Blank Check with Griffin & David - A.I. Artificial Intelligence with David Rees

Episode Date: February 26, 2017

David Rees (Going Deep with David Rees) joins Griffin and David to discuss 2001’s robot boy sci-fi: A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

David is 11 years old. He weighs 60 pounds. He's 4 feet 6 inches tall. He has brown hair. His love is real. But he is podcast! Only 60 pounds. I want to say something.

Those stats are almost identical to me at that age. I know for a fact I was 60 pounds and 4 foot 6. And I was 12 when this movie came out. Yeah. I don't know how much I weigh. Now. Or then. I'm 62 now. Hi everybody, my name out. Yeah. I don't know how much I weigh now or then. I'm 62 now. Hi, everybody.

My name is Griffin Newman. I'm David Sims. Welcome to Blank Check with Griffin and David. This is a podcast where we go through filmographies of directors who have massive success early on and then are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy past and projects they want. Sometimes the check's clear

and sometimes they bounce, baby. Great. And this is a mini miniseries about the films of Steven Spielberg with the biggest blank check of all time when he founded DreamWorks Pictures, his own studio. Post-Oscar win, he had nothing to prove and everything to gain.

And it's called Pod Me If You Cast. Yes, that's the name. Pause for laughter and applause. Thank you. Our guest likes that. Our guest likes it. And today we're talking about what I believe you said is your single favorite film in the Spielberg filmography. Is that correct? This is my personal

favorite Spielberg, although I know that's kind of like a big, jerky, hot takey thing to say. Obviously I like E.T. To restate, you're saying in terms of personal preference, not objective greatness, right? In terms of personal preference, not just within this miniseries, but the entire filmography, this is your favorite. Yeah, which is, I mean, I don't think a lot of people would agree with me. Right.

But I'm not trying to be a jerk about it. No, no, no. This is up there for me. The movie, of course, we're talking about is PC, Potificial Castelligence. No. Oh, no. AI, Artificial Intelligence. An awkward title. No. No no. AI artificial intelligence.

An awkward title. Yeah. I would say. Yeah. With no colon either. No. It's just

the acronym I dot and then what the acronym is. Two old American words. It would be like calling a movie

like FYI for your information. Right? Like it's a silly title. That's a cool title. Sorry. No no no. Didn't he do that to

mirror et the extraterrestrial i feel like why does he call it ai the artificial yeah oh right right a a yes that b i think et is e et has no colon really no colon well he does i mean how else would he poop well we don't see him poop. David? One comedy point. Give me one. Give me one. All right, one comedy point. Thank you. I don't really do that.

I don't really give the comedy points. It's just funny because it's a bit we do. You should try to be a little more generous. No, I think it's good that I'm very spare. You're the Scrooge of comedy points. Old miserly Sims over here. AI, artificial intelligence. We have a very exciting guest on the show today.

He's currently just over here highlighting my notes and my three pages of notes that I took on this film. Putting his notes in a little box like on an old movie on the posters, you know, and they would put someone's name in a box to prove that they were more important. He is the most prepared of any guest we've had on the show. I think that's true. He's taken out a notebook full of graph paper that is filled to the brim with notes. In block capital. Yes. The most artificial

intelligence way of writing. That's true. And let's say this. What if it was like David's weird notes? It was like, you know, I love mommy and Teddy loves mommy but I don't love Teddy. Is that what your notes are like? No, my notes are pretty boring. We wanted this guest on the show so badly that I believe socially at one point you threw out, like, what movie would you ever want to talk about?

And you said AI. No, it was, you came to me. Really? I think I did, yeah. Yeah, you were like, look, you guys, I think I had mentioned to you that we had thought about doing Spielberg one day. This was like three miniseries ago. If you ever wanted to do Spielberg, like, I want AI. Right.

You earmarked this a long time ago. But I'll say that was like a motivator towards us actually finally doing the miniseries was the ability to do this episode. Really? The AI, artificial intelligence six hour spectacular? I've always wanted to do this. Yeah, but I'm saying I'm trying to hype up the guests.

How excited we are to have him. No, we're so excited to have him here. Where do you know him from? Many different places. The sadly defunct television series Going Deep with David Reese, which is one of my favorite shows on television. Really? I was a huge fan. Oh, thank you.

I didn't think I knew that. Thank you. I appreciate that. You changed the way I tie my shoes. Ah. Amongst other things. But that's the big one on a day-to-day basis. Awesome. Thank you.

I appreciate that. On my phone, everybody's name has an emoji. And yours is a piece of bread. It's a toast episode of Going Deep with my person. All right. Yeah, yeah. I like that. It's a phenomenal show that people should watch.

Can it be checked out? Is it hard to check it out right now? I think it's kind of hard to find. You need to download it illegally, maybe? I think you can buy it on Amazon Prime. There's two seasons, and the seasons were on two different networks. And it's kind of, I think, start with Amazon Prime. And if that doesn't work, just send me an email.

Well, let's say this. Worth the hunt. Much like our young hero searching for the Blue Fairy, you should not give up. It is the Blue Fairy of instructional television programming. Six of the ten episodes in your first season are available on Amazon Prime, and four are not. Really? And it's totally arbitrary. The second, third, fifth, and ninth episodes are not available.

Our guest is David Reese, by the way. Yeah. Hey, David. Election profit makers. What else? Get your war on. I don't know. A lot of just random stuff. An amazing career.

A storied career. But now caps off with the highlight of it all. The final chapter. AI Artificial Intelligence. Yep. AI Artificial Intelligence. So, this is Spielberg's first film in three years, after Saving Peregrine.

Oh, really? Yeah, he's working in in three years after Saving Private Ryan. Yeah, so he's working. Oh, really? Yeah, he's working in his three bursts. That's insane. Three movie breaks. This is the first movie he made after Saving Private Ryan? Yep. Because it goes in like 97, 98, he does Lost World, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan.

And then in the upcoming, from 01 to 02, he does AI, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can. He does these three movie bursts. Yeah. And then in 05, 06, he does War of the Worlds Munich. Oh no, sorry, 04, 05, he does Terminal War of the Worlds in Munich. And then he disappears until Crystal Skull in 08? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, he's in this weird, like,

he has these flurries of creative activity. But it's like Lost World, or rather Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, drop the mic, walks away for four years, comes back, delivers two flops, Amistad and Lost World. Lost World does well, but sucks. Amistad doesn't work. And then he disappears. Or no, then he does Same Prime Ryan.

He wins another Oscar. Highest grossing film of the year, drops the mic again for three years, comes back with AI. Now, the big thing that happens in between 1998 and 2001 is Stanley Kubrick dies. Yeah. And I think he we can talk about it but that was what spurred him to make the movie right? He was like okay we gotta honor Stanley I guess.

Stanley's memory. And differing stories, different accounts. He did the kind of like this will be the movie I make right? Like he sort of did the put off everything else. Yeah I need to make this now. We have to get this done or whatever. Kubrick had been developing this movie for ages but in a sort of very vague kind of way.

I know the whole thing was that he knew he wanted to make a movie about a robot child but the technology was never totally there. Do you know this stuff David? No. Stanley Kubrick was obsessed with this story Super Toys Last All Summer Long. Just from the 60s. From the 70s, Brian Alda's story and it's just the first third of this movie.

It is what the story is. It's just the first third of this movie, you know, is what the story is. It's just the robot boy comes to his end. And there's the teddy as a character. You know, it was just that. Because Stanley Kubrick is crazy. He wanted to build a robot child. Right. He wanted to wait until they could build a real robot for the movie.

He was like, we'll wait for the tech to catch up so that we can have like an artificial child, right? I know. Are you serious? 100%. So I don't think the movie was ever that actively developed because he was like, well, I'll just kick it around in my brain a little. But we can't really start scripting until the robot exists. Right, right. And apparently-

Got to write for the robot. Got to write for the robot. And then Kubrick decided that this was a, quote, picker-esque version of The Adventures of Pinocchio. And so he handed Ian Watson or whoever wrote the first sort of screenplay Pinocchio who gets screen story

credit on this yeah and he said like you have to get Pinocchio into this like this is a Pinocchio story like this is what it's gonna be

and then at some point they made a robot child and they did like a screen test and apparently it was so horrifying that like Kubrick

was like forget it like and I would love to see what this nightmarish realistic robot child looked like. Crummy robot clanking around reading lines.

In the early 90s. Oh my gosh. Can I tell a crazy side story? Chris Cunningham, you know the music video director who did the Bjork video with the robots. He was part of this process. He was brought on to try and, yeah.

Can I tell a crazy side story? Tell me your crazy side story. Early 80s when my dad was sort of kicking around, didn't know what he was doing in his career, he worked for this guy named Lewis Allen, who was, like, a big Broadway producer who did Annie and a lot of stuff. Okay. And Lewis Allen was, like, an old establishment guy, but he was really into, like, youth counter of stuff. Okay. And Lewis Allen was like an old like establishment guy but he was

really into like youth counterculture. Okay. And he became very close with Andy Warhol and he thought Andy Warhol was fascinating and he was like you should do a one-man show on Broadway where you tell stories as Andy Warhol and Andy Warhol was like I'll only do it if it's a robot and so they for like a year or two developed an Andy Warhol robot that was going to do a Broadway one-man show where the robot told Andy Warhol stories and it going to do a Broadway one-man show where the robot told Andy Warhol stories. And it was apparently a similar thing. My dad's talked about it in passing, but as this very traumatizing thing

when they were like, okay, the robot's ready, and they all just were freaked out by it. The robot came out and... It must have been one of those Disney Hall of Presidents automaton. Yes, that's exactly what it was. I think they were talking to the Imagineers

to try to make this Andy Warhol robot. I know in the early 90s, Kubrick started talking more seriously about doing it with Joseph Mazzello. Yes, they screen tested Joseph Mazzello, who's the boy in Jurassic Park. But they also built little, quote, little robot type humans,

that's Chris Cunningham saying. But it was a total failure. It looked awful. I mean, yeah. But this is sort of failure. It looked awful. I mean, yeah. But this is sort of when he and Spielberg start touching. Right. He goes, I think this might be more of a Spiel-y movie than a Kubi movie. And apparently, I know a lot about this movie because I was obsessed with it when I was

a teenager. They would fax each other all the time. Because, you know, Kubrick lived in his big mansion in England and he's making Eyes Wide Shut and God knows what else he's doing, but he would fax all these ideas to Steven Spielberg and Spielberg fax them back and they... I just like the idea of them faxing each other. And then Spielberg,

yeah, you know, Kubrick dies, Eyes Wide Shut comes out and Spielberg decides to roll up his sleeves and write his first screenplay since Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Which is the thing I find most fascinating about this movie is that he wrote it and he has sole screenwriting credit. That's such a power. That makes me love this movie more.

It kind of makes me love Steven Spielberg more. Yeah. I love Steven Spielberg, but I would love to ask him, why did you feel like you had... He doesn't... No, he doesn't do that. He likes to work with your Tony Kushners, right? You know, your big Hollywood, you know. Your Jeff Nathanson's.

Yeah, your Eric Roth's. Yeah, David Koepp's. But it's very fascinating to me because the hype for this movie was so huge. A, because we were at this sort of threshold in effects, I think, where everyone was like, oh shit, Spielberg making a serious robot movie. Who knows what this is even going to fucking look like. He's making his first sci-fi movie since Close Encounters? I mean, since E.T.

But even that, E.T. is one sci-fi element in suburbia. He hasn't done a whole cloth world building thing since Hook, which was a fucking disaster, and that's not, like, the right milieu for him. Like, this was an exciting thing. You know, he had never gone this deep into a sci-fi world. Yeah, he'd never done a future movie. Right. Right?

And then the Kubrick-Spielberg thing was just like, both of them together? What's this fucking going to look like? Yeah. Dream team. Right, and it was like, oh. Dead Kubrick and living Spielberg. Dream team. Well, I think it was always. A little robot boy to bring them together, what's this fucking gonna look like? Yeah. Dream team. Right, and it was like, oh. Dead Kubrick and living Spielberg, dream team. Well, I think it was always.

A little robot boy to bring them together. The most idealized version of it was like, oh, if you have Kubrick's precision and intelligence with Spielberg's emotions, and maybe the two of them can like make something, we don't even know what this movie would function like. You know, because the complaint against Kubrick is that he's a little cold and distant.

Even the people who love him go, like, that's his thing. And Spielberg, the complaint is, like, he's a master manipulator, but sometimes he manipulates too much. What if they could? Oil and water, right? What if they meet in the middle? I feel like that kind of doomed the movie. Like, I think the movie's reputation is better now that it's viewed as a Spielberg movie, wholly. Yeah, people were like, oh, well, I like the Kubrick stuff.

You know, you would hear that a lot. I don't know if you heard this, David, when you saw it. But, like, people would sort of say, like, well, there was this cool dark stuff. I assume that's Kubrick's influence. What is the Kubrick stuff, then? Well, I mean. That's the thing is I don't think, I think it's all Spielberg. Well, it's all Spielberg and Kubrick.

Like, Kubrick's laid out this story and Spielberg wrote it. You know, but,, but nothing was changed. I think Kubrick added a lot of the Rouge City stuff, the middle stuff. That was all his idea. But then the end is his idea, too. The whole Pinocchio thing's his idea. That was the story

that he handed Spielberg, and Spielberg wrote it. It was a movie they developed together. You can't separate the two things. It wasn't like they were like the postal service and they were sending like parts of it. It was an exquisite corpse, you know? Okay. So when did you see this movie, David?

I saw it in the theater in... It came out June 2001, right at the end of June. So I probably saw it in July 2001 at BAM of Brooklyn Art Cinema. Is it in... Whatever, you know what a Brooklyn art cinema. Is it an art? Whatever. You know what I mean.

Yeah, Brooklyn. Fancy movie theater. Yeah. And I actually had dinner with a friend of mine last night, and I told him I was coming on this podcast. I guess you could say I was bragging a little. It's a big brag. And I said, do you remember when we saw AI together?

And he said, I never saw AI with you. And I was like, really? I was sure we saw it together. And he was like, no, no, I don't think I've ever seen it. But I do remember I had what I think was the, I saw it in the theater. I really don't remember what I thought about most of the movie. But I do remember towards that final act, the bonus act. Sure.

After 2,000 years underwater. Mm-hmm. Feeling like this movie is crazy and people in the audience snickering and being vocal in their disdain for what they thought was this incredibly treacly

feel-good ending. It is a fairly creepy ending. Although it's also fast-paced. Can we say for the record, I consider this one of the most disturbing movies I've, like, I find this movie, I've watched, I associate this movie with a pervasive sense of dread. Yeah, it's one of the most fatalistic movies I've ever seen. And I think it is, I think once you realize it is a horror movie about the human condition, you realize this movie is incredible and I think the disdain that a lot of people have for it is they cannot handle the intensely

bleak worldview that Steven Spielberg is dropping on everybody. I think that's pretty fair. Especially since it's the opposite of what his movies usually kind of give you. Right. So you assume well, you know Spielberg made it and so you assume that it's going to be a, so you reinterpret everything through this lens of like, well, he's sleeping with his mommy.

That's such a Spielberg ending. The kid gets what he wants. It's like, oh, this is really crazy and fucked up and dark. He essentially kills her at the end of the movie. If I bring her back to life, he's removing her from the space-time continuum so she can never exist again. No, and all – yeah, I think this movie is incredibly dark and bleak and disturbing.

I feel like it's a horror, you know, you've ever seen Synecdoche, New York, the Charlie Kaufman movie? Yes, I think we're both fans. One of my all-time favorite movies. Well, and you know, the story of that movie is that they asked him to make a horror movie and he was like, well, what's the scariest thing in the world? Growing old and dying. So I'll make a horror movie about that. And this kind of, and that movie to I'll make a horror movie about that. And that movie

to me also has a sense of real dread. Creeping menace. And that's the same. And that's how I feel about AI, artificial intelligence. It's so weird. I thought this was such a feel-good movie. No, dude. No. Just really cheered me up.

Made me feel good. David, you asked who this is. This is Ben. Hi. Alright, do asked who this is. This is Ben. Hi. All right, do your thing. What thing? You know, all the names for Ben. Oh, no, I'm sorry. This isn't that Ben.

Oh, this is a different Ben? Well, that's producer Ben has all the nicknames. Right, right, right. I brought my own producer, Ben. So our Ben was not available today. He had booked a prior engagement, so David brought his own Ben bot. Oh, this is a Ben bot.

This is a Ben bot. Well, that's probably why he thought it was a feel-good movie. I am so excited to talk about this movie because it makes me feel like a boy. Is it a game? I'd like to play. Say his best line, his first line in the movie. I like your floor. It's a good, and his weird little ballet shoes that he's wearing. I in the movie. I like your floor. He's wearing little ballet shoes.

I like your floor. I like your floor. When did you see this movie, Griffin? Okay, so I got a little bit of a crazy story. It's like you never just sit down and see a movie. Every time it's some goddamn convoluted story. Are you ready for this one? Sure, go ahead.

I went to the world premiere of AI. Oh, wow. Really? David Rees spits his coffee out. He's had a spit day. In shock. Where to the world premiere of AI oh wow really David Reese spits his coffee out in shock where was the world premiere must have been in Los Angeles oh it was in New York City okay yeah with like everyone

fucking there my grandmother is like essentially like a professional cocktail party attendee it's a fun job yeah she's like an actual like a socialite in the traditional use of the term rather than what it's become today. Right. And she's someone who's like twice gone to the Academy Awards without a ticket.

That's great. She just like walked in. Are you from a showbiz family? Yeah, kind of. Yeah. I mean, I'm from a family that exists in a weird sphere around show business. Okay. But I'm not like Randy Newman's son.

Okay. Despite trying to tell myself my entire childhood that i was it would have been great it would have been great i would have been so good as randy newman son um but yeah my grandmother like worked as a liaison for a tertiary film festival in the north of france sure getting actors to come so her entire life is just that she has like connections, connections and communications with people. And so she hasn't paid for a movie in, like, 35 years because she just goes to screenings of everything. And she doesn't usually go to premieres,

but somehow she got tickets to this and brought me in. I was, like, a ride-or-die HJO fan at this point. That was my big appeal. Because I was, like, 12, and I was starting to get, like, angsty, and I thought Spielberg was a fucking hack, you know? I was like, this master manipulator, he's a fucking hack. You know? It's like this master manipulator he's a fucking hack. I don't want to be manipulated. Give me the truth.

Like the live action Scooby Doo movie. Give me the straight shit. Had Haley Joel been in anything but The Sixth Sense? This is his second movie, wasn't it? Pay It Forward comes out later this year, right? This was his second movie, I think. No, Pay It Forward had already come out.

So Pay It Forward I was come out. It had? Okay. So Pay It Forward, I was really into. My dad always mocks me. My dad always mocks me because the lights came up and I turned to him and I went best picture, best director. I predicted it was going to win the top five categories. Such an idiot. Yeah, I was a fucking dummy. You're a dumb idiot.

I was a fucking dummy. Okay, so you liked Haley Joel, you went to the premiere. But I was like, ah, this Spielberg bullshit. Everyone else was like, excited for this, excited for this. I was like, it looks dumb. so you went to the you liked hayley joel you went to the but i was like ah the spielberg bullshit everyone else was like excited for this excited for this i was like it looks dumb and i went to the premiere and it was a star-studded event mike myers was two rows behind us i was flipping out right and then the movie starts and i'm i just i'm from frame one digging it so hard there is such a palpable sense of dread like i was like oh this movie actually reflects my worldview now as a 12 year old who's starting to become aware of the world around him and is terrified by all of humanity and sees how pointless all of it is, you know? Wait, so you picked up on that even when you were a kid, the dark part of the movie?

Because I was a really dark kid. Oh. I was a very dark, creepy little kid. In addition to being the exact same size as David the Robot. Right. I was kind of like him in this movie. Like, I just, like, the constant fear of not being loved. Right.

In just a, like, sit in a corner and, like, shudder kind of way. Keep me safe. Keep me safe. Right. That kind of thing. The keep me safe thing. That was, like, me. So I saw it and I was like, this feels like an autobiography.

Uh-huh. Great. And I also just, I love robotics. I love robotics as, like, a theme. I love the visual sort of patina robotics. And I just felt like all of that is so well realized in this movie. Loved it. It was the premiere audience, so everyone, like, flipped for it.

They got a fucking standing ovation. Really? Yeah. And I remember, like... The premiere, they all... Is that usually a safe bet? Really? But, like, when Jude Law's name came up in the end credits, people went like ballistic and it was like, he's going to win best supporting actor this year.

Like everyone was like drinking the Kool-Aid, right? Right. And I went home to my parents and I was like, it's amazing. And they're like, but I thought you hate Spielberg. And I was like, that's old Griff. He's a fucking dummy. AI is the truth. And I like hyped up to all my friends at school and I told my parents.

And then like three weeks later it comes out and everyone calls me and they're like what's this fucking bullshit? My parents called me I was at summer camp and I called them on the pay phone and they were like we were like like snickering

at the end of it when the teddy bear comes up with the hair it's goofy. It's like a dumb kids movie what the fuck are you talking about? No.

Think about how terrifying his line read when he hands the hair to them and he's like and now you can bring her back can't you or something it's like this Ray

oh yeah I agree with you he has enough purpose to understand when they're like we want you to be happy and he's like then you know what you have to do you have to let me go to bed with my mommy but there was a period of time I'm gonna make her a cup of coffee god. But there was a period of time. I'm going to make her a cup of coffee, goddammit.

There was a period of time where I wondered, did I only like it because I saw it on the premiere and that's such a good environment. And then there was also a time where I was like, years passed and I was like, well, I was like 12. I haven't rewatched it. I had a lot of dumb opinions at that time. Like, I don't know.

You pay it forward. Right, exactly. So I was like, was I just so on the HJO train that I like couldn't see objectively and then I maybe watched it again like when I was 18

I didn't see it between 12 and 18 and was just like nope this fucking rules and I've seen it like four or five times since then I love it

I think it's a great movie uh yeah I don't think go ahead David it's not a movie I would weirdly I rewatched this movie a lot

really? like once feels too bludgeoning it is but I I've seen it a lot once a year I think there's one reason I can handle it too I get that itch and it's the same thing with Synecdoche

which is one of my favorite movies sometimes I'm just like that's a movie I cannot rewatch sometimes I need to watch because nothing else is gonna be like you know it's like a bloodletting or something you know

I'm never there I'm never there where I'm like Synecdoche, New York I need to I get the idea that you you know watching a sad movie helps you, you know, expel certain sort of emotions or whatever. You find Synecdoche, New York darker than AI artificial intelligence? Synecdoche, New York is about death. Like, that freaks me out much more.

Mortality, right? AI, obviously, it's about that as well. But it's also, to me, it's about religion, which I love. Like, it's about, like, man's relationship to God, right? Or his creator and, like, the weird purpos religion, which I love. It's about man's relationship to God or his creator and the weird purposelessness of their existence. It's blown out enough. And, of course, it has the sci-fi look. It has the genre feel that's a nice little gauzy layer.

I mean, Synecdoche kind of does, too, to be fair. But Synecdoche is about being ill and it's so gray. I love the movie. I love it. When you rewatch this movie, do you watch it with pleasure? That's a good question. I know it doesn't make you happy. It doesn't make me happy.

No, no, no. But you know what? Why do people watch horror movies? Why do they watch sad movies? Isn't it more just sort of like you get some kind of cathartic release out of it? I like processing these thoughts. i saw the movie in theaters it came out in britain uh after september 11th hummelberg right after like to the 24th i double checked it but it's the 21st of september wow and so i remember it was like particularly i saw it

like opening day and the twin towers are in that fucking thing. Right. And everyone in the audience, like, shuddered when that happened. Like, and it was a British audience. Yeah, right. You know, nonetheless. And, yeah, I was talking to David about this before we started recording, but, like, this was the movie where I liked it a lot when I saw it. I loved it. I saw it with all my friends.

They all hated it. We, like, walked out. They were all mocking it. And I didn't know what to do. It was, like, one of those early, like, I'm like, wait, why am I like so wrong on this? Like, or like, I guess I had that anxiety. Right. And I bought it on DVD and I bought the soundtrack.

I was a little weirdo. That's effed up that you own the soundtrack. It's weird, right? It's like weird. I have it on CD. Are you, are you, are you an only child? You're not, are you? No, my brother.

And I got my brother into this damn movie he and he yesterday was like he's excited for this episode and he was like where's the dvd i need that dvd you know like yeah yeah david's just quietly thinking processing this well i think it's really interesting that for both you both saw it when you were younger than I was when I saw it. And for both of you, it feels like you knew right out of the gate what it was you were watching and how to respond to it. Whereas I was, I think I had to see it again or do some reading about it before I realized. I did too. Oh, the reason everyone's laughing is because they can't handle it. Yeah.

I definitely was baffled by the ending the first time I saw it. I think the tone struck me oddly. They can't handle it. I definitely was baffled by the ending the first time I saw it. I think the tone struck me oddly. I didn't get why it was so heavenly. I didn't get the voiceover. I didn't get why it was being presented to me this way. The ending is so crazy. It's crazy.

It's one of the craziest endings. It doesn't tell you that the things are robots. Right. Which most people misinterpret them as aliens. I always thought they were aliens until I was getting ready for this podcast and I was reading a couple essays and someone said, well, most idiots thought they were aliens. They're actually evolved AI. And I was like, oh, yeah, of course. That's why they're so stoked to find him.

Right. Because it's like literally they found a Rosetta Stone. Yeah, they found the missing link. Yeah. Yeah. And they look, they think, people think they are aliens because they look like aliens.

Because they're all skinny things. Right, exactly. And like that's what aliens look like. Right. Yeah, I mean when I. But when you see it and like the way they share

the info when they sort of touch each other. Right, yeah, they make their network, their neural network. That to me is the best, but it is interesting that they don't like put a point on it,

you know, because I do think that baffled a lot of people and they well and there's just the off hand reference I mean it'd be weird if they were like we are right there's the off hand reference to like the originals like they were man-made right right yeah yeah you know as

opposed to see when I saw the first time when I was when I was 12 I don't think I could intellectualize it at all I just knew and it was sort of the same thing when I saw Synecdoche where I was like this is funneling into that fear that I've never been able to verbalize before right yeah yeah like it just kind of hit so specifically with like as a kid who was like alternatingly obsessed and terrified by love and death as like abstract concepts and could never fucking put it into words but would just stay awake at night with like this dread this movie tapped into that and it

made it so frustrating when i was like a kid and everyone else was like this movie's dumb i laugh at it and i couldn't explain why it was good other than just like no but it's good you couldn't make the intellectual argument i think one one thing that's interesting about this movie to me is that it's scary. To me, it's like that feeling of dread that I had even before I really understood what was so dreadful about it, which is not the intellectual. I mean, it's just deep. Like, it goes so deep into, you know, the fathomless emptiness that defines the human condition and love. The purposelessness of our emotions. And how love is like an illness.

Love is like a curse. Which is like below the level of an intellectual argument. But then you can also be scared of it when you try to make an intellectual. Well, this is a movie about how all religion is a huge mommy substitute. It's not going to work. And people are so selfish. They just want their mommy to love them even at the cost of all of humanity being destroyed. That doesn't even register for them as long as they can make a cup of coffee for their mom who will be dead in the morning sure it is essentially structurally a one-night stand with

your own mother right this is the next morning the relationship is gone and he just stumbles home or whatever's gonna happen and he can only have her by killing her that's the other thing that's the craziest thing about the fucking ending which no one talks about. Is they explain to him. They're like we figured out we know to bring someone back but we remove them from the space time continuum. Like DNA is part of the fabric of time. She'll have never existed if you get to

spend 24 hours with her and he's like yeah I'll take the 24 hours. I don't know if she'll have never existed. I don't think that's how I can answer the specificity of, well, we can bring her back, but it can only last for 24 hours. I mean... Yeah, I know.

Again, that's what... It's a little bit of a ancient riddle or something. Yeah, it's just so bonk. It's like when you hear about a myth from olden times, and it's like, well, and then he turned into a constellation, and he could come out in the spring and the summer because his dog was lost. It's like, why has this this gotta be so fucking specific that's what i love it right about like greek myths about like we have why freaking persephone is stuck in hell

for six months out of the year yeah right yeah it has that she ate those six pomegranates like what if she anyway go on that's just the that the 24 hour thing again it's you get the sense that spielberg's like fuck it i'm just gonna go for broke yeah right he can have thing again, it's you get the sense that Spielberg's like, fuck it. I'm just going to go for broke. Yeah, right. He can have her again, but it's only good. It can't like he could have easily made a movie. It's like, well, we're first of all, we're not aliens. We're robots.

Right. And you're the you're our favorite robot. We've been looking for you, whatever you want. I want mommy. I want mommy. All right. Well, this is 2000 years in the future. Here's a new mom. Same DNA.

It's essentially your mom. Go live in this house forever. Sure. Right. You can have that. There could be that. Spielberg's likeberg's like no I gotta twist a few more screws here so you can only have her for 24 I mean it's like he's going crazy I think this movie makes me think Steven Spielberg is a really interesting person me too because this is the script right that he he created without the one would imagine it's like the many many layers of

hollywood filters that his scripts and lots of scripts right and even though i don't think i liked the movie as much as i do now even when i saw it i did come away being like well this is a dude who can do whatever he wants yeah sure because there's no fucking way this movie was made by committee with a bunch of studio executives being like it it's true. And that's a crazy thing that jumped out to me watching it this time is, think of, I was struggling to come up with examples, okay? Think of other movies in the last, let's say five or six years

that have this level of world building and production design and intricacy, right? Into the technology, the design of all the characters, the environments and all of that, that is not in service of set pieces, because there are no set pieces in this movie. Not really.

Right? Well, there's one really lackadaisical chase sequence. Yeah, one. It feels really kind of listless. Half-hearted, where they get in the damn helicopter. My notes here say listless chase sequence. For like 90 seconds. No one, like, this is the thing, like, in Minority Report, which is his next movie,

which is very, very devoted to, like, having its tech having its tech feel organic and everything makes a certain sort of sense. They get in a damn helicopter thingy that's a cop copter. They drive away. No one's going to just flick some switch that's like, turn off the helicopter. Is there no fail safe here? And so they just drive. Who cares? He doesn't care.

It's an aquacopter, right? What's he call it? It's an amphibicopter. Amphibicopter. Amphibicopter, right. And it's, you know, like, he doesn doesn't care. It's an aquacopter, right? What's he call it? It's an amphibicopter. Amphibocopter, yeah. And it's, you know, like, he doesn't want you to think about it. When the narrator says amphibocopter, it's so awkward and clunky. Ben Kingsley. Sir Ben Kingsley.

That's Ben Kingsley? Yeah, and can you imagine him being handed the script and he's like, what's this word? Amphibocopter. Right. I highlighted the word I don't understand. You sure you don't want me to just say the vehicle? He's like, no, I'm saying a fibocopter. It goes underwater and in the sky.

It means something. Say it. Also, I mean, we should know, like the cars in this movie are the dumbest design. I love them. They would flip if you did a gentle curve, right? Oh, yeah. I would say the production design has not aged well. And I wonder if that's...

I would agree, but it's fascinating. I wonder if that's deliberate because the world... First of all, the typeface that they use for the instruction sheet and the packaging is not looking good. No, it's really bad packaging. Oh, you mean her weird overhead projector

slide? Yeah, the transparency sheet, that typography, and then the packaging of the David robots at the end. It's a bad box. Right, it's a horrible box. Who wants a box that just shows you a silhouette of the house? It looks like a naked child is in there. And then their house is very non-

Their house is odd. Yeah, it looks very chintzy. I like the input. Well, we should try to approach it. But like, well, we should start with the freaking house anyway. But I like the idea, or at least that there's some like there's only a little of this going on at this point. Right. Of this luxury living.

That there's some like very, very narrow, almost like fake bubble of. Right. We still live in the suburbs and it's fine. Right, right, right. Because the implication is like, America's shrinking, like the world is- Yeah, but on the other hand, the Rouge City is pretty fancy.

I mean, you know. You sunk some money into that, but it's sex city, right? Maybe it's just- That's where the money's gone. Excuse me, blank check and guest. Could I give you my thoughts? Because I just saw this movie for the first time.

Sure. Ben Bot, please relay thoughts. So having been exposed to this cinema for the first time in a post-Trump world, I derived enjoyment from seeing all the future violence and pain. Also, the end of human civilization. Okay, Ben Bot? Yes. You connected because it was like a flight of fancy.

It was like a thing that could never happen, right? Oh, no. It's going to happen. Okay, Ben Bot. Don't explain the bit to him. Come on. Ben Bot knows. Ben Bot, don't kill us, please.

Ben Bot. I won't. No, the robots aren't going to kill us. We're going to kill ourselves, right? Isn't that the... And then all that's going to be left is us. That's what Jude Law says. Oh, my God.

Is this... Could you have a reading of this movie where the final AI killed all humans, or does it have to be global warming and catastrophic climate change? I think it's catastrophic. I don't know. I think you could have that reading.

Wouldn't that be amazing? That would take it to the next level of darkness. Yeah, that they're the further descendants of whatever generation of AI. Also, I love my mommy. Thank you, Ben Bot. All right. So the movie. Please commence producing.

The movie starts. We should. The movie starts with this weird little prologue. It opens with the sound of waves over darkness. True. Orga waves. And you see the artificial intelligence crashes into it

and it says AI, right? It's actually a funny title. But yeah, it's William Hurt. Well, no, I guess there's some explanation. Isn't there a little Ben Kingsley narration over the waves? Yeah, Ben Kingsley, like the world has ended.

Right, yeah. Whatever. Amsterdam, Venice, and New York City. Those are the three cities we know we've lost. There's probably a couple more. And then we get the Big Hurt. Yeah, the Big Hurt's in this one. Hobby.

Professor Hobby. I love him so much. I think he's such a good actor. I know we've talked about him a couple times on this podcast. This was in his real dark career phase, William Hurt. He was, I mean, I guess Lost in Space was his last box office player. But, I mean, he really, he hasn't, you know, whatever. It's like 10 plus years since broadcast news, like, you know, since, like, he was a thing.

This probably seemed like, oh, man, he's got, like, a choice supporting part in that Spielberg-Kubrick movie. And then it didn't really, you know, I think he he's very good in it but it certainly didn't boost his signal at all. But yeah it starts out with a monologue which I always I kind of like when movies start like this like I like when movies but they have like a thesis statement at the beginning

I like that but also I like when movies submerge you with a character you know is peripheral you know what I'm saying? Like we're going gonna open with what is not the main character and fully like force you into this environment where it's like here's like seven minutes of a guy who's got the

and billing and a bunch of like executives who don't have character names. Ken Leung. Yes. He's in there. Matt Winston. Matt Winston's in there. But it's just like you've seen the trailers, you know it's about Hilly Joel Osment

as like a little boy. Right. And you know they're sort of talking about him, but it's just like, this isn't where this movie's going to live. We're going to put you

in this place, this is like sort of a table setting, and then your story is going to start. It kind of feels to me, I mean this movie is like a fairy tale.

It's like an adult fairy tale. Sure. That's certainly part of its conception, or at least that's built into the theme of the movie. Yeah, it is a bit of a, it's a picaresque journey. It is, it's an episodic, he has little adventures. Right. That are all moral tales, except they're all sort of warped, I guess.

Right. But like, it's much, I mean, have you guys read Pinocchio, the book Pinocchio? Never read it, the original. Okay, it's very, very, very, very, very upsetting and dark. It's a nasty book. I read it. I was obsessed with it as a child because it was so creepy. And it's very heavy on the morality.

It's like trying to imprint on you. You have to be a good little boy who listens to his parents. But it's the same thing. He goes on these little adventures and something horrible happens to him each time and he can't die because he's a puppet. So they like hang him from a tree. You know, the thieves,

the little animals. And then he just hangs from the tree forever until someone finds him because he can't die. That's how that book ends? No, that's like in the middle of the damn book. It's a really, no, at the end of the book the blue fairy turns into a tree. Right, right, right. Well, yeah, of the damn book. It's a really, no, at the end of the book, the Blue Fairy turns into a red boy. Yeah, of course, right, spoilers. And then Pinocchio has the whole Pleasure Island thing, which is very similar to Rue City.

Right, which is why I think Kubrick was obsessed with that idea. What do you make of the beginning, David? It's hurt laying out this concept of like what, you know, well, imbuing emotion into artificial intelligence. I've always been really interested in artificial intelligence. And are robots ever going to be people? And like, do robots deserve rights once they reach a certain level of intellectual or cognitive or emotional sophistication? And I think what watching the movie, I think I wanted to see it because it's called AI, Artificial Intelligence. So I was like, oh, it's going to be an action movie about basically philosophy of mind.

And the hurt scene makes you feel like they're going to double down on that. But I don't think there's much in this movie about artificial intelligence, really. It's not really a philosophical movie about artificial intelligence. I feel like that's just the conceit we're talking about. It is not a complicated look at the sort of moral implications. And it is more of a fantasy movie with sci-fi trappings

than it is a science fiction movie. Like once you get past the initial table setting, it becomes a lot more philosophical. And like I said before, there's not much attention paid to making everything makes, the tech makes sense.

No, they're right. Because Jude Law. Yeah. I mean, I guess it gets into stuff about like Jude Law's character has a personality, feelings and emotions and drive. Right. Yeah. He does have a lot of this feels like. Yeah.

I mean, that's I mean, and that's one of the fundamental weird. One of the things that's so weird about this movie is. I could see people falling in love with Jude Law's robot. I could see people falling in love with Teddy. Yeah, Teddy's a good-looking guy. I mean, yeah, you know, like, he seems at, you know. He's got a lot of character in that furry face. It's not an original point, but, like, relative to the humans in this movie, like, I would much rather spend the rest of my life with Jude Law and and teddy than with monica and professor hobby yeah and monica's jerk husband yeah right fuck that guy but david is so weak like the uncanny valley stuff is so bad with him yeah it's like

no one's ever gonna fall like no one's ever gonna fall in love with you, dude. Like, you're so weird. You want to take him aside. Come on, man. Back off. Take it easy. Right. But I feel like that's what, I mean, when you get into like the real deep stuff in the movie,

it's like, well, every child is awkward. Every human is awkward. And we're probably all unlovable, like relative to a teddy bear with a heart of gold who's like a newfangled jiminy cricket but there's just something about when you think about it on the level of like really just take it on the surface level okay this guy's professor hobby's son died so he does what any scientist would do he builds an army of robots that are exactly like his son for other people to fall in love with yeah

he's like spreading his son out into the world for everyone to love. He had the best son. There's got to be a parallel somewhere in Western religious tradition. I can't think of it right now about a father figure sending his son out for all of humanity to fall in love with. A sacrifice, but I know it's there. Like a dandelion and he sort of waves it in the wind. I just don't have time to think of it right now. I can't quite put my finger on it.

I think Scientology deals with that a little bit, right? Yeah, totally. Well, Scientology has all the airplanes thatology deals with that a little bit, right? Yeah, totally. Well, Scientology has all the airplanes that were in the volcanoes that blew up, right? And it's like all the bits came out of it.

Exactly. It's kind of like that, too. So, Hobby's son, Hobby had a son. His son's name was David. David dies. Hobby's like,

well, I do want to, right, I want to make a robot that people can fall in love with and then, because there's not a lot of babies around. We've been told you can only have one child or something. He sympathizes, one imagines, with the childless parent.

So he wants to provide something that would maybe replace it, I guess. And this is where the stage setting gets so specific, and you think that the movie's going to be making an intellectual argument, which is he says, I want to. What does he say? He says, I want to make a robot that can love. Right. There's no reason.

I'm just thinking as a business, as a business. There is no reason for the customer. There's a reason to tell the customer, yes, this robot son actually loves you. But there's no reason to build that into the robot. First of all, it doesn't really make sense to me that a robot could love, but putting that aside... It's a burden. There's no reason for the robot, in terms of user experience,

as the parent who needs a kid, there's no reason for that robot to actually love as long as it passes this weird emotional Turing test of this child is acting as if it loves me. I'm feeling the love. The marketing, yeah, of course we're going to say a robot that can love. But when I'm in the back, when I'm Professor Hobby hanging out with my scientists, goofing off, sticking pins in robots and telling them to take off their clothes, it's like, listen,

we're going to tell them this robot can love. I don't fucking know if this thing can love. It's a robot. But the point is, like, you set up this. That's what Jingle Joe is supposed to exude, right? Right, exactly. Like, there's the imitator, the guy who sort of reflects you back at yourself. And the scene with

his first client is so emotionally intimate. Yes. And mirrors. He listens. And he mirrors the imprinting thing, because you notice when he places her on the bed, he has his fingers on the back of her neck, which is where Monica has put her fingers on the back of... So it's all this... Turn on the love button. Yeah, right. So

it's kind of like the Jude Law character is kind of... kind of undermines the Professor Hobby's obsession with making a robot that can love. And with David, this robot, who... I feel like in the end, I can only take this movie as an emotional movie because intellectually, it just starts collapsing in on it. It's just so... There's so much going on and you can't, I don't think you can have a single intellectual

response to the arguments or the logic of this movie because it is really just churning up the deepest, darkest Freudian stuff. It's not going to make sense. Do you know what I mean? It's like fairy tales where it's like we need to find a way to communicate to children these things that scare them. So let's use fantastical elements.

Right. And like wackadoo storytelling. Right, right. To get at some deeper truth that will not be understandable in didactic terms. Yeah, yeah. And the movie operates in that kind of logic. But like, so I have my own read on this movie. But it's a fairy tale for adults.

Right, yeah. Well, yeah, is it a fairy tale for adults? Like is it trying to help you understand, like what's it trying to help an adult understand adult understand well that's that's i think where this movie failed at the time of its release to me it doesn't fail at all no at the time of its release i'm saying the reason why people didn't respond to it well at the time is because i think they went oh it's spielberg doing sci-fi and the leads a child he's better at childlike wonder than anyone else right he does these movies where kids and adults alike the kids see it the adults are brought back to their childhood it's unifying right and then he made this movie that's like not for anyone and he's not trying to help anyone he's exploring his own sense of mortality right and what's so awesome

about it in terms of spielberg is like with elliot and et like those kids are constantly having their mind blown and their eyes are opening up and and in this movie david is so obsessed with getting his mother's love he doesn't give a flying fuck if he's at a flesh fair murder circus. He's not really taking it in. If he's in Rouge City surrounded by all this decadence. He's so monomaniacal when it comes to his mother's love that all he has no wonder. He's a completely boring. Right.

He just wants to be home in this boring apartment making coffee for mommy. Right. And what's so sad is like, no mom is going to love such a boring ass kid. She doesn't care. I mean, like, you know what I mean? Like go out in the world, learn some stuff. Yeah, right. Learn how to have a conversation, you know, like so when you're, you know, it's like I had the craziest night last night, mom. I went to the circus and they were tearing up all these robots and I got really scared. They almost poured acid on me.

Yeah, right. Exactly. but it's love without the thing that's so bleak about the movie is or maybe this is the maybe this is the well maybe this is the the moral it's like a love you know it's like love is active love is a verb right it's not just a state of being that once you achieve it then you're in love and then you have fulfillment like this kid's life is so empty he literally doesn't care that all of humanity has been destroyed you know what i mean he doesn't really get it i mean i like the way he says and we're jumping ahead i have a lot of things to say but when later when he's like maybe it'll be like that day in the amphibocop right it'll last right right like that's how he can think about it.

One thing that's interesting about it is there's a lot of tenderness in this movie from other robots, like Gigolo Joe, like Teddy a lot. Because Teddy is David's protector, right? He really goes above and beyond to keep this kid happy. I need to find David. Have you seen David? Where is David? He's taking me to David. I love that he gives Teddy the

least appealing voice in the world. He gives Teddy the voice of like a cigar shop owner from like 1920s. Where's David? I'm looking for David. Jack Angel is the voice actor. He was like a veteran voice actor. Voice of Chunk in Toy Story 3. Oh, okay.

Which one's Chunk? He's like the rock guy who's got the two faces. One's angry and one's happy. Oh, yeah. He's maybe got three lines. I know the entire voice cast of the toy story we know we know you do um so but like so part of to me i i love religious shit and i to me robot stories are always about you know human or often about humanity trying to talk to god right yeah and like the horrifying thing about all religion is is that religion is trying to answer is,

why did you make me, right? Like, why do I exist? And so, like, when she imprints on him, she's making him, right? Yeah. I mean, obviously, hobby has a role in that, too, in his own fucked up role. Well, it's nature versus nurture. Like, they're each one half of that. But she's activating him for this supposedly two-way connection.

She's the idea. That's right. But, of course, like you're saying, how on earth could she, like, she obviously feels like pity for him and she, she's attached to him, but she doesn't love him.

How could she love, he's, he's bizarre. He's like a pet that keeps fucking up, right? He's sort of like a dog, like almost, right?

Like all of their arcs together are just him making a mistake and her being like, I get it. Look, you're a weird robot. Like, you know, I'm not gonna hold you responsible. Well, I think the

bigger thing is that she... Like, does she love him? No, she's in love with being a mother and she misses that sensation. And just being able to go through the motions with him is starting to activate that thing in her. I mean, you see, even right before she activates him, that she's still creeped out by him. Right. But that, she's feeling fulfilled in that way.

Like, that itch is being scratched and she needs that because at the beginning of the movie, she's like a broken person. Like she has no reason anymore, you know? Yeah, something about the imprinting also feels weird to me. I want to find the words. Oh, I have them in my notes.

Are you ready? What note taking? Get Ben Bott ready because I'm going to imprint him on you, Griffin. Are you ready? Okay, Ben Bot, activate. Yes. Okay. Here we go.

Put my finger in the small of his neck. Cirrus, Socrates, particle, decibel, hurricane, dolphin, tulip, Griffin, Ben, Griffin. Now say it. You're my mommy. Say it. You're my mommy. Okay. Boom. There you go. Thank you, Ben, Griffin. Now say it. You're my mommy. Say it. You're my mommy. Okay. Boom.

There you go. Thank you, Ben Butt. Can I come hug you? No, Ben Butt, you have to produce the show. What do those words mean, Mommy? Just keep engineering, Ben Butt. Okay. Okay.

And, you know, I watched this. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I watched this with Joanne, and she asked the question, like, why doesn't the dad imprint? Like, why is this a one-on-one thing, right? Right. Which is, like, it's just sort of inherent to the movie. Well, and what's incredible is as soon as she imprints him, and he hugs her, and then

in the next scene, the dad is so over this kid. He's like, all right. So far out of the house, and she's so into him. Right. You know what I mean? It's a very kind of weirdly reduct- Freudian. Yeah.

I mean, heavily, you know. And- But why? This is what I've done before. a weirdly reduct... Freudian. Yeah. I mean, heavily, you know. And... But why? This is what I've done again. Before, that scene where he's like, change me? And she's like,

ah, no thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that shot of him in the glass door where David, like, turns to look at her and you see his face all... Yeah, it's all fractured.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. But also, it's very Oedipal because it's like, his love is so extreme beyond the average love that a mother, that a child has for a mother. Right. Because it's like he's designed only to love a mother.

And so that's like, I think, a threat to the father once he's activated, which is just like, this isn't just like a kid who needs his mom. This is a kid whose entire raison d'etre. No, he is obsessed with her. And he'll never grow out of it. Right. That's all he will ever be. Yeah, well, that's the real creepy thing about James.

He can't grow up. Right. That's all he will ever be. Yeah, well, that's the real creepy thing about James. He can't grow up. That's sort of the perversion of childhood. You're stuck forever. It could be a year. It could be 2,000 years. And so I love that man playing God stuff with, you know, fucking Frankenstein on it, right? Like that thing of like, yeah, they did this thing for some purpose they thought they understood

but then they didn't consider the implications of imbuing consciousness on something, right? But also for a filmmaker who's known for being able to create a sense of childlike wonder, and not just in his movies, but the stuff he produced and the fucking cartoons and everything, and was like, people complained it was infantilizing pop culture, to make a movie about how being a child forever is a curse is fascinating. And that the only wonder in the movie is horror wonder. Yeah, well, that's the thing.

You see this Spielberg face that we talk about a lot, the long shot of someone reacting to something before you see it, when they're looking at the moon rising, which is this gorgeous image that's, of course, a nightmarish image, and things like that. Or his, obviously, that freaking blue fairy statue he loves so much. Right, yeah. But Haley Joel freaking Blue Fairy statue he loves so much. Right. Yeah. But Haley Joel is definitely like the most haunted Spielberg kid.

He's great in it. I think it's a really wonderful performance. Yeah, it's amazing. He doesn't blink at any point in the movie. He has to do a lot of underwater shit. Yeah, he has this weird waxy makeup. I would, I would, how, what do you think his experience how do you think spielberg explained to him what the movie was about or do you think he did or didn't or it's just like you just need to

act like a weirdo but that was the thing with him at the time i mean you have to remember like that buzz was like after six cents they were like this seems like the kid gets it like they didn't just trick a good performance out of him it seems like he's getting it and then when he would do interviews and stuff he wasn't like precocious where he felt like a trained monkey. He was just this very intellectual kid. He just seemed like one of those grown-up kids who like wore slacks and New Balance and button downs. And seemed like at a party he might be, like at a dinner party, he might still be there. And like he'd be able to like make conversation with the grown-up.

And then I think he hit teenagehood and it was like, it was a disaster. Right, and he's like never been able to play an adult convincingly, which is so bizarre. But his father, because he always plays like slackers and sort of like. He plays like gross sort of side guys now. Right. Yeah. But he plays very like infantilized kind of men now. His father, I think, was like an acting teacher.

And so it just feels like he had this real sense of like breaking down character psychology. Yeah. But it never felt like he was parroting stuff, like he actually got it. But what's so amazing about- Can I just say something that I just found on his Wikipedia page that is a fascinating nugget? His father said that when Osment was learning to speak, his father deliberately avoided using baby talk when communicating with his son. Yeah, okay, yeah. There you go.

He imprinted him only with real words. Go ahead. What's awesome about his performance is he's a child, he was a child, the actor was a child, playing a fake child

built by adults as an idealized child who the viewer has to come to recognize is a sociopath yeah sure right yeah and subvert every innocent i mean all the famous shots of him like laughing out of the blue and it's like really really horrifying and all that stuff but even the more subtle stuff like the intensity of his desire to be loved yeah right but but that is a synthetic i think it's a synthetic desire well no right i mean because everything's about and like the thing his his um he copes like in a way that's supposed to manipulate you like when you know francis

o'connor uh the mom what's her name monica yeah is gonna leave him in the. The like snap from his normal sort of pliant like, what are we doing, mom? How do we have a blanket for you? Right, right. To like utter devastation. Total panic. Yes. Right. Is so instant.

I mean, and he plays it very, very well. Like he makes it feel like it's a, you know, a switch has been put. And again with the robots at the end with the hair when he gets so indignant. Right. Because it's a survival thing. Right. I mean, that's like his nourishment is he needs love. And if you threaten to take that away from him, he goes into like, you know, like like

warrior mode to get what he needs. Yeah, this I'm starting to think this movie is intellectually incoherent because intellectually incoherent. Yeah. Go on. Well, the only reason he wants to be a real boy is because he has told himself that is the only way Monica will love him. Yeah, that's just a logical thing he thinks. Like a leap of logic he makes.

It's like, well, what if I was a real boy? Because he thinks the problem is that. The tragedy is if he had just acted a little more normally. Right. If he just had a little chill. And I will say this. This was a huge problem in the movie where I was like, come on, guys. If the techs,

after they have the spinach eating contest and his face starts to melt and then they open him up and start sucking the spinach out in front of the family? Yeah. No.

A little weird. Do that off-site. Because how are you ever going to- Don't remind them that he is a robot. Right. And then he's like, don't worry, mommy. It doesn't hurt.

It's like, okay, you just lost her right there. And there's that shot. Because that's really crazy. She's holding his hand and then she lets his hand go. Right, exactly. His hand's just sort of hanging in the air.

So if he had been, she could have, the whole point of the, I think the whole point of Hobby's business was, we're going to program a robot to love a human. Right. What that means, we never really learn. But once that's done, yeah, humans are going to be loving robots all day long. So he doesn't have to be real in order to be loved. He just has to be better at acting like a normal kid. You know what I mean?

Don't give him a good sense of acting. Maybe that's the problem. Right. Gigolo Joe is the opposite side of that. They don't like, right. He has no real love, but he knows exactly how to make people feel like they're loved. Right. And people are falling in love with him.

Right. Because Gigolo Joe is a smooth operator. So that's what I don't understand logically. There's no... I'm really getting down to the level of engineering. Are you just trying to understand the logic of Hobby's decision of his creation? Yeah. Because to me, that's what the movie's about, right?

I was yelling this at someone recently when we were talking about the movie. Why do humans exist? We're stupid. We destroy everything. Right. We act irrationally because we are imbued with all these emotions and selfishly we we act selfishly we act you know what is love except like something that ties you to someone who might hurt you and or die and or you know but also they're a good thing you know but you know what i mean like there's all

this irrationality that's why we get angry at god and say like why did you cast us out of the garden of eden right, isn't that... Well, I also think this is a big Garden of Eden movie because I think the difference between Gigolo Joe and David is that, like, Gigolo Joe hasn't bitten the apple, and David has. Sure, right. Gigolo Joe knows everything and understands it

intellectually, but isn't burdened with having to feel the existential weight of it. He understands it, whereas David has this thing that he cannot reconcile. And that thing is the need to be loved by his mom. Yeah, and just the depth of feeling and loneliness. He has an equation that can't be balanced, right, which is like how you might think about emotion, right?

It's like, I mean, obviously it's extreme, but he can't be fulfilled because he's been imbued with something that you can't easily fulfill. Right? I don't know. And obviously, then there's this idea that he's being seeded with something that grows. And then when we meet this consciousness many thousands of years later, it's evolved into something more recognizable. But they're very analytical when they talk about everything, though.

They are. I mean, they're robots. The future AI, you mean? Yeah. Right. I think they are compassionate towards him. They're deeply compassionate towards him. Yeah, they are.

That's true, actually. Which you don't see. That's interesting because those robots, I mean, if you're just looking at how you would react to all the AI or the robots in this movie, those are the only characters in the movie that feel sensitive, thoughtful, empathetic. Yeah, they're sensitive, and they try to interact with him as the Blue Fairy. They try to meet him on his level. They get it. Whereas the

other robots... I mean, Teddy, like I said, is compassionate in a weird sort of way, but in a more blocky kind of way. It's easier to... That's his algorithm. He has to serve his master. He is nice. Hey, Griffey? Yes, BenBot? I have a question about Teddy. Okay's like, okay, that's his algorithm. He has to serve his master. He is nice. Hey, Griffey. Yes, BenBot?

I have a question about Teddy. Okay, BenBot, commence question. Great. So why doesn't he tell jokes where the setup is, this is a thing that is happening, and that reminds me about this other thing that happened another time? I don't get BenBot's bit. BenBot, do you think that Teddy is the character from Ted 2 and the Ted movie?

Yes. Okay, so Ben Bot, this is a different Teddy. Looks similar. Looks similar. Animation's about at the same level. I would say this Teddy is much more. This is not a Seth MacFarlane Teddy, Ben Bot. Why didn't we see the Teddy fuck a human? Okay, because Ben Bot, that's a different franchise.

Does he use an apparatus in those movies? Yeah, he fucks her with a parsnip. It's the worst joke in the movie. He says out loud, I fucked her with a parsnip. Okay, Ben Bot. That's funny, Bart. Ben Bot, cease laughing. Okay.

Yeah, that movie should go die in a fire. I've never seen it. I saw it was like 20 minutes of Ted 2 on HBO once, and I wasn't fond of it. Yeah. This is my rationalization for all that stuff, this sort of Gordian knot we're trying to untangle here. I think Professor Hobby wanting to imbue a robot with love,

which is an abstract concept, and it's like how do you define this fucking thing, is just like man's folly, right? Right. I agree. It's just that he's accomplished so much and it's like the uncanny valley,

that's the thing he knows they haven't done. What's the gain of that? Will it feel any different from the human side? I don't know, but that's the thing he wants to try to.

Right. Like the fact that when he stabs the woman in the hand, she feels the emotional response he wants and she feels the physical response she wants,

but she knows it's because of that. Right right and he wants it to just be an organic innate process rather than a calculation right so that's why that happens but the thing is david is programmed only to love you know um whereas gigolo joe is like programmed to respond and react to it's the difference between being programmed to love and being programmed to be lovable. Right. David is programmed to have love. Right. And programmed to never have that end. Which is like, you know,

it's the classic thing of like, oh, wow, you know, he's way too into me. I'm freaked out now. Right. You know, like David has no chill. David's a fucking walking 11-year-old, 60-pound thirst trap. Right. And so that love no chill. He's very thirsty. David's a fucking walking 11 year old 60 pound thirst trap. Right. Yeah.

Right. And so that love is terrifying to her, which is why why she's freaked out by him because he's operating only based off of that. Wait, is that what a thirst trap is? A thirst trap. Is she not? I don't know what thirst trap actually means. Thirst trap is when you're like putting out the bait.

You want people to be thirsty. You're making it known, you know? Yeah. I thought that it's like she's kind of the thirst trap, you know? Jude Law is. Jude Law is a real thirst trap. Yeah. With his soft shoe dancing in the puddles.

But I think, yeah, I think the thing is that they program that into him without any sense of how that would actually play out. As often happens with technology. It's like, this should work. Right, right, right. And you make it and you're like, oh, we didn't realize it. If this, then that. I like that when we do meet Professor Hobby again, you

think, like, finally his salvation, right? They can figure this out for him. You know? And he instead is just like, you know, my son was one of a kind. You're really interesting. It's crazy how you're doing all this shit you're doing. We did not see this coming. Anyway, I'm gonna go get everyone. I'll be

gone for 20 to 30 minutes. You wanna go to a boardroom meeting? Why don't they fucking turn him off or something? I mean, I guess going to go get everyone. I'll be gone for 20 to 30 minutes. You want to go to a boardroom meeting? Why don't they fucking turn him off or something? I mean, I guess you can't. But I think it is that, like, you know, there are some, most movies are about love in one way or another, right? And love is, like, the most dominant and sort of powerful and cathartic human emotion. And Spielberg's an emotional filmmaker. And he's making a movie about the curse that is love.

Right, but it's a fragment of love. They haven't fully understood it, I think. It's more of a devotion, right? It's more of a... Well, it's a child's understanding of love where you have these feelings and you don't know how to intellectualize them. And that's the problem is that

he is not able to intellectualize anything. He just needs a place to put this thing that he has his love sort of takes the form of obedience right like like what does he want to do except sort of serve her except he wants to serve her emotionally

but like he can only do it by kind of acting out the motions of being a child like you know there's just so many weird disconnects to what he's giving her and what I think they want him to give her, right? Or what like a substitute child could actually do. Well, he's like this incomplete

line of code. He has a sense of wonder. Like, he wants to hear about Pinocchio. He wants to, right? Like, you know, there are things that he, he likes watching them eat food. He likes, like, he likes it. And food. He likes it. And he says he likes it. And you believe him.

But at the same time, all he can do is mirror and be nice, be helpful. I don't know. He has no initiative or drive. He doesn't do anything a kid does, which is behave really rationally. There's that john mulaney joke that i love about like you know he wished someone had asked him as a kid why he did the things he did where it's like why did you put these this firecracker in this carton of eggs and he would have said like i'm hungry i'm horny and i'm full of rage right i don't know where to

direct that so that's why i did this like. But David essentially has one emotion, right? And everything else stems out of that. Like when he has fear, it's fear of not being loved, right? Or being hurt. Right. That's the only sort of driving force he has. So it's like he's an incomplete equation. Yeah. And he just needs to keep on throwing shit at the wall to try to get back what he wants,

which is he's never getting back what he wants. The only way you could ever complete David's line of code successfully is to make a mommy robot that loved him as unconditionally and they could just infinite food back Luke.

Sure. Which is what, right, which is I guess kind of what they do in the final scene in the movie. It's kind of what they want.

I think it's what they want. They build a simulacrum of, right. Yeah, this movie makes no fucking sense. That is what they give him at the end,

right. They give him a Monica end right they give him um a monica but she's free of all human burden right and she has no memory right or her husband and she loves everything right and so but then the and then that's another thing that's so crushing about the movie is like well you know what kid it's not really monica yeah yeah but you know right because in this monica world like the real monica has a husband and another son and that informs who she is and that's who you originally wanted to love you and now you just have this half roofied zombie you know like i mean and i've always read the

movies he's dying at the end of the movie like that he's his purpose has sort of been achieved so neither of them will wake up no that he it they say, like, for the first time he dreamt. Right, right. You know, like, right, that it's over. Like, the feedback loop has been closed, finally. But, yeah, like, that's why I don't get, although I understand, like, the idea that it's a happy ending. It's not.

It's a sad ending. It's a very sad ending. I don't think it's, I don't even know if it's sad. I just feel like it's, yeah, I guess it's, sad implies, though, some human element to it. And I find this... It's distressing, I think, maybe. Yeah, distressing.

I think it's disturbing. I think it's extremely, really disturbing. I think it's like a Twilight Zone episode. It's like a be careful what you wish for thing where people talk about wanting to have this connection to their Spielberg-y childhood of the sense of love driving you and not having to bring adult analysis into stuff.

He's like, that would be a fucking nightmare. You'd be trapped in a hell cage. It's like what Teddy says when he says, we are in a cage. When they're trapped under the Ferris wheel in the amphibicopter and he's so happy because he's just going to stare at the blue fairy. Teddy is so deadpan about it

Teddy's like, fuck this this really sucks dude like we're in a cage you have to sort of kill the child inside of you partially in order to be functional because if you try to remain a child living in the world the world will destroy you and if you try to have your love just

exist unbridled without any chill it will destroy you and also if your only goal is to have somebody love you like you're going to be impossible to love you're unlovable and you are gonna not even be fully human yeah you know like yeah it's it's effed up

right it's really crazy I want to get I'm just gonna we need to move forward do you like the performances of the pair of Francis O'Connor who didn't it never happened she was supposed to happen she was in bedazzled like the performances of the pair Frances O'Connor who didn't it never happened she was supposed to happen she was in Bedazzled like the year before this

yeah she was in Mansfield Park I mean she's pretty good Monica she plays oh right I like her she's very selfish

at the end there you know like when she makes that decision I like she she sells that well like that she she knows she fucked up

like she knows she she probably shouldn't have turned this stupid kid's love emotion on or whatever. The imprinting. But she's too much of a coward to just burn him up. It's a nicely prickly performance. Sam Robards, he's an okay jerk. I think he's fine. He's the dad.

He feels a little one-dimensional to me. Yeah. There's even, like, at the beginning, he's got to make a meal out of explaining the robotics to her. They give him, like, a big, like, half-a-page dump of exposition about the technology, and he kind of can't make that sing. He's Lorne Bacall and Jason Robards' son, right? He is, yeah.

Whoa, really? Yeah. Oh, interesting. But he was also, I I mean he didn't have as much buzz to make it happen but I think certainly getting this big of a part

in a Spielberg movie seemed like it was going to push him and it didn't happen for him either. But he has to play a good Broadway actor. I mean he has to play

an asshole. Right. He's playing a human in this movie which means by extension you're playing an empty shell a monster.

It's a pretty underwritten role. The kid Jake Thomas is like too kid for me. He doesn't quite hit for me. It's a pretty underwritten role. The kid Jake Thomas is like too kid for me. He doesn't quite hit for me. Oh see I like it because he's too kid. He's very kid. I would hate that performance in a different movie. I think for this movie you need someone who's acting so much like a movie shit. I do like his little

leg braces. I do too. Yeah his little plastic things. I like that they're kid colored. Right. They look like they're for a kid. Like let me cheer you up about your paralysis or whatever the hell it is. I'm green. What do you think of the scissors scene. That's the only other thing

because like that's the thing where when you're watching you're like why the fuck would he do this like surely there's some piece of. Yeah. That does feel right.

But I mean I think it's a Spielberg is trying to illustrate like whatever you think about like laws of robotics right like they've they've fucked them up by making this weird thing.

Right. Because the love overrides every other command. It's messing things up. But of course, why the hell would he... It's almost too obvious a sort of situation that you could take the wrong way. He's literally a creepy kid standing over

your phone. And when you literally have her toss over in bed so that her eyeball is right next to the blade, it's like you're milking it a little bit, Stevie. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I don't know. But you gotta get that strand. You know, you gotta get that strand of hair, that lock.

Other performances, I mean it's like William Hurt's really good in it. Jude Law is fantastic. Oh, Jude Law rules. Yeah, we should talk about Jude Law. Well, no, we're moving. So yeah, alright. So then, you know, he runs, he escapes. I mean, he's evicted. He's made to go to the woods. Right.

And you immediately cut to these things, you know, like he and these other poor, sad, abandoned robots who also have a purpose, right? I mean, I guess it's only to survive, but like going to like the mountains of robot garbage and plugging their like hands and faces on. Blank check host host David, could I speak on that? Yeah, sure. Go ahead, Ben Bot. I'm glad that with substantially less land on the planet they're still dumping garbage in the woods.

Ben Bot, I issue you 10 comedy points. Thank you. What do you guys think of the Flesh Fair, the Rising Moon, Brendan Gleeson? I think all that stuff is boring. I mean, I understand they have to have it to have something dynamic happen. I would also say this is maybe the most troublesome part of the movie.

I don't know. I do like a lot of it. I think they're interesting ideas. It goes on for way too long. It does go on for a little too long. The thing I like the most is not so much the very obvious thing where the crowd turns on Fred and Gleeson, but before where the guy who runs the flesh fair. The dad whose daughter is like, I think there's a little boy in this cage. And that he admires the craft of it so much that, I don't know, there's something.

I like that philosophical difference that plays out between him and Gleeson. Sure. Right. Gleeson is more like, I mean, you almost kind of know what he means, where he's like, this is fucking insane. Right. That someone would make this. Right. I'm now twice as motivated to kill it.

This is a nightmare. Right. Right. Like, why would you? And the other. No, I mean, Gleeson's argument. Gleeson actually makes. Some decent points.

The most compelling intellectual argument about why this is all so disturbing. He's like, yeah, they're going to start making robot kids so that we don't even have our own kids. Like, this is horrible. Doesn't he also sort of imply that it's maybe a robot for pedophiles? Doesn't that go like probably some sick fucking billionaire? I feel like there's one line that makes it sound like it's maybe a sexual thing. I never thought of it that way, but I mean, it's not the... I mean, the nightmare of the flesh fair, I guess, is more like how it's playing out.

Sure. I remember, especially at the time, which was like, you know, the Bush era, it felt maybe too loaded because they're like a NASCAR crowd. Like, you know, it's too on the nose, you know. It's a pretty red state. It's a very red state. They all have like cowboy hats and they're all like. It's a monster.

90s rock band is playing. 90s new metal band essentially yeah kid rock is great yeah exactly i love watching like movies like this and when they do that shot of like the weird kind of like guar mega death like costumed metallic armor guy just imagining steven spielberg have to go in the office and it's like so here are the concepts for the metal band like there was a day where that was like for 45 minutes. Here are the Dayglo shark bikers. Like that's what he had to sign off on those things.

He was like, no, this is good. This is great. I think the cod piece should be sharper. I really like the moon thing. I like that inversion, especially because of how much that's part of like Spielberg's iconography with E.T. and the Amblin logo. Oh, right. To make it into this like sense of dread.

Yeah, that's true. So I love that reveal. And then once I think them, this sort of captures kind of interesting. I mean, I love the sort of just like the moonlit dark kind of silhouettes of all these different robots running away. Once I get to the flesh fair, it gets a little on the nose. It's a little much. I think that I like the robots.

Like I like all the abandoned little guys. Yeah, looking for their parts in the pile and stuff. But more like when it's like, here's a nanny bot who got too creepy or too old or whatever. Here's a weird war robot. I like all those little guys. I also, I love- Chris Rock. I don't know if we need him.

He goes a little too hard with the voice cameos in this movie. I do like that. I feel like in a lot of movies with robotics, thereos in this movie. I do like that. I feel like in a lot of movies with robotics, there is a uniform robotic style. Oh, sure. Right. It's all like the old modes of the old fashion. Right. Not only different generations.

That guy was like, I was Times Mecca of the Year. 75 years ago. He's got weird spaghetti on his. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not only are they like, okay, clearly these are different generations, but also like, well, different companies would make robots in different ways. Yeah, it's like phones. Yeah, right, exactly, which I, like, I love that. It's like, okay, these are, like, clearly

mechanical robots that have human features. These are ones that have human flesh over a mechanical skeleton. Here's one where it's a TV screen. Like, you know, all the different levels of that. I do think this is a part of the movie where Spielberg's reluctance to turn the gears and do any sort of Spielberg set pieces actually is a detriment to the movie.

Yeah, you almost wanted to have a little more fun. Because there's no tension because immediately the girl notices him there and then just becomes a conversation while this massacre is happening in the background. But there's no sort of like daring escape. There's no like, is he going to get out in time? Well, there is Teddy running around. But otherwise, it's just kind of like a bunch of people talking while awful shit happens in the background.

Yeah, there's not a lot of dramatic tension to this movie. There's not. I like looking at the robots. I mean, like, action-wise. There's not a lot of threat, I guess. Isn't that appropriate, given that according to the logic of this, Maybe not, though. I mean, they might as well just be burning toasters, right?

I mean, these robots are not. Are the robots at the flesh fair, do they have artificial intelligence? Are they deserving? They have some, right? Our respect? They don't want to die. Some of them seem to have a lot of fear. But then, like, the au pair robot.

But they don't resist, as we're told. And that's what the woman in the crowd says when David resists. They never plead for their lives. Mechas don't plead for their life, I think is what she says. It's a weird delineation because the Chris Rock robot is cracking jokes, but he seems scared.

It's true. There's a lot of muddy consistency. It's a little blurry about what is actually the what is actually going on in these robots brains. Right. Well, like you get to the nanny robot, who I think is like the most striking piece of imagery in the whole movie. For whatever reason, that always really stuck with me with the face and then all the gears behind it. And especially once the face starts melting off.

Right. But she her programming so clearly is based in just nurturing and caring for her child. But even when she's being melted off, she remains a totally cool, calm, and collected face. I wish there was more of that because that is very interesting, and it would have played up this tension or this synchronicity between the roles that humans, or humans' identities, whether it's professional or personal and how they will those identities are sustained through trauma or you know what i mean like the nanny robot i feel like is the is interesting like you say because oh right she can't freak out nannies aren't nannies

are paid to not freak out they are to calming yeah they're like uh they keep the kids you know feeling safe like the thing that's simultaneously really interesting and really frustrating about this movie is that it kind of feels like what he's implying is that there are not laws of robotics in this movie that like every robot's different right and that they function in different ways different purposes by different companies and there aren't these overriding rules of like you know so the pleading for the life thing it doesn't feel like that's like well we all know that legally robots don't plead for right right it's just we don't see that and i think the other element to that is even if they plead for their lives the chris rock one is

sort of joking about it and it feels like it's just like well he's programmed to do that the the love element to david makes it feel more palpable like that's that's the whole thing is for whatever reason humans respond differently to david they see him in the cage and they go that has to be a real boy. And even after he scans him, he's like, what the fuck's going on here? Why would you do it? What's the purpose of this? And it's not just the level of external craft because he looks very human, but so does the woman in William Hurts.

He still looks waxy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's just something there. There's like a terror in his eyes, you know? Yeah. Right.

Which gets into like, I mean, it's like what makes a good actor versus a bad actor. Like something just seems believable or it doesn't, you know? Yeah. Right. Which gets into like, I mean, it's like the different, like what makes a good actor versus a bad actor? Like something just seems believable or it doesn't. Right. You know? And this kid is just like the best actor they've ever seen.

Yeah, he's a good actor. Yeah. That's part of it. Yeah. Although, you know, if you have him at your home, he might walk in on you in the bathroom.

Like, you know. Yeah. He has, he's not that chill. No chill. Do you guys believe in true artificial intelligence? Do you think that'll ever happen? I can't wrap my mind around it. I really can't.

I can't conceive of it. I think it will. I try not to think about it too much because it freaks me out. If I try to actually run through what would need to happen and the logic of it, it freaks me out. But I kind of just can't believe we wouldn't ultimately get to that point. and the logic of it freaks me out, but I kind of just can't believe we wouldn't ultimately get to that point. The only way I think we honestly don't get to that point

is if humanity ends prematurely. I just don't really, I can't wrap my brain around it. It would just be us programming something, right? I just don't, I don't get, I get that I could probably read more about this about how it would be on that, but I'm just like,

it would be us making a million different levers to it would be us you know making a million different like levers to press right and inside a robot's code we'd have to get to like the robots making robots kind of thing you know I think I don't get it I think what I I can't wrap my brain I'm not kidding I can't either which is why I just go

it must happen because I can't think about it like it stresses me out too much to even like dig into it. So you're just assuming it's a given at some point. Yeah. Just like I have to accept the space is infinite even though if I think about that I lose my mind. Right.

Like I would as a child when I was like a lonely little like David robot in my bed I'd like sit up and I'd look at the ceiling and I'd just be like OK so just imagine there's a rocket ship and it just keeps going. Right. Yeah. And I'd go insane. Right. Insane.

And I'd like scream and like claw at the walls. What a weird kid. Yeah, I was David. God, I'd fucking leave you in the woods. Yeah, my parents tried. And I went to Mr. Dr. No, and they told me where my parents were. Okay, so his safety response bonds him to Gigolo Joe. Like that's all that's happening there.

Just grab onto somebody and don't let go. Keep me safe. It's amazing that Gigolo Joe doesn't't enter until 55 minutes he's great i mean and we should i guess at this point we've already seen his we've had his introduction is the murder thing yeah yeah no his introduction is the start of act two right so david is you see david receding in in monica's rearview mirror and then over and then over black you hear a woman say i'm afraid right and jaylo says you're afraid that i'm gonna hurt you um she's literally afraid of his robot penis yeah i mean this movie is really got in there i i mean i know we keep saying it but like

imagine if steven spielberg didn't make this movie yeah and somebody else made this movie and they were like what's the backstory of this movie and he'd be like well i fucking hate steven spielberg and i wanted to make the least i wanted to make a movie that people thought was a spielberg movie and then when you spend more than two seconds thinking about it you realize this isn't this is a it's about how all annihilating annihilating argument against this asshole's entire career and spielberg did that to himself yeah right that's why i feel like, that's what makes, I mean, I've always thought

that Spielberg obviously is like very, like must understand something about humans if he can make these movies that we respond so powerfully to. Yes. But I always felt like, I don't know, he seems kind of like Ron Howard.

Like, is he really interesting? Has he really read Kierkegaard? Is he just a robot that has a program to understand how to evoke that response? I am programmed to make humans love me by my movies. I will make movies to make humans love me by my movies. I will make movies to make you love me.

Wide-eyed child will induce love. Yeah, but this movie kind of makes me feel like, not that he's self-hating, but that he, I don't know. Anyway, you don't have to put that in. You were still doing the plot summary. We're keeping that in. I just feel like Steven Spielberg. Do you want me to cut that out? No, Ben.

I feel like this is the movie where I'm like, Steven Spielberg might be one of the most interesting people in America. I'm with you, baby. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Here's an interesting thing is, after this movie, and now he's got us on studio, he can do whatever he wants. Right.

He does so few classic Spielberg-y movies. He's doing a lot of different genre exercises. When he goes to do something like Indiana Jones 4, it's a disaster and he clearly can't get back to the thing. Yeah, he has trouble slipping into his classic vibe. He more makes adult dramas now. His best movies post this are Minority Report, Munich,

and, well, Lincoln's more of a classic Spielberg movie. But he's back in it now. It's austere. He's making his austere, adult-minded. He's now finally evolved into, he can make more of his classic Spielberg movie. And Bridges by, he's back in it now. it's austere. Like he's making these austere adult minded. He's now finally evolved into, he can make more of his like classic Spielberg

or whatever. But it is this sort of like, yeah, like kind of darker or austere, what is a better word for this? Like,

I don't know, slightly more world weary tone. Yeah. Is the best way. And it's, it's someone struggling to find the best in humanity

rather than trying to like project to everyone. Like we're all gonna make it because like Bridgespies is very much a movie about like one decent man can do a lot well we don't have to follow the rules right and it's like well why else do we have the rules and it's like I don't know and he's like no I think we should have them

you know and like those weird little yeah but the key to that and I think this is sort of what you're getting at Rhys is that like he got blamed so much has been blamed so much over the decades for like killing adult cinema. Right. Because Jaws created the blockbuster. Right, right, right.

And then it was like he and Lucas kind of perpetuated this thing where it all became genre exercises. Genre got elevated to high art. Those were the movies that changed the entire theatrical model of how things played, of opening weekend being the thing of merchandising. All that sort of stuff. And it feels like it happens. I mean, this, I think, is the big fulcrum point in his career. And certainly now we're at the other end of it, where it's like when he tries to make a Spielberg movie

in a traditional Amblin-y sense, it doesn't really work. It's the BFG, you know? BFG's a good example. But when he tries to make the movies that are either applying the Spielberg things to adult-minded things, which feels like he's trying to do the mea culpa. And like I'm the one guy with the sway to still get the kind of movies made that used to be made before I started making movies. And he's very publicly. Before I eradicated.

Very publicly disdainful of Hollywood and what he thinks Hollywood's doing right now. He thinks the model's fucked up now. And he's like it's all $200 million movies. You can't get anything made anymore. And it's like you're the one who kind of created that. Right. Not consciously. Yeah, but it's not his fault. I mean he made a David bot. He's fucked up now. And he's like, it's all $200 million movies. You can't get anything made anymore. And it's like, you're the one who kind of created that. Right. Not consciously. Yeah, but it's not his fault.

I mean, he made a David bot. He's David Hobb. He's Dr. Hobbie. He's Professor Hobbie. That's what he did, you know? He, like, made a thing because he wanted to make it, and his intentions were good. And the thing he made was good, but it had these... It destroyed humanity.

Right. And he's trying to, like, fucking bring it back. Right. You know, he's using the lock of hair and is like, how do I make a Capra movie? Put Tom Hanks in it, you know? Right. So I think this movie is him starting to like really contemplate his legacy,

but then it was sold and packaged as like, Spielberg does sci-fi again. Yeah, right. And everyone was furious. God, is there any chance you could get him on the show to talk about this movie? I would love to talk to him about this movie. One day, hopefully, maybe in my life,

I'll get to talk to Steven Spielberg for some reason, right? He'll make a movie. Yeah, yeah. And he'll want to talk to him about this movie. One day, hopefully, maybe in my life, I'll get to talk to Steven Spielberg for some reason. He'll make a movie and he'll want to talk to it. I think he's directing a couple episodes of The Tick this season. Maybe you can get me an intro. But this would be the movie I would love to know the most about. I'd love to pick his brain about the movie. If you have one director and you can talk to that director about one movie they've made, would this be the movie?

I'd love to talk to him about that. I mean, it would just be such an interesting conversation because you would learn so much. Even in his contemporary reaction to your questions, he might be like, I don't know. I was trying some stuff. It's pretty good. Like, Jude Law gives a good performance. Or he might be like, thank you, David. Yeah, yeah.

You see what I was doing. He takes like a cube out of his head. Yeah, right. I'll say this. I met Ang lee once and did that spiel to him about hulk and he did that exact thing really like i like someone interested me was like hey um hey this is griffin he wants to talk to you about hulk and he goes like oh i'm sorry i'm sorry and i was like no no no i think i get it and i said my like 15 seconds

and he literally went like thank you and it was like i feel like i have to apologize for that movie all the time but yeah that's what i was trying to do really and he wasn't like, thank you. And it was like hushed tones. It was like, I feel like I have to apologize for that movie all the time, but yeah, that's what I was trying to do. Really? And he wasn't like, it's a masterpiece, right? Right, right.

But he was like, yeah, that's what I was trying to do. Nobody gets that that's what I was going for. Yeah. Oh, it'd be so amazing. And I kind of want to believe that Spielberg would do the same thing.

Yeah, right. He's talked about the movie. He would say, here's my fantasy. He would say, first of all, David Reese, it's so great to finally meet

you and secondly um it was a huge fan of election profit right exactly that podcast where are the other four episodes of going deep on amazon and then he and then he would say thank you that is the only movie i've ever made that matters like it's the only good one. And it says everything. I left it all on the road out there. I think it's kind of his whole... I think it is sort of the key to unlocking his entire identity. Really? Yeah, I kind of do.

I don't know. It's definitely a key to unlocking his identity at this point in his career. But I think that's the point. This is the fulcrum point of everything he ever represented. I'm trying to find, I mean, I've certainly seen him talk about the movie post the film's react, you know, where he talked about the fact that it's like, his amusement at the idea that people thought he tacked on the ending,

where he's like, that was Stanley Kubrick, man. Like, I was working with what he gave me. And by the way, it's not a happy ending. Yeah, that is part of a whole. Right, right. I don't know. I mean, I'd like to see more of yeah that is part of a whole right right i don't know i mean i'd like to see more of him talking about this movie i mean i don't know i'm sure maybe he has maybe he'll write a book you do one i mean honestly what's a billboard on spielberg

what's a bleaker what is a bleaker big hollywood movie it's a good question i mean there's there must be a couple other things but but this is right up there. I don't know. I mean, and I'm not saying because... You're right. This is a bleak movie, and it has a bleak ending. It's not... Have you ever seen that movie Seconds? The Rock Hudson movie Seconds?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Frankenheimer movie. Yeah, which is also really kind of bleak and shattering. Because the message is, you can't start over. You're doomed. Right? Right, right. Well, yeah, like in the 60s and 70s, you know.

The conversations really bleak. The fucking taxi drivers bleak, right? Right. But I think when I talk about the dread in this movie, it is interesting because it does feel like what you're saying, like Spielberg kind of killed grown-up movies. Or him and Lucas. And the vibe that I get from this movie is kind of that 70s

vibe of like oh my god like but then it's like a 2000s like sci-fi like a big budget right it's like he's like bring you in he's like you want the thing you like and then he slaps you in the face and it's like dumb for wanting yeah right and then makes you oh yeah you want to see skyscrapers that just look like a huge pair of neon tits? Yeah. All right, but then, yeah. I mean, but that's the thing, but people didn't react that way. They kind of reacted just like, what the fuck was that? Like, they didn't react with, like, or, I mean, I feel like the overall reaction wasn't, like, I'm bummed out. It was more like, I feel cheated. No, they were just like, it doesn't make any sense.

It's cheesy. It's really trite. Very cheesy. A boy who can love, and it's all Pinocchio. It's all Pinocchio. Why does he have to fucking. It's so stupid. And you feel embarrassed. I think a huge love and it's all Pinocchio. It's all Pinocchio. It's so stupid. And you feel embarrassed.

I think a huge part of it is you feel embarrassed. You feel embarrassed for being pumped up for it. Well, no. I mean, also you feel embarrassed for him. You feel embarrassed for David. Like, dude, 2,000 years you're sitting underwater looking at this dumb statue just to make you real? Oh, God. You know what I mean?

That shot of the Blue Fairy statue just crumbling is rough. Yeah, when he touches it. Yeah. Right? All right, but I think- I gotta get us back on track. Yeah, yeah. What do you want to say?

No, no, I just, I think that's part of, like, the reaction that audiences had very much was like a typical teenager response, where it's just like- This is stupid. This makes me feel weird. It's dumb fucking. Yeah, yeah, right.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. Once it started out on a weird foot, people just, like, pushed it away and defensively were laughing at it so they didn't have to engage with it. Now, can I say one thing? Yeah. So do you know the movie critic Armand White?

Yes. Oh, yeah. Okay. Who worked at the New York Press. So when this movie came- The glory years of Armand White. Right, right. Who's still around and he's still at every screening I go to.

He's a critic for National Review. He is. It's so perfect. Noted provocateur, contrary film critic. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Once called Steve McQueen a garbage man at the New York Film Critics Circle when they were giving Steve McQueen an award.

Right. But that same year listed Jack and Jill as one of his top 10 movies of the year. Right. He is involved in a decades long performance of being a cantankerous public intellectual. And I think even he no longer knows when he's trolling and when he's holding on to legitimate anti-establishment anti-Hollywood elitist gripes He's lost the game a little bit in the bit

The bit's gotten a little sloppy I would say, especially back in the day and these days it used to be like, when Armand Wright wrote about something he liked, it was fucking beautiful He could write the most incredible stuff about stuff he liked But now he applies that to Resident Evil Retribution That's interesting to me because I have, so, so Armin White, I'll explain to your listeners who are not East Coast elitists. You used to write for this free.

We have an only East Coast elite. So you guys all remember the New York Press, this amazing free alt weekly. And he was the critic and he would always just take the opposite view of whatever the critical consensus was most of the time he fucking loved ai artificial intelligence his review of ai i read it the other week is so incredible it and and i have it right and i could not find it because the new york press no longer exists the following week he started to review another movie and then basically was like ah fuck i need to talk about ai you idiots don't understand how incredible this movie is and his argument in that his argument in that initial review was people are people can't handle this movie because they can't remember they won't let themselves remember what it's like to be a child and to need to be loved and that review

actually kind of made me think like oh like like like, is that why I kind of thought this movie was weird? Am I too afraid to remind myself what it's like to be vulnerable and needy? But rereading that review again, I don't think he actually got it. This is a good take, you know, right when, you know, for when you just saw the movie. Yeah, but I think in the end it's wrong i think it's not that people made fun of the movie because they couldn't handle the innocent like pure bottomless innocence need and longing that defines our childhood and this and the weird freudian erotic relationship that initial bond between mother and child especially

if it's mother and son and all that stuff i don't think that mother and child, especially if it's mother and son and all that stuff. I don't think that's what it is. I think it's more like what you were just saying. I think people reacted weird to this movie because they can't handle

how fucking bleak the message is, which is that love is doom. Yeah. You know? It's a curse. It's like a thing we have to overcome. Like we have to use

all our other faculties and facilities as a human being to still function even though we have this love thing driving us. The sum total of human experience and human culture and human storytelling and myth making and institutions and family and religion is to overcome the fact that we are empty. Right. You know what I mean? And we will never be filled. Yeah. feel like that's what makes the movie so kind of profound in a way and also why everyone made fun

of it and snickered in the movie theater when i was watching it way back then but i do think when you're a kid you feel that and you don't know how to put it into words and you don't understand what's going on but that's that loneliness right yeah yeah and as you get older and you learn how to deal with it and you push things away and you bring things closer and what have you when like people want to see like amblin type movies they want to be reminded of parts of their childhood that they still look back on fondly. And this movie is about a feeling that people don't put into words that everyone tries to forget when they grow up.

Yeah, I feel like this movie is kind of like goes, you know, it's like there's so much adult culture now that just trades in nostalgia. And Spielberg obviously a huge part of that. Right. And I feel like what he did in this movie was like, you're you're like well you know what's behind your need for nostalgia and mommy's love right is that you are an empty shell and you always will be and someday all of humanity will be erased right you love gremlins because gremlins made you feel less close to death for two hours when you were 10 right yeah right anyway AI analyzes how one loves by fathoming the need for love

are those happy tears david asks his distraught mother in such moments ai's unprecedented combination of curiosity and intimacy is breathtaking i remember that review yeah the end of his review anyway good movie at the same time you know at the same time this is a movie that i would i would totally get a kick out of watching some comedian do like 10 minutes just ripping it to shreds. It's a movie where I understand people disliking it, I guess. You know what I mean? Yeah, no. I mean, that's what's so audacious about it.

It is preposterous. It's preposterous. That's a great way to put it. It's truly preposterous. And it's so unconcerned with internal logic. Yeah, it's so ambitious. It is. It's like, you know, it's preposterous in the way that cathedrals are preposterous.

They're reaching for something so ineffable and so sublime. It really does feel like he's trying to make a sublime movie, right? Where you can't really put all the, it doesn't, like, the flow chart is never going to make a sublime movie right where don't you can't really put all the it doesn't like the flow chart is never going to make sense there's there is not a coherent theory of artificial intelligence vis-a-vis gigolo joe versus david you know it's contradicting itself it just turns into this deep like i said earlier just deep churning incredibly bleak emotional sludge you know in a way that is cliche i say it feels very human i mean it's very muddied in the way that all human struggles with the profound are are muddy but like the bible works on an emotional level more

than intellectual right yeah it contradicts itself all the time it's aiming at some sense of feeling right yeah right something that relates to this is the Dr. No scene, which I love, which is like the idea of trying to- Nothing he doesn't. There's nothing he doesn't. The idea of trying to break all human knowledge down to this algorithmic machine is so weird because one, he's trying to trick you.

That's the best thing about Dr. No. He's like, you better ask him exactly. He's like a weird oracle, right? He's like a carny game. They're just trying to get trying to trick you. That's the best thing about Dr. No. He's like, you better ask him. He's like a weird oracle, right? He's a carny game. They're just trying to get money out of you. Well, new bucks. Right, right. Yeah, they want some new bucks, yeah.

Which is the best, by the way. It's maybe my favorite name for future currency. The weird puzzle of trying to get a proper answer out of him where they have to combine flat fact with fairy tale. Right. Yeah. Is like, he's trying to tell us something.

Because if the movie has a set piece, it's the fucking Dr. Nosy. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Where Robin Williams. The most tension is there. They only have nine questions. Robin Williams plays a cartoon Mr. Einstein.

And he's going like full goofballs McGillicuddy. And that's the most tension in the whole movie is Robin Williams going like, ask a question, there's nothing I don't know. And then, but then he's like, oh, Pinocchio. Like the way his- He becomes so reverent. But then what's really crazy is then you hear Hobby hacked into him to give- Yeah, right, yeah. I mean, it makes no, it's crazy.

It's, yeah, it's preposterous. That's my final adjective. What do you guys think of Rouge City? Rouge City is actually not much of the movie no in my head it was a little more but really

and I watched this with Joanna it's the most expensive part of the movie but certainly not like that scene where they go through the lady mouth tunnels Adrian Grenier is loving it Adrian Grenier wants that

wants that the porn bot on his dick you know yeah yeah he had a little dance on his dick that you know

I think you think like all right here we go but i do love the idea that you're just like check this place out i was made here i you know i learned all my tricks of the trade here and he's like okay yeah where's the nearest doctor no like right no he's yeah uh and and then of course i mean i really do think the religious metaphors are obvious in this movie but i I do like that Gigolo Joe gets that moment where he hangs outside of the church. Right. And he's like, this is when people want to see me the most. Right, yeah, yeah.

When they're coming out of here. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've talked about the whole movie now, because then, of course, the end. We talked about Adam Ward. Yeah, yeah. We mostly dove into the end. That was our beginning. The end is his self-awareness, right?

He comes to meet Javi. He realizes he is a fucking speck. This is the most, yeah. He meets his double. This is when people really start laughing. I think this is when people really, I mean, my experience watching it in the theater. It's so uncomfortable.

How do you not laugh? It's so uncomfortable when he said, and maybe this is a moment that Armin White gets at in his so uncomfortable when he said and maybe this is what maybe this is a moment that armin white gets at in his review when he's saying i am special i am unique i am david i mean he's really putting it all out there yeah in a way that that the rest of us spend our entire lives doing that as subtext right right you know what i mean um but for him to do it and then to literally violently destroy his doppelganger because he realizes he is not special. Like there's boxes and boxes.

And one of the boxes is moving. Like it's like very overt horror movie. That scene is just so over the top and just I love it. I love it too. And then that final line of his where my brain is falling out. Yeah. Which is like such a great childish encapsulation of right like the awareness of mortality right or one's like or your mind being blown yeah yeah

totally my brain is falling out totally can i throw out one more angle yeah that i think is important to talk about with this movie because we've talked a lot about it being sort of a horror movie about the terror of being a child you know and not being able to understand what you feel and all of that this is also a horror movie about being a parent like yeah I think this is totally from Spielberg's perspective as a dude who has a bunch of kids right does he yeah a bunch of kids adopted

right okay you know himself came out of his own penis a lot of children and I think this is to some degree a movie I don't think this is the main thesis but i think it's a thing he's wrestling with is the terror of bringing something into the world and printing it and knowing that forever that thing's going to be tied to you yeah i never yeah i'm not a parent so i haven't thought about that yeah this is i mean three non-parents talking

about this that would make sense but i've like heard a lot of people who are parents who can't watch this fucking movie. I have friends who are parents and can't watch this movie. Because it's like a terror of like, this is my fear of what will happen if I bring a child into the world. Right. This is my fear of what could happen to my child I already have. Right. And just that like, they will forever, ever be defined by your relationship to them. Yeah. We'll never go away. Yeah. But you're present with your band.

And that's true. You're right. It's a good nightmare of parenthood. Yeah. Yeah. And then then his I mean, I interpret him like his self-defense mechanism finally kicks in. He decides to die. Right. Yeah. I don't know what else that's supposed to be when he basically just pitches himself off. He says mommy and then he throws himself off the skyscraper. Yeah, he doesn't have anything. And you know, I used to, people used to I feel like as they came around, I know! You just said it out loud! It's so crazy!

And the um... It's so intense! Oh god, and then Jigalo Joe gets sucked away and he has that perfect final line, I am, I was. Right. Which is, yeah, right? That's a robot summing up the experience of death. Yeah, totally. We don't have time to get into this,

but God, what a weird career Jude Law's had. Especially when in this movie it felt like it was like, this is going to be the anointment. Right, this is the beginning of superstardom. But like, Spielberg gets, like, Jude Law is an uncommonly pretty, odd looking guy.

He's a little too slick. He's perfect for this kind of a role, which is like a sort of a perversion of a movie star. Yeah, yeah. You know, like some sort of ersatz movie star that has like the look, but like there's just something off about him. Yeah. And then he goes like. Yeah, yeah. And he starts playing.

He moves so well in this movie. He moves like a fuckboy. It's incredible. He looks like a fuckboy. He moves like a fuckboy. It's incredible. He looks like a fuckboy? He moves like a fuckboy, Ben Bott? Yes. Define fuckboy. All right.

A fuckable boy. Okay. But you know, in the same, or is it next year he's in Road to Perdition? Yeah. That's the good Jude Law shit.

He needs to be something a little weirder. He's a great character actor. That's that thing that happens a lot with like an incredibly handsome charismatic dude everyone thinks

is a leading man and then they realize they're a character actor and his breakout was Talented Mr. Ripley in which he played a really handsome charismatic dude

but as a character part. Yeah. So everyone was like oh just make him the lead of stuff and it's like too slick. It never really works.

It only works in Cold Mountain. Yeah. Yeah. You got some notes for us, David? A really literal question. So in the final shot of the movie, Monica has fallen asleep and David is in bed with her and the voiceover says that he goes to the place where dreams are born.

Yes, right. And Teddy crawls up on the bed and watches over them. I was hoping we'd get this. The next day, what does Teddy do? Fucking sits and contemplates his existence. Does he do 2,000 years of focused meditation?

Here's the other question about Teddy. Monica turns him on when she brings him back. So there is the implication that you can kind of hibernate that guy. But who's going to do that now? I don't know. Maybe they like him too. Maybe there's a Teddy Museum. If Spielberg didn't want you to be asking that,

I don't think Teddy would be in the final shot. Yeah, I think it's a mirror of, you know, obviously the most obvious analogy came just a few minutes ago in the movie when they sat looking at the Blue Fairy for 2,000 years. Yeah. And Teddy said, we're in a cage. And then now we're in a second cage because now Teddy,

because you're pulling out the final shot, they pull out through the window of their house reconstruction or whatever it is. And again, you're in basically a glass box kind of witnessing helplessly or wishing on this idealized fuck, this is what it is. Yeah. Okay, so think about it. He's in the amphibic opera for looking at

this idealized vision of motherhood, Madonna, everything. And God. Right, and God. Just the whole kit and caboo. The creator. Just wishing, wishing, please, please make me a real boy. Make me a real boy, right? For 2,000 years. And Teddy's sitting there like, I can't

believe we're sitting here for 2,000 years in this cage. This kid is never going to get what he wants. Right? I have plans. Yeah, then they get saved. I'll call my girlfriend until I'm canceled. And then the movie ends with Teddy, presumably, there's no reason not to believe this wouldn't happen,

spending the rest, another 2,000 years now looking not at the idealized image of mommy slash God, but this, I guess, a Pieta, right? A tableau, yeah. Of the mother and the son reunited. In death. Yeah. In a death, in a literal death embrace, right? Absolutely. If Spielberg didn't want you thinking about that, Knowing he's just a filmmaker of such intentionality.

Even when he's bad, there's nothing that's in there by accident. Even in the Wikipedia recap, the last line, Teddy climbs into the bed and watches as David and Monica lie peacefully together. But he doesn't climb into the bed, he climbs onto the bed. Even that's a big distinction. He sits at the foot of the bed. And he doesn't lie down. He sits facing towards them. He watches them.

And that's the last thing the movie leaves you with. Yeah, yeah. And then all the lights in the house are you with is him just looking at them sitting. And then all the lights in the house are going out until it's just that one The silhouette of Teddy looking at two dead people Oh my god. Teddy won. Teddy gets out of this one alive.

Teddy won. But yeah, no, I mean when I was watching this with Joanna and when the you know, when the fucking thing falls on him and she was like, Jesus it's gonna end like this? And I was like, Jesus, it's going to end like this? And I was like, no, it's worse. You think it'll end. That's when everyone thinks it ends.

The big criticism. It became the idea. It should have just ended with him staring at this dumb statue underwater forever. But that feels incomplete to me. And that's a less challenging ending. Yeah, I agree. I agree. You just walk out and you go, well, that's dark.

You don't have to think about it. Then it's just a tragedy. Poor guy never got what he wanted. That, I agree. I agree. You just walk out and you go, well, that's dark. You don't have to think about it. Yeah, then it's just a tragedy. Poor guy never got what he wanted. That's a shame. The real ending is like, oh, he got what he wanted. A mother's love is pretty messed up. They have that coffee rotary thing, the little carousel of coffees.

How many coffees do these guys have? That's what I couldn't stop thinking about during the coffee. They have like nine brands of coffee. Yeah, that's definitely my major takeaway. You mean Monica and her husband? Yeah, Monica and her husband. Jesus. Careless consumerism. And that's what led to the seawaters rising, right?

Manhattan. That's why they call it Manhattan. Don't try and think why a massive Cybertronics company would have its headquarters in a flooded city. They're like, hey, just don't use floors 1 through 25. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I don't care. I don't know.

Helicopter, amphibicopter to the top of the building and then elevator down. Yeah. Do you think there are people in the mail room who are just seeing fish floating by? Yeah, right. Underwater. Yeah.

So I'm glad. Well, yeah, I actually did not think we were all going to like this movie. I'm glad that we all at least thought it was interesting. Yeah, I love it. I think it's a great movie. I think it's a great American movie. I think it is. I think it's one of the most interesting.

It's a very, very interesting movie. That's fine. Yeah. And I think it's doubly interesting because of who made it and because of the budget and because that it was actually in movie theaters outside of his own mind. Do you know what I mean? It feels like. It's a hell of a year for movies, too. It comes in a crazy great year for movies.

In 2001? Yeah. Mulholland Drive. That's a good movie. Gosford Park, which is one of my favorite movies. Great movie. Rush Hour 2. Royal Tenenbaums, Memento.

A lot of influential movies. Right, yeah, yeah. Waking Life is that year. A lot of movies. In the Bedrooms. Donnie Darko, which is not a movie I love, but is a movie that's had a footprint. Yeah, those are ambitious movies.

Trek. Fast and the Furious. Yeah, those are ambitious movies. Moulin Rouge, Shrek, Fast and the Furious. Yeah. Dr. Dolittle, too. Do you think they should have just, when they watched the final cut of this movie, been like, you know what, Stephen, we all love it. This is a profound piece of filmmaking. How would you feel if we said it was a David Lynch movie?

Yeah, right, right. Because if it was a David Lynch movie, I feel like everyone would go in in with the right sense because mulholland drive actually is another movie that does give me kind of the same feeling of dread yeah you know i like it makes me i have more fun watching that movie than ai yeah yeah yeah it's just i mean it's just i know what you mean it certainly has very profound sense of dread but it's more it more fun. Like, it's having more fun. But do you think if they had marketed it as a David Lynch movie, people would have kind of gone in ready to have the moment of like, oh, shit, this is so heavy, bro. There is no question that Spielberg's name totally messed with people's perception of the movie.

There can't be. And also the fact that they released it in June, which is an odd time to release a movie like this. And they also were very mysterious with the marketing. I mean, there was that whole thing. This was like the first movie to do...

Yeah, the poster was just the AI, you know, like, yeah. But this was also the first movie to do... What's the term I'm looking for? In the marketing, they did the thing... Do you remember this?

On the poster and in the trailer, there was a credit block for, like, some sort of specific scientific assistant. and someone leaked to like news like oh if you google that name in that weird credit and they did like oh yeah they did like viral marketing right not augmented reality but what's the term no arg arg right yes

there was like a whole arg and he was the first person to like use this in mainstream marketing where they created a whole whole sphere of websites for the companies connected to the movie and there was a mystery to unlock. People got really into it and that was a lot of the marketing and then the trailers were very short, very sparse, very sort of enigmatic.

It was an elaborate murder mystery that played out across hundreds of websites. What? You had to solve this murder of a scientist. It was a runaway success, but it didn't actually make any fucking sense compared to this movie. Can I do a quick merchandise spotlight?

Very quick. Very quick? Yeah. They thought, oh, Spielberg movie. It's got a toy in it. That's an obvious one. So they made a teddy i think using like furby technology they like made a teddy and it was going to come out that christmas and they were like we

gotta rush it we were behind the wheel on this one so we gotta rush it to get out in time for christmas and then june when the movie opens they're like oh shit and so they like pulled the plug immediately so the teddies go for like a thousand dollars now wow does the teddy say anything other than where is David? This is a cage. Yeah, but Super Teddy, they try to make it look like the packaging of what it would be in the movie. But I think they like, it's a very, very hard to find item.

The fucking teddy bot is amazing. You want to see what do you mean? You want to see the real, you know, how they made him. Oh, it was a real? It's a real robot. But even when they do the CGI, for some of the scenes where he's more physically active it's very well done yeah yes he looks great and i don't mean this backhandedly but like the fucking seth mcfarland ted comes out like 12 years later and the cgi is as good an ai right you know like the

no advancements have been made they just nailed it on the first try. Fox Office game? Yeah. Okay. So it was June 29th, 2001. Opened at $21 million. Is that correct? $29 million. Wow, that's higher than I thought. Yeah, it opened pretty well. And then it only makes $78.

So it really- Worldwide or domestic? No, domestic. Worldwide it made $235 million. So it actually did fine. And what was the budget? $100 million. Yeah. It's expensive.

Yeah. A lot of shit going on in this movie. Is this Spielberg's least successful movie? No, not by a long shot. Oh, okay. But I will say, I think at this point... If you're taking out... At this point, it's one of his biggest bombs in years.

He only had a couple at this point that didn't make $100 million. Like, it's like Always didn't make $100 million. Always and Amistad. And Empire of the Sun. Oh, right. And then save for sugarland express like those are the only 1941 oh right but almost always he made over a hundred so this was like a big definitely it's at the bottom end of his you know usually yeah even like hook made a ton of money you know whatever like even his kind of crappy movies do well like color purple was huge

even when he would do like drama like schindler's List made a ton of money. Saving Private Ryan three years earlier was the number one movie of that year. That's a very uncompromising hard to watch movie. Number two is a movie you love. It's its second week. The Fast and the Furious.

The Fast and the Furious. More of a summer fair. More of your typical summer fair. Although if you really think about what's going on in those movies David it is so dark I mean those movies are also about our unending need for love I guess well what movie isn't it I mean Vin Diesel is kind of our mother

you know culturally he is the mother we're always seeking the approval from well it is interesting that the point of the movie is that they're driving a quarter mile, like they're driving nowhere. They're just driving like... It's a human condition, man. Right.

We're all driving now, right? And they all gather to watch this spectacle. Okay, number two... Also, cars zoom, zoom, go fast. Number three is a sequel to a children's movie that you've already mentioned.

Dr. Dolittle 2. I actually loved the first one when I was little. I did too. And I remember... I have not seen the second one. It was the day before my brother and I

were both going to go to a sleepaway camp. My parents dropped us off at the theater and they were like, you can go see a movie. As long as you stay together, you can go see a movie together. And I really want to see Doctor Dolittle too. And he put his foot down for Fast and Furious, which I was furious about at the time.

And he ended up saving my life. Bringing me into the franchise. I needed that. Number four is a very successful or quite successful video game movie. First Resident Evil? No. 2001. It was like a decent hit for a movie based on a video game.

It launched a star. If you'd already won an Oscar. Oh, oh. Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider. Yeah. What do you guys think of that?

Not a good movie. Never saw it. Pretty forgettable. You know what? I'm thinking I've only seen a handful of Steven Spielberg movies. When you're naming all these movies, I feel like I've seen Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters. I don't think I've seen Close Encounters all the way through. Have you seen Jaws?

Yes. You've seen the Indiana Jones movie? I've seen, yeah. And I've seen the first Indiana Jones movie. Sure. I've seen E.T. Is it 10-10, though? No, I had to do a hard pass on that.

We'll listen to our episode about it later in this podcast. I've seen A.I. and I've seen... You've seen Schindler's List? No. Hyperion? No. Amistad? No.

Color Purple? No. Hook? No. The Terminal? You're missing a lot of them. Minority Report? Yeah. Great movie. Yeah. My buddy's in that. Shout Purple? No. Hook? No. The Terminal? You're missing a lot of them. Minority Report? Yeah.

Great movie. Yeah. My buddy's in that. Shout out to Daniel. Really? Who is he? Wally. Oh my God.

The tech. It's your guy? That's your buddy? Yeah, yeah. Old college friend. Yeah. Catch Me If You Can. You seen that one?

Yeah. Is that about a guy running a scam? Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah, Leo DiCaprio. Okay. He's a big scam artist.

Keeps on taking on different enemies. War of the Worlds. Yeah. Okay, yes. All right. Now I'm more, I guess, into Lake Spielberg. Now Munich. Have you seen Munich?

Yes, I have. I have. Okay. Yeah. So you got to go post-2000s. Tintin. Did you see Lincoln? No. War Horse? War Horse.s. Did you see Lincoln? No.

War Horse? No. Bridgespies? No. BFG? Probably not. I haven't seen BFG yet. So you've got to catch up to the recent effort.

Okay, what's number five? Number five is a very good movie by an African-American director that made a little bit of money. I would say it's probably the last good movie he ever made. So is it a John Singleton movie? Yes. It's the last good movie he made. It is a very nice little movie, though. It introduced the world.

Craft is the year before that. Is it Baby Boy? It's Baby Boy. Okay. Which is a pretty small scale, kind of indie, almost like indie feeling drama. It was a coming of age. About growing up.

Yeah, starring Tyrese. It would be indie today. At that time, studios still made small movies like that. Good movie. And then, of course, he goes on to make Too Fast, Too Furious next, I think. That's his next movie. Falls off the deep end there. That opened to

$8 million in this weekend. So, yeah, so AI doesn't really make a big deal at the box office. It gets nominated for two Oscars. Score and visual effects, both deserved. And I feel like it sort of eventually becomes a bit of a critic's darling, but I mean, like, you know, it's taken a long time

for people to come around on AI. Yeah, I feel like it also has become... It's still so scarred with its... I'm not saying this is exclusively its supporter base, but I feel like it is the Spielberg movie for people who don't like Spielielberg i agree with that can i give can i give a shout out to an essay somebody wrote that really yeah please do you were telling me i want to read this so the writer timothy crider i think it's crider i can't remember if it's crider or creator k-r-e-i-d-e-r wrote an

essay for this movie in film comment sure i think after it came out. Yeah, you got his name right. Tim Cradd. And it's really insightful and really helped me understand why I find this movie disturbing. So I just wanted to give a shout out to Tim's essay. I'm looking at his cartoons right now. He's got some cool cartoons.

I liked it, yeah. Nice shout out. And I'd like to give a shout out to Going Deep with David Rees, which you can find in a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean. We are in a cage. Spend 2,000 years praying to the Blue Fairy that that will ever come out on a good DVD

edition. Folks, get inside your amphibicopter and hunt for that Blu-ray. It's a great show and it's worth the effort. Thank you. And it's, yeah, it is, I'll say it again, is a show that has actually changed the way I live my day-to-day life. I love that. I appreciate that. Thank you. It's a real, my day-to-day life. I love that. I appreciate that.

Thank you. It's a gift of a program. I totally agree. I love Going Deep. And thank you so much for being on the show. I'm excited for this. Thank you so much for having me. It was great to have you.

I was so stoked to talk about this movie, and I was so excited when I heard that you found this movie as fascinating as I do, movie as fascinating as I do because it really is like one of the strangest movies I think I've ever seen in a way that feels very authentically strange instead of the whole point of this is that it's strange. Do you know what I mean?

It just feels like it's almost trying to be normal. Well, hey, this is a Hollywood movie. Wait, no, no, no, no. We're trying to entertain you. Look at this, you know, Rouge City. Whoa. You don't build that big of a set if you don't think everyone's going to get on board with your movie. I just think it's such a fascinating movie.

So thanks for letting me come on to talk about it. Definitely. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Thanks to us for having you. Thanks. Big thanks to us for having you on the show. Next week, Minority Report.

Next week is Minority Report. Next week is Minority Report. It's a great, great, great film. And we have a cool guest. I'm not going to say because every time I announce a guest, then they end up canceling it. So I'm not going to jinx us, but I think we'll have a really great guest on the next episode. Please remember to rate, review, subscribe on iTunes. Ben Bond, how are you doing? Come on, man.

Don't be afraid to ask for what you like. Review, subscribe on iTunes. Ben Bot, how are you doing? Don't be afraid to ask for what you like. Review, subscribe on iTunes. I'd love it. Write us a review, fellas. Don't give us zero stars unless you're a Sith Lord. Ben Bot, commence final thoughts. Yes. We didn't get to it, but the future music.

Oh, right. I don't think it's free jazz. I'm going to shout out Vaporwave so if anyone's interested YouTube Vaporwave and you'll hear what real future music sounds like thank you very much BenBot

thank you all for listening and as always BenBot initiate self-destruct mode let's get out of here. That's good. This has been a UCB Comedy Production. Check out our other shows on the UCB Comedy Podcast Network.