Blank Check with Griffin & David - 127 Hours with Sean Clements

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

Welcome to another installment in the “If This Happened to Ben Hosley, It Wouldn’t Have Gone Down Like That” series of films - it’s 127 HOURS! Hollywood Handbook’s Sean Clements returns to the pod as we all discuss what we would do if, like real-life outdoorsman Aron Ralston, we got literally “stuck between a rock and a hard place.” What is gnarlier - cutting off your own arm, drinking your own pee, or hosting the Oscars the same year you get your first acting nomination and completely self-sabotaging during it? James Franco, we’re looking at you. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

You know I've been thinking everything is just comes together. It's me. I chose this. I chose all of this. This rock, this rock has been waiting for me my entire life and its entire life ever since it was a bit of a meteorite a million billion years ago up there in space. It's been waiting to come here right right here. I've been moving toward it my entire life.

The minute I was born, every breath I've taken, every action has been leading me to this podcast on the Earth's surface. Doesn't it feel that way sometimes, David? Absolutely. Doesn't it feel like we're just stuck With which of us is the rock And which of us is the arm Great question I think it swaps

Sometimes I think Or the audience Are the audience the rock and we're the arm Maybe Or sometimes it's the other way around You know sometimes We're trapping them They're stuck in here with us A main conversation it goes both ways i mean like any good marriage sometimes my experience

is the guest is the arm oh oh boy well that's true we're happy you're stuck here with us i don't know what you're talking about sean i do not know a single person who has ever not enjoyed being on Hollywood Handbook. I cannot. It's certainly not personally. Certainly not someone I was on the show with. I can't even imagine someone having. It has to be brought up every time. I can't even theorize the adverse reaction someone would have. would happen i remember i just remember you telling me i was like oh how did that go and you were like well i don't know just uh was sort of and we could bleep that out if you want but uh you know it's just sort of sitting there and they would just be kind of like uh what are bugs first of all first of all i i believe the question was what is bugs? Secondly, I think people can... Sounds like a good show. Great joke. He does. Perfect, diamond-cut joke.

I think people can look at the history of times I have been on Hollywood Handbook and see the times I have done it with other people and guess which one of those people didn't like it. We can bleep out the name, but I don't think, with no disrespect to that person who was a friend of mine but was not able to quite really nice guy link into what was going on i just remember how open he was about disliking it like he just yep both on my during this is confusing for me because you seemed like lovely people that was his exact outside of the show

right but then the show is so aggressively unpleasant i know people who like you i know people who like you yeah so it's just a little confusing it's also funny because that was maybe a 47 minute record and he did come out of it looking exactly like franco at the end of the movie it was blood around his mouth tourniquet and he had he had severed one of his limbs even though he didn't need to do that dysentery yeah yeah he was yes he had various sores that had developed throughout the recording canteen full of mud look this is blank check with griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david that was i mean i don't know if it's because it's a late

night record david be a little slow on the draw there i'm a little slow i think i think i have some sort of permanent zoom delay at this point. I don't know, Griff. Oh, boy. Well, don't you think so? I feel like I'm always a little delayed these days. Remember when we had to do this shit every fucking episode? Yeah, do you remember? Remember like a year and a half of doing it every episode, and for a good run of that, records would only start at 10 p.m.?

I think it was 9 p.m., yeah yeah yeah yeah what can i tell you a hell's look i don't want to i don't want to be overly dramatic here that was my 127 hours and i think it was actually worse i think it was actually worse than what he experienced um but we tend to record in person now because we've learned the lesson of danny boyle that humanity is about the connections we make being there with other people but occasionally we have a guest so fucking good well we'll fire up the old zoom i feel guilty i'm sorry i wish i was there no no you should not feel guilty no We literally, it's fine. This is a choice.

We made a choice. We just got back in the studio and obviously the energy's been electric. It is. It's been powering the entire Western seaboard. The fact that you and Kelsey can now banter in person

on the flagrant ones it's it's next level oh yeah that that tension's insane no yeah check out electric check out the flagrant ones at hollywood handbook because now that it's in person it's totally different show if you thought you didn't like it if you're a friend of griffin's yeah maybe you're a well-known actor and yeah uh somebody's done some absurd comedy in your own right. Maybe go ahead and dip your toe back in. He's usually really good at committing very hard for long amounts of time to esoteric bits. I feel like you guys were being silly.

It's like, yeah, but doesn't that kind of line up with your whole thing? Maybe, maybe if you thought you didn't like the show, now's a chance to give it another listen or take a plane, fly back, do an in-studio appearance, give it another shot. Look,

this is a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, sometimes they get stuck pinned between a rock and a wall for 127 hours.

That's, yeah, in Utah's Canyonlands National Park. Thank God. After biking around without telling anyone where you're going yeah like a like a fucking psycho like a i'll say it like an idiot like we can all agree that this guy fucked up right i know he his human spirit persevered and all that but like what the hell what's the matter with this guy producer ben has a bit he started i hesitate even to call a bit i'll say he has a

life philosophy that he's starting espousing on on mike over the last year which is whenever we watch like uh any sort of thriller heist movie in which someone gets stuck in a moral quandary and digs themselves deeper and deeper into a hole ben always has the same takeaway which is if i was in this movie it would end with me on a tropical island that I own. I would keep all the money. I would never get in any trouble and I would be fine. No one would die. Yeah, I would do it different. And the way I would do it different, it would work out great. Right. And I feel the same way watching this movie, which is if I were in Ralston, what would happen is I would stay in bed with Clemence Posey for the rest of my life.

Problem solved. Yeah. That was the high point. Stay there, dude. Figure out the longest lease you could get. Order a lot of takeout. Don't go to the cave. Yeah.

Are you outdoorsy, Sean? You're an outdoorsy guy. Do you hike? Yeah. I like the national parks, usually. Yeah, I like the national parks usually. I mean, I have an opinion on parks like this that are like rock and desert, which is I don't like them as much. I want to be around big trees. I like Yosemite and I want trees and rivers and lakes.

That's what makes me really feel like i'm getting away um so when we do get like a little like uh vacationy break like i we went to big sir not that long ago like i like to be in the woods and so um went through i do too i'm with you Went through Utah drove up through Utah Right before Our first child was born And did a little trip Took the dog to some To some Big you know

Hiking areas and went to Zion But Did not do Canyonlands And it's not this landscape is just not my preference. I, it's very beautiful. So, so I'm just trying to look so dusty and hot to me.

Yeah. I'm trying to clarify. Are you saying you are, or are not a Zionist? If you had to identify clearly here on the, it's unclear. He did it, but it sounds like it's not his favorite thing.

It was not how he would identify. Um, you know what? Uh, it's unclear he did it but it sounds like it's not his favorite thing it was not how he would identify um you know what uh it's it's it's a very it's a very uh fair question and we all do need to at some point take a position on this i can no longer ride the fence no it has to happen on mike blank checks 127 hours episode. Look, to finish setting things up, this is a miniseries on the films of Danny Boyle. It's called Slumpod Millioncast. And our guest today from Hollywood

Handbook. It's not called that. Isn't it called Trainspotcasting? Oh, you're right. Jesus. It's been a little while since we've done a Boyle episode. It's called Trainspotcasting. Slumpod million cast was the alternate title they're both good thank you wow we gotta leave that in though that but that's like alternate universe shit that is alternate universe shit right you know everything everywhere all at

once hollywood's favorite movie right so you're kind of paying homage there yes yes yes the the blank checks that could have been. Exactly. All right, no, sorry. It's Trains Podcasting, and introduce our guest. I'm sorry. I'm now imagining our Everything Everywhere

all at once, which is just, the timelines are exactly the same, except the names of the miniseries are different. You have a different shitty title. No ripple effects. There's no domino effect of those changes just which dumb joke here's here's an existential question for the podcast do you think the blank check system will

exist anymore like do you think the daniels now will get blank checks yeah no right great question really yes i think they'll get to make like a movie but they won't i don't think they'll get to make a movie, but I don't think they'll get four bites at it. They signed a five-year deal with Universal that I think is very similar to Jordan Peele's deal. They feel like one of the few examples of, because that movie was not just such a big Oscar player, but it was genuinely a big profitable hit, and they made it so cheaply i think similar to get out universal is like you know what if you can make stuff for under

50 million dollars whatever the fuck you want you know even 60 million dollars is a bargain if you can stretch your dollars these far i also i and i think i can say this and ben i will let you know if i can't but i'm pretty sure by the time this episode comes out it's fine i just saw beau is afraid the new ari aster movie yes and that is another one where you know obviously yeah he made it for whatever he made it for it wasn't you know 200 million dollars but still really the the most classic example of a blank check of a guy being like, I made you two hits. Now I get to do whatever I want and you do not get to ask me any questions about it. Like that movie screams, like you, you, you have to get off my back. Like

I will do, I'm going to do everything you didn't let me do the last couple of times. It's going to be three hours long. It's going to be not a horror movie like yeah but in these but in the in the filmographies you cover i feel like sometimes people get their blank check and then it just like uh never runs out yeah it doesn't run out but i feel like i i'd be curious to see in the modern era where it feels like there there's a little tighter leash on people where it's like because like i guess damien curious to see in the modern era where it feels like there there's a little tighter leash on people where it's like because like i guess damien chazelle had a blank check right yeah he did yeah that there's another one yeah but it seems like post babylon just as it was difficult for silent film stars to transition into the era of sound it may be difficult uh to move forward here he's another

fascinating one because right before babylon came out paramount signed a big new deal with him and seemed really bullish and my question is is the conversation now damien chazelle being like can i do my thing for 5050 million rather than $100? Or if they're like, Damien, you have to make Quiet Place Part 5 and then we'll talk. Like, is there a conversation that is like, Damien, here are our established properties. And if you pick one of these things that we already like, then we can have a conversation. Right. And he takes on Ghostface? Scream Night.

Like, here are the things where we'll give you more leeway ghostface be in yes la la land take them all the way to la la land takes hollywood i mean yes that's true oh my god imagine the things killed a jazz enthusiast we all know what chazelle's ghostface movie would be it would be ghostface questioning whether he has the time and the bandwidth to have a personal life or if in order to become a truly great serial killer he has to sacrifice all human connections and unlike 127 hours the movie might come down on the side of just focus on stabbing people be the best stabber you can become the best stabber right yeah um wait there's

some there's another blank checker though our guest today is sean clements from a hollywood handbook and the flagrant ones sorry sorry i got us off on the tangent no no david's just occurred no no it's fine i mean i guess the real thing is that it's like if you make a marvel movie successful half the time that's not a blank check thing anymore half the time no one cares right sometimes you know like ryan coogler can do it and then i'm sure he could make something weird if he wanted to coogler is interesting question for me the well the russo brothers and man have they been putting those checks to good use. I mean, those guys take risks. And I mean, to do a movie like The Gray Man, like no one makes movies like that.

I mean, you know, it's got The Gray Man in it. Do you guys see The Gray Man? Oh, God, yes. Three times. Yeah. The bank handed them the checkbook and they went, thank you. We appreciate this. But we also wanted to ask, is there maybe a corner office? Is there a permanent position we could take at the bank handed them the checkbook and they went thank you we appreciate this but we also wanted to ask is there maybe a corner office is there a permanent position we could take at the

bank we'd love to get into the office can we shoot our next movie in your bank right a good double feature is the gray man and the um pj novak film vengeance uhance. Uh-huh. Ah, Vengeance. Yes. Gray Man ultimately becomes about Harvard being evil. Uh-huh. All of the people, all of the bad guys met at Harvard. Uh-huh. Vengeance, written and directed by a Harvard man. Yes. And these are spoilers, so you guys can block this out.

Does result in the murder of a wicked Yale-y. out does result in the murder of a wicked yalie who was who was who was the villainous mastermind of the film and so it's like you know i and i don't know which side to take but they're just both interesting to think about and and in totality you kind of get all of humanity featured in a way i prefer my movies to ask questions rather than give me answers. And I think you're talking about two films that are in a really interesting dialogue with each other. I just found out who plays the evil Yaeli in Vengeance.

I'm just looking at the Wikipedia page for Vengeance. I didn't know about this. Yeah, I should cut you from Spread. Yeah. God, Spread. What a movie. Another great title, just like Vengeance.

Screw you, Van Halen. Spread them out. No, Sean, it is a conversation that I feel like we have a lot, and I feel like 15 times a day, a listener will go to the Reddit or tweet at one of us or call us or show up at our door and go, does this person have a blank check or not? Yeah, right. And it is getting, or show up at her door and go, does this person have a blank check or not?

And it is getting, I think the examples are getting fewer and further between and a lot of them have like huge contingencies around them. And the thing that rarely happens is like, you're a slumdog millionaire where a movie comes out of nowhere, explodes, makes an ass ton of money, and, like, the world loves it and it wins Best Picture. And everyone's just like, well, triple crown. Like, you've done it all.

No one is disappointed with this movie in any regard. We have complete trust in you. I feel like there are usually a lot of qualifiers around it now. And the Marvel thing, yeah, is weird because, like, I think we've talked about this as well in the past. But like it used to be a thing that if you made a Harry Potter movie, it felt like a lot of those directors chose to do it so that they could make their passion project afterwards. Yeah, that's right. You were. Yeah.

Right. Post Chris Columbus, it was like, OK, I make this and now I'm seen as a profitable filmmaker. Right. Like made rent and Alfonso Cuaron made his Harry Potter and then he got to make Children of Men. And no one was going, well, we don't give you any credit for that movie. That movie was a hit because of Harry Potter. Anyone could have made it. The studios would go, you know what?

Fine. You made a movie that made like $800 million. Here you go. Make your weird thing. Yeah. Chris White's making New Moon. Our friend Chris White's like that's him being like i made a bomb okay i want to prove that i can make a competent you know money making movie

right and basically if you do that strategically now they keep you on the leash for that franchise or other movies where they're going to keep you on a tight leash or or whatever it is yeah or you make a profitable indie and then you get announced as a director of a new star wars movie and then you get to write around pre-production and then they go wait never mind never mind never mind yeah i do but i do think griff i do think everything everywhere is what you're talking about yes it is like i mean i don't know it is the triple crown it is the slumdog thing right so maybe that's what makes them unique and i i think get out was close to that, even though it didn't end up winning Best Picture, but it was a similar kind of thing. I think Gerwig's in that position now, even without having won the Oscar.

Barbie's kind of a half blank check because she's also like tacking on to a franchise thing. But then if Barbie is big, then she can do literally anything. Yeah, but this is all depressing and i'm excited for of course it's depressing but of course it's depressing but the examples of the people we're talking about who only make original films it's it's a it's a shorter and shorter list and like boyle is fascinating because like he makes the early decision his career to not do alien resurrection and be like too early for me sean Yeah, Sean. Did you know that? He was the first choice for Alien Resurrection.

I didn't know that. He was like thinking, you know, this is off like, you know, train spotting. And he was thinking about it and he was like, I can't handle the CG. I don't know. I can't handle a movie star. Forget it.

He does Life Less Ordinary instead and basically like decides that he couldn't pull it off uh and then in the last five years feeling well uh came very close to doing bonds and is one of these guys who actually had like the sort of wherewithal to go like you know what i can see that you're not gonna let me make the movie i want to make. It's fine. I'll walk away. Like just, you know, basically at the fulcrum point where it was like shit or get off the pot. He was like, I don't want to have to do this if I'm going to have to fight for this all the time. So he's kind of actively avoided this his whole career, not being able to make things the way he wanted to. Now, what I had heard, David, and I don't know if this is corroborated in the dossier that JJ put together, but that there was basically

a kind of handshake deal with Fox Searchlight after Slumdog Millionaire that was anything you want under $40 million gets greenlit immediately. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. And that's why he does this movie, because, well, we can talk about first i do but but a true just like yep anything you want yeah yeah right right right you get to

yeah if you're gonna stay in the searchlight stable anything you want basically yeah but sean i want to ask you about boyle i want to ask you your boyle your your overall boyle feelings uh as we're as we're thinking about him. You know, I feel generally positive about him. Like, obviously, I loved Trainspotting when it came out. I thought it was cool. I liked the soundtrack of it. I was like, this is great. 28 Days Later, you know, thought that was cool.

I think I just had a sort of positive like this guy's good he's making cool movies feeling about him this one for me like 127 hours kind of is really what sold me as like you know this is essentially a bad idea for a movie like like sure to me like so much about it is like that won't work um and i saw it in the theater and i teared up in the theater it was like very like felt very emotional was like super invested in it and like didn't expect to be hooked and really interested, but just went cause it was going to be an Oscar movie. And I, uh, had the time. Um, and then I was just like, Oh shit, this is, this is really cool. And so, uh, that it kind of pushed me over the top. Like, I think, um, um uh put him into like another category for me of like okay this is

beyond just like i usually like his movies to like oh this you know um this person uh is especially talented in a way that like connected to me but i couldn't really tell you since then like hasn't been the best run since i was like great now i'm all in on daddy boy like and then it was like and then i don't think he's done anything else that i have had strong feelings about um you're not a jobs head because i mean the other three no one really few people have strong feelings about trance transponding to or yesterday but steve jobs is the last movie of his to be polarizing i liked it i liked it i i you know i i was not blown away by it um i know yeah i know it was polarizing certainly i worked for a boss at the time who couldn't get over the fact that he like washed

his socks in the toilet or something at one point and no one talked about it and he was just like this just can't just be a fucking scene in the movie that you're doing this and no one like you're not allowed to do that like this is one of the most disturbing things i've ever watched on film and there are witnesses to it and like uh so that has stuck in my head as a take um but i think i saw it and generally liked it and it felt like sure a little too sorkinian spots um but fastbender's good interesting uh but yeah i wasn't it was not like an a plus for me captured your imagination yeah i didn't have really strong feelings when i saw 127 hours that year for me and i'm sure we'll go over i can't even recall exactly what what did win but

i was like i thought this was because of the um level of difficulty and everything i thought this was the best performance i saw this year i thought this was the best movie i saw this year i i didn't i'm not shocked that it didn't win but i thought it should win best picture and and best actor i i really thought it was like really good on a rewatch was it as impactful no but i when i saw it i was like oh i think this is great uh this was the oscar year that king's speech wins picture director and actor after everyone had sort of thought that social network was the front runner for most of that season if social network had beat this, it would be less embarrassing

than King's Speech beating both of them. Looking back, I've watched Social Network multiple times since it came out. I love it. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen. I think it should have won Best Picture that year. This is a huge theater movie. Yes.

Yeah, but my experience in the theater was special it's just watching this thing at home and I know I'm like an evangelist for watching things in the theater or whatever we all like to watch things in the theater here but watching this at home you're not stuck with

them so it's like so much of the power of it is lost you can just pause it and be like yes yeah still on the rock okay i'm gonna go get you know an orange yes like which i did i'm gonna be honest with you it's well hey humble brag it's one of those movies like uh rear window where like you can watch it and appreciate the craft of it. But there's something about like you are stuck in a chair. In a dark room. Watching this guy be stuck.

That does really transform the thing. I did feel like in certain ways I had more. Of an objective appreciation for this movie watching at this time and I hadn't seen it since theaters. Even though it obviously is a less, like, all-consuming, visceral thing. But I think when you're watching it, certainly watching it the first time in theaters, you're just so, like, on edge and overtaken by it.

But I also, I don't know if you have had the same experience, Sean, David as well. I just, like just liked this movie a tremendous amount when I saw it and at no point ever considered re-watching it because I was like, oh, that movie's impossible to re-watch. That's the other thing,

that I wouldn't have re-watched it unless we were watching it for this. I don't think I would have been drawn to re-watch it. And as I re-watched it, it was like it lost a lot of its impact because I had seen the whole thing. So like moments as you know, as you guys are saying, like when you're in the theater and he's like at the decision point to try to like start cutting through his arm or something like that, like things like that where it's like, fuck, OK, we're going. Things like that where it's like, fuck, okay, we're going.

And the way that the score lines up with him hitting the nerve, all those little things, it's so fucking intense. And you don't have that at home, and you don't have it when you have seen and remember every beat of it and generally where they come in. It's just not the same journey and so i wouldn't put it in the same categories like there are certain movies that i've seen where uh they're i think they're like expertly made and super intense and i'm so glad i saw them but i never want to watch them again like like funny games or something where i'm like okay i don't

want to see it again like uh or like bug like i'm just like great okay um come on let's throw on bug yeah but i'm like never gonna be like let's throw it on this isn't that level of like fucked up or something but it is similar it is similarly like you're just uncomfortable the whole time and i guess i don't uh need to go through that again no and we'll get to this in the episode but like fox searchlight made this catastrophic uh miscalculation in the promotion of this movie which was pushing how many people at festival screenings of this film before it came out fainted puked or both and they turned it into this fucking horror movie you're never going to be able to survive this thing that genuinely

scared people off where i think as you're saying the more the more exciting thing about seeing this movie in theaters was the fact that once again as you said you like, this shouldn't work as a film. There's no you cannot think of compelling. How do you make a cinematic 90 minute narrative based around this event? How do you possibly pull this off? How can any performer pull this off? How do you make this exciting? I mean, Boyle's whole pitch was like, do an action movie where the guy can't move. Right.

Which is in and of itself, it's like a challenge that he's presenting to himself. So, so much of the excitement of seeing the theater wasn't just the tension of it, but being like, how does he film this? How does this film play out? What happens for the next 30 minutes? How will he show us the arm getting cut off? All these things that when you know, as you said,

it takes a little bit of the juice out of it, but it is this kind of of the juice out of it. But it is this kind of blank check thing that I love. And I think the fact that Boyle was already basically two decades into his career when he won his Oscar was not getting the blank check status at a very young age. He had already gone through being the hot young kid, having a bit of a fall for grace coming back having this huge hit like he's not saying what's the one movie i've always wanted to make that they never make me make because of the size or the scale of the thing he's instead saying basically to me in my eyes him taking on this movie is him being like now i challenge myself right let me really give myself

a fucking test to make sure i'm still sharp that i'm not going to get sloppy that i'm like can push myself further as a filmmaker which on that level he succeeds wildly yeah that's cool yeah just one more thing on the first i'm going to break open the dossier in a sec but on the first viewing of it you are for even even if you haven't been reading blog posts about people throwing up or whatever you are like he's gonna he's gonna cut that fucking arm off and so there's so much there's so much tension and yeah you know you're just imagining like it's gonna be too gnarly i'm not i i don't you know like and then as it always is with these things even with the most insane fucked up horror movies

which this is not it's it's what you imagine is worse than what you're gonna watch like you know and once you've seen it you're like oh shit and they tease it so early they do when he yeah he tries and the knife is too dull and it's like i don't know like that all of that like he puts it into your mind very early in the film like i might have to try cutting my arm off and so it is just sort of simmering there um and then like yeah you're like he's gonna go for it and it's it's fucking bonkers but i yeah i mean i i couldn't do it i'm just dead i mean i don't know how you guys feel about this but i'm dead i'm not i'm not cutting my damn arm off yeah right i don't know how i don't know how to like broke break my legs yeah i mean break my arms break

my bones i don't know how to do that right yes that's that's part of it too well yeah him having like that rescue training like he's kind of a dumbass but it does sort of i don't know for me because i am a little bit outdoorsy not too much but you open up and he's fucking biking and showing people like different like secret entrances to uh cave pools and you're like fuck man this guy's living the life like what if this was my life just just cool and free and know how to do a lot of stuff. That's awesome. And then he gets trapped and you're like, Oh good.

I, I did the right thing. Like, I don't live this life. This sucks. This'll never happen to me. And then, and then it comes all the way around to like,

shit, man, this guy fucking is like a special person. Like he's, he does a thing that yeah uh i wouldn't be able to do yeah uh no i mean you know you're you're talking to uh two new yorkers who i think our idea of an adventurous getaway is to take the subway to get a sandwich uh not go to subway take a train to a further place that has a better sandwich i look i am more outdoorsy than you absolutely almost impossible to be less outdoorsy than

but yeah i'm kind of like uh yeah let me do a day hike and is the is it basically a loop like you know how hard do i have to think while i'm hiking you know i like that kind of a hike like do i go up the hill and down the hill i get that yeah someone was trying to sell me on hikes the other day and i said look i like walking but my favorite thing about uh walking and i'll walk for a very long time i don't want to brag i'll take a long ass walk but what i like believe it when i see it level ground no you love you love a flat walk you should move to like nebraska or something you should really like level it out lands the flats i like i like the flats i like shade i like walking with a parasol hiking rocks wildlife rocks yeah i like all that stuff i mean

my my my family's from upstate new york I would go to the Adirondacks every summer. But that's why I like a lake mountain thing. I have never experienced dusty crevasses, whatever. I've never done any of that stuff. Canyons. I've never done canyons. Two bobcats when I was at Big Sur this last time. Well, Goldthwait, then who's the other one?

That's my joke. You are so nasty. That was my joke. You are so nasty. What do you... I try. What do you, Sean, what do you do with a bobcat? What's the procedure when you see a bobcat?

When I see them? Nothing. Yeah, what'd you do look at him you just let him took a little video took a picture yeah said what's up I guess they're not that big I guess I'm thinking of like a cougar or something

yeah bobcats aren't that big so I've seen them multiple times yeah they're like 35 pounds like but the first time I saw one was when I was in Yosemite and I was like you know i'm at i'm like taking a picture of like a big mountain and i hear behind me like oh all the frogs are starting to do their thing you know so i walk over to the edge of the water through this like off the trail like kind of swampy area to be like let me go look at these frogs of course i can't

see them but as i get to the edge of the water, I turn and we've surprised each other. Me and this bobcat are like six feet away from each other because he's drinking some water and I'm peeking around. See if I could see some frogs. And we both like in a cartoon start like backing away from one another. And I was scared. Like I was like, I should be scared. And then I talked to like a trail guide the next day and he was like, they're like a cat. They're cats, right? They're really a little bigger than a cat.

They don't want fuck all to do with you. They just are like, dude, this is where I drink my water. Get out of here. But yeah, so now I've seen a couple more and I'm not as nervous. See, I watched this movie and the first 10, 15 minutes where his life is, quote unquote, fun. None of this is appealing where he's driving off road and he's biking and he's pal.

What about palling around with Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn? Here's why I would love to do that. A coffee shop. I would love to pal around with them. I'd love an invite to that party with the inflatable scooby-doo and i will they'll say people are out back and i'll go no it's fine i'll hang out in the living room uh you don't want to like swim in a damn cave griff doesn't that look fun i don't like the cave looks pretty good i don't like yeah yeah i've done that i went to a cenote that that's the only part of this movie that that feels a little appealing to me but i still wouldn't wait do it sean sean was that cool the cenote i i want to do that that yeah it was awesome yeah and it was like and it what there was like a little like makeshift carved

into the rock like stairwell on the side and you walked up like whatever 15 20 feet and then you can dive in were you in like mexico or yeah yeah yeah wait what's a cenote um it's basically what they're in it's like a cave pool yeah it's like a crater like inside of a cave filled with water so it's like a really deep like little kind of indoor lake thing inside the rocks see when i watch into the wild a movie i also have not re-watched in a very long time oh yeah but i like that one a lot i like that one a lot it's a really good movie it's also associated with a really normal guy normal smart except i don't like what he when he looks right at the camera and is like now me and you are hanging out like i'm just like why are we doing this that part i was so in it yes uh but that's a movie where i'm like i'm sold on his

thing as much as the guy was proven to be kind of because he's yeah wait a second griffin that's because he's he's got your morden outlook about humanity. That's no good. Thank you. No, but he's wrong. He should chill out. I know he's wrong. I'm admitting. I'm acknowledging that he's wrong. But his whole thing. He is more of a griffin, though, in that he goes up there and then he's like, I don't

know, should I eat these berries? And then he's like, ugh, I don't feel great. It sucks. It all goes wrong immediately. Yeah, he has no training. Yeah, he doesn't really know how to do what he's trying to do. I relate to that. I guess that's the thing.

I can relate to this guy, but even the idealism of what he wants to do, where he's just like, this whole world is full of shit. Let me just fucking go to the forest with a van and not have sex with Kristen Stewart. I'm like, I can see all of this playing out. Make a belt with hal hallbrook yeah i like the landscape he's he's exploring more um uh i will just touch back on you know are you saying both of you saying all of us saying we couldn't do this we couldn't break our arm or cut our arm off right oh no i didn't

i could do this you could do it you would do it and it would work out fine you'd do it it would be great i wouldn't even need a tourniquet yeah yeah you ben you would do it like someone pulling a tablecloth like really fast and none of the dishes you'd just be like right exactly you'd make it out of there with arm intact um but one thing to keep in mind in these extreme circumstance movies is that when you are going through this this is something to keep in mind for everyone anyone who has fear around like what if this happened what if i was in this situation when that's happening to you you are no longer you does that make sense yeah yeah the parts of your brain that are activated and deactivated

during that experience the you that is evaluating how you would behave in that situation has nothing to do with what would be happening in the situation i i understand what you're saying but to play devil's advocate i think i die through some set of circumstances before i even get to that point i think i die he's in a specific circumstance i I die leaving the hiking store. I get hit by a car. I face plant the bike into a sinkhole. Something, I don't think I ever, I can't even imagine getting to the point

where that survival instinct kicks in. The bike is doing you in. The bike does me in. Yeah, that's, you're not making it past the bike, I don't think. No, no. Yeah, I guess that's right. We should crack open the dossier and start talking context but i feel like let me tell you the most

important place to start with the context is just remember when we all fucking heard this story it was such an insane news story because we've like we've covered some other movies like this where it's like oh based on a real event but they're usually these stories of like a triumph you know some great or some national tragedy that happens over a drawn out period of time for this story to land of like this guy is rescued and then every newspaper and website in the world is like hey guess what a guy was stuck underneath a rock for five days. He sawed his arm off.

He's alive now. And just seeing these photos... He sawed his arm off with a pocket knife, too. That was a big part. We were like, oh, shit. Right. With a pocket knife. I think this story hits so big,

less even for the, like, triumph of the human spirit element and just for what we're talking about. Every single person read the story and went, holy shit, what would I do in that situation? Yeah, so obviously that happened in 2003 to Aaron Ralston in Blue John Canyon. Is that where it is?

Blue John Canyon? Canyon Lamps, National Park. Right, yeah. GQ named him their Survivor of the Year, which as far as I can tell, that's the only time they've named anyone their their survivor of the year Which as far as I can tell That's the only time they've named anyone their survivor of the year Yeah I'm trying to think of other survivors Of the year that I've liked

Boston Rob We're both rushing For the same joke But Danny Boyle hears about uh and he gets the book the book the book is called um between a rock and a hard place obviously like i mean yeah the guy's the guy is wedged to the rock when he's like if i ever write a book about this it's called right you know like that title i'm sure one billion comedy points given to him upon signing the book deal yes um he he reads the boyle reads the book so this is pre-slumdog

obviously and he sends it to uh this the his executive pathé films in france and says i think i know a way how to do this i know it looks impossible but you can be honest to the event you can show it on screen but you can do it in a way the audience will tolerate it like do this immersive experience um and they basically say go fuck yourself right yeah yeah i mean other people had thought about it um. Ralston had himself gotten together with Alex Gibney, who's a guy who makes like two documentaries a year, to try and make a documentary about it. And weirdly, they couldn't get financing for it,

which seems odd to me because one, it's a documentary. You don't need that much money. And two, Touching the Void had just come out and was like such a hit and i feel like there was probably some like interest in these kinds of like you know extreme tales of you know of uh the wilderness type documentaries but i don't know maybe i don't know it's bizarre yeah are you at all like just as we talk about this guy and his experience do you have any like i don't know if it's skepticism but like do you feel a certain type of way about these people who like have something crazy happen and then they just cash in on it in this major way like i guess

you know it's a life-defining experience it an interesting story. But doesn't it feel a little weird? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, we will we will get to it. But a thing I found really fascinating was digging in to this guy's life for the last 10 years since the movie came out. And it played out a lot differently than the note the movie ends on. Yes. Yes. In every sense. Yes. And it played out a lot differently than the note the movie ends on. Yes, yes.

I caught that as well. In every sense, yes. But I also feel like when we were all younger, this was so every year or so, it's kind of the Oprah type thing, not to diss oprah i mean you know just but like these people with their sort of like tales of triumphant woe coming on telling their story there's something moving about it there's something kind of compelling and frightening about it they get turned into motivational figures it becomes sort of a life philosophy on that track yes right yeah exactly yes are you know the great american heroes jared from subway uh well the cheshire murders you know happened in my hometown really yeah that's where i grew up it was like across the street from one of my best friends and that and and that um for people who don't know it was like an in cold blood type like murder situation, but just invoking Oprah, the husband, the dad was a doctor.

These two people like went in, like, you know, beat him up, left him in the basement unconscious, did horrible stuff, murdered the rest of the family, set the house on fire. And he woke up and like got out of the house. That became like an Oprah story and he got interviewed

now he was already i guess a very successful doctor and stuff but i to my knowledge he never became any kind of speaker on it i guess it's not as much of a story of like triumph or something as some of these that we're talking about right like what's what's the life lesson yeah well what was interesting to me is when he did oprah i think unlike almost everyone else i saw she was like and can you find forgiveness in your heart for these men and he was like fuck no fuck these guys no i hate them like and just like never would give would not give oprah an inch like right i relate to that but no but that's it's now i guess that's all on tiktok i'm not saying that like this is what i was gonna say no i do think you're onto something david that there's something to the speed of the press cycle yeah also too is like it used to be there would only be a couple stories of this scale that hit at the right time that broke through in such a big way.

And then there would be like at least a nine month victory lap sort of like tour of all the major outlets leading in the book. Right. Where they would just stay top of people's minds long enough to be awarded Survivor of the Year by GQ magazine the following year or whatever. Now it feels like these things happen a lot faster. You're forgetting already people who were like this two months ago, you know? But I guess you got to be the right person, like a person who's compelling, who like what and who wants to like do the circuit and make it their life. And there has to not be like another news story that knocks you out of the conversation hard to become this person like right during covid right like would that have been on the fucking news if somebody got stuck and it could be like good what were you doing get inside yeah stay home like asshole you know i just think it's

yeah just stay down there suits you right we used to have time for these stories we don't have time for this shit anymore i assume neither of you have read his book between a rock and a hard place i have not no but the title's still getting to me yeah it's a good title um in the book he alternates chapters between being stuck down in the canyon and like his past his family his home life and danny boyle who had already run into this problem he tried to make a film about a big fire in massachusetts 3000 degrees and that had fallen apart because the families of the sort of you know the the people who died were not into it and he's like i'm nervous about meeting this guy because i'm

gonna cut all the other shit out i don't want to do anything about his family like i don't want to do alternating between you know like i don't want to take those breaks because my whole idea for this movie basically is to really not vary the tempo of it all and like you know stick with him down there and go on flights of fancy in his brain but like don't like cut to five years ago or whatever yeah so david what what what were the the other i mean can we get into details here and what the changes were i'm always curious what like what they kept from the book, or whenever they adapted the book,

or something like, what's in and what got left off. I feel like we usually breeze over this, and I feel like, why not take the time to actually, like, account for it page by page? so chapter one,

you think I should, like, just start, but okay, okay. JJ did it, right? He gave you the material? Yeah, it's all in here. It's all in here.

It's a, yeah, it's a 450 page shot scene right yeah we should mention i feel like uh we forgot to set this up at the beginning of the episode obviously we've all been saying none of us could imagine living through what Aaron Ralston did. But we want to sort of out of respect and deference, try to simulate the experience as much as possible. So we are attempting to make this our first 127 hour episode. Now, obviously, there are two camps that are constantly warring in the blank check listenership. Some who think the show has gotten too long and some who think the show is

too short but regardless to honor this movie in particular it's just it'd be silly to let it be less than i don't know if we'll make it the full 127 hours it's the goal at least 115 hours yeah so we're one day in now and david right i appreciate you taking the time to explain all the changes from the book and like the thing about all those changes is what gets Boyle the credibility to make him is that he just won a bunch of Oscars. Because like at first, Ralston's like, I don't want to do it. But after Slumdog, he basically is like, look, I'm Danny Boyle. You know, I want to be in the John ross sorry aaron ralston business so

you know he couldn't say no i guess that's sort of the way he wants to be in aaron ralston business they were thinking franchise at that point right well with respect um some of the changes that you went through and i did appreciate how thorough it was some of them were a little boring um just like i didn't you know it was some of it were a little boring um just like i didn't you know it was some of it was just like small wording things even your delivery lacked a little pizzazz but go on yeah it seemed like you weren't as interested but the main one right is that like the that what he actually he met two uh women on a hiking trail and yeah apparently he showed them some basic climbing moves which like yeah he did not show them a magical cave yes yeah he got to them in a secret like

entrance to a magical cave that they dove into until they already way yeah yes yeah exactly right right right this kind of like you jump I jump Jack you know where it's like a trust fall thing yeah and by the way when they are jumping it looks like they are scraping the fuck out of their fucking back does it not

look like their back would be ruined yes that looks so unpleasant to me I know Ben would enjoy it but i wouldn't be able to do it um i'd slide right down smooth sailing it looked like it would hurt but you know you hear that danny boyle wanted to change it the air routes it was like no it has to be the climbing holds and you're like my brother have you ever watched a movie like we're asking a lot of people already for once in a

goddamn life stay home sit on a couch watch a movie and figure out how they work yeah maybe he hasn't seen a movie maybe he hasn't yeah it doesn't seem like his what he's interested in but um it's a it's a great change like it's just correct it's very correct it's necessary it's beautiful genuinely like it just looks nice and i think you need some sense of this guy is this kind of like vibrant sort of winning personality right like like otherwise i don't know maybe you're just kind of not with him for minute one like right like you just kind of need him to be charismatic for a second you need one sequence where he's charismatic yeah yeah that he's charismatic and that there's life there's so much life waiting for him like these right these girls are into him and they invite

him to a party like like that he's like missing out on something like you we want him to get out because you're like kind of ingenious because it's it makes it both like a paradise lost sequence where then when he's in the shit he can keep thinking back on like how recently i had it fucking made. Like I was in this perfect movie scene. And then the alternate of that is like the sliding door of him being like, and if I had just stayed in that, I'd be fucking partying with a blow up Scooby-Doo now. Watching this tape of these two ladies telling me they think I'm cute and I

can do nothing about it. You, you need that. Yeah. No, cause it's smart to not start the movie with him being like mom dad i'm thinking about going on a trip it's better to start with him leaving his house right it's better to start in the swing of things you do need to see him engaged with other people for five to ten

minutes and have him be sharp and just get this sense of him as like he's like this nature sprite he's like just this weird creature you know who's sort of joyful versus say um you know uh the into the wild guy where it's like okay this guy's in search of something he will never find this is like bleak somewhat relatable sad but he's just trying to walk to the end of the earth or whatever. That's not what this, you know, Dan, Aaron Ralston, he's just a fun loving guy. Guys, I'm sorry. I just, I have some bad news. I feel the need to inform the podcast.

A recently established character in Blank Check lore who only makes appearances when we do zoom episodes has in fact returned at 9 39 p.m on a thursday night the naked guy who lives directly across the street from me is walking around fully naked eating dinner he is naked oh yeah pacing back and forth holding up a bowl and a fork. I think he's eating pasta. He's eating pasta. He's eating pasta standing up? He's pacing fully naked, eating dinner. I gotta be honest with you guys. And I consider myself a fairly free and not modest person.

I have never eaten dinner naked. That is not something that seems appealing to me at all here's what i i never want to happen accidentally spill food on my penis and that is that's a moment of such deep embarrassment if you have gotten to that situation there there are multiple layers that are supposed to shield you from that ever happening right well maybe that's why he's not sitting down maybe you know what you're right uh but yeah no just pacing back and drop it in your lap no if i'm eating if i'm eating in the nude something has gone wrong if i'm eating dinner walking around, something has gone wrong.

If I am walking around eating dinner in the nude and you can see me, send for help. This is almost a 127-hour situation of the series of bad decisions that have led to this moment. And I want to make it clear. This isn't like a Jerry Maguire, mcguire uh he and a lover sitting across from each other naked feeding each other strawberries or whatever this is a methodical pacing back and forth bull fork penis nearly 10 p.m on a thursday night wow i'm just fascinated i'm glad he's back because you know just kind of keeps the zooms fresh to have our version of this character it's nice to have a guy

yeah to have all right okay let me give you some more facts from the dossier okay apparently one thing that uh boyle is is thinking of taking on post slumdog is a remake of the Park Chan-wook film Lady Vengeance. Yes. Glad he didn't do that. And we talked about this in the slumdog episode. But he what is it? He buys the rights

to the book, the Mumbai book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about this in the slumdog and set up at fox searchlight and at one point claimed that was going to be his next movie and in retrospect it sort of feels like he bought the rights to pay off the author for not suing him for taking a lot from slumdog yeah it's a non-fiction book about life and yeah that's conjecture i don't know but um but he still hung up on this story which he had thought about years before he takes it to simon beaufoy and uh christian uh colson who he had done slumdog with and he's like uh and simon boyfoy beaufoy

apparently a climber and he is initially skeptical because he's i guess just kind of like ah come on i mean for whatever reason he is simon boy bow foy just doesn't like the idea of doing a climbing movie in a way um but he boyle convinces him on the degree of difficulty which i feel like is how he gets everyone on board where he's like the fact that it's hard is the interesting thing about it right you know that's how he just keeps uh getting people to sign on the the other thing i read is that uh he said this in an interview but you know slumdog is making the oscar rounds the same season as the wrestler and apparently boyle was you know he's he's going to all these events with Aronofsky and Rourke.

And he's like, that's what I want to do next. I want to do a movie that's all about one performance like that. To build a movie exclusively around it and find the right person for it, that feels like a fun challenge for the next one.

On top of all the other sort of narrative technical challenges of this particular piece of material. Yeah, yeah. Beaufoy compares it to Samuel Beckett or whatever. He's not saying, I am Samuel Beckett, but he's saying, I'm trying to think of the action from a Beckett play like Endgame where no one can move, right? So, you know, you're interested in emotion psychology trying to

understand someone's feelings without any like dynamic action happening um yeah i you know i the next thing i'm interested in essentially is uh is the actor uh right like you know i don't is uh is the actor uh right like you know i don't i where's we gotta talk about him where's james franco we got right now when they're bringing him i mean it's post spider-man trilogy it's post milk i feel like milk was kind of when he felt like a more serious actor milk and pineapple right it's Milk and Pineapple Express. Now he's got this weird press cycle around him being like, actually, I'm stepping away from Hollywood. I want to take courses. And then Mill comes out that fall. So that's like his 2008 year where suddenly he starts to get elevated. He came onto the scene. Right.

And like freaks and geeks or whatever. It's like this guy's like a pretty boy. Like he's the good looking guy on the show. He's James Dean. He's the brooding. Yeah. Then he played James Dean and like on the show. He's James Dean. He's the brooding. Yeah. Then he played James Dean and like, and sort of was like,

is he trying to, does he think he is James Dean? He's sort of acting like that. Like he's like stuck in the role or something. I, and I think he was whatever worried about or potentially could have been written off as like, this guy's just like a handsome guy who was like a young actor.

And then kind of set out to be like, no, I'm a real artist. And I think with, with milk, with, you know, by,

by playing against type and pineapple express, which is like, that's a goofy movie. He insisted right on playing the bigger character. Right. He was supposed to play the Rogan part. That's how it was written. And he insisted, this is the one I want to play. And I think the guy Rogan part. That's how it was written and he insisted

this is the one I want to play and I think, yeah, he had... He was the guy who wanted to swing and he did it. Like, he, like, achieved, you know, what he wanted and people were like, oh, this guy's got serious chops,

you know, and then this movie's, like, so, again, for... Boyle's so hard. So hard for Franco, for any actor to do this shit where you're fucking talking to yourself.

What a nightmare. It's so easy to look so dumb giving this performance. But yeah, no, he I mean, he had a weird career arc because I mean, everything you're saying, but it's like Spider-Man was so big and so big at a point in time where there weren't many franchises that big so even being the best friend in three spider-man movies kept him in the consciousness for long enough but then in between those movies he would do these sort of like failed leading man programmers like tristan and his old and annapolis where it was like what is this guy does he have any personality

whatsoever and then another spider-man movie would come out you'd be like okay well he's got this at least and then there's that like unexpected apatow ascendancy suddenly all the people he worked with the guy who ran his show all become like these power players in hollywood and it's this thing of like well we could take franco who's now almost looking like a failed dramatic leading man and reclaim him as a comedy guy. And and yeah, and then he ends up saying, give me the funnier part. I want to do more of a character performance. Boyle, I have read him say in interviews that Pineapple Express is the reason he ultimately cast him, that like his commitment to Pineapple Express, he said, I watched it and realized this is a major actor.

Obviously, Franco wasn't his first choice, but yeah. Yeah. Well, who do you think his first choice was? Shia was the first? Or was it Gosling as the first? Okay, I knew those were the two guys for a while. But was he going to do it with Kelly Murphy too? Yes.

He talked about it with kelly murphy i think but that went nowhere um shia laboe there were like unsubstantiated rumors about ewan mcgregor but i don't think those are real that's just something people kind of you know would just say about a danny bull project uh shia la buffett does seem like was the most serious contender but then he was in like a car accident i feel like holes in this could you do the could you do both of those really no no you gotta pick yeah his agents like shia no no yeah you need mountains if anything no more nothing down yeah Go down in a hole, man. And Griffin, you're right. Gosling, Ryan Gosling.

I mean, these are sort of obvious names for who were the hot young guys of 2010. He had liked him, Franco and Milk and Pineapple Express. Apparently, their first meeting was terrible. This is Danny Boyle. Quote, I was convinced he was stoned he hadn't even finished reading this script uh but he swears he never touches anything and knowing him now i think it's his way of sussing people out he pretends to be out of it when in fact he's watching you

to see what your reactions are i mean what he seems to be describing is like america's relationship with james franco for his career which is basically like is this guy just fucking an idiot or is this some weird game either way i don't like it with me he's fucking with me right exactly or is he like shauncey gardner like there's this question of like have has he has he tricked everyone into thinking that he's some intellectually activated guy, but really it's just like A to B. But when you mentioned like his commitment and Pineapple Express and that being impressive, and I do think of, but I think of this movie

and more than Pineapple Express, I think this and Spring Breakers. Yes. Yeah. Are just connected in my mind of like two performances that if you miss by like an inch yeah you look so fucking stupid and to me i think in both of them like he's incredible i think all three of those performances 127 hours uh pineapple express spring breakers i would nominate all three

of those for Academy Awards, and I would give him at least one of them depending on competition within the year. Like, those three performances are incredible. And as David always says... And the degree of difficulty is so high on all of them and nailing them. But also, when he does, like,

Great and Powerful Oz or something, or he does a movie where he's like, I don't think this is good, and I don't think the part's interesting he just reads it we did on the podcast and and right it's he's a feast or famine actor where there's almost no middle ground whatsoever where like those three performances are so difficult. Most people would crumble under them. He goes above and beyond. And then there are times where you're genuinely like, do you know that the cameras were rolling? Yes.

Did you know that this was not a blocking rehearsal? Completely phoned in and a movie like that too, right? Big budget movie where he's like, okay, taking the paycheck and I'm just going to fucking get through the process. It it's that it's rise to the planet of the apes it's it's there's like you know these movies where it's just like whatever he thinks whatever i think of the movie this guy doesn't like it like this guy is not interested at all in this movie but i even think there are some of the tiny indies that come out after this the ones that sort of made no impression whatsoever, where it feels

slightly the same way. I mean, part of it too. Like doing Faulkner or whatever. Yeah. Right. Part of it is he just starts this thing of like, I am the most productive man

in the world. I can do everything at the same time. And most people who would be daunted by the idea of adapting Faulkner, period, he's like,

I can do that in between classes, classes I'm teaching and taking. This is setting up my joke. So I'll tell you my famous James Franco joke from the roast of James Franco. Okay, this was a joke you wrote that was rejected from the roast, correct?

No, this joke made it to air. Oh, wow. So I had in 2010 worked on a cartoon called Alan Gregory Jonah Hill was the main voice show bombed but Jonah was

very nice to us very funny guy and then around the time that their comedy center was doing a roast of James Franco he had myself and some of the other writers from the show over for like have pizza and like pitch some jokes, like possible jokes. And so I had, he was one of the roasters, right? He was, yeah, he was roasting. Uh, he was on stage roasting Franco. I was there. Hayes was there. And,

and we all like, kind of like had some laughs and pitch some things. But I had one joke that I pitched that made it to air. I don't remember what any of the other jokes I pitched were. I don't know if they got performed and they did well or bombed or what. But the joke, as read by Jonah, he may have reworded it to make it better. I don't recall. He goes up and he says, there's an old formula in Hollywood which is you do one for them and one for you.

But James has a little bit of a different formula. He does one for them and five for nobody. I mean, it is what is most fascinating to me. And look, obviously, he is an incredibly complicated figure in so many ways, right?

He had such a weird stranglehold over, like, the pop culture discourse for so long because he was doing so much and he was doing so many weird things. And then now, obviously, there's been a lot of reckoning

with a tremendous amount of behavior for him that is bad in so many different regards but like so much of it at at the peak was this like what's the goal here like what's the end game where do where do we think this is going you're making like you you are personally directing five films a year that barely get released there is no part of you that thinks that maybe you should slow down and try to make one movie really well but the weirdest thing was like there would be films with insane challenge there were challenges yes he wasn't making like woody allen type like oh yeah it's two schmucks in a coffee shop like he was like yeah no i'm gonna roll up my sleeves it's been a hundred years. No one's gotten William Faulkner right,

but I'm going to do it like three times. Like I'm going to just keep doing it. Yes, yes. And the crazy thing is, we talk about some of those performances of his that feel phoned in. Some of them are the movies he directed where the performance feels weirdly phoned in

because it's almost like he's on autopilot where he's like, I can do this. I read the script. I know what it is. Or he's like, I can do this. I read the script. I know what it is. Or he's like, I don't think I got this one, but I don't think I hit it. But let's just get it done. He directed a movie in 2018 called Future World, which I have not seen and starred in it. And Lucy Liu is in it, I think, and Method Man and other people.

That's like a Mad max movie it is a bad mad max ripoff that he signed on for as an actor and i believe like a couple weeks into filming was like i don't like the director went to the producers and was like you should fire him i'll take over as director he took over that one midstream why why i don't know there's an interview i watched this very fascinating interview he did i, about a year ago that was him sort of trying to come back and test the waters and apologize for, you know, his behavior. Sort of came. He was like, yeah, I was a sex addict and I've had. But it was one of those things where he kind of.

I was trying to run away from myself. Not a lot of other stuff. Right. But there's there's an anecdote look it's an interesting watch i'm not necessarily sold in any way but there are a lot of interesting sort of like uh statements he makes about himself that i think are telling in a way that he doesn't even quite understand but the one anecdote he has that is incredible, and it's very similar to your joke, Sean, but the tragic playing out in real time version of it is he said, you know, he went to his agent and was like or, you know, the foreign sales people he had dealt with before producing partners he had dealt with before he was trying to get more

projects off the ground. He was like, these are the next four things I want to direct, this and this and that. I can call Dan McBride in for a day. I can get this person to do a cameo, whatever it is. And whoever it was he was talking to said like, James, I cannot sell another James Franco movie. Everyone who at any point in time was interested in buying james franco movies now is sitting on four james franco movies they still haven't released there is a backlog no one is buying more the shelves are full and he was like it will take seven years to release the movies that you've made in the last two. Oh, man.

You've literally like it's like hyperinflation. Like you've printed too many James Franco books. Like and now bread costs a million dollars. And this happens like right around the same time that a bunch of people start speaking out about these insane acting classes he ran and different co-stars of his whatever. So it's like all of it came to a head. acting classes he ran and different co-stars of his whatever so it's like all of it came to a head but even before that basically the industry was like there needs to be like a government bailout of james franco films and then we all have to agree to never do this ever again and then you look at this movie and you're like this is the moment that should have been his anointment to the top tier of his generation. What happened four months after this movie came out in America?

He hosted the Oscar ceremony in which he was nominated. It is one of the most incredible acts of self-sabotage. A night that should be an absolute victory lap for him. It's his first nomination. He's not gonna win but everyone's takeaway was clearly this guy's got big stuff in store he'll win an oscar within the next five to ten years instead he goes up on stage and makes everyone in the world hate him that was just incredible to think about yes it's that fast the turnaround is that after that yes he does do spring breakers in 2012

and obviously that's a universally well-regarded performance but they're also like he was so good at playing a demon from like florida hell you know like it's not it's not like they were you know i mean that that's a that's a loaded piece of praise when, you know, you were great as Alien, the guy that if he was hanging out with my daughters, I'd kill myself. Right. But then, meanwhile, you talk about the Feast of Famine with Franco. A year later, he plays Hugh Hefner in Lovelace and can't fucking find an in to that character. Like, sometimes you hand him a piece of material where you're like, well, obviously you could relate to this guy. There's a thing for you to play here. And instead he's like doing it off of fucking cue cards.

It's so bizarre. This guy's kind of sleazy. I don't understand this weird cult of personality. Have you guys seen the interview? I've never seen the interview. He's in that. He's like a smooth co-lead just thinking after i watch this like i kind of am curious because i have heard that um he's also playing

like kind of a big character and like he's like a parody of a talk show like self-obsessed like kind of right he's the host doesn't know like not self-aware rogan's the producer or whatever i i think like behind the scenes i saw that movie i saw a screening of it before it was canceled from its theatrical release when it was just a normal like uh a twitter contest killing a living dictator movie yes uh that is a disastrous performance in my opinion it is it is all of the most miscalibrated comedic... But it's not a phoned-in performance. No, no.

It's a big swing that misses. You know what, Sean? I'm curious to see it. I know. It's actually the only exception to what we're talking about. It is maybe the only time... He's doing something and it doesn't work. He's doing something he cannot do.

He's taking every fucking item at the buffet and stacking it on one tiny like fucking side plate obviously the other performance he gives post all of this that did make a huge impression obviously was his tommy was so but once again it was like okay you've successfully played a freak like and i don't mean any offense to Mr. Wiseau. You've successfully played a guy who doesn't understand that he's a bad director and shouldn't be making movies. In a film that you directed that is kind of amateurish at best from that standpoint. It's an okay movie.

It's a lovable movie, but not really. Well, this is where the line is, too. It's like, is this guy fucking with me? But is everyone fucking with him right right right right is this a windy city heat situation does this guy not know the weirdness to where it became like everyone was like how does he have a normal brother who's talented and everyone seems to think is a chill guy like yeah people would be like accosting dave franco being like well what do you think of your brother and he'd be like i don't know like i don't know what to say about this like it got it got so strange that like well i'll say too from like yeah when we did that roast writing session and we were

like well what should we talk about like jonah was like i mean i've known this guy for a really long time but i i kind of don't know him at all yeah sure like and i think that's an experience of like a lot of close friends like or like even maybe his own brother where they're like i don't totally know what's going on with him and i don't know if he knows what's going on with him um which i don't know if he knows what's going on with it. Um, which I guess is probably true of a lot of actors because it makes it easier for them to sort of like totally invest in these other realities and stuff. And sometimes I think they are like, it's an odd profession.

Yeah. But there was also, look, there was this period of time in which he was involved in like four different universities, either enrolled as a student teaching teaching classes, or both. Well, yes. I mean, obviously.

And that is the prime. That's happening when he's making 127 hours. He says to Danny Boyle, I wasn't stoned when you first met me. I was tired from all of my classes. That is his excuse. Right. From being in so many schools. Too many schools. Me I was tired from all of my classes That is his That's his excuse

Too many schools I was in a lot of schools at the time Right he went to his safety School and his reach And his early decision He went to all of them The other late James Franco performance I do like is Ballad of Buster

Scruggs which is a tiny Performance He has to nail that final line where he says first time and he's got the noose around his neck and he does so i guess i'll give him that it's sort of the last time i noticed him in anything obviously he does that's basically his last movie before he like disappears into the wilderness no he knows that line but i also think it's it's the weakest of all the lead performances in that movie by a yardstick uh yeah yeah yeah i mean since then he has not done anything except for complete the deuce uh yeah his

his work on on the deuce which we all kind of just sort of, I don't know, never talked about that show was interesting but kind of a bummer I don't know somebody had to tell me season 2 came out and there was a third season there was? yeah, there were three

they did three seasons I think third season would have been shorter and I think the third season also came out in the we don't talk about franco period like they were too deep in it and they were just sort of like look it's ending here you go here are the last episode now here we are talking about i know i mean all i wanted to say was just that in that period where he was uh enrolled in four different universities and he would switch which ones every semester he'd go i'm dropping this one i'm adding this one uh but but the universities would keep on saying like no he's really a student he's like really here he really does this and there was this kind

of unspoken thing that has now come out that like he was sending proxies to all of these fucking classes of course and they would like film them and take notes and he would be like yeah yeah i got it right because he was one of these guys who's like i could just read it and i'll remember it i'll process i don't need to be there and it was such a good advertising campaign for all of these schools that it was like it started with him actually being there and then very quickly it would, oh, he hasn't set foot on this campus in two years or he only shows up when he's teaching this one seminar or whatever it is, you know? Yeah. To be clear, at one point or another, he was enrolled at or taught at UCLA, Brooklyn College, Yale University, Columbia, RISD. Three days later.

NYU Tisch and the Columbia School of the Arts and maybe also California State Summer School for the Arts. Those are the schools I can find that he was associated with. Oh, and maybe Warren Wilson College. I don't even know what that one is. He was there too. are those are the schools i can find that he was associated with oh i know maybe warren wilson college i don't even know what that one is well he was he was there too thank you for taking the time to read all of those this is a college now yeah we all go to warren wilson's college on uh on the weekends he had the the ability briefly to turn anything into a college wherever he was became a college yeah he was deputized yeah it's like how the president if he's on a plane it's

air force one it becomes yeah transitive everyone um welcome to starbucks university bucks university david i don't know if this is in uh what jj pulled up but i remember in the like award season campaign press run for this movie when danny boyle would speak very positively about his experience obviously how happy he was with the performance that franco gave a fella right and this movie uh there was this whole thing, I know, Sean, that you want to talk about where the film has two DPs

and the main reason they did that was because they basically were like, let's have two crews that alternate so we can film double long days without overworking people. Right. And Franco, once he basically got in there,

was in there and would just read his fucking textbooks in down time to keep like he was like oh I'll keep up with my classes in between setups and things like that but Boyle would say he was like look Franco is like a weird guy

I would sometimes come up to him and ask him or you know make a suggestion direction wise or ask him if he thought he could do something and he would like sort of stop and like think deeply and then nod his head and go yes franco can do that as if he was like an advanced computer processing a request and he was like it was never clear to me if this was some bit he was doing or if this is his process, but he would

speak of himself in the third person and was like, yes, Franco is capable of doing that. Well, that sounds fun. The Clem Dog can relate. Except that every time somebody asks me something, I go, Clem Dog can't hack it. Right.

I'm not going to give you what you want on this one, boss. Clem Dog's tapping out. Clem Dog is at capacity. What you got's what you're going to get from Clem Dog, friendo. My apologies. Okay, so Danny Boyle, we've sort of, you know, he's already got this crazy,

let me just give you a little Danny Boyle production nonsense because he is crazy. Initially, he was like, I want to shoot it on location in the canyons down there. And they were like, Danny, we won't be able to feed a crew. It's going to be unsafe and there's no light.

And he was like, right fine so then they recreate the canyon in an old furniture factory uh they did go to the canyon obviously to shoot the build-up to his accident and all that but they did not uh do you know anything else there uh he also wanted to shoot the film in sequence okay which i i understand that right that he's like i want to you know give the actor the chance to build that up um but that they couldn't do either um it just feels like kind of not that surprising his style is counterintuitive to that because boyle likes to switch between so many different mediums and so many different like kinetic insert shots and whatever it's you know if this were a more low-key film if it were a stripped down robert bresson version of being trapped in the cave maybe you could do this uh in order um i i will say just to give this one props this is a movie where i completely believe that they're in the real place

the same place the entire time. Totally. That transition for me. If you told me that they did it on location, I'd go, wow, that must have been hard, but I wouldn't be like, no way. It feels like it. Seamless transition. It feels completely true the entire time. The light feels right. None of it feels stagey. And I even think

a lot of times you can sense the energy shift in the performances when people are out in nature versus when they're suddenly cutting to them in a contained, controlled environment. And I just feel like it's all on the same continuum for me. I agree that it looks fantastic. It wasn't nominated for cinematography. This is an incredible year at the Oscars, as we've sort of touched on, this is an incredible year at the oscars as we've sort of touched on like apart from the king's speech like the other cinematography nominees that year along with the king's speech which is actually an okay shot movie are true grit social network black swan and inception like yeah it's a

it's it's just it's all these those four films are all basically original films i mean true grit and social network are based on books. But you know what I mean? Yeah. That are like gigantic hits. Like audiences are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're ready for all that. And King's Speech as well, obviously.

This feels like the last time that you had like several Oscar movies becoming blockbusters rather than several blockbusters becoming Oscar movies. Right, because other nominee that year is The Fighter, which is another big hit. Right. All those movies did well because of Oscar buzz. Inception is the only one that was sort of a hit coming in. Yes, right. Inception was a summer blockbuster, yeah.

But anyway, why did they shoot in a furniture factory and not utah as many film stages you ask every single film studio in utah was being used by john carter which which had to have a zillion sound stages yeah um just funny to think about yeah um so, the fake Canyon they made, uh, they wanted it to be like really difficult to access, even if it was fake, just to make it feel real for James Franco. So Franco needs only a couple of people could. Yeah. Only a couple of people could come in at a time.

Uh, they would leave him the camera and he could shoot material on his own uh the way that um the lar larb who's the uh costume designer and was sort of the costume and production designer here the way they put it is um his danny boyle's knee-jerk response when you ask him something has nothing to do with traditional rational thought everything has to be an experiment until it's shot like he's just clearly he's just kind of like i don't know how could we do this differently to make it look real or more interesting like you know he just never wants to cheat in the normal way i guess until he's like backed into a corner and it's like no we have to do it this way danny or else like it's just gonna be too crazy there's all this stuff is clearly interesting like they made this set difficult for a reason i guess i don't know i think you can feel it

yeah i'm sure yes i think it definitely adds to the performance i think like it has to it has to feel claustrophobic um uh yeah i think that energy like permeates all of it like it it really yeah it felt authentic to me and that like it's the two cameraman thing where they're like constantly working because they like we can't do a four-month shoot it's going to be too intense like we need to compress the actual length of the shoot it's easier to make him work faster longer right but fewer days and with the amount of setups this movie needs it would just take forever if you weren't shooting that many cameras and shooting basically double days and everything and it does as you said that it they keep it moving by like doing all these weird like different insert shots and different angles and like when they start flashing to um

his memories i do think again something that could seem so stupid but the fact that they have him like mouthing uh the words along with his memory like say like just quietly saying to himself the thing that he's thinking about himself having said like it just feels i don't know that that felt great to me like what would happen as you're starting to sort of dissociate um from your own experience that's another reason i think the sort of liberties taken with the um uh tamblyn mara scene are so important is because you need him to play showboat to that scale where when he gets to this point later in the movie it doesn't feel like a cheat to have him saying these things out loud yeah you're like this guy would he is so self-mythologizing

that he would be narrating this in real time. He would be performing this for the camera or for himself. And him reliving his memories in those moments would be like a full body experience for him, not a passive cut to flashback thing. When he's doing the like talk show with himself and it like, and those like fast cuts in between like him as the interviewee and him as the interviewer and like the level of energy that he has um sort of be playing host and like brightening up and kind of summoning everything he has and then down to him being depressed and

being like no this is how stupid i am like i didn't tell anyone i'm going and seeming broken as you said it feels genuine it doesn't feel like a cheat it's very engaging it's very interesting but because you've seen what a show he puts on for these girls and how sort of into himself and and sort of being a performer in his own life. He is stepping off the rocks and having the confidence to make like three serial killer jokes in a row. That kind of like absurd charisma that I feel like seems to be stock and trade for guys who are creeps to be like, hey, don't worry, I'm not going to murder you. Like he comes down immediately, makes a Friday the 13th. You know what I'm saying? But he's like, I can sell this to them. You you need all of that i will say self-awareness yeah the moment you're talking about sean where he drops the reality of the reality show of the talk show

and says you know it breaks down basically his realization that the soonest they would even send a rescue team to discover him would be another three days. And then you just sort of cut to that wider shot of him in the rock, realizing how doomed he is and the show is over. That is how I'm going to feel in 45 minutes when we end this Zoom. And we just suddenly, I'm just sitting at a table alone. It's like that moment I was like, like oh this is what zoom podcasting felt like during the pandemic okay it's a good episode right and then you just cut silence and call

cut silence 45 hours later what day are we on right now three and a half four okay gotcha yep um here's an early thing that i think is brilliant in this movie go ahead the the delayed title card yeah yeah yeah giving us so much fun and not hitting us with the card until he's stuck right like it's it's the minute he's stuck that we finally get the title that was so good and i didn't obviously didn't remember it from the first viewing but that really uh got me him getting stuck is communicated very well i i know this may sound so obvious but the way it happened so fast and like you see the rock tumbling down and you know you're just sort of like yep i get it yep he's stuck i don't need any more like i completely understand how he cannot

move now like you know i don't need a physics diagram here they do it just right yes it feels just right and it's the fall it's like ah god damn it like fuck you know because it's the kind of thing where it would in the moment feel small feel like it feels like you spilled a drink or whatever right yeah shit ah you know right yeah god fuck damn it okay how stupid all right let me fix it and then it's just like nope no chance right right he doesn't say ow he doesn't scream in pain it's absolutely a moment of more him being embarrassed that he fucked up and then it's the slow realization of like oh i'm i'm actually doomed now and that you have so long to live with the mistake.

Right. Because he's there, right? He's realizing his arm is pinned. And then suddenly right above his shoulder appear giant letters that say 127 hours, which is based on reality. That's true. And this guy's like, you're telling me this is how long it's going to be? Are you kidding me? For real?

But I feel like Boyle is incredibly good at spatial geography for someone who is so kinetic and manic as a filmmaker. Usually people like this just choose to throw that out the window and go, it's part of my stylization. I don't care. I don't care. It's part of my stylization. I don't care. I don't care. And it gets harder when you're in a space that's this contained to even just make it so clear where are all of his items in relation to him, you know?

When he rigs up that little like pulley system so that he can like, you know, kind of be able to take the weight off of his legs and stuff and the way they're kind of showing him like slinging the rock, like all of that. It's not overdone, you know, but you kind of just as you said with the getting stuck you're like i understand like yeah i understand where everything is and like how and sort of how this works the most relatable shit in this movie for me talk about how much i don't understand this guy earlier in the episode the stuff that i think think Franco does so well beyond the showboating stuff which is really hard to do without you know embarrassing yourself to do this sort of self-narration all that sort of shit he has so

many little moments where you register exactly what he's thinking where he's sort of taking account of his situation and the circumstances around him and you as an audience member doing the math and you can tell exactly what his conclusion is from that math yeah but there there are a couple moments that really stuck to me it's certainly that first moment when he realizes he's stuck but he doesn't realize how bad it is and at first he's just like oh fuck god and it's sort of just that feeling of like the moment you've realized you've locked yourself out you know you like close the door and then you're like i don't have the fucking key and your brain does the whole thing like could i could i could i do this could i do this is this open can i try this right hang on oh do i have

one over here like no i fucking moved it and you're sort of like that was a mistake made in five seconds you know i almost had the thought right before the door closed that i should check and i didn't catch it and now i'm gonna fucking regret it and then similarly there's the moment where he places his water bottle down and then tries to fish a thing out of his eye and the water bottle falls over and he loses like 25 of his water talk about tension to the water bottle every time the lid of the water bottle is open right i am panicking yes i am like no don't put it down you you have to always screw the lid back up that's the thing unless it's in your hand he plays it so well where he's just like that that moment of arrogance for a guy who's

fucked to be like well i don't need to close it i'll pick it up again in a half a second yeah yeah yeah and it's just like a near fatal mistake well and there's moments too where he's taking a sip and he's almost like starting to fall asleep or like you know like he's like passing out a little bit and you're like no no no he's gonna drop his water like i'm so scared he's gonna drop his water and then when he finally there's a couple times where it feels like it will happen and it doesn't and then when it does i wasn't you know exactly expecting it the first time i said where it's like oh not now here's a question for you guys what do you think is the most impressive aspect of his survival because i have a clear answer you mean and the answer can't be

that he cut his arm off i'm talking about basically the five days up until the arm getting cut off where he has to maintain right okay okay because there's a there's a very clear answer. You think it's peeing into his... I think that one's okay. I think the moment where I really... The peeing is definitely where I went, where my brain immediately went. Only because we were just talking about the water and that he's able to stay hydrated

by like peeing into his like Osprey pack or whatever. Yeah. I think the moment that makes me truly believe that this guy is survivor of the year is when he chooses to make it a no-fap 127 hours. The moment when he is re-watching the video from the cave. Now, I did completely forget. And he goes for the belt buckle.

And then he goes like, no, you can't. I thought he was about to jerk off. I forgot. I was like, is there a five-minute J.O. scene in this movie? I forgot how long it took him to almost jerk off. I know. He really comes close. In my memory, it's like around day two that he tries to jerk off.

No, he makes it. But it was like, no, it's so late in the game. It's like night four. I would think it would be off the table by then. Right. Yeah. I thought it was too late. I thought he should have tried to

jerk off earlier that's basically what i i do that minute 15 i'm like let's get all the gettings right who knows how much blood i'm losing well i still got one hand right it's crazy that he does it when he's basically near death and it almost feels like in that moment his decision is do i jerk off and die a happy man or do i save what little energy i have left to cut my arm there's the unspoken thing of like this could kill me right i think i think well you know much much like a lot of very smart people will tell you on reddit every time you come you lose some of your energy the more power you have right right and i think he realizes i maybe got 10 15 percent left one load would nearly deplete me if i'm gonna if i'm gonna know the guy reads his bible i mean better to spill your seed in

the belly of a whore than wasted in blue john canyon as i so often repeat of course of course Blue John Canyon. As I so often repeat. Of course. Of course. So it is, yeah, it is a crime. Yeah. And now we're going to resume the episode. It's two days later. So we're on Monday now.

Is that right? Yeah. Monday, Ben? Yeah. Okay. It's actually, well, really, no, it's Tuesday morning. So Ben just cut out all the audio we kept running, especially the stuff where we were sleeping. But now the four of us are back together again. crews and two separate dps and um you know for the most part it's pretty unified but uh i picked i think 29 spots where i could tell that they had handed off from one time to another sure

and just it's so subtle it's so subtle but i have the eye yeah And visually I knew, oh, okay, this is so-and-so. Or this is when such-and-such was handling the camera. And I just, so I had the list. No, I was just going to say, just to clarify, the three of us went to sleep. And then while we were sleeping,

Sean got back on his microphone and just did a six-hour run explaining all the moments that he noticed the pass-off happening. And poorly explaining them as well. Because you're an amateur. It's the part where they're in a cave. You can see the wall of the cave. He's wanting to get out.

He's hating being in there. The man is looking at his own arm, even. Right. You should have been able to get through all that in three hours, but it took you six. Cause you were, you were stammering.

You were losing my place. I can't read my own writing. A lot of that is what is free to say? It's dark. I mean, yeah. You know, um, you know um look i i one thing griff i don't know if you know the two there's two cinematographers as sean mentioned anthony dodd mantle who is danny boyle's big collaborator at that point the other guy is called enrique chediak and he is the cinematographer on 28 weeks later oh. Oh, interesting. So this film had the DPs of both 28 Days and 28 Weeks. They combined forces.

That's all. That's cool. I talked about this in our Slumdog episode, but I have to assume a similar approach was taken on this movie. But the thing that I find so interesting about Dodd-Mantle and Boyle, their work in this period, and it is just pretty wild watching this and thinking that this movie is coming out less than 10 years after 28 Days Later. shot on fruit by the foot and this is almost like strikingly detail like you see every speck of dust on his hat you see every bead of sweat like the image could not be more clear um but there's this thing sean that boyle talked about when they were like experimenting with different uh digital video

cameras for slumdog millionaire where boyle was like is there any reason the camera needs to be in the shape of a camera and they were like what are you saying and he was like well there any reason the camera needs to be in the shape of a camera and they were like what are you saying and he was like well you build it like a camera with these dimensions because that's what we're used to cameras looking like but like inside of that the guts are like there's a lens connected to a sensor connected to a battery right and they were like yeah and he's like so can we just take the panels off and disassemble this so that he can put most of it in a backpack and anthony dob mantle can basically hold the lens and you feel it in this movie i think where it's like they have to get into really tight spaces that's cool they have to move around really fast

and he was just like there's no reason for this guy to have a fucking thing on his shoulder why are we pretending that a camera needs to look like this now god i'm so fucking stupid like i would never think about anything like that ever that is that is so smart yeah it's so fucking you insist that cameras have like big mickey mouse ears to keep the reels in like to this day like you they have to have that you hide snacks in their tripod. And the megaphone I'm yelling at you isn't doing anything. There's a mic if I want it. I don't know.

Tradition used to mean something in this town. Okay, so before we talk about the amputation, is there anything else you guys want to highlight i love all the stuff with the water just because it feels like such like a relief and then an instant danger like i like how you're like okay finally this guy's getting rained on and then like when there's the waterfall thing that feels very visceral i don't know that's interesting that flight of fancy where the rain, like, allows him to escape and everything, and then it's like,

you see that it's like a dream sequence, like... But there's such an elegant arc to that from going like, oh, this is a salvation to going like, this is making the situation so much worse to the moment where you clock.

This is all in his head. Yeah. None of this happens. He's dreaming about water. Right. Yeah. I like the part where the camera moves out of the canyon

over to his car and he imagines the gatorade bike and then it's that's awesome the movement of it because i feel like that really captures like kind of how your mind could do that like if you go on a trip and you realize at the airport like oh fuck at my coffee table is whatever i left behind this is where i left my keys when the door locks behind you you immediately remember seeing your keys on the counter the frustration of the shittier knife yeah what he realizes of just which is real part of the story and like couldn't happen any other way which is is really crazy like that this guy who is about this life in such a major way doesn't have good gear for something so like essential like just like if you if this is your lifestyle and you are like rock climber mountain

man like knows all the secret paths it's like you've got a decent knife like that's got to be true for 99 of these people but it's just like that came with a fucking free flashlight like a stocking stuffer for my mom and i was like right whatever the knife works right the series of like i mean he says he has a swiss army knife but he can't reach it i think right no don't you see him leaving it like he doesn't pick it up maybe you're right isn't that right at the start of the movie like you see him put down like have a swiss army knife yeah and he doesn't grab it yeah or something like that it's such a horrible detail that it's yeah all the little things that he like behind where it's like, well, this doesn't matter, which that like no matter what, like you, you totally can relate to just that. Oh, yeah.

Well, whatever. It'll be fine. I don't need this. Well, just the idea that this is the only thing you need. This fucking tool is like so dull that not only does he need to cut his own arm off, but he has to spend like an hour or two sharpening it against the rocks in preparation to cut his own arm off but he has to spend like an hour or two sharpening it against the rocks in preparation to cut his own arm off when he's been chipping at the rock forever i really relate to his hand hurting from doing it um then when he's been chipping at it and he has the boat where he's like i actually think that i have been making myself more stuck like which makes sense right that it's like my arm

was like holding it out again so like by like decreasing the amount of surface area that was touching the rock i let it like roll in tighter that um and that you would not think of that until you had been doing it for three days yes yes just on a storytelling perspective he's like so good at just like the the markers like the time markers in this movie of like what's the first thing you do you take out your thing you try to like chip the rock away right which works as such a good establishing a long process but we're you know we're here but you're like i can get this done and it establishes this shitty tool so well you know you get the close-up of it his finger running against it

okay it doesn't even cut his finger you see him chipping at it it doesn't work and then basically like minute 30 is him trying to cut his arm making a few like scrapes basically and giving up an hour in is he just jams it straight into his arm yep like i just need to fucking do this uh and then you have like 10 to 15 minutes right of him then trying to figure out what to do from there um the the fucking uh you already invoked it i mean should we just get to the the gnarliness of of the arm yeah let's do okay so do you want to know how they did it yeah okay so one thing that i think is incredible that danny boyle says is the the real rescue services guys eventually did go get his arm they like lifted the boulder and got it. And they showed him a photo of what it looked like.

And he said it literally looked like when the guy gets flattened by a steamroller in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It was flat like a pancake. Because it just got stuck under the rock, obviously. So just funny to think. And if we have ever shown any image like that audiences would just laugh it would just look too ridiculous like that's what the real thing looked like um but yeah they built a prosthetic arm they took a mold of his arm they filled it with muscles veins tendons and a bone and they attached it at his shoulder

and you know figured out this complicated way for him to sort of arrange himself so his real arm is being held in place and the fake arm is there. And then they gave him the knife, and they were like, okay, cut your arm off. It's going to take you a while. And he started hacking away at this fake arm.

And Franco says that's the take they use. Right. The reactions are real, because he doesn't know how realistic this thing is, and the fact that he's actually going to have to go through it, like, layer by layer, the amount of blood that's going to come out and all of that. But it's so visceral, because you feel like,

you know, you feel like, okay, as we talked about, like, maybe I could get my mind to the place where I'm going to start doing it. Would I know to break the bones first i guess i've got a lot of time to think about it but the thing you don't account for is like all right well the the you know it's pretty much dead this part of your body you turn it for a long time but but the way they use the score when he hits the nerve yeah that's that is for me it is the thing that has stuck with me about this film yep i i i almost don't go a day without thinking about it yeah it is because

he touches it it's like touching the fucking wire you know and it's like it zaps him and it zaps him again and he goes i gotta fucking do it i got to just like do this thing that is going to hurt so much. And I got to do it so fast. It's a band-aid. He says it's like lighting your arm on fire. It's like putting your arm into lava is how he describes it. Like the cutting the nerves. As both of you said, you go to see this movie and

you're like how gnarly is this gonna be when's he gonna do it how insane is this gonna be yeah right how long is this gonna take and and you know one of the craziest aspects of the real story is like it's not like he just went slice or i'm off you're like this is like multiple hours of his life having to methodically continue carving. So you're like, how is this going to play out? How grotesque is this going to be? And then far and away, the most visceral aspect of it is Danny Bull just hitting on like, oh, it should make a buzzing sound like you're playing Operation.

Yeah. Basically, nothing is going to affect the audience more than like a sound music cue that invokes the feeling of hitting the nerve directly. And that sense of like, there's no way but through this and it's not going to get any better. Yeah, that's right. It's more than anything you see. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Nothing you see is really that bad. Right. Like, I mean, I just mean in terms of gore you know in terms of nastiness like it's not nice but it's less gory than evil dead yeah sight you know yeah it's like an arm covered in blood and he's cutting through you know it's horrible but yeah it's it's all in the sensory parts of the movie and if you're in a theater it's that you're locked in with it obviously like that you just you know it's harder to look away the screen is filling your vision um and i mean i think he

plays it so well like ralston says like i like that he's smiling because that's how i felt because i was like finally accomplishing something like as much as i felt like insane and it was in so much pain i was at least doing something for the first time in days basically yeah trying something yeah instead of just waiting and being like what yeah that's right yeah it's a relief in a way and it's it's interesting like obviously and then just the idea of him then like showing up in front of a bunch of like you know like a utah family and being like like i got off my arm like it's it's like fucking it's like dutch tourists or something right like yes that's what it is but i remember that that's what i remember from the theater of like him

getting out and like seeing people and like him you know like for i mean first he drinks all the muddy water which is so right right fucked up it is like it's the nastiest looking water they do a great job i think i had forgotten how much of a journey he has to like just get back out to where he could run into someone after having cut off his arm after having been trapped for five days and then it's like no you still have to like do your hike in reverse six miles

that's so fucked up right yeah I don't want to walk that under the best circumstances no that's the wildest thing have any of you watched the alternate ending for this movie? No. What's the alternate ending? I did not know this existed. I bought the film on iTunes. It had a bunch of deleted scenes,

including a 22-minute alternate ending, which I bring up now because it starts basically at the moment where he successfully gets through the arm and is freed from the cave sure at that point it's mostly playing the same but there are some editing choices it spends more time on sort of the gap between when he gets out of the crack and when he finds the swedish family you see more of his like journey in between but with the sigur ross song starting to play and everything and he sort of passes out less it gets a little less dreamlike a little less quickly and then once he's rescued it starts cross-cutting with the swedish family on tv talking about discovering him and this movie basically had shot,

scripted, edited, uh, the Danny Boyle version of the cast away ending in which rather than it immediately going to this sort of montage Coda wrap up, you, it's all a little montage, but it's more him landing him doing the press conferences,

him seeing his family again for the first time he's in the hospital with his mom his mom goes like i'll kill you if you ever go without telling us where you're going you see you know it's sped up but you see all the steps of everything and then he goes to his sister's wedding thus justifying my lizzie caplan is only in two isolated shots of this movie there's an actual scene where they go to the wedding and uh treat williams says like this is the greatest day you could ever hope for not only am i gaining a new son in my family but we got our our previous son back and they cut to franco and he just kind of looks empty and then there's a scene where he and lizzie caplan play chopsticks together on the piano and there's like something kind of uns empty. And then there's a scene where he and Lizzie Kaplan play chopsticks together on the piano.

And there's like something kind of unspoken in him. He leaves the wedding. He gets in his car. He drives to Clemence Posey. And then she talks to him. They do. They do like the Helen Hunt ending. And he basically they're like having a nice sort of catch up.

She's so excited to see him. I saw the story on the news. Offers him drink they go out back they're talking she mentions that she broke up broke up with the guy that she clearly had been dating after him he sees his like window of opportunity he tells her i had this vision when i was in there i saw the small child and she went was it you and he said no it was. And I realized that's what I want. It's my future son. And he looks at her and he sees it on her face. She plays this moment incredibly well.

And then he goes, that's not your kid, is it? And she goes, no, it's not going to be my kid. Right, right, right. my kid right right and then she says to him like every single person who loves you is constantly like hurting themselves right you you kind of need to i wish you all the best but you need to figure your shit out there's no going back here it's a punishment to care about you right and the ending is not perfectly executed i think franco weirdly kind of fucks up the scene despite the fact that she's playing it well but then he still does the exact same coda it then goes from that to him coming out of the pool the shot of seeing both the actors playing

his family and friends and the real family and friends and then saying like three years later aaron found his calling the prophecy came true he got married and had a kid right can i tell you what danny boyle's take is why he cut all that out he was like it's a good ending it's all done well like you know it's a very hollywood ending yeah and he was just like the day before the final cut was due we were just like this just doesn't make any sense for the movie we made like the movie is fairly light and experimental. This is a pretty traditional ending. The movie just needs to punch out, is how he puts it. I agree.

It just needed to be him saying, I need help, and you're done. And then you do the very pre-coded at the end. They sound like good scenes, but you're not in the world seeing him experience interactions with other people, except in his mind or this very brief thing in the hike feels like you just would be entering a different movie for all of

that what did you think of it when you watched it griffin is it it does feel a little bit like that it's weird i mean because the movie the movie itself is only 90 minutes long basically which is i love that which is nice like we talked about this in our train spotting episode but bull is incredibly good at knowing basically, like, if I'm making a movie that's going to be this high octane, this difficult,

he basically does what he calls the 90-minute blood pact of, like, this movie has to be out of here in 90 minutes. You cannot subject people to this shit

for longer than that. I think, you know, you're right. That's the fundamental issue, probably, is just that it feels like it's out of a different movie it feels kind of jarring and especially because the the alternate ending is presented in the context of it transitioning from him in the cave to this you're not just watching these scenes in isolation you're watching the lead up to it it does suddenly feel like a totally different thing. Even when we see scenes from his life in his memory, they're so dreamlike and feel like memories, like they're these pieces. They're just like his POV or

something like they're not, you know, they're not traditional like scenes from a film that you watch. And so it does just feel like that would be out of place, although it all sounds kind of good. When something like Castaway commits to doing 45 minutes to an hour of once he gets back on land, whereas this, it's like, Bull wants to do all of this, but do it in 10 minutes. And more interaction in the lead up,

more establishment of a wider world that this person exists in. Prior to the stranding i think so that you are so when you return to it it doesn't feel like it's from a different thing it feels like you're like book ending um now that having been said when this movie came out and i liked this movie a lot i thought it was pretty triumphant i do remember feeling like the ending feels a little too pat. It's just, it kind of felt like, like Danny putting his hand a little too far to say like,

and here's the lesson. Here's the moral. He learned the Kota, like the, the Chiron or whatever. And the, and the like real people on the couch, like that,

but him getting out and seeing the family and calling for help and how frantic it feels yeah that he can't talk yeah i need help and then like the sort of time lapse that they do to like a helicopter or arriving like all like that had me fucking oh incredible i was like uh and the music for it all of it i was just like going through something serious during that when i the thing that gets to me is when he says to them the swedish family he's like can one of you run ahead and the mother and the child run ahead and then they find like two other hikers and they run back and they hand them their water bottle in this sense of like the further they're trekking humanity the community is coming together

everyone's giving him the water bottle he's trying not to pass out like all that stuff and him asking them to do it like that's played so well too of like the fact that he is like a volunteer rescue worker and knows what needs to happen like being established earlier and him doing it in a way that's not aggressive but it is like because it's also very scary obviously to be approached by this person like you're a family like you've got your kid with you covered in blood he looks like a guy it looks yes it looks terrifying you know um and then to be like i'm gonna i'm going to ask you for more things like um in this way where i'm trying to contain myself of like i need you to be fucking moving right now like i'm dying uh it's so intense dude yes and then the other

people helping out it's incredible and he's right that basically the movie needs to end within three minutes of that like you're not gonna top that feeling coda it's just well i just like having the final uh title on screen of like oh don't worry he got married that feels like something where fox searchlight is like look if you want to cut out all the emotional shit fine but you are not releasing this without telling the audience that this guy got married and had a kid i'm like there needs to be at least a text on screen that says that or else people will riot. Like, you know, I'm sorry. And the additional element of like, he never stopped exploring.

And now here's real footage of him still going on an expedition. Climb every mountain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, what happens in real life is within two to three years of the release of this movie, he and that woman are divorced. He has another failed relationship after this and in the years after this he basically talks about his like whole initial oprah press tour motivational inspirational figure period he was like i my shit was fucked up and basically when i should have been humbled by that experience it instead made me think i was invincible and i was basically in a manic state for like years where i thought nothing could fucking touch me and i could

overcome anything understandable understandable completely fry your brain like nice to acknowledge yes that it's such it's such a a long-term like a prolonged traumatic episode that completely rewires your brain over days and days. And then that the recovery from it would be years. And basically it's just, it's the mistake of this movie. Like we, we covered, uh,

uh, Lorenzo's oil on the podcast. And I said, I couldn't believe the, the decision that movie makes that other films based on true stories don't make is when they do their end title cards explaining what happened after the movie. They specifically word it as at the time of the completion of this film. Yeah. So smart.

And they just lock it into here's at the moment that we locked picture. This is where things were at. We're not claiming this is where things were at we're not claiming this is forever that movie's stronger i love that movie i think it's so good that you know is a story about a couple that stays together and it ends with them being together and it you know they got divorced like two years later because like this shit fucks you up so bad and like the now the movie feels a little odd but and then check the wikipedia it doesn't need to negate that reality but it does feel like when the film is ending with

a real shot of aaron ralston with his wife and kid and then a real shot of him continue to explore and then the movie's like and look everything was perfect he figured out his home life and it didn't stop his thirst for adventure and then this guy by his own admission like two years later was like i do not know how to relate to people and it is insane that i kept on going out into the face of danger all right i want to say before we play the box office game i want to say one more thing about this movie that's interesting please aaron ralston loves fish that may not shock you to hear it the band fish they make fun of it for him in the cave yeah right yep and they really he really wanted to end the movie to end with a fish song and danny boyle said like listen out of respect for him i listened to fish endlessly continually

like try clearly danny boyle who clearly has fairly like hip taste in music and like has these great soundtracks and eclectic as well like goes for all kinds of different 100 100 and he's just clearly like immersing himself in fish and it's just like there's got to be some way many of us have before to get on board with this right and at the end of the day, he was like, I can't. I can't do it. I can't listen to this anymore. I can't put it in the movie. Yeah.

And so they did not put Fish in the movie. Do you know what song he wanted to end it with? No, he did not say what song he wanted to end it with. It was the cover of the 2001 theme, weirdly. No. Farmhouse. I mean, I, yeah. I need help.

I just love the idea of Danny Boyle. We have cluster flies in there. You know, where they're like, you know, in the post-production, like, it's like, what? Why is Danny in that room? He's like, he's listening to Fish. He's doing it all day. He just, he's just trying. He's bouncing around.

It is funny. The opening song in this film that plays over the opening sequence where it's all the kind of like crazy Boyle quick cutting him getting ready to go. It's called Never Hear Surf Music Again by a band called Free Blood. If I had to write a parody of a song that Danny Boyle would choose to put in the soundtrack of one of his films, the opening lyrics, which you hear very clearly are, there must be some fucking chemical that makes us different from animals. Take it if it makes you numb. Take it if it makes you cum. Take it if it makes you make it perfect. That just feels like every one of his movies has a song that has that attitude that basically

screams its lyrics at you. Yeah, yes. It is so soon into the film that you're thinking about um being made to come by a chemical and and i did think like there were moments where i was like is this way cheesier than i remembered i thought that i liked this and it's like yeah it is a little bit like there's stuff that just aren't you know immediately feels sort of dated like but i don't know on the whole it works no i think i think it totally works and also at this point it's basically a period piece it's like a mid-2000s vibe this guy and he

feels right out of it like it feels absolutely accurate to that kind of a guy from that that like from about 20 years ago absolutely which is crazy to think about um this film came out uh did the classic festival thing uh premiered a telluride went to toronto had that word of mouth thing that was crucial right like all the critics are like look he pulled it off like you know i feel like all the reviews which were glowing were basically like the thing's compelling like what can i tell you you know i get hats off to danny boyle but then griffin as you say there's this parallel thing happening where it's also like, and you won't believe it. People are screaming, you know, the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto.

You know, there's a doctor on call because it's so intense. And I was anxious about seeing this movie. I was like, what the fuck? Like, how awful is this going to be? And, you know, I put people off. They went full William Castle, the tingler. Yeah. In their, like, selling of the movie.

And basically the first screening was at Telluride and two people fainted. It's the altitude, you know? But Fox Searchlight was like, we're capitalizing on this. And they just decided to, to like commit to it wholly. And then it just sort of escalated. Like it started to, it felt like it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there was another screening, maybe at Toronto, where someone had to be taken out in a gurney. Like it did almost feel like matinee style theater.

Someone's arm fell off. People vomited. And then like in the screen but then people were writing articles someone thought about jerking off but then didn't so actually that was not a problem they held back no but like people were writing articles like like saying it as like almost the challenge of i think it was more that yes by the way guys right right to blank check if you just as a general question have you tried to jerk off to the scene where he tries to jerk off and only tried i don't want to hear if you did it

i just want to hear if you thought don't need to know that's your personal business i'm not being invasive and follow-up question follow-up question did you try to jerk off to our discussion of that scene no sure right yeah right fantasy within a fantasy uh i griffin i think it was more the feverish awards bloggers that were focused because the advertising was very triumphant true story right like very heavy on the like you can't well my god the human spirit blah blah blah like they were they were hitting that too uh the huffington post wrote uh that in an article november 2010 uh the film has gotten audiences fainting vomiting and worse in numbers unseen since the exorcist and the movie has not even hit theaters yet that was sort of like right the

the thing that yes a lot of more of the oscar bloggers and whatever we're like the thing that, yes, a lot of more of the Oscar bloggers and whatever were saying. The thing I do remember that felt like the moment where they just made their decision and fucked it up was at a certain point Fox Searchlight started distributing shirts that said, I survived 127 hours. Sure. Right. Yes. They did that. That was like swag that they sent out that felt like they're trying to own it now and it yeah it it did it did become what you're talking about where i think a lot of

people went like oh if it's that fucked up then i don't want to watch it it's a roller coaster no it's a movie it's a movie it's a movie it's 95 minutes he he cuts his arm off there's some blood it's like you could see this in an episode of er and it's visceral like it's a movie it's 95 minutes he he cuts his arm off there's some blood it's like you could see this in an episode of yeah and it's visceral like it's not that crazy it's visceral it's intense but i mean yeah the arm cutting is less than five minutes of the movie shouts to er i mean hey you know i saw some fucked up fucked up stuff on er when i was a kid um the movie made its budget back domestically 18 million dollars it made another 40 worldwide you know so 60 million was its take like you know whatever i remember griffin that when it got a bunch of oscar nominations being a little surprised like we all

figured frank i was getting in there yeah when it got like it snuck into Best Picture and it got a screenplay nomination. That was the first year of the 10. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe the second year, I think. No, it's the second year of the 10. Oh, you're right.

You're right. Oh, no, it's the second. But yes, no, it went from being like this movie's a juggernaut. He's going to get Best Director easily to then it feeling like it waned a little bit

and then it kind of surged a tad at the last minute people liked it voters were generally moved by it but obviously didn't win anything at the Oscars it was a big Oscar year for

whatever let's do the box office game it's just a great box office game this film came out November 5th, 2010. How limited release. Okay. What was the widest it went? So the widest it ever went was it got to about a thousand screens in late January.

So that's like, I think when the best picture nomination comes in it's very very classic searchlight slow build release you know and it ended up at like 15 18 18 okay which like if you put in perspective is a good number for a guy cuts his arm off movie but i think they had this moment where they were like is this thing gonna cross over yeah is this thing gonna make whatever 50 60 i don't know but it didn't but okay griffin number one at the box office it's new it's an animated film november 22 um two major stars above the title i feel like two major stars you know what five big stars above the title including one of you know sean's sean's roast master friend jonah hill okay so jonah hill is this the movie mastermind the movie is not called mastermind

what's it called oh i always get the title wrong it's called megamind megamind i feel like this is a forgotten film I feel like no one talks about this like it's a paramount animated film well it was Dreamworks yeah because there were those years where Dreamworks kept on changing distributors some past episode this was re-litigated by our listeners

some past episode Megamind came up and you and I both said fuck Megamind despite not having seen it we apparently had a lot of ire for megamind came up and you and i both said fuck megamind despite not having seen it we apparently had a lot of ire for megamind i and i i watched it over a kid's shoulder at an auto shop when i like hit uh you know like i had a flat and i had to like sit for an hour while they changed my tire or something that is when i saw megamind sean have you seen megamind haven't seen megamind although i am now there's so many of these animated films that i i didn't watch that i am just at the very very very beginning of

starting to see some of them via uh my son which i've always been excited for. That I didn't feel a lot of pressure to watch these movies even if I thought they might be good because it's just like, oh, well, I just walk in and it's like, okay, dude's watching Madagascar.

And it's like, okay, great. I'll do that. If I had seen it, you know. I watched a scene from the penguins of madagascar with my daughter the other day yeah and i was like this shit's funny like her her song was that one yeah yeah like there were there were gags it was a lot of sort of visual humor it was working for me i saw i watched a little bit of sing too the other day hey they're singing some good songs david just it don't get me started on the different timelines of the madagascar franchise

when we're already 120 hours in that's what i'm saying you've done that i said don't get me started i well i'm not trying to now number one at the box mega mind i just want to say i feel like has a weird cold following with the generation that saw that at the right age and i feel like in particular yes the jonah hill character has a lot of life as a meme now i feel like i see the face of the jonah hill mega mind character getting circulated online a lot. I think Despicable Me ate its lunch. It did. Yeah. Like, that's what happened. Megamind had no minions.

Nope. Right, it didn't have anyone cute. And so while the movie may be good, may be better than Despicable Me, but it did not have that thing. Sean, you are not gonna believe what I'm about to tell you. You are correct that Megamind had no minions,

but it did in fact have David Cross playing one singular character named Minion, and this was their fatal robot monkey with a fishbowl head. This was their fatal mistake. They said, stop at one. Oh, yeah, he was the fish. We don't need multiple minions. We needed two more minions. Yeah.

Yeah. Implying the existence of many, obviously. Yes. Right, because there's also monsters versus aliens. I feel like post-Incredibles, there were a lot of these like, okay, can we do these kind of

throwback comic book-y sort of... But in my mind, it's like we're going from the perspective of this villain largely, right? Like, isn't that... I don't know. He's the main my mind, it's like we're going from the perspective of this villain, largely, right? Like, isn't that... I don't know. He's the main character. That it's like Despicable Me and Megamind are like, we're following the villain and making them

a sympathetic character, and they're actually not that bad, and there's something worse coming. Like, I feel like, without having seen either one of them, this is my impression of them. The pitch on Megamind was Megamind was developed by Ben Stiller to star him

and Robert Downey Jr. And the idea was I will play the world's worst supervillain or maybe that was the Downey part. But he ends up successfully killing

his arch nemesis, the Superman character. And then it's this guy having an emotional crisis when he doesn't know what to do with himself. successfully killing his arch nemesis the superman character and then it's this guy having an emotional crisis when he doesn't know what to do with himself and through like four years of development neither of those guys were involved in the movie and the superhero never dies and it's just about him retiring for a bit and it very much became a he's maybe not all that bad movie yeah yeah yeah that okay that tracks anyway made made 150 million dollars at the

u.s box office it was not not a flop by any means right um number two griffin is also new this week it is an uh acidic comedy starring an actor you literally just mentioned due. It's due date with RDJ and Zach Galifianakis. And movie I still defend thoroughly. Sean, do you have due date thoughts? Yeah, I think I didn't see it. Good thought. Good thinking. Good thinking.

Right. Yeah. And I feel like there was some trailer moment that I went to quote immediately upon it being mentioned but is not coming to mind. But some line or something... What was the big line in the trailer? Yeah, wasn't there a big quote from the trailer of like, Galifianakis has a gun or something?

I don't know. There's definitely something with a gun. They're guns. Yeah, I've heard of Shakespeare. He was a famous pirate. I remember that line. There's definitely something with a gun. They're guns. Yeah, I've heard of Shakespeare. He was a famous pirate. I remember that line. Good jokes. Don Jr. says,

I hate you on a cellular level, which I've always thought is a good insult. I think he feeds his dog a waffle and the dog sneezes and then he says he's allergic to waffles. I think that happens. I don't know i once again i like this movie david what's number three at the box office number three at the box office is also new this week i just want to point out all these films are opening pretty well like i think due date was seen as like a comedown from the hangover but like made a hundred dollars

32 made a hundred million dollars yeah this is um a serious effort from a director who had not been taken seriously it's his uh his sort of oscar play it's a it doesn't work in that regard and then what happens to him after this he goes back to silly bullshit he goes back to making the stuff he's always made uh to great financial success okay uh and he remains one of the most powerful and important people in hollywood it's not michael bay it's not mcg no bigger than that mogul status mogul status yeah there's there's nobody like this and there's no movie like this there's nobody like this there's no movie like it's a really it's a it's a is it is it uh is it is it is it for colored girls it's for colored girls by tyler

perry it's a hard movie it's basically it's like what if someone who is an undeniably commercial filmmaker but makes a very specific kind of movie try to adapt an incredibly sensitive and incredibly complicated theatrical work that is like one of the towering pieces of african-american theater in this from like the 70s with an all-star cast and with an all-star cast and like you know mounted for oscar success and you watch it and you're like oh it's bad okay i guess i i guess i shouldn't be surprised by that right but like everyone briefly was sort of like i don't know maybe tyler perry's got uh an oscar movie in them like the moment that movie was announced and with that cast and the best picture field had expanded to 10 i remember so

many people being like well that will get in as the 10th nominee right it's sort of with 10 nominees there's room for that and then everyone saw it and no one thought about it ever again yeah like god bless him he took on this really difficult work it's an it's a great you know play and he opened it to 20 billion dollars like i don't know you know like it's yeah it's kind of crazy to think about that that movie played that big. But it didn't work. I don't know. What a time.

No, you're right. And he never tries anything like that ever again. He was like, all right, forget it. Forget it. I won't do that again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although now he's doing a World War II movie. Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Whatever. I mean, whatever. He's still working. He's only in his early 50s um he's got a style yeah yeah those tv shows are the most insane yes the tv shows are the craziest what's the show you got to say what the show is there's too many well the the like oval office one or whatever is the one the oval yeah the oval yeah

yeah the oval that one's wild there's 91 episodes of that show that is one of i want to count it like nine shows that he currently has on the air nine shows presently running but he's the writer and director of every single episode correct that is every time let's be clear that is his claim i understand he is the credited writer writer and director on each individual episode of nine currently running tv shows the oval sisters uh bra assisted living like i oh some of them he's actually finally stepped back from I think he's about to buy BET just like correct it seems like that's about to happen Tyler Perry's young Dylan

which is apparently a Nickelodeon show I don't know who old Dylan is it feels like a young Sheldon without Sheldon having existed first I don't know sounds pretty good I have a joke now where I call the Big Bang Theory old Sheldon he's old you guys theory old sheldon and he's old guys crossing old sheldon yeah he's getting up there um number four at the box office griffin is a uh a solid action comedy hit okay

solid action a bunch of movie stars in it. 2010. It gets a sequel. It's going to make about 200 million worldwide. It's Red. Red. With Bruce Willis. Kind of... Is it kind of the last Willis vehicle that isn't like, you know, glass? Like something kind of where he's sort of only a quasi-lead?

Yeah, I think that's the last one that feels kind of legitimate. But it was also that era where suddenly movies need to have six stars instead of one star he is the guy in it I guess he did Die Hard 5 after that oh sure

and he did Looper oh yeah Looper that's the year Looper and Moonrise are like his two final great performances. What? Is Red good? Red's okay. I'll watch it. Red's super okay.

It seems like I would watch it. I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen it. I'll say this though. Like Red 2, you're like, maybe I undervalue Red. It's one of those movies where you watch red 2 and you're like maybe red was a little harder to pull off i should give them a little more credit yeah they really had something with them they have since lost it yeah um the red 2 fans coming for oh god those red 2 fans are crazy yeah they're like mary louise parker you know anthony

hopkins showed up for this one yeah i've seen that one um okay number five at the box office uh because i need to go to bed my god um is it's griff it's november 5th the weekend before was halloween it was our big halloween movie it's dropped four spots it's dropped four spots since halloween it's not a saw it is a saw it is a saw which saw is it is this is this final chapter is this 3d or is there one yes it is no it is saw 3D, the final chapter. That's technically seven? AKA Saw 7. Right. Yes. Okay.

Where the poster, and I remember this well because I was like, what is going on with this franchise? The poster is like Jigsaw being built by like a big scaffolding. Do you remember this? I'm looking it up. They should not have done that. I remember thinking that was a bad idea i was like guys jigsaw is not nice like we should not we should not make him bigger we shouldn't rebuild him like if he's a part that's a good thing i remember being really frustrated you just you would see the poster for the new saw and it would

be like a bunch of blades you know in like an operating theater and you'd be like yeah okay sure okay they're still doing that right and then i just remember seeing this poster that's like a scaffolding the size of like it's gonna launch a saturn rocket it's like what wait wait wait wait wait what happened i remember being mad at obama during that you were mad yeah yeah sure sure because he'd just come into office and you're like what the fuck like jigsaw's supposed to be gone not back like not not back and bigger than ever yeah that pissed me off um so that is that is the final Saw for a while, and then they tried to revive it with Jigsaw, and that didn't work.

And then they tried again with Spiral, and that kind of didn't work. And now Saw X is on the way this year. Is essentially the third time to try to reboot Saw since 2010. Yeah. Can we sort of catch yeah yeah uh some other movies griff paranormal activity 2 which is kind of eating saw saw his lunch you know that's like the new thing uh you got jackass 3d which is a wonderful

film uh perfect film great american film right you've got secretariat which is one of those movies that no one remembers, but actually made like $60 million. Actually kicked ass. Yeah. Actually fucking showed everyone who's boss. Not unlike its namesake. Yeah.

It was kind of the Secretariat of movies. Doing laps around all the movies you do remember. Yeah. Have you seen Secretariat, Griffin? I never saw Secretariat of Movies. Doing laps around all the movies you do remember. Yeah. Have you seen Secretariat, Griffin? I never saw Secretariat. No. No. No. I should have. I should have. Yeah. I saw Seabiscuit. That was enough for me.

Yeah. Yeah. It's Malkovich and Diane Lane. Yeah. I'm going to post this in the chat, but there's one production still of, um, uh,

secretariat that I love and have never forgotten. Um, okay. Hold on. I'll, I'll post for you guys, but keep going through the box office. Yeah.

Uh, yeah. And then, uh, let's see, uh, hereafter Clint Eastwood's bizarre, uh,

tsunami psychic movie hereafter starring Matt Damon. Uh, one of those movies. Hereafter, Clint Eastwood's bizarre tsunami psychic movie Hereafter starring Matt Damon. One of those movies he just low-key made in between giant hits where you're like, huh? What? And Clint's like, I don't know. Enjoy it if you like it, I guess. Look, if you're busy, you're busy. My favorite thing is they interviewed Peter Morgan who who wrote it, and they were like, Hereafter was kind of a weird one. And he was like, I submitted a first draft. And then the next thing I was told was Matt Damon's in it.

Clint, start shooting next weekend. I didn't even fucking revise it. Clint just read that and was like, sure, let's do this. Tsunamis, psychics, I love it. That one-take-only philosophy extended to the script this time. Yeah. And number 10 of the box office, The Social Network. Oh, sure.

The great film of 2010. That's it, Griff. Okay, let's see what this little picture you've sent. This is funny. Give me credit. give me credit it was worth oh yeah i'm looking at this secretariat photo and i'm enjoying it i just remember seeing this photo and thinking to myself oh i'm gonna see that and here we are 13 years later i have made no progress in watching Secretariat. I see that photo and I go, oh man, a bee flying by would have a field day with either of their mouths. All right, we'll make sure Marie tweets this photo out.

It's a good photo, yeah. Randall Wallace's Secretariat. I think, is it the last movie he ever directed? No, he made heaven is for real oh fuck heaven is for real about uh burpo what was his name colleen burpo what was his colton burpo todd todd todd burpo's the dad and colton burpo's the colton yeah incredible family an incredible family oh the Burpos. That's how God tests you.

Yes. I'm going to prove that heaven's real, but only to a family named Burpo. So you sort of can't take it seriously. Can't take him seriously at all. Sean, Flagrant Ones, Hollywood Handbook. Flagrant Ones, Hollywood Handbook. Yeah, check that stuff out. Hollywood Handbook's a podcast.

Subscribe to it anywhere. Flagrant Ones is the name of our Patreon where we have that show and a basketball show and the pro version. And Carl is playing video games, live streaming. There's more stuff there for you. And thanks for having me, guys. Hey. Flagrant Ones is my favorite podcast, basically. That's so nice there for you. And thanks for having me, guys. I go on my favorite podcast, basically.

That's so nice. Weekly joy. Yeah. And you're one of those people where I feel like recently more and more you've started watching movies along with the podcast. And I always get so excited when you text your movie thoughts to me. Oh, well, I appreciate that. I feel licensed to do that but please it's no no hopefully i'm glad to hear it's not annoying but yes i often i think like when you were doing

the fossy stuff i watched yes and was like basically live texting you throughout the entire experience but i loved it and i loved listening to it um reminds me of a good eric roberts thing after this uh but yes no no, you I love getting your your movie takes. And I also love when you text me non-repeatable anecdotes about people involved in movies. Yeah, well, and as we yes, I like that, too. Yeah. And and occasionally I have those. I like to collect those if I can. And I have an Eric Roberts one for you that too. Yeah. And occasionally I have those. I like to collect those if I can. And I have an Eric Roberts one for you too.

And we'll talk about that. Great. Okay. So we'll swap Eric Roberts stories. Fantastic. Great, great, great. Thank you for coming on. And thank you all for listening. And of course, thank you most of all to my parents and siblings.

This is what Ben told me to do in the outro. I am selling Ben off the river. He sent me a DM that said, thank your parents and siblings in the outro. So thank you to Peter Newman, Antonia Dauphin, Romilly Newman

and James Newman. This ordeal of recording over 125 hours has really made me appreciate Newman and James Newman. This ordeal of recording over 125 hours has really made me appreciate them and realize I should spend less time podcasting and more time playing chopsticks with my family. Thank you all for listening.

Too bad. Gotta get your Steve Jobs Blu-ray. We're going straight into it. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media, helping to produce the show. JJ Birch for our research,

Lay Montgomery and the Great American Owl for our theme song, AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing, Pat Reynolds, Joe Bowen for our artwork. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for some links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon,

uh, blank check special features where you do franchise commentaries and other bonus episodes, such as Danny Boyle's Olympic ceremony, his opening ceremony, which will be coming soon to the Patreon. If you want to listen along to that, Ben sent me another private message that said,

now drink piss. I don't have piss, but I have urine colored kombucha. I'll drink while doing this outro. Tune in next week for Trance, one of the most normal movies ever made. Yeah, that's a chill one. Returning guest Nia DaCosta,

the great Nia DaCosta, on for that episode. Good ep. It's a good ep. It's a good ep. And as always, Ben, for that episode. Good ep. It's a good ep. It's a good ep. And as always, Ben,

I realize we came in two hours short of our goal runtime, so I need to fill a busser for the remaining two hours, okay? Great. Okay. So he,

producer Ben, aka the Ben Ducer, aka... I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. you