Blank Check with Griffin & David - All That Jazz with Lin-Manuel Miranda

Episode Date: July 24, 2022

It’s SHOWTIME, folks - and boy, are we jazzed about this episode! Broadway icon and actual Blank Check listener Lin-Manuel Miranda joins us to talk about what many consider to be Bob Fosse’s masterpiece, 1979’s “All That Jazz.” LMM surprises Griffin and David by bringing along an original copy of the film’s script, which offers some fascinating insights into Fosse’s blurring of the lines between memoir and fiction. We discuss the parallels between “All That Jazz” and LMM’s recent screen adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s “tick, tick…BOOM!” - two projects that are concerned with the creation of art in the face of mortality and self-doubt. Plus - Ben gets a very special birthday present.  Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

No, nothing I ever do is good enough. Not beautiful enough. It's not funny enough. It's not deep enough. It do is good enough. Not beautiful enough. It's not funny enough. It's not deep enough. It's not anything enough. Now, when I see a podcast, that's perfect. I mean, that's perfect. I want to look up to God and say, how the hell did you do that?

And why the hell can't I do that? You think Joe Gideon would like this show? No. Those guys, they're speaking to a deeper truth i can't find not enough ladies complaining to the angel of death how's his shider it was pretty good okay right i mean so you did a shider yes yes i think it's more tension was you know these are quick impressions i don't practice the impressions you just saw the process of me scrambling for a quote last second great and i usually try to pick one thing.

And I feel like the Scheider thing is he's always very, he's tightly wound. I mean, the only Scheider movie we've ever covered before is Last Embrace. Oh, yeah? The Demi movie. The Demi Hitchcock riff. Yeah. But I think I said in that episode, I feel like Scheider just has such, like, his skin is so taut. You know, it's funny you say that. I think this movie was delayed because of Last Embrace. Really?

Really. Yeah. Roy Scheider was the guy. He had to audition for like a week. Originally, it was Richard Dreyfuss. Yes. Which, just imagine. I cannot see how that would work.

No disrespect. Neither could anyone from the moment they committed to it. And that's why it didn't happen. But that movie would have been insufferable. Right. He can play a prickly, difficult person, but not like this. I mean, the Scheider casting is so bizarre. And you hear all the stories about like what it was.

What's his name? Sammy Cohen. Right. The agent who like pushed so hard of like, I think Scheider's your guy. And Scheider so badly wanted to not play a cop. Right. And so he could do anything else right and they like did the meeting and they were like well he can't really sing or dance but you're

right he's the guy yeah it was if you come to my house every week yeah right and we just go through every line of the script um and uh but yeah but demi's he was committed to last embrace yes and so they had to wait till he was finished with that so that's funny that's the other one it's not have you seen last embrace i have not it's not great it's not terrible very fine it has a early demi yeah yes very early demi it's kind of his first vaguely real movie like the the prior ones are all like uh what roger corman movies right but it's also the last one where it feels like he's approaching things from a corman standpoint of like what genre does this have to slot in right it's like the next movie on it's like like, what's my personality?

And it has a Niagara Falls finale. That's its big thing. Like there's someone falling down the Niagara Falls or whatever. You know that thing where movies used to have one expensive sequence

and it was the poster and the entire marketing campaign and they were like, we promise you in the last five minutes. Why is little orphan Annie hanging off a bridge? That wasn't in the show.

You're going to see one good thing. Annie hanging off the bridge is one of the, because they clearly, they should have done the Statue of Liberty and they were like, ah, we can't, everything's been,

ah, we'll just do a bridge. Like a suspension bridge. Exactly. Like why isn't it a locate, like a New York place? Which there are none in New York. I have the Mad Magazine spoofing Annie. It's my mom's or whatever.

The humblebred. And they really rip it for the bridge. They really like, they have like three or four jokes about the bridge. Were you a Mad Magazine kid? You feel like you were. I remember my first time walking away from my home unsupervised was to go buy a Mad Magazine. It was Super Mario was on the cover. Okay.

It was $1.35. Cheap. Pretty35. Cheap. Pretty cool. Cheap. You came in today wearing a Nintendo hat as well, let's say. You had a Nintendo hat on, and you have an All That Jazz shirt. A Fosse shirt. A more smokey.

I do. This was our wrap gift for Fosse Burton. It's the Fosse Burton crew shirt, but the more smoke, please. That rolls. Here's a question for you two. I discovered special delivery. And a bagel came in. A bagel, I gotta say for the listener, the door opened and a hand

a disembodied hand. It was actually very bossy. Just offered a bagel on a plate. An isolated hand, a bent wrist, put my bagel into the room. You could almost hear the snapping under the timing of the bagel. For anyone who's ever criticized me

and said, this guy can't believe he eats bagels on mic. Yeah, well. I want to say, today we have a Tony Award winner. We have a Pulitzer Prize winner. Sure. Grammy, Emmy.

I mean, don't put him on the spot. He doesn't want to talk about his award. No, I'm not. Slowly unwrap my bagel. I just want to say, he's about to eat a talk about his award. No, I'm not. Slowly unwrap my bagel. I just want to say, he's about to eat a bagel on mic. Yeah, despite all that. You don't have to eat

directly into mic. No, I'm going to try to be as discreet as possible. Absolutely. But this is vindication for me. That's all I'm saying. You're doing great. I'm here to

absolve you of your sins. We've been building to this moment. Did you guys have the experience that I felt like I had as a kid when you discover

Mad Magazine you're like I fucking love the energy of this I love the this is so funny this is my sense of humor I didn't know

you could do this and then the first time they parody something you like oh you're like wounded by it how dare you you're like come on

right because their attitude was that every movie sucks right like every movie's stupid I discovered Mad Magazine through my

it was my mom's collection it was like a big box of them and there was one that made fun of Return of the Jedi Like every movie is stupid. I discovered Mad Magazine through my mom. It was my mom's collection. It was like a big box of them. Yeah. And there was one that made fun of Return of the Jedi. Yeah. And it just, you know, has so, it really, really is nasty to it. These things were created to sell teddy bears.

Exactly. They went for all the other. And some of the points, as like a seven-year-old, I was like, I guess I can see that. And it was a little loss of innocence moment for me. Like, oh, right, this is like a corporate product. Sure. Okay. I remember reading the ones that came out on the newsstand and then going to, I think it was my godparents' house. And they had a stash of old ones.

Which are better. And I remember seeing Apocalypse Now was a crock of shit now. And being like, oh my God. How did that movie make any money after that? You what? I mean, you know, we just watched Lenny and recorded that yesterday. The movie that comes right before this. I just, I love the idea of doing an incredibly serious Mad Magazine biopic.

That's them getting arrested. Right. It's like all black and like spotlights and they're smoking and the smoke is rising like i don't know a crapalypse now no that makes no sense no crock of shit yeah you get um you get like uh timothy chalamet's dick de bartolo someone's like what if spy versus spy versus spy? Remember when there would be the third spy? Yeah. Occasionally?

The lady spy? Oh, the woman in gray. She would always get him. The woman in gray. She always got him. You were always excited when you got one of those. I was always. Dale Day-Lewis just pops in at the end like,

Jeff, he's late with the fold in again. That would be incredible. He's just like this tortured artist. Fuck it. Dale Day-Lewis retired, right? Ben's good friend, Danny Day, retired. You call him up and you go, Dan, look, I know you're out of the game,

but William C. Gaines. It's time. Address me as William. Right. Fucking, what do you have? Liam Schreiber as Don Martin. I'm trying to think of all the most intense growling actors. It's like Spotlight,

but the same cast as Spotlight. Spotlight, exactly. So Matt's just done. This is the lighter side of dentistry. Mad does, I think they do like four issues a year that are mostly reprintings, and they'll do like one or two new pieces. Yeah.

I just remember that Return of the Jedi joke when Leia's freeing Han from Carbonite. You know, Leia says like, how could you have been in Carbonite? You did Raiders of the Lost Ark and Blade Runner in between this and Empire Strikes Back. And as a kid, a kid i was like damn that's a good run by ford like i think that was my that was my reaction to that joke like god that's what he squeezed in in between yeah anyway anyway uh listen wait did you introduce our guests not yet i'm waiting

all right i'm so sorry or our podcast you're doing everything yeah you're doing fine uh this is a podcast thank you called blank check with griffin and correct. Yeah, you're doing fine. This is a podcast. Thank you. Called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they

want. And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce. Baby. It's a miniseries on the films of Bob Fosse. It's called Pod That Jazz Cast. That's right. This movie was a hit, right? I mean, a mild hit. It was a miniseries on the films of Bob Fosse. It's called Pod That Jazz Cast. That's right. This movie was a hit, right? I mean, a mild hit.

It was a hit, yeah. Which is crazy to consider. Yeah. It is crazy to consider this is like a box office success. Yeah. You watch this movie and it's so brilliant, but you also think, well, this must have been the one that people were just like, I can't handle this. And even as you're watching it, you're thinking, does anyone who hasn't seen Lenny or read a biography about Fosse understand what the fuck's going on? It's so personal.

It's like he must have just been so culturally omnipresent at that point where even if he didn't know fucking everything, you had enough of a sense of who the guy was making this movie that you understood what he was riffing on. But it is, yeah, it's bizarre. It's bizarre it's bizarre uh it's it's one of quietly one of the blank checkiest movies ever made it's not the biggest check ever written it is the biggest check ever written you think so like like just just in terms of creatively like there are bigger financial checks but in terms of going into a studio and being like i want to make a musical about my death and how much i suck about the heart attack i just had essentially yeah right and also the insane thing with this movie where the budget runs over I want to make a musical about my death and how much I suck. About the heart attack I just had, essentially. Yeah.

Right. And also the insane thing with this movie where the budget runs over and another studio comes on and it's like, God damn it. Fine. Fuck it. What are we going to do? All of it. It's two blank checks. It's two blank checks, really.

Yeah. Sort of overlapping checks. And didn't he in the process also like renegotiate to get the rights back to the movie or something crazy? I don't know. Look, today we're talking about all that jazz. Now I want to say, and I'm not going to harp on it. the movie or something crazy i don't know look today we're talking about all that jazz now i want to say and i'm not going to harp on it when we emailed you about doing this episode

and our guest today by the way because this is a movie podcast i don't know if you know this i'm going to list a couple movie credits wrote the songs for moana film we love card on this podcast that's true and kanto little little little movie with a couple songs that stuck around in the public consciousness. Director of Tick, Tick, Boom. And this isn't a theater podcast, but I did see on your Wikipedia that you created, wrote, and starred in a play called Hamilton.

A few other shows. That was a thing I did notice. Lin-Manuel Miranda is inexplicably on the podcast. Long time fan. First time caller. Bizarre. Bizarre. Bizarre. Bizarre. And dare I say it, dumb. Dumb. Dumb. One of the least impressive things about you. bizarre bizarre bizarre bizarre and dare I say it dumb dumb dumb

one of one of the least impressive things about you is being on this show absolutely absolutely dragging you down

thank you for wasting a little bit of your cachet and time and time absolutely what was the thing I was going to say

okay so we you were complaining with the miniseries thank you thank you we emailed you of course he has to do this right and in the subject I was going to say? Okay, so we email you. You were complaining about the miniseries title. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Of course he has to do this, right? And in the subject, I have to do it.

I have to do it. Just do it quickly. In the subject heading, I say, pod that jazz cast, parentheses, working title. And then we start the thread with your assistance. You're one of the busiest people in the world to figure out a time to do this, right? When it comes time to start recording these episodes,

I go, I want to call it pod that cast. Yeah, he wanted to do this right when it comes time to start recording these episodes i go i want to call it pod that cast yeah he wanted to do that with the z's right he was overruled and the argument was you already put it in the email oh you he did i agree it's not i think pod that jazz private email to me is not binding for what you face the world with. We can disagree with pod that cast on creative grounds. It feels vaguely medicinal to me. I think of NyQuil. I think that's a good call.

Also, if you take... Cast may cause intestinal distress. It just makes it sleepier than it is. If you take the spaces out between the words pod that cast, it sounds like it's some psychotropic medication. As we've also discussed, you can't sell it on mic to the extent that people definitely know. Listen, there's something about...

When you say it, I hear crickets. Podacast. You just hear a microphone going... Those aren't crickets, those are snaps. Those are jazz. Podacast. It's pod that jazz cast. It's pod that jazz cast. We're talking all that jazz.

It's the notes the title isn't playing. Thank you. It's a real, it's a Damon Wayans miniseries title. It's a jazz title. It's a jazz set. It's a jazz set. I think this is his best movie. I think it's one of the better movies we've covered on the podcast.

I agree. I agree. Linny, do you think this is Bob Fosse's best think it's one of the better movies we've covered on the podcast. I agree. I agree. Linna, do you think this is Bob Fosse's best movie over Cabaret? I don't know. I think this and Cabaret are... It's difficult because Cabaret is such a total package entertainment, you know, like a game-changing piece. Like, it's so... Whereas this, as we said, is so personal and it's hard to just, like, recommend to someone.

It is. Like, I'm not just going to tell any random friend, like, oh, throw on all that. I think if you say to a friend, I think you'd really like this, your friend, whether they love it or hate it, might be like, why do you think of me? Why do you put this upon me? Especially the way it ends.

What about this said me? And I don't know how to feel about that. Maybe you're trying to quit smoking. But then this also is kind of a pro-smoking movie somehow too because he looks so damn good smoking. Any Bob Fosse movie

is kind of pro-smoking. Yeah. But man, as someone who's currently trying to quit, this really hit for me. Did you fake smoke when you did Fosse-Verdon

or in general? No, it didn't require because the only scene... Oh, actually, wait a minute. You do the final number. I do the final number, but then I also did the dances with the daughter. Right. Oh, right, wait a minute. You do the final number. I do the final number, but then I also did the dances with the daughter. Right.

Oh, right. Right. Which was, no, I don't think I'm smoking that either. He doesn't have a dangler. No ash on his daughter's head while he's putting her into a pot beret. But for me, Cabaret gets the slight edge only because it also has like an all-time great Candor and Eb score on top of it. Sure.

Whereas this is like, what are the songs I can get that tell my story? Yeah. I don't think there's any songs in this that are really transcendent. Although there are sequences that are really transcendent. The numbers are, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, that's true. But it doesn't have, you know.

I mean, I listen to Bye Bye Life a lot. Yeah. I do. Like, as a standalone, obviously as a sequence, it's like bravura shit. Oh, absolutely. But his best movie, yeah, it's obviously, I feel like it comes down to Cabaret or this. And this, I give the edge just, we were talking about Fury Road right before this. But that thing where you're just like, I can't believe this fucking exists.

Absolutely. It gets the bump of like, I can't believe this fucking exists. Absolutely. It gets the bump of like, I can't believe it exists and it's good. At best, you think it exists and you watch it and you're like,

it's a curio, it's interesting they tried to do this, but it's not very fun. You know? This movie, it was, yeah, was successful,

respected the time, has aged well. When did you first see it? Like, what's your Fosse journey? Way too young. I'm someone who... 35 is a little young to see this movie, honestly, I'll say.

I had to have been a teenager, and I think a lot of it went over my head. But I have a crowd-pleaser dad and an art house mom. Like, every weekend with my dad was a Seagal movie, a musical, or like a Van Damme movie, and like billiards. That's what we did. And then, like, my mom,, I think showed me Last Tango in Paris when I was like 10. And like, I definitely do the right thing when I like all of that stuff before I was a teenager. And so I think I was probably around 12, 13. And a lot of it just went over my head. Had you seen like Cabaret at that point? Or you'd seen other Fosse stuff?

Probably. I'd probably seen Cabaret. Right. Yeah. I feel like I've heard you talk about there being a lot of like original cast recordings in the home that you would listen to shows on record. and Julie Andrews and Debbie Reynolds were like the altars my dad worships at. I don't know what it is. I think he just loves a bootstrap narrative. Like he was a little kid in Puerto Rico and was like, I'm getting out of here.

So like his favorite movie is The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which is not a good movie. It's watchable. It's absolutely watchable because of her. There's a 50-minute stretch where there's no songs in it. And it's like not short. But the sequences in it are songs in it because it's barely a musical. But the sequences in it are really good. But it was like required viewing. Is he like a militant Star Wars fan

when he's watching Titanic? He's like, that's not my Molly Brown. Molly Brown wasn't like that. Yeah. Oh, that's the first thing he said walking up to Titanic. He was like, that wasn't Debbie Reynolds. Yeah, that's true.

It's not Debbie Reynolds. Yeah, but I definitely saw this when I was too young to get it and then kind of you you re-watch it and you go oh my god but you know you talk about his cultural footprint like this is a guy who won a tony uh an emmy and an oscar in the same year and all four different projects this is not the like for directing every time too not not there's no jokey like award there yeah yeah yeah it's it's cabaret liza with a z and uh right because i think tony for yeah pippin pippin and then he additionally gets choreography tony and emmy for liza like he he wins all three for directing and two choreographies on top of that yeah yeah no it's it's it's pretty wild but yeah

i don't know how you we were talking about dreyfus in the beginning and when dreyfus didn't work out or they just both were like this is not gonna work um he said i'll play it and he said to a screenwriter you must support me in this and screenwriter did and the producer was like there is no fucking way you can write a movie direct in it produce it start and star in your condition it was a non-starter i'll say it was one of my favorite scenes in fossy verdon is in that sequence where you playing scheider playing joe gideon say like bob you should do it like try the number because i do feel like it's such a running thread that like Bob Fosse was defined by the fact that he

so badly wanted to be a movie star. Yeah, he wanted to be first air. Right. And it feels like we keep on hearing these stories where he's like, God, our hands are tied. I guess I have to play the MC. And everyone's like, no, you don't. There's a good guy. We got him. He kept on sort of trying to accidentally

rig it where people would be like, I guess there's only. And you look through the list and all the people they were sort of considering for this were just like all the biggest leading men of the 70s. You know, like Dreyfuss makes sense as the most sort of neurotic leading man of that period. Had he just won an Oscar? Yeah. Is that why he's maybe. Right. You see the crazy names of like, is it Hackman? Is it this? They apparently offer it to Beatty and Beatty said, I'll do it if he's maybe... Right, okay. But you see the crazy names of, like, is it Hackman?

Is it this? They apparently offer it to Beatty, and Beatty said, I'll do it if he doesn't die at the end. And he's like, that's the movie. What are you talking about? He gets the girls. But, like, all of those other guys,

you go, like, that wouldn't have worked. You almost feel like, who could have actually played this part? And Scheider on paper seems like it wouldn't make sense. But there's something so fucking magical wouldn't make sense. Absolutely. But there's something so fucking magical about him in this. Yeah.

There is. I love him in this movie so much. I watched this again last night with commentary. And it's, what's his name, Allen Heim, the editor. Okay. And he just kept on saying like, yeah, Scheider couldn't dance. He's got a terrible sense of rhythm. Bob worked with him every day, but he just, he innately doesn't have rhythm and just every time especially in the final number he was like i mean if you're

really i cut around it but if you're looking at it he's so fucking off he just kept an underlining like roy really can't pull this off wow but you like you that's funny you might he sells it on confidence and charm you know dreyfus i don't know if you remember this one but like he was supposed to be in the producers on the West End years ago. I guess when it was launching on the West End. And he dropped out at the last minute. It was a very shocking thing. I think Nathan Lane actually was spirited over.

Was it Jason Alexander and him? Fuck, I have to look it up now. He dropped out like a week before. It's funny. And I think he couldn't do the dancing. Right. And it was like a last minute thing of like, this actually isn like a week before. It's funny how, it's like, he's, and I think it was, he couldn't do the dancing. Right. And it was like a last minute thing of like, this actually isn't going to work. It sounds like that's also what this came down to here, where they were just like, this is never going to be solved.

Yeah. Four days. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, like, it's, it's really weird. Yeah. They brought in Nathan Lane. It was him and Lee Evans.

Yes. Lee Evans. Okay. Who was like a Lee Evans? Yes, Lee Evans. Okay, okay. Who was like a British comedian guy. But anyway, like it's just funny that the book ends with that. Like Dreyfuss, they worked with him. They were, I mean, the thing I have, it's from the Wasson book in my notes, is just like immediately you could smell disaster is how they put it.

Yeah, right. When Dreyfuss is like running the steps with him. And also, you know, notoriously a prickly guy like I think Fosse doesn't need someone else who is a neurotic mess over obsessing over everything there's something about Scheider just probably being something of a pro and also really really being eager to show something different right but it's fascinating that like as much as I feel like this becomes his best performance, you know, maybe not his most iconic because of Jaws and everything. Sure. This becomes, like, his high watermark as an actor.

He doesn't really get to do anything like this ever again. He pretty much just goes back to, like, he does this movie, he gets the Oscar nomination, everyone applauds him, and he's like, okay, I'll pick up the badge and the gun again. Yeah. And he does another 15 years of it. There's something to be said for when you're doing a musical, getting an actor who isn't really known for musical. I just went through it with Andrew on Tick, Tick, Boom. And, but they have to have some kind of innate musicality for it to work.

Like Andrew was a fine singer who got told when he was like six, you're a bad singer. So he just never pursued it. Okay. But when we were going through singing lessons and all of the sort of prep for him, he was great. He was there.

He made sense there. It was just like rusty water in a faucet and then the clear water came out very quickly. Sure. Because I remember that being the beat on it. It was like, well, Andrew Garfield, like that's very demanding. He's not going to be able to sing.

And then like two minutes into the movie, you're like, well, this is fine. Like, I don't know what anyone was worried about. Did he do his own piano playing? What I said to him was, I need to be able to pan from your fingers to your face like three times at the beginning so we can sell that you're playing piano. And then don't worry about it after that. So he needed to learn the opening riff of 3090, the opening riff of Why, the song he sings at the Delacorte. And I forget like one other song.

But I just said, worry about these three little pieces. So the rest of the time is he just like... Because that's what I would say. Yeah, but you know what? He also would watch our rehearsal pianist. And that's something I'm such a... I hate when you see bands in movies and they're just doing something that has nothing to do

with what you're hearing. So I'm the stickler for that. It's like that and empty coffee cups being carried around like a wait list are like the two bugaboos I have. And there's one of those in In the Heights. It drives me fucking crazy. The coffee cup? Yeah, there's one coffee cup where I was like, I wasn't on set. Because there's so much deli stuff.

There's so much bodega material. When you're handing over your cups, I feel like they have proper weight in them. Your actual performance in the movie. You clearly had control over that. Yeah, but I would always check in with, because Andrew is such an incredible actor. The only notes I would give him in some of those sequences was like, look down occasionally to make sure.

Sure, technical adjustment. Yeah, literally like, look down at your keys, make sure you're doing a key change you're gonna look down at the piano I feel like the thing I mean this is an unfair stereotype

but this is the thing everyone's like all the Brits can sing a little and dance a little right like they've all got a little bit of that right

you sort of have to do the foundation of a little bit of everything right yeah I don't know maybe not with Andrew though cause like

I don't know did Andrew do like Rada or one of those things like was he one of them yeah he went to drama school and someone told him

you can't like right must have you know 100 like don't bother him to have come this far and never even like done a school play where he had to sing that is surprising very weird yeah yeah you would think right i just i remember it's it's the one that like stuck in my head of what you're talking about on the behind the scenes of josie and the pussycats the movie they were talking about how proud they were that they did like fucking three months of instrument rehearsal right and uh who was it biff naked i think no am i wrong who's the band who wrote the i mean it's obviously the fountains of wayne schlesinger but then uh i forgot who the band is that uh did the the songs songs and did the singing voice. But they did like three months of

instrument rehearsal and there's behind the scenes footage of them going like, look, see, we can play it ourselves. And they play it and it sounds fucking terrible. But they actually knew what they were playing so when they dub it over with the professional playing, it looks correct. Right. Which is all you need. That's all you need.

The band that recorded the tracks is the band I have on stage with them too you need that's all you need yeah and i had the band that recorded the tracks is the band i have on stage with him too so like that's all accurate okay you know like i'm just i it drives me crazy when i see someone going like this on a bass and no bass is playing this is a question i have every elvis movie i mean they shot those things in like four days yeah yeah they shot el Elvis movies on lunch breaks during other Elvis movies. I watched Fosse-Verdon fairly recently, which I somehow missed when it came out, despite being like a Fosse fanatic, when we knew we were doing this miniseries. And there's the episode that's focused on that year. Fosse's insane triple crown year.

He's there and Patty's next to him and they're miserable in the limo. Right, he's losing his fucking mind. The year ends with him having a physical and mental breakdown, right? And then his second big sort of hot streak period is the Chicago Lenny same year, which ends with him having the heart attack.

Or it doesn't even end. It's interrupted by the heart attack. So he had these two kind of massive years, not only, but two years where it was like multiple plates spinning, everything working. He's at the center of like high culture in America and he's fucking miserable and he can't handle it. And he's self-destructing and his body is exploding and his brain is collapsing. None of it fixes the hole inside him. Right. Absolutely. Right. And you seem like an infinitely more well

adjusted man who does not have this romanticism of the the tortured artist kind of thing right yeah absolutely but you are an example of a person who has had that kind of year yeah right more than once but like that very rarely do people get to go to that echelon of just like you become this sort of looming figure of like everything you do is suddenly given new importance. And you have always struck me as a guy who like handles that incredibly well, like has seen excited by the opportunities that come out of it and are able to handle the responsibility of like, you have to occasionally be like a spokesperson for America, you know, like truly people go like, Liam, we need you to help sell the idea that our country isn't collapsing. Yeah, that's getting, that's a tough sale. Right.

That's become, yeah. Do you ever just like stare at a wall and go like, this is fucking exhausting? Or do you just have more energy than most people? No. Well, I i mean there's a couple of things in that question i have to unpack first of all there's like the year right like for me sure the closest thing to that year that i experienced was the hamilton year and what kept me sane was doing the show um sure you can't party like fossy partied and do seven shows a week. And I would die so fast. It would be, I'm not throwing away, and then I would fall into the orchestra pit. And so, you know, that was...

The show, weirdly, was my saving grace. Because the offers and the attention and the internet is coming to the show every night. Like, every night is a different bold-faced name. And that part's really crazy. But the show is really hard to do. It's two and a half hours. And I don't leave the stage. So weirdly, that became like the moment of zen.

And then I think the other thing was like, I was kind of a grown-up by the time that happened. Yes, you're one of those. My son was born two weeks before rehearsal started. Sure. And so I was... That's crazy. How did you do that?

As someone with a young child? Doesn't seem possible. I mean, he was born and I hadn't written the last fucking duel yet. So I was up and I was just responsible for a couple of the night feedings. And I was up writing the ending anyway. And then we, you know, to be honest, like leaned on our... Like my parents took our kid like every night before a two show day. Because if I didn't have a full night of sleep, I didn't have enough voice for two shows.

No, 100%. And so it was like one night a week. Like that kid was just like at my parents' house. It's good for them. They live nearby. And my wife was still working at a law firm. Like it was fucking crazy. But you're like, I mean, you can't say this about yourself, but you strike me as someone who just has exceptionally good time management, focus.

Am I wrong about this? I'm a super procrastinator. How do you handle? The deadline stuff is the stuff in all that jazz that speaks to me the most. Like, I have really stranded casts who are going to sing for an audience of friends. Sure. Wow. of like, can you sight read and tick, tick, boom. I've lived that many times. Look, I'm not trying to equate this accomplishment to Hamilton. I want to make it very clear. I'm not putting this accomplishment on the same level as Hamilton. I don't know what you're about to say.

I can't wait. But I went to a wedding last weekend. I'm stuck. My buddy Andrew Taven, 10 minutes morning, he comes up to me and he's like, would you want to make a speech? And I was like, you didn't ask anyone in advance? And he's like, I forgot. One of the groomsmen should make a speech. And I was like and i took out my phone i jotted stuff down i got a speech got an applause break

you got an applause break that's i got a place and people kept on coming up to me and there was a warm crowd i'm sure although it was a destination wedding so people are a little tired yeah uh and and and people were like how did you write that speech in 10 minutes? And I was like, if I had been given a month's notice, it would have been worse. Well, if you'd been given a month's notice, you would have written it the night before anyway. I mean, that would be my reality. And it also still would have been worse. Yeah, right. Yeah.

The fact that it was like that amount of pressure. I like pulled six threads of knowing this guy for 12 years into one moment. Right. And look, once again, I'm not equating it, but I have heard there is interest in adapting the wedding speech to Broadway. Amazing. It might be in my Hamilton. You're out of town. You start out of town.

Yeah, you maybe, where's a good place to start? Like Toronto or, you know, San Diego? Yeah, yeah. Obviously, like, Fosse is a figure that you clearly are, like, in conversation with in your career. Well, I think that Tom, what's funny, because, Fosse is a figure that you clearly are, like, in conversation with in your career. Well, I think that Tom, it's funny because, you know, I just read the book. Sam Watson is a friend of mine. He went to Wesleyan and I used to play piano for his improv group.

Like, I was like the Richard Franch on piano for their, like, group. And so that's how I knew him. And then when I read the book, I was like, oh, I didn't know you could do this. It's like learning your friend can juggle chains. Like, oh, I didn't know you could write like this. And to me, the innovation is really the epigram of the book, where it's all 60 years left, 45 years left. That's how the chapters are broken down. Which is such a stroke of genius

given who he's talking about and how they saw the world. But I think Tommy was attracted into making that because Tommy is like the anti-Fosse. Like, he's just such a, like, I want to talk to you all until we're all making the same thing.

And I want to, like, you know, he's just, like, very square dealing with people. He's not like a sort of dictator. Because like every story you read about Fosse, you're like, I understand the man was a genius, but how did anyone put up with this day to day? I mean, what a pain in the ass. Yeah, and like, and earnestly, like the movie kind of earnestly puts forth like, yes, I need to fuck you to make you a better dancer. I need to understand your body.

Like that was the, like That was the come on line. And it's like, put up with a bull. And then you watch all that jazz and you're like, oh, this guy completely knows how full of shit and annoying he is. And yet he's also this great artist that I can't really, you know. I think this is a good time to tell you what I brought. Tell me what you brought. Which is that?

You said you brought something. I brought some goodies. Goodies, yes. I called Sam just before, like a week ago, saying I'm going to go beyond blank check and talk about all that jazz.

Anything not in the book that you want me to read. And he said, everything I know, he texted me back, everything I know is in the book. And he goes, oh, but I have the original draft.

I'm going to send that to you. So I have this original draft. Wow. F have the original draft. I'm going to send that to you. So I have this original draft. Wow. Fosse's original draft. I took some screen grabs. It's 146 pages. That's interesting. Right.

Sure. The crazy thing about the draft is he didn't change any of the names in the original draft. So it's just... So that's not John Lithgow's

fictional other director. Yeah. It just says Hal Prince. Right. And was it Joe Gideon? And it says director. It just says Hal Prince. Right. And was it Joe Gideon? And it says Kander and Ebb. Yeah. Right.

In the thing. And there's another story I have to tell you on top of that. But like, and there's all these scenes with Patty and Herb Gardner that didn't make. Oh, wow. All the cut scenes are him talking to his friends and his friends calling him out on his bullshit. Right. But is the thing that accidentally, I think, helps this movie is that the guy is friendless? Yeah, that's right.

But in real life, that was his crew. Yes. It was Herb Gardner, Paddy Chayefsky, and they would all get drinks, and they were the creative club. And so I'm going to read you some of these cut Paddy tunes. You have to sing them. There's Bob smoking with a drink in his hand. He's looking at the Lenny movie.

And he goes, maybe we can get away with it. Herbie says, Bob's afraid if he ever said anything optimistic, God would strike him dead. There's one little bit. That does make sense, yes. Then here's another thing uh

patty such bullshit it won't be bullshit if he drops dead and patty says maybe falsie thinks the only way people will take him seriously is by dying right herbie but do we have to keep reminding him all the time do we have to tell him what a son of a bitch he is do we have to tell him how miserable he behaves to women patty herbie to fossey that's approval again none of the names are changed right yeah to fossey yeah that's approved there is no joe gideon in this draft that's when yeah it's annie yeah it's um it's his daughter you know it's his daughter yeah what's so funny is in that, in that content, uh, the commentary, Allenheim says like when they were cutting,

he'd go like, do you think we should hold on you for this long in the scene? And Fosse would be like, that's not me. That's Joe Gideon. Yeah. Like he was prickly about it. He was like, come on,

just fucking, why are we wasting time? Right. Let's get the short hand. But the fact that even the first draft was like Bob Fosse. A hundred percent Bob Fosse. Here's, here's the one that,

that made me want to bring it up at this point. Herbie. So Gideon Fosse is saying, but I'm despicable, untrustworthy, disloyal, worthless. Herbie, interrupting. Listen to that. He thinks he absolved himself simply by listing

his crimes. Bob, the biggest con of all. Honesty. Patty, which does not deny the truth of the fact that you are despicable untrustworthy disloyal worthless but that's that's right he's like yeah he's like if i say there's the self-awareness call me on it if i say it and i kill myself at the end of the movie because if he like he's like if he's alive at the end of the movie then it you know people are walking out they're like it's almost like well his reign of terror will never end the death it makes it more poetic it's like right of course like this guy was just

a tightrope walk but there is this element to this movie i mean as opposed to like i feel like you certainly see it a lot with comedians right where they like do the work that's like i'm putting myself on the fucking slab i'm exposing my words and all but it feels a little masturbatory still because it's like, I want you to approve of me hating myself. Yeah, and it's comedy. It's honed. Like, they have, you know,

thought exactly about how they're going to talk. And if you laugh at it, it sort of takes the burden off of me of like, I made this entertaining, so now you can't be mad at me. And this movie,

he keeps on showing such a self-awareness for what a piece of shit he is. And then people are like, the fact that you know doesn't excuse it. That doesn't make it cute or charming. I mean... But it does kind of because it's a cool movie and one of my favorite moments

is when they do the uh what is it uh take off uh with me what's the name erotica yes erotica and at the end of the number the the verdon uh stand-in character is crying she's like you fucking asshole it's the best thing you've ever done like people are angry that he continues to do good work because it's like you're gonna fucking be able to justify

your bullshit I mean he starts thinking about this after he has this massive coronary event right like he's doing which is what the movie

is about right he's doing Lenny in Chicago at the same time basically he has this heart attack and then he said like for about a month he behaved himself like no smoking no making passes at the same time, basically. He has this heart attack. And then he said, like, for about a month he behaved himself. Like, no smoking,

no making passes at the nurses. And then after a month, it's like, you know, no. You know, he went right back to that. You live, suddenly you're back to the old thing, smoking, drinking, being dishonest in relationships. So he's, like, aware that, like, I am uncurable. I literally

faced death and it was like you know what am i supposed i saw some anecdote where like the producers the executives would be like bob you we took a physical there's like a life insurance policy on you you have to cut down on the smoking he's like i did cut down five packs a day like that was his concession was like i went from 10 to 5 you should be happy well the doctor the scene with the doctor in the movie like it's like i mean it's really funny but it it's also like a look into just how people looked at health in those days yeah the doctor's got a dangler from his lip and he's like listening to his lungs while coughing like that you're not going to hear anything.

Yes. Gwen Verdon, this is a quote from a different book, but Gwen Verdon said, I think the real reason I was never jealous of other women is I knew his real affair was with death. Yeah. And when death is Jessica Lange. Yeah. Jessica Lange.

Does the whole, I was, I saw, I rewatched this movie with my buddy Alex Horowitz, who's a filmmaker, on Wednesday night. And we were discussing whether the death thing still plays. Is that just Fellini overflow? Is it a little too corny? Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Does that still play for you?

It does because it's kind of funny, which I think the movie knows. I think that's how it gets away with it. It's funny that, I mean, this is right at the start of her career, right?'s only been in king kong before this like she's still like luminous jessica lang where everyone's like what a babe like here's the new faye ray she's just ethereal beauty exactly like we who even knows if she can act she's just so luminous so i like that she's being deployed that way yeah reading the original draft the death scenes

take the place of the cut Patty Herb scenes. So basically, he calls his friends out, and then the conversations where he calls himself out for being a piece of shit, and her being like, Joe, you rascal. He basically replaced his friends with death.

I think, I mean, what a statement. But yeah, I think it works once again because of the ending. Like, all of this would be a little too precious, a little too clever by half, if it wasn't committed to like 40 minutes on the operating table, Death Fantasia ending with... The thing, it truly is the moment that just like moves the film into a different echelon is when Ben Vereen repurposes his introduction speech.

That final number is so incredible, right? It's one of the greatest movie endings ever. It's Sammy Davis in the script, by the way. Really? That's fascinating. Explicitly. Wow. Of course he's in Sweet Charity.

I mean, that's really funny. Yeah, that would be funny. But that thing where it's just this brutal, like, this guy's a piece of shit. He's nobody's friend. Right. You you know it's like at that point i i feel like the movie's kind of earned all of it he literally i mean it's it's felini's cinematographer right uh yeah i want to ask about the script is the um giuseppe rotuno is the name of the cinematographer. Is the TV movie critic in the script, is that a person? Yeah. I wonder who that was.

That must be someone who did that. Yeah, I didn't get a screen grab of that. But yeah, it is probably the real name of the WWOR critic. Exactly, right. Whoever was doing that at the time. It was probably like Pat Carroll or some mean lady. Yeah. I didn't know.

I'm reading the Fossier right now. A researcher has renamed the research dossier the Fossier. Yes. Of course. How many points to JJ? Right. Snaps with wrist curls. I knew that Chicago lost the Tony to a chorus line because a chorus line was like the juggernaut.

Yeah, 100%. tony to a chorus line because the chorus line was like the juggernaut yeah 100 and but i what i did not know i guess is that verdon obviously was playing she was playing roxy hart right yeah but and then she had an injury and liza minnelli subbed in for her right i guess i forgot about this and that actually saved the show apparently like that became right it became like a box office hit yeah and they didn't advertise it it was right because they were trying to be nice. Yeah. They were trying to be nice. And of course, everyone's like, hey, Liza Minnelli is doing a Broadway show right now. Right. But it was also the whole weird conflict of interest with her where it's like, this is the part I want to play forever. But also the larger goal is I want to have a stake in a show that I helped create. Yes. Right.

To be a cushion for my daughter. So it's like, if Liza taking the role keeps the show running and moves into profit and gets it touring, even if she's taking my glory away. And then that being the star of the Cabaret movie. And by the way, that show being so wildly ahead of its time. Yeah, yes. Yes, it's up against Chorus Line,

which was a juggernaut. It was to 1975, what Hamilton was in like 20, like, just like, it was the conversation. But also, like, no one was ready for it. Everyone was like, oh, like, and then. It's too dark. It's too mean. And then when Encores did the City Center revival and it was like in the middle of the OJ trial and I was like, this is actually very quaint compared to what we're seeing like on TV while we're watching a trial on TV every day.

It's also so funny that I feel like if the movie hadn't come out, that revival probably would have closed within like two years. It would have been like, and this was a healthy ass run. And instead it's now the second longest running musical ever.

I think it's only behind Phantom. It outran Chorus Line by a lot. It did. It beat Chorus Line by a lot. It did. It beat Chorus Line. It had the last laugh, yeah. Is it still on? Yes, it's still on. It's never going to close.

Pamela Anderson was just in it. That's every six months another insane person is playing one of the roles. You know, I always wonder about that. Alan Dershowitz is playing Mr. Sullivan? I have a friend who was just Billy Flynn,

so maybe I can answer your question. What are you wondering? Oh, James Monroe. Yeah, James Monroe. No, that's the thing. It's like, I always, whenever I see that there's been some piece of stunt casting, no offense to Pamela Anderson or whoever, whatever, right? You know.

So the line from the dancers is, we have three tracks. We have like, can really do the part. Wow. Right. Yeah. Can sing, but moves. Yeah. Right.

And like, the no fucking idea and they just have like what they do accordingly depending on the three levels that come in right that's just what you know it must be so strange and like the west end i grew up in your pam is in the second category like she can sing it and she can move yeah right like she's professional yeah you will hear those surprising reports where they'll be like, this one's actually good. In the West End, Denise Van Outen, who was a

morning TV host, did it on London. But then she moved to Broadway and I was like, she must have actually been pretty good for that to happen, right? Because she's nobody here. Wait, I'm sorry, just how would you know that? She hosted a show called The Big Breakfast. I used to watch it all the time.

Denise Van Outen. Shout out. Does your family have some incredibly expensive satellite package? Did you have a Sling TV that feels like the technology was... That's what I'm saying. I'm confused. In what way would you have access to... No, I grew up in England, my friend.

Yeah, I grew up in London. That is insane. Some context on this movie yes obviously initially they were trying to adapt this novel ending by hilma wallitzer okay that was actually the initial genesis of it and the option eventually expires and it just turns into bob fossey the the movie right like okay initially it was actually not going it was going to be an adaptation what was the novel it's called ending it's a similar thing it's like a memoir about death like um was it also about a chain-smoking broadway choreographer no i don't think so walter was very confused because walter is like my characters are not fossey-esque at all they're very ordinary middle-class characters

and he brings in Robert Arthur, Robert Alan Arthur, and they start working on it, and then eventually it just turns into all that jazz. It turns into, you know, a Fosse movie. And it moves from Paramount to Columbia. Fred Ebb gives his blessing to

call it all that jazz, I guess, because it's his song that they're naming it after. It's kind of incredible how cynical the use of the title is in this movie, that it's Vereen at the end saying, like, life, love, works, relationship, all that jazz. It's just like your whole fucking stupid life that we're about to end. Since we've just mentioned Fred Ebb, I would like to interject with another section from the original script. Because the songwriting team in the script, it's just Kandor and Ebb. Right, yeah.

So here's the scene with Ebb and Prince when they're eating and they're telling him that, you know, Fosse's had a heart attack. Ebb, marvelous cast. And now we've got to sit around four months, maybe even lose them. I'll have the lunch and steak. Prince to waiter, chef salad for me.

I can see where it would be difficult to hold them together. Ebb to waiter and tea with lemon, then I can see where it would be difficult to hold them together. Ed to waiter. And tea with lemon. Then to Prince. All because he didn't take care of himself. And that goddamn movie! So, wait, there's more. Go on, go on. So, I, uh, I texted this to the

homie, John Kander, who is the nicest man in show business. You are truly the only person who got away with saying that. He's really the first composer I met when he saw heights first. He was sort of the Sondheim to your Tick, Tick, Boom. He truly is. He's in his mid-90s, right?

He's still kicking. Still kicking, still amazing. He's going to have a show very soon. Hell yeah. He has another show. He just has never stopped writing. So I texted him and I wrote, over here reading Bob's original draft of All That Jazz,

an old Bobby just forgot to change anyone's names on the first draft. And I put an eye emoji. And then he texted me back, wow. Even more complicated than it appears, Bob implied to Fred that he was actually writing about Stephen Schwartz. And then he wrote, we are all cowards. Three exclamation points. Wow.

That's from the homie John Kander. So it's after the movie came out, he was like, no, no, no, it's not you. It's not you. Or before when he asked for permission for all that jazz for the title. Yeah. He didn't want to be right. I'm going to make you look so insane and neurotic. Right.

That's funny. I mean, Chicago only opens... So he had some decorum or whatever, some sense of shape. The guy was obviously, you know, good at getting what he wanted out of people. Right. It's just so many of the stories you feel like he badgers, he's such a force of personality. Yes. Like that's how he achieves these things.

To go back a little to the Jessica Lange thing, do you guys know the famous anecdote about like, so you have to talk about extensively across this miniseries how much Bob Fosse loves having sex with anyone isn't his wife. Sure, anyone nearby. Any pretty young woman. To get a sense of how they move, of course. Well, absolutely.

Oh, my God. And there's, the story I remember hearing is that, you know, he was just like, I haven't gone through to laying yet. You know, I can't, I can't crack her. Jesus Christ. You know, what's the thing? And he says to his friends at some point, he's like, I have to pull out the big move. And they're like, what's the big move, Bob? And he's like, I really try to save it for if the woman's really, you know, resistant to my charms.

But if I dance for a woman, then it's game over. Right. I'm going to dance for her. I'm going to put on a performance. So they're like doing a rehearsal session or whatever. Right. Probably in his fucking apartment like a creep. And then he's like, know okay jessica could

i do a little dance for you and he does his soft shoe and he's like waiting for her to melt and she's like oh wow yeah that's good no my boyfriend was talking to me about and she he realizes oh she's dating mikhail baryshnikov i just did this for the one person right not that impressed by dancing yes right impressed that fucking meaningless it's absolutely right she was in the middle of a long relationship with him that is really amazing

just not even clocking it she's like good form you know he does this thing the greatest dancer ever a perfect physical specimen he's not fucking like hacking blood all over the floor. Exactly,

he didn't just have a coronary. Right. A horrible reputation with all women he's ever met. Right. I still remember

being like, he's off Broadway right now, right? What's he doing? He's doing some like a Chekhov thing. Yeah,

it's like a riff on, I think it's a riff on The Seagull. It's The Seagull, I think you're right. That's another one of those guys that like when he chooses to act just on a lark, you're like, you're fucking this good at this too? I know, it's infuriating.

So as we mentioned, Warren Beatty, Nicholson, who apparently took Fosse to a Lakers game but couldn't dance. Double check that, that must be wrong. Jack Nicholson conducted business at a Lakers game Dustin Hoffman Who essentially said I will never work with Bob Fosse Again after Lenny He's named as the comedian in the script too It's just Dustin

Just Dustin It's funny because he actually cast the guy Who played the role on stage That was his Keith Carradine Who kind of cuts a similar physical figure. I get that.

Yeah. He's done some, yeah. Yeah. Like you can see that and obviously he can sing a little and all that. Yeah.

And then it goes to Richard Dreyfuss that becomes a disaster. Right. So they fire him. But outside of Keith Carradine, they're essentially just going to the seven

biggest leading men of that generation. As Dreyfuss put it, quote, I can't get up there with my big Jewish ass and try to be a dancer. To be fair, Ricky, he has a slender frame. I don't think his ass is that big. I don't know.

He's kind of stocky in his way, Richard Dreyfuss. Now I'm trying to picture Mr. Holland in that outfit in Bye Bye Love. And it's joyous. Lynn, what do you think of the opus at the end of Mr. Holland's opus? David has talked about this a lot. I don't. Look. I just like the opus at the end of Mr. Holland's opus? David has talked about this a lot. I don't look. I just like the opus sucks. It always bugs me. You've gotten this long movie, but you've been jumping around, right?

You're not listening all the way through. I think that this is maybe the sixth time David has brought up how bad he thinks the opus is. Yeah, but then Joanna Gleason walks in. No, all that's great. You're just like, yeah, like it's just the opus itself is a piece of work if we were to judge Mr. Holland's life

it's got like guitars and then a brass yeah because he taught through so many eras man he did it's like this sort of Copland thing he's doing

I don't know anyway it's just always funny where they're like because that movie's like two hours and 20 minutes long it's not short it's not bad

like finally his opus and he just absolutely stinks up the joint. I think they thread it. They thread the themes of it enough throughout the film that I bought it. You buy the opus. That's fine. I'm not bumping it in the car. But, like, you're at a record store.

You find, oh, what is this 7-ish? I'll take it home. I'll put it on. Divorced from context of the movie, would you be like, good work, look at label Mr. of the movie would you be like good work look at label mr holland or would you be like you know if it's like some random find right you want to hear something wild this was this guy's life work taught for decades give this thing a listen nally portman puts the headphones on you this will change your life are you like okay so scheider gets on board try to get us back on track as you say he

was going to his house every night right he's like he's holding bob fossy's hair back while he's coughing into the toilet right he's smoking cigarettes at the same you know he's trying to just be like be as as committed as possible to it he's really good in the movie. He's incredible. I mean, he's... Bob Fosse's whole thing, as we were saying, is that he so badly wanted to be Fred Astaire.

And every time he tried to put himself in the spotlight, people were like, there's something about you that's not very charming. There's something a little creepy about you.

Sure. Right? And he didn't have, like, the lithe form or whatever. No. Astaire or whatever. No. And there's something a little creepy about you sure right and he didn't have like the lithe form or whatever no stare no and there's so there's this this weird conundrum with this movie where it's like you need to cast a movie star to play the bob fossey stand-in but part of this character is he has a certain charisma that is able to help him in his career but can't translate into him being a very captivating performer.

Right, he's not actually going to be. And sort of the fun of that also is that his style, which we now, I mean, it is its own genre of dance. Like you can say, and Fosse, Fosse, Fosse, is the anti-Estere. Like it's like, okay, if Fred is elegant, I am pinched. If he's loose,

I'm tight. Like, it's these isolations. It's literally the inverse of everything he wanted. Like, he just was like, well, this is what only I can do. Right. And Scheider does have that pinched quality. Like, even though he's more seductive than Fosse ever

played on camera, and he has movie star charisma that he's like committing to this piece of shit guy. Right. There's still the thing where it's like, I understand why he's not a star. Yeah. Let me read you this quote he has about Jessica Lange's character just to close that off. When he thinks something's about to happen to you, and this is from Fosse. When he thinks something's about to happen to you in a car or an airplane coming close to the end this is the flash I get a woman dressed in an outfit like

a nun's habit a whole hallucinatory thing it's like the final fuck that's how Bob Fosse puts it so it is person it's not just a Fellini ripoff to him he's like no no what I what's gonna flash before my eyes comes right on us exactly yeah Shirley Macaine, of course, declined to play Gwen Verdon in this movie, which would have been weird. And kind of insulting. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Because it's like, she already beat you out for Sweet Charity, and now she's going to play you. But then the decision to have Anne Rankin play herself is bananas. He made her audition for it. Yeah. He wanted Sidney Lumet to play Paddy Chayefsky.

And then when that got eliminated, he wanted Lumet to play the Hal Prince, the role that Lithgow eventually plays. I wish Lumet had had a little Sidney Pollack run later in his career as a character. Where he's just showing up as an actor. I know, it's such a good idea. And he was like a really good child actor. And then it may surprise you to hear this this but the production of this film was unpleasant and complicated and filled with drama uh right uh and fossey kept improvising on set and no one knew what they were even doing you know every day um one of the producers was basically tasked with at a certain point

just having to go up to bob and be like last shot enough we're going after this like you know we need people need a break and the infamous thing here is they have already gone over budget over schedule and they haven't shot any of the final number and they're like too bad you can't you can't do it right and he's like this is the whole fucking movie right and so they cut together what they do have and they screen it for fox because it was set up at columbia at the time columbia yeah and they were just like we have god jesus christ we can't not make this uh like those things where everyone was like the out of control vanity project and then they show it and they're like this is good yeah this fucking works and he gets a second studio to sign on and take over the movie it was budgeted at six they do that at nine million yeah and then and that's when alan ladd who like is the you know weirdo king of fox in the late 70s the guy who greenlights

star wars he's the guy who all looks so green that's like green lights like three women right my favorite your favorite story right yeah so in movie, when they're talking about going over time and over budget, they also are going over time and over budget. That's crazy. Correct. It's like meta on a whole other level. And then editing took it a year.

Just like how this movie is basically about a guy trying to edit a movie and being like, I don't know, this is shit. The real mindfuck is when you watch Fosse-Verdon and you're like watching a dramatization of the guy making the movie

about the problems. Yeah, it got... And then there's someone is like, you know, like you're like five levels in. Yeah.

It is funny because one of my favorite aspects of the show is like making Paddy Chayefsky the best friend in a romantic comedy.

The like Dave Chappelle in You've Got Mail being like, you fucked it up, man. But now I realize like, oh, it's kind of using the device from like obviously

he played that role in his life it actually is all that chat scene in a weird way that's so funny and then the thing with this movie is

everything you read about it is a nightmare and then it comes out and it's a hit it was one of the top 10 20 movies of the year 9 Oscar nominations it was nominated

for a bunch of Oscars Stanley Kubrick called it the best film he had ever seen I know to have. Wins the fucking Palme d'Or. Stanley Kubrick called it the best film he had ever seen. I know. To have that line in the movie where he's like, do you think Kubrick

ever has days like this? And Kubrick watches the movie and he's like, you've bested me. Can you just picture him in his, I picture the Shining Hotel in London.

That's where he lived. Right, exactly. Just being like, ah, you said my name. 10 out of 10. Hey, that was me.

Spielberg, of course, is good friends with Scheider sure they worked on jaws together uh scheider showed him the movie and spielberg was like he's gonna release it with this ending because you know think about like baby spielberg being like shocked right of like whoa imagine if it were the close encounters guy yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's so funny. He was like, if you didn't want Dreyfuss, that guy moves. And it got great reviews. See what that guy can do with a plate of mashed potatoes?

Put that big Jewish ass up on that screen. It won four Oscars. Yeah. You know, design Oscars, but still. It wins editing. It wins score.

Score. Sorry, editing, song, and art direction and production design. Okay. Costume design. Yeah yeah and it won the palm door yeah one of those classic like they just had been in theaters for five months they put it in the camp film festival and it wins the palm door you know another thing i i had failed to put

together until watching this last night but like fossi was in this weird direct competition with coppola where it's like godfather one cabaret same year yes and lenny's the same year as godfather two it's song original song score that's that thank you sorry lenny's the same year as godfather 2 and conversation and then this is the same year as apocalypse now right uh yeah 1979 yeah and and that story you threw out in the lenny episode of him being paranoid about seeing a fat guy on set with a beard and glasses and being like, fucking Coppola. Like, for him, it was like, that's... That is a story from the Lenny set.

He's like, are you trying to replace me? Is this Coppola? But he was like, that's the guy. No one thrives more on, like, having a competition than having... Yeah. Like, the entire opening sequence of this movie is like, I just did a chorus line in four minutes. Yeah. Fuck you. You're totally right.

That's like, the chip on his shoulder is so massive, even though it's like, you've had every success. Right, every success. How can you not be satisfied? Yeah, he's broken. He's broken.

And he and Coldplay have like, both won their Oscars at this point. He's like, I haven't gotten fucking Best Picture. Yeah, and he never does, I guess. This is the Kramer vs. Kramer year? This is the Kramer vs. Kramer year, which was a guaranteed

Best Picture winner. That was like, you know, it was the know, it was the biggest hit of the year. It was the Avengers Endgame of its kind. This divorce movie was like the colossal blockbuster. That's the first movie my parents took me to see. I was six weeks old. Really? You were six weeks old?

I was six weeks old. They were just like, we don't have a sitter. You're coming to watch Kramer vs. Kramer. It looks like a weird date night. But hey, America was rolling out. It's like, we don't have a sitter. You're coming to watch Gramer vs. Curve. It looks like... That's a weird date night. Yeah. But hey, America was rolling out. That's the thing.

The amount of money that movie made, it must have played in every context. Like, that's a date night. That's like kids seeing a fucking matinee after school.

Like, everyone went to see that fucking thing. Anyway. And like, a fine movie, but kind of an uninteresting winner in a year with like these sort of landmark films or maverick filmmakers it's a fair point the other nominees that year are apocalypse now all that jazz breaking away which is a great movie great movie yeah and norma which rules so it's sort of a mix of like smaller drama stuff

with, you know, and then Apocalypse Now and all that jazz with these like auteurist masterpieces that are like big and complicated. Right, right.

The heart attack movies. Yeah. And then, yeah, you know, Hoffman wins, Hoffman and Sally Field are the, and Meryl Streep

for Kramer vs. Kramer. Who wins supporting actor? Melvin Douglas for Being There, which is kind of a, you know, grand old man win. No and being he's fun yeah i mean i love that movie but it's it's a grand old man win i love that term the grand old man bring him up bring him because like the actor nominees it's hoffman jack lemon for the china syndrome right al pacino for injustice for all that's this whole yeah it is out of order uh roy scheider and peter sellers for being there Al Pacino for Injustice for All Roy Scheider

and Peter Sellers for Being There it's a very robust whole generation of guys they essentially make Hoffman wait a decade into a landmark career before they give him it Pacino wait 20 years De Niro gets it fairly quickly

De Niro got it young Deval they make wait 15 years. Like all these guys, it was like, you had to get through your grand old man, your Art Carney's,

your what have you's. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good Oscar year. It's a good Oscar year for movies. I don't know. Can I,

there is an argument for me that Ben Vereen is snubbed for this movie. Ben Vereen's incredible. He's incredible. And it's like the MC performance where you're like,

how can a guy who just does a musical number and a little bit of crowd work? I like that section in Bye Bye Love where they just go to him and he has that one isolated scene. And it's better than maybe anything. And it's an uninterrupted take of him dancing. It's just some of the most incredible performance of any kind I've ever seen captured on film.

And because he's so montage-y, every time they cut back to him, he's doing some new thing. You're just like, where are these fucking moves coming from? And his energy is so bizarre because you've put him

in this context of like, oh, here's this insincere, glad-handing, like Hollywood bullshit phony. And then when he comes back in this final stretch, you're like, he kind of feels like Satan now.

Right. Or at least some sort of like guardian of the threshold right like some kind of yeah he's part of the same vibe of that jessica lang is part of it's like unearthly that's a that's a seven minute oscar nomination no he's incredible and you can bump the kid from kramer versus kramer get him out of there or mickey rooney for The Black Stallion, one of those weird kind of like, oh, you know. Who was the fifth? The other nominees are Robert Duvall for Apocalypse Now, who is a pretty good performance. And Frederick Forrest for The Road.

Also not that much screen time. No, but I mean, Duvall in Apocalypse Now. No, no, no, I'm not arguing. It's ridiculous. I'm just saying, in terms of screen time, it's about commensurate with Penn, isn't it? That's a fair point. Duvall's probably in 10 minutes. The difference is his dialogue. He smells the napalm and he keeps it moving.

It's really good. Goes that, three scenes. Napalm, good. This time of day, perfect. Out of here. He's so ripped in Apocalypse. I know. It is that whole, you're like, this is Duvall?

I know. It's crazy. I love that performance. I'm thinking about if there are any other bankable leading men of this moment who could have pulled it off as well as um scheider did and it's like devolves almost the guy right angry enough to pull it off but i don't know if he could be seductive enough in the same way you know no he probably couldn't well i don't want to i don't want to say no because he's a good actor but yeah yeah um but scheider's amazing i don't want to, I don't want to say no because he's a good actor. Yeah. Yeah.

But Scheider's amazing. I don't want to take it away. He's not a wartime concealer. Yeah. He's not. This movie has two of the greatest openings of all time. Go ahead.

Like, I think just the cold open of the showtime, the classical music, the waking up in the mirror, and then going to on Broadway. Yeah. Are just like

two incredible openings. So like unsettling and haunting too. Yes. It's so good. the waking up in the mirror and then going to on broadway yeah are just like two incredible unsettling and haunting too it's it's it's so good allenheim talks about that like as they cut that sequence and they were showing it to the people at the other stages of post-production the sound mixers and everything everyone kept on calling up and they were like oh you're winning the oscar this year like just from that sequence they were like buddy you got it and he was like i kind of know i got it like they just watched that, they were like, buddy, you got it. And he was like, I kind of know I got it. Like they just watched it

and they were like, this thing's fucking dynamite. And it is like a complete statement in and of itself. It's like you totally get the weird heartbreak of being in that position. There's so many little mini stories every time he has a little interaction of giving someone the good news or the bad news. Honey, I did fuck him and I didn't get it.

Yeah. That's incredible. And there's the guy who is so off. Yeah. His kid's laughing at him. Yeah. No, it's all of it. And that was filmed at the Palace Theater

of Liza Minnelli, Infamy Liza at the Palace. Right. And Bob had an earwig in Roy's ear for that whole sequence. So he's literally in his head being like, tell her she looks beautiful. Or whatever the fuck he's saying. God. So, okay, yes.

It's hard to go through all that jazz plot-wise. It's not really, it's not like it's formless, but it is, right? It's almost like it's formless but it is it's almost like you have to go through the elements more than the plot these are the things Joe Gideon is juggling he's trying to make the comedian a film later to be perfected

by Taylor Hackford that's true and then he's trying to is it the stand up or the comedian you're right it's called the stand up fuck my joke sucks he's trying to. Is it the stand-up or the comedian? You're right. It's called the stand-up. Oh, it's called the stand-up. Fuck, my joke sucks. He's trying to do that.

He's trying to do the airplane musical. NY slash LA, right, is what it's called. Yeah. I love their confidence of just like, this thing is a fucking surefire hit. This thing is going to print money. But yeah, but it's like he's watching dailies. Every morning he wakes up.

He takes pills. He rubs water on his face. I can't put eye drops in without thinking of Joe Gideon. I don't know about you. It's very visceral. He really captures the grossness of it. Just the bathroom mirror. I think anytime I look in a bathroom mirror.

The address on his prescription is literally one building over from where he actually lived. So he hid it. He really hid it. He lived in 61 and I think it's 57 on the pills. Wait, so where did he live? Where did Bob Fosse live? Like West 61st Street, I think.

No, West 61st Street. It's a Central Park West. It was the editor's argument where he'd be like, so you, and he'd be like, that's not me, it's Joe Giddy. He's like, Bob, your fucking address is on the pail. Like, it's like, it's your labels. And he's, you know, it's Bob Fosse. His ex-wife is working on the show. Right.

But obviously she thinks he's a piece of shit. What's the thing he's taking? Is it Dexedrine? He takes Dexedrine, Visine, and Alka-Seltzer. Right. I think the whole thing with Dexedrine is it's like immediate action. Right. So the Showtime thing is supposed to be like the second pop that it's on.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. He's got his girlfriend. She's played by his real girlfriend. He's got his daughter. He keeps seeing an angel of death and chatting with her. Just one of those movies.

And he's a mean prick who's always taking things out on people yes right yes i don't know how else to describe he lives in an incredible apartment he does that is like a gorgeous gorgeous manhattan apartment like yeah blown away. It's got two floors. That's another incredible sequence. The Harry Nilsson perfect day sequence. Where you go from just, like, the idyllic life to realizing, like, oh, she's at the other side of the door. And the song immediately becomes, like, completely ironic. And just brutal. When Annie Rankin walks in with the dog and she says, I'm sorry.

She nails that fucking moment of just like it's so fucked up that she's blaming herself and that she's just like i'm stupid to have ever thought it wouldn't be this it's so chilling to watch it in a way like for her to be like living this out as she was living her real life must have been with him it's so bizarre is she still alive and ranking? I think she very recently passed. Yeah, she died very recently. Right, yes, right.

Yeah, that's right. No, but yes, it is so wild that it is her. It's almost more wild that she's the only person playing herself. It makes it more extreme where it's like you're putting her through the ringer when you're at the most extreme point of your relationship with her. Bob's daughter Nicole has a cameo in this movie

but she's not playing the daughter. Right. She plays like one of the kids. You see her dancing in the background. Exactly.

Yeah. The actress plays the daughter in this. This is the only thing she ever did. Right. She's so charming. She has a difficult

to pronounce name uh as urs sebet foldy i think that's how it's said yes and then when she's like giving it in the final number where she's dancing yeah yeah well the dance with and ranking that they do for joe in the apartment is maybe the most charming it is yeah It's kind of the only sweet moment. And it's still tinged with all this weird melancholy, obviously, because it's like, you know, there's a relationship there that you wish he had more of. Right. Or could enjoy more.

But it is so incredibly charming. And the dance practice scene. I mean, that weird, like... There's, like, nothing. I don't know who... It's the only way he knows how to communicate with people yeah i don't know who she is because there's no this is all she ever did yes there's there's a years later interview with her on the criterion thing it's her ranking

okay yeah um that sequence where he's he's talking to his daughter while he's dancing with her that was one of the first things bob filmed because i think Roy at one point said to him, wait a minute, Bobby, you want me to sing, dance and act at the same time? Can this be done? Can it be done? It really was like both the deep end and like, this is how it's going to work. Yeah. And where he's, you know, he's putting him through his paces.

He's choreographing. Joe Gideon is choreographing. But he's also having this very sort of, you know, one of the only honest relationships he has. But I think it works because Scheider just always looks so haggard and stressed. Yes. And he's a very handsome guy, but he's got that weird quality to his handsomeness. There's that odd intensity to him. And he, in most movies, is so fucking serious that something about him smiling is a little unnatural. Right?

Right. Like, it's funny that he became such a big star. Because he does not have a traditional kind of charm to him. As you said, there's the pinched quality that was always there, even in some of the biggest fucking movies of all time. Did you guys ever watch Sequest DSV? I never did. R.I.P. Jonathan Randis. There you go.

There you go. That was my introduction to it. Yeah. And that's sort of Spielberg going like, we got to get Roy work. I think so. I don't know. I mean, yeah, he was right. That was the end of his career.

Yeah. But no, he's just so well cast here i mean any i don't know i just can't imagine anyone else i i'm i'm looking at like stills in the movie now and he's just he's so tired i just love it he's yeah yeah yeah and there's something like there's something i don't know like like a buttery about him you know wait what's the word you just used buttery i don't i don't i'm trying i buttery about him, you know? Wait, what's the word you just used? Buttery? I don't know. I'm trying to even think of how to spread this. You want to spread him on toast?

Well, yeah. Sure, spread him on toast. No, but there's this, there's something just a little, like, he's slick, but in a way that's a little bit sticky and gross. Yeah. You know? Right. But, like, not to the extent that you're like, well, this is just a monster. Why would any woman pay any attention to him?

No, but you're like, this is going to leave residue. He's magnetic. I'm not going to be able to get this out of my clothes. That butter metaphor really took us on a journey. I was willing that thing into the train station. Keith Gordon, of course, star of Christine, later filmmaker in his own right, has that terrifying sequence doing the child sort of burlesque performances right and not realizing he's like uh dancing with a huge semen stain on him yep yeah but that i

forgot that that's keith jordan as baby joe yes yes um but it is it's such a good like you know fossy verdant the the series digs into this more deeply but it's like that's like one sequence that pretty much gives you so much of what you need to know about this guy's entire relationship to women and sexuality unsupervised at 13 seeing things and experiencing things he never should have experienced

right right and then getting tied into guilt, shame performance, him existing in worlds that he's not ready for it's so crazy for him to put that on screen not that it's not a part of performing shame performance yeah him existing in worlds that he's not ready for but it just feels so so crazy for him to put that on screen yes

not that it's not a part of the Fosse legend or whatever that that was his childhood but was that known then like this is my question with Fosse it feels kind of

surprisingly revealing like it's a thing you would imagine he wouldn't be ready to work through I can read the book I can learn about Bob Fosse but in the 70s

is it like, oh, that guy is a horndog? Like, you know, because it's like, this is in general release. People are going to see it around the country and they're coming away with,

like, you know, right? Like, that's what I guess I'm trying to entangle. I think there must have been some level of gossip column fixture. I guess so. Yeah, I mean, the guy did Hey Big Spender,

which is like the craziest, you know, prostitution MGM musical number of all time. Yes, yes. So he's associated with burlesque and sexier. Right, rawr.

Yeah, so much of his career is like taking, removing the veneer of respectability that exists in show business and performance and being like, no more euphemisms here. What are we actually talking about? And this is a little bit pathetic and desperate and grimy and unpleasant.

And I guess Lenny, his last movie had been such a boundary breaking movie as well. Like that was so much part of it. And Cabaret was as well. His depiction of his mother is so grotesque. It's like this low angle and it's like there's junk in the background.

It looks like one of those Bill and Ted hell sequences. It's a bogus journey. It's very bogus. This is kind of Joe Gideon's bogus journey. That is what's going on. That must have been a working title. Oh, God. Best three out of five why won't you cast me in your shows uh so right so cliff gorman we should we should

again mention him briefly but he played lenny uh he's also he was he was in like the original boys in the band i think yeah he's one of those like theater guys from the 70s um and you're watching a movie that it feels very different from lenny in a way and that he's so animated yes whereas like the hoffman performance is much more like laced with cynicism and like right confidence whereas like the stand up what's the dig he gives at both dustin hoffman and himself he goes he goes he's mumbling and i'm the idiot that let him mumble which is totally true he does mumble it's it's it doesn't happen for crying out loud you're hiring a mumbler that's so the scenes in the editing room it's alan heim playing himself right right and he said like i had my assistant

editor and we had our like intern or whatever right and they were supposed to play themselves but he thought the intern was more attractive as the blonde lady so he like changed their roles so she could be closer to lens right but alan heim's playing himself and he was like i want this moment where i ask you to do a cut and you sort of like raise your eyebrows disapprovingly to the beat of the cut right and alan heim's got these big fucking bushy peter gallagher eyebrows sure they're like huge like right george whipple yes absolutely and so he was like just give me give me an eyebrow raise and he did it and he was like smaller smaller smaller fossy was always i hate acting don't act just behave smaller smaller smaller smaller then they get there and they look at the footage and he's like, show me the smallest take we have.

And he's like, Bob, that was the smallest. And he goes like, I can't, I can't believe, I can't believe I fucking let this happen. Like, how did I not get a smaller take than that? And Allenheim said, I'm not an actor. And he went, but you're a person. And I should have been able to get more out of you like it was this weird thing of his just like obsession with i can manipulate people i can get anything out of anyone even the things they think they don't have inside of them yeah there's

a sequence uh in the original draft it's not in the film where he says show me the cut of uh from valerie to dustin it's like it's like i want the shot of valerie to Dustin. It's like, I want the shot of Valerie to Dustin. And like, Haim is like, he never shot it. He never shot it. And they're all talking about how he never shot it. And he has this tantrum. It's in his head. It's in his head.

And then finally he goes, I never shot it. He does always give himself shit at the end. It's true. Like that's the one thing about Joe Gideon slash Bob Fosse. He is not like some deluded fool who's like, yeah, right. He pulls away the football on himself. On himself.

So you edited Tick, Tick, Boom. Were you in the editing room for In the Heights or anything like that? It seems like a nightmare to edit a musical. Is it like just how precise you have to be? I think it's more fun. Okay, fair enough. Literally, I think the worst musical is more fun to watch than some good movies. That's my personal bailiwick.

I more mean just the preciseness of everything you have to do. The toughest one for us was the therapy number, which is actually the most Fosse, Rob Marshall-ish sequence we have. Because we've got the musical number Jonathan Larson has written, and then we've got the fight that inspired the number, and they're happening at the same time. And originally that song was longer, and originally that fight was longer.

And we're cutting it down to sort of its bare essentials. But there's also a tempo shift. The song starts really slowly and gets faster and faster. So that was the real nightmare. Yeah, that seems so annoying. It was like, you can't just, like, cut two lines. I have to ramp up the tempo in the underscoring

to get to the next section. So that got very, like, higher math. Right, you can't just be like, okay, let's watch like six versions of this and see and see what works best or what right you have to match it all to the rhythms i don't know i mean they talk about like lenny they sort of found too much i'll skip it yeah exactly uh lenny cabaret they sort of found the editing rhythms and the structures and how to have the different worlds

sort of uh in dialogue with each other in post. Right. And then this movie, he tried to like write that into the script. Right. Like the interplay between all of it. At a certain point, it was like, it's too difficult. It's better to just shoot everything as it is and then find the weird echoes. But you're right. Because like, of course, Cabaret, right? It's like you're either in the show.

You're either in the Cabaret or you're in the whatever real world. And, you know, he's so good at switching between. But in this, it's like you never really feel like you're in the real world, even when he's, you know, working. Like when he's like, you know, choreographing. Like, I don't know. It always feels like some dream he's having on the slab. Right. Like he's like near death.

Right. I mean, I hope this does not come across uh uh critical in any way but when it was announced that you were doing the tick tick boom movie i was like okay here's a guy who has blank check status right now if he wants to direct a movie musical presumably you could do anything you wanted no disrespect to tick tick boom but why is that the thing you'd pick and then i remember seeing the trailer and going, oh, he's fucking doing all that jazz with Larson's life. Now it totally makes sense to me

of here's a guy who similarly was obsessed with the ticking clock. Totally. No, there's a shot of the ticking clock in All That Jazz. It gave me chills when I rewatched it on Wednesday night. But they just pan away from him, show a clock, and come back to him. Especially the thing you're saying about the book, the countdown of the book, right?

But the narrative of, oh, what's the actual work I'm adapting, and what's the life story I can have running in tandem to his fictionalized version of his life? Yeah, and for me, the part I had to discover, because the fun for me of Tick, Tick, Boom was there is no definitive version of Tick, Tick, Boom. There were like six versions of a one man show he did with Roger Bart singing backup, like from 1989 to 1994. To tiny audiences.

Yeah. Yeah. They got more and more bitter as he got, as his 30th birthday was like in the rear view and he's still performing his, his one man show. The final straw, I think he got a performance at the public, but they scheduled the same day as the public's Christmas party. And so drunk people are wandering in and out while he's performing Tick, Tick, Boom.

And he was like, I'm done with this piece. Like that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Right. And then it's sort of getting adapted. And then it got adapted posthumously by, by David Auburn and Scott Schwartz, Stephen Schwartz's son directed that off Broadway version. And that's what I saw. Yeah. And that's a three person show. And so the opportunity, the thing I had to discover, cause I, I had what he wrote about himself. I had sort of, and the poignance that takes on with his untimely passing, but the fun for me was finding his working process. Like,

that's the thing that all that jazz has in spades, right? Like, how Fosse worked, how he worked with dancers, how he came up with ideas. So that was like a big trip to the Library of Congress, and there's an amazing guy named Mark Eden Horowitzowitz who runs all the musical theater archives he's got sometimes papers and hammerstein's papers like a cool job and he it really is and he puts on a show for you too he was like here's the draft copies of so long farewell from sound of music and you see like sayonara crossed out like all this crazy shit um like it's it's it's really amazing but the thing he pointed out to me was uh this notion that jonathan larson wrote questions he would write himself questions and the song would be the answer to the question so he would write i mean the most famous example

is like how do you measure a year right and you've got a piece of paper that says like 52 weeks, you know, 365 days. 525. Oh, got it. But when I learned that about his process, the fact that the last song in the show, every lyric's a question, I found that like amazing and heartbreaking and just like oh like yeah this is this is a portrait of an artist like interrupted okay that's the thing it's so fascinating that like that is something he wrote before he died but it feels retrospective right yeah he wrote his own like all that jazz and that's the thing that's what all that jazz is too it's not like bob

fossey like wrote the screenplay and then died and someone else made it. No. He's predicting his future. Yeah. And it is so, yeah, it's similarly retrospective. And with the Larson thing, it's like him dying will always be the headline of his story. It's like, can you believe this guy never got to see the success? Right.

I mean, it's so tragic. I remember my dad explaining that to me. Like, you don't know the thing with Rent? Like, this is the whole point is that it's so crazy it's so crazy and the time you know it's interesting because that's true for our generation but there are you know now rent is decades old oh there's people who don't know that story at all i didn't know how few people knew it until we started test screening it that's fascinating and realizing oh we actually need to put. That makes sense to me because it's true.

Like, the whole Rent phenomenon that we're thinking of is actually in the past. Like, not that Rent is still not a famous show that people like, but the whole sort of publicity of it is beyond us. Right, right. You're away from the original cast. Where the main lyric is, no day but today, and this guy didn't live to see it.

Right, right. And it's a show that is literally about, like like seizing the moments and everyone having a clock time. Here's another insane question for you, but it just struck me. When you're talking about going to like the Library of Congress and looking at these notes and everything, how do you reconcile and do you just not fucking think about it? And am I ruining your brain right now by asking you this when you're working on anything that any any piece of your process now has historical significance you know what i'm saying yeah i really try you just try to fucking never you shouldn't think about that you shouldn't yeah no that's i think that way lies madness

exactly and there's so many artists who either try to go bigger in the wake of success and it gets crazy and overblown or I don't know. But that is, of course, what our stupid podcast often is. It's like, what do you do after you make the sixth sense? Like, how do you respond to something like that where it's like, I didn't even mean for this to be some sort of cultural thing and now it is. And now it has to be the twist ending. Exactly. So do I lean into it? Do I run away from it?

Do I go bigger? Do I go smaller? I think that for me, the answer is choosing the right heroes. Like Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez was like my shit when I was 17. He was like, he made his own movie for $8,000.

How do I do that? I remember thinking that and devouring that book and he talks about Sophomore Slump and he says the answer is to do so much different shit

that no one actually knows what your sophomore project is right don't actually have a second album just do like eight things so he did Four Rooms

and he did you know a Showtime series he just did all those different no because I yeah you're right I would imagine

the and sometimes the other hero that I choose who just always like just never repeated himself just keeps doing it

but like you and also didn't try and go bigger like or whatever he would usually go lateral or right like you say

you just pick something completely like what he's doing Pacific Overtures why would he do that you know like and it's like

you know fuck you he's but I it feels like the only healthy way who are you cursing out right now fuck you whoever didn't like Pacific he's talking to. It feels like the only healthy way. Who are you cursing out right now? I don't know.

Fuck you, naysayers and son of I'm. Whoever didn't like Pacific Overture. It's a great show. Piece of shit. No, it feels like the only way you can wrap your head around following up Hamilton without losing your mind is try a bunch of different shit. And make, relieve the pressure of anything needing to be the follow up to Hamilton. Like you're, you're. I'll never write a history musical.

No, you should. Come on. Salmon Chase or... I'm sure I'd think of, like, some... No, but, like, you have so many different talents and interests that you're able to just, like, keep just embers going and trying different things and... Yeah, I mean, that's the hope.

And, again, like, they just take too long for you to be like, I should do this. You can't power the amount of energy required to make something if it's like, this is what I should be doing. It has to be the thing that doesn't leave you alone. Otherwise, you'll just put it down. I find I'll just put it down.

I just get bored. You see, if it was Salmon Chase, you could have a song about swimming upstream. You know, you could do a whole fish thing. I'm actually getting into a Salmon... I don't actually know if Salmon Chase was a good guy, though. I should Google him. He was a...

I mean, no, I'm not going to go on the deep. I'll offline, I'll go on a deep thing on Salmon Chase. You don't want to talk Salmon Chase? He is the most compelling character in the Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals because he was the staunchest abolitionist but then he got very power hungry in Doris' telling and when

Lincoln finally wrote the Emancipation Proclamation he said I don't think you should do it because he wanted to be the one to do it sounds like a good subject for a music stop it over the Johnson impeachment, right? Like, that's pretty dramatic. I don't know.

I'm just imagining... Salmon with an exclamation point. I'm not imagining how people would respond if it came out. Like, Lin-Manuel announces Salmon. Really?

He's really gonna just do that again. He's just gonna pull a different guy. Sorry for bringing up Salmon Chase. I think I always think about him because

all period-specific music, it's an all-white cast. Yeah, you go the opposite way. Sorry for bringing up Sam and Chase I think I always think about him because he was All period specific music it's an all white cast Yeah you go the opposite way You do 1776 What? Very traditional You know they're

bringing back 1776 I was very rude about 1776 the movie on this podcast On an episode he said it People got really mad at me It still hangs

How do you feel about the movie of 1776 if you've ever seen it? I mean, it feels like a pretty faithful record. It's not much further along than... Like, it feels almost like a screen grab of the show. Because it was the original cast.

And they just kind of got everybody. I don't, you know... I just, I don't know. My mom put it on. It was one of those things where we were like in an Airbnb. And it's like they have four DVDs. And we've seen three of them. 1770, let's put it on. It was one of those things where we were in an Airbnb, and it's like they have four DVDs, and we've seen three of them. 1770, let's put it on.

And I was just driving. David fucking bodied it, and we still get messages from people defending it. Yeah, people are like, how dare you? And now there's some re-release. Because people love Mr. Feeney. That's true. You're going to shit on Mr. Feeney?

How dare you? I didn't specifically shit on him. Mr. Matthews. Real 90s kids understand that you can't shit on Mr. Feeney how dare you I didn't I didn't specifically shit on him Mr. Matthew David real 90s kids understand that you can't shit on Mr. Feeney real 76 kids whatever

leave me alone now just have my favorite part of the podcast are David's asides to imaginary just missives coming at him Lynn's favorite part of the podcast

fuck you Steven Spielberg yeah right be mad at the Pacific Overtures critics they existed they did I'm trying to think of like

major sequences we haven't talked about he has a heart attack I guess we haven't really all the medical stuff is kind of like impressively nasty yeah it's pretty grisly like it doesn't have to be as like they i feel like they make it more grisly or not more but like more realistic than it well did they show real fucking open hearts this is what i'm saying it's the thing that like it's like visceral it remains still truly shocking

yeah like scheider is so like like, taut and, like, his skin feels so, like, drawn over his face that it feels like you could kind of just, like, tear a hole in him with your finger. You know what I mean?

Roy Scheider is, like, a human being who looks like he's, like, stuck in, like, sausage casing. You know? Right. Where you just feel like...

That's just the tight shirt he's wearing in Bye Bye Love. Well, additionally... Having worn a facsimile of it in Sausage Casing. No, but I think his skin as well. You know that it is like when they cut into him, you're just expecting like the tension is going to release like a rubber band. Yeah. So I don't know if there's any like hospital stuff we want to talk about.

I mean, I mentioned in Lenny, in our Lenny episode, I think that he would literally like grab every nurse's ass. And then I was like watching this movie and I was like, oh, right he would literally grab every nurse's ass. And then I was watching this movie and I was like, oh, right, that's just in all that jazz. You don't need to read a biography for that. Yeah, it's just happening. CCH Pounder, a young CCH Pounder. Her first film, I believe.

Yes. Popping up as a nurse. That was great. It was great. She's the best. You did email me, Len, on Wednesday night, just a photo of Wally Shawn.

That's right. Yep, no subject in that email. Look, a wild Wallace Shawn. Responded, come in. Come in! Wallace Shawn. Theoretically. Exactly. Basically pitching the producers to him, right? Like, you know, if you kill this guy, you'll actually make a profit. You can make more money with a flop than a...

Which isn't the whole thing that it's, like, impossible to make money on, like, a show, right? Like is that like kind of the joke there a little bit that is just such a show one in five shows it's a hugely difficult proposition i don't know why we keep doing it well it's nice because we like theater and it's good what if i make back their money and most of them just come out even right like of the ones that make back their money they're like okay we can close without taking a fucking haircut what did you guys think of all the exaggerations of just like the behind

the scenes and like the investors and like there's that one character actor who uh stuck out to me well there's david margulies who's the mayor in ghostbusters one of my favorite new character actors i got to talk to him. Really? Really? Yeah. He also passed away recently. Yeah. I run a film series on Washington Heights over at the United Palace, and he was my guest for Ghostbusters. Hell yeah. Lenny.

A quiet, like, maybe the secret weapon of Ghostbusters. Yeah. You're doing Raiders this weekend, right? Yeah. Yeah. We got Spielberg for Raiders. It's insanity. You have Spielberg?

You must have met Spielberg at this point, right? Have you already got Spielberg for Raiders. It's insanity. You have Spielberg? You must have met Spielberg at this point, right? Have you already? I met Spielberg. Well, the crazy thing was that Heights and West Side Story were filming within

two blocks of each other. Right, you were both uptown. The same summer of 2019 and one of my, maybe my all-time great days. I like to, like, at the end of the day, be like,

I think that was a top five great day. I spent the day writing lyrics for Alan Menken for this, like, new Little Mermaid tune. And then I had to furiously drive back for the closing scene of In the Heights. It was like literally all the hydrants are open. Like, we had the original cast there. My wife has a cameo in that shot.

Like, her dad is there who grew up in the neighborhood. And then, like, you know, we're trying to get the light and we have five fucking hydrants open. I'm like crying with every take. And we wrap, that's the last shot. And then like the moment with the little girl

putting on the hat was improvised. Like that's John F. Chimney. Like put your hat on her head. And you're like, ah! And that's the take and it's a wrap on the day.

And I walk two blocks north to 177th Street, and they're fucking filming Maria. Like, it was like, and by the way, like... Because they actually filmed that in, like, an actual place. They filmed it in, like, a back alley between four buildings on 177th Street. So cool. And I had a bunch of friends on that show. Tony Kushner's, like, longtime associate Antonia and I went to high school together. And she actually, she's weirdly also the reason I ended up going to the college I wenter, who's like the god of the film department at Wesleyan, like gets up in front of the class and goes, some of you aren't supposed to be here.

And like looks at me and goes, but this is such a rare print of Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing that I wouldn't like begrudge anyone. I wouldn't kick anyone out. I wouldn't kick anyone out. Fucking roll it. And like, it was an amazing movie. The class was supposed to be from one to four. It ended up going till six just because we couldn't stop talking. I was like, I want to go where

I want to go where people are this passionate about movies. Like, I almost missed my bus back to New York. And so yeah, so I walk up to 177th Street and like Spielberg is figuring it out. And he still has like student spirit. He's like, let me show he still has, like, student spirit. He's like, let me show you, like,

I'm figuring out how to shoot this. Like, I've never shot a musical before and he's showing me, like, things he's trying on his iPhone. It really feels like that movie especially was that for him, right? Where he was really excited again to be like, this is like a new world for me.

Have you gotten to speak to him outside of that? Or, like, was your one meeting with him? I've only just seen him at things. At the job. Like that moment I just got a like a

nice film geek moment with him between like and literally what they were shooting was the like Maria and like the pan up to her. And he was just

trying to get the timing on that right and they were far from doing it and then I walked home because I was in my neighborhood. That's the other part of the top five-ness. I walked home because I was in my neighborhood. You were in your neighborhood. That's the other part

of the top five-ness. I like, I remember I was walking, I was walking just across the neighborhood back to my apartment and like two guys on the stoop,

one of the guys was like, Hamilton, the fuck are you doing here? I was like, I still live here. Do people call you Hamilton on the street like that?

In my neighborhood, it's 50-50 Usnavi in Hamilton. Oh, sure. Okay. For many years, it was Usnavi and I loved that. Yeah, yeah, it's 50-50 Usnavi in Hamilton. Oh, sure. Okay. For many years, it was Usnavi, and I loved that. Yeah, that rules. I think that, look, that story in and of itself is a fundamental

difference between you and Bob Fosse. That, like, you can talk about, like, I'm able to step back and look at that day, and the immense just sort of, like, satisfaction, appreciation I felt from that day. That feels good. What a lucky life. Yeah, my whole, yeah, I don't have a broken thing. Right, that day

would have made Bob Fosse miserable. Pouring dirt into a hole being like, why won't it ever fill? Bob Fosse would have walked away from that day going like,

what am I supposed to do tomorrow now? Or he would have made a fictional Spielberg. That's a fucking Spielberg movie. He thinks he can pan better than me. He's trying to steal

my location. His craft service is in my shot. I mean, his famous Oscar speech where he's like this and some of the other recent events have threatened to turn me into something of an optimist. And he says it so begrudgingly. No, I was in the worst thing Martin Scorsese has ever directed, the pilot for HBO's Vinyl. Oh, that's the worst. I think it is.

I think it is. It's still pretty darn watchable. It's certainly the best episode of Vinyl, but's the worst. I think it is. I think it is. It's still pretty darn watchable. It's okay. It's certainly the best episode of vinyl. But stiff competition there. But there's a boardroom meeting scene with like 12 speaking parts. And there was a moment where everyone's just waiting. And his whole thing is like, I really can't focus.

I have to just think about all the stuff in my head. So when I come out of the video village please everyone just be quiet right and he's always like it's not a diva thing it's not a respectful silence thing i just have a hard time focusing so he comes out and everyone just sort of like holds and looks at him and he's like waiting for the command of what's going to be next right and the whole camera team's waiting for what the next setup is and he stands there and he just starts pointing at different corners and like going like this and cannavale was like the one guy who sort of had the clout from the actors to be like i can ask him the film nerd questions he's like marty what the fuck you what were you doing now and he was like i just can't figure out the spatial geography

of this and it's martin scorsese and he was like i always just i never figure out the spatial geography of this. And it's Martin Scorsese. And he was like, I always just, I never remember where the fucking camera should be. And he was like, we do have that. And then, and he's like this fuck, there's a reason I don't do scenes like this. And he was like, you're, you're being like self-effacing. And he's like, no, I usually like, it's a reason I'll do long steady cam shots and stuff. Cause I just always cross the line. I never know how to do it. Right.

And it's like those guys truly the secret is that every single time they don't think they know how to pull off that movie. It's both picking things you haven't done before to test yourself but also remaining in that headspace of being like I'm constantly learning constantly be better. I could constantly evolve. The big sequence I feel like we need to talk about is the the presentation of the and new york la right oh yeah yeah which erotica it's already like which you watch that now if again like i think the first time i watched it and was able to process it not like as a kid yeah was like oh paul abdul jacked all of that for the cold-hearted video. Oh my God.

That's very true. And so many, and so many people have just taken elements of that. It really does. Yeah, you're right. It feels almost MTV in some elemental way.

There's Michael Jackson moves in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so much, there's so much modern movement I mean, we talked about this in the last episode. And the eroticism of it. It's essentially lifted from his bit And the eroticism of it. It's essentially

lifted from his bit in the Little Prince movie. Yeah. Oh, that whole thing is Michael Jackson's. Yes. Michael Jackson, yeah,

grabbed a lot from it. And to his credit, credited him. Right. Totally, totally like Shadow of the Madness. But that sequence is like,

you've seen the glimpses of the show up until that point and you're just like, this thing's so fucking corny. It seems corny. The producers are so happy with it. The pitch of it is bizarre.

Right. The producers are actually into it. Right. Right. And you're just like, you know he's not going to settle for this, but is he going to fuck it up? Right. Then you get to that presentation where you're like, wow, he made it better. They all start applauding and then fucking more smoke.

And they're like, I'm sorry to inform you, this is not over yet. Yeah. And then fucking lights go down. I i mean that sequence is like 10 minutes both that and the final number are like 10 minutes are interestingly long yes like american and paris level sort of like yes demanding patience from the audience that i feel like does not usually happen anymore like it's like everyone yeah yeah and and and this thing of like this relentlessness of like how do you heighten this more now i mean the last 40 minutes of the movie are the stacking of all the death dream yeah numbers but like i remember the first time i saw

feeling exhausted and not in a negative way but in a sort of like that movie is not something i want to throw on all the time like it you feel really. You feel really wiped out by the end of it. And that sequence too, I mean, first of all, if you don't like musicals, stay for the most incredible naked people you'll ever see in your life. Everyone looks great. And then there's also the same-sex couples

that are dancing together. It's just, it is this smorgasbord of just... It still feels scandalous. It still feels modern and striking. And it is, it is this like smorgasbord of like just it still feels scandalous it still feels modern and striking and and it is it's this thing that like these movies often struggle with movies about complicated geniuses the mr holland's open problem right when you see the person's big work he's complicated do you believe that it's that fucking good? Yeah. That everyone's like, right. And especially because he's not like restaging his own number, you know,

he's not like having it be Pippin. They're making up a fake musical. Yeah. And he's like going to the far edge and it's all just summed up by the fucking reaction. What's the name of the actress who plays the wife? It was mostly a Broadway actor. Um, Leland Palmer,

who's so good. Which is funny because that's the name of a character in Twin Peaks. Yes. Yes. Anyway. Uh, but yeah, who's mostly a Broadway person funny because that's the name of a character in twin peaks yes yes anyway uh but yeah who's mostly a broadway person right like she was in uh pippin uh she was in joyful a joyful noise she was in you know uh hello dolly back in the day she's wonderful she is yes just that like fuck you it's the best thing you've ever done to be clear i think the the twin peaks is a is a reference to her because like i think david lynch is secretly a nerd about that stuff. I mean, he cast Russ Tamblyn and Richard

Boehmer in Twin Peaks. There's all that quiet stuff in it. I never watched Twin Peaks. I didn't know that. They're both in it and not playing singers or dancers. That's crazy. I don't know. I don't know if anyone's ever asked Lynch were you a big musical nerd. He never answers things like that.

No, it's true. He's always like, eh! How much would you pay for David Lynch's West Side Story, though? I would love to see that. That would be great.

Yeah, it would be, I mean, his musical, when he does musical sequences in his movies that are so good, you imagine him doing a top-to-bottom musical. All right, we should play the box office game, Griffin.

Yeah, I suppose, I just think, you know, we've talked about the ending a lot, but, like, play the box office game, Griffin. Yeah, I just think, you know, we've talked about the ending a lot. But, like, it really is 40 minutes, like, the last 40 minutes of the movie from when he goes under, pretty much, right? Sure. When he's, like, going through the stages of grief and all that. Because he essentially has, like, the heart attack, like, an hour in.

Yeah, sure. The things I forgot about re-watching it were the wandering the hospital scene. Right. There's like 20 minutes of. Where he like hugs the old lady and kisses her. Right, right. Like the bleeding out. My brain blocked off.

Yeah. There's that moment where he's bleeding out on the wall. Yeah. And then him finding the other hospital employee in the commissary and doing the musical number with him. But yeah, but then you get that last 40 minutes that just like builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and then as as much as it is like in so many ways a tough watch an exhausting movie there's something about like the weird level of triumph to bye-bye life even though it is so cynical and bleak. Like the fact that both of them.

Look like they're having the time. Of their fucking lives. And you have that thing. That always fucking gets to me. The like big fish thing of like. Oh when you die you see every single person. You ever knew. They're all just fucking there.

It's your whole life story. And they do the thing too. Where it's like Keith Gordon is there. As the younger version of him as a separate person and then just like that just building to such an exuberant high yeah and then he's dead and then he's just fucking dead you play a smash cut zip him up to the body how else are you gonna do it god i just imagine audiences just walking out like shell-shocked i don't know that's what i imagined it was a hit i maybe i'm you know it's just it's just i wish we could have things this demanding of an audience in theaters all the time right and the people would like movies excited by it yeah yeah i don't know yeah uh let's

play the box office game lynn we're gonna try and guess the top five from you know christmas 1979 essentially which is when this movie came out this is the month before i was born there you go okay the top five from, you know, Christmas 1979, essentially, which is when this movie came out. This is the month before I was born. There you go. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Do you know what movie was number one at the box office? There's that site. I know a beetle got arrested for pot the day I was born.

I think it was McCartney or Harrison. I don't remember. There's that site where you can enter your birthday and it'll tell you what was number one

at the box office. Of course. Mine was The Burbs. I think mine was Top Gun. Okay. Makes sense. Number one at the box office is a science

fiction film. In 1979. We covered it on our Patreon. A science fiction film we covered on our Patreon. It's a movie called

Alien. No. What? It's not Alien. It's not Alien. We covered it on our Patreon. It's 1979.

But Alien is 1979. It is. This is a film I on our Patreon. It's 1979. But Alien is 1979. It is. This is a film I stick up for. This is a movie that you stick up for. A lot of people think it's boring. Oh, it is called Star Trek The Motion Picture, a.k.a. The Motionless Picture, because they think it's boring.

How do you feel about Star Trek 1? The original. Never seen it. Never seen it. Are you a Star Trek guy? You're not a Star Trek person. No, I'm a Wars guy. That's fine.

I only started really getting into it because of the podcast. Star Trek. Good stuff. Motion picture is great. We've talked about it. Number two at the box office is a comedy starring one of your favorite people. Is it Gene Wilder? Nope.

Is it a Steve Martin? Yes. Is it The Jerk? It's The Jerk. One of the best comedians. This is a pretty good top five. He hates these cans. He hates these cans. Number three at the box office is the biggest hit in 1979. It's The Jerk. One of the best comedians This is a pretty good top five. He hates these cans. He hates these cans.

Number three of the box office is The Biggest Hit in 1979. It's going to win Best Picture. It's new this week. Kramer vs. Kramer. Kramer vs. Kramer. It's coming out this week. Wow.

Number four, it's a Disney movie. It's kind of a famous sort of flop for them. Animated or live action? Live action. It's a live action flop in 1979.

It's one of those things that they keep saying they're going to remake it. The Black Hole. You've never seen that, right? I have seen the Black Hole. Oh, you finally have. I did. I watched it. It's on Disney+.

I was trying to convince you to watch it. Very boring. But I'm surprised. Because I watched it when it was up on Disney+, and I reached out to you, and I was just, I reached out to you. I sound emissive over your way. And I said, David, have you seen this fucking thing? This is the kind of boring sci-fi movie i know you love and it's even too boring for you it's too boring i can't believe it's kind of incredible but it's kind of

cool mood to it yep it's just the maximum shell anthony perkins robert forster what kid doesn't want to see this yes uh roddy mcdowell and slim pickens as robots borg nine borg nine's in it yeah uh it's about a space station that's falling into a black hole. It looks incredible. It does look really cool. Yeah, it's got a cool vibe. Number five.

Very fucking boring. At the box office. It's a comedy drama starring two major movie stars. It is actually a hit, but I don't think it's well remembered. It's actually a hit. It's from a big director.

It's from a big director. It's actually a hit. It's 1979. It's 1979 it's comedy it features an actress from lenny it features an actress from lenny but not valerie prine it valerie prine isn't it what movie is this it's redford i was just looking at her fucking film oh it's electric horseman it's the electric horseman never seen it redford and fonda yeah it's a western comedy, right? Right. Pollock made like seven. Sidney Pollock, yes.

Redfords? Yeah. He made a lot of movies. He made a lot of Redfords. Some other movies. Steven Spielberg's 1941. Mm-hmm. Apocalypse Now.

Mm-hmm. The Rose, the Bette Midler movie. Sure. Something called Cuba with Sean Connery. Never heard of that. Cuba. Cuba. I'm going to Cuba.

Am I Cuban? No. of that. Cuba. Cuba. I'm going to Cuba. Am I Cuban? No. Okay, good. Thank God. I was checking. I was like, are you Cuban? Yeah, it's like a Cuban Revolution movie.

I've never heard of this. Richard Lester. Part heaven, part hell. Pure Havana. That's the tagline. It is a good tagline For Havana Like for Dirty Dancing

Havana Nights That would have been A great tagline Sure It was a huge bomb Part Heaven, Part Hell All Dirty All Dirty

All Havana That's it We did the box office What were the other Just I need to ask What were the other Top 10 of 79 Oh you want like

1979 in film Kramer vs. Kramer Yeah All That Jazz All That Jazz Is in the top 20 their top 10 of 79 oh you want like right because aliens in that 10 kramer versus kramer yeah all that jazz all that jazz is in the top 20 it's not in the top 10 amityville horror oh sure rocky 2 yeah apocalypse now star trek alien 10 uh-huh which is a huge hit humongous karina longworth was just talking about on her podcast the jerk moonraker and The Muppet Movie is the top ten. We've done The Muppet Movie at our film series, too. Who did you have as a guest? I had Lonnie Price.

I gotta go to... That theater is so cool. No, I'm lying. We had Muppets Take Manhattan. That's why Lonnie Price. Oh, yes. That fits a Manhattan screening series. It's the one about putting on a Broadway show.

It's the one about putting on a Broadway show. We fucking rules. Gregory Hines just does a jogger in the park. I mean, there's so many great... It's so funny to me that, like, I don't know if you had this same experience as well, but, like, being a Muppet kid, I would later, when I saw the things

that people were best known for, be like, oh, that's the jogger from the park in Muppets Take Manhattan rather than the intended effect, which is that's Gregory Hines as a jogger. Yeah. It's did they host the Muppet show? Right. That's what I know. I knew Kenny Rogers as the host, the one time host of the Muppet show. The saddest rendition of the Gambler you'll ever see. Where they have a puppet play The Gambler

and he dies in the train carriage. Go watch that. It's great. I'm going to Google that. It's great. No, I remember just being like, well, Vincent Price,

obviously one of the biggest movie stars of today. And my parents were like, he died five years ago. And I was like, what? He's on The Muppet Show. I knew it was an old episode,

but I was like, Vincent Price is probably still relevant to other six-year-olds right now. Oh my God, look at this. This is very haunting probably still relevant to other six-year-olds right now. Oh, my God. Look at this. This is very haunting. What are you looking at?

The Kenny Rogers. Yeah. Because these puppets are sort of very sad. Yes. These, like, old man puppets. They're fucking sad numbers in The Muppet Show. Yeah. They weren't afraid to go there.

Time in a Bottle. You remember that one? Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. It's just a straight-up music video of the song. And these weird human puppets. Weird human puppets.

Good for Kenny Rogers. The best. Okay, Lynn. Thank you so much for doing this podcast. It's my pleasure. Thank you for indulging us. It means a lot that you listen. It's very bizarre.

You sort of DM both David and I after listening to specific episodes and would comment on like, oh, I listened to an episode very touched by the things you had to say. I listened to this episode. Here's my insight on this thing or whatever. I thought it was cool that you did Ron and John. Like that's just like really, that was...

It felt like important. Yeah. And they felt like the most auteur-ish of the sort of Disney Renaissance. Like the easiest way to get into that period. Especially since they always did different stuff. Like, you know, every project that they would do is different. And now they're doing something else, maybe?

One of them is doing a movie at Netflix. I know they retire, but now there's... Oh, I don't know. Rumors of unreturned... Them announced a Netflix movie. Have you interacted with them for Little Mermaid? Like, are they involved? No, not really.

No? Yeah, I wonder. I said this to you at the time i think i dm this back to you but when we were in like a weird transitional stage with this podcast and we were trying to move networks and we were tangled up in weird contract stuff and we're fucking sweating bullets over a podcast that was not making anyone any money but that we wanted wanted to keep doing, right? Angela Farraguta, who ran our sofa media at the time, we had just done a Wonder Woman episode. Yeah. We talked about the weird parallels between Wonder Woman and Moana.

Oh, I don't think I caught that one. And she did this thread of, like, Wonder Woman gifs under Moana lyrics or something. Of, like, oh, the girl on the island who dreams about sailing out, and all this sort of stuff. Right. And you retweeted this. And it was, like oh the girl on the island who dreams about sailing out and all this sort of stuff right and you retweeted this and it was like the first thing we did that had any sort of virality out of our bubble and it like really really fucking helped us oh that's great it was absolutely a thing we're like a big deal it just you checked your notifications at the right point

in time and out of generosity just flip the fucking thoughtless retweet but it was like uh very very helpful all that to say you've done so much for us already you've been so considerate in giving us this time there is an ask and Ben almost burned this yeah

well Ben sounds so sad no no it's 2 o'clock I know I'm fine okay okay well this is all we're gonna say David is wearing a t-shirt right now No, no, it's 2 o'clock. Now it's 2 o'clock and I feel like... I'm fine. Okay, okay. Well... This is all we're going to say. David is wearing a t-shirt right now that has a list of nicknames on it. Producer Ben, Ben Deuster.

Right. Producer Ben. Mr. Hosnitz. The Hosnitz. But there's one of these nicknames that is particularly relevant today. Yeah, is it on here? Yeah, yeah.

Birthday Benny. Birthday Benny. Now, I don't know if you know this. Today is Ben's birthday. Oh, happy birthday, Ben. Thank you so much, Len. Appreciate it. We've been very excited about doing this episode.

And I'm just fucking putting him on blast now. Several times over the last month, Ben has verbalized to me what his greatest birthday wish is. I'm ready. Well, I thought it might be fun and no pressure, but if you maybe wanted to do like a birthday wrap for me or something. He said this multiple times. Ben texted this to the blank check thread and I said,

guys, I can't come tomorrow. I just checked my schedule. If you're going to do that. They're going to bail out of the episode. Oh, you're going to do that? Oh, I can't come. Anyway. I'll give you your present off mic. Perfect. Why don't I do, I can just come. Anyway. Well, I'll give you your present off mic.

Perfect. But why don't I do, I can just sort of, I'll do a version of the list. Oh, sure. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you want the list? Yeah. Yeah.

I think I better give you the list. Well, thank you for being. You know, Weird Al at the end of his shows does this like eagle ooga that just gets longer every time he tours. This is. Really? Does he do that? I should go to a Weird Al show. Oh my god. Right now he's on tour where it's

no parodies. It's just the genre. It's all the deep cuts. It's fucking incredible. I was at the first night. I'm seeing him, what is it? The 29? I think he's coming to Carnegie Hall in like September. Yes. I think that's when I'm seeing him. He does like 40 costume changes, right? Not in this tour.

No, this tour is not that. This tour he has like a new kind of idea. Because he did one that it was like we're doing full string orchestration for everything. Right. This tour is the only original song. There's so many. I can't fit it on a screen. He's going to have to scroll.

Give him my laptop. Okay. So embarrassing. I was at the Radio City Hall. I don't know if you only did this one. The one where you came out and just said Yoda. Yeah, yeah. That was great.

That was a great show. I was sitting next to Tina Fey. I did not know Tina Fey. Yeah. And, you know, during the sequence, during the costume changes, they always play kind of like Weird Al in pop culture on the screens.

It would be Jeopardy! mentioning Weird Al. And they played the Weird Al writing the lyrics to the 30 Rock theme. And I will love Tina Fey forever for this. When that showed up on screen, she went, fuck yeah! She was totally sincere reaction. Totally sincere, like, yeah, I'm on screen. That's the best.

Because the cool thing would have been to be like, oh, embarrassing. I know. And she was like, rawr! I was like, yes, that's the appropriate reaction to me. Yes, yes. That's been to be like, oh, embarrassing. I know. And she was like, ah! I was like, yes, that's the appropriate reaction to me. Yes, yes. That's the appropriate reaction. Oh my God.

I'm going to have to scroll. There's too many. There's too many nicknames. I feel like one of you needs to give me a B. It's not going to be B. I think it's B. I think it has to be B. Okay. Do you want it fast or do you want it slow?

Slow. Okay. Just like Christmas? Yeah, do you know about Slow Christmas? No Oh, Len Every year Ben puts out a Slow Christmas album He thinks Christmas songs are too fast

Slow them down He did an album Chopped and Screwed First year was Chopped and Screwed Christmas He took Christmas songs, he chopped and screwed them into the thing Second year he hired musicians Had them record songs at a slower tempo. Man, you really contain multitudes.

I do. I'm glad to know you. Happy birthday. Thank you so much. Okay, here we go. Slow like Christmas. Producer Ben. Purdue-er Ben.

The Bendusa. The Poet Laureate. The Meat Lover. The Tiebreaker., the fart detective, our finest film critic, the peeper birthday Benny, hello fennel, now Professor Crispy, the fuck master, dirt bike Benny, white hot Benny, soaking wet Benny, the hots, Mr. Positive, Mr. Hossitive Close personal friend of Dan Lewis That's the hottest shit The voice of reason, Santa Hoss The commission, wishful band Hosleywood, the futzer P-p-producer and the bass stealer

Pro-producer, Ben Kenobi Kylo, Ben, Ben, I, Shyamalan Ben, say, say, Ben, anything Ailey Benz, Warholz Purdue, a Bane Ben 19. The Femalemaker. The shit's insane.

Robo-Haz. Benglish. Mr. Beng-credible. Eat Ben. Drink Ben. Hustle. Beetle vape. Juice the Hustle of Day.

Public enemies. How sick of the ditch of the Jersey. But anyway, stop making Ben's. Hustle. Drinking the city. Ben Hustle. Miss Sally. The secret lights of Ben's. The great mouse. making Ben's house. The secret lights of Ben's.

The great mouse. The house breaking. Ben's in the house. Ben's came from Newhouse. Bronco, Hosley, Bronco, Benny, you motherfuckers. Benny Lane, not say Benny thing, not a temperature queen. Osama Ben Hosley.

That one's banned. Dr. Crunchy, oh, I'm in the rejected nicknames. Yes, you are. Happy birthday, Ben. This song is fucking insane. Wow. Sorry, I went into the rejected nicknames. No.

It's even better. I'm in the wiki fandom. Ben, truly the best birthday present of all time. Wow. Thank you, Lynn. Thank you. That is truly the dumbest thing I imagine you've ever had to do. You'd be surprised.

I've had some morning show. Oh, my God. I could only imagine. And I always say, you have to provide the beat if you want me to freestyle. And then you get, you know. It's a BYOB role. Thank you again for doing this. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Now I will eat my bagel without fear of making noise. I could do the outro. Hey, anything you want to plug? Do you have anything? I got nothing. Great.

Fantastic. Encanto is on Disney Plus, and your kids have already seen it. I think I could use the boost. I heard the album isn't doing particularly well. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show. review and subscribe.

Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media helping to produce the show. Thank you to AJ McCann, Alex Barron for our editing, Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel

for our theme song, Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork, JJ Birch for our research compiling another great Fossier. You can go to blankcheckpod.com

for links to all sorts of real nerdy shit including Blank Check special features or Patreon feed where we do commentaries on franchises like the Batman movies. Yeah, I guess we're still doing that we're just finishing that up yeah uh tune in next week for star 80 one of the bleakest movies ever made i love it because i'm

a glutton for punishment yep uh and and as always I still cannot believe you did the fucking podcast. All the time, fam.