Blank Check with Griffin & David - A Christmas Carol with Emily St. James

Episode Date: December 13, 2020

What's today? Why its Christmas Carol day! Film critic Emily St. James (Vox) returns to discuss Disney's 2009 take on the classic holiday tale. The gang talks Jim Carrey's career, the best and worst Christmas movies, and Keeping up with the Clauses. Check out untitled slow christmas compilation volume 1! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch @ shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

blank check with griffin and david blank check with griffin and david don't know what to say or to expect all you need to know is that the name of the show is blank check on the first day of christmas my true love sent to me a podcast in a pod tree. On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me two podcast doves and a podcast in a pod tree. I did this to myself. I did. On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me three podcasts, two podcast doves, and a podcast in a pod tree. This song doesn't have anything to do with a Christmas carol, right? Just checking. I don't actually know.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me. It's a Christmas carol. Four podcasts, three podcasts, two podcast doves, and a podcast in a pod tree. I'm sorry, you turned calling birds into podcasts? That's it? There's so much more you can do in calling birds. On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me. Five podcasts. Call me five podcasts. Golden podcasts.

Four podcasts. Three podcasts. Two podcast doves. And a podcast in a pod tree. This is why you guys are in the lead for the Peabody this year, right? Like, this is the reason? Yeah. This is our submission. The OB is no longer in our sights. We want the Peabody this year, right? Like, this is the reason? Yeah, the OB is no longer in our sights.

We want the Peabody. On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me six pods of casting, five podcasts. Oh, boy. Four podcasts, three podcasts, two podcast tubs,

and a podcast in a pod tree. Podcasts do win Peabody awards. They do. They have a whole category for it. You should submit to the Peabody's and submit this episode. On the seventh day of Christmas

my true love sent to me. Submit to Peabody. Seven pods are casting. Six pods are casting. Five podcasts. Four podcasts.

This is podcast three. What is podcast? Two podcast doves. And a podcast in a pod in a pod tree wow the harmony the harmony is there

so we got to seven we got to swans of swimming which I believe you put as pods of casting is that right and no we got to eight excuse me we got to we got to eight and so maids of milking which you put as pods of casting am I right no actually David I'm sorry that was a visit from the We got to eight. So Maids of Milken, which you put as pods of casting. Am I right?

No, actually, David, I'm sorry. That was a visit from the ghost of bits future. I hadn't gotten to it yet. Here it is. On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me eight pods of casting, seven pods of casting, six pods of casting, five podcasts. Six pods are casting. Five podcasts. Four podcasts. Three podcasts.

Two podcasts. And a podcast in a pod tree. tree Hello everybody and welcome to Ho ho ho Merry blank check Good Good I was gonna say this is our last episode before Christmas

but it isn't, it's two weeks before Christmas, right? Um, it's December 13th, so, but you know, it's the season before christmas right um it's december 13th so but you know it's the season it's the season as they say it's the season to be casting yeah i mean you gotta make you gotta get flight in before christmas like that's right that's important flight right flight will be our actual christmas episode we're landing the flight right before christmas our plan for the time being tentatively is to roll it i should mention that we're gonna roll it flight is that a reference to flight yeah i feel like we're gonna roll it for a brief period of time

was up there with a dually appointed federal marshals and we're gonna get over on all these guys it's gonna be the best we ever did am i wrong emily like we're gonna we're gonna roll it was a pretty major trailer line for a little bit oh yeah Oh, yeah. If you saw any movie in like 2012, you heard we're going to roll it. Yeah. But the answer is David is mortified of planes and he probably covered his eyes every time the trailer came up. Yeah. I mean, I know that the plane is upside down or something. We're going to roll it.

We're going to roll it. Right. Right. And I know Goodman is involved. And then they're maybe in Congress or something we're gonna roll it we're gonna roll it right right and i know goodman is involved and then they're in maybe in congress or something there's some sort of hearing at some point that's all i really know look you're gonna see the movie very soon it's the next episode we're recording obviously and i don't want to spoil anything for you but i just want to say the movie might finally answer whether or not john goodman's character has

sympathy for the devil i'm trying to be as oblique here as possible but the movie might provide an answer as to what and it it might be pretty clear yes and i'll go in with that now i have no idea what you're talking about but uh when i when i I was here to talk about Alice in Wonderland, we talked about planes a lot and flight is part of the planes expanded universe. So we talked about the Pixar, well, not Pixar, but the Disney tunes,

right? Right. The Disney planes, planes, fire, it's planes, then planes, fire and rescue.

And then planes were going to roll it. AKA flight. It was retitled Flight in America. In Europe, it was released as Planes, colon, We're Gonna Roll It. We're Gonna Roll It. They should bring back Planes and put Sully in it. Look, we can't talk about Planes again. Wait a second.

If we already did a Planes bit, we gotta flex our muscles. We gotta do something new here. did a plane spit we gotta we gotta flex our muscles we gotta do something new here if if they told me that sully played a plane in planes three i i would i would see it you you know not only that i'd see it in theaters during covet i would go to a public screening during COVID if they were like, surprise, third plane movie and Sully has one scene. I just brought up airplanes so I could open the door just to crack and dangle a little sign

that said Sully through the door and see if you took the bait and you performed marvelously. Thank you, boys. Yeah, we're pretty easy marks I would say. Yeah, by this point people marks, I would say. Yeah. By this point, people will have heard our Castaway episode where Nia DaCosta in real time tries to interrogate us on whether or not the Sully thing is a bit

the way our Reddit has been trying to do for the last five years. That movie is very good. It is not a bit. It's not a bit. I swear to God, it's a great movie. She also goes in on Clint Eastwood's whole concrete very good. It is not a bit. It's not a bit. I swear to God, it's a great movie. She did. She also goes in on, you know,

Clint Eastwood's whole, you know, concrete and fluorescent lighting, you know, 2010's oeuvre, but whatever. Yeah, absolutely.

Not wrong. Sully rules. But this is a holiday episode of Blank Check, a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes, ho, ho, ho, they bounce baby. This is a miniseries on the films of Robert Zemeckis, the notorious Bobby Z. uh the notorious bobby z and today we're talking about a christmas movie a christmas carol the movie that forced him into early retirement as a mocap filmmaker yeah is that did he admit that

did he say like okay i took it as far as it could go or what did he say like they just cost too much money and they stopped let me do it. David, we're going to get into it because I think there's an element here that you're forgetting, but we will unpack it. Our guest today by popular demand, and I should make it clear, she is always a much demanded guest for turn appearances by our

listeners. But in this case, as demanded by herself to come on to speak about this movie, we in an early episode of this main series said, what the fuck are we going to do for do for that episode we're gonna be so burnt out on these mocap things by that point who wants to talk about that and right in the inbox an email that took many months for me to actually respond to yes i thought i had offended someone i was like oh well that it won't happen but you know. No, here's what's happened.

I've gotten to a point where I can no longer distinguish between things I've done and things I've thought about doing. Yes. Fair. True for all of us. I lie in bed every night and I go, have I not brushed my teeth or have I done it three times in the last ten minutes? And I don't know. And sometimes I get up and do it a fourth time. And sometimes I don't do it at all um emily vanderwerth the great from vox from the national fodderwhacken championships of 2018 i think that's when you won yeah i think that was

our year though right yeah yeah all right yeah um thank you so much it's so good to be here i go ahead and self-proclaimed christmas fanatic that's the key detail i want to throw out here as i open up a can of christmas budweiser it's it's a late night wow record it's a boring movie i felt like it was time to drink some christmas bud on mike i got a christmas green tea right here my friend okay okay i got a christmas bud but emily you're a big christmas fan and you're a big christmas carol fan correct yes yes i feel as though uh me appearing on a christmas edition of blank check is like a prophecy somewhere like somewhere in like a temple somewhere there's like a man who's like saying oh he saw this drop into his Spotify feed

And he says, oh, prepare the heralds Because like he's just fucking ready for it But yeah, I love this I love this story I love Christmas As David can attest going back many years So yeah, I'm so happy to be here And so happy to be talking about

One of the ugliest movies ever made It's truly ugly This is the headline for me Because we've watched two of these uglies, three of these uglies in a row now. I'm going to agree with

what you're about to say, I think. I think I know what you're going to say and I agree. I don't know if I'm going to say what you think

I'm about to say. My point is, we've been bumping uglies three weeks in a row, right? We have. Just straight uglies in this run.

You thought I was about to say this is the best looking of the three? No. Okay, because Beowulf's the best looking of the three, right? I thought you were about to say

this is the worst looking of the three, and I agree to my astonishment. I think Polar Express is the worst looking of the three, but it is astonishing

that this movie is so boring that that quality overrules three but but it is astonishing that this movie is so boring that that quality overrules how ugly looking it is like we kind of like beowulf we're like but of course you have to admit this thing looks like garbage we hate polar expanse and we're like and of course it has to be admitted a huge part of that is that it looks like garbage and this i could talk for two hours about how boring it is before i really start unpacking how ugly it looks um yeah i i think that at least polar express is a train i think a train looks better in this because it's metal i think i think this is a world geared towards

metal you know i think all of zemeckis's mocap movies should have been about metal people and things and it's just when you bring skin into the game you're in trouble and that's why i will pick polar express over christmas carol both as a movie and as a thing to look at anyway i'll say this too i mean obviously uh polar express is uh you know working with earlier stages of technology. It's at a disadvantage in that way. But from a design standpoint, Polar Express is a thousand percent more aesthetically pleasing than this movie. And Polar Express is not an aesthetically pleasing movie.

This is true. Emily, I've known you for 20 years. I don't know if you've done the math in your head, but I've basically known you for 20 years. This is true if you've you've done the math in your head but i've basically known you for 20 years this is true yes um do you remember what the oscar season was when the two of you i would say it's on the message boards um you know probably the the return of the king season yeah it was it was return of the king it was return of the the King. I came in and made a big splash with my winged migration signature and my message. Yes.

You were all in on winged migration. That's right. It said, FYC, the goose, best supporting actor, was trying to make an impression. And yeah. And I was like, David, you're so cool. And you're like, I'm just some, and I was like, oh, he's just some 15-year-old kid. That's who I was. A cool 15-year-old on an Oscar message board.

But Emily, this is also bore out that you have discovered a lot of our friends, but people who have become incredible writers at different outlets across the land. You had a real eye for talent you know recognizing young people on message boards who had the passion and the skill set and like giving them their first jobs you know frankey falls into that category as well yeah yeah uh pilot right yeah uh sonia suraya um emily emily oshita you know these are people who are

like tumblers and i just was like this is a good tumbler and at the time no like nobody was was hiring women for these jobs and i so the av club just had a whole bunch of women and it turned out i was a woman and then we had david so that was great and And I now work at the Atlanta Culture Section, which is eight women and me and Spencer. But also, I mean, if you hadn't extended opportunities to so many people, this podcast would not exist.

Sure. I wouldn't have met David. We wouldn't have had any guests. Who would our guest pool have been? This is true. Have you been on oscar watch lately i know it has a new name now it's it's had like many names i haven't i haven't in a long time until just and i'm sorry to start on this really arcane ship or whatever it's a christmas carol episode we have um i I watched the film Hillbilly Elegy.

I was provided with a screener. I've seen it too. Yeah. Which is not a good movie. And by this point it's come out and I imagine it's been mostly savaged by critics and whatever, you know, it's out there. And I didn't review it,

but I did foolishly, I will say, just sort of out of boredom, put it at like the bottom of my 2020 list on Letterboxd, just as like a joke. Or maybe not like bottom, bottom, but like, you know, right at the bottom, right? Does that make sense? You guys know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And Andy Scott, shout out to Andy Scott, who Emily knows, my old roommate, and another Oscar watcher emailed me and was like, you have lit a torch on the Oscar watch, whatever it's called now. And it has exploded. Like, people are like, David Sims put it up. This thing's going to be a catastrophe.

And apparently there's Amy Adams stands and they're all freaking out. So that's, that's the update I got from the message boards. But, but how long ago was that? I feel like the word has been out with read this thing being toxic for a little while now. I mean, whenever I saw it, like when would that have been? Let's see now I can look at my diary, you mid-November, right? It wasn't like crazy long ago. It's a bad movie.

You know what? It was all the way back in October. They gave it to me really early. It's worse than A Christmas Carol. Hobiliology. It is. It's worse than A Christmas Carol. There's no question. It's working off way worse material, to be fair. I mean, A Christmas Carol, you're no question. It's working off way worse material, to be fair.

I mean, a Christmas Carol, you're working off Dickens. Well, that's an interesting question. Let's dig into this. Which do we think is a better original text? Charles Dickens' classic Christmas tale. A story that has endured for centuries, has lost its zero potency. There's a reason we keep on returning to it.

Basically helped invent the ghost story. Or J.D. Vance's cheap hackery, the hillbilly elegy. It's tight. It's tight. I don't want to put my foot down for either and then have this age poorly. When do you think Zemeckis is going to do the mocap hillbilly elegy because this is a story that's going to be told over and over and over again i think yes he needs to make it metal and he needs to make every character a terminator and then it'll work

there's a terminator monologue sounds good in which in which glenn close refers to good bad and neutral terminators and there's no such thing as neutral terminators i don't know what she's talking about they're very sort of good bad they really are kind of an on off switch kind of thing excuse me there's good bad and there's terminator 3 rise of the machines where arnold's character has a slight malfunction and sometimes he turns bad briefly well right but he's not really neutral it's not like he's like i am a centrist no neutral neutral fundamentally doesn't exist i guess like the real arnold schwarzenegger is something of a neutral at this point but let's not let's not get into yeah the point i wanted to make is please emily i i have known you for

20 odd years and i've always known you as someone Who loves Christmas From the beginning it's been A big part of your brand A love of Christmas We once cooked up a Santa Claus show together Like a Santa Claus TV show? Yes Emily asked me to pitch

Like was it a sitcom? It was a sitcom yeah like a weekly sitcom about santa claus i can i can i can um i can uh uh remember the exact premise that you came up with because it was very good tell me you'll probably do it better than i did this was at the height of my name is earl uh, David pointed to My Name is Earl and said, we need a show like that where there's a concrete goal. So, it was about Santa on the other 364 days of the year. It was 364 episodes. Each one was a new day in a year of Santa between Christmas Eve.

And the show was called, this is long before Keeping Up with the Kardashians, it was called keeping up with the clauses wow i remember that i remember that yeah so david uh invented keeping up with the kardashians the only other thing i remember is that santa has a new wife because santa is immortal but i i decided that his wives are not that he's like javier bardem and mother like they they die and then he just gets a new one right yes this is true and so I was so because I thought it'd be funny like a sitcom it's like Santa would be like a fat guy with a beard and he would have this like improbably attractive you know 28 year old wife played by like a young ingenue who's now stuck on this sitcom but like they'd he'd still love her.

You know, it would be tender. It's just that you would have the, anyway, I thought that was funny. It's funny that that was a trend for a little bit, but like here's the premise of our show. According to Jim. There's a hard end. No, no, not that thing.

Of course, you're talking about My Name is Earl, right? David, that premise is evergreen. We'll never get tired of that premise. But the like My Name is Earl thing. According to Jim. Right, right. you know my name is earl right david that premise is evergreen we'll never get tired of that premise but my name is according to jim right the show is literally like crossing items off a list there's a built-in ending for it and the ending is only a scant 180 episodes away like those premises where it was like here's we have to end at this point and that point is nine seasons i figured out i'm actually going to figure it out again, how long Keeping Up With The Closets would run. And it's 16 and a half seasons.

So that's like how long you need to do Keeping Up With The Closets. That thing will sell. That thing will be in syndication forever. You'll make millions. That's me talking to ABC in 2005 or whatever. Is there a talking reindeer? Oh reindeer oh yeah that's a great idea yes there has to be a talking about that goldthwait yeah as rudolph or as francer i don't know i almost made david do a spit take i was so close he it. He swallowed really fast. Remember how My Name is Earl was a huge hit?

Yeah. And the office was, it was like eating the office for breakfast on that Thursday block. And then it kind of, I guess people just kind of got sick of it. I don't know what happened to my neck. There's this super weird phenomenon of single camera sitcoms from the late 2000s, 2010s where they debut huge they're big for 13 episodes and then people just inexplicably stop watching them new girl was another example i was gonna say new girls like the last one of those where when it started i was like oh this is like the biggest comedy on television this is the new friends and by the end of season one i was like i

guess it's now just become a niche thing but tell me how many seasons new girl ran for new girl ran for seven yeah seven my name is earl only got four and apparently ended on a cliffhanger that was never resolved yeah because they promised greg garcia that he was going to uh be able to finish the story the way he wanted and then he was not allowed to finish the story the way he wanted so what is greg garcia doing Garcia doing now? Cause he did, then he did raising hope, which I loved. That was a big thing.

That was a good show. Raising hope. He did, he did the guest book on TBS. Right. Very weird show. Yeah. I do not know what that is,

but that's cool. It's a, it's a comedy anthology series about the people who sign a guest book and a vacation property. And each season is a new vacation property. Here I am sitting on a fucking mountain of gold with my santa claus sitcom and people are like i don't know let's do a show about guest books like they're just like looking around the room at the like you know ski lodge or they're like ah could we do like a table sitcom no that's

ridiculous uh guest books guest books we'll do guest books i forgot greg garcia also did the millers the cbs sitcom that ran for 34 episodes will arnett margo martindale beau bridges jb smooth jemma mays nelson franklin sean hayes yep yep it was a big cast it was supposed to be the the next big thing thing and it just didn't happen. Greg Garcia. Greg Garcia is like somebody who always has a show that seems like it's going to be huge for a little bit. He's a pro. Yeah. He did Yes Dear, I think.

Yes, he did. That was his thing. And then he came from Yes Dear. Yes. But like My Name is Earl was like, look, I know I created Yestere, but this is my actual sensibility. I remember there was such a press tour of him being like, but that's not the kind of show I grew up watching. This is my actual interest. And then made himself sort of like the more quirky guy.

I also feel like in my 10 years of doing pilot season or whatever, almost every season there's a big Greg Garcia pilot at CBS. That's like the cool one that then doesn't get picked up. And several times he has the show that's really hyped up. Everyone's fighting to get cast in. It doesn't go. And then they bring it back the next season and try it again.

And then it still doesn't go. Yeah. And the premise is always like, what if a middle schooler was a superhero but also a nurse? And you're just like, what? I wanted to be in that one so badly. Unsurprisingly.

Super Clyde! Oh, I wanted to be in that one. I have two more things to say about Greg Garcia and then we can talk about A Christmas Carol. Or we cannot. Apparently, or whatever. Whatever you guys want to talk about. Apparently, Greg Garcia in 2008, one or we can apparently or we yeah or whatever or whatever you guys talk about apparently

greg garcia in 2008 alec baldwin accused him of being a scientologist i guess because jason lee is one like i don't think he had anything more and greg garcia was like i'm not a scientologist like he had to issue a statement he was like i'm like a Catholic. Two, he did the book to the musical Escape to Margaritaville, which was the Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical that I don't think ever made it. No, I guess it did. No, it did make it to Broadway. Briefly. It ran on Broadway. Yeah.

Yeah. I believe they extended the run of Escape to Margaritaville in Los Angeles, which rarely happens here because, you know, not a huge theater town, but a big Escape to Margaritaville in Los Angeles, which rarely happens here because, you know, not a huge theater town, but a big Escape to Margaritaville town. Big, big Parrothead town. Yeah. I almost wonder if it was like built into the budget of Escape from Margaritaville that opening on Broadway was a loss leader just to get the prestige of it played on Broadway. Because it's like, you have to imagine the ultimate life of that show is on cruise ships.

You know? Right, right, right. Here's a line of questioning I want to get into, Emily. Because we started digging into this a little bit on our Polar Express episode where the Sims grew up, sans Christmas, largely. And in our contact episode,

we talked about our relationships to faith and religion a lot. And most of us grew up pretty areligious. I grew up with a sort of very perfunctory Judaism, my parents being like, I guess we should teach our children this stuff. But they had completely abandoned that pretty much by the time my sister was around. But you had a very religious upbringing.

And you've written a lot about your relationship to that as time has gone on and how it's changed and morphed and all of that. And so I want to know sort of where Christmas fits into into all of that how much value christmas has for you uh is in tied to the religious traditions of it and how much of it is tied to what i still find very effective about christmas which is essentially just like movie christmas like i fucking love movie christmas and lights in new york and food with weird wrappings and things like that. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting because I grew up doing kind of the secular Christmas, but mostly very religious Christmas.

When I was three, my mom took me aside and said, there is no Santa Claus, but also your dad is Santa Claus. And I was like, oh, cool. That's awesome. Good for him. Married Santa Claus? Mom, that rules. Which she was saying, you know, because like, when you get a gift from Santa,

that's actually from your dad. But I was three, so I didn't entirely understand that. But yeah, I grew up with super religious, I remember very specifically, there was a Christmas service at my church that ended with the pastor being like, and we have this recording of hell that I'm going to play for you now. And yeah, because yeah, it was- He was saying like, we got a microphone in and this is it. This is a famed story in evangelical Christian circles that a bunch of Soviet scientists dug a hole to the center of the earth. I'm aware of this story.

Dropped a microphone down. I didn't know it was evangelically embraced as well. Is this true? It's sort of like a weird urban legend. Oh my God, this is hardcore. So they genuinely presented it as like a scientific breakthrough. We finally have captured audio of hell.

We have audio of hell. And it's on the internet if you want to go look for it. It sounds like a mall food court slowed way down. Like it's, yeah. Emily, I'm just going to go look for it it sounds like a mall food court slowed way down like it's yeah uh emily i'm just gonna stop you for a second if ben's looking particularly despondent it's because he had been working on trying to create the first ditch podcast he thought he was gonna be the first person to stick a microphone in a dirt hole and just record it for two hours

and so upset damn this is a big this is a major hit for him i will i will say that the the hole that they actually dug that which was a 40 000 foot hole whoa it's called the the cola super deep borehole which is a pretty good name yeah yeah uh and it, it was like an experiment of like, what happens if we just dig really far? I'm just amused. You give people fodder for stories about having recordings of hell. So, yeah, we would go to church and it would be like, and they're teaching children about Santa Claus. And like, that would be presented as like, we were losing Jesus from the center of the season or whatever. And then, you know, I went off to college and I eventually moved to California and I

really started to miss winter. Like I missed snow. I missed, I missed really what I missed was New York Christmas, which I had not experienced to that point. But like now have been. Speaking my language, Emily. Yeah. Now have been several times.

And I'm like, oh, this is, this is like the ideal city for Christmas. Los Angeles is kind of depressing because they do this thing at the Grove, which is our big shopping mall. That's like they just send foam into the air and it's supposed to be snow. And I took my wife to that and she was just despondent the whole way back because it's so disturbing and gross. So disturbing and gross. But then the first year we were in California, somebody on Christmas Eve, like we'd gone up to the mountains and gotten a giant pile of snow and just put it in the parking lot of our apartment complex. And that felt like, you know, like Christmas to me. So I started to get more into secular, you know, Christmas music, Christmas bullshit, basically, and watching every Christmas movie, every Christmas special I could find, and that sort of became a weird obsession. So just like Christmas flavored things and Christmas albums and Christmas movies and specials. I get very caught up in it. I will feel very depressed going through this Christmas without there being like the Christmassy vibe in the same sort of way. Aside from the fact I'm probably not going to celebrate anything with my family, it's also just like things like the outdoor sort of like market at Union Square.

Rockefeller Center. The Rockefeller Center. Sticky bandits, wet bandits, stuff like this. Have you seen this Rockefeller Center tree? It's bad. I mean, if this isn't a metaphor for 2020, I mean, if 2020 was a tree...

Yeah. It'd be really tall, but have a Wait, is the tree wearing a face mask? Is that what they did? No, it just looks really shitty. It's just kind of a weird, shitty tree. I don't really get it, because I think there's a whole process where

people grow big trees. know we saw they showed the picture of it when they cut it down and it's literally the how it started how it's going meme applied to 2020 yeah like because it was beautiful when they cut it down and now it's just like all crap so i i mean i just looked at the photo and my immediate thought was, oh, the tree guy couldn't get out of bed either. Dude, I get it. Major feeling. Yeah. Big mood.

The first time I was ever on this show was because it was Christmas 2016 and I went to New York specifically because I was like, well, there may never be another Christmas. So I'd better go to New York and have one more Christmas there. And we made it, sort of. We made it. We made it. Wow. We'll talk about full circle. So you love Christmas media.

I do as well. I feel like I'm such a sap for christmas that even stuff i'm cynical about usually activates me in some way and i honestly feel like polar express and a christmas carol disney's a christmas carol might be two of the only christmas movies i've ever seen that stir no feelings of christmas cheer in me i will i'll even say this i agree with that i ended up hearing i made this gigantic christmas playlist on spotify that i made this gigantic christmas playlist on spotify that anyone could contribute to and somebody put sylvestre's christmas carol score on there and i just heard it sans the movie and was like this is great this is great christmas music and in the movie it just

gets buried by whatever the hell is going on. Makes zero bullshit. I know it's a good score. It's a totally, as you say, the fine work on its own. Yeah, this is,

um, yeah, this is just, uh, I watched, uh, a few years ago, like every version of Christmas Carol,

I could get my hands on. And this is by far one of the worst, which is this story is really hard to screw up. The reason that it's boring is because the underlying story is always pretty good. But yeah. Do you have a go-to pick for what you think the best adaptation is or the couple at the top? Oh, Griffin, do I? I'm fishing for an answer here and i'm hoping i learned my favorite

is the uh this actually has a zemeckis connection it's the 1971 animated version by richard williams uh who did the animation for who framed roger rabbit it is done in the style of the woodcut engravings from dickens original book it It's gorgeous. It's on YouTube, even in like three 60 P or whatever it is. It's just gorgeous to look at and beautiful. He won an Oscar for it. Um, I love the Alistair Sim version.

I like Muppet Christmas Carol a lot. You know, there's, there's some, there's some really good ones, but my favorite by far, the one I watch every year is that 1971 version. That,

that one is really good. Alistair Sim also plays Scrooge in it. Like he's doing right. He's doing your classic Scrooge in it. Yes, he does. He's doing your classic Scrooge. He is sort of the... He is Scrooge, right? He played Scrooge a bunch and yada, yada, yada. Muppet Christmas Carol, definitely my first experience of Christmas Carol, I would imagine. My first was Mickey's.

And I think Mickey's has got a little... You know what? I saw Mickey. Yes, mine was also Mickey's. I definitely saw that when I was... Yes, that's right. That Mickey one was big. Am I mistaken in thinking that it was released in theaters alongside one of the re-releases of a Disney classic, and then it became just like a blockbuster vhs well let's find out let's i saw it i did my very first time going to the movies i saw mickey's christmas

carol with the rescuers there we go in theaters yes so it was put with the rescuers and then just became a tv right yeah but that one's really good mean, yeah, it speaks to just the potency of this story that like not only are most adaptations of it at least enjoyable, but also the inevitable like TV never get tired of it and there i don't know i feel like there was something slightly exciting about the announcement of this movie just because it felt like that might be in zemeckis's wheelhouse and aside from the mocap he doesn't have any big story hook he's not trying to put it in a contemporary setting he's not trying to radicalize in any way like his argument is using this technology to try to make the most faithful adaptation of the book in a way the technology uh could not allow up until this point which in a way he succeeded at at because the book does have that sequence rarely committed to film where Scrooge

is chased by a hearse, being driven by the ghost of Christmas Future and then, like, has to, you know, escape it and turns into a tiny man and goes into a tube and a whole bunch of stuff happens. It's in the book. Nobody's ever put it on film. Zemeckis did. Are you sure there's a shit joke in there

at one point where he talks about Christmas pudding, which is cool the book has people don't realize this the book has 45 pages of tiny scrooge hanging onto an empty bottle skidding down the streets and rooftops it does it does bring in things that are from the book that i guess no like the thing where he puts out the christmas past guy as a candle that is from the book that I guess know, like the thing where he puts out the Christmas past guy as a candle that is in the book. Yeah. I don't know that you're, you're like, you're reading the book and you're like, God, that's so great. We got to include, you know what I mean? Like it's, that's just a weird image. And Zemeckis is like, yeah, that, that'll be a set piece. That's going

to be a whole set piece. We're going to blow that out. There's stuff that's in the book that he could have put in the movie that would have padded things out in an interesting way, like the Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present go on a journey where they visit miners and sailors and people who are celebrating Christmas out in the wilds of Britain, and that is a

nice little sequence in the Richard Williams one, and it could have been good here, too. It's very odd that this film is a completely lacking in humor it is like perhaps the single most humorless adaptation I have ever seen of this story and b excuse me is also weirdly lacking in feeling. Yeah. Yeah. It has not a lot of emotion. And like, this is about a person's emotional transformation.

Like, that's what A Christmas Carol is about. So that's a problem. Well, he's a bastard. I mean, that reads. Yeah. You get that he's not very nice at the beginning where he says children should go to jail sure but i also for the crime of poverty i feel like you got some fundamental issues if i'm watching a christmas carol and when tiny tim shows up for the fourth time i go oh right tiny tim right right right tiny tim's in the movie okay the the other i would say the yeah the

issue griffin is referring to is that uh this film stars jim carrey uh famously funny man and uh is light on jokes light on humor but also like light on character comedy like it feels like he is pointedly trying to avoid finding any comedic angle to the four characters he plays. Which is remarkable because Scrooge is already a comedic caricature of a rich man. And then the ghosts are, you can go any direction with them. And the idea of having him play these ghosts is actually pretty smart and the kind of thing mo-cap was made to do. But they don't do anything with it it's one of the strongest arguments for mocap is that kind of like oh

it's like a digital kind of man of a thousand faces thing you can have one guy play a whole cast of characters be in scenes with himself have that be a more natural sort of acting pipeline uh and yeah it's like it's not like that's like part of the text in the way that like you know the dad and hook are usually double cast in peter pan but it feels kind of natural in that same sort of way yeah they're reflections of scrooge it makes sense like yeah it's thematically appropriate i mean the the the ghost of marley is his guilt the ghost of christmas past is his regret the ghost of christmas present is his uh his loneliness and the ghost of christmas future is his fear like it works it just you know they don't they don't bother like explaining why

they're doing it or at least just having like jim carrey make fart noises when he's a giant man like that would be cool it is odd to watch a modern adaptation of a classical work and be like man i wish he was like breaking scene to teach someone how to dougie i wish there was more like right i wish he was like do not go in there you're just like do something motherfucker yeah he does a little at the end as we will i'm sure talk about right like when he's happy scrooge he's finally it feels like riffing a little bit like doing some carrie stuff yeah it's it's a it's a thin gruel it's a i will say this i will say this i think christmas carol is i can't think of another uh thing that is so frequently adapted where we talk about the how it's adapted

in terms of who plays scrooge instead of who directed it it's the alistair sim christmas carol it's the patrick stewart christmas carol it's the george c scott christmas carol whatever and you know like this is the only one where it's like yeah that's zemeckis's christmas carol that's partially because zemeckis is such a big deal, and it's partially because Jim Carrey leaves absolutely no impression. Because this absolutely should be the Jim Carrey Christmas Carol. You have to imagine that's why Disney pulled the trigger so hard

on this thing. If I could back up a little bit to just do a little bit of table setting because this is like a byproduct of I think a really interesting kind of five-year period at Walt Disney Studios, where they're in this transition zone. It's sort of the jump between Eisner being outstead

and Iger fully dominating the motion picture landscape before they start acquiring everything and just become, you know, the owners of all IP. But I know, like, you know, their animation studio was still on the rocks. They're in the process of rebuilding it. Pixar had just been acquired by them. So 2009, the last three Pixar movies had been Up, WALL-E, and Ratatouille, the three movies that Pixar produced independently. So, like like Disney's influence on Pixar won't come into effect until next year

with Toy Story 3. Bolt is I think the year before this. Tangled is the year after this. That's really when Disney animation is kind of up on its feet. The Pirates of the Caribbean series perhaps tapped out at this point. They revive it again.

But at this point it was like, maybe that's three and done. I think there was a major awareness on their part that they did not have boys brands. That was always sort of talked about, that they were trying to retool the Disney princess strength in a modern

way, aside from just the legacy characters on sleeping bags. But they were like like we need boys things so tron legacy happens and prince of persia happens uh lone ranger happens and outrageous budget but they're just like taking big bets on trusted names for things where it's like is that an old franchise that maybe has enough cult appeal are these people who have been good with us in the past are they gonna be able to make something new alice in wonderland comes out five months after this and is like a humongous hit that i feel like really starts to mark like the transitional point that movie very much feels like it came out of we

want to be in business with big talent we want to get burton back in the fold we want to come up with a new take on alice in Wonderland but what stems out of that obviously is just let's remake all of our legacy titles. Let's just get more literal

about putting these things into live action. But this is like the end of Dick Cook's run and it felt like he was really starting to experiment and there was

a story I remember reading on like Ain't It Cool or whatever in 07 or 08 about like the big upfront meeting they had for their shareholders, where they were like announcing and showing off concept art for the next three years of their big movies. And it was the kind of thing that gets live streamed now and people lose their minds over because we now all like watching shareholder presentations as content but back then it was like a thing that didn't leak out and there were just weird written reports of it

and these guys coming out and like selling their pitch and zemeckis came out and like pitched the christmas carol thing and showed off the artwork the concept artwork and was just like look first of all jim carrey is the ultimate mocap actor. Think about what we're starting to work on here. Rubber face, yeah. Right, I tell you Jim Carrey in mocap playing multiple characters, already dollar signs in the eyes, right? Then I go Jim Carrey as Scrooge. You should get Amp.

That feels like a great part for him. And the other characters he's playing are the ghosts, and people are losing their minds. And he's like, and by the way, I have a pretty good track record when it comes to time travel movies. And I just remember reading it like it brought the fucking house down and people were salivating and they were like, yes, yes. And he was like, Polar Express, remember that shit? They still release it in IMAX every year. It makes another 10 million dollars.

And people are like fucking like Arsenio Wolf hollering. You can see how on paper, even though now it feels like a kind of risky bet because everything has been so algorithmed and you so rarely get a movie that isn't from a very specific, well-established pipeline coming out of Disney. check off all the boxes where you have to imagine disney maybe regrets that they didn't do polar express uh that this technology seems like it's not going anywhere although it ends up mutating after this into a pretty different form the straight mocap movie pretty much ends after this save for tintin um and also like jim carrey that's a big star we want to be in business with much like they had done bedtime stories that they were star we want to be in business with much like they had done bedtime stories that they were like we want to make an

Adam Sandler movie we want to make these big movie star movies we want to be in these brand silos when Iger comes on and it just becomes like we have our four pipelines

that's it all that experimentation goes away another weird thing that came out of that pitch presentation do either of you remember this

that they announced that Guillermo del Toro was going to be given his own imprint at disney called disney double dare you where he was going to get to make live action and animated films at a mid-sized budget that were particularly designed to scare children i do remember that i remember that and literally like six months later, he gave some interview. He was like, yeah,

that, that never happened. Like that's not going to happen. Dick Cook got fired and everything went out the window. And then you have these vestiges, the leftover movies like Christmas Carol. But there was also so much post Hellboy 2 Guillermo stuff that never came together.

Like he was the king of announcing shit that sounded cool and would fall apart. And then of course, hobby being the ultimate, you know, version of that. The, uh,

that, uh, the first year I went to, to Comic-Con was 2009. And that was a Christmas Carol year. And Disney was like the first presentation in the big ass hall H, which is where they have all the movie stuff. And Christmas Carol had a lot of buzz coming out of that.

People were like, this looks really cool. The ghosts look great, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know what they showed, because I assume they showed footage from this film. But people were buzzing about it. So I was kind of hyped for this movie. There's another factor at play, which is just that 3d was still pretty fresh there weren't a lot of fully 3d movies and especially movies like designed with someone who understands the technology as well as zemeckis does so i just feel like if when people would see a five minute sizzle reel

or a trailer of this you were just kind of so dazzled by like oh my god there's so much like kinetic energy and movement and everything's popping into my face that people be like i guess it looks great no no i thought this movie looked like shit i thought it was a bad idea at the time i want that on the record i heard the idea and i was like i sound stupid that was also the first year they did 3d presentations in hall h and that was the year they presented avatar and everyone was like this looks terrible this is what griff and i were talking about this movie is what is it griff six weeks before avatar comes out six weeks after this movie they look like they're in different decades there are aspects

of avatar that already are looking creaky but geezise, these films do not feel like they are of the same generation, let alone within a two-month span of each other. It's really like Cameron is really spanking Zemeckis in terms of like, okay, you think you're like this sort of pioneering VFX director, but like you truly do not know what you're doing with this stuff like i mean i know he's not doing this aggressively but that's just how it feels and they do feel like after this zemeckis slinks off and you know cuts it out like you know i mean you know he he gets tempted back later as we will see but he's like you know i'm gonna go make flight yeah this is the other part of it i want to frame is that image movers his company which had sort of become image movers digital and was starting to rebrand itself as like an animation company um did polar express at warner brothers monster house at sony beowulf at paramount most

of those films were independently financed sold off to distributors disney was like we want you uh these were the types of acquisitions they were making rather than buying marvel for billions of dollars they were like can we get a first look three picture deal with image movers maybe this is the future um so it was this film and then two months after this movie three months after this movie, three months after this movie, Mars Needs Moms comes out. And he was getting ready to film Yellow Submarine. The weekend Mars Needs Moms came out and they literally like pulled the plug,

turned the lights off, shut everything down. He was like ready to go. And there's a lot of artwork you can see for that that looks incredibly strange. But he was going to do what was described as a more narrative-based yellow submarine. It sucked so much.

It was going to be the worst. It looked so weird. Have you seen the pictures? I've seen the picture of the purple meanie. And it looks to me like some Alice in Wonderland crap, and I hate it. It also looks like Rudy Giuliani. There is one that really looks like Rudy Giuliani. There's a picture of the Beatles, and they have like bananas, yellow submarine proportions where their arms and legs are like 12 feet long.

And like, you know the the width of spaghetti um he's going for less photorealistic with it which at least feels like well that's where you should have been going earlier on but disney just bails entirely on the notion of like this being a form of entertainment this being the guy to be in business with and that's when he totally slinks off and apparently like retreats to a house and like reassesses his life and then it's like send me good spec scripts let me just read good live action movies that won't cost much to make wasn't i mean you you know this like peter serifanovich was gonna play yeah pa, right? Yes. Who's going to play Paul? Yeah. Crazy. I've talked to him about it a lot. I mean, they were like really ready to go.

And he was very excited about it. I mean, he's a really big Beatles fan. I think he was just very excited to be playing that part. Yes. I think it's also worth noting that it wasn't just the Marsden-E-Bombs bombed. Although, of course, that thing bombed, but A Christmas Carol did not make money. Like even though it was pretty successful in terms of money gross, it cost too much money. So fucking much. Right. So it was like a hit, but a hit at the box office that ended up being a money loser for them and then mars need moms was radioactive yeah yeah and mars didn't need moms they didn't need them and like christmas carol christmas carol should

generate money but this was so expensive and like you could see disney being like well we can bring it back every year like right they do it just it never happened it never became that kind of movie so that's the other interesting kind of rabbit hole I went down here, trying to figure out, like, why Disney was so confident about this. The other aspect is, in terms of Disney trying to, like, check off boxes at this point in time, trying to rebuild their world domination and being like, we need an action franchise. We need a this. We need a that. We need this going. Disney, surprisingly, doesn't really have like a

definitive christmas movie and for an entertainment company as vertically integrated as disney the value of having a christmas movie that's gonna like pop up again in revenue every year that will always be like replayed on tv go up in in rentals. Yeah. You can re-release, you can do all the merchandise. And like, I feel like they've now kind of squared the circle by being like, Nightmare Before Christmas is both. That's,

that's their one, right? Yeah. I mean, I mean, you're forgetting another film that I directed three fourths of. You directed three fourths of it? Yeah.

Nutcracker in the Four Realms. Right. Exactly. I did three of those realms.? Yeah, I was the filmmaker. Nutcracker and the Four Realms. Right, exactly. I did three of those realms. But David, to this point, Nutcracker and the Four Realms is like the one inexplicable Disney movie of the last five years. Right, and it's probably,

it's them being like, yeah, can we get a Christmas movie? Right, it has to be. It has to be. And even like the Santa Claus trilogy, which is successful for them, has not lingered in that same kind of way. Like you have to imagine Disney is like, I wish we had an elf i wish we had a christmas story i wish we had

a wonderful life okay now yeah now that this begs the question one of the best what's like come on emily griffin ben christmas movie like come on what's your christmas movie always always it's a wonderful life like i just sure i you know a great yeah like i uh i i just can't uh top top that one i think it is interesting that disney purchased 20th century fox and like if you go on disney plus their christmas section is mostly 20th century fox movies home alone Home Alone. That's the thing. Okay. Miracle in 34. This is what I was going to say. They're really weaponizing Home Alone now. They're like pushing

Home Alone nostalgia hard because I think they're like, finally we have one that like people are in the feels about. And I'm up for Christmas. It gets murky between the two holidays.

I mean, it's same obvious lazy answers for me. Elf is my favorite modern one muppet christmas carol is probably my emotional favorite wonderful life i think is the best uh my my secret stealth answer even though it doesn't totally fit but it is a movie set around christmas and new year's is hudsucker proxy like hudsucker proxy is the movie that feels most like the holidays for me uh the movie right the movie that i love even though i know it's total shit but i watch it every year like a lot of people

have that relationship with love actually i have that relationship with the family stone which i know david i was about to say don't you fucking say the fucking family fucking stone to me yes fucking piece of shit yes emily yes why do people like this movie okay okay look it works it just fucking works it works you're not the only person lots of lots of people like that movie apparently yeah likes that movie you just you can't go wrong it's just a great cast they're having i i love the giant family assembles at christ movie, it could be a lot worse than family stone. And I would still love it. Yeah.

Family stone is so bad. It's a film I saw with my grandma at Christmas and I loved, and I had the, my Rachel McAdams crush was at its peak. Yeah. It's and she's wearing like a dinosaur junior shirt in that movie. And she's got glasses. I want to note

that at this time on the message board you had a rachel mcadams and wedding crashers signature in your picture because you just were so into call me out i'll fucking admit it absolutely i don't remember that but i believe it i loved rachel mcadams i still love rachel mcadams the best um and and me and my fucking grandma walked out of that movie being like that was kind of disappointing like it didn't get me and i've never seen it since uh and i keep i'm i keep being like should i give it one more shot like people love the family stone yeah like even though the director i feel like never really had another hit right that diane lane kevin costner movie that just came out that's like the highest grossing movie in america by default and then he let him go and he did the one with

selena gomez yeah yeah right right okay someone someone was tweeting the other day some critic who i apologize for not giving credit to but someone was tweeting like he's this incredibly weird figure because he goes like 10 years in between movies and he makes like a low scale exercise in a kind of forgotten genre that's slightly better than it needs to be and then just kind of disappears again i remember when family stone came out or when it was screening there was a movie every year that uh esteemed internet commentator david poland every year would be like this is gonna be an oscar player this is gonna win a bunch of awards

family stone was his movie in 2005 and then it did nothing at the oscars you speak of course the poland curse the poland curse yeah right the poland curse it was i mean i was all in on those boards at the time time or certainly at least the comment sections on the hot blog or as Lex G would call it the cold blog a savage a brutal takedown from Lex G

but yes I mean the most infamous one was when he said that Phantom of the Opera was going to win Best Picture

that it was like we have our front runner yeah mini driver snubbed when are you when are you doing Schum um when are you when are you doing schumacher when are you doing schumacher get out of here it's too fucking long it's half a year joel schumacher that's the problem i mean i would love i'd love to cherry pick

yeah i mean oh boy it's long we've talked you know we've sort of you know joked about it or whatever it's also a weird sad ending the last like five just stink oh yeah um yeah family stone for okay so yeah whatever maybe you know what i'm gonna watch the family stone the the everyone's favorite wife swap movie about the you know white guilt right like there's there's a there's that whole scene where sarah jiska parker points at herself to reference race or whatever is it anyway christmas movies people like that new one the happiest season i haven't seen it yet excited to watch it that's cute family stone vibes right like that i mean right it is a it is a mediocre um family gets together at christmas movie because it doesn't give anybody

but christian stewart and m and Mackenzie Davis anything to do. But it's a very sweet Christmas rom-com about two ladies, which is right up my alley. Look, I love Home for the Holidays, personally, the George Foster movie. That's a fantastic movie. Yeah. Yeah. Which is another, I mean, I believe, I can't even remember if it's Thanksgiving or Christmas. It's Christmas, right?

I think it's Thanksgiving. No, it's Thanksgiving. It's Thanksgiving. That's I think it's Thanksgiving. No, it's Thanksgiving. It's Thanksgiving. That's the only problem with it. But it's the same obvious, you know, it's the same thematic thing. I love, yeah. You know what? I love Robert Downey Jr. movies.

I love Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. That's a great Christmas movie. Obviously, Iron Man 3, the iconic Christmas movie that we love. I mean, can we go on a little side tangent here? This shit that gets litigated every year of like, but is that a Christmas movie? As if there is some governing board, as if it's

like champagne. Unless the film is produced. I am the governing board. So let's just, let me just determine right now. Name some movies, I'll tell you if they're Christmas movies. But like all Shane Black movies are Christmas movies, right? There shouldn't be any litigation there. To the degree that I always think Die Hard is a Shane Black movie because it features Christmas so prominently.

Thank you. Same here. I always file it in the Shane Black cabinet. Right. And Shane Black wrote many of Bruce Willis' movies. But no, A Little Princess. That's another one. That's a Christmas movie, right? I don't really remember, but Christmas must happen in that movie.

Yeah. Fanny and Alexander is like a Christmas movie to me. Because it has a gorgeous Christmas sequence. The thing is, and I don't think I'm telling tales out of school here, is the Christmas movie for me is Fellowship of the Ring. Not even all the Lord of the rings i agree the lord of the rings movies i watch all of them around christmas they're a classic they're a classic christmas rewatch i basically do it every year i don't always make it to return of the king like because just because they're long but fellowship with the

ring i think has to be in the canon emily david and they're like. But Fellowship of the Ring, I think, has to be in the canon, Emily. David, and they're like on cable TV. Yeah, right. Because I feel like I'm at my parents' house and I'll watch them with commercials. They just feel like they're running. Look, we're going to let Emily do the final ruling here, but for me, that's where it starts to become questionable.

When people go like, no, Die Hard's an action movie, it's not a Christmas movie. It's like, one Die Hard's an action movie. It's not a Christmas movie. It's like one doesn't negate the other. It's set around Christmas. Christmas is interwoven throughout the entire film. Fellowship of the Ring, your argument is I watch it at Christmas time. It feels Christmas-y. They've got elves, Griffin.

Come on. They've got elves. Is it textually Christmas? Yes. All Christmas movies are about like needing people in your life at hard times, right? Like that's what Christmas movies are about, right? Let me submit that a movie that becomes a legitimate, gigantic phenomenon that changes the film industry that comes out at Christmas, which happens very rarely, can be sort of a Christmas movie by proxy.

Like it has to be, it has to be brought to the party by a different Christmas movie. Okay. But I would say the three Lord of the Rings and Titanic both fit. Wow. That criteria. So I'm putting them in. Putting them in.

I'd like to throw out two obvious Griff picks as well. Sure. Gremlins. Great Christmas movie. Yeah. The Phoebe Cade Santa Claus speech. one of my favorite uh elements of christmas filmmaking ever uh batman returns great christmas movie of course absolutely absolutely i also of course you have one has to acknowledge eyes wide shut of course a great christmas wonderful christmas movie perfect christmas movie um of course trapped in paradise

like that's a classic christmas movie uh the film that was written directed and produced by ben uh nicholas cage john lovett's film i mean we all love that right i've never seen trapped in paradise i think the even more interesting sort of question is these movies that have a Christmassy vibe, but aren't actually about Christmas. Like the one I always point to is the Royal Tenenbaums, which doesn't actually have anything to do with Christmas, but feels like it takes place at Christmas. Wes Anderson, definitely. A lot of his movies, I feel like, have that sort of, because they have a snow globe feel to them. But yes, Royal Tenenbaums, especially because it's about family and all that that that also brings it in you know family movies about family often sort of end up getting sifted into this box well i i just i read some one of the national treasure producers was doing

press for some other movie he produced or something and they asked about why national treasure 3 never happened. And he offered one of the 15 excuses that come up from time to time. But the one he said that was different was, you know, Disney is so vertically integrated. They never figured out how to make National Treasure valuable for them in any other sector of their business. They never figured out how to put it in the theme parks. It never became merchandise. You know, you couldn't do, like, the video games didn't work. Like, there was no other area of the company that could benefit from National Treasure. And as time went on, Disney became all about, like, a movie needs to function in every facet of our company. And something like Santa Claus,

the Santa Claus trilogy, the Tim Allen movies, they're hits. All three of them do well, well enough for there to be three of them. But A, even though I think there is some nostalgia for them from our generation, it doesn't feel like they're the same kind of perennial, regular TV appointment viewing movies. It doesn't feel like they've ever gained any value at Disney and other areas of the company. And you just have to imagine in 2009, Disney's looking around and they're like, we don't have a Grinch. We don't have a Charlie Brown. We don't have a Buddy the Elf. Like aside from not having like a classical Christmas movie, we also don't have like a mascot of Christmas. We can put Mickey in a Santa hat, you know? Even to some degree, I wonder if that's a reason

why they never have weaponized Muppet Christmas Carol as much as I thought they would after they bought it, that they want something that is, like, proprietary to Christmas. So the appeal for them of, like, let's get a massive movie star and a massive filmmaker doing, like, what could be the definitive Scrooge, and he can be, like, all designed to be the definitive Scrooge. And he can be like all designed to look perfect like Scrooge, and the ghost will look awesome.

It tracks on paper. But I agree with you, David, that when I saw it, I thought it looked like, to quote David Simms, film critic at The Atlantic, like a bowl of farts. I thought it looked like a bowl of farts. And I remember just feeling like, this, really? This is still as far as the technology has come. This is still the sensibility

that Zemeckis is hitching his wagon to. That haven't been said. Remember going to see movies with my friends in theaters, that trailer came up. One friend in particular, I remember turning to me and going, that looks amazing. I remember the trailer being very extra it was really trying to sell right that

that his face you know and how how intense it looked all that right there's a money shot at the end of the trailer that isn't in the movie where he like he's like slamming the door or something right yeah he turns the camera and his face is like coming into the theater and like a snowflake lands on his nose yes he blows it off he looks straight down the barrel of the lens and he says bah humbug and i swear it must have been a like a test it must have been the demo reel to get them to green light the movie because it also looks so much better than he looks at any point in the film proper. But I remember that shot and my friend Dixie turning to me and saying, oh, that looks amazing.

And I was like, really? You think that looks amazing? And she went, well, I guess I've never seen a 3D movie before. Like we were going to see some other 3D movie. That was the first trailer in 3D. And that being her first impression was like, oh, oh shit this trailer is doing all sorts of crazy shit it looks amazing it did like it didn't open well but it did people went to see this people went to see it it opened poorly and then had okay holds but it did well overseas yeah but they wanted it did okay it did it did

about the same overseas they wanted the polar express thing i think right were really over performed you know come christmas time and it did not if you open a christmas movie the first weekend of november and you can keep it in theaters it will have a pretty but yeah i think it's um i i remember i went to see this movie on Christmas Eve because I was like, I'm going to go see a movie. And the theater was packed. Like people were coming out for it. So, but yeah, I agree with sort of your theory of where Disney was. I think Santa Claus would be a bigger thing for them if not for Tim Allen. I think that Tim Allen kind of killed that movie by being Tim

Allen in a weird way. It is also interesting that the first movie is so much like fish out of water, he's at odds, you wouldn't believe this guy is Santa Claus. And the sequels lean so much into Tim Allen in so much makeup looking like Coca-Cola Santa Claus. Yeah, like the poster for the second Santa Claus movie was just Tim Allen looking at you looking like coca-cola santa claus yeah like the poster for the second santa claus movie was just tim allen looking at the you know looking at you looking like santa claus right right at this point yeah he doesn't look like tim allen anymore he doesn't sound like tim allen there are no a ruse to be found i'm gonna i'm gonna save it in fact and i'm gonna make it my background here we go anyway this movie so you saw it in theaters emily i saw it in theaters i

did i waited until christmas eve i was gonna see it opening weekend but the reviews were so bad and then i was just like i mean it's wild it's wild this picture we're looking at it no one's cheeks have ever been rosier he looks drunk i mean let's let's just be straightforward his face is red it's the color red it's wild looks like ham from like a shot in the 50s you know what i'm saying yes i do back when they were like it's how it looks is what matters let's put as many chemicals as you want into it it should look like fucking you know like a red sausage yeah this is another interesting point though is like you look at this poster and you go why pay for tim allen like what are you doing here just right versus versus another thing you have to calculate into this very movie is the Grinch was so fucking successful.

Despite being a piece of shit, it was so huge. And the fact that Jim Carrey was unrecognizable in it did not hurt business at all. People were like into the transformation of, oh my God, it doesn't look like him. It doesn't sound like him. He's transformed into this classic character. Yeah. It's this thing that really becomes the impetus to do a lot of these films is how can we make this person look exactly like the Grinch, look exactly like Santa Claus, look exactly like J.D. Vance, the writer of Hillbilly Elegy. I was trying to get Santa Claus 3 going, but

it doesn't really work with the background. I'm sticking with 2. Santa Claus 2 is kind of my aspirational fantasy, which is that I will meet a middlingly attractive middle-aged man who's like, listen, I'm in love with you, and I'm going to make you Mrs. Claus, and you just have to move with me to the North Pole. That's the premise of my show!

I'm going to think about it. Keep it up with the clauses. I'm going to think about it every time. Keep it up with the clauses. I did not see this film, Griffin. I decided to not see it. That was my choice. Same here. And I'm glad that you respect it.

Instead, I probably saw Avatar again, or I saw Sherlock Holmes, or trying to think of the sort of big Christmas movies that year. I absolutely saw Avatar for the third time on Christmas Day with my family. Some of the other big movies at Christmas. I'm not spoiling the box office game because, of course, this film came out in early November. Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Squeakquel. Alvin and the Chipmunks, The squeak it was it was that bananas weekend it was like the

it still is i think the single biggest day in movie going history right because of avatar squeakquel and sherlock holmes all opening to over 70 yes and i think also like christmas was a friday so like it all it was all perfectly lined up. It's complicated. Came out on Christmas day. Right. You have up in the air, you know,

these are Christmas movies that I was seeing. I did not see a Christmas Carol. I saw it yesterday on my couch and I thought it was bad. Three out of 10. I watched it tonight right before recording on a 3D Blu-ray. I could not believe how boring it was. I texted David. I believe, let me get my exact wording here.

Please. I said, how is Carrie so dry in this movie? He is weirdly underplaying every role. He's funnier in the majestic yes and i believe i said like i mean my thing is like and you'll agree with it like scrooge is like mr birds he is the most ridiculous exaggerated character yeah he is the meanest person alive he's the most miserly person like you know what his personality traits are the most like that's what scrooge is signing on to play scrooge is like stepping into a gondola on the river of

ham right and carrie on top of this is a cartoon in the movie so it's not just that he's playing scrooge it's that he's playing him as a cartoon and yeah his take is like yeah I'll play him as like kind of grumpy and yeah I think that's what I'm going to go for he's going to be like a little grumpy he should have gone full Riddler he should have just gone fucking gone for it just but like but yeah

like watch McCulloch series of unfortunate events is five years before this and is arguably a better Scrooge performance than this is like that's the kind of energy he should be bringing to this and dr robotnik is 11 years later and is a better scrooge he's given us many a scrooge like you know he's given he has yeah you know who else is a better scrooge the grinch the grinch another classic scrooge that's another reason he shouldn't be screwed you already played the fucking grinch like how many the Grinch another classic Scrooge that's another reason he shouldn't be Scrooge you already played

the fucking Grinch like how many Christmas grumps do you need Jim Carrey to bring you so I found I found a quote that Carrey said in an interview while promoting the movie he said uh it's a very classical version of a Christmas carol there are a lot of vocal things a lot of physical things I have to do, not to mention doing the accents properly. The English, Irish accents. I want it to fly in the UK. I want it to be good and I want them to go, yeah, that's for real. It feels like that was his biggest take on each of the characters was like Ghost of Christmas Past, lilting Irish accent, check, work done. Ghost of Christmas Present, kind of a roly-poly Yorkshire guy, check, job done.

Ghost of Christmas To Be, just point a lot, check, job done. And the Ghost of Christmas Past is so disturbing looking. I actually like yelped when it came up yesterday when I was watching this movie. I was like, oh my God, what's that? It just, it, his head's a candle, which is, you know, from the book. His body's a candle, his head's a flame, Emily. His head's a flame, yeah. Oh, that's right.

I'm sorry. His head is fire. His head is fire. He is a candle. But like he moves around, he moves moves around the fire moves with him and like his face looks like a like a little like squat like jack-o'-lantern it's so disturbing um the but weirdly not the ugliest character in this film because the ugliest character is obviously bob cratchit yeah looks like terrifying looking looks like a potato that has the face of jesus in it like that's what it looks

like yeah emily emily the the term i was about to say was puke potato i also went to potato but i couldn't get over the hair pattern on that potato i want to look at it again now it's it's so weird because we literally had had, like when is Gary Oldman playing fucking Sirius Black as a fire in Goblet of Fire? Remember there's the, he's just, his face is just made of coal. He looks better. Like two years earlier?

Right, he looks better in that than he does in this. It's the weird cheeks that's all messed up about, you know, like it's something about the way his cheeks. He looks like a rodent. Like if you saw him in your house you would leave out poison but you also think about like weta is running the table on mocap at this point in time right and pointedly weta never tried to make their characters look too much like the actors right maybe they put a little hint of it in there but they were always sort of extrapolating

as much onto a different model, which also necessitated some massaging and keyframe animation that probably made the performances better. Whereas Zemeckis was so into like, it's one-to-one, we're not futzing with it at all. It's straight there, unvarnished. It is bizarre that Zemeckis is so committed to, like, all the characters need to look like the actors.

But in this one in particular, he hires people who are so physically different than the characters they're playing. So you get these odd, like, it looks like that fucking face replacement app that everyone does now where they put their own face in different videos. Where you're smiling, Ray, all of a sudden yes right you're just like that is not the body that gary oldman's face belongs on he is also not tiny tim why make a little boy tiny tim that moves like gary oldman and looks kind of like a young gary oldman and then is just voiced by some other child have you since you've done the poll since you've done your Polar Express episode, there was a quote Zemeckis gave around the time that movie came out. So tell me if you've talked about this,

that is just horrifying now when we think about who we cast in certain roles, where he was talking about, okay, imagine being able to do a story about, you know, the Brown versus Board of Education, but Meryl Streep can play one of the little girls who like has to go to the school and like, oh my God, but Meryl Streep can play one of the little girls who has to go to the school. Oh my god. Bob. But he got his dream. Gary Oldman's

playing Tiny Tim. He made it. Hanks plays the little boy, and in Mars Needs Moms, Seth Green plays the boy. He was really into having adults play kids, and in each of those cases, the plan was to have the adult actor also voice the kid, and at the last second it was too

creepy and they hired a kid to re-dub it i we should also mention so that's gary oldman colin firth is in this movie third build uh as fred screwy or whatever also looking kind of like colin firth in a weird, peepy, waxy way. You've got Hoskins coming in as Mr. Fezziwig for one big sort of musical sequence, essentially. Right. The hot chocolate of this movie. Yes, the hot, hot. You got Robin Wright Penn playing once again a stone-faced nobody woman character. Like every time he's like, Robin, let's get you in.

David, I must correct you. She plays two different stone-faced nothing female characters. She plays both his sister and fiance, I believe. Correct. Yes. Correct. Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. And then Carrie Elwes. Yes. yeah and then carrie elwes yes his main job was to be the actor that jim carrey acted against in every scene for any of the scenes where he is playing against himself in the final cut so most of carrie elwes's work was not used and then they gave him like five nothing roles yeah he plays like portly gentleman and mad fiddler and guest two he plays the guy who asks scrooge for money which is you know that's his biggest part that's the biggest part right uh and then scrooge is like poor children should go to jail and he's like well they might

die and scrooge is like good that's great i love that thin out the herd elwes was also impolite elwes was also supposed to be in yellow submarine and to some degree i think elwes was making a play to be like zemeckis's circus like i think he might have been like can i be one of these guys who figures out this medium and becomes like a go-to mocap stock company actor. Sure. Yeah. Fair enough. And it worked.

Oh, sorry. It worked. Worked perfectly. Instead, he produced Elvis and Nixon. And co-wrote it. Did he co-write it? Wow. Harry always co-wrote. did he co-write it? wow but yes

Jim Carrey plays Ebenezer Scrooge at all ages each age is credited as a separate character that he played at the end credits I don't know if you noticed that but it's like adult Scrooge, young man Scrooge little boy Scrooge, Scrooge as teenager and all of them are credited to Jim Carrey

as separate Scrooge like when he's kind of waking up and he feels a little tired like Scrooge, Scrooge as teenager, and all of them are credited to Jim Carrey as separate. Scrooge, like, when he's kind of waking up and he feels a little tired. Scrooge during the day. Scrooge at work. He should just keep going. Scrooge at night. They should have really credited both mean Scrooge

and nice Scrooge as different characters. I mean, they're different men. Oh, also, Gary Oldman is Marley. Yes, he plays Marley I would say And maybe this is a hot take The worst looking creation

In the entire movie Which defies logic Spooky CGI ghost that should be a slam dunk He looks just like a person That is blue Rather than being Trans transparent and ghostly and i remember he's in the trailer and that was why when i saw the trailer i was like they clearly they're just have not figured this out like you know there's three of these now and

they just don't know what they're doing because he looks like shit and the the best Jacob Marley, of course, is the Marley brothers from Muppet Christmas Carol. Whoa! The whole thing about the bit where he undoes his cloth and then he has to flap his mouth up and down like he's a puppet. Yeah, that was weird. Yeah, it's supposed to be a bit, I think, but not funny or disturbing, really. This is an era that's really earmarked by Zemeckis having poor impulse control of just needing to follow through everything he possibly could do at any given moment of a movie. What were you going to say, David? It's just so terrible looking.

It's so bad. so bad it's just so terrible looking yeah it's so bad the thing that emily is referencing where there's the weird kind of body horror and there's a couple other moments like that like the skeleton uh where it's like oh he's kind of doing like more tales of the crypti intense visual horror i i like that movie right i thought that was good Where like Yeah where I'm like It's got bones It's got dust And he's laughing On the ground Those are cool

Those are cool things Yeah right It's an idea Like that's what I'll give You know what I mean Like at least it's something But like when When the little kids

Wanton ignorance Turn into like Like a criminal And like a Like a sex worker It's just like What a weird choice. That is incredibly bizarre.

I did have to double check that it wasn't Leslie Zemeckis playing the adult sex worker because we've noticed a pattern, Emily, in all of these movies, Zemeckis cast his wife as weirdly the most sexualized character in the mo-cap universe. Oh, I've seen Welcome to Marwen. I've seen it.

But also also do you know his wife is the burlesque puppet in polar express i did not know that yes and is the busty beer wench in beowulf where there's three minutes of her pendulous breast swinging but in this she is um she's just colin firth's wife i don't think she has much to do. She is in it. Leslie Manville plays Mrs. Cratchit. Real life ex-wife of Gary Oldman. It's true. Married to him five years.

Very odd. I mean, look, it's a skilled cast and when we were texting about this, David, you were saying like he's treating this as if he's playing king lear like there's weirdly too much reverence for the idea of what scrooge is rather than viewing it as like a

vehicle to have a lot of fun as an actor let alone as a comedic actor and if it's like if your goal is to do like we're doing a very faithful adaptation we're gonna play it straight we're gonna lean more into the spookiness of dickens or whatever then it's like have fucking gary oldman or colin firth or bob hoskins just name three people who are in this movie let alone any of the other people from like the zemeckis rogues gallery have fucking you know like even you just think about how much more exciting this movie would be less commercial but more exciting it would be if it was christopher lloyd is scrooge in zemeckis's a christmas carol and you had that kind of manic energy but it's so bizarre that he

is playing it so deadly straight and i realized watching it like i mean talking about scrooge is kind of this like comedic archetype right it christmas carol is like the prototype for that sort of story we love the royal we uh but like with like something like as good as it gets where it's like watch a very charismatic movie star play an unrepentant asshole. The first hour of the movie, the fun is, oh my God, they're saying the stuff I would never have the courage to say. They don't give a fuck. They're Larry David-ing, yes. Right.

And then the last hour of the movie, they learn how to be a good person. Nicholson. Nicholson would have been a good Scrooge. Yeah. Speaking of people Zemeckis has worked with, I think Harrison Ford now has a great Scrooge in him. I think he'd be great.

He would be so good. But it should be about a California stoner who's rich. You know what I mean? Like, don't bring him to London. This is the mistake. Stop trying to put these guys

in Victorian England. Bring Scrooge to an... You know, obviously they did it with Bill Murray, right? Like, you can transpose this story to anywhere make it be about a guy who's like all i want to do is yell at david blaine and make my wood would work right you know like that's what you need i just think the key detail is the actor needs to have fun being this much of an asshole the only way a christmas carol works is if the audience is getting some perverse pleasure out of how evil Scrooge is. As you said, David, on like a Mr. Burns level.

So that we're like invested enough to be touched when the transformation happens. Carrie's just playing an asshole. Like he's just playing a guy who sucks. And you're just looking at your watch being like, okay, when's he going to realize the error of his ways? Like Michael Caine is fucking dialed in, in Christmas Carol.

You know what I mean? Like so good. I, what are the other Christmas care? I like the Murray. I like Scrooge. It's okay. I've always thought it's a little overrated, but maybe it's underrated.

It's a little overrated. It wasn't even a huge hit at the time, so maybe it's not overrated. But people maybe put too much on it because it has Bill Murray in it. I like the classics that we talked about. I guess there's no masterpiece. Have you ever seen The Rich Little Christmas Carol? I have not. It is is i've read about it a glorious thing to behold it is um uh rich little playing every part in a christmas carol uh many of them is like celebrity impressions i don't necessarily i'm told this is true they're

all celebrities i'm not really aware of i will hear i'm gonna tell you some of his uh impersonations okay wc fields as ebenezer scrooge i'm looking at this list so i mean first first off hammer perfect choice you know the audience is just like he went there he's doing he's he's satirizing wc fields who died 30 plus years ago he's daring to do it you got paul lind as bob cratchit johnny carson is fred laurel and hardy is the solicitors richard nixon is jacob marley that's actually a little spicy for 1978 yeah that's somewhat related to the news of the decade uh groucho marx is fezziwig peter falk is the ghost of christmas present that sounds good yeah that actually sounds good i'm into that there's no you're

missing two key details here please it's billed as peter falk as colombo slash the ghost of christmas treasure to make it clear which character he's riffing on gene stapleton as edith bunker slash mrs cratchit but then a couple just to end off strong truman capote is tiny tiny tim that's just that's just homophobia i don't know absolutely peter sellers as inspector clouseau as the ghost of christmas yet to come i i forgot to mention bogart is the Ghost of Christmas yet to come. I forgot to mention Bogart is the Ghost of Christmas Past. Yes. You murderer.

You almost forgot that. James Mason, George Burns, and John Wayne as the three businessmen and Jack Benny as a boy. Wow. I presume the, what day is it, boy? You boy. This has a helpful tool. There are five of these people were dead at time reading that list what we imagine it to be that's the same kind of thing you imagine hearing jim carrey is going to play four characters in A Christmas Carol. Like, he's just going to fucking go off.

And Carrey, despite not being, like, a grump as his comedic persona, did a lot of movies where it's like, oh, he's upsetting polite society. He's doing whatever the fuck he wants. Like, there is a devil may care streak to him that in theory should fit well guys guys when richard nixon comes in as jacob marley instead of chains he has watergate tapes he has like reel-to-reel tapes draped on him this is a masterpiece boy this is so good oh boy oh my god yeah we gotta do it i think you gotta watch it you gotta watch it yeah we gotta watch it um i mean let's do a little little carrie context we're not digging into me the movie as much because everyone knows what this fucking story is christmas carol there's

fucking three ghosts look it up like what do you want from me it is such a faithful adaptation uh although if there's anything particular you want to say about it, Emily, adaptation-wise, I would very much like to hear it. We'll get to that, but let's talk Carrie. Because I think this movie is a Rosetta Stone to understand Robert Zemeckis. And I'll tell you why later. Carrie, we realized we've never really done a Carrie movie before. And he's obviously one of the most dominant movie stars in the 90s. And we brought it up recently in a box office game.

His bananas year where he has $300 million movies in one year, he goes from being a guy who gets paid like $150,000 a movie to a guy who gets paid $7 million a movie. The following year gets $15 million for the Ace Ventura sequel. And the year after that becomes the first actor ever to make $20 million for what ends up being his first major flop. And then he kind of just continues to run the table on the 90s. Well, he made a movie after the cable guy called liar liar in which he couldn't lie and we you know obviously that was a huge hit he

couldn't lie humongous humongous and then he then he does the truman show one of the masterpieces of movie making but there was there was the cynicism of like oh carrie wants to be serious now and then people love that movie and it was a big hit he didn't get an oscar nomination but it was like a major fucking hit i we left off batman forever which happens uh in between that that's that's that's 95 that's post his first wave right but only built yeah only built uh you got man on the moon which i think he's great in very good i do too but then that then that's a box office disappointment. I guess so. I mean, it's a box office disappointment by the standards of a Jim Carrey movie, I guess.

In terms of an Andy Kaufman biopic, it's all right. It must be the highest grossing Andy Kaufman biopic. It definitely wasn't worth him being that big of a dickhead to make that movie. Well, it like ruined him right like i mean isn't that i haven't ever watched that documentary but isn't that what that documentary is kind of about it's the worst yeah i mean yeah i guess but it just portrays him in the worst light possible he's so yes they could retitle that paranormal activity six outtakes of jim carrey on the set of man on the moon it is that upsetting he seems like an incredibly difficult person in in all ways and like you know peter

weir on the truman show like talks about like how you had to like tire him out to get a real performance out of it you know you had to let him do all his shit and then like, then you'll start getting stuff out of him. Like that was sort of how he approached it. He definitely feels like an actor. You have to wrangle if you're not trying to just make a Jim Carrey vehicle, like something like liar, liar,

you're hiring him to just do everything. Um, right. But 2000, I feel like that's when he's starting to just be like okay i'm gonna do cartoon stuff right me myself and irene that's like a cartoon rubber face movie uh grinch obviously it's humongous highest grossing film of that year then then the majestic it's weird it's like i love jim carrey ace ventura pet detective is literally the first VHS I ever bought with my own allowance.

You know what I mean? I was the perfect age for him, much like I imagine you guys kind of were. Maybe not. No. There was something about Ace Ventura that I always found very disturbing that I didn't understand. Ace Ventura is very disturbing in all ways. No, I was not allowed to watch Jim Carrey movies,

but I did sneak Dumb and Dumber on a class trip, and it's a classic. Same thing for me, Emily, and it was because my parents hate him. Because he's annoying, and he was suddenly everywhere.

Ben, where are you on Carrie i mean i love the mask like the mask is good big big movie for me i mean i still say like taglines from that movie to this very day somebody stop me somebody has to stop you right yeah you often yell that at the police um i feel like truman show was the first carrie movie i saw and i didn't see the carrie comedies until after that like my parents are just like we're not taking you that shit we find him so annoying that that card game cinephile i was playing that over zoom with my family and my dad got or my sister rather picked up jim carrey we were playing it like uh uh what card on head guess the name of the person kind of thing clue style and uh so romilly had jim carrey on her head and my dad was trying to

give her clues and his clue was bad actor and i was like you can't give that as a clue as if that's a universal right and he was like i hate it it's just he's so annoying like he couldn't give any clue that wasn't clouded by his opinion of him so your dad okay yeah no i was just say, I got into him like late-ish. I mean, like 99, I was watching the Carrie comedies on VHS, which is, as you kind of pointed out, like when the golden period is over. So the Carrie movies I were seeing in theaters were when the bloom was off the rose. You're me, myself, Irene, and Bruce Almighty's and what happened. I mean, Bruce Almighty was a huge hit. Bruce Almighty was a huge hit. It's not a good movie.'s not even an okay movie it's really no it's bad it's actively

actively bad but um it opened to 70 million dollars it was the biggest opening weekend for an original film ever in bruce we trust that was the tagline he'd done the majestic which had bombed so he was kind of like had bombed with everybody to be you know the mes jessica is just one of those just total bombs right like it it's it's a christmas movie awards potential the director of the shawshank redemption critics are like no audiences are like no like it was just the complete complete rejection he slinks off he comes back with bruce almighty it's the same move as liar liar he's like i'm gonna come back high fit high concept comedy

you're gonna love it like right like we're just gonna be with tom shadiac i'm gonna just do another tom shadiac movie but then he does have eternal sunshine the year after which is his best performance. He's amazing, right? So good. Yeah. But I feel like... I feel like Gondry has talked about that he, like, went to Peter Weir and he went to Darabont and he went to all the directors who've worked with him and they're like,

tell me all the tricks. I mean, his whole thing was, he said the reason he cast Jim Carrey was based on how lonely and uncomfortable he looked at the end of every episode of In Living Color when they would all come on stage for the good nights. And he was like, that's the performance I wanted him to give. And you've got to give Carrey full credit. He's brilliant in that movie.

But it also feels like the fact that he's never been able to give a performance like that again speaks to gandry somehow teasing it out of him that's the thing it's what i'm trying to say here i guess is like it's 10 years from ace ventura to eternal sunshine and yes you have a couple bombs in there but that is a a pretty solid block of work dramatically and comedically and then yes he still like squeaks out hits with like fun and with dick and jane and yes man and a christmas carol right like you know there's mr popper's penguins david you know he pops up with the penguins but like the life is out of his eyes yes yes it's just like he's just not very fun anymore like i remember yes man being that's probably the most watchable of them because like i don't know it's a peyton

reed movie like zoe de chanel's you know people are kind of like working in the margins on that one but i couldn't tell you a thing that happens in it no that's also one of those wild movies where they were like trying to develop a new model to keep budgets of comedies down so rather than getting 20 or 25 million dollars up front he took zero up front salary for 30 percent of the first dollar gross 36 percent he got a lot of the gross he made a lot of fucking money on that movie uh but yes it's never quite the same and i feel like the last decade he's done a lot of weird more like supporting parts i mean things like kick-ass 2 and burt wonderstone when he's in a comedy he's sort of like playing like the color character right and then when he does something like mr popper's penguins it feels like there's a gun to his head um i also just like you know i always

to his head there are many penguins to his head they're all holding guns i'll say this i've never seen dumb and dumber 2 i have no idea if if he's locked in in that one at all. I tapped out after 15 minutes on HBO Go. I was not able to stick with it. I feel like there was excitement around that, both the Farrelly's and him returning to form, and then it did well, and just no one ever talked about it ever again.

But what I was going to say is I always like try to collect stories when I, when I work as an actor from like other actors and especially from film and TV crews, cause you can get really good gossip, other actors there. I'm less looking for like a savory personal life stuff and more just like I'm curious about what people are like work wise. savory personal life stuff and more just like i'm curious about what people are like work-wise and carrie is one of those people where you just hear the the most uh disastrous demented stories

uh where he is just absolutely like a guy who's been so famous for so long and got famous for being uh unrainable you know that he just does whatever the fuck he feels like doing at any given moment. And I'm not talking around dark, fucked up shit. It's just like the stories are so bizarre where they're talking to a grip who's like, yeah, I worked on Mr. Papa's penguins. We were shooting

in this guy's $15 million Central Park West apartment the last day of filming. He asked me for a sharpie pen and then he drew a giant self portrait of himself on their living room wall and signed it and said man they owe me 20 million for that one

wow and he's just in another reality he's in another reality by all accounts he's in another reality and functions in that way where he's like I am doing a mitzvah to these people by defacing the wall of their living room with a drawing of myself. I want to say, because of his background in sketch comedy and TV comedy, his big breakthrough role was this sitcom called The Duck Factory that got canceled after 13 episodes, but it was supposed to make him a star. So he has a lot of experience with TV comedy. I was actually looking forward him as joe biden on saturday night live and that was a disaster it

was train wreck the worst thing that has ever happened and like i too is like because it like remember the buzz on that was like well carrie really wants to do it and he asked lorne and he has a take and i'm like okay like sure if he sure. If he didn't care, he thinks he wants, you know, and then he just comes in and he's ready to move to New York. He just did fire Marshall bill. Like there was just nothing going on. Like it was so weird after all that hype.

The thing that was so insanely damning about it was that Alec Baldwin looked like fucking the Groucho Marx up there next to him. I'll, I'll, suddenly I was suddenly, I was like, well, I was actually locked in his truck. This is good stuff.

Like it was insane. Like Alba was hitting his lines. I was kind of amused. Like, and then you switch back to Biden and he's like, ah, what are we going to do suckers? And he's like,

you know, shooting a finger gun. Like I did, I did like Joe Biden is, you could satirize the man there are takes on him yeah there's stuff there's stuff there fucking he was the onions best comedic character for eight years thing three other guys have played him well on snl i woody i was just a big fan of the woody harrelson. Big fan is strong because anything political on SNL these days is pretty weak sauce. But like, Woody Harrelson had a take. He had a look. It was

kind of funny. Like, you know, that was working for me. I know he's like busy or whatever. Speaking of Carrie, where does the number 23 fall in? Because that's a fucked up movie. That's a couple of years before this right right i think so number 23 is 2007 like after eternal sunshine he also has a series of unfortunate events the same year and then he has phone with dick and jane which is one of those movies i think that had uh been shot a while ago you know like that one sat on the shelf for a year i think it was more that they kept shooting it for over a year that you know like that one sat on the shelf for a year i think it was more that they kept shooting it for over a year that was a movie that never was finished and they kept going back for more and more reshoots yeah but but like so if you basically sort of think of it as like

he kind of takes a three-year break almost and then the number 23 comes out and it's like what you know like wait is he into this like that was the thing it's it's a horrible movie yeah anyway like it's a stupid bad movie but there was also that kind of vibe of like this feels like something jim carrey maybe believes like that there's some magic to the number 23 am i misremembering is that another schumacher yes that, that's a Schumacher. You gotta do him. You gotta do Schumacher. Do we gotta do Schumacher? I mean, the number 23, though. This was, I just remembered the other thing I wanted to bring up.

Because I was looking up photos from the press tour for this movie. One of the photos I had is my background, my virtual background before I shifted it to adult Gary Oldman sitting on adult Jim Carrey's shoulder to do the mocap. But I found this photo of him and Zemeckis. They did some weird Amtrak cross-promotion train tour for this movie because I think they were trying to post off. Right. Big Amtrak tie-in. I don't know why. Because of Polar Express.

But there's this picture for the press conference where he's like vomiting up tinsel or whatever but carrie had this look through the entire press tour where his hair was like fairly long he has a really big beard and then he would wear a lot of loose layers like he would wear like a buttoned down shirt and then like another jacket and then a blazer and then an overcoat. And it was like very odd how it was a very consistent look and it was kind of dressed down for how many promotional appearances he had to make for this movie. And then it became clear, oh, he signed on to do the Three Stooges, a thing that I think people forget. He was supposed to be in the Fairley Brothers' Three Stooges, where it was supposed to be Sean Penn...

Benicio Del Toro. Benicio Del Toro as Mo, Sean Penn as Larry, and Jim Carrey as Curly. And it was a big announcement, like, he's re-teaming with the Fairley Brothers. Jim Carrey is going to gain a hundred pounds to play Curly. And this was the period where he was trying to bulk up.

So he started dressing in this way where you couldn't see his body and grew out the beard so you couldn't see his face. And then like a month after this, he goes to the Farrelly brothers and he's like, I can't do it. I can't gain the weight. I don't look right.

And then just loses it all and like shaves. Right. And looks normal. He says he gained 40 pounds and wanted to gain another 40 and realized like it he couldn't hack it like you know he whatever he must have been in his late 40s early you know like it was rough on him i wouldn't he recommends gaining 80 pounds to play curly in a three stooges movie you know he was pretty good on the showtime show uh kidding which is not a great show but like he was solid in it like he's got he's got

he still got it i kind of hated that show yeah yeah i think he was good i i i he was good he was interesting the weird that show bothered me because he was supposed to be playing a mr rogers type you know figure like a beloved and jim carrey just doesn't have that energy like and especially not in this show that's kind of weird and a little you know showtimey right and so i i but yes he was compelling and he is compelling as dr evo robotnik in sonic the hedgehog he's it's not like he doesn't have it's magic to him although i will say in a christmas carol he does not because no but i'm i'm looking at like i'm looking at the last decade in particular right and i would wager that his best performance of the 2010s was as leap dave williams in 30 he's fantastic i i have forgot about that i have like immense nostalgia for the high concept jim carrey comedy even though i haven't seen all of them i just like i if he came out and he was

like i play i'm doing a movie where i have a guy who has a Tourette's syndrome, but for compliments, like I'd be like, yes, I'm there. I'm there. I'm a guy who fucked a dog and I became a cat. Like I would see that four times.

You know, they would do that though with like, cause that's kind of what Mr. Popper's penguins is. And you're like, ah, shit, this sucks now.

But like, I, look, I threw on liar, liar recently, you know, or whatever. I stumbled on it and when

jim carrey is being when he can't lie it's great liar liar rules there is a solid hour of like marriage dramedy stuff in it that you're just kind of like okay jesus let's keep it moving you know he is a kid he has more tyranny like there's all kinds of but when he can't lie that's great and maybe he should do liar liar too i don't know he can't lie that liar liar is like his big it's his crossover from the like the comedy audience to like the broader audience where you could imagine him have gotten an oscar nomination for that somehow it wouldn't have happened but like you know you could see it. And then he's supposed to become Hanks in other ways,

and there's just something about his personality that won't fill that space. There's something off-putting about him. He's creepy. I think it is whatever that manic, chaotic strain he has is that makes him engaging as a comedic performer. It makes it hard to accept him as an everyman. And Truman Show

is such a weird take on the idea of him being an everyman figure because he's like a bottled, sort of like a bespoke everyman created in a social experiment.

And then Eternal Sunshine is a guy who's like sapped of personality. Like he's like pointedly playing an incredibly boring, emotionally inexpressive man in that movie.

Can I point out, I, I like him a lot and I love you, Philip Morris. Yeah. I never saw that. People like that movie. Right.

I like that movie. I think he's very good in it. That felt like that was maybe, you know, a glimpse into where he could go for the next decade. And then he didn't really in it that felt like that was maybe you know a a glimpse into where he could go for the next decade and then he didn't really tap into that potential at all in terms of straight comedy i think the best one is burt wonderstone not as a movie but he's good in that i also have not seen that movie because it is against the law to see that movie

it is i look i served my time i served my time that movie had it is illegal to see this movie buzz and box office that's the only way to explain there are federal laws in place one of my one of my dream well one of my things like uh david will understand this i spent a lot of time thinking about movies that people could make because we used to take part in like a weird online game where that would be like a thing fantasy casting one of one of my dreams is paul thomas anderson making a movie about a week in the life of the lawrence welk show because that show was so like fucked up behind the scenes and i was like but who do you have play welk jim carrey would make a good lawrence welk anyway that's a very strange reference that people will be excited to hear. Well, but Emily,

great pitch. Put it on the blank check picture slate along with keeping up with the clauses, which is now the first project under blank check television. But that reminds me, the other thing we're not talking about was that for so

long there was the looming specter of the christopher nolan jim carrey howard hughes movie yeah i wonder what that is i wonder what that looks like i'm i'm kind of glad that never happened i'm kind of glad it never happened but in a certain way howard hughes is a good fit for carrie is a good fit for a carry. 100%. Yes. Creepy, reclusive, strange, intense.

Right. It's just that we've done a lot of Howard Hughes at this point. But yes, no, in theory, that's an interesting project. When was that supposed to? I guess it was like...

At several points in time. Right. The late 2000s, especially. Right? That's sort of coming together. Yeah. Well, almost happened early 2000s

aviator got to the runway first then he almost revived it and then people's thought is that like he kind of just put a lot of that stuff into dark night rises weirdly he like cannibalized his howard hughes script into the third batman movie i've been thinking a lot about how Will Ferrell's kind of a, Will Ferrell's kind of at this point where he is sort of where Bill Murray was pre Rushmore. And like, he needs to like an indie filmmaker. Like I saw somebody suggest on Twitter that Ari Oster would have a great time working with Will Ferrell.

And like, I would love to see that. Like, I think like people kept thinking that was going to happen with Jim Ferrell. And like, I would love to see that. Like, I think like people kept thinking that was going to happen with Jim Carrey. He was going to hook up with an exciting

young indie filmmaker, revitalize his career, go to supporting, and he just never did. Like, Eternal Sunshine's the closest he got. Yeah,

I mean, and there's things like him being in like The Bad Batch, you know? He's kind of fun in The Bad Batch. That movie stinks.

Right, and he did that weird fucking movie dark crimes have not seen dark crime it takes a dark mind to solve a twisted crime is the tagline what if there were dark crimes i mean they dared ask the question but i don't know i think it is harder to crystallize what his persona is that you can subvert into a more serious minded movie, Emily, in the way that it was like so clear what like, if you take the Bill Murray thing and you put him in a more serious context, the overwhelming loneliness of this guy becomes very poignant, you know?

And I think Farrell has those reserves in him that no one's really figured out how to properly use yet. Carrie is best when he's doing sort of just maximalism. When what you're watching him for is just doing everything. It's one of the reasons why this movie is so upsetting because it's the one time that he's seemingly holding back. When there should be nothing keeping him in place. I want to hear your sort of big Zemeckis take. Before we play the box office game, right. I feel like we just need to hear this and talk it out.

Yeah, I was thinking about this because when we were talking about the rich little Christmas carol, I was like, well, why didn't, you know, at this point in time, why not just get Robin Williams, have him play every part, have him do like a celebrity impression for every part. And it would just be like a disaster, but you know, it would be more fun than this movie. Maybe like W.C. Fields as Scrooge. I'll just throw that out there. No one's ever done that. Watching this movie,

I was struck by Zemeckis' adaptation choices to play up at every turn the anti-capitalism message of A Christmas Carol in a way that usually does not get pulled into American adaptations of this story. It's usually like Scrooge just needs to be nicer and give more to charity. Right, he's too mean. Yeah, Zemeckis is, I think watching it at this moment in history, I was like, oh my god, this is like playing up the aspects of Dickens' story that are like, you know what, we are only as good as the weakest people in society and we should work together to build something that doesn't give too many people too much money and doesn't give too many people too little money. from the book because he cuts quite a few things for all the hype that this got about, you know, this is a faithful adaptation. The stuff he keeps is all stuff like wanton ignorance. It's all stuff like, you know, really playing up how Scrooge has lots of money and other people have no money and

the, you know, the orphans and the collecting for the poor and all of this stuff. And that made me think one of the things that has followed Robert Z samakis around his entire career is is he fundamentally a conservative filmmaker in political sense or is he someone who's kind of satirizing that viewpoint taking the piss out of that the gump question i think a christmas carol proves that he is indeed fairly i don't think he's like as far left as like george lucas but i think he's a fairly left-leaning filmmaker who really does kind of hate the capitalist system that has made him rich. It is a thing I have been wrestling with these many months and the months ahead of us where like – It's not months ahead. It's months.

This month ahead of us. But I was watching – his early short films are on like the criterion disc for i want to hold your hand and they're the films that he showed to spielberg that got spielberg on board being his mentor setting him up with films and the whole thing he liked about him was he was like this guy is anarchic like he makes these really radical angry political comedies. He just likes chaos. And it does feel like there's a much clearer satirical edge to his movies early on that starts to fade away. And I think he starts to get pegged as being this very kind of like sappy populist sort of like sentimental mainstream guy.

But he is clearly a very angry filmmaker. Like, most of his movies seem driven by contempt of something, and then perhaps regrets about where that anger led, you know? But they all have that sort of thing to it, and we talk a lot about him being like, kind of the ultimate boomer filmmaker, but he also seems to be a guy

who has a lot of hatred for everything the boomers wrought in society. i mean not to relitigate forrest gump but i that's that movie that movie is about um i am a boomer i love boomers i fucking hate myself i hate everything that i've done you know that's the conflict that makes that movie kind of difficult to untangle yeah right and like I found this quote that I read in the contact episode about how he was raised super Catholic and then became super, uh,

uh, atheistic and then has spent like the later years trying to sort of untangle his earlier, um, rebellion and find some sort of middle ground between the two. And he also falls in this category. And it's like two narratives that come up a lot on this podcast because of the kind of careers that we cover.

One is filmmaker discovers some kind of technological breakthrough and becomes obsessed with pushing this boulder up a hill, quote unquote, for the next generation of filmmakers, right? This weird sort of like, in the same way that Ang Lee has done with the high frame rate stuff, Zemeckis at this time was always framing it as like, I don't care if people don't like these movies.

I'm doing this for the next generation of filmmakers. I'm doing all the R&D for the next generation to have these tools to play with. There's that thing. And then there's also the thing of, I hate what all the film trends I started have wrought in culture. Yes, very much so. Like he seems to have –

Yeah, that grumpiness. Right. You know, Spielberg and Lucas, you know, all these guys where they're just like, ugh, look at all these movies now. They're all bullshit. Right. But it's an odd choice in that way to make a Christmas carol that is, at this point in time in his career, to make a Christmas carol that is so devoid of joy, of humor, and is trying its hardest, if unsuccessfully, to forefront the sort of regret and the literal horror of the story. Right. But if you view this as Robert Zemeckis being like, I am Scrooge and I ruined the world, like, I think that that is, I think that that's a take, you know, I think that he is really tapped into this idea of like, we need to like build something better. And like this movie becomes

like kind of his Waterloo in that regard. And then he goes off and starts making like weird little kind of personal kind of not movies. And, you know, and welcome to Marwen ends with Steve Carell turning the camera and saying, eat the rich. Like,

you know, it's, it's, it's the Marwen's crazy. This movie is just so fucking boring. My final thought I'll say is like tintin comes two years after this is the final gasp i've said this before but like i think so much of the success of tintin is they find the exact right distance to push it into abstraction so they

overcome the uncanny valley by being like these are proportions that no human being has this is not what the architecture of a face looks like we're still going for a tactile quality in the animation and the realism in the performances but we're not trying to replicate the way these actors faces look in that kind of way and they go a little bit into that with like i mean obviously the stretching out of carrie's limbs in this and his nose and his chin. But even like you look at the ghost of Christmas past and it's just straight up Jim Carrey's face in a flame, right? You look at the ghost of Christmas present and it's straight up just like,

it looks like Jim Carrey doing the promotional rounds for this movie, trying to bulk up to play Curly. And then the ghost of Christmas to come is just apparently him motion capture performance in the silhouette of a robe pointing at shit. But there's that. He point. He point. He point.

There's the opening transition of the movie, I guess, after the opening credits, Zemeckis flying over the cityscape shit where it goes from the book. Or does that come first? Where it goes from the book. You look at the book and then it goes into the city and then it says jim carrey over footage of him wandering around but there's that transition where it goes from the illustration in the page of the book yes it says like to griffin right and then the illustration becomes 3d and then slowly the illustration transitions into this totally horrifying looking

Bob Marley corpse. Jacob Marley. What am I saying? Bob Marley. I wish Bob Marley was in this movie. I wish that had been his choice. I'm doing A Christmas Carol but the ghost of Bob Marley is playing every character. I bought the rights from the Marley estate.

But I had this immediate thought of just like oh that was immediately more visually appealing than anything i've seen in any of these movies he was so weirdly committed to trying to bridge this gap between like it's not animation it's not live action it has the qualities of both that i just thought like look it's not going to fix the energy problems this movie has but if this movie were done with like three-dimensional illustrations in that way yes yes i agree with this completely it would have some fucking feeling to it you you're like what you were saying about the richard williams version being the best one it's like make it look like the

fucking woodcuts from the book or something. Yeah, and that apparently was like their goal, which this looks nothing like. But yeah, I have seen so many Christmas Carol adaptations. I've seen so many that are worse than this one by several degrees. This is the one I least want to watch again. Like, it's so... Also, when Bob Cratchit turns toward camera at end and starts talking to it and reciting the famous end of the book, it's terrifying weird theme park ride. The Fezziwig sequence where she turns into hot chocolate and the main money shot of it is a woman twirling too hard

and briefly becoming a helicopter through her skirt. Yeah. The one thing that I think really does succeed in capturing the book, again, is Tiny Scrooge. I'm glad it's in there and I'm glad that Dickens' vision was realized. Finally, just dancing on top of that bottle. tiny scrooge i'm glad it's in there and i'm glad that dickens vision was realized finally just just dancing on top that bottle little scrooge he's funny when the high pitch the the pitch up it's always good i david pointed out that this is one of his only soul

screenwriting credits i was like yeah but it's like he pretty much just copy pasted the book and then added in long-screen descriptions of what, when he shoehorned in chase sequences that must have ended with, I promise you this is going to look really cool. Yes, exactly. Also, I guess, I mean, Marley, chain legend, I guess we should just shout that out. Oh, yeah.

I mean, the chain work is pretty good. You know, they're green that's cool they're translucent you know yeah dickens really invented something pretty magical which is that ghosts carry around chains and you know i've i've taken that and incorporated into my fashion so you know i'll have wearable chains with my line that's coming out next year um so look forward to that do you look forward do you look forward to being a ghost because they'll just like give you some chains absolutely yeah uh i assume that they they they you you go and you get your chains and then they they assign you a place to haunt yeah st peter's like how many chains mr

hosley and you're like all of them it's like checking in on election day you go to the little desk and they're like hosley hosley with an s or a z you go s and they go great here are your chains we have to play the box office game this is one of the crazier box office games that I can remember. It's three movies where you're just like, holy shit. Number one, though, is this is November 6, 2009. Number one is A Christmas Carol opening to $30 million. Not great. Not okay.

You know, what are you going to do? It ends up at $130 million? It ends up making $137 million domestic, $ $177,000 international, $315,000 worldwide. Okay. But, you know. But it costs like $200 million. Yeah, and it costs a ton to market. And Polar Express made more than that, you know, five years earlier.

So, like, that's just not what you want to see. And this thing has certainly had zero shelf life zero that's the other thing that it does not linger does not become a classic um all right number two though okay okay um concert movie uh has made 57 million dollars michael jackson's this is it michael jackson's this is it who could forget that michael jackson had recently died yeah when this movie came out and so they rushed this is it the it's not even a concert movie right it's it's like a preparing for a concert movie it is it's it's not even a documentary it's like it's got the shape of a concert film but it's put

together from footage of him rehearsing a concert he never got to do because he died uh so weird i've never seen huge hit so 60 billion dollars worldwide is it the whole is that the biggest concert movie of all time? It might be. Probably. Like, what would its competition be? I just remember there being, like, Sony bought it for so much money, and Deadline was doing these breathless pieces where they were like, no one knows how much this is going to make. Is it going to make $500 million? Like, there was just this feeling of, like, and then people saw it,

and they were like, oh, it's really just watching rehearsal footage. Like, it's very unexciting. There's a part where, because I'm such a big Jackson 5 fan, and there's a part where he goes into doing a medley of all the Jackson 5 songs. I start getting so amped. And like 30 seconds into it, he goes like, hey, can we stop? I'm just like out of breath. And you're like, oh, well, this sucks because I didn't see the thing I wanted to see. And also, this is more depressing now.

My. Yes. Go ahead. I was going to say my my primary memory of Michael Jackson's death is that he died while I was visiting my old German grandmother. And we went out to watch fireworks on the 4th of July and people were playing Michael Jackson songs. And I was not aware that my German grandmother knew about Michael Jackson's death, but she turned to me and said, he's dead now. Very sad.

And then she went back and got in the car cause she didn't care about watching fireworks. I mean, no lies detected. He was dead. It's true. I was in Paris when Michael Jackson died and there were literally just people running down the streets, holding bottles of wine and beer, screaming, Michael Jackson, Ile-et-Mort! Ile-et-Mort! I was over like all night as I went to different neighborhoods. It was a constant throughout the city. Number three at the box office. It's this week it's opening to 12 million dollars

michael jackson no good very bad don't do it sure yes how to describe uh i guess like a dark comedy um one of those movies i feel like just saying the title is just a great movie that does not exist. It's a great filler title for any movie that does not exist. Big cast. Big cast. It's not holiday themed at all, is it? No, it's not holiday themed. It has a funny billing where someone's getting the and credit, but it's it's not an actor.

I know someone is getting the and credit, but it's not an actor. Not an actor. It's like actor, actor, actor, actor and a doc. You're close. You're close. You're close. Okay, so is the and the name of a proper character, or is it like a thing? It's an animal. It's an animal.

It's an animal. And is the movie kind of like centered around the animal? Well, no, but like it's in the title. This animal is in the title. The animal's in the title this animal is in the title i've never seen this movie i've never seen this movie and i love the star of it i love most of i love yeah a lot of the actors in this movie one canceled actor in this movie but you know a lot of good actors i almost find it unlikely that i haven't seen this movie so is this like i don't know that you've seen this movie is this is the is the canceled actor kevin spacey the canceled

actor is kevin spacey hmm huh it's a kevin spacey dark comedy he's fourth build he's fourth yeah yeah it's got ahead of the the animal it's not nine lives he's built one position ahead of an animal was he in an air bud yeah it's an air but no come on come on it's a it's a serious movie it debuted at the venice film festival it's got huge stars in it it does not exist it cannot exist i saw this 50 times no it's like a comedy but it's like it's like a dark satirical comedy for grown-ups wow spacey and animal can you give me the animal kingdom it's part of it's a hooved animal i don't know It's a horse movie? No it's not a horse movie Is it a cow movie?

Horse movie Not a cow not a horse But you know another farm animal Sheep Now this is getting fun Now this is just an animal guessing game No it's not a sheep Is it a pig?

Wait did I hear goat wait Did I hear goat Is this the men who stare at goats The men who stare At goats No goats no glory It's Clooney Bridges Who's the one person I'm forgetting

Spacey and a goatvin spacey and goat in the men who stare at goats a grant haslaw film you're you're right that movie cannot exist i met grant haslaw once seemed like a really nice guy yeah obviously george cooney's writing partner when that movie was out i doubted it existed like yes right yeah it's it's a i guess an anti-war comedy about cia or like u.s army like psychological experiments right where they're like trying to make psychic spies i've never seen it i only remember the trailer and it's like a guy running into a wall or whatever right you know like it's like shit like that I have no idea what it's about

I mean people you know like Truman Show Syndrome is a serious thing I feel like there have been psychological studies of generations of people post Truman Show grow up with the fear that their life is actually just some fictional reality for someone else to watch

and I felt that way anytime I walked by a Men Who Stare Life is actually just some fictional reality for someone else to watch. And I felt that way anytime I walked by a Men Who Stare at Goats poster on the street. Because it was like, this is lazy set dressing for a movie that cannot come up with a fake movie to exist in its universe. The Men Who Stare at Goats. They stare. All right. It's enough talk. Okay. The fourth movie is a sci-fi horror film.

Sci-fi horror film 2009. Yes. Would you say more sci-fi, more horror? More sci-fi. Just one of those cheap-ass sci-fi horror movies that probably made a profit no one ever remembers it's not the the dennis quaid ben foster one is it no i believe what's that called elysium is no wait no but it's something like elysium it's not elysium that's the matt damon thing what the fuck is it doesn't matter anyway no it's not that it's just a cheap-ass horror movie. It stars Mila Jovovich. Oh.

Fuck. Fuck. It's got a cutesy sci-fi name. Yeah. You know, it's like a play on a concept we would be dimly aware of. It's a sci-fi concept. It's not ultraviolet. No.

No. This is going to be tough. You guys are not going to get this. No, I think I got it. I feel like I'm usually good at my Milos. You got it. You're going to tap out. Do you have a guess, Emily? You look like you almost had a thought.

I remember the poster for this movie, but I do not remember the title. Describe the poster to me. Emily, give me the poster. Oh, my God. It's, fuck. It's, maybe I don't remember the poster. I think I'm remembering a Resident Evil poster. Shit.

Mila Jovovich is not on the poster, to be clear. Oh, she's not. Okay, well, there we go. Then I remember. The poster is someone being lifted out of their bed, as if by an alien force. Oh, oh, oh. It's not, is it called The Fourth Kind?

The Fourth Kind. The Fourth Kind. What if there was a fourth kind? The fourth kind, the fourth kind. What if it was a fourth kind? It's an alien abduction movie, right? I believe so. Yeah. The second you said being left out,

I was like, okay, yeah, that, uh, that's, that I, that's either the fourth kind or that one from like a few years later with

Carrie Russell that I don't remember the name of anymore. Dark skies, dark skies, dark skies. I think cause a close encounter of the third kind is where you meet an alien but a close encounter of the fourth time is where an alien abducts you from your bed anyway from your bed when you're sleeping you remember that found footage movie set on the moon what the fuck was that

what uh emily what's that movie called apollo what's the found footage apollo 18 i believe it's it's a it's a later yes right yes apollo 18 uh yeah what if what if we went to the moon and there was a camera alien uh okay speaking of found footage movies what is number five at the box office it's made 97 million dollars in seven weeks paranormal activity a little film called paranormal activity that rules love paranormal activity yeah one is so good two is okay three is the best never saw the other ones i've only seen one in three but i agree that three rules three is so good three is amazing yeah um yeah three rules i should watch the other ones why not um that is the box office for this time we've also got opening at number six one of my favorite

movies of 2009 richard kelly's the box which we will one day do on this podcast uh which i love so much uh you got couples retreat what if there was a Couples Retreat? You got Law Abiding Citizen. What if there was a Law Abiding Citizen? But like both of those big hits, like Couples Retreat. Vince Vaughn just snoozing his way to 100 mil domestic. God, it's true.

Vince Vaughn is like, he, yeah, he's like resentful that he's in that movie. It's so weird. Yeah, you literally just went to Hawaii. Is this what you want? Yeah. Right. It feels like a parody of he's in that movie. It's so weird. Yeah. They literally just went to Hawaii. Is this what you want? Yeah. Right.

It feels like a parody of an Adam Sandler premise. Right. Right. It's like, we got to go to Hawaii. Why? Ah, for some kind of like couples retreat. I don't know. My hot wife hates me or something.

I like Vince Vaughn has found his Wes Anderson and it's S. Craig Zoller. Like that's... I gotta say, Vaughn, pretty good in Freaky. I gave him a good review for Freaky. Gave him good notices. He's been doing good work. He's good in Hacksaw Ridge. He's good in Fighting With My Family.

He's leaning into the right things right now. The thing about Freaky is he's funny in it, obviously, because he's playing a teenage girl for most of the movie, right? Like it's a body swap movie. But he plays a serial killer, and you're like, yeah, Vince Vaughn, of course. Like, that's good casting. He's creepy and scary. And then, like, when he's being funny, you're like, oh, right, I forgot that he was, like, a comedy star for 15 years. Right, and for something, he has that muscle.

A-list comedy star, yeah. What a weird career. But you want to talk about a great career? Emily Vanderwerf, one of the best writers out there. One of our best guests. One of our favorite people. I want to ask you, because you're never going to do A Christmas Carol again, because no other great directors have done A Christmas Carol. Who's your director you'd like to see do A Christmas Carol?

Just lightning round, because I have an answer I have just to make Griffin happy. Oh, got to hear the answer to make Griffin happy. Who do I want to do a Christmas Carol? That's a good question. I mean, I didn't watch the FX dark Scrooge who fucks. But I am into the idea of someone doing a harder-edged Christmas Carol like that. Not an edgelord's Christmas Carol, but like

the thing this movie occasionally toys with of just like, what if you made it really fucking dark? You know, I don't want anyone to do it, but yeah, it'd be fun if Mike Flanagan did a ghost story movie. You know what I mean? If someone leaned more into the horror. If you did a nasty story movie you know what i mean like if someone leaned more into the

horror like if you did like a nasty like one million dollar haunted house scrooge movie yeah i don't know what's your answer emily gendy tartakovsky oh well well that'd be fun okay so that's that's a great pick my pick be, like, the first thing that came to mind for me was, like, Paul King does a big Family Scrooge musical. Right, like Joe Cornish. Like, you know, British guys with a good sense of comedy and visuals. You know, yeah, yeah. But I'm also, like, I feel like Muppet Christmas Carol scratches that itch for me.

It's a great Christmas Carol musical with a great performance at the center and a lot of good comedy. Now I like the idea of Genndy just going fucking full tune on this thing. Yeah. And he's a guy. Could Blobby be in it?

Blobby? Yeah. Bring in Blobby? Blobby could be the ghost of Christmas future. You know, the thing about this is there's all these franchises that are like, we're going to do Christmas Carol

because we got these recognizable characters hotel transylvania christmas carol would work emily that's such a good idea that's such a good idea drac i mean drac is kind of a scrooge sometimes yeah you know an ht4 i mean if you're gonna keep it going you might as well just start being like yeah i don't know we'll do a christmas carol yeah i don't know we'll do a what's another like template you could shove it into yeah hotel transylvania treasure island yeah just do them all make them the new muppets um great emily is there anything specific you want to plug aside from the fact that people should just be following all of your work in general because it's always worth following. You can find me on Twitter at twitter.com

slash EmilyVDW. I am on Vox all the time. My newsletter is called Episodes. And as you listen to this, the penultimate episode of the second season of my Scripted Fiction podcast, Arden, is dropping tomorrow. So check that out. We have gotten awards

nominations. That means we're good. Highly recommended. And not to be competitive, but I want you to remember how this episode started and out we have gotten awards nominations that means we're good highly recommended and not to be competitive but I want you to remember how this episode started and recognize that we might be nipping at your heels in the awards categories next year Peabody's coming I remember I've got my comedy points coin I'm gonna have a Peabody

medal wow can you imagine oh I've noted it I've wrote down apply for Peabody but you know guys i've i queued this up in the polar express episode i gotta promote oh of course the untitled slow christmas album that i've put together it's it's a slow christmas album ben thinks that christmas music isn't slow enough so he's releasing an

album this is for real that's gonna drop this week as you're listening to this the link will be in the show notes please you know it's free for everyone to listen and enjoy i just can't believe that's real that was the best christmas music i've ever heard ben you've created a holiday classic thank you emily that's i really appreciate as someone who loves christmas that i take that in high regard this thing's gonna be huge i'm just saying it's gonna yeah it's it's gonna get much bigger than our podcast right it's gonna be like it's gonna be like the buster Point Dexter to our New York stalls. All right.

Great reference, Griff. Take us out. I love it. Yeah, let's end it. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Joe Bonpette rounds for our work. Lane McInerney for another theme song. Go to blanksetred.com for some real nerdy shit.

Go to patreon.com slash blank check where we're finishing off the Alien franchise. Blank check special features. Tune in next week for a flight. We're going to roll it. And as always on the 12th day of Christmas, my true love sent to me 12 podcast, potting 11 potters,

pipe potting, 10 Lord pods, a potty, potty, potty, 11 potters potting. 10 Lord Pods of potting. Lord Pods? Lord Pods. Potty's potting. 8 Pods of potting. 7 Pods of potting.

6 Pods of potting. Come on, sing it with me now. 5 Podcasts. 4 Podcasts Four Podcasts Three Podcasts Two

Podcasts And A Podcast In A Podcast Cast in a pod trees.

That's a Peabody winner.