The Year of Living Dangerously with Tracy Letts

A podcast caught in the fire of revolution. So that's the part that's the tagline. I've been going tagline heavy on the series mostly not because I'm trying to avoid doing an Australian accent. I could nail it if I wanted to. You ever done an Australian accent? I haven't. I'm told that the secret is really really really. Riley Riley. What's I feel like the one that's gotten really big when I see Riley doing like Australian accent Instagram's is no. No. No. We're doing it terribly. Yeah, we're we're. But that they there's a no with an R. We've been really upsetting the entire continent this entire series just so you know what you're walking into Tracy. Luckily, this movie isn't set in Australia, but we have been, you know, our knowledge gaps about Australian history and culture have been exposed a little bit. Look, we have heard some of this some of your Australian prejudice. I mean, because I grew up in Britain. Yes. OK, so you've heard. Yeah, I'm copping to it. And we thought it was a positive stereotype to assume that upon meeting every Australian takes out a knife and compares whose knife is bigger than the others. We did not think that was offensive. Have you ever been to Australia? I have. You know what? This has not come up much in this series. You've been multiple times or just the one time. I've been two times. Right. Both for work. No, one once for fun. I had I had a good friend growing up whose family relocated to Australia. And I went to visit him when I was a teenager. And then I went I went for work. I was I was on a TV show, which no one should ever make. I feel like you have some similar experiences or similar opinions on the process of making a TV show, which is fairly brutal. I don't it depends on the show. OK, you're right. You're right. What show were you on? It's called The Tick was a superhero parody. And we had an extended press tour that ended in Australia. Oh, wow. And they were like you to Australia. They took me to Australia. And it was a thing where the cast was an international press tour. And every time we like jumped the continent or a country, someone would drop off and be like either we're cutting the budget. We're reducing the cast or I'm not available for another week of this. And so it got down to Australia and it was just me and the creator of the show. And they were like, and you're down to do the Australia stop, right? We'll fly you in. It's just 36 hours and we'll fly you back. And I was like, I'm not going to Australia unless you give me five days in a hotel. It was one of my only flexes ever. Were you in Sydney? I was in Sydney proper, but then did some driving around. Not me. People drove me around. Yeah, he can't drive. I can't drive. I'm afraid of course. Have you been to Australia, David? Never been. Would love to go in theory. Have you been? I have been three times. Sure. I went once. Somebody was doing my play Killer Joe at an independent production. And so I went for that. I was impressed for that. My play Augusto Sage County was done at the National Theatre when Kate Blanchett and her husband were running the National Theatre. So we took our production to. So same cast like you. Yeah, the whole show went. Took our group down there. And then the third time was when Kerry was shooting the leftovers. They shot season three. There were only three seasons. They shot season three in Melbourne. So I have a brother in Singapore. We went. We got visited him in Singapore, got terrible food poisoning, then went to Melbourne. And we got there earlier than she was supposed to start work. But we were there at the same time. The Melbourne International Film Festival. Oh, very good festival. Like, yeah, milf as a milf. And we we just became festival goers. We got we got passes and just went to all the movies. It was a great way to learn the city and learn the trains and stuff. And we had a great time in milk. Milf sounds like a real filth. Festival I'd like to frequent. The thing you are teaming me up for here unknowingly, Tracy, which I somehow have not brought up at all this series is my brother, James Newman, boarded a plane on New Year's Eve, 2025. And January 1st landed in Sydney, Australia, where he now works full time as the general manager of the Sydney basketball team. I feel like you have brought this up. I think I haven't been in this series. I can't remember because of recording order, right? But my brother is now like an Australian resident, or at least has a work visa. Is is, you know, what does he do for the best? He is a general manager, the GM of the city, men's and women's teams in Sydney, Australia. We are very different people, but I love him very much and I'm very proud. There are very healthy people, the Australians, regardless of their physical attractiveness, they're always running and jumping in front of you. There's a lot of running and jumping and biking and positive. Yeah, he was calling me and saying, like, you're the only person I know who's visited, like, and I know you've only gone, like, you know, short trips and work stuff and whatever. But what's your takeaway? And I'm just like the quality of life there seems unbelievable. And on average, not to stereotype positively, people seem happy. They do. It is like one of the least tense major cities I have ever visited. There's a lot of running. There's a lot of jumping. There's every every animal can kill you. Everything. Every spider. Around every corner is a scorpion. Yeah, there and there. Just like running up, right? We're out of antitoxin. So be careful when you're. Don't you dare bring in a green bean, as they'll yell at you. But that's why it helps to have a basketball in Sydney, though. You can just dribble those motherfuckers. I mean, you know, I have I have a friend just from Brazil and I was talking to her about like the stereotype, you know, that she the the cute stereotype, right? We're always just all on the beach all the time, just dashing into the water. That's how I feel like about Australians, too. I know it's not true. Yeah, but they're all just running up and down the beach and jumping in the water and firing up the barbecue. I mean, I'm almost definitely going to visit this year. And for the foreseeable future, Sydney is probably a place I go to more than most places. I mean, it's obviously a big commitment trip. But like if he keeps working there, I'm going to good food. Surprisingly good food. Right, they got seafood and some Asian influence and spice in the food. It's good. David, you held up one finger. Some of it's funny, just because we're talking about a film that was largely filmed in the Philippines. Yes, although they did shoot some in Australia. It was basically an Australian production. He treats witnesses as first Hollywood film, even though a Hollywood studio came in and rescued this movie at the last moment before production started. But we're also talking about an Australian filmmaker, one of the canonical Australian filmmakers. And this is his departure from Australian film. Like this is really the full farewell. Yes. And we've been nailing all discussions of Australia up until this point and is continuing on this episode. Should we take a moment to pat ourselves on the back for how good of a job we've been doing? Yeah, Ben, can you cut in like the loudest thumping sound of all time or maybe toilet flush? What's this minister's call? This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their career, such as basically leading the Australian New Wave, being certainly one of the leaders. Vanguard, certainly. I'm already throwing a flag on this. Yeah, really? Yeah. He was not a massive success. Well, well, well, well, you don't think he got there? Well, he got there. Yeah. But the way you describe the ethos of Blank Check makes it sound like he had a massive success and now he's. But Tracy, our ethos has suffered. It's 12 years into this show. We're a little bit out of those guys. Not completely out. And some of those guys were saving. Some of those guys were saving. Mostly we want to discuss interesting filmmakers and we're... He doesn't quite... I mean, what's his most runaway success? Truman Show. I'd say witness is his guarantor. It happens right after this. Witness is the break out, right? The guarantor is what we call the hit that convinces them to hand you the Blank Check Book. And then I think he is a bit of a Blank Check filmmaker. I do think his studio run, even though to a certain degree, he was a hired hand. Green card, obviously, more his personal passion project. Right. Look, the thing is, Tracy, if we had a director on and we said, we think that Hollywood gave you a blank check, they would shoot us in the face. Do you know how hard it is? Yeah. Even guys we talked about like Nolan or. M. Night Shyamalan, who really did get a lot of power. And M. Night Shyamalan, who now... This is still very hard. M. Night Shyamalan now literally funds his own movies and would be like, there is no such thing as a blank check. Right. But George Lucas, I mean... He's the model. He's the original. And you love him in his films. Sure. Especially when he's with you right here. He's got Wato. Look, this is a massive success early on in the career. I've given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a film. A mini series on the films of Peter Weir is called Pod Nick at Hanging Cast. That's right. Which I approve of. Thank you. OK, so then I give up. Because what was the other one? Podstern cast, Mander, Colin, the pod side of the cast. That's really fucking bad. OK, I you know what? I can't fight that. This is a man of letters here. This is a fucking Pulitzer Prize winner. I'm not going to argue my writings better. It's Pod Nick at Hanging Cast. You will hear no further gripes from me. Who did Gallipoli? But we'll have already aired by now. Yes, Jennifer Kent, the wonderful filmmaker, Jennifer Kent, who made the Babadook and the night in Gale. We wanted an Australian filmmaker, especially for Gallipoli, which is very. We tried for several. What's tough is that they live eight trillion hours away. Right. We did it. What? It was like 9 p.m. our time and it was like the next morning, her time. Yes. She was. She was on Zoom. We were taking nightfall and she was drinking coffee. Right. But she rocked. She was awesome. Do you like Gallipoli? Very much. Gallipoli is very, very, very phenomenal. Had never seen that before. Had never seen this one before. Both of the Mel Gibson films were blind spots. I do have holes in my Peter Weir. What are your holes? I mean, sorry, bit of a bit of a aggressive question there. How are you? Mastering commander. You've never seen. Interesting. Mastering commander. As I learn more about you, you've been on our friend Sean's show. Obviously, you know, I'm third chair on the big picture. Yeah. Let's just say I'm third. We should let's let's introduce with proper titles here. OK. OK. Not only is he third chair on the big picture, not as only is he a Pulitzer Prize winner in drama. Yes, this is true. Tony award winner as well as both writer and actor. Correct. Correct. You got to flex it. But most importantly, he is the king of physical media. I also at one point called him a bad bitch on this podcast. Excuse me. I didn't hear that. I believe we called him the boss bitch. Maybe a boss bitch. In our awards show episodes we do annually, I nominated you best supporting actor for Indignation. And I believe David responded, Tracy Letts the boss bitch. Because you'd had a good really good year. It was a good year. You'd been in a lot of stuff that that's when you're in like Christine and like Wiener dog and the lovers. I don't know. It was like a very, very sort of exciting. When you meet Hitmaker and he gives you the secrets, he's like, here's how you make a hit. Wait, when did he meet? When did they? Christine. Christine. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And he was like, the women have to be little and it will go over a hundred million dollars. And you run to Gretiger a wig. I'm holding the hot hand. Tracy Letts is here in the studio. Thank you very much for having me. Love you, Tracy. Thank you. In the blank check. Now you're saying that you've never seen Master and Commander before. I was happy that this is the series that you came on for. It is one of our great joys in life for David and I. When we pick a new director, we put him on the schedule. We immediately crack our knuckles, pull up Blu-ray.com and go, what do I already have and what are the holes I have to fill? And then what's the best addition? And it used to be, oh, no domestic release of this too bad. I'm not going to have it. I've started being a no matter what, by any means possible, I'm getting all of them. And this is this is a varied stack here. We got the le voiture au manger Paris. Right. This is a French copy of the cars that ate Paris. Who's who's even the distributor here? Esca additions. Yeah. BFI about to reissue this and 4K. Got this fucking Mondo second site picnic at hanging Rob. I got that. That's very nice. It's a good box. I just have the criterion of that. But it's a very that only has the director's cut. And this is theatrical plus the book you get. It's kind of like a better addition. I got them both. I tried to convince I use this specifically to try to convince Amanda that physical media isn't ugly. I was trying to combat your I live in a game stop. Thing by being like, this is nice. And no, there are nice ones. There are nice ones. But sometimes they're a little skeptical of the really nice ones. Sure. I mean, I have giant boxes of movies that are like fricking Congo. I mean, maybe Congo is rude because I know the boxes are great. But then you're like inside is William Freakin's, you know, Jade, like, which is a movie I like, but doesn't belong in this. I finally I just bought the umbrella 4K of the live action Super Mario Brothers, which I think is $100 and contains more literature than like the Encyclopedia Britannica. A film that I've forced separate film that I enjoy, but like that most people involved with are like a stain on my. It is objectively dog shit. And I want to be clear, I love that film. It is objectively and it comes with a book that includes two different scripts, two rejected scripts for that movie. And that's one of only three books included in that box. Last wave from the aforementioned umbrella, the fine folks. Yep, I got that. We got Gallipoli has just a paramount of pretty basic blue that only came out recently. I'm glad they finally put it out. I've got Gallipoli, but I'm going to look at my OK. I wonder if I'm wrong in this. What are you? A reissue. What do you use? This has a 2023. I use something called C L Z. I use that too. Yes, very fond of that. Let's see. Gallipoli. How do we spell that? G A L L. I P. Yeah, that's what I got. Yeah, from a place you've never heard of comes a story you'll never forget. We both agreed in this episode, kind of a rude tagline. Yeah, a bit. But then I saw you on your letterbox log where people were getting excited. Oh, fuck is Tracy Letts doing your living dangerously? I'm sorry, I didn't realize when I when I logged it, that people. One of the sports. Oh, no, no, no, it's good. It's good. I like that. But you were posting an anger. Yeah. That you had to watch it on YouTube premium. Because it was the only better option than the DVD you had. The DVD. I actually played them side by side. You're aware of this. But what is that? This is a Spanish blu-ray. I've been a little suspicious that it's a bootleg, but it seems like it's not. Have you watched it? Yeah, it looks OK. Well, there's the whole thing. I would not say it is reference quality. No, right. It looks like probably YouTube premium just on a disc. Why isn't this movie? I don't fucking know. Why do I have a fucking box for Congo on my shelf and not the Year of Living Dangerous Underground Pictures? They put this out. What's the copy right here for the disc release? I'll figure it out. I mean, look, yeah, it's got this is 2014. I feel like often with the only country in which any blu-ray release of this movie has happened. It was 12 years ago. These MGM United Artists, like, you know, that's sort of tricky period for this. Right. Like the rights will get weird, right? That's always isn't that always the answer? It's like no one can untangle. Sometimes I also want to like we'll get into this, but I wonder if there's a feeling of touchiness around this movie of if we restore this too thoroughly and spotlight it too much or people are going to get up in arms. William Freakens, Jane, they're not touching about shade. Sorry. Yeah. You know, like there's other movies that get that touchy movie. That's my people touching each other the whole time. I'm so grabbing everyone. And I got the rest of it. I got the the Arrow Witness. I got the Dead Poets, the basic Disney release. I don't I don't own Dead Poets. Do you not like it? I like it. It's a Sims is on the same page. It's my least favorite. We're I think mine too. Fearless, I think is a Warner archive. Truman, basic Paramount 4K. Mastering Commander got the steel book, but I assume you don't have that yet. I have it. I just have it. I bought it. Interesting. And then Way Back's an image release. I have that as well. Yeah. I don't think I've seen the way. Do you like Brit shit? You know what I mean? Like so like the Mastering Commander kind of passed you by just because it was like sort of a big blockbuster at the time. And you were like, like, like, like, how did it pass you by? I wonder based on those books, right? I have no I've never had no grounding in those books. I don't go out to see a movie just because Russell Crowe's in it. I don't not see a movie because Russell Crowe's in it. But he's not an automatic guy. You go out to see. Huh? Exactly. What about the sea? You know, the China? Are you a boat guy? Yeah. Not not. Is this the Midwestern or are you like oceans there? Thousands of miles away. I have no good reason for not having seen Mastering Commander. Maybe I'll go home and watch it tonight. So it's the it's the best. It's OK. It's one of David's favorite movies. I have not rewatched it since I saw it in theaters. We have not done that episode yet. Can you say what your favorite where is? My that one is certainly my favorite. Yeah, my favorite is. But I love a lot of this film. Huh? Yeah, what's your number one? But is it Truman Show that feels kind of lame? But it's fine. It feels like that might be my answer. What's your favorite? Is it this? It's Year of Living Dangerous. Yes, right. I mean, we we talked to you when we were planning this series, being like Peter Weir, does he spark interest in Year of Living Dangerously was your Reno? I believe you said it's one of my 50 favorite movies of all time. You know, I made a list recently of my favorite movies. I was going to be my top 100 list. Yeah. And it turned out to be about 160 something. Is it ranked or is it not ranked? OK, just what's in the pot? Chronological order and yeah, Year of Living Dangerously is on that list. So it's basically at this point, it's like this is the canon. These are the movies. You were just sort of going through everything you've seen being like. These are my favorite. These are the things I will watch again and that I know and love. Now, you might have sensed David and I both trying to sniff out some of your movie blind spots, right? What don't you like as much? What what haven't you seen and for what reasons? It's because we came into this loaded with a challenge. Ben producer Ben, who is not a physical media guy. I've gifted him a couple of this over the year, but this is not his beat. When we lock down a day in a time to record. I should say I have vinyl of a big vinyl collection. Yeah, love music. But as far as yeah, this is movies. I only really have a handful. Yeah. And he says, you know, it would be fun if we tried to gift Tracy with a disc that he doesn't already have. And I said, Ben, you don't understand the scale of the challenge you just proposed. That's impossible. And then the more we got into talking to him about how hard that would be, the more we were like, wait a second, you should try. You should try Ben. You should see if you can pick out a movie he hasn't seen and or placed in his collection. And then he bought three and it sparked a competition in David and I. And we have also each bought three movies for you. Wow. And this is the Tracy Let's Challenge. There are nine discs that are about to be presented. Oh, and we want to know are any of these not already in the collection. Oh, great. Ben, I feel like you should go first since you spurred this whole thing. So I want to shout out. And we went to Night Owl video. You ever been there? To William's Burg? Great place. Lovely little place. It's about a year old. It's finally bringing physical media stores back to New York City. Shout out to Night Owl video. They got a very nice used collection, very, you know, and all the new stuff, obviously. And their motto is death to streamers, physical media forever. So they're definitely going for it. I was trying to give Ben some help in strategizing. He also went with our friend, Ben David Grubensky, past and future guest, who was sort of guiding Ben through the understanding of certain labels, have subscription programs. Tracy might be pre-buying a full year. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He had mentioned your, your subscriber to Vinegar Syndrome. So I avoided those releases. And we're looking for, you want rigorous honesty. Rigorous honesty. Please. Complete honesty. Absolutely. Because you have about what? 20,000? No. No, that's crazy. 11,000 plus. Still a lot. But I appreciate you throwing out the number 20,000. It makes it seem reasonable. Well, then we're kind of, 20,000 were sort of starting to approach like the amount of movies that might exist. This is why the challenge is fun. Right. But you buy a lot of stuff and kind of are like, I'll get to it or I have a completionist's urge or whatever. I've seen perhaps 30% of the movies on my show. Right. Because I'm currently in this project of like, I got to fucking watch everything I own on disc that I've either never seen or not remember. How many discs do you have? I have over a thousand, I think. I'm nothing like you, but I have a lot. I think I'm similar in numbers. And my wife is, it goes in one room. And so it's a little mysterious what's going on, I think to her, but like then she'll glimpse like, what's, and I'm like, no, no, no. You live in Brooklyn? I live in Brooklyn. So your space is some, you have some. Somewhat limited. There's going to have to be, I'm going to need, there's some shelving conversations I'm going to need to have. Some choices that need to be made. See, we bought this house and it had a basement and it looked like a Marriott ballroom. And it's just like, oh, well, this is where we can put everything. I mean, I'm very jealous. Tracy, I need you to know that I now often repeat the phrase, all I want is the type of success where I can have a Tracy Letts basement. It has become basically the driving force of any professional ambitions I have is if I can just get a Tracy Letts basement, imagine having a home where there was space for all of my sickness is the way I think about it. And you can pass your sickness on to your family members. Well, that's the real thing. Yeah. All right. Well, and so I want to preface this. Well, as far as curation, you saw my porch. Yeah. So just keep that in mind as a kind of lens. These are kind of three porch movies. It just helps you understand the kind of sub-lover of porch movies. So of course, first here, I have a limited edition steelbook of Ace Ventura Pet Detective. I do not own this film. You do not own this film. Have you seen it before? I don't think so. Wow. Wow. You're in store for a good time. Oh, great. How do you feel about James Carey? Funny. Funny. Well, then he's probably got a couple of laughs today. I mean, it obviously not so funny that I've ever sought out Ace Ventura, which I think would be one of the touchstone films in his launch pad. Right. I will say this was part of my strategy was thinking the 90s might have been the era where you were dismissing certain commercial films. Definitely. Definitely. It started in the 80s, but certainly extended well into the 90s. We'll get in more into the 90s discussion. Great. I will say that I just worked with Peter Farrelly. Oh. I shot a movie with him called I Play Rocky. Yeah. It's coming out later this year. And at one point, I got a note from him to take it down. And I said, wow, the director of Dumb and Dumber just told me I was a little too broad. That's incredible. In a movie about making Rocky. Who do you play in I Play Rocky? I play a fictional bad guy. You'll never make this movie. Boxing movies don't amount to a shit. I'll tell you Rocky will never win Best Picture. You might have actually quoted a few of my lines. Do you do you like to get that call? Because like for first fry, great movie and you're very, very good in it. But like where it's like, oh, fun racing. Oh, no, no, you're the guy who shits on everyone in the office. I think this movie sucks. I wish this movie weren't happening. But then what's great about for versus for is you get the scene of the emotional breakdown, the best version of that character. I turned down a lot of those things unless it's got that extra thing that I go, oh, this is this is good. I want to do that extra thing. No. And so I play Rocky has that. No, I'm excited for I Play Rocky. I am a sucker for that kind of movie. I like I like early word is good. And do you know that the young actor playing Sylvester Stallone in the movie is the same young actor who played Al Pacino in the offer? One of my obsessions of the last decade. I have not seen it, but he's very good. I almost bought you the offer on DVD. And then I was like, it's TV and it's DVD. This is offensive. This is rude. But the offer is one of the more bizarre things ever made. Thank you for the Ace Ventura. I will gladly start. Wait, what is one of one right now? One out of one. And so I should mention that was a shout release next. We have this is Arrow Video. It is a 4K of spawn. I do not own that. Wow. That doesn't shock me. Have you ever seen spawn? I have not. Mark Azie Dipé's spawn. Are you familiar with the character? Is he a vampire or a vampire hunter? Oh, he's from hell. More demonic spawn. Yeah. He's a former like a way. Soldier. Yeah. Like he dies. He goes to hell and Satan is sort of like, I'll let you go back to earth. But you do have to be kind of like a hellish superhero. Was he originally a comic book? Correct. It's comic. Todd McFarland, T-dog Max. 90s, very 90s. So highly. A lot of chains. And who directed the film? Mark Azie Dipé, who's a legendary special effects artist. He's widely credited as being one of the two guys who really cracked CGI for Jurassic Park. And they were like, well, that means you should make a whole movie. And he did this. And I believe he never directed a live action film ever again. He directs direct to video Garfield sequels now. Yeah. Then you're two for two, man. Wow. I'm thrilled. By the way, this has theatrical directors cut on it. I recommend directors. Thank you. I appreciate it. And there's some really great special effects. And that's all I'm going to say. OK. Roger Ebert gave this movie three stars. And then here, lastly, we have Trash Humpers by Harmony Crint. I do not own Trash Humpers. Wow. I knew that was going to be OK. I was I believe that was the one that was borderline Harmony Crint doesn't feel like quite your taste zone. But I also got a couple of Harmony Crint on the show. So I'm glad to have Trash Humpers on this. Hell, yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of his work and I just I can't believe three for three. Well done, man. Incredible. Well done. David, would you like to go next? Sure. Why not? All right. OK. First off, this is the most obvious one. You might have this one. This is arrows. Yes. 4K release of Dominic Sendis film Swordfish. OK. He's checking the database here, which is what I thought. Where you I doubt you've seen Swordfish. I have seen it. All right. You've seen it. OK. So I was wrong. But one of those where I was like, did you buy it just because there's a nice new addition out of a sense of completion? I do not own. OK. OK. Have Jackman, Don't Halle Berry, of course, John Travolta, Don Cheadle. Yeah. Don Cheadle, a role that you would play now in this movie where it made today's Sam Shepard's role as the US Senator, who's sort of like, stop, Travolta, you got to cut out your whatever it is. I don't like these computers. Are you right? And Travolta is like, it's interesting and shoot some death in like Utah or some, you know, some extravagant location. Just to make sure I'm thinking of the right film, Halle Berry, Newt Seen. Correct. Very famously. They leaked this. Oh, a terrible leak came out from the studio. Oh, she's filming a nude scene, an extra scene has leaked. Oh, who could have spilled this info? Which like clearly someone sent them a long range tracking report and they were like, can we leak the can we pay Halle Berry another million dollars? There's a moment in the trailer of her undressing. And I remember being surrounded by teenage boys, being a teenage boy at the time, people being like, I hear she keeps taking clothes off. Like it was the buzz was really strong. It's a scene in the film. Her nude scene that I would say doesn't feel entirely dramatically. Yeah. To the sunbathing. And then she just drops the cover. Again, I have seen the movie. I honestly, the nude scene is what it's sort of known for. I think this is a crazy text. Like this is a bizarre, like when Hollywood was sort of like, we should be doing like cyberpunk Tarantino movies. And then like one year later, they were like, you know, like we got a stop. Who directed this? Dominic Senna, who also made Gone in 60 Seconds Remake. He did. He was a Fincher guy. He was one of the Fincher stable. I always get Senna and Simon West confused. Right. Well, they were both Fincher guys. They're both. Yeah. He did that kind of nasty Brad Pitt movie, California. If you remember that, like a serial killer movie. Yeah. He was, you know, all sizzle. No say mediums, medium to small states. You guys are four for four. All right. Oh, he did Season of the Witch, which I love. Have you ever seen Season of the Witch? I have. Great movie. One of our finest. All right. Next up, this is this is a strange one. This is DVD. Use DVD. I was really trying to get. Wow. Scott Alexander and Larry Karasuski is screwed. Let's check in the database. Now this is Griffin. Yeah. An exceptionally strange movie. I agree with that. Yes. I believe it has never been released on high. No, no, no, no, no, no. Have you ever seen it? No, it looks like to medium use here. We got some crinkling on this. I'm sorry to give you this. It is an odd kind of blank check movie because they had had such success as screenwriters that people went, we should let these guys make a whole film. And it was trying to launch, arguably, three comedy stars at the same time. It's trying to launch. It's sort of trying with Norm again, Norm McDonald, around the dirty work era, right? Like our little after. I think it's almost contemporaneous. And then Dave Chappelle. It's sort of half baked era. Yeah, Dave Chappelle. I'm talking. I was going to say a Silverman. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure. She's in there. But Larry doesn't disown this movie, right? I mean, Larry, he's fond of. I think they're both. It was it was one of those movies that had no idea how to market. It has one of the weirdest trailers. They clearly just have no idea what to tell you about this. It is so odd. Because it's quite odd and kind of vulgar. I was going to say it's in this category. I would classify as like big budget studio versions of John Waters material, you know? And I think it's a little post like something about Mary. People want gross out. It is very dark. It's very odd. Oh, thanks. Five for five. DeVito is great. And it's doing great. Finally, Crank High Voltage. I've not seen Crank High Voltage. Have you seen Crank? I haven't seen Crank. I've actually been on a bit of a stathom tear. Wow. And you haven't gotten to it yet. I've not gotten to it yet. Both vital. I'm sorry that I went for high voltage here because the completionist in you now means you'll probably end up buying Crank as well. This is the sequel, Crank High Voltage. Is Joan Allen in one of these movies? Joan Allen is in Death Race, a movie I really fight for. She she plays the I know I was going to say she plays the Tracy Letts. I don't want you doing death race. It is the opposite. She is the evil prison warden. Right. She's like you mother fuckers, better death race. And there's a bit in that movie that I love where Joan Allen goes on like a 30 second tear and says every American curse word six times. Nice. Because she's angry. And how I've taken is breaking her system. For a while, my treadmill watches were TV shows, keeping up with the TV shows. But it just became too painful. And so what I've been doing is you're going to fall asleep watching these shows in 10 episodes before they do any plot. Right. It wasn't an enticement to get back on the treadmill. So I've been catching up on a lot of action like trashy action from 90s, 2000s action. Like I've watched the Equalizer series. I saw you log out. Yeah, extremely good. Extremely solid. I had to consider buying you the Equalizer trilogy. So I did some cross referencing. We were just talking about those movies. I love them so much. They make me so happy. Just to pitch you on Crank. Crank, the first crank of the idea is it's speed, but with his heart. So he has to keep his heart rate above a certain. In Crank, Harry Baltic, I believe he's been given an artificial heart. So he has to literally like grab onto like just use electric cords and bite them to just wait. Really? Yeah. The first time it's fun ends with him dying. Right. And it was enough of a hit that justified the sequel. Well, what if they put an electric heart in him? But it resulted in one of the greatest taglines of all time, which is he was dead, but he got a lot better. Yeah, he got better. Mr. Statham never made a movie that he he couldn't find his way to make a sequel. Absolutely. That's so true. All doors are open in the world of Jason Statham. I like this era of his better, which was more martial artsy versus this new one where it's like he's a gentle gardener, but he used to. And then like some nice old lady dies and he has to go kill Hillary Clinton or whatever. Yes, but Beekeeper is incredible. Beekeeper is incredible. Have you seen Beekeeper? I have seen Beekeeper. Beekeeper is just so insane in the world it establishes. I forget which Crank it is. One of the Cranks has one of my favorite gags, which is Japanese guys talking to him and you see the subtitles and Statham is so out of it that you then cut to a reverse of Statham looking at the subtitles. Like the shot is reverse going like, Neville Dean and Taylor. All right. So I got I got three for three. Six for six. OK, well, I took a very specific strategy. And I was like, I feel like the 90s are the zone where you were maybe not keeping up as omnivorously with all the commercial cinema. I think that's true. And B also, you talk about on your on your physical media episodes, so a big picture of the things you were watching with your children. And I was sort of trying to triangulate your children's tastes, where things are going. And I'm like, are there movies that I grew up with that you would not have seen at the time? But that might be good to introduce your children to. I like they can come grift stamped. I disagree. They can also. So maybe they knocks these discs a little higher up on the watch list because there's a little bit of an activity. OK. OK. So first of all, Joe Dante is 1998 picture small soldiers. Have you seen it? I have not seen small soldiers. And I assume that means you don't own it. I do not own. OK. Nor have I seen Joe. I didn't even know it was a Joe Dante movie. You're making a shermanesque statement. Tracy, that's exactly what I was betting on, because I went, I bet Tracy has respect for Joe Dante. Sure. But he lost track of the last couple. I did. I did not know that was his film. There's an incredible film about the military industrial complex about the the corporatization of America. Is that a person on the cover? So it is about a tech company, a military tech company that buys a toy company and their endless sort of gobbling up a conglomeration of everything and decide to try to make this film is very relevant now. Basically, AI toys. What if G.I. Joe's could actually do shit and they put military microchips in them and they start literally waging war on our backyard counter. But are there people in the film? Yes, there are. Is not an animated film is a live action film. This is Major Chip Hazard, who is the main villain, toy voice by Tommy Lee Jones and Franklin Jella, our leader of the Gorgonites. But this film stars Kirsten Dunst, Gregory Smith, Great Kevin Dunn, Phil Hartman's final film performance, Dennis Leary, David Cross and Magnuson. It's it's got a really good cast. Jay Moore, of course, it was that era where we were trying to make that happen. But it's it's a it's a wonderful film. I think I think it's a razor sharp satire. You guys are very funny. You guys are killing it. Big action. I'm going to show that to my son. Yeah, I think I think he will like it. It's got it's not I know he's very anti-Kaidri film. I know it is not a small, not big. Right. There's a similar. Yeah. Energy of chaos. Creature, future. He kind of likes the first question is always, is there a creature? It is mostly very small animatronic puppets, you know, of monsters fighting army men. Got it. And humans being like, the fuck is going on? One of the best films of 1998. Similarly, this comes from this was Dreamworks. When Dreamworks was launching and Spielberg was like, we need a family slate. We need amblin-esque pictures. And he greenlit odd versions of amblin-esque pictures that didn't quite perform as well as they should have at the time. Gore Verbinski's Mouse Hunt, his first film. I do not own Mouse Hunt, nor have I ever seen. Wow, you'll like that. This is quietly one of the best film craft films of the 90s. If this movie came out tomorrow, best cinematography, best art direction, best sound, best editing, people would be like, nothing has looked this good since the 50s. Who directed Mouse Hunt? Gore Verbinski. Oh, you just said it. It is his first film. It is him cashing in the heat of directing the Budweiser Frog commercials. And it's a script that's just these two guys are trying to catch a mouse. And he's like, what if it has the aesthetics of delicatessen? He built an insane house. He insisted on doing almost all of it with real mice. They had like 60 mice who they trained as actors. It's Nathan Lane and Lee Evans. Lee Evans. But it's also it's Christopher Walkins in it, Maury Shakin's in it. It's William Hickey's last performance ever. Oh, yeah. Wonderful film. So recently a film form. They screened some beautiful 4K. I tell you what. This is reference quality. If you if you score this last one, nine for nine. This is my biggest swing because this is more recent. But I had a feeling that you just kind of opt it out on this whole series. This is I picked. It's an excellent adventure picture. It's it's a family story done in a style. I'd say almost heightened to melodrama. With the broad kind of allegorical storytelling of your biblical epics of your. It is called Avatar, the way of water. I've never seen Avatar, the way of water. Did you blind by it? I did not blind by it. I do not own it. Nine fresh discs. Now, did you see the first one? Did you see the first one? I've never seen one of the. My guess that you just went not my thing. Right. I've got. Yeah, I haven't seen this. A ripper or an adventure about how we have lost touch with nature. So now I have to go by the first one. This is the problem. We're making homework for you here. I'm these sequels. It's a boy and a whale. Yeah, the mighty Paiocon, who you will be thrilled to meet. How long is that movie? Let's not talk about runtime runtime. What is a runtime? Well, just in terms of showing it to my son, there there are. Your son will be into it, I would imagine. Your son will be into it. It might have to break it over a couple of nights. It's a hundred and ninety two minutes long. A hundred and ninety two fucking minutes. It's longer than Lawrence of Arabia. It's similar to Lawrence of Arabia. Longer than Lawrence of Arabia. But has your son seen Lawrence of Arabia? That is a question. Actually, you know what? Lawrence of Arabia is longer. Yeah. Lawrence of Arabia is almost four hours long. Is it really? Yeah, it's really, really long. This is four discs. So after you watch the movie, you can go into the making of, you know, recently, Sean and Amanda on the Big Picture podcast, we're talking about how even if you're not into it, it's undeniable that the the specialness of the special effects are, in fact, kind of jaw dropping and beyond what you're accustomed to seeing when you watch a lot of A.I. Slop, I would agree or CGI. Slop is it is very much. Yes, it stands in opposition to that. And we we agree that it is the best of the three. Yes, absolutely. Really? Yes. I think this equals the best. I do think you could watch it cold. It does a pretty good job of table setting at the beginning of the film. And there's such a big time jump between the first and the second that there is a bit of a clean entry point. Now, I have to say, you guys have done absolutely beautiful work in collecting these nine discs. I'm really impressed and I'm really happy to have them in my collection. And I'm happy to give all of them a spin, all of them. Does anybody listening to this give a shit about what we're talking about? Yeah. Oh, very deeply. Are you kidding me? Oh, yeah. You go on Sean's podcast, which is bigger than this podcast. And you guys, you know, speak at length on these matters. I always assume that those episodes are just very niche, that there's just a very there's a small but dedicated number of people. This is a growing area of interest for people, I feel like. I do feel like there's this general person, you know, like just feeling amongst film fans of like, it's just not good out there anymore. It's bad and we need to take a stand and we need to do something. It's so annoying sifting through these streaming services. It's so annoying kind of like trying to find the best version of it, you know, and like it's so satisfying to own something. I don't know. I don't I can just hear a lot of pissed off film guys going, what do you mean he's never seen Ace Ventura? What? Who is this? That's the balance. These things. Look, people got to come to blank check and understand this is the flow. This is the natural order. You know, have you ever had anybody on this show older than me? Yes. Your father, my father. Are you willing to say your age on my 60? Yeah. My father, my father has been only on Patreon, but he is 73. No, he's 73. I believe Clint McElroy. Oh, sure. Amy Irving. Amy Irving. The great Amy Irving. She was only on Patreon, though. Colin Quinn, I believe, do you know? I think Colin Quinn is older than you. I would think. I think so. Colin Quinn is six years older than you. Yeah, yeah. You're rubbing in his face next time you see him. So unfortunately, you don't get you get to retain the crown as king of physical media. Let me tell you a few people who are older than me. I'll surprise you. Yeah. We do. There's one last disc reveal. Oh, yeah. The remainder of the bag you mentioned, of course, your physical media episodes on the big picture, which started out as just you and Sean and then grew to include Chris Ryan and Tim Hitmaker Simons as well. There is one person who has been desperately trying to make his way onto the physical media high council. Well, I'll read this note he left. Mr. Lutz, please accept this meager offering of physical media. Sorry, it's hard to read his handwriting. It's really chicken scratch here representing some of my movies, only to our reference quality. It's less about hoping you watch and enjoy and more the honor of contributing my work to the definitive archive. Alex Ross Perry. Oh, Alex Ross Perry. How lovely. And what did he send? He gave you three of his films, which is her smell, pavements and listen up, Philip. Yes. I own listen up. You own this same the Eureka edition. Yes. Wow. I own that. And I'll take. Wow. I mean, this is this is like an epic L for ARP that we went fucking nine for nine and ARP gets up to bat and immediately you fucking imported one of his movies. Haven't watched it. I should watch it. It's next. I think you'd like it. Incredible job. And price performance. Yeah. Yeah. Price is incredible in it. I don't know if you I'm another, you know, theater legend in his own right. Who also did Yellow Face, which I was going to say, important to our discussion today or the year. Dangerously. David, yes, they say that the eyes are the window to the soul. They do say that. What does that make our glasses? The windows, the window frames. I don't know. The curtains. Yeah, the curtains. The point is, if you are a glasses where like I am or like our own producer ban is true, it's a big decision. Sure, because this is how you introduce yourself to the world. The same gauge with other people. You make eye contact through the frames. Sometimes it's just time for a refresh. Totally agree. All right. Well, so what about Zeni optical? Oh, the fine folks. Zeni glasses. The eyewear, they got fun shapes, sizes and colors. They got a lot of colors, right? Statement pieces, bold statement pieces. They call them and they're inexpensive. I would say they're an online eyewear shop with prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light lenses, all starting at under 30. That's crazy. That is very low. I feel like glasses often cost more than $30. Way more. But you go to Zeni.com, you pick a frame, you upload your prescription, they ship it to your door. No appointment, no store, no off sale at the counter. Easy. At that price, something kind of shifts. You're not like, do I need new glasses? You're like, why don't I try something fun? Right? Sometimes you got an old pair, they got a scratch on them. It's annoying, but you're like, am I going to go through the hassle? Or the screws start to get loose and you find yourself taken out that microscopic little screwdriver over and over again to tighten them up. At this price, why not just get another pair? Ben, I ordered a pair of the Magoo. I think this is funny. OK. We all know from Mr. Magoo, the cartoon character who can't see. And Zeni is saying, let's solve that problem. Let's give you glasses called Magoo. They're blue and green, two of my favorite colors. A nice boxy frame. You're not agonizing over one pair that has to do everything for the next two years. Get the ones for work. 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By the way, they're the big picture has come up a couple of times here. They did a 1988 draft. I was I was just listening. I'm in the middle of listening to you speak. I was not invited. And I said to them, you know, I'm going on blank check tomorrow. Right. And maybe if the blank check guys adopt me, you know, we're all New Yorkers. We're New York. Yeah, it's true. I was like, maybe maybe maybe I wind up jumping ship. Let me tell you, the text I got from Sean was pretty definitive. If you even think fucking around for one fucking second, I was having a fun time listening to that. It's an interesting year, 88. And I really I respected Chris. Chris is buying there. Chris Ryan's binder of getting the number one pick where it's like, you're on the big picture. You know, it's like you have to pick die hard. That's sort of like the and he lost midnight run. And I felt for him. His minorans run. Well, I sent them immediately upon conclusion. I sent them a few movies they left off. OK, 1988 draft that I would have such as glad. Well, thin blue line would be top of great. It's just like, how is this not? I mean, would be a beautiful use of a wild card pack. Yeah. Did it get snubbed for best documentary? Yeah, of course. Yeah, it was he was right. He wasn't doing what that branch appreciated. You know, like he was doing something new. So he was they never liked. So you'd have to take it in wild card. I think did he eventually win for Fog of War? Like, I feel like they eventually gave him a Maras and Oscar. And then he also did the fucking the stuff for the Oscars. He did. Those were fun. Yeah, he won for Fog of War, though. That's his only ever Oscar nomination. Like they were, you know, they were always kind of like too snooty for him. It's just one of the most incredible, last in cultural artifacts is from Errol Morris doing those that Oscar intro one year, where he interviewed people about their favorite movies. We have the clip of Donald Trump looking into the Otero in Terrotron. Is that what he calls Terrotron? Right. And talking about why he loves Citizen Kane and misreading it. Right. It's a movie about a guy who gets everything in a big house. I think he literally says it's a movie about a guy who gets everything. That reminds me, I was at a I was at some party in Los Angeles and David Zasloff. I was with Kerry and some of the other favorite guy, Gilded Age. And of course, Kerry's in the HBO family, of course. The Queen of the HBO family. She's on Gilded Age and Zasloff came up and he was so excited to see them. And we came to realize after a while, I was like, oh, the robber bear are his heroes. Of course. I love how you're ramming that railroad right across America. Yeah. I. God, my favorite thing in the Gilded Age is any time Morgan Spector's character is just like, I feel like I need to go, you know, kill 10,000 railroad guys just to just to get my rocks off. You know, just really got to like go fight with J.P. Morgan about something. I love the Gilded Age. Where you got Gilded Age is number one kind of show for me, where I can Google after and like action and learn about the offer. David just said this in our way back episode with Alex Frost, Perry. Have you seen Peter Wears The Way Back, one of his least seen films, his final film, the film about escapees from the gulag who trekked across the Gobi Desert all the way to India. I remember my mom watching it and saying, this is really good. How come I didn't see this fucking movie? It was completely ignored on release. It's a fairly handsome, like, you know, solid. It's not his best movie. But David was saying he loves anything, any watch that can cause him to open up some Wikipedia tabs and start digging into. You know, afterwards I'm like, so, when going in the 50s, what was going on? I want to hear your other 1988 snubs. Let me consult my technique. I'm guessing Akira wasn't picked. I haven't finished the episode. Akira was not picked. It's also trying to think of like definitive 88 movies that probably are too knee-shirred. They keep complaining about how bad the sequel slate is. It was very bad. And in fact, Amanda asked me specifically what my pick would have been. It's really bad. I suggested Lady Terminator, which is not actually canon. Right. That one's not canon. You have Halloween 4 Hellraiser 2 Nightmare 4, but I'm just immediately here. No one. It's not great. Even with Thriller open, no one picked Child's Play and no one picked Dead Ringers. Dead Ringers was definitely on my list. I think they mentioned it in their honorable mentions, but not good enough. Another woman, the Woody Allen movie, another woman, which, you know, that would have been a surprising pick. It would have been. But because I'd listened to the New York draft. Well, we had to dance with her in the rain drops on that one. Didn't pick Woody Allen. Also, nobody picked Woody Allen. No one picked Woody Allen. I want to make it clear. Woody Allen's name was never said. So the people were suspicious. We were in front of a live audience. We were in front of a live audience. Back stage, there wasn't like a blood pact. Like we all agree, no one's going to utter his name. It did not happen. No, no. I think if we were not in front of a crowd, I don't know, though, like who knows? Because the whole populist agenda of the drafts of like, you're supposedly trying to win the audience's favor. I see, right? I will say the other thing with Woody Allen in a New York movie draft is it's like, OK, well, so do you figure Manhattan is the pick there? There's other definitive New York movies. Well, you know, almost all like. Like what's the New York right? It's more of a cannon than the idea of he has one film that feels most representational of New York than the one that's named after a borough and has a poster and has some great fucking photography. And then have a really good relationship. Yeah. Well, I would probably pick Manhattan. But certainly if somebody picks Annie Hall in comedy or Hannah and her sisters are not these are not shocking. No, not wrong. Hannah and her sisters, the bear 1988. Never shoot the. Jean Jean. Yeah, the bear. The bear, the great the bear actor. It's a great. Yes. Bart the bear plays the bear. It is a it's a nature film shot really from the bear's perspective. It's very good. I have never seen. I know. Oh, and that is a genre of movie that doesn't exist anymore. The sort of gentle nature focus plot light. You know, it's not that gentle. That's the good thing. Right. Right. We've got some peril. Yeah, there's there's there's fucking in it. There's psychedelic drugs. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, the bear's kind of like the the animal drama doesn't exist anymore. Right. Right. On a tapestry from like, you know, black stallion to the bear. It used to just be like once or twice a year. Yeah. There would be a wide. We went to the jungle. You're going to love it. And we're like, we think we got this animal to act. Never cry wolf. You guys know that? Oh, yeah. I've never seen it. I know it. Beautiful movie and there's no good physical media. That's Carol Ballard, right? That's the kind of king of what we're talking about. Terrific. Yeah. I had my neighbor, Toto Roe, but then Sean informs me maybe that's not quite the right release. It's tough. I you can call it an 88 movie. But to me, that's one where it's like you can't go by the American date because that movie was never properly released in America. It got a fucking trauma release. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Hairspray. Hairspray is a great movie. Things change. Never seen. Never seen. David Mamet, Joe Mantegna and Don Amici. A very good. It's the poster where they're in the back of the limo, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good movie. And there's a good disc of that, too. I think it's an indicator has a nice disc of that. Cross and glancy. Did that come in a little line? Amanda fucking trapped the shit out of the way. And my comedy pick, chicken and duck talk. Chicken and duck talk. Never heard of it. Looking it up. OK. What is that? Looks like it's a Chinese film. Hong Kong Hong Kong comedy. Yeah. Michael Huie. Very funny. Don't know it. Chicken and duck talk. OK. I'll check it out. I was pretty astounded that Fennesey didn't pick police story to. He mentioned it as I considered it. And I'm like, yeah, you should have considered it and then picked it. That's a good move. Mystic Pizza. Did that get picked? Amanda chose crossing to Lancy over Mystic Pizza. This is really fun how we're relitigating. And I will move on this right now. But my last Clint Eastwood's Bird, I think one of his best movies is an 88 film. That's an incredible film. And they did not draft that. They did not. A little. The one I want to ask you about, Tracy, because I feel like a couple of times now, Big Picture has done sort of a drive by of apathy towards this movie. And I like it quite a bit. Clean and sober, the Michael Keaton film. I like it quite a bit. I think that's a very good film. I think I mentioned it actually on their podcast, on one of the physical media podcasts, because I was talking about the value of Warner archives. Yes. Right. Which puts out sort of standard issue releases. They're very clean. There's no extras to speak of. There's no giant boxes. It's just here's the movie in a nice, clean presentation. And it might not have been kind of a big deal movie at the time. But I really like Clean and Sober. I think it's a very good movie. And as a person sober for a long, long time, I have to say Clean and Sober is one of the movies that gets it right. Get for psychology of that. Right. I was on the Michael Keaton fan. Michael Keaton's maybe my favorite living actor. But I was on the Michael Keaton Mount Rushmore. Yes. It was kind of a bad episode. Like it was a fun episode with you guys talking about Keaton, but like the four big Keaton movies was actually fairly easy for you. That's the problem is it's easier and more interesting to pick eight to 10 Keaton movies than it is for because the four are always going to be pretty chalk. But they they were just like it was not in the conversation for them. And I went in there being like clearly this is one of his key texts. Well, they get weird about some of that stuff. And I can say, in fact, to bring it back to Peter Weir, please, it comes up with witness, you know, Amanda. And I really love witness Amanda. And it's a great movie. We will be on the witness episode next. Sean gets the Amanda is going to be on the witness episode. Absolutely fantastic. We recorded it. It's in the bag. Sean gets a look on his face like his ass is sucking lemons. And he says, is it a great movie? Yes. And I go, now, look, it depends on where, you know, it's all relative, right? We could say Seven Samurai and Lawrence or a bicycle thieves are great movies and these other movies are. But if you're going to live in a world where you're telling me that a few good men and Pelican brief are great movies, then goddamn right, witnesses. Yes. Yes. I also is also definitively a great movie. I think that's it is analogous to a Kersawa where you're like, well, like making Samurai movies in the Japanese film industry at that time was akin to doing like a programmer. And he was elevating it to such a high level. I'm not saying witness is the Seven Samurai of cop movies. But I think there is a similar. OK, but what is the most thoughtful, intelligent, deliberate, nuanced, detailed, lived in version of this? And it is what makes Peter Weir a blank check filmmaker, arguably, I would say, not in this film where he had a little bit of a blank check in the Australian film industry up until this point. This starts to transition him, especially with Mel Gibson being a guy who had crossed over. But then once he makes witness work at that level, and here's just what should be a cop action movie drama that is now nominated for Best Picture Best Director, gets Harrison Ford is only acting nomination. It's like every A-list actor in Hollywood wants to work with this guy. They want to bring their passion projects to him because he can lend integrity to them. But that is the next chapter of his career that ends with the film we're talking about today. Well, I think he showed a particular skill at a kind of stranger in a strange land story, which seems to be a theme running through a lot of Peter Weir's work. Even something like Dead Poets Society, which is ostensibly an inspirational teacher. But Robin Williams is the stranger and a strange man there. Yeah, I have a card for sure. Yes, I have continued to say this kind of quickly because I lack the knowledge and the intelligence to make this point more thoroughly, let alone the historical context. But especially watching his early Australian films, it feels very informed by a man who has spent a lifetime trying to reckon with his relationship to the country he lives in. Do I belong here? What is my ownership over this place? Does this place own me? Who has been disposed in my favor? You know, and it feels like his films are constantly cultures kind of butting up against each other, interrogating each other and people crossing those lines and feeling out of sorts in their world. Did I read correctly that this year of living dangerously is a recent rewatch for both of you? He'd never seen it. I saw this film several years ago, but I did rewatch it for this show. And when did you watch it? Last time. For the first time ever last night. Yeah, I like to be fresh and tasked. Yeah, yeah. Well, what did you think? I liked it quite a lot. It is it is an interesting film. I have so greatly enjoyed. You know, the exercise of this show where we cover someone's full filmography at times, even when it's a great career, you start to get into a feeling of for like months, I've just been on this one guy's wavelength and it's starting to get a little samey, even if I can extricate the values of each individual film, I'm in a bit of a loop here. And other times it the the filmography is so disparate that you're just like, I'm swinging all around here. I don't have any grounding force. I have just by and large felt the the cruising altitude of Peter Weir movies is so comforting to me. There is this kind of like thoughtful patience to his films. I love movies that feel like they have some answers that they're not sharing with you, both in terms of actually the text, but also the craft that you can feel the intentionality and the thought and that's forced you to sort of lean in and try to interrogate what the person is doing. And this movie does have just such an incredible vibe to it. In a very basic, fundamental way, I don't know how many films I've seen that more accurately capture the feeling of being in a foreign country. Just the basic feeling of I have landed in a place and I'm trying to acclimate to how this place works. And so much of this movie is the interrogation of who are the people who landed here and act like they already own it? Who are the people here who are trying to claim ownership? Who are the people fighting to be seen within it? And I also love any time it can be pulled off a movie about a fairly how would I put this? He's not a weak lead character, but he's almost irrelevant to the movie in a certain way. He does not drive the action. No, it's he's changed by the action. He's changed by the action and the movie is OK. I guess I'm leaving this now. He's pretty shallow. He's pretty shallow. Yeah. And he gains, obviously, some depth as it goes along and he gains some understanding of the way things really work, which is what I love about this movie. I think it's so good. We're as early films, which this thing we've discovered in doing this is that, like, he came out of a background of sketch comedy, like performing and directing and then directing sketch, county leads directing theater and then directing film. And his early works, especially his short films, feel way more kind of barbed and and pointed in their kind of satire of this kind of guy, a sort of well-meaning, liberal, white man who wants to be involved in causes, who wants to help and doesn't quite get it. And this feels like this interesting. I mean, this movie is just the transition point of like everything in his career, but he's basically removed any of the satirical edge from the character. He is presenting it very earnestly, but he is also presenting kind of how unimportant he is. And even in the framework of it being like, oh, right, he's not telling the story. But I think it's also like about an Australian becoming alienated from like where he like it's about Australians becoming alienated from like the Western world or like the way the Western world works and the way the Western world operates on the rest of the world, right? And he's going in there being like, I'm like these British guys and these American, right? Like I'm in this mix and then becoming alienated from, which I think is so interesting, especially that it's Weir's last Australian film before he joins Hollywood and he does so well in Hollywood. And I don't ever feel like he like, you know, he never like made shit there, right? Like he always did his own movies. But it's interesting that he sort of says farewell to Australia by with that. And the first four films are just so thoroughly about him interrogating his own sense of identity as an Australian of his generation and how he sees the world from that experience. Well, I mean, the character of Guy makes basically one ethical decision in the whole movie and it's the wrong one, right? Totally fed by his ambition and without any sense of context. It's like, I'm here to do this job and I don't care who gets hurt as a result of me doing this job, as long as it gets me what I'm what I'm after. And yeah, I think you can read that as personal on the part of Weir, especially given, as you say, he's about to go to Hollywood. He's about to leave Australia. He's about to become that. I mean, he's going to become quite a quite a player on the world cinema scene. I don't know if he's making this film because you keep we can we have a dossier of research, I'm going to open it up. But like he'd been trying to make this for years. This was a longstanding passion project of it. So he's not making it in this sort of swansong-y way. But it's interesting how it sort of worked out. Have you ever read the book, the Christopher Koch book? I have. I think it's Koch. I was about to say with that spelling, you never know how. Right. Christopher Koch's 1978 book, which is based on his younger brother's life. His younger brother was a reporter in Indonesia during. Is this the dossier? Have you opened it? I've opened it. Yeah, it's not physical. You seem disappointed. I was a Google Doc. I mean, especially given the year of living dangerously, you kind of want. Yes. Right. A big manila folder right out of the shadow puppets. So his brother, you know, was in Indonesia for the fall of the Sikarno regime. We are reads the book and buys reads in a single day and will inquires for the rights like immediately his quote is I could smell the. Now, what's this word? Sate. I don't know what that is. S-A-T-E. Yes. Interesting. Not sure. I think it's just a different spelling of Sate. The tang of clothes, cigarettes, the distant sound of the gamelan, the exotic Japanese atmosphere. Like he, you know, his whole thing, I feel like with weirs, he has these like aesthetic reactions to stories or whatever. It's like he'll read a script and be like, yeah, that's interesting. But then once in a while, he read the script, or he's like, oh, I can't stop thinking about the world like the how, you know, and that's always seems to be why he's in pursuit of projects. He reads a thing. He goes, this is overwhelming. I could never touch this. And then he can't stop thinking like the lippley is him walking on the beaches, right in Turkey and seeing this like hand from an Australian medication bottle. Right. Yeah. And being like, oh my God. And like then not being able to let go of like, right, our boys were here with their shit. And then last wave was basically the same thing, like literally finding an object in a space and then going like, oh, so who is the person who left this here? David, it's geared grilled meat. Yeah. Right. It's satay. Okay. Right. So it was just spelled differently. Probably JJ's fault. Yeah, it's probably fired. Have you seen the last wave? Obviously, single if we have you seen. Yes. Last was pretty cool. Yeah. And that was recently put on the disc, wasn't it? Umbrella has had a disc out for quite a while. I missed out on the deluxe edition. I had it. Criterion is now also. Re-registering. Criterion. It is. I had the old criterion. The DVD. Yeah. Right. They only have it on DVD. They haven't announced, I think, a Blu-ray or 4K yet. It is a movie that they own outright. Yeah. Like it is a movie that domestically is owned by Criterion. So I think it is coming soon, hopefully. So we're was trying to make the Thornbirds, which of course, eventually got turned into a mini series. I don't know if you know this. And then he gets sort of diverted onto Gallipoli, but then the investors withdraw from Gallipoli. So then he turns to Irving living dangerously. Then Rupert Murdoch himself funds Gallipoli. And so he gets put back to Gallipoli. So Irving dangerously is backburnered. He had visited Asia in the 60s. Briefly, I guess in his sort of he went to Colombo, which is the capital of Sri Lanka while he was traveling up through Europe. He was very intrigued by it. Bali had become a vacation spot for him. So Bali is obviously a different island in Indonesia. I've never been to Indonesia. I will admit now. I have not either. I have not either. Of course, it's been many times. No, Ben Ben. Yeah, you're always there. I would love to someday. Yes. My wife's been to Indonesia, but she lived in China for years. So she's been everywhere. She's been in China for years? Yes. Do you not know that? No. Do you not know that my wife is fluent in Mandarin? This is so surprising for someone I'm so close with. Irving has known my wife since since they were teenagers. I went to high school with David's wife. So I like to contend correctly that I'm actually closer with her than he is because I've known her longer. Is that how you guys met? No. No. Complete coincidence. We became friends and he was like, you want to hear something funny? I'm going on a date tomorrow with someone you went to high school with. Oh, wow. Oh, so you guys, your friendship actually predates your relationship with your wife. Correct. Here is the order. Very much so. I meet his wife. I meet David. They meet each other. I know both of them better than they know each other. So true. Three kids. Hairs. But you don't know that she's fluent in Mandarin. Or that she's lived in China. That she lived in China. Is it working as a teacher living in Hunan province? OK. But because she lived in China, she was like, oh, I'm in fucking China. I'm going to go everywhere. Yeah. And so she's been to Indonesia. She's been to Thailand and Cambodia, Japan. Was this right after college? Yeah, right after college. So those are the years we fell out of touch. I guess. She was in freaking China. It was hard to contact her, I think. But she says it's very cool. You know, she's yeah. Anyway, can I circle back to a thing? I know we'll have covered this in Gallipoli, but I think it's important. Kind of restating. Rupert Murdoch invested all this money into the idea of we got to start weaponizing what's coming out of the Australian New Wave, not out of as much a sense of cultural pride, national pride as I think there's money in the mills. All these good filmmakers seem to be making interesting stuff. An industry that is still so small. Can we turbo charge that by throwing money into it? And so that's how he ends up fully financing Gallipoli. And it was part of what was supposed to be a company that was going to be mimicking this a larger project. It is the only film they ever make. But Gallipoli gets all this fucking investment. His budget jumps way up from what he had done before because of Murdoch. And the other thing is that there's this energy. It's why Gallipoli gets more of an American distribution deal up front with everyone post-Mad Max being like, how do we get Mel Gibson to Hollywood? How do we cross this bridge? This guy is just clearly like a raw element of movie star. If an Australian filmmaker has Mel Gibson, they've like opened a bunch of doors into our offices. Do we have a timeline for what is considered the Australian New Wave? Great question. I think it's basically like the first film that is marked as like, you know, the Australian New Wave is like Wakin' Fright or the comedy Stork. And those are both 71. Wakin' Fright is directed by Ted Koch, who is not in fact Australian. This is the whole thing. Walkabout is also marked as an early one, but that's also not directed. But at least those are films where it's like they're filmed in Australia. And then The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, which is 72, which is a Bruce Beresford movie, which is like a silly comedy. But that's starting to spark like independent Australian cinema again. Like Homegrown. And so early 70s is where you market. Cars that ate Paris is 74. Right. And that's a really, you know, that's a real kickstarter. And then that leads to Mad Max. But this scene is kind of the beginning of the end. Because right after this, you get into sort of like Brian Trenshard Smith, more kind of like just genre plays. Mad Max, sequels, Krakatal Dundee. Like the thing has become commercialized. Correct. And most of the breakout directors have gone to Hollywood. Right. That makes sense. Because, you know, I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, and I probably heard first heard of the Australian New Wave around the year that this comes out. So this comes out in America in 83. Right. And by then there have been Mad Max's. I don't know if Road Warrior had like made it to America, but it's probably around when I had seen Road Warrior in the theater, definitely. Right. Before this. And then like Beyond Thunderdome is 85. And that's that sort of thing where it's like, well, now this has gone Hollywood. And then Dundee is 86. Yeah. And then it's over. It's over. Right. And like you're saying, like all those guys, so like Beresford, Russell Mulcahy, like even the sort of lower level guys, they've all gone to Hollywood. Yeah. And they go to Philip Noyce. Right. And they go make genre stuff mostly. Right. And then you have Peter Weir and George Miller is the kind of like esteemed, you know, whatever, like Hollywood big shot versions of this. Yes. I mean, George Miller is the odd one because he figures out how to basically keep. But he still makes like witches of Eastwood. Like he's like, yeah, he's like, yeah, he's like, yeah, he's like, yeah, he's still the one that's the one that like broke him. Where then he's like, if I'm doing this, I'm doing it on my own terms, even if I'm ultimately handing the product over to Hollywood at the end of the day. Now, did you see this film when you were, you know, in 83? Yeah. Like in Peter's. Yeah. So you would have been what? 17, 18 years old. Yeah. And what what drove you to see it? Or was it just seeing everything? Well, at that time, I saw everything. I knew who Peter Weir was. And, you know, Mad Max or I should say the Road Warrior had announced Mel Gibson as a movie star in the most profound way, just a theater full of people going, that guy's a fucking movie star and I'll follow him anywhere. And I want to see what he's got. And of course, Year of Living Dangerously was quite a calling card for him in that. It's like, oh, he's not just it's not an action star. He's not Dolph Lundgren up there. He's smart. He's he can he can play the male action star, but he can also play the romantic lead. He's smart. He can also play a guy who's a bit of a son of a bitch, right? He there there are a lot more arrows in his quiver. We realized with Year of Living Dangerously. I was thinking watching this and not having seen it before. This maybe feels like his most normal performance ever because obviously here he's fighting against the Mad Max thing, right? And trying to show his range he has. But then I feel like when his Hollywood persona as a movie star settles, it's still using 10 percent of the mania. You know, it's the lethal weapon. It's the caged animal thing. And then he can also still be in romcoms or dramas or whatever. But he does have that odd kind of manic energy to him. And this he is just so fucking steady. You know, he's not Charmin Schmuzen in the way he is in Gallipoli, where he's such an exciting kind of playing like an innocent sort of, which it's like not something he really did much of. He's ever played someone this kind of like simple in a way, not simple in like a backhanded way. I never saw the river that is he playing a kind of this kind of guy in that? Like I'm trying to think of a comparable. No, the river he's playing a Midwestern farmer, not completely convincingly. But it's not an embarrassment either. But yeah, he never really did the kind of slightly bright eyed, you know, it was just making me think of how different sort of Hollywood sees development of movie stars now, where like you have a foreign export movie that crosses over here. Everyone points and goes, that guy's a fucking movie star. And Hollywood's like, OK, collectively, how do we do this? You know, and there is this feeling of it's not like one studio signs him to a 10 year deal, but everyone's like, it is worth continuing to throw money at movies that have Mel Gibson in them so we can test them out and grow him incrementally. Like he needs to be in spring training, right? It helps if he's in a drama. Audiences need to meet him in different flavors. We need to test what he's good at and bad at at a low enough budget level that this will ultimately help all of us versus your Taylor Kitch, your on Friday night lights, and they're like, great, you're the star of three, two hundred million dollar movies. But nobody's actually having nobody's actually saying that, right? They're all individually circling it. But it did feel like there was a kind of, I don't know, you read about these things like a collective unconscious in the period between when the studio system kind of collapses and the star contracts where, you know, people are literally saying, we're buying this guy, we're sending him to charm school, we're molding him in our image. Things dissipate. But still, there is a sense of like movie stars are rare. If there is one potentially on the board, it benefits all of us to just chip away at this guy. Part of it, I'm sure, is also selfishly like, will Mel Gibson look fondly upon us 10 years from now because we financed one of his early films? Not to mention what Mel himself wants, right? Because he wants to be taken very seriously. You know, eventually he's going to wind up making Hamlet. He's going to wind up making Braveheart. He wants to be taken seriously in this way. So of course, he's not going to follow Road Warrior with. I can't think of anything stupid. Well, right. Oh, you're trying to think of like, what's the dumb thing? What would be the dumb thing he could do? What's interesting is that he follows Road Warrior and you're living dangerously with three prestigey pictures, none of which I feel like we're quite it. Like there's the Donaldson bounty film, right? Just like pretty good. It's like pretty good. Everyone's he gets to be opposite Anthony Hopkins. Everyone's all dressed up and yelling and it's fine. And he does the river, which I feel like didn't really make an impact, but on paper made sense. Who directed the river? Mark Riedel. Oh, right. So like, you know, he'd paint on the rose that had got Oscar nom. He'd done obviously on Golden Pond. And then he does that thing, Mrs. Soffle with Diane Keaton, which I've never seen, but I, that's a Philly Armstrong is a good director, but right, like a, a bond. That feels like he gets stuck in, he's a little too earnest. Yeah. And it feels like these are movies that the bigger guys had passed on. Right. And it was like, well, let's gamble on the Australian guy who's so handsome. Like he'll make sense. And playing him a little more romantic, maybe. And then he does Thunderdome and then Lethal Weapon. And then it's like, okay. It's off to the races. Well, it's off to the races, but it is him doing action for a while. It's like Tequila Sunrise, Air America, like those. And then he grabs the prestige with like Hamlet and. I think what they dialed in with Lethal Weapon and with Thunderdome in particular, where he's older, where he's like a more haunted max and everything is like, what's the right level of crazy we want here? Maybe we cleaned him up too much, you know, with like your Mrs. Softells and stuff. Like, let's get a little bit of the energy back in there. And then those two movies, it's like, we got it. We know who he is. We have a handle on him off to the races. How old is he when he does Year of Living Dangerously? Still a good question. Still quite young. If that film is made around 81, 82, he's, let me do the math here. 27. No, he's only a mat. He was born in 56. Yeah, no, you're right. At 26. Yeah, he's really young. Yeah. He's only 70 now. Yeah. And it's obviously he's been famous my entire life. I mean, he is so pretty in this. It is kind of astounding, just the serenity of his face. Look, it's the magic of aging. It means if you're Pacino or whatever, that I can show someone like the godfather and they're like, I didn't realize he used to look like this. And you're like, take a look. Like, there was a reason everyone was going insane about this. Apologies for the tangent. But I found recently, I went through doing some Wikipedia rabbit holes. Do you know that Al Pacino is actually on the record as far as we are able to historically document these things as one of the 25 oldest fathers in human history? Oh, well, OK, well, good for him. Good for him. No, I didn't know that. Everyone was like, oh, he had a kid really old. And I'm like, yeah, it doesn't that happen like a lot, though. And it was like, no, he's like he's up there. Here is a Wikipedia entry list of oldest fathers on record. And a couple of them are questionable. Like the top guy there, like that guy might have been adding two decades to his age. And I'm like, then throw him off this fucking list. Let me tell you the top 25 you don't know about. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not bragging about it. All right. There's one guy also. Tony Randall is on this list. Tony Randall. The child at 77. Yes, he was married to one woman for like 40 or 50 years. She passed away. He married a 20-something. They pumped out two kids really fast and he passed away. Tony Randall also from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Wow. David. Yes. Ah, ah, oh, God. This is life throwing another thing at me. Oh, no. Did you catch it? No, I got hit with it. I got pelted pretty hard. It's going to leave a bruise. How's that to do this? It's tough. It's tough and life keeps throwing more things at me. Okay. Well, is there maybe something that we could take off your plate? Have someone else help you out with perhaps a trusted tasker from TaskRabbit? David, I would love nothing more. My ideal life is to do as little as possible, as much as can be off my plate, the happier I am. I have two children. I have logistical responsibilities often of like, I need to build a piece of furniture. I need to whatever, you know, learn about this for the first time, but sure, I'll buy into the premise, the bit of this ad. And I've used TaskRabbit multiple times for it is literally always like that is the best money I ever spent in my life. You know what I mean? Where you basically like it would have been six hours of me building this bookcase. And instead, like I did whatever the other task I had to do, you know, like sleeping, could be sleeping or a meal shopping for food or whatever. But like while that got done and it's like, it's always just so rewarding. I had a tasker come and build a grill for me when I bought my grill. My ears are burning or should I say smoking? And that was one of those things where I was not only was I like, this will be this will take a long time. I was like, looking at all this, you know, masonry, all these like, where I was like, I will mess this up. Like, I just won't do this. Hey, David, no need to speak in generalities to me. What kind of bad boy would we talk about here? What model you buy? It's a Weber grill. I'm not going to tell you the model. OK, we can talk about it off my look. Taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture, completed 700,000 home repairs have handled 1.5 million moves and counting. That's quite impressive. Obviously, you know, you guys probably know already, but you can search on TaskRabbit for TaskRabbit based on cost, skill set, availability, past client reviews. You know exactly who's showing up. You can have confidence that they know what they're doing. So when life happens, you're to do this grows, get ahead of it now and give $15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com or on the TaskRabbit app using promo code check. Taskers book up fast, especially for same day tasks. So book trusted home help today. That's $15 off your first task using promo code check with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. So the screenplay is written by three people, right? So we're in David Williamson R1 team. They already had written Gallipoli together. Playwright. Playwright. Playwright. A great playwright, I feel like of the, you know, and then sorry, it's coach or... Coach. Coach. I think it's coach. Right. Coach wrote his own scripts and they kind of merged them. But we're, describes the relationship as bumpy. But it was a little not exquisite corpse, but like, like, these things were happening, siloed processes that were then mushed together. As it usually is, I think when you see multiple screenwriters on a thing, somebody didn't meet somebody else. I just think sometimes it's more iterative. Right. Where it's handed off from one person. I guess that's more exquisite corpse. Whereas this, it was more like a Frankenstein's monster where they're like, we got four bodies. Which parts do we want to pluck from each of them? Though the movie is a little bit more of a, though the movie is not, does not differ from the book in any interesting, great way. Yeah. A different narrator, I suppose, is probably the biggest change. It's not Billy in the book. It's not Billy in the book. Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's another journalist. OK. In the book. OK. But that, that feels very telling. Right. Whether that was Weir's decision or that Weir responded to someone else suggesting that. Yeah. It does feel like kind of... No, it's a big... The most important framework the movie provides. Yeah. Yeah. For how to read it, in my opinion. So, Coach says, you know, and there was initial publicity that left his name off. He, he says he sort of fought for the screenplay credit. And that, you know, as it always is with these sort of screenwriting disputes, everyone's got their story. But Weir, he, Coach says, I gave Weir a screenplay. He liked it. He took it to CBS in America. They didn't like the script. And so, you know, there was a polish. It turned into a rewrite. And Coach is like, I know I'm not trying to be like the sensitive novelist here, but like, you know, they had fucked up my story and I fought to put stuff back in. And so Weir kind of rewrites the rewrite. The rewrite was done by a guy called Alan Sharp, who is, you know, wrote night moves like a Hollywood guy. Weir rewrites the Sharp script. More in the direction of what Coach is interested in, CBS drops out. Williamson then comes on board. Coach's final estimates is that the script is 55% Williamson. Weir, 45% me, Sharp excised, which was the stuff he really didn't like. So, you know, he's moderately happy. Peter Weir's take is I ate the novel, I digested it and it was delicious. I can only recall the taste. But what I then spoke as a result of the experience was my way of telling the story. He really has a way with words. Like a lot of guys sat down in front of a WGA panel or whatever and was like, well, I ate the script and I tasted it. I will say in our months of reading and watching interviews with Peter Weir and as someone who loves to just drive a bit into the ground, his commitment to metaphors and talking about his process, he will pick one and he will really stick with it and write it out to the end of the thought. Right. Yeah. So, right. They altered the Kwan character. Weir says he's much less likable in the novel. Would you agree? Yeah. And I guess he wanted sort of to alter the balance of that. So in what way is he not likable? Is he just like more of a cynical kind of. Yeah, I think my recollection of it is that he's Kwan is more manipulative. Yeah. Because like this movie frames, it is a film that positions Kwan as the hero of the story. It is almost kind of like a big trouble in little China in many ways of sort of like, here's your like fake lead at the center. But actually, this movie is being driven by this person who would never be allowed to be the center of a story. He also says he filled out Jill's character more in the book, the characters pregnant. He felt like that was a little too much. Like essentially, why would she be sort of throwing herself into all of this? Why would Hamilton be interested, you know, like in a further complication of that? You know, like so they removed that. And, you know, it's just essentially like, I assume this is correct. And we were saying the book is more very much about the politics of the time. And the movie is not really. Not that it's, it's how am I trying? Like it's like this movie could be set in other moments of sort of critical change in a country, I guess. You don't need to know anything about Indonesian history or politics in order to enjoy the movie, The Year of Living Dangerous. You need to, you know that there is essentially a sort of coup that happens at the end of the film. But like this is a crazy and fascinating moment in Indonesian history. And it's only, and like the point is that he's only grasping little bits of it anyway. I will say I'm the opposite of David in this regard, where I, more than anything, value a movie that can be in conversation with real historical events, but not require you to open a bunch of Wikipedia tabs. I don't look to those films as educational resources. I don't walk out of them going clearly. I know everything, but I like the ability to sort of tell a story adjacent to in tandem with real hard history that just kind of works as a complete closed loop on its own dramatically. Well, how well do you know, Vienna, post World War Two? How well do you need to know it in order to enjoy the third man? Yes. Right. Yes, sure. I mean, we're going to give you just enough context so you know what the fuck is going on. Right. And then we're going to do any movie. Yeah. And I think we're is in particular very good at that. Almost all of his films are like in conversation with larger, thornier issues that are too hard to compress down narratively, but he is telling one very clear emotional story within that. But of course, you've also got the problem. The the issue of Peter Weir and David Williamson and CJ Koch and Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver telling you a story said in exotic Indonesia. Yes. And I think that's a lot of this movie's tricky, like standing at this present moment is just taking a little cursory, view a letterbox. I feel like there is a conversation for a movie that's a little bit lost. And part of this is no proper physical media representation, not streaming in the regular places. A cruddy streaming. Right. Like, yeah. Is is this movie a peak example of kind of Hollywood exoticism, even though it was not fully a Hollywood movie? Or is this a movie that is actually kind of interrogating that, which does not mean is not guilty of any of the attributes. But I do think and I especially think this in having watched the earlier Australian films up until this point. I do think that is very deliberately what he is doing. I think he is very skillful at making movies where he is owning what his perspective is and the limitations of his perspective and working that in textually and narratively and commenting within that. But I think everything we're saying about the recentering of the Billy Con character, which we will get to momentarily, is its own major conversation, is what he's really trying to say here of like, here's a story of a guy who lands in a foreign country that is under great turmoil and is primarily focused on advancing his own career with a sense of kind of back patty. I want to be doing the right thing and falls in love and has a hot fucking two movie stars at the prime of physical specimenship. I mean, Sigourney is so stunning. The two of them look unbelievable in this, but it's like they're just getting it on while people are really fucking suffering. Right. And you know, the movie is very conscious of that. And the actual story is this Billy Con character trying to push these kind of useful idiots into helping, you know, rather than hurting. But without Billy never wants to tip his hand like he cares too much. He's paying too much attention to everybody that he's keeping his files. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, even the question of like, why do you have access to the president? You know, why do you have his ear that he's just sort of kept tabs on everything for any moment he feels like he can move the chess pieces around the board to help the cause? But of course, the tragedy of this movie is like Billy Quan falls out a window and Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson get on a plane and get to go like, well, that was interesting, but back to our normal life. And they just leave the problem there. That's right. And does we're get away with something because he's already established his liberal bona fides, his the story points that you talk about colonialism in Australia. Does is he given us a little extra credit for that? Whereas the people who made Casablanca or the third man right are not given that kind of credit. I mean, obviously, when I saw this movie in 1983 in a movie theater, none of this should ever crossed my mind. Right. But I see it now in a different light. Right. For 40 years changes the perspective. Was. Yes, I wonder what. Yeah, right. What the sort of discourse was at the time because this was a big ish film. It was well in Indonesia until like 2000. Yeah, well, that's not a country that allowed discourse on its politics until the 21st century. But even after that, yes. There was discourse and what was it? Death threats against Weir and Gibson from Muslims who believed the film would be anti Islamic force, the production to move to Australia. Yes, right. Because they were going from the Philippines. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm sorry. It was supposed to film in Jakarta, which is in India. Right. Then it was denied. So then it moved to the Philippines and then they had to end up filming the final chunk of it in Sydney. Got it. Because all the actors, I believe, who are not the three principles or four principles are Filipino actors. Yes. Ultimately, these films financed by MGM. The first of their Freddie Fields era of famous super agent, who is the president of MGM in the 80s, cost six million American, sorry, Australian dollars. Don't know what that translates to, but, you know, sort of a small to medium spend, I guess. Sure. About 10, I think, based on the math we did for Gallipoli. They was about to go the other direction. All right. Good to know. OK, I think they supported the Linda Hunt casting choice, which was sort of a fraught choice. Yes. So he cast David Atkins at first, who is like an Australian dancer and a national treasure. And I assume they cast him more for sort of like a physical reason. And then they like start doing rehearsals with Gibson and they're like, oh, he cannot hold this. This is wrong. He was he was a small Caucasian man, but not a man with dwarfism. Right. And so they start like looking for, you know, anybody, essentially, they they look in America because they had, according to We Are Exhausted, they're casting like sessions in Australia and Hong Kong and London while Sean tested, which is. Oh, my God. Unbelievable. And the other one is Bob Balliband. Yes, they were like, who are tiny guys with particular energies who can be pulling like Mel Gibson's suit jacket. I mean, beyond just the fact that Linda Hunt gives such a good performance in talking about everything that is tricky about watching this performance today, it is, I just think, helpful to envision how much worse it could have been. Yes. Because that's a night to imagine Wala Shon doing this. It's no disrespect to the great Wala Shon. Of course. It's like the film would be illegal. A thing that Linda Hunt is famous for after this movie is Aunt Dan and Lemon, the Wala Shon play. She's in. Right. Yes. It's funny that they in her side have no idea if this came up of like, what was your Billy Quan audition? I found a whole interview with her where she was talking about it and comparing notes with him. That's there you go. So, you know, how did so bad casting session in LA. He's reading the Gibson Park, you know, for David or David Atkins. You're saying Wala Shon. No, no, no. Weir is like reading with people. He's reading Gibson's lines. Like everything sucks, apparently. Yeah. And a casting director holds up a photograph and he was like, that's perfect. And the cast was laughing and was like, no, this is a woman. And Weir is like, I was just desperate. And I was like, I want to meet her. Like, please. Like she had done one movie up until this point. Right. He had been in Robert Altman's Popeye as part of basically the ensemble of Sweet Haven. I think she is Roundhouse's mother, maybe. Right. I mean, and she'd done Broadway. She's done some theater. She'd done a lot of theater. Right. She had gone to the theater school at DePaul University, formerly the Goodman School of Drama. And I believe she was cut. I think she was cut from that program. And then when she became very famous, they went back to her and said, would you mind if we you were a fucking unbelievable. And the alum. Yeah. She's a she's a New Jersey native, Ben. But just from Marstam. Grew up in Westport, I believe. Yes. And and she's as a teenager diagnosed with hypopatuitary dwarfism. Right. She's four nine. Yes. She is a Caucasian woman. This is so true. This is unbelievably true. Yes, it couldn't be more true. She asked, I think the sensitivity at the time was more that she was like, can we rewrite this to be a woman? Like she was a little bit more like, I'm not sure I can pull off playing a guy. Like I don't know how much, unfortunately, there was hand wringing over, like, you know, putting someone in the yellow face at the time. When you read the response at the time or people talk about the making of the movie, it felt like their concern was, will this look silly? Not is this offensive? Right. Yes. It was this is a big swing. And in a serious dramatic film, does it throw the entire thing off balance? And the fact that it doesn't and that her performance is so good is Fentasy has been talking about this a lot recently. It is one of those rare examples of a best supporting actress win. That's basically a cakewalk and the only nomination that movie got. You know, so crazy. It's similar to the Amy Madigan weapons thing of just people being like, yeah, this is just like this is kind of one in a million thing. This immediately like is stuck in everyone's mind. I mean, it's kind of hard to imagine you're living dangerously without Linda Hunt in it. It is the defining element you make with the movie. I think weirdly, David, that it's considered brown face. It's a fair point. Yellow face because she's portraying a South Asian Southeast Asian person. This is clearly something I'm very good at parsing out and talking about it. And like an old school. No, you're right. I mean, but no, nobody was concerned about that in 1982. And nor am I going to. Yes, but the decision at the time, right? We we show the movies to our kids that come with the disclaimers now. Yeah, it was wrong at the time. It's wrong now. Right. And I believe that absolutely to be true. Yeah. And that's and that's how I feel. The thing with this one that's so odd is it's not like breakfast at Tiffany's or whatever where you're like, well, this is this is plainly offensive at the time. And it's just playing into a stereotype and all this, you know, like Remo Williams, the adventure begins is only like a year or two after this. And has Joel Gray playing a villainous character who is like borderline foo man shoe. Right. Right. And that is a performance that gets like a Golden Globe nomination. But that that was Hollywood at the time. They were obsessed with the stunt of. Yes. It was as if like, oh, my God. And this is I'm choosing my language very carefully here. I'm saying that this was their attitude at the time. And this is exactly what the danger of the dehumanization was. It was treated as can you believe this human being convincingly played a dog? You know, that it was like, right. Oh, they. Of course, it's acting, my friend. And make up in a voice and they changed the whole thing. And now we obviously have like an entirely different language for how we consider like who should play what and how it is interesting that it feels like the gender part of this is the most interesting part of the performance. The most powerful. And I actually think would be seen as progressive today in my mind in that in that light, it would also tell you, you know, when you're the director and you're setting up the auditions and you're working with a casting director and you say, what we need from this character is a Chinese, half Chinese, half Australian dwarf of a within a certain age. Right. And you set up the auditions and then you look out in the waiting room and you go, they're not they're not out there. They're not they're not coming in because not to say they didn't exist, but say there are four of them out there, Chinese, Australian people with dwarfism who are coming into audition and maybe two of them are the wrong age. And one of them is just terrible. And one of them you're like, oh, maybe we can make this work. I'm not going to like rank the levels of offensiveness of which things are touchier than others. But it's like, what if you find the right guy and he's six foot seven and now he's like walking with like shoes on his knees, you know. And it did feel like the part of this that felt risky creatively was the gender element. And it is the thing that gives this movie this like entirely different like power and text. I don't know if it's just me watching this from for the first time yesterday, but it feels like baked in. And I was it was this interview I found that Linda Hunt did with bomb magazine where she's talking about having just done the run of the Wallace Sean play. And she said, like, that was deliberate in my mind that, like, I am playing a super personality that I am not trying to play a man. And you watch this now and it it feels like there is a reading that is pretty easy to get to of this character being like an Albert knobs of being someone who has assumed a different gender identity, whether at a personal expression or out of means of survival. And that is kind of like the secret the movie is holding. And I think that was the thing that just made this performance so transfixing that, you know, in an era where people are just doing kind of race swapped casting offensively without any delicacy, playing into stereotypes without any larger game. This performance is not doing that or rather that's not the main driving force. So people are just like fucking hander the Oscar right away. And as like a kid growing up in the 90s and trying to learn about Oscar history, it was such a weird thing to stumble upon and be like in like the 80s, they gave best supporting actress to a woman playing a Filipino man. And it's like someone I haven't heard of. But now that you're pointing her out, she does just kind of pop up in things. Does he? You suppose there's any consciousness that he's indemnifying the brown face decision by by doing that? I do wonder. I but I really think the way he presents it is more just the total desperation of we could not find anyone even close to being good for this. Right. And it's such a unique and specific role. And then he at one point was like, should I make the character even more physically unusual? Should I make it a hunchback? Should I essentially just kind of transform it in a way that it might fit other actors? Right. And then he pulls back from that because he finds Linda Hunt. I do think Linda Hunt wins the Oscar because she's good. I do also think she wins because it was one of those kind of like, well, like you said, like, well, this has never happened before. We have to sort of acknowledge what an unusual performance this who else was nominated. That's a good weird year. I was looking at because it's Cher for Silkwood, who I think wins the Golden Globe. The SAG doesn't exist yet. Right. And that's Cher's entree. Right. You know, like of being taken seriously. Right. Maybe Cher was going to be the front runner. This is the year. So it's Cher and Silkwood. Amy Irving and Yental, a lovely performance, but probably not going to win. Alfrey Wood and Cross Creek, which is a great performance, but is a small movie. And again, probably sort of like a welcome and welcome to the biz, you know. And then Glenn Close and the Big Chill, which is not like the definitive close performance. But I feel like now they'd look back and be like, should we just fucking give it a curve for that? And then this is what saves us the headache of. Yeah. Every time they nominated her, they were like, but we'll give it to her for the next one. And she was the only actor nominated for Big Chill, which is weird because she is good in it. But she doesn't actually have a big role. I think it just speaks to her status that she was so she's the scene where she cries in the shower, which is like a big oscar kind of scene. Yeah. But like, if I'm given someone an Oscar for that movie, it's like Joe Beth Williams or something. I don't know. It's someone else. Well, it's absolutely the argument for an ensemble award. Did it? Right. I mean, Big Chill would have won it hands down. Yeah. And then who's the fifth nominee again? It's Linda Hunt. So Linda Hunt shared Glenn Close, Amy Irving, Alfre Woodard. Right. Right. OK. Good year. It's an interesting year. It's an interesting year. That's the terms of endearment here. Right. And they run both of them in lead. Yes. They had to so surely. Right. Like you could have put. Today, they would have put McLean in supporting. No, I think they would have put Debra in supporting and it would have been bullshit. If that came out, I think they would have put McLean in supporting, which is weird. I think you're you're disregarding the kind of like. I know what you're arguing. Elder Statesman rule. I would point to Carol as the analog. Yeah. But but. Officer and gentlemen already come out. So Deborah Winger was a big movie star and that movie's more about her. And McLean is the sparky supporting character, like in this bullshit read of it. Like I think Deborah would have been lead and might have won. Maybe they should have done some category. They could have both won. But Linda Hunt won. Linda Hunt, such an interesting actor who has such a crazy, interesting career in some ways. No, obviously. But it's also someone that like obviously Hollywood never really knows what to do. No, there's a fascinating kind of like paycheck run. And I don't say that disparagingly or the studios are like, this person's interesting. How can we work her into our big movies? And you're like, oh, she's like the madam running the saloon in Silverado. She's like the stern principle in kindergarten cop. Like there's a good series of big studio paycheck gigs for her that all use her in an interesting way. Another one or two Altman movies, too. Right. She's in Prada Porte. Yeah. And then she ends up on she was on a 90s legal show. And then she was on NCIS. She's on the practice. Yes. But as like one of the judges, but NCIS for a hundred years, she was on the show for 100 Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Right. I always forget if it was New Orleans or Los Angeles. This is a thing I discovered that I just I'm so happy. I did the research and stumbled upon this myself. Linda Hunt twice won the Teen Choice Award surfboard for Choice Female TV Star Colin Action for NCIS LA. Yes. Those awards, of course, are full of integrity and voted on by action. But they give a surfboard. That you have a whole. You got a gun for one of these. You got your Pulitzer. You got your Tony. You got to get a serve. I mean, you go up on stage and they give you a. I was desperately trying to find a video of her accepting the surfboard. There's no way she did. On her IMDB, she is credited once as self at one of those ceremonies, but I could not find any video of it. But both years, I think the category was exactly the same. I believe she beat Yvonne Strahatsky for Chuck. Yeah, Maggie Q for the LaFam Nikita TV show. Like it's like four years. Shalene Woodley accepting a surfboard. Oh, it's a full. It's a fucking surfboard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was two years in a row, the exact same nominees. I think I just like leave the set, but leave it in the like in the in a parking spot, you know, outside. Just like, yeah, no, you got to ride that. I'd walk home. I just love that it was four women and high heels who kicked people and that both times they were like the teens have spoken and they like Linda Hunt sitting behind a desk. What if you don't surf? This is my question. Surfing board. Sell it, frame it. Do we call it a surfing board? It's just a board. This is again, you're sort of not really a Hollywood guy. I'm feeling here. But to this point, it's like this wasn't an anointment of a career. She was basically unknown to most of Hollywood. She was, you know, established in theater, but had done almost no on camera work. And then Hollywood is like, I guess we got to cast her in stuff, but she never becomes, you know, like you look back and go like, oh, that makes sense that Linda Hunt has an Oscar. She got a Tony nomination for End of the World, a play I don't really know in the 80s. Yeah, that's about that's a yeah. Anyway, she's in the film. Gibson obviously was the choice to begin with. Apparently he was vaguely wary of the character. I think because he'd never done that kind of a thing, right? The sort of more cool detached, just the whole center thing. Yeah, right. Yeah. Sigourney Weaver, Peter Weaver, like the film Alien. Yeah, like many of us. And so I don't know, he didn't he didn't. Like, you know, didn't have to press too hard at her time in between alien and Ghostbusters. Wasn't Rocky, but you do look back at it and you feel her fighting against getting pigeonholed as just genre. That is right, like a sort of an action queen or whatever. Right. And it feels like she tries a lot of interesting stuff when she and Ghostbusters can prove that she's funny and then that's followed by aliens and gorillas in the mist and everything. Like by 84, 85, it's like, oh, Sigourney Weaver can do anything. But she only does one movie in between Dangerously, which is Eyewitness. Right. Which is a she and Bill Hart, both kind of anointed new movie stars at that point. Never seen. They're like journalists, right? They're like Peter Yates, right? I think James Woods is also in that. That's not bad. Sure. You know, when she had been in college, she had gone to school with Christopher Durang. Right. And he had written these plays. They would do these plays in college and he wrote these roles for her where she was kind of the, you know, in a sense, he's writing. Yeah, they were very, very much comedies and she got to do lots of wacky stuff or be kind of the fact that she was tall, statuesque, beautiful, long legged and yet being in these screwball comedies, we're playing a kind of Margaret Dumont character in these things that Durang would write. So it makes sense that after aliens, she would say, well, that's not really who I am. Not really an ass kicking action star. I do different stuff. But in Year of Living dangerously, she and Mel, right? Find an opportunity to play. I mean, she's just so fucking smart, right? Her screen persona is so fucking smart. And so you can imagine a lot of actors who would feel not not equipped to play this role that she plays in Year of Living dangerously. She has a really good, tremendous amount of intelligence and authority on screen that just is established second one when you see her. Yeah. In a movie that doesn't have a ton of time to backfill character. Right after this is when she does Hurley Burley on Broadway, which I feel like was another kind of big fucking deal. Yeah. She do much theater now. Like she did Christopher Durang's Spikes, Spikes, Spikes. Yeah, that was the last one. Yeah. So she doesn't do a lot of it these days. Yeah. Is she in these fucking Avatar things? She sure is. And she's crazy. I'm so glad you asked. In a stroke of almost Linda Hunt-esque casting. It is bizarre what they do with her. Sigourney Weaver plays a 13 year old alien. So in the first film, it is a phenomenal performance. In the first film, Sigourney Weaver plays this scientist, a human person. She's like a chain smoking tired. I'm trying to make these avatars. How do people become aliens? She dies in the first film spoiler alert. But her mind is uploaded, of course, to a mind tree. Don't worry about it. Would you say spoiler alert after the spoiler? Yeah. Kind of loses some of it. A little bit. And then in the second and third films, she plays in a Navi, an alien. So motion capture performance, but they use the motion capture so that she can play a 13 year old girl. But it looks like her. It's like Sigourney Weaver's face on a 13 year old blue cat alien. And she is so good in the films. And it is such a well observed performance of a teenager. It is. Here she is. Oh, there you go. Anyway, but back to the year of living dangerously. It's just so exciting having on the show. And I feel like I just want to tell you all these things. Yeah, we're excitedly showing you are like macaroni. As we said, they know they were never really going to do Indonesia. They shot in Manila, which was very arduous. Then there were terrorist threats, which was a problem. Manila is a very Catholic city at the time, I think. Then they start shooting in a village that's very heavily Muslim. And this causes a lot of friction. And they, I think, don't know how much of a mess they're making by doing all of this. Like they're just blundering around making their movie. So they eventually have to retreat to. I mean, at one point, a note was left in a vehicle saying in the name of Allah, the Almighty, stop your imperialistic film or we will stop you. That's the thing. The discourse of this movie, I think it was not touchy in the States. It was touchy the places they were filming. That makes sense. Yes. So we're like, we were going to leave. Emelda Marcos, the then First Lady, but a big Filipino politician, obviously, personally reaches out and begs them, like, don't leave. Like, you know, like, we'll figure this out. But we're is just kind of like, this is too fucked up. Like we don't need to be, you know, dealing with all this. Life first, movie second is how he puts it. So then they do another like six weeks in Sydney, recreating some of the sets, like patching it all together. And yeah, the biggest battle. What do you think the biggest battle over this movie was after it was, you know, Final Cut? The biggest battle? Like the biggest kind of like a U.S. Sensor kind of, you know, like, you know, the studio thing, like it's that there's child nudity, that there's the boy naked when he's sick. And that like, isn't that, you know, in the house, though, like, you know, it's like, they're like, well, wait a second, though, why are we seeing a penis? I don't like a child's penis from the dead child. Right. Yeah. Being right. Priorities there, maybe a little out of whack. Film came out December 82 in Australia. January, late January 83 in America. So Linda Hunt wins an Oscar for a performance that was a year plus old. Wild. Like she only wins in the 84 Oscars. Yeah. And looking through it, it really felt like she just sort of swept all the critic awards. Yeah. It must have been a performance that people were like, that was interesting. Obviously, that's not a traditional Oscar winning performance. And then it became such a critic's cause that she she carried it all the way. I just think back to the casting thing for a second. An interesting comparison point that I saw people pointing out on Letterboxed to your point of like, yes, it is incredibly hard to cast these things, right. And in theater, you were granted more sort of latitude of people can play things representationally. And in the film, we expect a kind of literalism. And how do you find the real person and also know that they can deliver what's necessary for the role? And all of that, which is none of this said as an excuse, right? Just the casting is an incredibly tricky art form. The weird kind of counter to this movie is killing fields. Two years later, where they hire Hying Nesnagor, who basically just was the guy he was playing. And he wins an Oscar as well, you know? And it's in an academy that has very rarely awarded Asian actors at all. He is one of the few. And it's basically he is considered it's him and Harold Russell from Best Years of Our Lives are the two times that someone who was like straight up a non professional actor. We hired this guy based on life experience and it worked. Even then, you know, it's going to be hard if you go, well, let's just assume we can direct them and we can get the performance out of them. We have to find a four foot nine half Australian Filipino dwarf. It's still like a tough challenge. You know, I years ago just literally identified that human being alive on the planet. Right. Yeah. Years ago, I did a play of mine called Linda Vista. And there's a Vietnamese American character in Linda Vista. And we went about trying to cast this role and trying to cast a Vietnamese actor in Chicago was challenging. We we eventually got there. I have a Chinese, Korean American friend who said to me, why are you? Why are you trying to cast a Vietnamese person? You're not going to find a Vietnamese person. You just cast an Asian person. And I said, but don't you think that the Vietnamese person would have a different perspective on that and would want to see themself? Want to see the Vietnamese person represented on stage by a Vietnamese actor? And she said, that's not the way we look at it. She said, if I have to wait for the role to come up, that's a Chinese, Korean American. I've already got a limited number of roles I can play. And now you're going to tell me that I can only play a role if it's Chinese, Korean American. Well, I don't know what Linda Hunt would say since she has dwarfism. Yes, about a role that comes up in which she's being asked to play a dwarf. Yes. Now, would she say something different now than she said back in 1982? I don't know. I don't know. It's we're not hand waving or excusing any of it. There are like two fundamental truths, which is this casting would never happen today and this performance is extraordinary. And it is like really the juice of the movie in every way. And and back to just the reframing around this characters. The whole reason this movie works for me on top of her just nailing the performance so hard. But I think today there would be some form of reconceptualization around the character somehow. I think today a director would say, let's find that person before I do anything else. Yes. Right. It's like, I've got to know that I've got that person. I mean, I can build this movie around. There was whatever years ago, 2019, Steven Spielberg announced he was going to make that movie about the kidnapping. The kidnapping of the Carter, Montana. It's been made since then. Yes. Yeah. But he announced it as his next film. And they said, and now we begin the worldwide casting search for the kid. Right. And basically, after two years, he was like, I can't make this movie. Yeah. We never found the kid. Right. You know. And if you're Steven Spielberg, you have the clout to be given the money in the runway to search knowing that you might not find the kid. If you're Peter Weir at this point in your career, they're saying to you, here's when you start filming. Yeah. In in Millie. No, right. You decide who's playing that role. But we're not waiting around for four years. Mel's got like two more fucking Mad Max's to make or whatever. Right. Yeah. So the film we should discuss a little more in depth, I would imagine. You know, what do we? It opens with Billy Quan, a character who we will later find out is dead. Sure. But is telling the story of the film to us. Sure. Sure. We're right. He's narrating from beyond in diary form. Right. Right. In a way. Yeah. But does this mean we're done with the dossier? We are. I'm sorry. No, it's all right. I'm the only thing left there is, you know, the reviews, the reception of the film, which I can tell you there are the specific questions we can always play. I can tell you played it can. I can tell you that it was well received by critics. And we're these days is sort of like, I'm not sure about that films legacy, but I'm glad, you know, it still exists. He doesn't talk about it in a reverential way exactly, but I think it was a pain to make. Here's what I don't know yet. How do you feel about this? I love this. I love this film. I, you know, sensitivities aside and all like the things we just like, I just it's just the kind of movie I really respond to because it's sexy, but also like politically complex and like rewarding in its complexity. Just like not giving you an easy answer, not giving you an easy guide or route for like he makes mistakes that are identifiable mistakes to me. He behaves in a way that I'm like, yeah, I don't know that I would really be of upright integrity here either. I don't know that I would know how to navigate this situation, but I would be kind of thrilled by it or and it's just a film that feels very relevant always. You can say it's relevant now. Everything's relevant now. Right now, everything is right now. Everything is relevant. But like the Super Mario Galaxy movie has never been more. Right. All films. But like capturing like the feeling of a country on the brink of something is hard to do. Like and I love any movie that does that. And I love like Ross Lenny movies or I'm trying to think of like what are what are other movies that you would put in that genre of like sort of films about a revolution, but that aren't about like the instigators of that revolution? I don't know. That's an interesting question. But I love revolutions missing. Missing isn't that. Yeah, another film that's impossible to find right now, right? Isn't missing. It's on criteria. Oh, it's not criteria. Yeah. Then I should go fuck myself. You should. But Gallipoli is not not inherent in my comment that you should go fuck yourself. Gallipoli is is similar in that regard. It is, you know, backgrounding a giant historical moment and showing it to you only through the perspective of people who don't understand how important what is happening around them is actually going to be. Yes. I like what I look, I'm no expert on Indonesia. I don't know if you are. Are you? I am not an expert on Indonesia. This is good to get out there. But like Socarno, from what I understand, Socarno was not a communist, but he was sort of like loosely aligning himself, lefting left wing, loosely aligning himself with the Soviets, maybe loosely drifting from the Americans. And what's happening in this movie is the American, the West, the Americans, the Brits, the whatever, the old nasty stakeholders are like, let's fucking so chaos so that we can get our guy. Right. Like that's what happened in Indonesia. Because like Suharto is the guy who replaces him is he's like, you know, I'll do what the Americans. David is saluting for those of you listening at home. And I know that I am embarrassingly simplifying Indonesian like politics here. But right. Like, and I just love that in what's up. Because I was really trying to figure out like he seems to be this figure like a hero. He is Socarno. Yeah, he is. He's the father of like Indonesian independence. Like they broke off from they were controlled by the Dutch for, you know, 100 fucking more. I mean, how many, you know, hundreds of years. They were the Dutch East Indies and like post war. He's the leader of their independence movement. And completely anti imperialist. Right. He doesn't want anything to do with the colonizers. Right. And and and therefore sets himself up as leader of the country. But of course, he's terribly corrupt as well. And that's what the tension of especially Billy Kwan. I mean, everyone else here is there. They're drifting in here because it's interesting. Like Billy Kwan wants Socarno to help. And Socarno like and I guess identifies in Socarno like, you know, good, right? Like you could be doing good. I mean, like were I in charge of a nation of what, 10,000 islands with like 400 million languages and like that had just been liberated from Dutch bond? Yes, I imagine corruption would rain. I don't really know. Like this is what I don't know. Like was Socarno a bad leader? Like I don't think so. Like I think it was just like an insane and complicated situation that then the West kind of like blew up. I also think there's an interesting trick in the egg thing when you look at like radical revolutionary movements and how often those leaders are proven to be corrupt and whether there is some driving force in them that pushes the politics, even if ultimately helpful to their people so that they can achieve their own ultimate desires and gains or if it's just classic fucking absolute power, corrupts absolutely. But so often you have these arcs of the person being the savior, ultimately becoming the exact kind of person that they exist to topple. Yeah, a little bit. Not the exact same. I think there's a spread of that happening, but I think it never actually even really came to that. I'm not even saying with him in general. I'm saying like globally across history, that is a thing that repeats itself. History aside, I just like how the film captures that, you know, all of that ambiguity. Yeah. While still being a 100 minute sexy journalism thriller. Also to your point, what I like is a pretty darn watchable movie. Yes. But it's not a movie where he's going to break the case and fucking save the day. And it's not a movie where he's like the white savior or whatever. You know, like it doesn't really. It avoids all these. It's like an anti white savior movie, even though it is obviously placing this guy. Doesn't feel like a yell at the audience at any point. But it's it's why I said the like useful idiot thing is there is this sense of like, as you said, Billy Quan being like, man, if someone could get through to this guy, he really could help everybody. And he identifies guy, literally just some white dude named guy who's handsome and charming. And it's like he might listen to him. If I can load the right ideas into his head and he can go relay them and he's a better delivery system than maybe I would be, does that affect change? I find that idea very moving that that this the what's going on globally, politically, what's going on in this country is so far beyond the reach of the characters. Yeah, they really don't understand quite quite the world they're operating in. And they basically, you know, one of them dies and the other two run away. Yeah, I mean, that you write there's that gets to just live a fucking Hollywood romance. A scene that I love is when they they make it through the checkpoint. It's so tense. And then they're laughing, even though they're they just witnessed like state murder. Right. And I'd probably because like they're just so exhilarated and they're like, you know, happy to be alive. You wouldn't put that in a Hollywood version of this movie because it makes him look like a jerk. Or an idiot. It is it is begging to be misread. Whereas I view that as pointed and part of that is the prism of looking at his other films and the continuity of his viewpoints. I brought it up in other episodes, but there is one of the first things Peter Weir did was he made one of the chapters in an omnibus movie called Three to Go. That was truly like the very beginning of the Australian New Wave. Let's get these kids out of film school and try to make a movie commenting on the youth of Australia. And it's it's three different stories of three different characters. And he made one called Michael that is about a upper middle class kind of very coddled privilege kind of well meaning liberal intellectual kid who is fighting or he wants to rebel against his parents and what he views views as the safety of their bubble and wants to get into the shit and starts entrenching himself in kind of radical politics and radical art and wanting to feel dangerous and wanting to tell himself that he's not just comfortably sitting in an ivory tower, but it is ultimately an act as an effect. It's him just wanting to rebel against whatever is imposed upon him, even if what is imposed upon him is like immense privilege and security and safety. And it builds to him inviting this radical kind of a theater troupe over to his parents house, mostly to kind of just say fuck you to his parents and then immediately is hit with like actually is this more chaos than I want. And I think it's really interesting as like basically the first extended narrative thing Peter Ware ever made on film, because it feels like it is him very much trying to excruise the the exact person he doesn't want to be. Sure, right. You know, sort of cultural stories. Yeah, right, right. And the guy who gets out when things get a little too messy likes to believe that he could get down and dirty and and really give everything to the cause. What does he do in this? He doesn't do much. Exactly. That's the difference. Is that this guy really the first act of the movie like just kind of circling around like he's really not doing anything. Right. That movie feels right. It feels much more barbed and this the way it is, I think, getting at a somewhat similar thing is much less critical of the character and more critical of the societal systems. And then as you're saying like the moving part of it for me is Billy Quan basically understanding that everything boils down to people, that these issues that can feel so humongous and impossible to manage or ever affect change, ultimately are swung by two people having a conversation. Right. And can you get the right two people in the right place? Can you get them to align on the same things? Yes. And so much of the movie's philosophy is contained in that first conversation that Billy and Guy have as Guy is just arriving and Billy's talking to him about, he talks to him about Tolstoy and what would you do? Do you help the one person in front of you? How do you help? What then must we do? Which is all pulled straight from the book, by the way, the Coch's book. I mean, the dialogue is pulled straight out of the book. And it's really the argument or the conversation, I should say, that sits the center of the film and that we keep coming back to. I mean, like I say, Guy only makes one ethical decision in the movie and it's arguably the wrong one. So, okay, the plot of this movie, though, is... Oh, we're still back to the plot. No, no, it's fine. We don't have to be, but I'm just trying to think like how it progresses. He, I mean, much like Mel Gibson, wanting to show people that he is not just an action star and that he can do drama. This is a guy who wants to be boots on the ground, an important photo journalist, you know, video journalist, film journalist, I guess, doing something meaningful. But also he wants to stake his claim as important. He both wants to feel like he is fighting for the right issues and also that he has seen as someone who can tackle issues of weight. He's... He arrives, he knows nothing. His predecessor has left him nothing, right? Like, so he's kind of like a true babe in the woods. So he meets all the guys. Michael Murphy, love to see that guy. Always love to see him. Incredible face. Yeah. What's he? I mean, he's an Altman guy to me. Like, he's a big Altman guy, but he does many things. He's great in everything. Yeah, and he's a terrific... This is only what two or three years removed from Unmarried One and where he's also a son of a bitch. Oh, and Manhattan a couple of years after. Manhattan, where he's also a son of a bitch. He just played this... He just played this happy bland, waspish son of a bitch. It is rare to have someone who was that good and that handsome basically fully embrace the idea of being a character actor has strategically to represent the most annoying kind of person. You know what I've never seen is Shocker. Oh, yes. Craven movie that is the lead up. And I've always wondered what that is like. He's the human lead being haunted by the Shocker, right? I believe that is correct. Yes. Is what Mitch Pallegi is the original Shocker? Right. He's the man who sends him to the electric chair and then the man in the electric chair. Maybe I haven't seen Shocker. It's Wes Craven. Wes Craven. Yeah. But even like... But you know that sort of weird 80s Craven where he wasn't sure what's good. He's great as the fucking ineffectual mayor and Batman returns. He's great and away from her. Like, I just think he is always fantastic. And this is such a perfect use of him. He became a big narrator. He narrates like any PBS shit that that's Michael Murphy. Anyway, Michael Murphy is there. Still alive, by the way. Still alive. How old is Michael Murphy? I can tell you that he's 87 years old now. He's about to turn 88. And I think he's the only American... Well, I was about to say he's the only American except Linda Hunt, of course, is American. But he's the only American character. He's the only American character. That's what I meant. Yes. He is the token ugly American. And it's another scene that I think is really telling. But Sigourney is at the... She's a British diplomat. Right. But she's an American actor. Yeah. The scene around the table where Michael Murphy is trying to sell Mel Gibson on the sexual tourism of the Philippines, where you're like, you know, okay, but like cut the bullshit. You're not here because you actually care on any humanitarian level. This is a cushy job because they treat you like royalty. And the laws are looser. Your money goes far. You're right. You're early. Yeah. Right. And then who's the other actor? Is that... He's Noel Ferrier. He's an Australian actor. Oh, who is... You might be unsurprised to learn how to big like sort of comedy career contemporary Barry Humphreys, who's a big Australian, you know, who's Dame Edna. Is there... Is Barry Humphreys... He died. Okay. Died very recently. Do we get a sense of like what publications, what countries... These would be like wire journalists, I would assume, right? Like my dad was a wire journalist. Okay. He worked for UPI. He lived in Vienna. He lived in Beirut. He lived in Rome. Like... Hated the Australians. My... No, my dad hated Welsh people. And that is too strong to say that he hated them. It's more that my dad, I would detect in him disdain for the Welsh. Where I was like, you grew up so fucking poor in London. Like, what is it, you know, what do you have on the Welsh? Nothing. Like, you know, it's like you're just as like a bunch of a yokel as them, except you grew up in like South London or whatever. But like... And like he just kind of had these like, yeah, but they're just so silly, you know what I mean? And I would be like, this is because we do what the Brits conquered them a thousand years ago. But this is also Taylor's world time. You're all stuck under the same boot and you point to the other person. Yes. I think they're the fucking problem. Exactly. It was so funny about it. And it wasn't like he was the only one. It's a common thing in Britain that people are like, the Welsh like, and it's just like, I'm like, they're like a hundred miles that way. How different are you? You know, it's like, but no, he didn't, my dad didn't have an Australian thing. Other British people do. I mean, don't you, I mean, like, have you been to Britain? You know, it's like the Brits, the way they are, it's especially with Australians. But you know, any like, you know, Canada, New Zealand, you know, America, where they're just like, you know, those guys are kind of Britain Junior. You know, we kind of invented this whole thing. They're fucking running circles around the British labels in terms of physical media these days. Well, that's right. The Australians are stepping up. I mean, what is a good, is there a good British like Eureka? The DFI. The Brits. Yeah. Indicators is UK and Radiance is UK. Radiance is UK. But like the old tartan label and all that, right? Like they're gone, right? Yeah. Yeah. But you got, you got imprint and umbrella and via vision. I'm just pointing to the time we got to, let's keep going with the plot. The scene of them sort of like trying to suss out in Mel Gibson, what is your sexual deviancy? As if the only reason you would take this job is to be able to take advantage, right? And it's like Michael Murphy is basically, I wasn't even going to say coded. He is like, this is a man with like pedophilic inclinations, who is like primarily driven by underage girls. Yes. And the other guy is like deeply closeted. Right. Right. And it's- Because when Billy's laying it all out at the end, that's what he's right. He's poking at all of those sort of unspoken things. And in that first scene, I think where you introduced those guys around the table and they're poking Billy as like, what's your fucking thing? Who are you fucking? What's your fucking deal? And he like very, like stands very firm of like, that is not my relationship with her. You know? They're like, so you're fucking her on the side, right? Why would you talk to her otherwise? And he has this like, you don't understand kind of thing where it just feels like Billy is a character who is completely grounded in the value of seeing people and seeing the worth of people and the relationship of people to each other in a non-transactional way. It's why it's so interesting to me to learn that the book character is less pleasant. But I guess because like to me, it's like, right, they invest the morality in the movie and Billy. Because this character is very strategic, but not in a devious way. Yeah, I'd be like, fine, manipulate me. Oh no, no, you made me fall in love with Sporty Weaver. Oh, this sucks. Yeah, that would suck. Oh fuck. Don't you hate when that happens? No, what do I do? So Billy nudges Guy towards Jill, right? And I feel like Bill nudges Jill towards Guy as well, right? Like there's all this sort of subtle manipulation going on. And also let Guy know that he can give him access to the president in exchange for agreeing to make Billy his exclusive cameraman that is framed originally as just, you do all that for me. And it's like, look, I just want steady work. Well, I don't think it's the president. I think it's the leader of the Communist Party. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Correct. Yes, yes, yes. But who does later historically did become the first president? Am I wrong about this? No, Socarna was the president of Indonesia at the time. Yes. Socarna was eventually related. So what happens is there's a Communist, you know, not revolution exactly, but like there's Communist fighting. Tracy, I'm looking at you because you know everything about this. I assume you know more about this than I do, but there's Communist fighting. Socarna was the first president. Yes, the military led by Suharto uses that as an excuse to completely wipe out the Communist and all opposition. That's right. And then eventually kick out Socarna, Suharto beholms the president of Indonesia for 35 years or whatever until death. No, not until death. Right. There in the 90s, it's like the economy gets bad and it's finally his time to go. I listened to this podcast called Revolutions by Mike Duncan. I highly recommend it to everyone. It's well known where he goes through every single revolution that's ever happened. It's just him talking. Just tells you, I'm on Mexico right now. And it's just always so interesting how it's always the same fucking mistakes. The guys just stay a little too long. And it's like, hey, you're getting old. Do you want to like pick a successor? And he's like, well, if I pick a successor, then you'll try to get rid of me. You know, like it's like, you know, like it's like, they become you started the relationship by cheating on someone. Then you're like, I think you're going to cheat on me like the whole like, right. You know, they, they can't. And Sukarno was kind of laying the groundwork for the communist uprising that was eventually put down. One of the ways he did this was with the speech in which he spoke about living dangerously. Correct. As where the title comes from, which is never referenced in the film. It's referenced in the book. Right. Straight off the bat, but. Viveri Peri Coloso. Well said. And like he, he called, he gave the speech during like an anniversary of their independence. I know it was about a year before the coup, but was he like, did he want this coup to happen the way it happened? Like, no, right? Like, like the 30, so this is the thing that's all sort of the start to get in the weeds here. And it's like, I'm, I'm, I'm lost. Again, seeing it in 1983, I couldn't have found Indonesia on a map. Sure. Right. That didn't matter. Like it didn't matter. The film effect. But what just, what spoke to you about the film then, I guess, apart from just the kind of rock? Well, again, the, the stranger in a strange land aspect of it, the, the, the quality of the performances, the love story that you talk about. I mean, the scene where he goes into the embassy party and then she comes and she gets in the car with him and we start to play the Van, Van Jelisse song is just the hottest scene. Unbelievably hot. They're really like peak handsome. That's who it, you know, like Gibson and Weaver. Well, they're not only physically attractive, but they're such good actors and they play, they play that desire so effectively. And speak that much to each other. No, but then there's also the sort of loaded mystery of like, you know, is there, is there a secret layer to this relationship? Are you gaming me a little bit? Is that, which kind of makes it harder. Yeah. And, and the, the filmmaking. I mean, I suppose with Picnic at Hanging Rock, he had established that he was a great filmmaker. Sure. But, you know, I just watched The Stuntman last night and But bemoaning, who, who's the director? Richard Rush. You know, that's a new radiance. Yeah. Why did this guy never make another great film? Yeah. That's one of my dad's. So it's like, what is it going to be? How are we going to know that Peter Weir is really that guy? And I think you're of living dangerously. It's very apparent that he is that guy. That scene where the British journalist says, I've taken a bungalow and then we cut from there to the guys having a kind of rickshaw or tuck, tuck race down the street. He takes about five minutes to say, I've taken a bungalow. Yeah. Right. He does a lot of purple preamble too. But yes. And then the music choices and the, the tuck, tuck race that takes us into the bungalow. And then the whole bungalow sequence in which we hear very little of the dialogue being spoken, but so much of the sexual tension between Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson is playing out through the dance, the Jerry Lee Lewis music, all of that. Just the way all of that is put together is really masterful filmmaking, I think. In a really unshoey way, he has such an incredible command of like the music of cinema in the sense of the magic you can get when you just have every element of this art form working in tandem. And you're not doing anything really gimmicky or flashy, but it is just the camera and the editing and the performances and the language and the literal music, the blocking, the framing, the art direction, everything. You know, he, he, it's like subtle magic trick. Shit. You know, it just feels like he's always doing like close up magic that is very skillful and making these things just flow so organically and be so, his movies are weirdly seductive even when they are not sexually charged. But he'd never made a sexually charged movie up until now. This is his horniest movie. Yeah. I would argue Picnic and Hanging Rock is very sexually charged. Yes, that's true. With the threat of sexual violence. Exactly. And it's mysterious and like, I mean, it's just at the time, especially imagine if you had seen had you seen other Weir movies when this came out, probably not, right? Like imagine being like, okay, what if the guy who made Picnic and Hanging Rock in the last wave and Gallipoli make next. I guess this has a little bit of a handshake with Gallipoli. Yeah. And the mel especially, this idea of now we're going to start digging in. Yeah. And like, let's tell us like Gallipoli and this both tell like human stories of like intimate relationships in a grand setting, like, you know, where there's a big thing playing out in the background. And I just find it ultimately just really transporting when the movie starts, I'm, I'm in a different era. There's even something about the way the credits look, the way the way the credit sequence over the shadow puppets. Yes, it feels, it feels of another time. Very effectively transporting me to a different time and place. And I love that. Our friend Bobby Finger, past and future guest, I was looking at all the letterbox logs for this movie. He used the term meandering as a positive, which I'm like, that is a good way of putting. I also, the weird movie is the mood it should have. It's the movie that they're very much on their own time zone. They're working at their own pace and they lull you into what they're doing. But it's the mood it should have because it's like that until it's not. And then when everything's going down, it makes the like the shock of that so much stronger. And then the death of Billy so much more like, you know, unbearable. It is also the thing I'm almost most allergic to in historical films or films about important political issues is characters who are so aware of the importance of what they are doing in every line in every gesture and filmmaking that is just focused on communicating that to you. The stakes of the importance in a way that is not representative of what it feels to live, to be a person, even when you were in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, you are not burdened with the weight of importance of what you're doing and how it's going to be studied. I think that's right. Yeah. I think that's I think you're right about that. I think, you know, if if Woodward and Bernstein were sitting around and all the presidents men saying, you know, this is the future of right, you know, fucking fate of democracy rests on our shoulders, you know, but instead they're saying, I got to go and talk to that lady and see if I can get her on the red. You know, it's what's most well judged about that movie is the amount of time that's them just being like, huh, she didn't pick up, you know, right, that you're not just seeing the important things and that they don't immediately have the full picture. The first time I saw that movie when I was a teenager or whatever, and it ends with them publishing. Yeah. I was like, wait a second, this isn't the Watergate movie about like where they get fucking Nixon and like the last half of it is like Congress and, you know, testimonies and like, oh, they erased the tapes. It's like none of that's in the movie. Like literally just a movie about getting that story. Such a good movie. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Good fork it. You got that fork? That's I mean, talk about a good image. Is Pakula up or down? He like, what do you mean? Because like, I feel like for a while, he was in the potential bucket for the losers bracket this year. I don't know. I don't know what I heard you reference this. I don't know what this is. Every March, we do 32 directors, a daily vote, a bracket, like, uh, you know, who's voting? Our listeners are listening. And we let them dictate one piece of programming a year. But where do they go to vote? Well, it's on Twitter, which I don't know if you've heard is doing really well right now is a normal place to have civil discussions. And now we do it on our own website. Oh, it's good on our website. You can go vote. I'll vote for you right now. Wes Anderson or Preston Sturgis? Preston Sturgis. My man. My correct answer. Yeah. No offense to Wes. Who is the great guy? No offense to that. Wes would vote for Preston Sturgis. He would vote in a second. Yes. But you, you had said you were like, is Pakula too many films? Is he a little down? No, it's a very great, interesting filmography. I mean, the latter half of his career is a little less sexy, but it's what's interesting to us when we try to cultivate and curate who's going to be on the bracket each year is, but you guys already know you've got this thing planned out for the next five years. We're crazy. It can't be somewhat about a year and a half. But we leave gas to let this one thing by the fans, right? Whoever wins this March Madness thing will just go on the set. For a whole series? Yes. The fans pick a whole series? Correct. Who's the last director they picked? The last director? The Kohn brothers. The Kohn brothers. Poor us. Right. So it's like, they usually pick someone. Five months, but it was a good fucking five months. Yeah. Yeah. And right now, yeah, it's, it's Scorsese. Scorsese, Milosh Foreman. You haven't done Scorsese yet? No. No, because it's a very hefty ask. So that's a little bit of us being like to the fans, like, are you cool with essentially a sort of a half a year on this guy? Which is like, it's fine. I mean, it's Martin Scorsese. We're like the size that is perfect for us. If you got like, how about Charles Lawton? I mean, well, you know, he's pretty easy. Just knocking it out. Sometimes if there's like a guest being floated who might be tough in terms of scheduling, we'll throw out, is there a one film filmography you want to cover? Because we know we could just slot that in anywhere. And so long we've always kind of kept on the table as like, is anyone ever going to try to claim that? Pretty good movie. Pretty fucking excellent movie. But no, but yeah. You worked with one, but you've worked with multiple blank check. You've worked with Catherine Bigelow. I have who we've covered on that. I'm trying to think of like who else. You guys shit all over my movie. You were a little more positive than the other people. Yes. I made a joke about you being terrified that you had a physical meeting. I like that you shouted out Lindor. That was going to get bombed. Who's the other Marie? Is that Marie? Yeah, Marie. She's on my shit list. Marie's going to be thrilled to hear this. We covered the post way back when. Hold on. I'm not done talking about her. So Marie, she says at one point, she said, well, I missed this vital part of the movie because I just happened to look away from the screen for a minute. It's like, happened to look, who happens to look? You don't know how to watch a movie. Because I know what that means. It means she's looking at her fucking phone, which means she doesn't know how to watch a movie. And she's totally on my shit list. She's on my brain. You have to earn Tracey's respect back or struss. I'm looking here like Adam McKay, Todd Salons. Sure. I'm like, these are people where they're like major directors, but we haven't done them. And I don't know if we would. All right. But we covered the post. Yeah. We kind of post. I haven't seen it. I love that film. We were very, very high on it in the moment because it was a new release. So we were very excited by it. I have not revisited that film, but I like that film. We really don't have to do my filmography. No, I'm just Tracey, if there are other directors that we've covered, but those are the two, I think. Catherine and Steven. Yes. And then we covered Ghostbusters Afterlife. Of course, you're the main character in that. That was a favor. I don't mind saying that. I mean, I would say that if Jason were here, you were around. The truth is that Mike Judge was supposed to play that part. Oh, really? Funny. He was supposed to play the part. And for some reason, the last minute, there was a scheduling problem. And Jason, we're in Calgary, we're in Kerry shooting the movie. We were already there. I was there with my wife and kids while she was working on the movie. And Jason's like, wow, if only we could think of somebody from Oklahoma who could do a scene with Kerry. So that's how I wound up in that. But you've not done Jason on the... No, we did a... On our Patreon, we watched the Ghostbusters. So you got to work with Muncher. Muncher's like Ghost and Ghostbusters. Okay. A blue guy. Again, just being mindful of timing. Yeah, we should wrap up soon. Try and maybe just hit a couple more major points in the plot. Griffin, you were referencing Mel's character being aware of living through a major event. Not being burdened with that self-importance. That he is kind of not solipsistically, but he is primarily just going, okay, let me figure out the lay of the land. Who are the pieces on the board? And how do I take the right side? He's not thinking about the impact he has. He's just trying to build a good career starting from that point. Where I'm trying to steer us is that Jill passes him info and that the Chinese communists are about to arm the PKI, which is the local Communist Party. Right. And he makes the decision that we've been saying throughout, the ethical decision that's really not the right one. Ben, we haven't heard what you think about the Year of Living Dangerous. I had never seen it before. And I really, really loved it. It really resonated with me. I have such romanticism for this kind of life of like a journalist living abroad, living hard, smoking cigs, drinking, hanging out at bars. You've lived dangerously most years of your life. I would say I have a past and I still think about those times fondly and glad I made it out. But yeah, this movie was just such joy to watch. Great. I'm glad to hear that because I feel like, obviously, this is, my presence here on your show is endorsement of the Year of Living Dangerous. I mean, you could always come on to discuss a film you don't think works. It's fun to talk about movies that don't work or that are outright failures. That can be kind of fun too. Can I share it? It also made me feel like I was able to live in a Tom Waits song. That is well put. This is just, like, that's the thing with a Tom Waits song. Like, this is just not my climate. Just, you know, it's just a Tom Waits song. It's not your climate or... Well, because Tom Waits is, you know, the sort of the bayou and this is kind of like the, you know, the same thing. It's too, the air is just too wet for me. Like, I would just be struggling. Yeah. I can't be in this sort of jungle-y climate. This is a damp movie. Yes. I love the beach. I love the water. Yeah. Like that, that's sort of, I know I would just, I would suffer very hard. They let the actors sweat, right? They do. It's part of the sexiness. It's part of the, like, and like, yeah, so the decision it read, it's basically Jill's like, hey, this shit's about to go down. You got to get out. And he's like, aren't I a fucking journalist? Like, right? He does the one kind of journalistic thing. He's like, I'm going to, you know, publish this news. But it's selfish because he's like, this is my big story, right? It's part of his motivation. Yes. You're right that there's a little bit of him being a hot dogging right kind of guy. Yeah. You're right. You're right. But everyone else is like manipulating him towards positive ends. You know, they are, they are sort of driving him as a vehicle in the right direction because I think they all identify. I was, I was thinking a little bit of this movie in relation to broadcast news, which is obviously so much about completely excoriating the William Hurt character. But there's, there's certain commonalities between these two of just like, oh my God, here's just a guy with the right shoulders and the right eyes and the right voice and the steady hand. He is so dangerous if he does not have a moral compass installed in him or the wrong people get a hold of him because immediately is this understanding of whatever this guy communicates to the public is going to be heard. You know, he is like a human printing machine for the legend. Right. Right. I just love too. He's a radio journalist. Like I love hearing him deliver the news. Yes. And it's not just that he's writing the pieces. That seems so good too. When he's doing the broadcast, he can't stop sweating. Yeah. Yeah. The character Kumar we haven't really talked about, but sort of a vital character in the last act of the film. He is driver. His, the fact that he is PKI, which is revealed late in the film, is so obvious when you watch the movie. It was like, oh, shit. How many times does Peter Weir show him sort of looking, giving side eye to the other woman who works in the office? Or I mean, clearly he's, it's like everybody knows it, but Mel Gibson. But that's what I love about this is like you kind of buy the Gibson is just, he's not dumb, but it's just too innocent to really understand like the dies sort of been cast. Well, that's also like I've arrived at a situation that is already wrapping up and I, I'm just like here to have fun and learn things. It's the other thing that reminded me of broadcast news where you're just sort of like, there is this cultural reckoning with, has the media become something that is now out of our control? You know, it has gained too much power. We have given it to a medium we don't quite understand where the values can be completely thrown out of whack based on things like watchability, you know, and the right answer to that is yes. Yes. Yes. And that, you know, there's this attitude of William Hertz more aware that he's part of the problem, but he's sort of like, if not me, then who someone else is going to do it, right? And he's right. I'm not the one who created this situation. You know, with, with some years, you can look at it and go, oh, actually, if it's not William Hertz, it's going to be another William Hertz. Totally. And the other part of it is, for better or worse, this guy projects intelligence, whether or not he has intelligence is irrelevant. Whether or not he understands the situation is irrelevant. It is that no one will listen to Billy Kwan and people will listen to Sigourney Weaver even less, despite being a mega babe movie star because she is a female diplomat. That's right. Right. And this guy is going to be able to Yeah. He's a megaphone. He's going to be heard. He's the best kind of character. Yeah. Smart enough to know that what he wants isn't going to happen, but still like a little bit of an out, like, can't dodge the true believer thing. I like, but what if you fed your people? Or what if you helped, you know, in the way I know you want to, or you could, or what, you know, and it's such a great, you know, again, the third man. Yeah. Holly Martins, right? He's, Holly Martins goes through the same crisis over the course of the film. Not understanding the situation he's in, having the situation explained to him still doesn't get it, has to see the situation played out in front of him to sort of start to grasp just what the stakes are. It is what I also find fascinating about like the possible queer reading of this movie and the Billy Quan character is there was a notion of, is Billy Quan someone who was born biologically female, who has adapted the persona of a male, whether through like a genuine expression of gender identity or a strategic means to an end to be taken seriously and to be able to power these things. I think there is like a queerness that Linda Hunt plays. And in this interview I read where she made the super persona comment, she said that was a deliberate thoughtful thing in her mind, that she was not like clearly I am playing this role like a cross dresser. But I think it's part of what's fascinating about this performance is it doesn't just feel like, well, this is like a stylistic kind of flourish that you just suspension of disbelief by this performance. Even I think in how every scene is played, the other characters kind of eyeballing Billy and going, what's going on here? What's the deal? And part of that is that Billy holds his cards close to his chest, but part of that also is like, so what, so is that's the haircut? What's, you know, like everything's a little, no one has really looked or sounded like this. Death of Billy very sad. And like, and just like, that's really of course like, I mean, do you buy that? I don't really think that guy is in danger as much as guy is in real danger after that and gets through the blockades and gets the airport. But you are like, right, but the, you know, the loss already happened. I mean, I guess, I guess guys like it's fucked up. Well, and he has to navigate it without any help from Billy, right? It's not just Billy's death, but that he doesn't have an advocate. And what he has to navigate is how do I get the fuck out of dodge? Right. And then it is, right? There is like, it's not like, I'm going to expose this. I'm going to write. Oh, I just watched the government murder journalist. Like, and it says like, where's the fucking airport? It's so, it's so silly that he goes to the palace and the way he conducts himself. Right. It's like, clearly he's, he's not thinking in his right mind because he's upset, but also he doesn't have Billy to guide him anymore. Right. Right. That's not going to work. Well, he's also got the presumption of a white guy. Like they wouldn't dare kill me. Right. Right. And there's something so kind of like undignified about Billy's death. Right. And even the way it is shown on screen that we get the moment of the breaking through the door and Billy's reaction. And then we're mostly seeing just the body lying on the ground afterwards. Once Guy comes to the scene. And Guy later says when they're cleaning up Billy's stuff that, uh, Socarno didn't even see the banner. Right. Yeah. Right. Tragic. But it's, it's not some epic, uh, sacrifice moment. Sure. You know, yeah. There is very, it's not, not effective. Yeah. So dumb, pointless, but you understand that, you know, the motivation, the sort of like, yeah, the desire to, uh, just do something. And Billy's so distraught because he's been giving money to that family and that young boy gets sick and passes away. And I think that just like really pushes them over the edge. Yes. Yes. And it's, like it's the, it's the dehumanization. Yeah. It is the, the, these are not chess pieces. These are human beings. We should play a box office game. You're going straight from, I think so. I mean, is there anything else we want to say about the film? I'm just, I'm trying to bring the plane in here. I don't want to, I think we haven't paid enough attention to Maurice Jarre and yes, uh, uh, Vangelis who the song is credited in the closing credits, but Vangelis himself is not name checked. So you would almost think that song is written by Maurice. Maurice and it's not. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, the classic like Peter Weir would just have like a collection of tapes. He would play music all the time while he's writing rock and roll, pop music is really like it's just fun to have 2D fruit in this movie. He just liked that little, you know, that little song he uses, uh, and uses it twice obviously apart from that, it's Maurice. Uses it twice, very close together by the way. It's sort of unorthodox the way he uses it. Also Russell Boyd, his guy. Yeah. I mean, and to be clear about Jarre, Jarre then goes to Hollywood, does witness, does mosquito coast, does dead poets, like becomes weird. This is really the key team that he carries over. Right. Yeah. Russell Boyd, the legend, uh, like who is, you know, at Picnic and Hang Rock, like when they have no money, figuring out all these innovative ways to like make the air feel magical, essentially. And he's such an incredible DP. He's still alive. Still working, I think. Uh, he hasn't really worked much since we're retired. Oh, yeah. Right. His last credit is the way back. Yeah. And before that, of course, Ghost Rider, he did shoot Nicholas Cage's Ghost Rider. Uh, why is this movie not on 4K? Well, I guess we already talked about this. It's almost certainly a rights issue. It's probably a rights thing, but it is odd that no one's left to figure it out. Given Gibson, given the Oscar. It's worthy of restoration. Yeah, I agree. Uh, and it's worthy of conversation, right? If, doesn't it provide an opportunity to revisit this question of casting? Sure. The question of politics. And, uh, it would seem to me that a new release would provide the opportunity to further that discussion. I mean, to go hard, I think that's why also MGM, or whoever has fucking access to MGM home video now through Amazon, maybe Sony, isn't going to just be like, yeah, just like put that one out with a theatrical trailer. I think there's a worry about just giving it the kind of release that Gallipoli got from Paramount, which is just like, we put it on a disc. Are you happy? Versus this is a movie that needs to be like, have a thoughtfully curated extras package of dialogue around it and context provided. Uh, so I don't want to, one of the, one of the specialty labels needs to step up. Yeah. Um, this film came out. Do you know about the box office game? I've heard you guys play the box office game. I intentionally did not do any investigation because I want to play, uh, legit and honest player. So, um, this film came out limited release January 21st, uh, 1983. Wow. So you're a graduated high school. Congratulations. Thank you. Uh, so that's as far as my education went, but nevertheless, where'd you go to high school? Do rant high school in do rant Oklahoma. Hell yeah. Um, so, uh, it is obviously it's limited really. So it's not in the top five. Number one, it's a lot of holdovers, I would say from, you know, the 82 season. Yeah. Yeah. Number one is a big Oscar winning movie of 1982, a comedy classic, but it wasn't the big, what's Tootsie? It's Tootsie. Because Tootsie was a December release. Tootsie came out in December. Yeah. December 82. The massive box office. Unbelievable box office. And in my past of, of trying to memorize box office charts and such, it does just feel like the first four to six months of 1983 are ruled by Tootsie until ET comes to me. So at the time I did, I know it came out before in a packed movie theater. Yeah. Did you enjoy Tootsie? I loved it. Do you have you thought about Tootsie lately? I feel like I'm like, I said, I selected it. It's Tootsie in the room with us. We did a 1982 movie draft on the big picture and I selected to listen to it. Yes. Um, a film I've only seen once. Really? Maybe twice? Yeah. But I enjoyed, but I have not seen in years. Which what? Tootsie? Worthy of revisit. Yeah. I'll revisit. Criterion, Criterion edition, very good. Yeah. Number two. Tootsie number one. Number two. What's Tootsie up to? Well, it's only been out for a few weeks, but it has made, damn, it's made $81 million. I think it at the time was one of the 10 highest grossing films in American history. Yeah. So number two is an action film that had come out earlier in December. Okay. A gigantic breakout hit for one of its stars. For one of its stars. I mean, the other guy is- It's a two-hander. It's a two-hander. I mean, the other guy's a little bit more of a name. I guess it's sort of a breakout for both of them, but especially for the supporting. For the sort of- So one guy was already more established, but the less established guy really kind of popped on this one. It becomes the most famous actor of the eighties. Action comedy? Yes. Very much. It's 48 hours. Oh, well, yes. 48 hours. Yes. Like, Nolte at that point, like, he's not nobody. No, not at all. But, you know, he's an established star. And Eddie Murphy is 21 years old. Eddie Murphy is but a child, essentially. So fucking good. So those are, I mean, like, obviously, those are like sort of- Yeah. It's like, basically, do you want to go see, you know, this kind of comedy or that kind of comedy? Like, they're just kings of the box office. Number three is, I mean, and now I'm thinking about the 1982 draft that you did. Certainly, one of my favorites of 82. Probably not my number one favorite, but one of your favorite directors, you know, sort of was nominated for many Oscars, big drama. It's a big Gandhi. Not Gandhi, but I can tell you that Gandhi is number four. Is it a Lumet? It is a Cindy Lumet. Is it Cindy Lumet movie? Oh, the verdict. It's the verdict. Hell, yes. So I think I got that in the legal draft on Big Picture, if we're just all reminding people of our past draft. I got the verdict. I got the verdict. You got the verdict? Absolutely. That was my like, number one. I think so. I can try to look it up. But the verdict is the best. I got the verdict in the 82 draft. The best. Why do I feel like I'm going to look it up? Oh, because I took 12 Angry Men. I don't know. I feel like I had first found it. You guys did a legal draft? We did a lawyer movie draft. I got, this is lawyer movie, so it's drama, comedy, thriller, Oscar winner, movie lawyer that you would want to represent to you. Oh, nice. And then John Grisham was its own category. And I got the verdict. Intolerable cruelty. The devil's advocate, Chicago, the firm and Atticus Finch. Not bad. You got Bridge of Spies, Legally Blonde, Michael Clayton, Philadelphia, the rainmaker, and Grisham. And then you picked Stanley Tucci and Spotlight as your lawyer. Oh, I knew that I had first round pick and I was like, what would I have gone for over the verdict? And the answer was, I knew it was going to be a feeding frenzy for Michael Clayton. You got Michael Clayton. I had to get Michael Clayton. Yeah. So, okay. Yeah, the verdict. So, number four is Gandhi. What's your take on, of course, the best picture winner. It will, or it's about to be the best picture winner. Gandhi. What about it? You're a big fan? No, it's kind of, I feel like you guys all kind of shat on Gandhi. We did the 82 draft. No, maybe they shat on it more than I did. It was important in the moment and Kingsley was undeniable. Kingsley is unbelievable. I think Gandhi is, you know, it's not one of the great movies of 82, but it gets a slightly bad rap. It's like, it's very watchable. It's pretty good. I still have never seen it. Yeah. I have it in that big Columbia classics box set and I'm just like, when am I in the mood to just throw on three hours of Gandhi? Let me tell you, well, Kingsley really elevates it. I mean, there really is a way on board with that movie, but also to see a hundred thousand extras, that's why it's just on his unimaginable. You'll never see it again. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's all right. I mean, you know, it's not, not incredible. It's got all the flaws you'd think it has. Number five is a real Griffin movie. It's a real Griffin movie. Is it an 82 holder or an 83? It's an 82 holder. A fantasy film. It's a fantasy film. It's like one of my favorites. Or is it just my type of thing? I'm sure you like it. It is the Dark Crystal. There you go. I like it. Oh, my son's favorite movie. Wow, there you go. Most watched movie in our house. Scary. He loves it. He loves it. Can I tell you the movie I almost bought as one of the three and I actually just could not physically locate a copy in time. But if you have not watched it with your son yet, I highly recommend. Have you guys done Paranorman? He got scared by, is it called Coraline? Yes. He got scared by Coraline. Interesting. Yeah. Coraline's scary. And so we haven't gone back into, he likes Box Trolls. And I noticed you had done James on the giant peach as well. Yeah. Box Trolls is the guy who eats the cheese and his face. Ben Kingsley. Yeah, he's really good. He's good, but it's very freaky. Yes. Paranorman is about fear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is like reckoning with fear. And I think it is one of the better dramatizations of fear mongering I have ever seen. We have it on the shelf. I think it is steel box. Okay. Okay. So if I had gotten it for you, I would have fucking struck out on that one. Okay. I chose right. I'll tell you the rest of the top 10. Number six is The Toy, the Richard Donner film with Pryor and Gleason that is remake of a French. That's right. Perfect politics. Yeah. Oh, does that have perfect politics? I haven't seen it. Jackie Gleason buys a black man and hands him to his son and says, have fun. Another Oscar. So that's a December 82 release that didn't really translate. Another Oscar. That was a pretty big hit though. Not at the same scale of Tootsie and 49 hours. Yeah, maybe. 47. That was pretty good. Sophie's Choice, which is, you know, is okay. I don't know. I don't know what you feel about Sophie's Choice. Haven't seen it since, since like 82. Well, I've seen it since then. It was on cable a lot. I recall it being pretty good. Yeah. Peter McNichol. Fantastic. It's, his career is fascinating when you zoom out. Right. How many times? Just when you discover him later in life and you're like, okay, so who's, what's this, how this guy gets started? You know, like Sophie's Choice is not what you would expect. Uh, number, sorry, number eight is best friends. The Bert Reynolds. Reynolds Goldie Hawn. Goldie Hawn. Valerie Curtin, uh, screenplay. Okay. Yeah. Valerie Curtin wrote it with Barry Levinson and it's based on their friendship. Right. So is it a sort of like, they're like, it's a bit of a sweat. It's a, it's a wind harry mitsality. Right. Right. Right. Directed by Norman Jewish and I've never seen. No, me neither. It's not great. Sure. Fair enough. Number nine is ET. Big one. Big movie. And then, uh, number 10 is the man from Snowy River. What is this? Australian film. Really? Directed by George Miller. Not that George. George T. Miller. Yeah. Wow. Who also directed the never ending story too. Yes. Australian Western. Griffin was offered crocodile dundee and had to turn it down. I can't believe it cracked the top top. Well, it's, it's opening at number 10. So not amazing. But yeah, but yeah, Kirk Douglas. It's what we were saying. The Australian kind of like, Australian fever is cracking. Kirk Douglas in dual roles as brothers Harrison and Spur. Man from Snowy River is good. I give that a thumbs up. And it got a, it even got a sequel. Man from Snowy River too. What's the, what's the physical media report on man from Snowy River? What are we looking at? I don't think I own it. Okay. I don't know. Let's see. So you have to sort of dutifully like log, like, because the, see, uh, the database thing, what's like CLZ or whatever it's called. It's like, my problem is I'm always like, can I put this in? Or, you know, like where you do this little barcode scanning. Yeah. But every day I assume another pallet arrives. You're opening them up. It's my, it's my full time job. It's my job. Like, has an Amazon driver or anyone like that ever said to you like, you know, our fucking DVDs buddy? I guess. I live in a dormant building. A man on a driver has never said that to me. My wife says it too. No, sir. I live in a dormant building, Humble Bragg. And it does feel like every time I pick up a package, they're like, get a lot of stuff shipped to you. How many do you have? How many discs? I think I'm probably around a thousand, but I'm not dutifully logging. I should. How do you, um, store them? Like, do you have shelves? I mean, I, you know, I don't, I don't really. I have shelves that I have outgrown. There are now pillars of vertically stacked discs, like the books and ghostbusters. This is my problem. I have too many discs and store it. A very well arranged like shelving situation, but it's full. Yeah. And so now the new stuff arrives and I'm like, well, yeah, that is exactly what I, where I'm at. I now just have like a shelving unit that is full and then a corner where discs live. And I'm in between, I'm waiting on the new shelf. I'm watching this Bud Butcher westerns right now, that criterion. Is that what it has? We did the tall tea and all the renowned westerns. Jerry and I did every one of them. We did like one a week for five weeks. They're fantastic. Every one of them. I'm great. I'm really liking the sort of like, I just have to watch my discs because then it's sort of like the choice is out of my hands. Like I'm not going to agonize over. This is why Carrie wants me. This is why I pick the movie every night. Right. Right. Like I don't want to choose. I don't want to scroll. She's like, I don't want to. She's like, I, the shelves intimidate me. The streaming tiles. I can't make heads or tails of it. You pick, you put it on. No bitching. Obviously she's got veto power. I think the entire time they've been together, she's vetoed two movies. What are the two vetoes? Or is it a secret? One of them was a movie with Kate Blanchett and Judy. Notes on a scandal. Notes on a scandal. Good movie. I hadn't seen it. I put it on and Carrie said, I've seen this and I remember it. Okay. Okay. So it was just a bit in the red. I don't remember that. That was one veto. Parliament Hill. Don't remember. There's something else. No, it's not a scandal is a Parliament Hill classic. A Parliament Hill classic. What's that name? There's a lot of scenes set at Parliament Hill, which is a park I used to say. But no, she doesn't veto. She, if she wants, and she doesn't blame me when the movie is bad. Right. Does she ever tap out? She never taps out. She never taps out. Sometimes it's hard to keep her awake because she gets up early. But that's napping. There's a lot of like, me making her sit up and I scratch her back while we finish. But your kids do a good bedtime. This is the biggest thing in my life. Kids are pretty good with the bedtime. Good for them. Now, occasionally I'll put on a movie that I've seen that I like and she watches it and she's like, what the fuck? Sure. Right. The brood. This is a conversation in our house still. She's like, what the fuck? That movie rocks. But I mean, it is certainly, you got to be in the right mood for it. And it's, it's such a poisonously angry movie. Yes. Which I love. Yes. And I know it's his like divorce movie and it's that movie rocks. But yeah, I want to make sure I said everything I have to say. I wanted a bitch about Marie. Noted. So wear it as a badge of honor. I wanted to say the big picture, right? That the big, you know, this questionable whether or not I'm a big picture or a blank check. Well, can we get ahead? Can we get a cartoon likeness of you to wear on that desk and tell people they're sitting at Tracy's desk? We're allowing you to sit at Tracy's desk today. Right. We're not possessive like Sean. This is a very free and open environment. Sean's a little bit more with the chairs and the committees and the, you know, all this stuff. We're not loosey-goosey, but also I do. His spreadsheets. Airdrop to contract over to you if you want to look it over. There's potentially a five-year first look deal on the table. Not exclusive, but first look. I was surprised that you guys had guests come back. I didn't realize that till I listened to somebody recently and you're like, oh, they came back. So I want to look at your list. Absolutely. So I want to see you. Well, dictated by March Madness. Tracy, we'd love to have you on any time. I don't know if you know this, but you're quite an estimable person. So we don't want to just like bug you all the time, but we'd love to have you back. I don't feel like that, but that's all well and good. The last thing I want to say is that you're living dangerously. So I showed it to Kerry years ago. Again, oh, I didn't know the other things we wanted to talk about. Did we want to cover Star Wars or did we want to cover Godfather? Say what you're going to say and then Star Wars. Okay. There's two minutes on Star Wars. Two. So Kerry doesn't remember the movies. I showed her year of living dangerously a few years ago. She had no recollection of it. The nanny and I were watching it a couple of nights ago in pre- Transgression. Former SAG. Yes. Doctor President. Yeah. And Kerry walked in halfway through the movie. She'd been working in town and she walked in and halfway through the movie. And she's like, I remember none of this. I have no recollection of any of this. But she watched Mel Gibson for a few minutes and she said, my God, he's so in his body to watch the way he moves on cameras. Just like it really is what he could do. There's a scene where he's going out to the airport at the very end of the movie and he does a jog out there. It's sort of high stepping jog he does on the way out to the airport. And it is a marvel to see. It's too bad what happened to that guy. He was one of our great, great movie stars. And I think even before he went publicly insane, he lost some thread of like the kinds of movies he's remaking. He did. You know, he got too into the sort of Hollywood gigantic paycheck world. But then also his revenge thrillers started getting weirder and darker in a way that. He's an incredibly magnetic screen presence, especially in the 80s. That is a very good quote from her. And I often, almost always, the infrequent times that I now work as an actor, a thing I used to do a lot more. Now I'm a professional podcaster who sometimes acts. I think about a quote. That's how I define myself. I'll tell you the first time you did big picture after Hitmaker had set it up, and we were watching all that happened. We have a text thread called News and Deals that Alex Ross Perry is in as well as the great filmmaker David Lowry. We were all sharing Blu-ray announcements and deals. And we saw it happening, right? Hitmaker saying, you should maybe have Tracy. Do you know Tracy? Yes, I can connect it. This and that. And we go, Sean, you've recorded Tracy today. How was it? And he said, if that guy ever decided to start a movie podcast, we'd all be cool. Bump right down the chart. We're done. It is our saving grace that he is so in demand in other areas. He is so esteemed in so many other fields that he never will commit to a permanent desk, which is why he can be third chair, fourth desk, whatever. But I remember some interview that Kerry gave where she talked about being a full body actor, how she feels like she can always rely on her theatrical training to in on-camera work, which is often so bizarre and nonsensical and can leave you in a position where things are changing so fast. And you have so little bearing of where you are in the story that you can look kind of nonspecific in a scene that she relies on her instincts and using her full body and everything. And anytime I'm like acting professionally, again, I go, like, am I doing full body after shit? Or am I just thinking about my fucking head? Very nice. Yeah. Very nice. So it means a lot from her. She's also a former athlete and Mel clearly has some athletics in his back part as well. It's a big part of it. Yeah. And I think, I mean, you're talking about the shame of how fully this man unraveled, but it is an interesting thing where great actors are often people who have a really great dialogue ongoing with their own psychology and their own body and ability to take control of these things and own them and use them in a very deliberate way. But very often great movie stars are people who have some weird kind of unresolved thing within them. There is some inherent tension that makes them more watchable, makes them more watchable, even if it makes them less functional as a human being. And sometimes it is in a destructive way. It sometimes is in a self-destructive way. Sometimes it's just oddness. You meet certain movie stars and you're like, how do you tie your shoes? But on screen, I will buy anything you are selling. It is a fascinating thing. And we were talking with Marie, now officially on the shit list, recently who was saying that she had just rewatched Apollo 13 and she was like, how the fuck did Braveheart beat Apollo 13 for best picture? And we were like, you cannot overstate how powerful Mel Gibson was at that moment in time. It's really true. Yeah. Yeah, he was. Star Wars? Yes. So you threw out one of the worst movie takes I've ever heard of all time. Wait, remind me, oh, that you don't like the trench run, right? That you specifically said, we all agree that the ending of Star Wars sucks. To me, it's a real appeal. What I said was that the ending of Star Wars is the most boring climax to a great movie. That's so crazy. That's what I said. Yeah, it's so crazy. But you said it like we're all on the same page. Yeah. And you're saying it to boys there, I mean boy and girl, but you end up to, you know, like where I'm like, I watched the trench run. I would watch the trench run over. I would rewind my VHS. The DVHS degraded. Phenis has like the trench run tattooed on his body. Like he's the fucking prison break character. And the thing about the trench run to me is like, I love the climaxes of the other Star Wars movies where he had more money and he went more epic, but it's actually kind of small in this beautiful way. Dramatically, it's like perfect. And even like, I think these moments that are constantly ripped off from that sequence, but exploded and overstated even down to just the return of Han Solo at the moment you think he's got no support is I just think so gracefully and sort of succinctly done without making too much of a meal out. All right. Let me tell you millennial boys. A thing or two. We're young ass, Ripper snappers. I'm an old millennial. You know, you millennials are so monolithic in their movie opinions. Let me tell you, first of all, we never called it the fucking trench run. I don't know whoever came up with the trench run. Oh, I called it the end of Star Wars. Okay. And by the way, the movie was called Star Wars. I always call it Star Wars. That I am with you. We in this house, I will not buy a new hope. New hope doesn't fucking exist. That's what it sounds like. He had five minutes where he was they were like, by the way, are you going to put like a title on the other one? He's like, yeah, new hope. It's so funny for him to land on that title after he's promised he would make prequel someday, but hadn't figured out what the prequels were. And he was like, the one safe bet is this is probably a reset point because call it a new hope because Star Wars isn't a good title. The fucking title isn't working. It's so crazy how good a title Star Wars is. So a new hope, which is like, it sounds like a faith hill album. Isn't it crazy that Star Trek was a title before Star Wars? Yeah. Right. You know, like Star Trek sounds more esoteric and what is that? Why did you pick that? No one had done Star Wars. Now, yeah, the actual trench run itself. Right. First of all, you know, it's stolen from a movie called The Damn Buster. Yes. He would cut in footage of it, right? Damn Buster is a damn good movie. Yeah, very good movie. D.K.M. But we've not. Why is Luke piloting one of these goddamn, because he used to shoot one person as T-14. I don't know. Do you really think that he has the know-how to get into this machine, drive into this crevasse of the Death Star that you imagine like this is a ragtag rebel group. And they're like, we've scraped together like 10 of these ships. Yeah. And he shows up and they're like, you're like six foot two. You want to get in this thing? They also, well, first of all, he's like five foot 10. Secondly, they got like 20 like lifer pilots and all of them fucking flame out. And Luke is the last hope. Well, he's the Jedi. He's the chosen one. Yeah, of course. Of course. But why are we supposed to care about Victor Buono, who suddenly shows up, lading the movie in the ship, and is just like, where did he come from? Who's he's, and I'm, one of the guys, one of the big picture guys tells me that character has a name. Porkins? We're talking about porkins. The actor is actually William. William who can. He does have a really rude of you. Victor Buono. I saw William Hootkins play. I've told Griffin this, I'm sure. I mean, there's a play called Hitchcock Blonde and he played Hitchcock on the West End stage. He was with Rosamund Pike. Yeah. And David Hague and, I can't remember. He's not still with us, right? Hootkins past. He must be pretty old. If he is. He also, he's in Raiders Lost Ark. He's the guy who gives the porkins that there was a scene between porkins and the mechanic who put porkins in the thing and the mechanic's name was Beans. Do you suppose there was a scene between porkins and beans? Yes, they're better. Tracy, and you are getting at why Star Wars has the cultural stranglehold it does because it opens up these questions, these conversations. Tracy. We start thinking about beans. You could write 10 beans novels. Look, I'm a kid. My dad introduced me to Star Wars, obviously, as a sort of a right, right? You know, I watch it like, and then I'm obsessed with the trench front. And yeah, I only know it's like, yeah, there's the guy who gets shot immediately. You know, to prove that there will be deaths like where these guys are going to blow up. Yeah, I'm all right. Boom. Right. That's put. And then you like start to read books about Star or like you get and you're like, the guy's name is fucking porkins. Like they, they couldn't spend five minutes like figuring out a better name for this guy. Yeah. This guy's got a squid head. What's his name? I don't know. He's a Mon Calamari. Why is Darth Vader in a ship? Well, how, why have we? He's in a little tie fighter. Have we been led to believe that Darth Vader is good at flying some of these ships? So now what you're doing here is very interesting because it's sort of what we did when we started the show, which is like, if you examine Star Wars without the further context, because like, of course, when you watch the prequels, it's like, oh, he was a crack. Everything's backfilled and explained. But like you're right that the whole thing with Darth Vader in general, in Star Wars, where it's like, there's a fascist empire. It is mostly run by British white men who are older and are kind of like, I should kill all of them. Who is this sadist robot who walks around among them with a cape? Everyone else is a fascist Nazi guy. It's what's fascinating about is Peter Cushing, right? Darth Vader getting retroactively turned into like the greatest villain in cinema, where you're like, he was meant to be like the weird gimmicky bond henchmen. Yes. There's some big guy who's got an odd energy. Who is like, like, I just wish someone would be like, where are you on the org chart, buddy? I'm a major. What are you? Why do you get a cape, Darth? There's an emperor, then there's some general. I understand all these things. Who are you? And so then it kind of makes sense that he's like, I'll get my ship. Like there's some ships like, let's go. Right. Why is he getting a ship? Because it's like, that's the guy James Bond has to punch at the end, because it's not satisfying to watch him punch Dr. No. Dr. No is like an intellectual. Yes. He's not going to punch. Dr. No had a lot of good ideas out there. He's got credit. I stand. He's just trying to make America healthy. I stand by that take. I've rewatched Star Wars, the original trilogy with my son. He's liked them. We've watched them two, three times. But he's not. He is not venturing. He's not been gripped by them. No. He may be a little young for it. I mean, I saw them all in the movie theaters when they first came out. But you're probably. I was the right age. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Right. Sure. Well, the other thing with us. It is when I saw them, I think. I saw the re-release. You know, I've seen them already, but I was there for the re-releases in 97. Those are my first time seeing them. And I was 11 and that was perfect. It was everything. I couldn't believe how bad Phantom Menace was. I couldn't believe it. It's quite a menace. It's tough because, yeah. I had always been told it was bad. Finish your sentence. Because. Well, it's bubbling with some interesting ideas and some bad ideas. This podcast only exists because of our obsession with that film and how we are constantly wrestling with it. How we would keep attacking it being like, are we going to like it this time? And we're not wrestling with. Is this good or not as much as what is going on here? And I can tend it as the best of those three. So when it started, people were like, well, maybe he'll like, he's a little rusty. He'll regain his footing. I can tend it as the best of the three. It's the best of the three now. I think the Padre sequence is wonderful, which again, he's ripping off Ben Hurd, but like. It feels similar to the trench run where he's taking a classical visual language of an epic cinema of past and applying it to. And the thing that's happened with the prequels lately, you know, the prequels come out, they were hits obviously, but they are derived. Reviled. Yes. And now that the Disney legacy sequels have come out and had their own life cycle, now the fans are like, well, the prequels are interesting because they are interesting. They are weird. George Lucas is weird. They are outsider art. Right. They are made by a lunatic who can fund his own films at the highest level. And George Lucas was like, I want to sort of, you know, write about the fall of the Roman Empire. Right. Like I want to write about this sort of decline. How do fish just stick? But I also think there should be like a Jamaican fish alien because kids watch it. You know what I mean? And like in the original movies, you can see Lucas being tempered and that there's a lot of interest, you know, a lot of mature people around him as well. And the, and the prequels, he's unfettered. So he's like, we'll have George our banks and no one at any point is like, this fucking sucks. Like we cannot do this. That's part of the problem when you become as big as George Lucas. 100%. Nobody can tell you. Now everyone reveres Lucas and I revere him too because there's nothing like him. And God bless this thing. You know, he did lots of interesting things. But like, I remember reading interviews with Mark Hamill at the time, like in the 90s, where he's like, he's the fucking pope. You getting lunch with him is a day long production. You can't have a conversation with him anymore. Like where it's just like a regular like, Hey, why are you know, like, and like that's what. And so they're interesting objects in that way. Cause like when, how often does that happen in Hollywood? Never. Never. Literally never. So that's interesting. But are they like a good movie? No. But you, you know, fascinating. It sounds like your son watches a lot of goofy Kaiju movies, which rock, but like they're silly too. Right. Like it's like the right balance of silliness is something that can be hard to find. Right. Is the, like I said, the question is, is there a creature and especially are the creatures fighting? I not to, not to spoil you. I did additionally get to Kaiju action figures for your children. Oh my God. Oh my God. See, do you think the big picture ever did this? There you go. This is, we treat our guests right, especially after we make them do a three hour plus episode. Yeah. Far too long. That's a really red. That's a funky color, Hedora, but then this is, I think, a really skeleton Godzilla after he is atomized from the end of the 54 movie at the bottom. Oh, that's fantastic. Isn't that fucking cool? I've never seen that. He has a bigger Hedora, but he'll love, you can't have it. He just had a Gamera themed eighth birthday party. I got so many Gamera. The other kids from second grade walking into this being like, converted other people, like are his friends into Gamera? Not at all. No. Right. They're all into like K-pop demon hunters or whatever. Which he's never seen, doesn't know anything about. He goes over to a friend's house and they watch, he has no idea what. But he's not coming home being like, I must now watch K-pop demon hunters. That one's talking about it as well or whatever. Right. Well, that's great. I mean, I'd say, I mean, I'm right at the start of this with my kids. It's like, you know, the sort of like, the larger osmosis and you watch how it works. I have to say, I didn't do a lot of conditioning to get him kaiju crazy. Right. This isn't a thing where, this isn't like when parents are like, my kid's favorite band is The Clash and you're like, okay, you know. I had the criterion box of Godzilla, which has a big sort of comic book. I know I have it myself, of course. Right. Yes. He became interested in those visuals before he could even read and page through that. And he went through that over and over. He memorized all the, I taught him the titles. He memorized all the titles. And then I said, well, if you like this so much, maybe we should watch one of the movies. And I put on one of the movies. That's it. Immediately. That's it. Because they are weird. Yeah. Like they're weird to watch. They're not like movies now. Like your daughter, you haven't shown them. No, my daughter is quite fearful as we, she loves movies. I mean, and she loves Bowser. Who is something of a kaiju? I got her the big Godzilla toy, which she alternates between being scared. Well, now, now the big Godzilla toy is just a favorite friend. And our house Griffin got her a Godzilla that's like large, but she was old again. But I was 54, but he got her this a couple of years ago. And initially, yes, sometimes the Godzilla had to be like put away. Yeah. Right. Like it was a little and then had to act like Godzilla was eating his finger and that was that bit was kill it. She's like fucking dead comedy. She needs you guys to come over again. She's been asking. Hey, hey, wow. Anytime. But, but, um, yeah, but she, she hasn't seen Godzilla yet. I got, I got one. She doesn't like when Ursula gets big in the little mermaid like that, like freaks her out. Yes. And so that's also kaiju adjacent. So I've been like, maybe. But I also think don't start with 54. Start with the movies where Godzilla is the good monster and he fights the bad monsters. Right. I think maybe the first movie he watched was destroy all monsters. That I would say is the best starting point because then you also have the Minya in that one, right? The the the witch. And I was going to say the little little baby Godzilla. Oh, yeah. Manila. Manila. Yes. Oh, I know that one. That one's cute. He's cute. He's a good answer. I'm not even that deep on Godzilla. I like Mothra. Mothra's cool. All right. So I want to shout out. Like Rodin. Uh, we have, I looked up our Indonesian, uh, listenership the last 12 months got about like 1500 downloads. Really? So there's some folks out there. So we just want to shout out to our listeners. Very nice. Hello Jakarta. What's up? Would love to visit. Sure. Just looks like I was like looking at Google Maps. Quite stunning. If you're one of those 1500, let us know what the local comedy theater breakdown is. If there's a good opportunity for us to do a live show. Yeah. Yeah. Please do. Yeah. Yes. Tracy, we've taken far too much of your time. Thank you so much. I can't believe this podcast is going to be four hours long. You're going to have to find some. It's not as good as it is. It'll be 315, which unfortunately may not even crack top five. It will not. It won't. It won't crack the 10. I don't think. Jesus. The audience weirdly just demands longer and longer. I don't know why. You're a king amongst men. You are. You are the boss bitch. You guys are sweet. Have anything to plug? Is there I'm not just ended its run on Broadway? Yeah. Not plug it. Nothing. Ben wants to see bug. Did you know I loved it? Oh, thanks, man. I think it really captures the paranoia of being on drugs. Thanks. Bug rocks. No, nothing to plug. As I've said before, this is my job. The acting in the playwriting is hopping. That's just right. You're plugging physical media and the value of owning the films you care about. You've plugged a beautiful hand to the past. But you guys, yes, Tracy has spoken very well of why it's great to own a disc. But our fans already know that, I would say. I will tell you as someone with an overwhelming amount of anxiety, most times in my life, I'm constantly trying to find different pieces of media that can function as a balm for me, things that for whatever reason, physiologically, just calm me down, slower the heart rate, slower the heart rate. Yeah, we're doing it. Slow down the heart rate. We need that much. Long form interviews with you have started really doing the trick. You got a great voice. Very nice. You got a great voice. But thank you for being here. We will absolutely force you to come back again. We will hold you to your openness. And thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Witness with Amanda Dobbins, Dobb Mob for life. We're doing it. He's crossing the ocean. He's coming over to Hollywood. Yep, this episode, this series has Dobbins as Sean, it has Hitmaker. It's got all the big boys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, y'all. Thank you. That is always. And as always, I have to ask, because I almost bought it, have you seen, slash, do you own, slash, has your son seen the role in Emerick Godzilla? No. And is that a forceful blocking him from that experience? No. In fact, when he turned eight, I said to him, you can now watch any Godzilla movie. If Godzilla's in it, you can watch it. Wow. That had not been the case before he was eight. That's like the best version of like the birds and the bees talk. You're old enough to start. I was like, he was limited for a long time to the Showa era. Yeah. And then I expanded the Heisei era, but now he can watch any Godzilla movie. Wow. If he ever watches it, please let us know, because I think he will hate it. But I was curious. I didn't want to infect your collection with the disc. I don't think it's a good film, much like Phantom Menace. I've always been fascinated by how broken it is, but I saw it about his age and really struggled with why it didn't make me happy. Blank check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeehan. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeehan and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ali Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.