Blank Check with Griffin & David - Allied with Chris Weitz

Episode Date: January 17, 2021

Now in the final stretch of the Zemeckis mini series, Chris Weitz returns to discuss 2016's WWII spy thriller, Allied. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

so so so quebecois become Je t'aime podcast quoi. So, so, so, Québécois has become, become a podcast quoi. It's not like Le Petit Québécois. I can't even remember. I think it's just Je t'aime Québécois. Am I wrong? Non, Québécois. Non?

Non? Je t'aime Québécois? Non? That is, that is not a Quebecois accent. That is not an anything accent. It's her saying it. It's her saying it to him. I know. I'm not criticizing you.

I'm talking about Brad. Bradley. Yes. Bradley Pitstein. And his AP French. Bonjourno. You know, I mean, he already did that. Like, you know, anyway, we'll talk about that.

He's done the World War II movie where he jokes about the fact that he can't really do accents. Hmm. Yeah. So he's covered. He's covered. He did it in the other movie. He hung a lantern on it in the other movie.

Exactly. He hung a lantern on it. Hello, everybody uh this is a podcast called blank check with griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david wow wow and i'm chris pumped up should i jump in there well there's ben if you want yeah okay i'm here too hi ben's here hey ben it's it Ben. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks

to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they're allied. Baby. And this is a mini-series on the films of Robert Zemeckis, the infamous Bobby Z. We're nearing the end.

We're talking Allied. It's the great Allied off. I feel like I've been hyping this one up. It's big. The entire miniseries. I don't know if anyone's actually excited. Right. You've been like Don King, Rumble in the Jungling, you know, like this being like,

finally, people are going to know the verdict. Allied, good or bad, Sims versus Newman. I mean, the thing is, like, do we know who can be trusted in this? Really? That's the question, Chris. I feel like this is going to be like the big guys episode in which I fight really hard and then everyone else kind of shrugs. Griffin, I'm really sorry to tell you this, but David is a German spy. Oh, no, I knew it.

And I'm afraid that, as you know, with podcast protocols for these kinds of things, you have to kill him with your own hand. Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Chris, Chris. It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Are you telling me that David grew up in Germany? that David grew up in Germany?

He grew up and as a baby, no, actually he was about nine, they parachuted him into London. Wow. And then he pretended to be an American kid in London. Wow. God, I want to punch this piano so hard right now. Play La Marseillaise.

God. Griffin over Zoom. piano so hard right now play la marseillaise god griff griffin over zoom this is why i want to get through the intro as quickly as possible how many world war ii movies has brad pitt now made it's a lot uh I was actually thinking about this. Three within 10 years? Right. You've got right around this time, you have Fury, of course. Everyone remembers Fury so well. That was the prequel to Fast and Furious. Exactly.

Yes. Once there was only Fury. What are some other ones, Griffin? Hit me, because there are a few. Inglourious Bastards? Of course. Of course. And then this is what I was trying to remember, if there's one more.

All right, well, let's find out. Obviously, World War Z was about World War Z, not World War II, so it's not that one. If you looked at only the end of the title in the mirror, you could get confused, but yeah. Right, exactly. What else? What else? I'm looking at his filmography. Legends of the Fall.

Is that the first World War, I want to say, that he goes to in that one? So not the same. Seven Years in Tibet. That's sort of post-World War. That's got a little World War II action in it. I'm enjoying this. Spy game.

Obviously, there's a lot of spy games being played, but no World War II. Would you count World War Z 2? enjoying this spy game you know obviously there's a lot of spy games being played but no no would you count world war z2 that would be a world of world war ii movie it would have to be okay if we did finally get world war z2 i suppose right you have to consider that okay sure isn't aren't they reanimating andre tatarsky to direct World War Z 2 isn't that he's coming in yeah I think so

yeah of course he wants to do an action movie I heard that's what his reps are saying he just wants to get his foot in the door he wants to show that he can handle that kind of budget there was War Machine another war movie the Iraq war

I guess that's it but he does have the look of uh you know a handsome old movie star so it makes sense put him in old war movies right like once he passes 40 he gets really into being this sort of like haunted lantern jawed golden boy in the war yeah right and then of course there is there's troy you know which is about the sack of trade talk about a war the trojan war that was a war yeah um i you know as we talk about world war ii movies you know i my wasn't my last movie yeah i think it was yeah my last movie had to do with the second world war and for a long time world war ii was like your angle that was your way into the academy right like yeah these academy voters were like world war ii i'm watching it i love it yeah that was

ultimate boomer bait right your last movie i mean your ass movie operation finale i think sometime before operation finale came out that changed but it's kind of unclear where's the line i can't quite well i mean honestly look look how allied did with the oscars that's the thing i was trying to sort of chart this i re-watched finale uh today before uh watching allied uh chris which is an excellent movie that's extremely kind of you and maybe masochistic. No, no, no. It's a very enjoyable film. It's on Hulu. A Cracker Jack movie.

Well, if it's on Hulu, it must be good. Exactly. But I was thinking about finale and this film and then even sort of like Fury, which is slightly more in the action vein, but I feel like also kind of

underperformed it does feel like there's been this shift where as you said world war ii used to be money in the bank now it's world war who oh boy well now it's just like the history channels domain or whatever right like they're just like we'll handle it, fellas. I also feel like this is the kind of movie that used to be, and finale as well, where it's like, you have, like, two big stars in a World War II movie

and there's, like, sort of, it's epic backdrop emotional story in front of that. Whether it's a real life story or it's a fictional story, it's like, here's a character-driven story in this setting. And now i feel like when war movies do well more often than not they are modern but even if they aren't they're movies that are sold entirely on like the viscerality of you are in the war right like when

war movies do well it's 1917 and it's lone survivor it's like that zone i feel like there are a couple other that have done well in recent years 1970 is maybe the only one to really like oscar breakthrough but i wonder if to some degree inglorious bastards is the dividing line it might be because that right but here's the there's a few i want to just take you through a couple um you know so some examples i would say of movies like you're talking about our guest today by the way is chris white's director of operation finale that's true um producer of night eggs and by the way we've got some housekeeping to do on night eggs and a little bit but i don't want to stop you we're gonna get to it we'll get to that um oh i mean yeah strap in okay so so so midway? That was a movie that came out last year, made like $50 million, kind of ignored.

That's a good example to me of like World War II, no longer money to bank. Greyhound this year, obviously sold to Apple TV. But, you know, people were kind of like, oh, yeah, whatever. Allied is a good example. But Dunkirk, Griffin, obviously obviously that has the nolan brand so that helps it along but that's a successful but like you say that's like what you're talking about where it's like you're in the war baby right this is visceral this is you know you're rattling you around if if somebody doesn't have like an arm hanging off right nobody nobody cares

anymore right right people want the the the vr experience right other underperformers you've got the monuments men you've got red tails these are not movies that were out now bombs they were just movies that kind of like did okay uh defiance remember defiance daniel craig valkyrie, of course, which I recently watched and is not very good. No, it's not very good. But to this point, 1917 and why am I forgetting the other one? Dunkirk are the only two that became major Oscar players. Right.

That's right. 1917, obviously, World War I. Yeah. No, absolutely. I feel like especially like if you go 2009 is when the academy announces the expanded field right and glorious bastards gets best picture best director best everything nominations that year and you could imagine a scenario in which you're like well if they're going to be 10 nominees every year probably one of them's going to be a war film

right you could see that just being like whatever the best war movie is every year will end up getting one of those slots and instead it's it's slipped as you said white sea yeah maybe it's actually like after saving private ryan it sort of upped the ante in terms of um you know viscerality and glorious bastard kind of turned it a bit post-modern right um and private ryan's like a couple years after english patient which is the last of that sort of war film to i think really connect in both levels but also it's like like how they say so many directors it's like you have a space movie and you're like you know which first allied for zemeckis it's like you've never made a war movie right you know doesn't everyone want to crack at that eventually yeah but it's but it's also such

a pointedly old-fashioned movie which is what i like about it but i think is what uh a lot of people find uh unengaging and distancing about it right i mean that's true i mean right there's a difference between critical reaction and box office. Like, the box office reaction to this movie, you can chart up to plenty of stuff.

Rated R, you know, right after Trump's election, weird publicity cycle where Brad Pitt basically doesn't want to talk about the movie. You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of stuff

that hams from this movie. There's all the rumor mongering about the two of them and his recent divorce and it's also like a straight adult movie with a very basic premise there's not a lot of hook in the marketing and they're targeting a very specific audience right um but yes right in terms of the critical reaction more interesting i I would say. You know, you say it's old-fashioned, but there are these weird kind of outlawing moments amongst it, right? There's this people doing cocaine and the party. Yes.

I love that stuff. That stuff's amazing. A lot of fucks. A lot of fucks in the script. Yes. So many that they even remark upon it within the movie. Yes. Too many fucks in one exchange, yeah.

When Marion Cotillard says, you just got an R rating, you know, she's like, oh, two, look, two non-sexual fucks gets you an R rating, but that would say sexual fuck you just said there. The MPAA will not like this movie. Wait, Chris, have you ever had to deal with the MPAA in terms of defining god um defining whether or

not you're speaking american pie yeah uh did they try and slap an nc-17 on american yes that was our first rating um right because you had you had him fuck the pie in a different well that was an or whatever there was an alternate shot in which he actually straddled it from above. I don't think we ever contemplated that. However, you do get into these ridiculous conversations about like, well, okay, what if we remove one thrust from

the pie? How about that? Wait, but surely it wasn't only the pie that bothered him, right? There are actual sex scenes in that film. A number of things. A number of things. But there was, as they call it, the technical term is frame fucking.

So we did have to do a bit of that in order to inch our way back to R. And that's like literally how long the shot can last right yes i mean right which angle you use right can you take out eight frames can you take out one pump i mean it's like the hingle mcringleberry um uh skit with um the key and peel skits right like you can't do the third pump or you get ejected right so they weren't like we just want i mean i don't know the the the foreign exchange student gets changed like this just doesn't seem plausible that was my mom's note after she saw american pie why would she change well she has a good point right she was just like i don't know david i it it felt kind of implausible to me and i was like yeah i don't i don't think that movie was really going for that is a goof that is a goof because

most people don't change down to full nudity at other people's houses in front of the mirror and spend a long time looking at themselves yeah yeah right right anyway um yeah but you know my mom she rented it she rented american pie in the year 2000 watched it and gave me notes so you know that's a viewer that that's money reported back to you yeah that was an elusive quadrant chris here's a question we've never thought to ask you and and you were you've been on the show uh this is now your third time including um uh patreon content Wait, is it only his third time? This is outrageous. Isn't it wild?

Right? Is it only three? I guess you're rarely in the Big Apple, Chris, but now we're on the Big Zoom. I want to get up there. I want to, you know. Oh, yeah.

I want to be up there with the Emily Yoshidas of the world. Yoshida just hit 10. 10. Outrageous. I can't do that. I'll take you guys. 10 main feed. Well, don't lose hope. I mean, come 10. 10. Outrageous. I can't do that. 10 main feed. Well, don't lose hope.

I mean, come on. Yeah. All right. Anyway, so carry on, Griff. But you're a good friend. The question we never ask. Of the show. Right.

I don't know when. Thank you. You've never asked. We've never asked. Because I feel like at several different points in the history of this podcast, maybe not recently, we've talked about the American Pie direct-to-video universe and

especially Eugene Levy's continuing role in that. Oh, right. Right. The Jim's dad's 10 years. Right. The Jim's dad continues to be this voice of sage wisdom to sexually awkward young men who he should have no relation to well actually at this point the

government actually it's like those very special episodes where the government paid for it the government pays us um pays eugene levy to represent to be a sexual educator. He's like, I'm here to open the book of love, like, or whatever. I'm trying to think of the most inventive. I will say, Griffin, Jim's dad has a Wikipedia entry on the hero's wiki. So he is considered a hero. He is a hero of sexual health.

So what was the question? I'm sorry. What's the question? I'm sorry. The question is... No the question is i don't mean i'm not trying to press you i just i want to be here to answer you directed the first film it has become this bizarrely long running series with all these spin-offs and everything do you have any participation in the american pie universe do you get checks when they release a 10th movie no i don't know wow rude paul and i don't at this stage

does adam hurt so that i hope so i definitely hope so because he is you know he's the daddy of it all daddy he's the jim's dad of the franchise he's jim's dad of the whole thing um we we do sometimes get checks for american pie 2 because we're executive producers by that stage right um but that that is it american pie 2 which i assume you had no actual involvement with no i will say one of the most anarchic theater experiences i've ever had i must have been 15 years old and i just remember pandemonium people were just like i don't know what's gonna happen in this movie but if you saw the last one anything goes youium people were just like i don't know what's gonna happen in this movie but if you saw the last one anything goes you know people were just like bouncing off the walls yeah

it could have been a black mass you know i mean i was like i was like 12 i was just at the cutoff i remember campaigning my parents so hard to let me see in theaters and it was one of those things where it's just like oh you might be a little too young but i knew i knew i theaters. And it was one of those things where it's just like, ah, he might be a little too young, but I knew, I knew I was missing out. It was like watching all my friends go to see the Beatles at Shea stadium. Like I was like, this isn't going to be the same.

And I watched it a year later on VHS. And I was just like, I missed a cultural moment. I'll say I was 15. And that movie was a little, that movie was a little, you know, young,

like that movie was really for 12 year olds. Like even at 15, I was like like i don't know about all this oh my god you guys are so young and this is every time we talk about this kind of stuff it reminds me come on i'm old i'm old as sin i'm old as bones a pile of ass show bones bag of bones sims david's so old he's gone into syndication twice over i'm so old that i'm just cashing hart hansen checks that's right i know the name of the creator of bones get out of here all right chris you're here you're not here to talk pie you're not here to talk uh jim's dad i wouldn't mind if we could talk a little bit about night eggs okay all right yes but you are

here to talk eggs that's true an ingredient in pie but has been ben have you got the then the promo queued up for i do here too in an intro yeah please let me, please. Let me just intro this because, you know, obviously we've lost a bit of momentum on night eggs with the pandemic. There's been a lot of talk about there was the thing with with Chrissy Teigen where she talked about eating night eggs. Yeah, a lot. She went to that well several times i feel yeah she made a video and everything she kind of encroaching on a brand down yeah in a way that

was upsetting for me i know and we so we got into it with the lawyers we we we had problems with Sam Jackson's window windows. Um, they, they were, they needed double insulation or whatever. There's too much, too much. And,

um, and you know, and, and then, then, uh, we did, you know,

we had a deal, we had a studio deal and then it fell through and then, well, okay. I should take some of the blame. I kept talking about giant horses and i think we should get into that but continue chris sorry no it's okay there were some budget questions and but then we um then we uh we we thought okay we got to go streaming streaming

now and and then we finally we got a deal um and have you guys heard of a thing called quibi so that that's what i'm really excited about right now oh i i have some great news for you and some bad news great news you have a name at quibi his name is david simms david is the founder majority shareholder uh bad news quibi's having a slight cash flow issue at the moment but i'm working on turning it around that would explain um why they're we've had some trouble kind of just getting getting down to brass tacks with them right yeah the phones are currently not like yeah i mean they're plugged in but there's no power being supplied to them but you know

we're gonna figure it all out david do you mind if i if i speak as your publicist here for a moment sure please yeah of course as an official representative for quibi uh chris you should just understand and first of all we apologize for the delayed response uh i think we can all say 2020 has been a wild year it's been crazy for everybody quibi is in the middle of a pivot i would say much like the pivot uh from from landscape to portrait mode while watching one of our classic turnstile videos uh quibi is sort of been pivoting as a company uh out of being um existent right right right so it's just a lot of like tectonic plates moving we're just sort of figuring things out.

We're very committed to Night Egg still. Thank you, Griffin. That explains a lot about not hearing back. But anyway, in the meanwhile, Ben, I was feeling really badly. I was feeling like I was being a bad producer. And so what I did was put together a bit of a sizzle, an audio sizzle reel. You know, I'll explain a bit afterwards afterwards but i just want to see what you think of it okay i'm very excited he's screen sharing with us here visionary filmmaker ben

hosley announced his latest project night eggs in 2021 not even a global pandemic will prevent the world from experiencing night eggs, night eggs, all rights reserved, not associated with Chrissy Deakins, night eggs. Well, and that's an important tag there that we should all really spotlight. Okay.

Yeah. So to explain, you know, obviously this, this went out today on the net and has gone viral. And some people are saying like, it sounds like a horror movie a little bit like it sounds a little too intense so that's so then that's why but that's why i put the the outro which kind of tells you that it's going to be fun to lighten right there there's kind of a like end of an episode of a sitcom vibe to the

to the right you know like i feel like i'm about to see the Gracie films card or something. Yeah. I think it's good though. I think it's got a vibe. Yeah. It's got a great vibe. The distortion on your voice.

I'm assuming that's. Oh no, that wasn't me. That was. Oh, okay. Okay. People think people keep saying it's me doing different,

like kind of trying to sound like the trailer guy, but that's a real guy. It was Don LaFontaine Jr. You got LaFontaine Jr.? You got LaFontaine Jr. That guy mostly does cruise ships. Yeah. Yeah.

But the thing is, you know, we're selling a sizzle, not the steak. It's like people still don't really know what it's about. Right, right. But that's kind of a smartle, not the steak. It's like, people still don't really know what it's about. Right. Right. But that, that's kind of a smart approach to marketing the movie. Cause the film of course is a mystery. So why not sell a mystery with a mystery being what is this fucking movie?

Right. Right. It's like that episode of entourage where they, they, they sell the movie off the trailer. No, sorry. Carry on Ben.

Go ahead. Well, no, no, please. I mean, I love an entourage antidote but antidote yes i love them i like anything that can yeah prevent entourage from

spreading but um you know we chris mentioned the budget issue so guys i don't think i've talked about this on the show yet. I, I sort of built in this new sort of angle, which is that there's giantism. There's, so there's giant horses, but like there's giant people, rich people are now giant.

Okay. It's like, but not like if you're like nine foot, 10 foot, you know what I mean? It's not like, if you're a fancy person. They're like nine foot, 10 foot. You know what I mean? It's not like huge, but it's like, they're double the size now.

So essentially you have giants of Silicon Valley, literally. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What's the, I didn't think about though, how difficult it would be to sort of make that happen you know that's the

budget sure it does it does um but i i feel strongly about it i do yeah i feel like that's the kind of thing you'll walk out of a meeting over where they're like yeah the people have to be nine feet tall and you're like i'm it's like there's not just a carpool lane there's a giant lane you know it's just things like I feel like you got to have. A lot of people think just put the people are supposed to be giant closer to the camera. But then there are a lot of problems. A lot of problems. Fantastic.

But seriously, 2021. I mean, I know actually this is 2021. That's true. So, welcome to 2021 everybody get ready everyone coming on 2021 once when i was um actually once when i was a a baby writer just arrived in hollywood um i went to a party and i met a uh a girl whose job was to to write taglines for uh for like posters and movies and she's and i said oh wow uh interesting so can like give me an example of like your what's the work you're proudest of and she said get ready for the ride

of your life that was her tagline her big tagline well it was it was not a come on by the way either i mean it could have been interpreted that way i don. I don't think it was. Unless, wow, now that I think back, like, gosh, did I really miss out on something about 30 years ago? Now, I have to confess, what is that the tagline for? Or is that just like... She didn't say. She never said. Anyone could use that. I love a get ready tagline, too.

It's just like, what was it? Ricky and the Flash. Get ready for Ricky and the Flash. I'm not ready. I'm sitting here. Trying flash get ready for ricky's flash and i was like i'm not ready i'm trying to get ready get ready i don't even know how to get ready for this i'm seeing here that it was used for total recall i don't know if that was the original i i also when i googled it got some total recall but let's see what the actual tagline for total recall was not the comp yes it was get ready for the ride of your life hey the only thing that i sort of mind more than a get ready tagline is

um x studio cordially invites you to because i always feel offended because i feel like you're asking me to buy a ticket you're not inviting me to anything if you're inviting me to it that's a fair point you are not invited where's the free ticket and where's the food and where's the party you are invited to buy a ticket you're of course invited to normal prices right well you're what you what they're really saying is like columbia pictures cordially puts you on the hook for 15.99 columbia pictures cordially is pointing out that this film will be on sale. Right.

For you. I was going down a YouTube trailer rabbit hole last night and I watched the trailer for Jingle All the Way because I remember that having like a very funny misdirect teaser as a child that they made it look like an action film and then subverted it. as a child that they made it look like an action film and then subverted it um but but that that movie was produced by chris columbus who was going to direct it and then handed off the reins to uh brian levant right who did the flintstones movies and and beethoven i think yes right uh he did beethoven one he did both flintstones he did snow dogs did a lot of a lot of hits yeah and and the trailer uses the very confusing from the director of Mrs. Doubtfire and the

director of the Flintstones which I think that's not fair play double dealing it's not it's not but you know I think if your producer is the director of a big hit film, you can't credit them as from the director.

I think you can do the from the guys or from the people who brought you. If you took it to court, they could be like, well, this movie is from Christopher Columbus, who directed Chris Columbus, not Christopher Columbus. Important distinction. And, you know, so you can't sue us on this. And I guess they'd be right. But that kind of crediting make it makes it sound like Jingle All the Way is Christopher Columbus and Brian Levant doing the five obstructions.

That it was a film of two, two directors, two titans wrestling control at every other scene. That I would like to be cordially invited to see. Yes, that I would watch. Chris, I'll cordially invite you anytime. I'm just realizing, on top of all the World War II talk we were doing at the beginning of this, the last time you were on a Main Feed episode, Chris, was Lust Caution, which is also a World War II movie. That's right. Yes. And when you came on Patreon,

it was to talk about Rogue One, a film that you wrote, which is a war movie. It is a war movie. I just love war. You've become one of our in-house resident war experts. I hope that I will be cordially invited anytime a war

springs up. You will. But I'm curious, as we now dig into the deep end of the great allied off 2021 yeah i'm curious what for you do you find appealing about war films like what are the central tenants of a good war film for you what do you like in the genre what do you aim to do when you've worked in the genre well i guess, I guess it's like the heightened emotionality and the sort of heightened, like, everything comes into strong contrast, right? Ethically, morally.

But I don't, I mean, I guess Rogue One is a war movie. But other than that, I haven't really worked on much. Well, I guess Apparition Finale, okay. Yeah, I mean, I think it's this greatest generation malarkey where it's like oh you know people had lives then there were much more living on a sort of a higher level of existence because of the um stakes involved the stakes are high it's i mean it's like sports movies it's a good thing to build a drama around because there's a game where they'll be a winner and a loser. Like there's a natural denouement there.

And even if you're not covering the end of a war in your movie, it's an environment where the stakes are incredibly high and everyone's pushed to their upper limits. Yeah, I guess that's why there aren't many great cricket movies, eh, David? That's not true, Lagan. Oh, really? For example. have you never seen lagan oh lagan i have not seen lagan isn't it about 20

20 hours long chris it's three and a half hours it's three and a half brief hours it might be four hours it's 224 minutes long chris please i know you have children in a family and you don't have 224 minutes to just throw around but please watch lagon i think it's still on netflix right now um it's so good i love it every time i've watched it i've watched it many times i threw it on recently for forky and i was like look you know i know i've talked to you about this movie and you always roll your eyes at the, you know, four hour Bollywood cricket movie. But I promise you, you're going to like it. Five minutes in, she was like, I am totally vibing with this.

This rules. We watched it. I think we watched it over two days. Like we we split it up, but it's the best. I will say I remember and this is a cherished memory of mine from when I was 10 years old. We play, we were playing cricket in my primary school and because it's a more advanced game,

like I feel like you don't play it when you're really little and I was really good at it. And the teacher in this first game we played said, the American kid is better than you at this. Like, you know, he was like yelling at the brit shame and i was like i like so proud of the fact that i was one okay at a sport and two putting my english

yeah well i bet you could catch their own sport i could catch and throw that reminds me of my first uh rugby uh practice when um they didn't know i was American and the coach stopped and said stop there's an imbecile in our midst because I didn't know what a number 8 did anyway allied allied so set in Britain

at least how would you know that well it's set mostly in Hampstead. It's set mostly near where I grew up. A lot of shots of Hampstead Heath. But yeah, Allied. Robert Zemeckis' Griffin, what do you want to estimate?

18th film? Somewhere around there, right? Yeah, I think he's made 20 or 21 in total. That's about 18. I remember, as we've sort of talked about in this late, this final period of Zemeckis that we're covering, the most recent period post-MOCAP, he's just constantly entertaining a lot of scripts.

Just a couple times a year you will hear Zemeckis is circling this. He's interested in this. And then something ends up going. But I remember pointedly this being a deadline story where it's like, Zemeckis got the script. He loved it. He sent it to Kutziar and Pitt. They loved it.

They sign on. They start filming in 10 weeks. Like it was like a rapidly moving train. It was just sort of this hot, hot script. Big movie stars attached. Big director attached. Paramount bought it for a lot moving train. It was just sort of this hot, hot script, big movie stars attached, big director attached. Paramount bought it for a lot of money and they like ran right into it, positioned it, big holiday season Oscar play.

And then it just sort of totally disappeared, which I think, as we've sort of alluded to, partially because it's a movie that weirdly had the opposite mojo of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, right? Like, that's a movie where Brad Pitt's married, he does a movie with one of the most beautiful movie stars in the world, and everyone can't get over the idea of like,

oh my God, did they sleep together? Did they end the marriage or not? And it becomes this press hullabaloo and people thought it was going to doom the movie because historically it does in the sort of classic like proof of life kind of way. Yeah. And then it didn't. It was a

major hit. And then this movie, it felt like there was a lot of gossip around it like, you know, as soon as they started filming and it was very unclear whether there was any merit to it or if it was just the kind of basic gossip construction that happens whenever two incredibly attractive people work together. But it felt like it sullied the movie in some kind of way, not the positive way. It didn't help the movie save 155 souls. It didn't land the movie in the East River. It didn't land the movie in the East River.

Exactly. Exactly. It was in the Hudson, Chris. Jesus Christ. You would never try and land a plane in the East River. There's a bunch of bridges. It's too gross. And it's too gross.

As far as I know, and I sort of dug around about this, it was all, that was all not true. It seems fake. They were like, well, it has to be this right and i think it just was was not i mean you know their marriage fell apart for more ordinary personal dysfunctional reasons and kutiar is still with uh kene i mean her marriage is still intact right and and as chris was about to say they have no chemistry they don't seem to like each other that much i would say and i all right look griffin look okay i got it i'm gonna say you know you you like this movie when it came out and you famously nominated it for best screenplay at the blankies

yes sir uh and i i scoffed you? I went, what are you talking about? Allied for a screenplay? I'll stand by the fact that I don't know if the screenplay, but we'll talk about that. But when I saw this movie at the time, I was kind of bummed out by it. I thought it was a little flat. Trump had just gotten elected. I didn't want to deal with it. And that was that.

So you were like too amped. You were too excited. It was going to be a lot of work. I just wanted to be outside you know waving flags no yeah yeah no um and so i feel like i probably didn't give this movie a fair shake i want to say there's a lot i admire about it i think it's interesting i enjoyed watching it again i i don't know that i came around to like allied triumphalism but i liked it but did you get did you get ready for it did you get ready for it did you get ready for the allied of your life i believe i believe the tagline was the enemy is listening um which is that's inspiring um

right but uh but but pitt and cotillard yeah i don't know they're not jumping off the screen to me two beautiful people too wonderful to look at folks look i'm gonna try probably in vain to mount my argument for this but it is pointedly i think a very bottled movie right which is one of the things that i think works against it as you say you know the idea of doing a classical world war ii movie is to be able to use these operatic emotions in front of a grand sort of backdrop you you know, with these high stakes and high passions and high tensions and all of that. And this is very much a movie about emotionally reserved people, which puts it at odds with the sort of genre that it is homaging.

And the era of films, I would say it is homaging. But I also think this is a movie that is so much about not being able to read people. And to a certain degree, rather than making this more of a tragic romance where the first 40 minutes are just, oh, my God, can you believe the fucking tension between these two people? The chemistry is off the charts. And then the rest of the movie becomes the tragedy of look at how it all falls apart i think it's deliberate you can argue whether it works against the ultimate goals of the movie it is deliberate that they are never explosively uh sort of uh electric with each other because the movie is about never being able to totally gauge where they stand. Well, there is that weird childbirth scene. Wild.

Holy shit. Which is bananas. Yes. So for those not familiar with this movie, Marion Cotillard gives birth during the Blitz while the hospital is being hit by bombs. They're rolling her out on a bed they she births their child on the streets yes and she's like look at me this is me before god like she has a whole monologue right which she definitely seems a bit actually

in retrospect yes well that's right that's the moment. Giant red flag. But yes, also, I think she says she's part of the Assassin's Creed in that monologue. She's spilling a lot of beans in that monologue. You have to find the apple and throw the animus. She also pulls Brad Pitt close to her right after the baby is born and starts sharing a lot of 9-11 theory she has.

But it is, in retrospect, yes but it is in retrospect yes it is an absolute warning sign that the first thing she can say during a bomb strike after giving birth to a child is like look at me i'm too exhausted to lie now yeah like that's essentially what she's saying like you can trust me because i don't have the energy to pretend to be someone else right now well this is i mean it made me think about childbirth scenes in general in movies which i i think are never ever ever realistic right there's a series of tropes right it strikes me it's so impossible to actually realistically depict childbirth and instead they just go by the book most of the time right it's like this is how we do this in hollywood so we're just going to do this for sure my this is going

deep but my my wife um had an emergency c-section for for for our first baby which was in london by the way at john lizzie's hospital birthing ward and um and although that was very stressful i also was secretly relieved i didn't have to go through the movie scene where your loved one is screaming in pain. Right. The 24 plus hours, perhaps. Right. Yes. So what does that amount to?

Is that I'd only been told by movies like what childbirth is like. And it would seem bad enough, but I'm sure it's actually much more much more painful um and also of course the baby is always better looking than a baby is when they when they hand marion coche out the baby like oh that baby's eight months old yeah okay you put some you put some goo on it but yeah hollywood has some sort of unfair casting processes when it comes to newborn infants. They definitely... I do want... It must be such a pain in the ass to corral a newborn. Have you ever had to deal with a baby, Chris?

Do they have to audition? Do they have to send a tape in? Of course. Send photos, yeah, or video or whatever. No, your audition is actually the birth of the child, because then you want to get as close as possible to what the baby's like as the newborn and then that's like the first camera test right that's like the old hollywood like they pay to put you on a camera test to shop around yeah um uh yeah

what who what was the famously bad cgi baby was it american sniper i think was american sniper has american sniper is like a plastic baby right it's just like a straight up doll yeah then like Bradley Cooper drops at one point and nobody even notices it's not that bad but it's pretty bad right the later Twilight films you were pre baby

I was pre baby there's a very odd resume CGI baby Renesmee show some respect please David it's just a name I struggle with Renesmee there you go it's a combination of Rene and Esme

very obvious but that one's an odd example because they built the practical baby first and then they made it CGI and you see the CGI baby you go that thing is so frightening looking why wouldn't they use the cgi and you see the cgi baby you go that thing is so frightening looking why wouldn't they use the practical and then you see the practical 80 times more frightening it is absolutely the single most cursed thing ever designed for a movie practical baby actually

created the conjuring universe just when it was created yes that all came out of that baby i remember i got speaking speaking of that particular movie, I got a call about, you know, because I was kind of one and done on the Twilight saga, and they called me about the next movie just to say, like, you know, there's this scene where maybe you could sort of help us with the writing of it. Is there a way that you could make it, like,

less kind of scary and creepy that, that, um, Jacob immediately falls in love with this baby. And I said, no, that's, that's just a tough needle to thread.

That's an impossible concept to get across. That's like, you know, the only medium in which that could possibly work is in a novel in which people can interpret it in their mind and adjust it however is least objectionable for them you cannot visually put that on screen it is such an absolute breaking point for the franchise yeah huge the tallest order i mean it's it's like a ben hosley night eggs rich person sized order. 15 feet tall.

Well, listen, no, that's going to be fine. Sorry, you're implying. That'll be fine. Right, no. That's a short order. Yeah, I mean, it'll, like the Hobbits and, you know, they've perfected it at this point, right? You just saying the Hobbits, that's all we needed to hear. Of course.

They perfected it. You're right. So, Allied. Guys, let's talk Allied. Allied is a 2016 war thriller made by Robert Zemeckis. It was written by Stephen Knight, who I would say is one of Hollywood's most unpredictable screenwriters. Yeah. Can we talk about Knight?

Can we unpack Knight? Can we have a hard day's night for a moment? Yes. Yes. Because he's written some screenplays. He's very prolific. I looked at him a lot. Very prolific.

Yes. He's very prolific. Very prolific. When Serenity came out, his third film as a director, which I feel like was one of the more clowned upon films last year, or 2019, but a film that I've always defended

for its bug nuts nature. It's ambitious. It's a wild, ambitious movie. I would say it makes some mistakes but i i like you know i like the ideas or i like what he's going for i don't disagree i will i will give you that serenity makes some mistakes but it's a movie i ultimately think you have to applaud it's it's wild ambition uh in many ways and a movie where I have always contended it plays a lot better if you know the ending going in.

But, but, but, when that movie came out, someone on the Blank Check subreddit posted, like, the argument for doing a Stephen Knight series at some point and saying, like, he's got one of the weirdest Blank Checks ever and that his guarantor is who wants to be a millionaire and i was like did stephen knight win who wants to be a millionaire did he self-finance a movie he created it stephen knight created the british version of who wants to be a millionaire and then became a very acclaimed tony screenwriter and then he wrote fucking dirty pretty things and got nominated for an oscar and

has had this like strong, working a lot. A lot of big directors, directed three movies of his own. Do you want to know what the initial title for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was before they came up with that very effective title, I would say? That's a million dollars, ain't it? For one, they're competing for a million pounds but uh also it was going to be called cash mountain oh shit that's better i mean are you ready to climb a mountain right yeah right right anyway it's just just that's like a very 30 rock title that's all yeah so i mean presumably there would have been like a a pyramid of of cash yeah there would have been

some pyramid motif it would be a dress like a mountaineer he would have like ropes right rather than the classic graphic of the amounts getting crossed off instead the graphic would be a money pyramid and a little mountaineer with a pickaxe and he just gets higher and higher up the mountain who doesn't get the money yeah yeah the goat just eating dollars cash mountain um but yeah his uh his big breakthrough was that he wrote dirty pretty things which is a very good movie stephen freer's film and got a surprise screenplay nomination at the oscars for it um which and you know that's like that. It's got no other nominations.

That movie kind of, you know, snuck in. I like Eastern Promises a lot. That was another early screenplay of his. Good movie. It's a movie I really am a fan of. Then he kind of goes away for a while. He directs a movie, Hummingbird, that doesn't really exist. Doesn't go.

With Jason Statham. Right, but he comes back that year, Hummingbird. He also writes Closed Circuit, which doesn't exist as well. The Eric Bana CCTV thriller. He does, wrote and directed Locke, which is wonderful. Wow. I didn't realize Hummingbird and Locke are the same year. That's wild.

And Ben, he creates Peaky Blinders. Right. Good show. and ben he creates peaky blinders right good show uh which you know the the drama of of course 19 teens birmingham gangsters that everybody loves that i think is like still on the air it's one of those shows that's just never gonna die this guy this guy is uh it has like two careers jammed into one this reminds me of when i I realized that I thought Brie Larson and Alison Brie were the same person. And I was like, wow, she's got such a huge career. Where did she find the time? Yeah.

But then you look at this next run post-Locke, right? Locke is like a movie that makes his mark as a director. And you go like, oh, maybe now he's going to like transition to being more of a director, writing his own material, scrappy little, you little you know actor based indie films like this and then he just does like 100 foot journey right Disney Lassie Hallstrom cooking movie he does seventh son which is like a disastrous universal fantasy franchise starter pawn sacrifice the Ed Zwick Bobby Fisher does Burnt, which was his script forever. And for 10 years, that was like this script where like Fincher almost made it with Keanu Reeves. There were always like big pairings. And then it finally gets made with Bradley Cooper, John Wells, doesn't exist.

I would argue though, not a bad script. It has some spicy scenes. Clearly. When you see it, you're like, yeah, I could see how this was a hot thing. Yeah. I could see how directors were into this.

Everyone considered making it. And then Allied, which is like, here's my spec script, bidding war, three major talents come up, Paramount Pictures gives it a big opening weekend

and it disappears. And then since then, yeah, weird, like he writes the girl in the spider's web, he directs Serenity, and he is now, of course

writing lockdown the doug lyman covid based heist movie starring anne hathaway chuitel edgifor david simms and griff olivia craig yeah of course david simms is in there of course you're forgetting that he created c the apple tv drama set in the the future where everyone's blind that Jason Momoa was in. This guy really just writes and writes. I want his writer drugs so that I can do his stuff. I'm sorry. I also have to mention. Yes.

Taboo. He created the British Victorian crime drama Taboo with Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy's father, Chips Hardy. Chips Hardy. But also, he wrote the Angry Scrooge Who Fucks version of Christmas Carol last year. Yes, yes. Guy Pearce was, I believe, right?

Was Scrooge, yes. I mean, it's a very odd career. Yes. But here's the other thing. Allied, which he is solely credited for, and I'm seeing here on Wikipedia that he got a blankie nomination for writing. Incredible.

Is based on like a story he heard. Like, it's like one of those things where he's like, oh, you know, like a friend of my dad's told me this story no no my aunt of like a late a guy who fell for a french woman and they you know he knocked her up and she gave birth and then found out she was a german spy like and you're just like it's not like this is a a concrete story that there's documentation of it's just like a crazy story from the war that he heard and it definitely feels like it is uh structured like a fable in that way and and i have to make

it clear when i when i laud this film's screenplay it is mostly that i find the structure of it incredibly interesting i like the structural idea of it yeah i i understand others do not like it as much as me but structurally this movie has some interesting ideas i i right off the bat if we're digging into the meat i love that this movie spends ostensibly 45 minutes on the epilogue right that there's a lot of time where you're essentially embedded in the early stages of this relationship. And it's like an ice cold open, right? I mean, you have this weird, like, we've talked about most Zemeckis movies open with complicated tracking shot, getting you into an environment or getting you out of an environment and giving you all the details of the character's life before anyone speaks. And this movie has like 10 minutes

before a word is is really kind of uttered uh and it's it just opens with like black white title cards and then brad pitt lands a parachute in the middle of the desert in the middle of nowhere love that right opening shot his feet love you know floating into the screen good right just sort of silence no score you're in lorenz of arabia territory for about three minutes right this guy has literally just dropped into the movie into the middle of the desert in the dunes and then a car drives up and they sort of have the silent exchange and hand off of objects and there's something kind of cool to like starting with no information, you know, other than the only that's a weird entrance. Yeah. And then the only thing he's told is your wife will be wearing a purple dress.

And it's basically like show up, you know, know how to act. And you're going to have to kiss a beautiful woman and take her upstairs. Essentially. Right. Great. Great. I love it. I mean, of course, this I like Chris. and you're going to have to kiss a beautiful woman and take her upstairs, essentially. Right. Great, great. I love it. I mean, of course, this I love. Chris, a couple of things.

One, I feel like you have not actually weighed in with your take on Allied, and two, what do you think of the opening? Well, so first of all, disclaimer, I'm in the tank for Bobby Z. I'm working with him now. And not just that. That's true. I like him very much. You're currently whittling a screenplay for him.

Is that fair to say? I am. And I'm also producing him as well. So I'm all around him. You're trying to turn the screenplay into a real movie. Indeedy. It is called Pinocchio. It is about a boy. No, a puppet who wants to be a boy

that's an interesting twist who can remember it's an original idea that i came up yeah sure right your aunt told you about it so my take on it is is partly informed by my liking of the man, also informed by the fact that my dad was OSS. And so I grew up with him watching World War II movies and his constant critique of these movies. And so I've got him in my head kind of, you know, it was just no fun actually watching a World War II movie with him because he'd be like, that is not the right divisional ensign for insignia for that panzer revision and stuff right like fine um but i do i do also really like the opening uh shot of this i like i like the opening moments i do think it is a quite old-fashioned in as much as the i think the modern mind says what what but why did they wait to tell him what she was going to wear and until he got into the car like did they not brief him at all in advance like wouldn't it have been more sort of technologically ahead of time actually but interestingly i guess

a lot of this movie depends on the fact that nobody has the internet um yes yes so you can't google somebody's picture i was gonna say this too and it makes perfect sense that this is a movie based on a story he kind of heard from somebody but this is very much a movie that operates from from top to tail in the world of movie logic right i mean pretty much every decision that everyone makes and how they go about it and the processes that are presented to them are all movie logic where you have to accept that that's the way it's happening because that's the way the movie wrote it. Yeah. Like, wouldn't you go meet your your newfound wife in private first and then she'd give you a little bit of a pep talk ahead of time and then you'd go to the cafe or the. You go to the roof afterwards. the the you go to the roof afterwards yeah you know the roof everything only happens the way it does because it would make for in theory a more

engaging scene in a movie right yes i mean you're you're absolutely correct they would meet in private somewhere even if they have to go to that restaurant they would find a way to have her step out or meet him in the bathroom or some shit but instead you get this weird disorienting cold open and you get him walking in eyeballing the the silent exchange of the two of them looking at each other and having to sort of go like this is now an arranged marriage we're now jumping into the deep end yeah we're in the world of stylish choices and um and and also like heavily elusive to the two two two older movies like there she, she literally says I've loved you since Casablanca right at one point. Um,

pretty early on. And so this is the world we're in. And, and if you're on, if you can get ready for that ride, get ready for the ride of your life. I would say I would, I am trying to get ready for the ride of my life.

Of course. Yeah. This is the other thing I feel like we need to mention. I say right off the bat, one hour into the episode. But right off the bat, I think we need to acknowledge, I feel like a lot of the complaints I hear about this movie stem from the visual look. That he is making a very old-fashioned movie,

that it operates on this sort of classic kind of 40s romantic movie logic, but he's using a lot of CGI. And obviously the films surrounding this are more like classic Zemeckis-y showcase movies, right? Like The Walk is pretty much a movie built entirely around we can reconstruct this thing and recreate this thing. JD has talked about it at length,

about how that movie is clearly trying to work past a sort of literal evocation of a real space and more sort of storybook kind of dreamlike representation of a place. And I feel like he is using digital technology in this movie, not just how much digital backdropery there is, clear like, you know, color correction. And even just their faces look a little mocap-y at times. It is a movie where it feels like he's using CGI like... How do I even put this?

I feel like he's weirdly using CGI to approximate old-fashioned visual trickery, right? Like, it's like the way he's using virtual backdrops in this is like it's rear projection or like it's like the way he's using virtual backdrops in this is like it's rear projection or like it's matte paintings yeah the same way that the way he's sort of touching up their faces feels like it's gauze on the lender lens or something you know painterly you might say yes but like you know give me a little grain like i i know this is the most boring complaint these days but like you know like if you're making a throwback movie, I would enjoy some...

It looks a little flat and digital sometimes. That's not the end of the world. No. These are handsome people. I like to look at them. I think the first act of this movie is pretty arresting like i i basically dig it you know like the mystery of all this stuff yeah is right it's just good it's i like how stripped away it is stripped you know stripped down it is uh i like that we you know we barely

need to know their names we barely need to know if anything they're saying is real i like that the mission is pretty direct we're gonna shoot that guy you know like uh i i like and i like casablanca who doesn't i came i came here for the waters the first act of this movie is like the middle of castaway in how sort of stripped down and sparse it is the tools he's using for a guy who's been known to use a lot of flash and use a lot of sharp dialogue. Right. Yeah, the dialogue, not tippy top, I think. I can't disagree. Yeah, that's the thing.

It certainly gets a little ropey at times. But I also think the movie wisely does not rely on dialogue too much. It doesn't require. It relies on a lot of looks. Brad doesn't have to speak too much French. Yes. It's not his strong suit. It's a look movie for me.

I mean, we like, when we did Manchurian Candidate on the show. I mean, when we did Manchurian Candidate on the show and talked about the value of Demi doing a Manchurian Candidate remake is his sort of subjective camera, right? His whole visual style of looking characters straight in the eye when they speak works very well with that material because it's a movie about trying to look someone in the eyes and figure out whether or not they're on the level whether or not they can be trusted which version of a person you're talking to this and that i think the way he's using movie stardom in this movie and i'm not saying this is like a meta movie about movie stardom but he pointedly cast two ginormous stars right uh and two people who have their own sorts of chemistry. I do think it is a movie about performance in a way that is aided by having two people

who are that innately arresting, even in a movie that is trying to tamper down their natural charisma. Because so much of the movie is just like, I don't know, she really seems like she's on the level right but then also this is marion coutillard she can play whatever you ask her to play you know yes i think you guys seem wildly unconvinced yeah well she's i she's look i mean

i remember when i interviewed him he you know zemeckis was very much like she was the only choice. And like, she has the look of an old, you know, European movie star, right? I mean, she's, she, it's what helped her endure in Hollywood, I think, you know, after she won this sort of early surprise Oscar. I, I don't, I don't know what to say about her performance in this movie. Does she act as well in English as she does in French? I think she definitely acts better in French. I think she's a good English language actor, but I think she's certainly next level in French. Usually when she's in an english language

movie like the no the way nolan uses her or um what are some other come on give me you know public enemies yeah like she is good at playing um like mystery women you know these very dramatic you know sort of leap off the screen figures right you know and then you see her in rust and bone or you see her in uh two days one night right you know the french very long engagement yeah uh and you're like oh my god this is such a natural like sort of human performance like and you rarely see that from her in a hollywood movie now is that because hollywood just looks at her and is like oh my god va va voom like you know possibly yes i think there's some degree of that i mean certainly like i you know nolan kind of uses her in that kind of

classical bombshell sort of way right but then you look at nine is another one right but i'm looking at other things here too and it's like the immigrant is sort of asking her to play old golden age movie star she she's great in that that the immigrant is sort of asking her to play old golden age movie star she she's great in that that's that's sort of the right vibe because that's like an old-fashioned movie she's playing an immigrant obviously so you know like you know it makes sense that her faculty with english is is not much you know like that that's yeah that's a great performance she's absolutely one of my favorite actors alive, even if she's not someone where I'm like,

oh, she's given my five favorite performances of the last decade. She's someone I always find very engaging, and I think she has a really strong command over her screen presence. And as you said, she can do things like Rust and Bone and Two Days, One Night, where she's speaking in her own language

very stripped down very elemental very behavioral or she can be used in that assassin's creed way where she's like what do you want me to play you want me to play like an ingenue a femme fatale i'm like mystery woman who's classy and makes your exposition sound less silly done you know and this movie's sort of the midpoint between those things. I mean, obviously more in the classical bent, but you also get another thing I like about this movie is that a lot of it takes place in other languages. Like, that is a threshold that I thought was really going to be broken after Inglourious Bastious bastards where that movie was such a big hit and like probably one third of that movie is in english and mainstream american audiences went and supported a movie that

is like largely spoken in german and french and i thought like oh finally now if people are making period films in foreign countries they will actually make the film where people are swapping going back and forth between a couple languages speaking natively as they would in any given scene films in foreign countries, they will actually make the film where people are swapping, going back and forth between a couple languages, speaking natively as they would in any given scene. Like, for example, The Walk is a terrible example of French people who all only speak English to each other because they want the movie to play in America. And the justification in the script is, come on, let's speak in English.

I'm trying to improve my english right of course that actually when they said that i completely understood and that made it make sense right but i like that this movie it's like you get a lot of scenes of her speaking in french him speaking less well in french it allows her a certain comfort curiously she speaks she speaks english to the german attache at the embassy that was odd that that's that's where the rule i guess is just thrown out the window where it's like look let's just all speak galactic basic here if we if we've got three languages in the room but uh you know but actually they sort of they they complicate matters as well by saying oh brad pitt doesn't speak english he only speaks german so it means right yes yes so curiously they're speaking english seemingly out of capris to yes to be mean. Right. That's how they get away with that. Anyway. Re-Pitt.

Re-Brad Pitt. Re-Pitt. Sure. You know, I would say 2011, he has this dynamite year that's sort of the, you know, the pinnacle of this whole era of his career that's been so exciting, where he has the Tree of Life, he has Moneyball, and of course, he has Happy Feet 2. Right. That's just three

great performances yeah he should have won three Oscars that year exactly best actor best actor in an animated film best supporting krill yeah and then after that you know he's still like I would just say he enters this phase

where he's just a raggedy guy so you got like killing him softly uh I would just say he enters this phase where he's just a raggedy guy. So you got like killing him softly, World War Z, 12 Years a Slave, The Counselor, Fury, this, By the Sea, The Big Short. This is this whole period where even in World War Z and this, where he's a marquee idol, he's kind of like quiet and grumpy and sort of mumbly and then like also just seems very drawn to playing these like really raggedy guys in supporting roles popping up and stuff being weird you know it feels like he's working through stuff obviously his marriage was falling apart it turns out you know but go ahead sorry that's a part of it i think it was also like him finding his real zone as an actor as you said like 2011 was like his most

successful year creatively right and he's starting to find the roles he can fit into as well but i also think there's a narrative that we see a lot uh talking about movie stars on this show were guys who are just like otherworldly beautiful. Kind of can't wait until they start losing a little bit of their pretty. You know? For a guy like Brad Pitt, I think he views like the wrinkles

starting to come in as a gift. Because they can still make a movie like Allied where you give him an $80,000 haircut and a perfect suit and he looks great and he's got the cheekbones. But he is now a little more weary, you know? And so it allows him to play savory people, unsavory people rather.

But it also allows him to play, you know, sort of broken down former golden boys. Which I think, as you said, he just runs with. He runs with. He wants to play people who have some kind of axe to grind chip on their shoulder something they're holding on to tightly you know yeah yeah i think like when he does uh once upon a time in hollywood he actually sort of emerges from that a bit i mean he still has the broken downness but he's having fun with it as opposed to something a bit medicinal about when a guy's like yeah now i'm gonna play the broken man and it's gonna be really sad just his performance in ally

does feel like he's like i'm gonna tie both arms behind my back and see how i do i don't actually think this is a bad performance i think at the end it is deeply felt what's happening to him you know i don't think you know it does not feel like he's like sleepwalking through this movie in the slightest i agree but it is interesting how insanely reserved he is for so much of you know how right like how resistant he is to turn on the charm button yes right you you hire a movie star with such innate charm pointedly to say now can you actively work to suppress all of that charm i only want the bare minimum charm coming through just to keep people engaged watching you on screen um my i think i've said this before in the show

but my sister who is uh nine years younger than i and so she kind of came of age as pitt was transitioning into his clenched period. When I took her to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, she turned to me, she went like, I didn't know Brad Pitt was such a movie star. And it was such a funny thing where it's like, she's grown up with Brad Pitt being one of the dominant movie stars in the culture

and she's seen a handful of his movies, but they were always him playing kind of angry, clenched or closed off or bottled in some sort of way and that was like the first movie she had seen in her lifetime having not seen the oceans movies too young for them uh that uh that where she was like oh he can be this charming like he can look this good and be this alluring and yeah it's like that's why he slam dunk won the oscar because people were just like okay now he's like taken everything he's learned from his serious sojourn and brought it back to him being like the sexiest dude in the world and this movie allied is absolutely in like the dead center nadir of those two points what are your thoughts chris my pit thoughts uh a little pit stop um i think yeah i think he's

very intent on not having fun here and and maybe that makes it less fun for us yes this is not really a fun movie no the beginning is a little fun and then after that it's surprisingly unfun i like how sad this movie is i could never argue it's fun i don't think it's surprisingly unfun. I like how sad this movie is. I could never argue it's fun. I don't think it's a corker. It's sad. Well, I mean, yes, Marion Cotillard shoots herself in the head in front of her husband. But is that really sad?

It does happen. It does happen. While your baby sits in the car. Yeah, her baby's right there yeah but it's happy because he's gonna be okay yeah he's gonna go to medicine hat yeah filmmaking wise this does feel like him using the tools from castaway in a very different type of story but it has that sort of inherent loneliness to it that I think Castaway has.

For a guy who's so much about energy, right? Like, Zemeckis is such a kinetic filmmaker in whatever genre he's working in, and his movies are usually very fast-paced and are about the sort of

back and forth between the performers, whether they're comedies or dramas or action films. Like, he's a guy who keeps everything moving. And, uh, this like starts out, as I said, where Castaway takes an hour to get to of just everything being really drawn out. And these guys, these two main actors who are sort of like holding back all the natural charm,

which I think is deliberate. You can argue it works against the movie's best interest, but because these are two people who, like, they keep saying it in the movie, like, don't get emotional, you know? Like, don't let your emotions get involved here. You're seeing two people. You're meeting them cold. You don't know whether or not to take them on the level.

And all you know is that these people spend their entire life faking relationships. So I think to some degree this movie is about the uneasiness of being in a serious relationship with somebody. The sort of inherent trust you have to commit to, I'll never fully know another person. And this is like the nightmare scenario of it, right? For a while while for about an

hour of it it feels like it's a movie about infidelity right and within a marriage right um and then they are it turns out allied uh by the end of it but um yeah actually oh okay yeah you see that's what yeah yeah i I got it. I just want to interject that there's a scene in which Marion Cotillard's character is kind of testing the mettle of Brad Pitt's character by slowly unbuttoning her blouse lower and lower. And I just kept on imagining that it would also work if Brad Pitt were doing that.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Just slowly revealing his pectoral that. Oh, absolutely. Just slowly revealing his pectoral muscles. I also like that Brad Pitt's reaction to that is Jesus.

He's not like, you're playing a good game and I can see what you're doing there. He's just like, alright, God, my God, you're unbuttoning your shirt at lunch. What am I supposed to do here? I'm having an egg. I love all the weird formality of that.

Like, I like that this movie isn't, look, it is obviously not realistic, but I think on an ecstatic level, it gets at some kind of interesting truth about what it must be like to be a career spy right and just like the the rooftop scenes are so fascinating to me because they don't have the kind of megawatt sexual chemistry that you would expect from this movie with these two actors what they have is them having very banal sort of formal conversations about like like shop talk while she also directs him in real time through how to seem like they're a sexually active couple like that they're exchanging war stories while also she's like and now you have to like kiss me here this person's watching this and i that i like that kind of stuff the rules of pretending to be a fake couple obviously the americans that was about a real couple but you know like i like the i like spy rules that's fun

like um i like the scene i i love um uh august deal i'm sure you guys agree so obviously he's in inglorious bastards he's in the the Daniel Brühl zone of like incredibly talented German actor who does all this wonderful stuff in his home country and anytime Hollywood comes calling he's like uh is the film set in World War II uh yeah what's what's the script called it's called uh the Nazi gets shot in the face so is that my role yeah okay it's actually very generous that Malick let him play like the conscientious objector because otherwise if he appears in an american film he's almost always playing like nazi asshole number three right exactly uh he recently played carl marx shout out to uh that movie uh the young

carl marx um but he's great i like this scene that scene the uh right do you guys agree you know the yeah write down the formula for phosphate for me right now although they never pay off the formula for phosphate i was thinking like um right does he buy it or not yeah he doesn't that it isn't it's never paid off and i i think it might have been here's how i would have put a button on that scene uh he would have just said well i don't even know what it is but okay that's the Forky and I was just like there's no way this guy knows what the formula for phosphate is and she's like well maybe he looked it up beforehand right he knew a phosphate guy was coming through I don't know I just Wikipedia'd it

I have in cartel right here of course Nazi, the Reich has all the technology. And then the assassination scene rules. Pit and Cody are just murdering people with machine guns. Like a fancy party. That scene where she, that moment where she points her gun at the nice society lady, you know, and the lady's like, you know, like, that's great. You know, spy stuff. Great.

Love it. But let's mention before that is them having sex in the car. They've like the tension slowly building between these two very bottled people. And then they go out to the desert. They're in the car and she sort of like throws out like we could just die tomorrow. I would have driven back to a nice bed, but I guess... Yeah.

I was just thinking like, oh man, that looks really uncomfortable. That is a busted car. Yeah. When I was younger, very aware that I'm still a young man, even though I feel like I'm 87. But when I was younger, I think as someone who grew up in New York City, I used to very much fetishize the idea of having sex in a car because it seemed like such a rite of passage, like such a suburban teenager thing.

Like that's your space. That's your domain, the car. You got to use the car. And now I watch something like this and i just can't stop thinking about how uncomfortable it would be it just makes me physically uncomfortable yeah right right especially someone with a fucked back i'm just like there's no way i could i could enjoy that not a fuck back a fucked back i guess i should make that clear i am not the fuck back of notre dame i do have a fucked back i'm trying to think and I'm sure we've

talked about this over the course of this miniseries but not a lot of sex scenes in some X movies no that's another much like that's another thing it's not a topic of great frequent interest there's a

diffidence yeah you're seeing some Brad tush we do see a lot of Brad's buttocks you do there's only two of them I mean like not that many of them a lot of buttocks yeah you see both they're out of buttocks

but that's look it's a thing that's come up that like certainly because Zemeckis and Spielberg are so linked Zemeckis is inherently

a lot hornier than Spielberg who feels like he goes out of his way to sort of avoid sex in his movies to some degree and then when he does it in munich everyone clowns on it to this day and zemeckis does not often have

like over sex scenes but there is certainly a greater strain of sexuality in his movies but this feels like the one movie that is like kind of sexual in an adult way to me there's this weird moment in the party isn't there where there's like this kind of the the world war ii version of a bro asking these two girls to make out yeah and when they're like clearing everyone out of the party a pit opens up a closet and there's like a topless woman being like chased by a guy benny hill style that she asked him to go upstairs to check to see if anyone's fucking in the baby's room like it's certainly and then you have uh lizzie caplin as uh brad

pitt's incredibly horny uh lesbian sister yes who's an actress who's almost 20 years younger than brad pitt but uh maybe they have different moms. I don't know. Yeah, really different moms. So when I interviewed Zemeckis for this movie, he was grumpy. Not with me. Just, I don't know, had a grumpy vibe.

I think he's one of these guys who doesn't want to give too much to the press. It feels like that's a through line. Definitely not. And also, he's been doing this for so long, he doesn't need to talk

to some pipsqueak. Also, he's more of a film spotting fan. He was, like, angry that he was talking to you. Of course. But I remember we talked a lot about the whole, like, you know, undersung thing, especially in old movies, of, like, yeah, Britain in the 40s, those people were going crazy they were like the world

could end we're being bombed all the time yeah they were drinking like crazy they were all having affairs obviously lots of men were overseas as well so like a lot of marriages had been like thrown to call you know like all kinds of crazy shit was happening they were doing things like cocaine you know and like it was just a wilder time than this you were listening to swing music they were getting swing music and they were having parties and like you know you think of mrs miniver and these great british war movies where it's like the stiff upper lip brits and all that but yeah it was the apocalypse like you know why wouldn't people be going crazy yeah yeah there's something

striking about seeing like his office superior doing lines in the background of a party in which people are openly fucking but that feels like i mean it's the it's the weird tension of this movie that it's like he's doing this pastiche thing but then he's also trying to deflate it a little bit as well by having them use more modern language and showing that sort of like debauchery but it's shot in in a quite in quite a sort of conservative manner right that's the interesting thing is it's not like you you don't have like foreground somebody doing blow uh kind of in in a weird like color timed kind of thing it's absolutely his least flashy movie and and the flashiest shots are still locked down by and

large like anytime he does some sort of fancy framing in the movie it's a pretty still you know shot held for a while he's just doing something interesting with the composition there's a great um either split diopter or or fake split diopter shot where brad pitt is in bed being suspicious of uh of marion coachyard and she's by a window and it's two different totally different planes of focus it's quite cool i think he also does a sort of reprise of his contact shot of the mirror shot where you can't see that the camera um yes as well there's some there's some cool stuff it's a less less ostentation it's less showy yeah right it's it's an unshowing movie but let's just say that the the sex scene in the car is kind of like a denouement in of to this first movie right like the first 45 minutes are

kind of their own movie and you could very much see that being the only story they wanted to tell two people assigned to a mission as spies playing a married couple they sort of fall in love they execute the mission and then they go their separate ways right that could very much be the movie but instead you have this sort of you know this big denouement this scene that for zemeckis it's alarming to see this kind of sex scene in a certain way especially in a movie that does feel this old-timey and old-fashioned you know it's not like copious nudity but you're seeing brad pitt's butt you know you're seeing those pie thrusts and and there's also like mad max fucking sandstorm happening outside the window there is a sandstorm well the sandstorm feels like it's summoned by their sexual activity right right it's it's so operatic right this one moment is

so operatic and then they go back to being like pretty professional like you cut to them you know getting ready in the car uh you know briefing each other and they're making like little flirty comments but to some degree these are two characters who have been trained to like sever their emotions right they have learned how to become somewhat sociopathic. Well, I think he, but he's gone a bit gaga by that point there, right? Doesn't he say, he says twice, you know, to a magnifique, right? Sure, but he's saying it in his Brad Pitt,

like clenched away, you know? To a magnifique. Yeah. It's a Kevin Quay accent. Then they show up with the guns, they mow everyone down, and then the film sort of jumps ahead to them being, you know, him saying, let's go to London together. I i'm gonna take you to london we're gonna start over right okay and so here's the thing okay so as you say this movie kind of

has a long epilogue right that's partly because one prologue it's second long prologue and a long epilogue though correct right like because the epilogue is another thing but right the middle of this movie is like all right flash forward and there's that birth scene that we talked about but basically it's flash forward he's married now they have a kid they live in hampstead the war's still on but they have this nice domestic life his sister's there blah blah this is now like at the 45 minute part he he pretty much resets and now does the standard zemeckis opening where you like go through the house and see all the pictures on the wall yep yes right now now you're in the the net neutral right you're at the comfort the home base simon mcbirney and jared harris playing british

functionaries who are a little weird i wrote down in my notes as soon as i saw simon's face oh shit simon mcburnie skull duggery yeah he's not there to deliver good news it's true he's not like oh boy first of all happy birthday some queasy cynicism is about to hit it yeah you get this like okay they have this like beautiful domestic life right this idyllic house they hang out with his sister they got this beautiful baby born in the most extreme circumstances ever and then you see like brad pitt's got a pretty normal like office job now he's a he's a desk a desk guy he worked right he works at oss or v section or wherever and they give him the heads up he thinks it's going to be a promotion okay so simon bernie is like your wife marianne boseger is a spy as far as we're you know we we're getting

information she stole this woman's identity she's a german spy you have to run a blue dye operation where you write some you know info down and we see if it gets passed along, you know, classic thing. Right. And then is introduced the craziest rule of all spying. Where if your significant other proves to be a spy, you must kill him or her with your own hands or you get killed, which is kind of right. You have to do this or else you have to kill the mother of your child or else we'll know you're in on it too whatever it's like a looper roll they tried to slip that curveball past us you gotta close your own loop

yes but this is not the movie's fault but Marion Cotillard what he should now do is do the blue dye operation and sit and wait and find out yeah yeah right right and instead of course the movie needs you know some stuff to happen so he starts acting like a fucking maniac and running all over town being like have you seen

this woman like is she the real marion beger? And handing pictures to pilots and then actually flying to... He's putting up flyers on lampposts. Going to France himself and interrogating a vomiting drunkard on a surreptitious prison break. Which is so funny that he barfs first. I love that. Yeah, the barf is good. Where he's like, is this her? And he's like, yeah, yeah, she's great.

Excuse me while I barf. I can't see a thing. Yeah, she had beautiful yellow eyes. He's like, no, she has blue eyes. Oh, yeah, I know, blue, whatever. May I play devil's advocate? Go ahead. This is where I think to some degree,

and not to psychoanalyze the man's life, right? But we talked about how Cast Away and What Lies Beneath are the two movies that come right after his divorce. And in the same way, you know, most directors who have robust careers start to check off certain genre boxes of the types of films they want to make or the types of actors they want to work with very often in a long enough career if a director goes through a divorce there's a movie that is very clearly the divorce movie right there's a film that feels like and we don't know the details right we don't know the details of his divorce it's not super public he remarries quickly he worked with his first wife he now works with his current wife who knows right but castaway and what lies beneath are films that feel like obvious divorce movies right like cast away as a man being forced on island by himself to figure out who he is and what lies beneath is a movie about like the weird tension of a marriage that's been going on for a long time and reckoning with what they sacrificed to get to that point and this feels like a sort of uh a much more generous post-divorce movie about just

trying to figure out like why relationships end on an allegorical level right the idea of their like being potentially at any given point a bomb under the table of a relationship that could that could upset the entire thing sure be it sure. Be it something from the past or that they've changed, that they fundamentally changed, you know, to no longer be compatible with you.

This movie's sort of about someone who, like, two people who fall in love at the one moment they could possibly fall in love, right? If they had met a week earlier,

she would have been a German spy. Not a week, but you know what I'm saying. And, like, after this, you know, she would have gone back to Germany if, you know, he hadn't grabbed her at the end of the mission and said move to London with me. And they're trying to outrun the outside circumstances, you know, fighting against the idea of them being together because of this sort of inexplicable, you know, connection that people feel to each other.

People falling in love in a relationship that's kind of intrinsically doomed. Okay. When I talked to Zemeckis, we eventually at some point, I mentioned, we talked about how fatalistic the movie is, right? You know, and it's about fatalistic people. They're living in London and during the Blitz and the, you know, you could die tomorrow, right? Like that's informing so much behavior. And here's what he says. I'm just going to read this. The thing that makes love stories work, in my opinion, in movies and novels and country and Western songs is the feeling of longing. We have to evoke the feeling of longing, the painful feeling. That's what we as humans understand as love. No one can define love, but if you attempt to, the closest you can get is longing. And that has a melancholy to it.

You can say dread or doom. It's that feeling we all feel when we fall in love with someone. We have this horrible, fearful feeling that maybe we'll never have this person in our life. If you want to get existential about it, all love affairs will always end in horrible pain. Right. I feel like that's what he's dealing with on a metaphorical level on top of the constant question of whether you truly know the person you're with, whether you can ever truly trust them, you know? Yes, exactly. But it's also it's that thing of like the minute you fall in love with someone or the minute you buy a puppy, right?

Like you will have that sort of dark thought in the back of your head of like, Jesus, one day this thing's going to die. The puppy might be a German spy secret. And also you'd have to kill it. We got to run a blue die. Right. But also like what, what could this thing do to break my heart? You know,

the obvious tragedy is I lose them. Right. But also like, how could they fundamentally betray my trust in some kind of way? And, uh, I do feel like this whole section of the movie where you're saying uh uh brad pitt has zero chill and is fucking shit up rather than just

letting the test play out is because he is so full of nervous energy the mere accusation flips him out right he loses his cool in the room with mcbirney and Harris. And he's just, I think, trying to control his universe. There is now a process in play that he cannot control. The results will come out in the wash. And he's telling himself, if I go and track down everyone who I think has seen this woman, can I get the results I want to hear? But, you know, he could just sit her down and be like, look, here's the situation. They tell me you're a spy and I have to kill you are you a spy or not come on let's let's talk it out believe i won't kill you let's figure it out which instead he becomes like a total psycho to her like

there's this whole section of the movie where he's like right where you're right and you're kind of questioning is she innocent and is he now seem like a spy to her but the thing is even when he knows he knows the very worst of it right like she's betrayed him she was fooling him that whole first 45 minutes in casablanca she's made him betray his side he doesn't get he doesn't care by the end of it he's so it's not you, even having been betrayed, he's still more about his love for her. Right.

Which is bananas, actually. It's kind of wild. Well, the question then kind of becomes... That is love, as Zemeckis might tell us. Right. It's wild sort of puppy love. And it's also like, for him, I think the greater question of allegiance is,

okay, if she's a spy, if this was a setup, can I at least hear that it became real at some point, right? Like, there's no way to reconcile with her original intentions. The thing he wants to get out of this is, but now it's real. Now there's still an actual thing. At some point, she changed. At some point, she evolved. This wasn't illeg an actual thing. At some point she changed. At some point she evolved. This wasn't illegitimate. I wasn't living a fiction.

The thing is, when she does finally admit it, right at the end, when he sits her in front of a piano and demands she plays Le Marseillaise and she says, I'm not Sam from Casablanca. Yeah. Sorry. She says, yeah, I'm so sorry. What can Ica? No. Sorry. She says like, yeah, what could I, I'm so sorry, what could I do?

I love you. Like, you know, they were threatening our daughter and like, that's why I had, you know,

like she, and it's like almost. I genuinely thought if I came to London I would get away from them. They wouldn't be able to find me. That woman who's been

babysitting our baby is actually a fucking German spy and she's got the baby at gunpoint. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's only

one drunk guy who could who could uh identify her right right right and there's the guy who's like oh i saw her and i'll never see anything again now i'm turning my head you can see i have no eyes yeah matthew good saying like oh saw her through this bad eye or my no eye which one but um no i also just like when she finally gives the explanation it's almost incidental we're like yeah no we we know at this point we know we we get it you were in an impossible situation you know what i mean like it's not like even a shocking reveal which is interesting for a movie and this is not a criticism it's interesting for a movie that is predicated on is she or isn't she right that by the end we're like oh no i mean yeah of course she is well it's

hard to do a reveal with someone not being able to do something it'd be more like if she like if she was known as if the known as a german spy with a tendency to play the tambourine and then suddenly she started jamming out with a band you saw that that would be the big twist give me that thing god she's so good at the tambourine no one's back but her not playing the marseillaise is inherently not a, it's like a, it's kind of less of a twisteroo. I was hoping that she tried to just like slam her way through. The alternate scene where she's like that.

No, but I, and also the drunk guy is like, she played the Marseillaise so beautifully. It was so good. Seriously, not just like she was just learning the piano but she had to be reading it i i like the simplicity of that moment though that it's like she sits there in front of the piano and then she puts the cover down and it's like i'm not even gonna pretend like you got me because i think in and of, the fact that she surrenders that easily to the ruse is sort of the moment where he realizes like, oh, we're both on the same level here, which is that we're now terrified about you dying. That like love of country who gives a shit.

It's just about keeping you alive at this moment. And then this completely like, you know, harebrained plot of like, let's just drive really quickly to a plane and fly out of here. They'll never find us ever again. Yes. Bad idea. This is true. Bad idea. Where are you going to go?

It's compelled. A lot of that stuff is compelling. Pit is so weird in some of those scenes, but it's very compelling. I guess. I like when he shoots the nanny that's a great scene great just absolutely murdering a 60 something woman yes in a hamstead townhouse you don't see enough of that in the movies you should do that once a movie every movie um and the the the sort of mania of the final thing where he's like trying to get the plane started and she's like wrapping up her baby because she knows it's over and jared harris like drives his car into a propeller just stop the propeller i love that shit i like from the

propeller just messed up the car like oh was like, oh. Yeah. Right. Intriguing. Then you have that moment that I love that I think is like a powerful Zemeckis shot where they're like in the rain. And here's like Jared Harris and Brad Pitt yelling outside this plane. And she's in the backseat of the car with the baby looking through the front window. And it's just like here are just two men like yelling at each other. You know? I will say though this movie cost like a hundred million dollars to make for paramount and this was really in a tough period for paramount where they were they were experiencing a lot of trufflops you

know they were bending into the brad gray area sure right um and like the end of this movie is jared harris is like mr pitt i arrest you for high treason at once against her majesty the queen and then she shoots herself and you see it and he's like that's all boys brad pitt will instead get the medal of decency and we'll never speak of this again and then it's like roll credits and then bobby zemeckis just comes on screen he's like i hope you enjoyed the movie. Files out and Donald Trump is president. Like it is, it is a wild thing to expect audiences to go out and be like, a cinema score for that one. Sure.

It's a, it's a, it's a, yeah, it's a very abrupt ending in a wide, right? You don't sort of cut in on Jared Harris thinking it over Brad Pitt. Right. No dog. Look, no, you know, hang dog look. No, you see her like looking at the abstracted figures through the window, making the decision, grabbing the gun, covering the baby, walking out. And she sort of like says her, I love you. He says his, I love you, turns away. And then she pretty much walks into a close up and shoots herself in the head.

It's wild. And then it's justad pitt's immediate reaction is so good he i think he plays that moment so incredibly well where even before the actual tragedy of the thing hits just the shock of it like his instantaneous knee-jerk reaction almost to just the sound of the gunfire and you see him over her shoulder in the shot and then yes right they cover up the body jared harris goes like five cheers for brad pitt and then drives away and then the end of the movie is like fucking maria couture's written a sad letter to her daughter being like we must admit i was a spy i was going to die at some point i assume if you're reading this they shot me in the head i love you raffy

cassidy from tomorrow yeah that is raffy cassidy they hired raffy cassidy is that right yes they did yes to be in a bunch of still photos and then i guess you see her from behind petting a horse with brad that's kind of like an antiquated um you know when someone records a videotape in the event of my death, play this videotape. Right. Yes. I always love when people do that. I should start making them now for myself.

You should make them for all kinds of scenarios. They'll be like, I see what you're watching. It means I fell off my speedboat that I eventually bought. If you're watching this now, I opened my window at the Safari at Six Flags and something went down. But that's essentially what she does. It's like, here's the letter in case of my death. I assume I, for one reason or not, will not live to see you grow up, my daughter. So here's a letter.

And the letter is like, I got to admit I fucked up. This one's on me. Sorry. I loved your father, but I got myself into a real pickle also jet fume could not melt steel beams if you really look into it and then the movie fades to black but but no that's right it's like hard fade to black uh uh credits sad pulled back alan sylvestre score and then he transitions to playing jazz music like then the credits the rest of the credits play out with like the right the movie's actually about the birth of modern jazz i mean that's that's really what's been going on this whole time it's a bleak movie it's a bleak movie i It's a bleak movie. I don't know. Does it earn it?

I guess is the question, right? Like, does it earn this incredibly, uh, bleak, you know, sad ending?

I don't know. I don't know. I kind of like Allied. When am I going to watch Allied? Like Griff, you like this movie. Did you watch it again before? Absolutely not.

This was the first time I've watched it again. I saw it in theaters the weekend it came out. I saw with jordan fish and rates and tori friends of the show and uh we were like oh that's the best movies of mecca's has made in like 20 years right that thing rules but it definitely felt like i don't know it almost felt like the flip side of what you're describing where it was like oh donald trump has been elected. We want to wallow in like epic misery. Right. And just sort of like doomed love sort of like watches the world burns around us and we have to kill each other shit. it. I mean, I feel like it had that kind of palpable tension in the theater, seeing it at the AMC25,

where, uh, like, you know, in the moment when he gets the guy to look at the picture and say that it's her, there were sort of, like, gasps, certainly, when she shot herself in the head. I don't know. It's just like one of those things where it's like, I felt like I kind of had an ideal theatrical

viewing of it. I certainly liked it a lot, again, watching it this time. But I remember it feeling kind of magical being captive in a theater watching it, especially with how sort of deliberately paced the movie is, how quiet it is, how bottled it is. There was something about the tension of being there in the theater that really got me. I'll watch it again at some point. It's not like one I'm going to throw on once a week. There was something about the tension of being there in the theater that really got me. I'll watch it again at some point. It's not like one I'm going to throw on once a week. It's not like I watch Allied when I can't fall asleep. I mean, I could see parts of this movie lulling you to bed.

I watched it on iPad while I was putting my middle child to bed in two different sections while winnie the pooh was playing to the side so i can't say i have the ideal theatrical experience sure and we should also mention no we should also mention we like we asked you to cover this movie like we sent you the full zemeckis list and you gave us some options and you sort of said like ally it's kind of interesting because i i have a fondness for like world war ii movies and then i sort of pushed on you like i'd really like you to come on this episode because david and i disagree on this movie but i i knew the risk of you might just not care for this movie at all i don't i well i don't know i think i don't know i think i'm in the middle of you guys really that's what i thought would happen i i'm also i I'm in the middle of you guys, really. Wow. That's what I thought would happen. I'm also in the middle, though. I think this movie has a lot of interesting stuff going on.

I just... It feels like everyone's in the middle. Yeah. I mean, by Zemeckis standards, I just like this period much more than the mocap period. Absolutely. That's not really a hot take. I think there's interesting stuff going on in Flight, The Walk,

Allied, and Marwen. I don't, none of those movies are, you know, out and out hits for me. I think Flight is the closest. Yeah.

See, this is far and away my favorite of this period, of his 2010s. But I appreciate that he at least tries stuff. And, you know, I wonder about this, you know, this next phase, but I also wonder about this next phase of Hollywood. And I also wonder if we'll ever see a movie again. So, you know, can't really lay all that at Mr. Bobby's feet right now.

This is the other factor at play, which is, I think I have a soft spot for this kind of movie in a career, which is blank check director has massive success early on. Right. And then they get to a point where they're just sort of like, oh, you've been like a major player for three or four decades. You can do anything, but maybe you're a little bit like out of the pocket at this point. Right. You have your sort of like empire period, like Tim Burton or whatever. And then you get to that period where you're sort of like, what do I do now?

What, what do I, uh, evolve into? Um, and this feels for me like big eyes, another movie, which I defend more than most people where it's like,

this feels like the most exciting thing to see a guy like this do, even though this movie was very expensive. It's like to do a movie that is so stripped down because we've said like Spielberg and like Lucas and a lot of those guys. Zemeckis has been one of these guys who now when he does interviews sort of like complains about the modern state of the film industry and that movies aren't made for grownups. Right. You know, Hollywood doesn't make a lot of original movies anymore. Everything's franchised, everything's whiz-banged, this and that,

despite him being a big special effects guy. It does feel like, to some degree, he's tried to do a little bit of the Spielberg thing, where, like, they'll make a family film, they'll make a larger film, but also they really try to use their clout to make the type of adult drama that doesn't get made anymore.

And so I do just find this film exciting as like, this is an interesting argument for what late period Zemeckis could be, you know, for him making a movie that is almost diametrically opposed to the types of films he started out making, but are very much the kind of films that only an elder statesman can make. And also not to steal her point coming up in next week's episode, but Emily Yoshida, mother of blankies in our welcome to Marwen episode brought up the fact that many directors in the sort of later period of their career start to like

obsessively make movies about making movies. It feels like the material that jumps out to them is almost always a movie about storytelling or the movie about process that can somehow be mapped onto movies and this is not that like this is very much a movie that is about a relationship and a situation you know it feels like he is just into the kind of gambit of what the script is presenting it's not something that he's mapping onto his sort of artistic um sort of mantra in a way that marwin does and the walk does you know i'd say it's a very curious cinematic object this movie right um because in some ways it feels so conservative in the way that it's uh sort of presented, but there's some really quite strange elements to it.

Edgy things. It's edgy in its way. It's also like you said, David, that you wish he threw some grain onto it. The language for this type of movie, we understand, is someone going full Mank, right? Or at least partial Mank. Mank is grainless, too. This is so crazy about Mank. But whatever, we'll talk about Mank, right? Or at least partial Mank. Mank is grainless too. This is so crazy about Mank, but whatever.

We'll talk about Mank another day. But this is what I'm saying, that you lean more into the pastiche and emulating the technology of the time. And I do think there's a cognitive dissonance thing here that works for me, but I understand doesn't work for other people where it's like,

he's using entirely modern technology to replicate a very artificial old timey sort of world for me it works a lot better than it does in the walk it's the best marriage of those things and i think it's also the one of the modern movies where it feels like um the technology isn't the point like he's using the technology in service of the story it's not by and large imagine if this was done with this technology it's just sort of like the trimming of it uh which i like uh let's play the box office game it's the great allied off 2021 um absolutely 2021 my friend um let's play the box office game though

griffin it's november 20th thanksgiving time 2016 who doesn't love to take their family to watch brad pitt and marion fuck in a car make a baby and then have her shoot herself in front of the baby yeah i took my whole family to see allied and every single member of my family divorced me individually number four it opens number four uh to 12 million griffin can you tell me the final domestic total of allied 30 40 makes 120 worldwide 119 uh so that's at least 80 probably over 100 what's number one okay thanksgiving and the year is 2014 16 16 so trump so is is this the final hunger games no it is not i think that might have been the year before it is an animated film it's new this week it's a big hit and I feel like it's only gotten bigger in the years since.

Is it Moana? Moana. Is this the week that America began considering the coconut? Exactly. $82 million opening weekend for Moana and Thanksgiving. I do think, I mean, I feel like that's maybe your favorite of the modern Disney era. And at the time, you were sort of like, yeah, it's good. But I do think it's grown for people.

It's one of the two movies I saw the week Trump was elected. The other was Allied. And I think they really skewed my take on both of them. And we'll never talk about Moana on this podcast ever again. What's number two at the box office? It was number one the week before. It's a franchise starter, but it's also a franchise entry sort of a is it like a side prequel yeah like a side prequel let's call it the side prequel it has spawned a sequel and another is in production and there's been nothing wrong

with the production of this new film. Oh boy. Nothing weird going on there. I know this one. Don't I? Yeah, I do. Chris. It's Dinosaur Land. Jurassic World. That was my first thought. It's not Jurassic World. I thought I was going to gazump Griffin.

But now I'm trying to think about other franchises that have dared move forward during a pandemic. Oh, is it the Crimes of Gromble Darned? Oh, exactly. Those Fantastic Beasts.

Right. It was the film that Dare asked, what if they were Fantastic Beasts? And if so, where would we find them? See, this is the problem.

I think Chris and I were just thinking about trying to make a movie during a pandemic and not thinking about the single most cursed movie currently in existence. A movie that every day seems to step on another witch's toes and collect a new curse upon its very nature. It's just that whole thing where it's like, all right, okay, we've decided to fire Johnny Depp and we're just not going to think too much about J.K. Rowling right now. Or Ezra.

Let's begin production in the middle of COVID. Like, it's not like... People need this movie. They're protesting in the streets. That's why they're protesting, right? They're saying boo earns yeah we should not show any doubt exactly wow okay fantastic piece where to find them david that was a great simpsons reference and you get 10 simpsons reference points wow oh my god wow if

if i had gotten simpsons reference points every day, if they could turn them into money, I would be a billionaire at the age of 12. All right. Number three at the box office, Griffin. It's another in the... We talk about these movies all the time. Movies that came out right around Trump time. It's another franchise movie.

We did a commentary episode on it. We did a commentary episode on it. We did a commentary episode on it. Is it Doctor Strange? Doctor Strange. Doctor, Doctor. Yeah, because, right. I think I talked about this in some other episode, but I saw Doctor Strange with my mom right after Trump was elected

because the accountant was sold out. Right. The accountant has dropped to number 15 on this box office. Wow. Number four is Allied. Number five, one of the best movies of 2016. Is it Arrival? Arrival.

Arrival. From, yeah. Do you like Arrival, Chris? Have you seen Arrival? I do. I do very much. Yes, I do. That's all I'll say well there you go yeah i did here's the thing is like i didn't understand the twist like i felt like the stupidest person going i didn't even understand when they revealed it

i was like why she got such a big problem marrying this guy? To be fair, Chris, my mom had the exact same hang-up. I saw it with her. We talked about it. She was like, I think I liked it. I mean, I just didn't like it as much as you. And then, like, a week later, she was like, can I ask you, like, one lingering question I've had about Arrival? And I was like, sure.

And the question belied the fact that she did not understand anything that happened. Some other movies in the top ten. Trolls, directed by Richard Lawson. Bad Santa 2. Remember that that happened? Of course. Directed not by Terry Zweikoff, but by Mark Waters. What else have we got?

We've got Almost Christmas. Which one is that? Which one's that? Almost Christmas? Almost Christmas. That's right. That's the one. It's the family comedy. else have we got we've got almost christmas which one is that which one's that almost christmas almost christ that's right that's the one it's the family comedy it's like danny glover monique romany malco like it's like a fun people people like that movie uh people have talked that one up to me uh i've never seen it um hacksaw ridge speaking of war movies yeah uh number nine and it's really unfair what happened to that movie i mean such a byproduct of cancel culture it's it's really you know mel gibson is

like a problematic figure and they canceled him so hard and as a punishment he only got nominated for best director and best picture i was just waiting for you to land the plane that's just it's just elemental truth that cancel cultures out of control. Right. And number 10, another of the best movies of 2016, The Edge of Seventeen. Great movie. Yes. That I love and rewatch a lot.

That's a great movie. Chris, if you've seen The Edge of Seventeen. I have not seen it. I got to see it. The idea of someone rewatching a movie a lot to me is so crazy. Well, you know what? No, I don't mean that it's a bad movie or anything like that is so crazy like well you know what no i don't mean that it's a bad movie or anything like that i'm like my god where is like i have no time no i know i know that's also you're you're a father chris yeah but sometimes you gotta watch gummo a bunch

a bunch yeah i recommend it if you haven't done that already, Chris. It's really, I mean, it reminds me of my childhood. He's always making kids movies. Kids, Gummo. Yeah, yeah. Trash Humpers. I mean, that's more adolescence. Yeah, that one's more for kids instead of about kids. The Edge of Seventeen is the first time I saw Haley Lou Richardson, I feel like.

Chris, you've worked with her several times. She's the best. And I think it's like one of the big stars of saw Hayley Lou Richardson, I feel like. Chris, you've worked with her several times. She's the best. I think it's one of the big stars of tomorrow. She's so great. I know. That was her breakout for sure. I had not seen the bronze.

That's where she popped for me. She has a small role in. Right. I haven't seen that. But I was re-watching your movie finale before this as well. And she's so good in that. She fucking rules. She was awesome.

She has actually pretty extraordinary range um and like very uh goofy in person but the moment that the you know the the camera goes on she just kind of like this dead set focus really man she's great i i it's one of the things that this pandemic cost us is the release of after yang the new coconauta movie where there's like robot babysitters and and colin farrell's in it and she's in it i gotta see that thing i know you best to best to best to delay yeah that's that's my of course of. That's my guy. I can wait. Yeah. I can wait.

Well, I mean, right. You produced Columbus, Chris. That movie, David, sounds like it was produced by you. And not only produced by you, but you held everyone involved up at gunpoint and demanded they make that movie. Like, that feels like a...

Oh, Daryl, you're going to play a robot or something. David doesn't really know the details, but... That feels like a Kim Jong-un like holding filmmakers hostage yeah anyway uh can't wait to see after yang whenever it does come out uh and we you know 2021 i do hope i'll be seeing movies in the theater again but who knows man yeah here's to that

cheers uh chris thank you for coming back on the show we gotta do it more often thank you for having me I'm around anytime you know well this is the thing is we were like you gotta do Allied and you were like yeah that sounds great and we were like great it comes out January see you in six months

yeah I thought you guys had forgot actually no no I mean I'm bad at responding to emails but also we booked most of I thought you guys had forgot actually. No. No. I mean, I'm bad at responding to emails, but also we booked most of Zemeckis in like March and April when it looked like he was winning and we were just so freaked out about the pandemic. And like, I guess we're just recording everything remotely now.

Let's lock down like all these guests. But that's like 20 episodes. We booked like 20 episodes ahead. down like all these guests but but that's like 20 episodes we booked like 20 episodes ahead um hey chris thanks for the ongoing like you know creative support as a producer of night eggs it means a lot those meetings uh like are just you know it's encouraging me to continue on with this journey i'm glad because uh you know i know it's been a tough year for all kinds of filmmakers but um but i feel like next year is our year yeah i agree well this year because that's right we're just we're in it we're in it so stay tuned i think night eggs is going to be the movie that finally gets people back to the theaters again it's going to be the sort of home

yeah you need a movie that's like a kind of a spectacle right well hey all right yeah exclusively on 4dx what do well you know i'm getting ahead of myself 4dx only big horses imax yeah you can feel the gallop in your seat oh boy that's that's what it should be ben it should be 4d imax you should demand that imax theaters convert to 4dx seats and that's the only way that night eggs can be uh projected i need smells i need rumbles uh chris people should watch operation finale i mean i just watched it uh for kicks before this to reacclimate myself with your uh uh filmmaking style re-world war ii but it's such a good movie oh thanks man um i was doing some uh some funny stuff in the course of

doing that um you know my mom's in that movie she because we have the imitation of life scene imitation of life yeah which is so good i love that yeah um and weirdly we shot that scene in the very cinema in in buenos aires where those two characters did meet in real life so that's that's wild wild yeah um great scene i'll plug that too people should watch imitation of life that's a great movie that your mom's it is uh we're done we're done thank you guys thank you for having me oh my mom's gonna be so thrilled she complains about the fact that you're not on the

show enough because she finds you relaxing as opposed to us screaming and yelling we are not relaxing that's a great we're not a great note by your mom honestly yeah zero shell but watch

those two movies and tune in next week for Marwen with Emily Ishida mother blankies coming back to welcome you all and thank you all

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All right. All right. That's it. End as always. Do the other thing. End as always. Brad Pitt shows a lot of butts in this movie