in the movie is him coming across her and she just like can't even clock that someone is there to save her. Yeah. Because she's just in countdown. Which is how she passes the time is these things. Also, every man is not to be trusted. Currently. Um, David, have you, because you have to watch all these movies, I find that like as we're talking about like this Lynn Ramsey series and I always had intended to watch we need to talk about Kevin and then once I became a parent, I said, I don't think I can watch it. I don't want to think about you. Yeah. Do you, do you, do you, do you, I just kind of have a transformation? Yes. Yes. And there's certain things where I'm like, I don't want to watch that, but I know I have to for my job. The part chain look when your daughter was like two and you were very open about that being a particularly tough one for you because that has a lot of like, like, little little, like, screaming and being tortured and stuff. That's the most extreme thing. Yeah. I have, I'll confess not watched our friend Alex's segment in VHS Halloween because I am told that is like literally just all kid torture, which I know he's, I appreciate what he's going for and all that. But so I'm just kind of like, not sure I want to do that right now. But you know, I'll watch a movie like HamNet because I love ham. HamNet, of course. And I know like this is about like this is this movie is like the crux of this movie is a kid dying. Well, that's just like dying off screen in some like kind of poetic way, but like a kid like suffers and dies on screen. And I'm like, I'm just going to have to kind of endure that. Like I know I won't love that. It's glaring to me how much prestige TV drama, et cetera is all hinges on like a kid has been killed. Yeah. And I don't think I saw it before. This is something that I went from into a lot. And how many movies that I enjoyed and I do obviously I like this movie. I think it's very good. But how many movies even in this genre that I enjoyed and used to think were cool and part-channel stuff like that I now am so uncomfortable with and can't watch. And I, you know, people are whatever about this. But I have a theory that I developed while I was watching this and thinking about we need to talk about Kevin, which is of course there are movies where someone's wife gets killed or someone's, you know, like other loved ones disappear. But with adult relationships, both the character in the movie and whoever like your partner is in your life have such a distinct identity that I don't think it transfers the same way. As kids are always used as just like a symbol where they don't have a personality. But your own kid is always like unformed in this way where it's like even if it's totally different circumstances and like a totally different like world than you're in, you cannot help but think about what if this was my kid. Yeah. You can't do it. There's some side of you that's absolutely right. It's really, yeah. I do try to just like click on critic brain and critic brain loves this movie. And this is not a movie that's as triggering for me a guest because it's so stylized and well, and somewhat part of the world is like possible. You can just the thing of like the story is like this guy was voluntarily involved in this thing. You know what I mean? It's not like a normal person who something horrible happened to him. It's like a person situation of his own making of the most extreme fousy in bar. Yeah. An evil person who was making really bad choices. I also think it's like the power of this movie, which is it's restraint in showing things and even saying things is I think largely driven by a there's no way to depict these things realistically, emotionally, visually, what have you without insane risk of being insensitive, glib, melodramatic, salacious, all of the above at once, you know, and even a movie like taxi driver, which is like a little bit analogous to is all about like, is this guy insane? Is this in his head? You know, the question of like how much you connect to whoever is the protagonist of a film and all these sorts of things and get his movie that was like misread horribly by the wrong people. I'm not talking about the actual responsibility. You know, you know what I'm saying? Right. And I think this movie in how it like pulls back from both the violence and the sex as the physical acts and even like really talking around them and putting a name on it. There's nothing really super graphic in it for how violent and no and talk in this movie. There's nothing graphic, super graphic sexually. It's all left to you, which is too super cool to say to that. Yeah. I mean, like to me, the iconic image of this, there's many iconic images of this movie, but you know, so and in the plot of the movie, he rescues Nina from a hotel or whatever and the piggy bank ride. Right. But then like is then like him opening the door to the guy who then gets shot onto him. They let someone to him and just the globs that land on Phoenix's face. That's right. And the big ol' boi globs. The guy, I take it back. I lowkey love. Like I love that kind of gore. Unfortunately, I don't know what's the matter with me on that, but I mean, I'm a movie fan and I enjoyed, you know, movie violence in a way. But like I feel like every other moment of violence in the movie is either. They're fairly obscure, you know, like the security camera rotation, which I just love that it's like a fucking five nights at Freddy's thing where it's like, it's just going to switch every three seconds and you might be on the action or you might not. Or you're very often seeing the aftermath. Like the gorious things are like him walking into the James Domen's office and like seeing his destroyed hands, you know, and you're holding on. Those hands are tough. Nourly prosthetic for a while. You know, Alice, Sandra, Nevolas, like, Slipthroat, Discovering His Mother's Eyes. But you don't see the violence being committed. No, but the corpses are nasty. But it is a reframing of like, no, you have to like lie with the aftermath of these things versus these movies that often have this kind of like somewhat exciting expression of violence and then you cut away the second the bloody thing happens. What if instead it's like you start on the reveal of the bloody thing and then he's just lying on the floor next to this. He's piecing it back together. Can I tell another very quick story? Let's hear the story about the big giant dog that we found the Malamute that was running around the neighborhood. So we found this Malamute running around the neighborhood and my wife and I bring it home. It's like a Alaska Husky. Yeah, it's like a 9,500 pound dog, like big giant husky. And we're trying to find the owner and we track down the owner finally. And it's this guy in the neighborhood, much older, like sort of frail older guy. And he comes to pick up the dog. It's this huge dog and we're like, what's going on? How do you have this dog? Why was the dog loose? And he's like, my son just rescued my dog died two years ago. My son just dropped this dog off at my dorm. I was like, you have a dog now, dad, and then left. And my wife is like concerned about the man and the dog. And you know, can you take care of him? And she's like, so can you like control this dog? Like are you able to walk it on a leash because I was getting dragged on the street by it. And I'm famously strong. And he, as he's answering, he's like, well, not really. And a cat runs by and the dog lunges and the guy falls. And he like smashes against the ground and he like breaks his glasses and he has a cut on his head. And he goes to push himself up to stand up. And both he and I see at the same time that two of his fingers are pointed just 45 degree angles and opposite directions. And it's one of the most chilling, like gruesome things I've ever seen. But I think about it with both that guy tortured hand like and the like how he says, like breaking someone's fingers at a fight. I was like, yeah, something about this. It's not like there's no bones sticking out. There's no blood. There's no anything. It was just like the joints are facing the wrong way. And it's like, and he looks at it and I look at it and we're just like, I was like, that's, that's very bad. You know, and then we really tried to get him to like go to the hospital. And then he said, brother, it's so much worse than you think. He was, dude, and you're the problem. I know. Now, he was, he was just like, we, we called the ambulance form and he kept telling us not to. And then he insisted on driving himself and the ambulance people were like, there's, we can't force him. He said, he said he's going to a hospital. He told us the address of the hospital. I guess he's going to go. That's another part of this is these movies often have these, these kind of rigged prosthetics, right? Right. Yeah. That you see for, and it's part of what you enjoy. One of the second shots is a movie fan like watching how those things work. But you even think about like you see half a second of fucking Amelia O'estivez's head getting crushed in the elevator shaft in the first mission possible. And I feel like that is a thing. People are age or like, that's one of the fucking nerve that haunted me as a kid, right? And it's crazy. You watch it frame by frame. It is crazy, but it's not that graphic or visceral and you don't have to sit with the aftermath of it. And by cutting to these things, either him discovering the bodies in these states or seeing the people after Joe has attacked them without seeing them attacked, you're left with the lingering image of what's going to stay in his head. That's sort of what I think she's communicating so much like you're saying. You see a guy's fingers look like that. You're going to have that image in your head for the rest of your fucking life. It's true. That's something you did to this guy and that's not something that was done to one of your ultimate loved ones. And this guy has to experience both of those things happening all the fucking time. Yeah. And it's something you saw and you're like, okay, that could happen. That could happen to me. Could I've seen it happen to someone? Yeah. And you're just, yeah, you're just walking around with it for a while. Yeah, he has a million of them. The thing with his mom like, and they have the scene where he like goes to like dispose of the body himself too. In the book that they don't explicitly say here, but that they put a pillow overhead before they shoot her. You see a pillow with a bullet hole. Right. And that he, in the book is like, basically is obviously very upset that they killed his mom, but it's also like their cowards. Like they couldn't look at what they were doing. Right. Right. That's almost more offensive to him. Yeah. Yeah. You have this like a moment, I think only Lynn Ramsey would put in a film where he like discovers the body sees the pillow takes it off, you know, blurry deep background. You see him removing everything. Her glasses that they clearly shot through putting it on the mantel. You see her like bloody head in the background, but not to explicitly. And then he hears the creaking of footsteps. And he like has the gun. He goes downstairs. It's did you do this or did the other guy do it? You know, he's immediately like this would have taken two people. Yep. Who's the other guy? Are you working for him as he working for you? He's sort of interrogating him. But then the intimacy of him like giving him the water to keep him alive so we can get more answers out of him. Also is like this is a man who is trained to do this. Yeah. And then the guy, the guy taking his hand as he's dying. And then they just lie on the floor together and sing the songs on the radio. Yeah. Like this is I live with the weight of taking people's lives in a way that you don't because you wouldn't even look at her fucking face and you left her upstairs. And I'm going to lie here with you because no matter what, I'm stuck with the image of you dying forever for the rest of my fucking life. Yeah. You know? And then he has this kind of like elegant, like funeral for his mother. Yeah. He puts on a suit as the only time he dresses nicely in the entire film and like brings her into the woods into the water. Johnny Greenwood score in this movie is fucking. The music. Yeah. I used to listen to it a lot. I would sort of be like, hmm, this isn't the best like kind of just sitting here. Test me. But there were the couple. There are the trees tracks. Yeah. Those are really good. What is it? Like tree synthesizer and tree acoustic and whatever that are the more kind of like poetic sounds with like, yeah, this beautiful like a femoral sound. And then there's also like that sort of like percussive thing when he's like walking down the hallway like out of the hotel. It's just like so fucking cool. We should also call out it's basically like an hour of the movie is like understanding this guy watching him go through this case retrieve her. He brings her to the hotel before the door gets knocked on and he sees the guy get shot and this like SWAT cause playing guy comes in and extracts her. They see on the news that her father committed suicide. Joe's immediately like this whole thing is kind of this is bad. I'm in something. Yeah, I mean, something I don't understand. I'm in over my head. I did not just get hired by this guy to recover. He's in the middle of something much bigger. Right. I mean, the fact that the cops are involved. Yeah, they're not SWAT cosplay, right? They're their cops. They're cops in the. Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. Yeah. That was like he because in the in the book again, like I he goes to this thing of like, they didn't have time to hire professionals, like professional hitmen to come and kill him, but there's always some dirty cop in town that they can just like have come to the job. Yeah, it's by the way, a smart choice that in the book, I feel like the father is made a little more overtly nervous defensive on edge, sleazy. And here it's like a guy with a tremendous amount of contrition and concern that as an unfolds you're like, oh, a lot of this is guilt. It's not just worry. Yes. It's both, right? But he's sort of like trying to console her in this moment as he's realized like her entire life has just collapsed. I just hit the microphone with a hammer by accident. I was fucking so I was adjusting my life. You really scared me. My microphone needs to know the power structure of this podcast. I just need to know what's going on. No, no, let's not do that again. Scary to me. David. Yes. Hmm. We're both stroking our chins. Okay. And narrowing our eyes and kind of staring off into the middle distance. You know why? I don't. Because we're trying to thoughtfully build a wardrope. Oh, and we don't mean a piece of furniture. Put that hammer and nail down. We're talking about what goes inside the wardrope. And I'm not talking about a portal in Arnia either. I'm talking about the clubs. That's right. You know, you want premium fabrics. You want considered design. You want every... That mixed bowl in the past, obviously. That's true. And they should be everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear. Yeah. Independent. Yeah. Evens the seasons changes 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 Arnia creep in. Oh, yeah. Mr. Tumnus shows up offering you Turkish Delight in order the queen does that. He'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. Just have different light shapes. Okay. Look, they've got lightwear, cashmere sweaters. I've got a couple of those. They got short sleeve mongolian cashmere polos. I think I might need to get some of those. Linen bottoms, shorts, tees, and 100% pima cotton. I won't settle for 99. European jersey linen, all kinds of versatile pieces that make a wardrope work season this. We're talking about queens. They work directly with factories. They cut out the middle man. So you're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores. You're just paying for clothing. That's all it is just quality clothing. Cashmere is 100% mongolian. That's the luxury stuff. Okay. Yeah. The pima cotton, it's long staple. It stays soft. It doesn't pill that European jersey linen, breathable and lightweight. Okay. It's rated between 4.5 and 5 stars by thousands of people wearing it every day. I was worried there might be a 4.4 and they're so terrible. They only partner with factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. So I've got all kinds of queen stuff. I point out all the time also my bed sheets. Yeah. Okay. My comforter, queens. And they're hitting. Yeah. Your best. I love being in bed, falling asleep well right now. Go to queens.com slash check for free shipping in 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrope and love it and you will. Now available in Canada to don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to qiuinc.com slash check for free shipping in 365 day returns. Quince.com slash check. He's like immediately clocking like there is no normal life for her to return to. And I don't know how to keep her safe and then within like a minute she is taken and then he goes home and his mother is dead. Every there. Right. It's just a death wave is rolled across. There's the key collapse of like. I might basically by default be her primary caretaker and also my entire life is collapsed and they know everything about me and they know where I am. No offense to his life, but his life was shitty. I mean, I didn't take a lot of work to blow up his life in any other circumstances. If he had come home and if he had come home and his mother, I have a patreon. I can't be judge and joe the assassin. His patreon numbers are really bad. If you look him up on graph. That was that was the saddest part to me. Yes. We're seeing him go to check his. Yeah. Double digits. Low double digits. Yeah. And the tears are really vague where you're just like too many tears. Too many tears and you're sort of like if I come up with something fun, I might put this here and they're redundant. Like some of it is like, well, what is the reason for this tear existing when you get like basically 90% of that in the in the next year. Yeah. You always have that luxury tear that's like for $100. It's all the same things as the $50 tier, but you give me more money, wink. Yeah. I just love it when there's nine tears and you get to the ninth year and it's like everything in the last eight tiers. And I'm like, I have to go back and read every other tear. Yeah. Give me the bullet points. Yeah. Full of points. Come on, Joe. You can tighten the language on each tier, but just remind me speedrun them. No, I think if he had come home and his mother had died in her sleep a day earlier, he would have just killed himself, right? And it's the double whammy of there's a person out there that I'm responsible for. I'm the only one who knows this person is in danger. I could go and help and they make that clear. Like he has a flashback to her. He's like, okay, I guess I'm done and then he's like, now fuck, I have a job still. Here's a guy who's defined by the fact that no one was able to keep him safe, you know, in his childhood. And he doesn't want that cycle to continue as much as he's not like, this is a chance to test being a dad. He does fall into this. I'm the only person who can solve this. And I actually just feel enough of an attachment to her as a person that I can't just turn a blind eye to this. And then you have what in 99 out of 100 other movies feels like the ramp up to, oh shit, the next 40 minutes we're going to get the most cathartic. He takes them all down. Yeah. And he goes there and it's over. Well, yeah, it's like another kind of security camp thing, right? You just see him take out the like guard on the way. Yeah. But you just, you kind of are just seeing like the like lawn footage of like, okay, that guys down and then goes in. And then the person who he came to have his big confrontation with that is going to be so satisfying is already dead. Alejandra Navola, who's like the only other recognizable major name actor in this movie who you're like, oh shit, he's the big bad. We're going to get some awesome fucking monologue. And then like, Joaquin's going to take him down. Doesn't have a line in this film. He sure doesn't like doesn't speak. You need a guy who's that much of a that guy to have the sense of power, he holds and to have him stick in your brain. But then he gets there and there's no fucking resolution for him, right? She has just killed him in self defense. Right. Yeah, it's all incredible to sort of piece together as you're as a viewer. Absolutely. It's really, it's disorienting in a great way. You're in his head where it's like, this guy's dead. Like, I don't get to do, you know, my revenge. Right. And then he goes downstairs and then she's sitting at the hands are all bloody and she's just like finishing a dinner that was just on the table like eating. Yes. And he's like taking a shirt off when he gets in there. His burnt Christ your mode. He's like, you're ready for like him to go like fucking wore your mode on these people. Yeah. And then instead it's just like, he's got this fucking swollen cheek, right? He's kind of just like stumbling around. And when he sees the body, there's the first like, what? Why was this taken away from me? He really followed. Yeah. He's like, he's like cries for himself that he's not going to get like the release. I can't complete this arc for myself. He doesn't give myself closure. And I think the additional thing is he very quickly does the math of she did this in self defense. And now she lives with having killed someone. And I hate that. And I, I should have been the one. So she wouldn't have to stop from doing this. Yeah. And she's downstairs trying to just like be normal, eat dinner while covered in blood with a switchblade knife next to her or like a shaving razor, a straight razor. And she's shaking. It's like the first time in the movie where you see her having the physical attacks, effects of trauma rather than just kind of going blank. Like, yeah. And it is this like moment that ties the two of them together of like, oh, fuck, you know, it's almost like, oh, you got bitten by a vampire too. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. You got the same virus that I do. Exactly. We're living with the same thing. And then she says it's okay, Joe, right? In the diner. Oh, it's later in the diner. It's so they go to the diner because I mean, who doesn't want to go to the diner after all this? He gets some pancakes or whatever. And he, uh, imagine 40s, 50s pop music playing. He imagined shooting himself, which just like instant Twitter meme. Yeah. And, uh, but right, like, you know, that's become like this kind of like, joky, like way of people like, you know, the fucking match lose and someone just walks into a siding in a diner. But also it is like in this way that Linn Ramsey can take very literal things from books and express them like into a mood that doesn't turn it into a, a plot point or like, uh, an overt statement about the movie. It is like this is the visualization of the line of thinking of you were never really here. And it isn't even said in the film, you know, there's no internal monologue. There's no him whispering that to himself where his fantasy is, if I saved her, my mom is dead. Can I just fucking shoot myself? And if I shot myself in the middle of this diner, would everyone act like I never even existed? Yeah. All the conversations continue at the same volume. Right. No one has any reaction to the fact that he just shot himself. He doesn't matter. The first time I saw this, I first second thought it was real, right? And then you know it's a fantasy when the waitress is still serving. Yeah. That's what gives it. That's what gives it. No one fucking reacts. And then she comes back to the table and he's just resting his head on the table in the same position as if he had shot himself. And she says it's okay, Joe. It's okay. And for the first time you're like, she has grown up, right? There was obviously like her, her childhood has completely been taken from her. But rather than like existing in a self punishing state, she is reaching out because she understands him for the first time. And even if it is not like an obvious father-daughter relationship, there are two people who are maybe going to give each other a reason to like stay alive because they share horrible language that can maybe help each other work through this. And I think the moment of outreach, which is like the first and only time in this movie that you see anyone try to do anything to help him emotionally coming from her is like so profound and emotionally overwhelming to me. Yeah, well, and he's this guy who has really wants to stop existing, but has this core inherent singular sense of duty that he can't put to the side and then her coming to him and being like wake up, Joe, like is like, you've got, yeah, it's a beautiful day. You still have something. The thing that he feels like he has to live for, at least that he forces himself to live for is a guilt and a burden and an obligation. And part of his mother being seen aisle is that when he's trying to take care of her, she yells at him right in that everything's a fight. You know that he can't even get the satisfaction of fat of helping his mother in her old age and having some emotional closure on that. So everything is just like a fucking weight on him. And this is like the first time someone is just saying to him kind of like, I see you, I know it's tough. It's another day. You know, you just have to, it's a beautiful day. That was the title. It was released under in some country. It is called it in some country. Just keep living. Yeah, sure. Just keep living. I very much support that. I don't support some of the actions in this film though. Which one? Well, I think he's a little hard on these guys. Maybe like, you know, marketplace of ideas for some. Just discuss. Hear them out. No, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a huge bummer of a movie. It is. I recommend. Yes. Okay. But there's something you're about. It's about things that are incredibly sensitive and tough. So like, if anyone ever said to me like, I just don't want to watch that. I would be like, I've never put it on. Yeah, sure. I'll do it. At the same time I find, and it's also light on plot basically has very little dialogue. And there's a little inscrutable for a while. Like it's like a movie where you're like, I totally get what's happening. I still think it's basically just like kind of super watchable. Yeah. Well, it is. I know that's great. It is. It's a classic story, but then because it is inscrutable, our concept, you know, intentionally disorienting in spots and you're piecing it together, it does feel like an elevated version of that kind of thing. And I love that kind of thing. There's no way, like I'm not like, I mean, it made like nine or $10 million worldwide. I think I made a little bit of money. Yeah. It's a movie where I'm like, I can't believe that wasn't discovered on a big scale. It's like, no, that's a, that's a 10% or not a question. It's like a 20-spirer nomination. It's like a British independent film nominations. It one screenplay an actor at Cannes, even though it was then dramatically recut after that. That's her, she's always does that. Like her movies are debut-acannons, and then she's like, they ain't done by the way. Yeah. But it got a rapturous response. I can't. Pretty friendly to her. And he won Best Actor there. It's true. Like, and he's, yeah, I mean, and I do think it's a major movie in his uvery, even if it's not much discussed now. Like, yeah, for sure. It's the totality of the 2018 and the range of it, then like makes Joker, which is such an obvious dumb showpiece. Have everyone go like, yeah, I guess it's time to just give him the fucking Oscar. He has Cannes and Venice. He doesn't have Berlin. I'm always interested to know. I need to like do a project on this sometime. Who has the triple crown? I have like people who have gotten best, because you can do it with like, who's won the top prize at Best Actor for Joker? Venice gave him Best Actor for Joker? No for the master. Oh. With Philipsy Morehawk. Much better. I gave Joker the Golden Line, which is interesting, because it's a dog shit movie. Yeah, it's cool. But like, yeah, it's just like, you know, those kinds of rare actors who do a lot of movies that would get to festivals and then get, you know, it's just a rare thing. It's yours, my other thing I want to say about this movie is that like the thing I find gross about the politicizing and the nervousizing of the idea of, of these types of things is that very often it is based in this like, I want to see like vengeance executed. I want to see all these guys taken down. I want someone to fucking call them out. And there's so little fucking discussion of the people who like suffer inside of these systems. And we're seeing it happen like right now, we're recording this month before it comes out, but I guarantee you, whenever this episode comes out, the same fucking shit will be going on. And this is a movie that like makes you think of the people, right? In a real way that's like characters inside it, the characters who are suffering is not viciously obsessed with the powerful men doing the terrible thing, which I always think they're like it to know them at all. There is this like perverse kind of like morbid fascination with like, how can anyone be capable of something that evil, but spending more time thinking about them than the people who are on the receiving end of their actions is like part of a fucking giant cultural problem. And I also think you saying David, like, I understand if I were to say to someone like, you should watch the thing go like, I don't want to see movies about stuff like that. I couldn't push back on them. You're also like anyone who would say that has probably seen 20 generic action movies that are about this in a glib way. You know, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's very, it's very similar to taking it super. It is. It really is. It's extremely. It's just a completely different mold of it, but it is like yes, a shadowy ring kidnaps of, you know, a dot, you know, yeah, but it's, it's removing the distracting pleasures that give you an easy way to process these types of things, right? While also making you think about the harder things, not in a sort of torturous graphic way. And I think to that extent, it is kind of a movie about our relationships to these kinds of stories and which parts of them we want to think about which parts we don't. Sure. And that makes it feel remain very sticky to me. Even though I do feel like it has disappeared a little. Ben, had you seen this movie? You'd seen this. Yeah, no, I went to see the theaters just Griffin. Yes, it was my favorite movie that I feel like the two of us were just like, I think you'll like this guy's a little shabby. This is the soapo guy, but I hadn't revisited since. No, it's, it really affected me. It's a weird way to kind of kick a day off. It is sure. And we haven't been doing much podcasting the last two or three days. So it's like, you know, look, literally, Amzy, one of my favorite filmmakers, people saying, if you were the, of having this series, there are other people hootin' and hollarin' on the reddit saying like, ready for five weeks of a bleakish in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've only seen Ratcatcher as like one of our other movies. Also, I think you're gonna dig if you're pleasant. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're gonna, I think you would dig some of the other ones. Yeah, for sure. I think all the movies are like this where they're not punishing and they're not chores to watch. I understand that like you might have triggers that make you just incapable of getting any enjoyment of watching a movie out of this and I would never argue that with people. But like I tend to exist at these extreme polls of my favorite movies, either tend to be like incredibly functional, poppy, plotty storytelling entertainment. Yeah. Or like vaguely plotless mood pieces about the worst things in fucking humanity. And I think I'm really like my obsession with fucking baby movies is like comes out out of what I find fascinating about the mechanics of being able to convey in the ones that are good to me, a larger emotional idea that can speak to an inner life of a child in a way that is like so clearly communicated and clean and economic. And on the other side of that, it's like, can you tackle an idea that is so big, it's almost abstract and unspeakable and get that across without those kind of storytelling tools. And construct your story in a different way. Those are like my two favorite types of movies. And there are other filmmakers that we've talked about who I feel like do this kind of thing, like Robert Brisson, who's like one of my favorite directors ever. And years ago, I pushed on David the idea of doing it and David just correctly responded with like, I want you to imagine doing 15 episodes. I love Robert Brisson. I love Brisson so much. Yeah. The goal. I would say the other problem with doing Brisson is it's like that is a man who is so completely devoted to his like way of telling stories and making movies. Yeah. There isn't much variance. No, great. If you're going beyond the stories he's telling, and what did he do with this? I was like, oh, he did the same. Should he always does? Yeah. Which is why he was good. But like, to me, this is the perfect moment to cover Lynn Ramsey. Five is the exact right amount. You know, there's like enough of a body of work there across almost 30 years that is meaningful. And if it was six episodes in a row, it would maybe break us. I'm excited to be able to like follow up with her when she makes other films. Yeah. Check back in. The same way we're going to do with the JGL. Yeah. And we are going to do that. They're equally important. And I hope he's knows that. Yeah, I got to tell him. He's, you got us, we got to book more flights. You got to issue the bad news. It's like, it's like where he's like process servers informing him. Just like post dating something where it's like 2027, like, you know, you're going to be flying in New York. It's the whispering in George W. Bush meme, ear meme, but it's a, sir, we have just received notice that a second and Joseph Gordon, life at film has gone into production. So this film, right, was it the camp? Film festivals you mentioned. And it was the last film shown in competition, which piss frames the awful lot. Although I think just partly because the movie wasn't done and they were probably punishing her a little bit, but then it won two awards to her total surprise. But often that's a little bit of a dumping spot because maybe the picks have already kind of calcified the canvas. So political with this stuff. That's the weird can year. Pedro Alamovar is the jury, the head of the jury. Will Smith was famously on the jury. And the somewhat scurrilous room was always that a lot of people, including Pedro wanted to be the PM, the French movie about like gay politics in the 80s and France to win. And Will Smith resists that. That may be completely made up. I have no idea. But that should take Pedro Alamovar's name out of my mouth so Will's doesn't slap me. That's true. They instead gave it to Ruben Osslin's The Square, which is not a bad movie, but it was kind of like, you know, felt compromising. And then feels more absurd when they gave it to him again for making a very similar movie. I prefer this to that movie, certainly. I prefer this movie. I think to pretty much anything in competition that you're, but there's some good movies like Good Time, This Aftery movie is there. You know, The Beguiled. It's okay movie. She will tell me if a sacred deer is there. Is that right? That's a Fia one director for that. Let's find out. Fish Lovards. Yes, she won Best Director, BPM won the Grand Prix, which is second prize. This one, Screenplay tied with sacred deer and Phoenix one actor. And then yeah, it came out and it made a couple million bucks, you know, in America. We're going to do the box on Amazon release in April, April 6th, 2018. And that's on limited screens, obviously, but open kind of big. You know, 44,000 per screen average, very good. Walking and showing up for this. Walking and showing up for this. It has the juice. Yeah. Number one of the box office though is a franchise starter. It's a new movie. It's a huge hit. It's not a perfect isn't it? No, it's a film. A franchise starter. So the start of the franchise. I know. It's perfect. It's our 2018. 2012. I don't know. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, it is closer to either 2013. That's perfect. Kind of the first one. And this is more of a kind of. I was on workaholics at the time. Okay. I remember Adam coming back from filming it, I think in between seasons three and four of that show. He had that bumper bump. He had that bumper bump. Yeah, that pep in his stuff. bumper in Berlin. No, this is a film that I feel like that hit big was not surprising because it had like a really robust good advertising campaign had a really hooky premise. But it did come out of nowhere a little bit. It's not Kingsman. It's not the first equalizer. It's a horror movie. But like Epic horror. Like big scale horror. Epic horror. Big scale. April. Is it based on anything? Well, I'll tell you this. It's not. I'll tell you this. That the word that it had opened to $50 million and it's first week. Probably some good news for the director of this film. Oh my gosh, it's a quiet place. There we go. There you go. That was an incredible clue. Thank you. Where is some good news, by the way, Seth? We have. We have active development. We have paid $80 billion in gold, cooker hands. Hollywood Hollywood, Hollywood, Hamburg recently did an episode about how we purchased the right. Okay, some good news. The problem was they green lit it and then good news stopped happening. There's no material for the show. The well-read drive. I'm just picturing John Krasinski sitting in front of a blackboard saying news is all bad. How do we find good news? What do you guys think of a quiet place? It was one of those things where I saw the trailer and I was like, John Krasinski directed a no talking horror movie and then you watch it and you're like, it looks pretty good. I'm somewhat loathed to give it to the guy, but I do think you kind of got to give it to the guy on that movie. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah, I saw it. I had a great time seeing him, Peter. Everyone was quiet. I saw it was quiet. I saw it with Ben Rodgers and hello. Ben Rodgers. I always have a funny reason that he hates something when he walks out and he was like, why is it pretty? It's basically post-apocalyptic. They look like they stepped out of a fucking J. Crew catalog. The fucking clothes are so nice. It's like, I'd never for a second did it enter my mind, but I was just like, yeah, you're right. I'm a bit of a man of the woods in the styling of that movie. But I think it's an effective film. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah. Number two, the box office. Has to be rampage. Is not rampage and I'm not sure that must have come out a little later. This is a film we covered on the podcast though, a new release from one of the more famous directors who ever lived, solid hit, big genre movie. It's made about $100 million in two weeks. It's Ready Player One. It's Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One. I was going to say next week rampage comes out and kind of Dwayne has a bit of a meltdown about being beaten by the second week in a quiet place. And was like, haha, gotta give it to my friends. Love crass dog in the bluntmeister or whatever. And then like posted seven things about like, I made this movie because the conversation between an animal and a man is the most important thing that could happen. I remember my dad pointing to a gorilla and a cage. Number three at the box office is a new film as well that is a comedy. And I remember at the time thinking this number was underwhelming. Now I look at it and I'm like, this is sensational. It's opening to $20 million. That's awesome. No. Okay. No, not tag. I would have told you it was based on a true story. I was tag. I would have told you it's based on a true game. You would have gave me a Brittany Marathon. No, that's a great movie. Right. Okay. But yes, this is this. I saw this at a screening and I was like, oh, that was so much fun. Like that's going to be a big hit. And then it was like in my memory, kind of just an okay hit. But the interesting thing about tag actually is just to take a quick detour. People genuinely believe that we stop playing because we grow old. When in fact, a tag proved this, we grow old because we stop playing. Yes. And that's actually why the audience needed to know it was a true story. Because if they thought it was just from the pen of some Hollywood fabulous, they go, these are the lies they sell us to comfort or soul. But come on, let's get real. And you need to know like, no, no, no, these guys walk the talk and they tag the tag. It's my favorite comedy where a major set piece is a pregnant woman faking a miscarriage so her husband will win a game of tag. Wow. I have seen tag. I went there. I played the game. Did not remember that. I remember something with cancer. At home dies, but yet the game doesn't. He's actually sick because that's why he's like, guys, we got to play tag. But that's like a twist that you find at the end of his urgency. It's almost telegraphed. Twitch's all time. I will say I do not think I was bold over by it. I feel like it's like two hours and 20 minutes long in the last 40 minutes or drama. I think I felt that it was that long. It's listen is an hour or 40. I remember it being Satan Tango. Definitely in pace. Duration. I remember. I remember. They were all real friends. Absolutely. Well, you can tell these are guys who are the same age. Oh, yeah. Have the same vibe. I mean, when John Han. When Jeremy Wrenner and Janie Ledele. I believe the dink who's wonderful. He's a great guy, good actor. And I'm scared by the way. I did a good job in tag. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is my favorite comedy I've ever seen. But where one of the biggest people to moments is also 28. And then the husband is going to get tagged. And so she pretends to have lost the pregnancy. Who's the woman? Can you tell me I do not remember all of their wives in that movie are overqualified. Like I want to say Rashida Jones is in it. Leslie Bibb. Annabel Wallace is the journalist who's covering them as a story. Now, you guys are what playing tag. I love Fisher. I love Fisher. I love Fisher's in there. Yeah. Yeah. She's in there. She's on the coast. She's on the pregnant one is Leslie bibbs there. I don't know. I've told this anecdote before, but my ex girlfriend and I were on a plane. And we were like, let's find a movie. We can both watch together. Oh, which watch tag? We like comedy movies. Fun. And we put on tag and we're watching tag and are like parallel back to seed screens. And then like 35 minutes in, we both took the headphones off and turned to each other. And we're like, I don't know if there's been a single joke in this movie so far. It's acting like a comedy. It just stopped the game. But I kind of can't identify anything that would be classified as a judge. Love you, Jake Johnson. Come on the pot anytime. I think it is Leslie bibb that does it. It sounds right. Yeah. Um, number three, the box office. You guys have not guessed the 2018 comedy. I'm talking about tag is a 2018 comedy. Oh, oh, oh, it's not neighbors to. No. But you thought it was pretty good. That's all right. And you were a little surprised. It didn't perform better. But then, but then I have them ever looking back. And performing on them, I'm like, I don't know, 20 million opening, 60 million domestic. It's not bad. Right. Like by 2015, the narrative is the comedy movie has died. And all they're not doing, like hangover number. We're opening to 20 and making 60. Right. And now you were like, all the goodwill in the world got naked gun to like a 17 opening weekend. Right. Um, okay. Wait a second. Uh, it's a sex comedy. It's a sex comedy. It starts a bunch of guys that we all like. It starts a bunch of guys. Yeah. Sure. Guys and gals. It's not, it's not that awkward moment. No, it's good. It's good. That awkward moment telling you it's pretty good. It starts a bunch of gals and girls that we love. Who's the distributor? Uh, universal. Fine folks at universe. It premiered it at South by. So it's got that classic sort of South by March premiere between April release. Yeah. You know, some hype and people thought it was going to hit. Um, yeah, you fully see Gary Cole's penis. Does that help? Oh, fuck. Yes. What is this movie? I remember the penis. That one. And now I'm trying to zoom out for the context. You fully see Gary Cole's penis. It's a universal picture. It's a sex county with a bunch of gals and girls that we like. If you name the director, we'll give it away from me. K cannon. Oh, yeah. Blockers. There we go. Not a bad movie. Not a bad movie. Totally fun. But yeah, you're right. They're seeing us trying. Yeah, he's trying to block them. Oh, yeah. You said you just got to do some blocking. There were years. It's good. Arrated comedy plays at South by blows the roof off. The Florida mouth translates into 40 million opening weekend, $100 million. And that was the first one that was like. It did. OK. And then like, good boys, I think was the next year. That one did stupidly well. That one did pretty well. Because children had never cursed before. That's true. Number four at the box office is one of the most successful films. I mean, I guess, ever made. Really? Kind of. It's not Avengers Infinity War. No, but it is a superhero film. I guess it's a, you know, it's maybe not quite of the top Marvel. Captain Marvel? No. OK. It's made $1.3 billion, which is a lot of money. It's a superhero film. It is. It's very good. You think it's very good. Arguably the best movie Marvel ever made. It's a rack or a rock? No. It's arguably the best movie Marvel. I might not argue that, but some would. Some would. But I really like this movie. It's really good. It's not Avengers. No. It's not. It's not a Thor. It's not a Guardians. No. It's not Spider-Man. Black Panther. There you go. Oh, sure. Oh, it's still in there. Jesus. There you go. That's why I wasn't fucking thinking of it. Because that's a February release. In now for two months, it's made $670 million. Yeah. Quite a big hit. Number five. Now, what is this? This must be a Tyler Perry or something like it. It's a Tyler Perry film. OK. Not faith-based. OK. One of his more, you know, dark dramas. Huh. It's not a sexy thriller, you know, like an erotic drama. I don't know. No, no good deed isn't Tyler Perry. Right. I just have that title. I'm not sure, but this is not that movie. OK. Tyler Perry, the non-Iron- And no good deed is not. That's not toad. But you know what? This movie shares a star with no good deed. So it's a taraji. Taraji P. Hanson. It's a taraji. And it's not I can do bad all by myself. It's him going a little more thrillery. Yeah. I think it's the wife. She's a wife. And she's a stalking and killing her ex-husband. Oh, it's like they get divorced. And then he gets successful after her. And she'd like supported him the whole time. So she's going to kill him. Is it like a one word title with a colon and then a... It is just a one word title. It's it's not to mutation confessions of a marriage counselor. It is not. No marriage council confessions have. Yeah. It's a one word title. It's not like betrayal. Is it? No, but you're closer. I'm closer. Is it like a divorce word? Kind of. Yeah. It's kind of a legal word. Is it a promoting? There we go. There we go. I want to say Alamoni, but there's no way it's that. It's just one of those things where they're like, plop taraji in a chair. She looks mad. It's called a promoting. People are like, yeah, $50 million to this one. When we talk about just like the box office still hasn't gotten back to where it was before the pandemic. Part of that is, kind of the Perry doesn't fucking put the shit in theaters. You used to have three movies a year that would basically automatically open a 15 or 20 and make 60. Yep. But just do a quick blockers. Um, some number, number six is a Christian movie called I Can Only Imagine, based on the song by the group Mercy Me. Of course. Dennis Quaid's in that one. Yeah. Sure. That movie's making normal. Number seven is the kind of underrated, not bad political drama, chap aquatic, about how Ted Kennedy is a no good nick. But it's not very good either. It's okay. Isn't that one also where like Byron Allen bought it for a ton of fucking money out of Tiff. I believe it was an entertainment one release. Yes. And thought it was going to be a big Oscar player. I mean, because it's sort of got that sheen to it. Jason Carter spent that money on some leashes for some of these comics. These comics. You know what I mean? Because they're running out. Over the place. They're going crazy on that show. It's crazy that David, the dogs never been on this show. And it's like, you know, we like to say sometimes that Sims is off the leash. Bow out loud. Okay. That's, yeah, I get loaned that to Byron because sometimes I've been I've been trying to go guys. Yeah. I do want to get this under control. Can I say I do sometimes feel like Byron is asking for a thought? A 100% Griffith. I'm like Byron. You were more pleasant. He's more pleasant. He's more pleasant. He's more pleasant. If you don't want to know, then don't ask, what do you think about air-boiled food? Yeah. You know, you've been, so you've been talking a lot about hockey and basketball. Byron, you have taken the leash off with your words in that moment. Yeah. You might as well be on Hitchin' the Little thingy. The Little thingy? Might as well be on Hitchin' the Little thingy. I mean, with that question, you're asking. Re-re-re-chapakwitik. Jason Clark plays Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy a famous cucker of people. He was always having affairs and such. This is actually the same. He's that why the film doesn't work. Yeah, the public, they couldn't put their finger on it at the time, but it felt wrong. Clark plays a character. He needs to be getting cheated on. What are you trying to prove? I'm not paying it. Number eight of the box office is Sherlock Nooms. Of course, the sequel to Nomeo and Julia. Right. There you go. Number nine is Pacific Rim Uprising, which is a true, like, straight to memory holes. Yeah. Number 10 is Isle of Dogs. What's Anderson's Isle of Dogs, which is expanded this week and is doing okay. Yeah, that's the box office. That's the box office. It's an April box office. Yeah. And this is a good movie and the Clem Dogg was here with us today. The best sound dog. We talked about you were never really here and it was awesome. It was awesome. We could, we should put Alicia on you. You can't believe this worked out here. I know. Because you were going to come on no matter what. But you're a busy guy. You're in LA. You have kids. Like, you don't travel to New York that much. And when you do, you're kind of like, hey, you're going to come on no matter what. You're a busy guy. You're in LA. You have kids. Like, you don't travel to New York that much. And when you do, you're kind of like, hey, in New York for an evening, I assume that's not going to work. I am here for like 36 hours every time I come. And that is the case again today. You get called in as like a wick works comedy writer in like a crisis situation to rewrite a thing for like six hours. And we've had going to schedule for a couple of things for the last 18 months. And we kept holding off being like, it'd be great to get it. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was there was like twice that I had to come here with them when I came. It was like a get like this where it was. What were you here for a day and a half with which loser was one that. Oh, yeah. And another one. I feel like a couple of times you've been like, and the man who wasn't there, I think. That would have actually been beneficial for us, but we can talk about that. I did. Yes. But I also feel like we would show you the schedule. And you'd be like, these five, I have an in on this. I have a fun story or experience with this. The second we committed to Ramsay, we were like iron lock, no matter what. It's a nice, I love that movie. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great movie. It's just really fun. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking hammer. Pito movie. That's you. But written in ink. That's me, man. If it's whether it's 127 hours, Don John or the hammer. The big three pedophile vengeance movie. It's you know that the club dog is already. It's your real super ego. It's your really regular actor next time. I mean, those are all different kinds of sort of like oddball actors, but like it would be funny if next time we were just like, let me just do like a George Clooney movie. Well, the American your favorite. Yeah, I love the American for our Anton Corbin. Yeah, I love control. Yeah, you were talking about it. I haven't seen it since 2007 or whatever. Right? Whenever I come out. Yeah, controls. Yeah, controls. Yeah, that's cool. Uh, a club dog, anything specific you want to, uh, plug other than obviously start getting excited for the dink now. Yeah, get ready, get ready for the dink, please do, um, watch that movie when it comes out, um, listen to Hollywood handbook. We've got a patreon, two, the flavor ones, two, um, uh, season three of severance, you know, come out sometime and, and this decade and every probably, probably, probably, it's going to be here. be here. And so I've been working on that. I'm very excited. Cooking up some, yeah, cooking up some freaky stuff. I can't give away too much. But I watch the show and I go, no severance. It doesn't exist. And that was a joke the whole time. And we were making fun of you. And I see a lot of pieces. And the numbers are just math. You add them together to make other numbers. They equal your birthday. It's a joke on you. I see a lot of think pieces that are like we analyze the mysteries of severance. Right. And people are going on the rabbit holes trying to solve it. And I only got one question when I'm watching severance, which is, what are these writers smoking? And where can I get some? But Sean, what do you guys smoke in the writer's room? And could you give me the contact information of the person you get it from? Yeah. So I will, I will get in touch with you. But we smoke dried banana peels. There we go that we read in high school on the internet could get you as high as weed. And so we put them in the oven. And then we rolled them up and smoked them. And it just kind of made you feel like pretty gross. It's not crazy. You think that when you're 15, you can buy into something like that. I was like, Oh, I have bananas. Right. You're like, it's so hard to get weed. If this gets you higher than we then everyone would be smoking banana peels all the time. They're legal. You had to you had to drive out in the oven first was like what was what the article told us. I remember my friends. We found out about morning glory seeds. Then you could take them. And they would like make you feel high. Yeah. See on the moon, brother. The thing that you know, no one said in whatever book or fucking early internet site that I read it on is that if you buy seeds, they come coated in like pesticides and fertilizers and stuff. Fair flowers. We got all so sick. Yeah. Just puke him. Just just puke in. And at first, we're like, maybe it's working. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. I feel high because I can't stop throwing up. That's a weird thing about it. The Bible. Those experiments where you go, like, well, I'm supposed to feel weird. So like maybe feel horrible is actually good. Yeah. This is the whole thing. I like this actually. Yeah. Every so often on Reddit cooking, someone's like, I poisoned my whole family because I didn't cook the beans for very long because like if you get dried beans, you have to cook them. It's like soak them and then cook them for like some amount of time. And I was like, yeah, don't you know, like if you don't soak them, then like you'll just get like insane food poisoning and like you could die. And it's like, why is that on every can of fucking beans? I always stick around there for me. Jesus. Anyway, give me a bean. Just happens on every once a month. Someone's like, Hey, I poisoned my family. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what you did. I guess version of that. I'm done. Jesus. We have to record ads. Oh, right. Okay. Thank you for being a herclaim dog. If I can just throw an additional plug, your co-host, Hazdavenport, didn't episode of the since ended podcast high in mighty years ago about a newspaper comics that I think it's just really good. And I revisit a lot real. A lot of people still checking that one out. You know, won't quit. So yeah, please do go listen to that. We'll link it in the description. Yeah. Absolutely. If we can just use our platform as much as possible to boost that episode. Actually, it's just throw to the episode at the end. Can we can we do a feedroom? Can we maybe look into the lights? I heard they ended high in mighty because he just sort of looked back a couple of years and went like, we're not top in this thing. Thank you for being her clumped dog. Thanks for having me. Yeah. I see you always great to see you next week, tune in for Diamond Love. I believe so. Right? I mean, I'm right. There's no new release in between. No, let's double check. Next week is Diamond Love. Okay. Lynn Ramsey's newest release. Another very normal, very fun probably on movie by this point. I would assume I think almost definitely streaming on movie. Yeah. So why not pull that up. Give it a watch in time for next week's episode over on Patreon. Come up in a few days. We're doing our annual mail bag episode. That's the plan. I think. Yes. I can't wait. I love the smell of an envelope and open envelope. And we're going to have it many times over. Yeah. If you're interested in that, you can subscribe at patreon.com slash blank check. I rather hear the female bag episode. My brother, come on. I'm married. I ain't dead. You're wrong about that. And as always, it's hammer time. Lank check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me Ben Hossley, our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKin. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKin and Alan Smithy, research by JJ 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 Minick, 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 blankcheckpod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter checkbook on substack. This podcast is created and produced by blankcheck productions.