Blank Check with Griffin & David - Bewitched with Dana Schwartz

Episode Date: July 26, 2020

Years were spent trying to figure out the perfect way to bring back the 60s sitcom, Bewitched. The result was a confusing, critical bomb. How do you go wrong with a hot Oscar winner, SNL star, a handful of Daily Show correspondents, and the Ephron sisters? Blank Check attempts to find out. Dana Schwartz joins #thetwofriends to discuss 2005's Bewitched! Plus, a special bonus interview with Alex Ross Perry and Jason Schwartzman on his experience working with Nora Ephron.

guess what i'm a witch guess what i'm a podcast fan Guess what? I'm a witch. Guess what? I'm a podcast fan. More or less embarrassing than being a Clippers fan? Who can say? At this day and age, I mean, it's the equivalent. I think that would be the joke at this point, right? If this movie were made tomorrow.

And this feels like a movie that could very much be made tomorrow. Of course. The people are demanding it. Mameza hasn't happened already. Make this exact movie again. But also, it feels timeless. It feels like this pitch would work in any era. Well, the jokes are just,

they're well-written jokes. They just work. They could work in any decade, any year. They just work. It's classic comedy. And you know, a key to comedy usually

is clarity, right? And this movie is crystal clear. You understand exactly what it's going for at every moment. Yes. I've got to say, I think, and I was saying this off mic, you know, comedy, sure, there's some yucks in this movie, but this is just one of the hottest movies of the 2000s. This movie is just so damn steamy well it's one of those things where the movie kind of underperformed at the box office i think it was because they were selling the comedy rather than the sexual chemistry i feel like i think the outrageous sexual chemistry of this movie

made people uncomfortable it was like i am curious yellow curious yellow. Yes. You have Nicole Kidman. Of course. She's been in Moulin Rouge with Elon. Yes. Ewan McGregor and the chemistry. It's really one of the

generation's best romances. But it really just pales in comparison to this. That's what it is. Yes. Your point is, at this point in time, Nicole Kidman is known

for more of sort of a musical comedy bent. To view her as a sexual object in a movie is difficult and farrell is coming in here who famously is a very physical actor shows a lot of skin and he's like nicole i'm gonna show you yeah right i'm gonna show you how to make the screen sizzle yeah exactly it's a sizzler this is a sizzler it's my top 10 sizzlers well as a heterosexual woman i say i've never been more attracted to a character than the unexplained deeply unpleasant jack our protagonist

of this jack wyatt jack wyatt uh yeah so i mean you're lobbing it up perfectly dana but today of course uh we're talking about the movie bewitched about a man trying his hardest to make sure that the witch on bewitched does not become the primary character uh a movie which also does the same yes you're right you're it's a fair point right the movie inadvertently does that yes or advertently i don't know i don't know this is like four movies crammed into 100 minutes too i i think it's more like 10 movies crammed into 100 minutes i was i lost track at a certain point but i think it's about 10 when we were an hour in forky was like wait does he know she's a witch yet and i was like no and she's like he's still gonna deal with that like that's gonna be a whole other

thing there are yeah there are three reveals where it's like he backstabbed her she's secretly a witch there's so many so many second act switches but for me one of them is literally undone there's a 15 minute segment of the movie that is like edit yes i have to say when she had a real Aunt Clara, I lost it. I was furious at the film. Look, we're champing at the bit. We got to get into this.

There's too much to talk about. It's rare we have a movie where we're just like, I don't know, like clear out the schedules. We might not be able to get this in in four hours. Like there's too much

to crack into in this movie. Griffin, I have a hard out in two and a half hours let's okay well you're gonna have to push that back i'm sorry this is officially gonna be our longest episode ever um hi everybody i'm griffin i'm david simms and this is blank check with griffin david's a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want.

And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they... Trying to wiggle my nose. It doesn't... It's more of a chin waggle, like I said. Now, what I want to say is, I also think that what Nicole Kidman is doing is more of a chin waggle,

especially if you look at Elizabeth Montgomery in the original show, the magic trick of it was her nose seems to wiggle without the rest of her face moving that much. And on Nicole Kidman, you could see the effort and so much of the movie is based around people seeing her do the nose thing and going, Oh my God, how do you do that?

I can't believe that. I remember there being stories about how she worked on the nose for like two years. She wiggles her face. It's not that crazy. It's like she's trying to get a booger out without picking her nose. That's what it looks like, right? Well put.

Thank you. I want to watch Elizabeth Montgomery to see because the show had the cartoon. Yes, right. And so the cartoon wiggles its nose as well. And obviously that's

very prominent nose wiggling. But she doesn't. No, when she does it live action. She's wiggling her damn cheeks. That's what she's doing. Also, if you're magic, you should have the ability

just to isolate your nose. That could be part of your magic. Do they live in another realm? What are the rules of witches? Okay, there are no rules! This is a miniseries on the films of Nora Ephron. It's called You've Got Podcast.

And sometimes when we announce a director, people go, I don't get it. What's the arc? That's just like they made a lot of hit comedies. Like, what is that? Here's the thing that's just like they made a lot of hit comedies like what's what is that here's the thing about nor efron aside from the fact that her successful movies are very much worth talking about for the influence they had and the weirdness of how they came to be she's got some big swings and some big bounces now the other bounces i feel like her movies are people are just like what people didn't like the movies. Right.

But also they just like did not even register. This is like... The movie came out and people were like, no thank you, not for me. And that was the bounce. Big pre-existing IP. Two big movie stars kind of at their peak moment.

Huge budget. Big summer release. I feel like this one when you explain mixed nuts to people people say i can't believe that exists i've never heard of it when you explain bewitched to people they go oh right i forgot that existed but also that's what that fucking movie is about actually they spent practically 40 years trying to crack up a witched movie and that's what we got eventually look i mean dana we were talking which is high concept the sitcom like it's ready to be a movie it's high concept enough you could have just at the end of this movie they tease that the couple is now becoming bewitched and i just wrote in my

notes i would watch that movie let me just watch that yeah richard kind and cedaris like that sounds fun let's have some witch antics okay i'm gonna speed through some some things here but our guest today for the noble blood podcast is there a name for the romantic comedy podcast? It's not. Who knows when it's going to come out? So, yeah. Okay. Just Noble Blood. And untitled Dana Schwartz romantic comedy podcast.

It's Dana Schwartz, ladies and gentlemen. Hi. Thank you for having me. Of course. Of course. Of course. Of course. Now, you had seen this movie before.

Yeah, I was talking about it. I was a big Bewitched fan growing up. Like, my mom had watched it growing up, so she had all the DVDs. I think they were DVDs. Maybe they were VHs. Whatever. But I watched old Bewitched. I had multiple seasons.

I was a big old school Bewitched fan. And I distinctly remember going to the theater to see this movie with my mom. And I remember liking it and i like enjoyed it and this was the first moment where like but i was i was like 11 or 12 just for context so i was like a 12 year old going to see this movie and i liked it i was like oh it has the cadence and look of a movie the same way you know some things have like sure it's a movie and I remember this was the first movie where I saw like reviews or like Rotten Tomatoes

and it got obviously savaged for very good reason and this was the first time as a young person I was like oh movies that I like or thought were good maybe aren't good yeah yes and so now I rewatch this movie as an adult and I was like oh this movie

is a disaster i thought i had seen this movie i i had a false memory of seeing this movie my my sister past and future guest romley newman huge classic sitcom fan mostly watched classic sitcoms as a young child because she doesn't especially at a young age did not like conflict right she liked high concept charm comedy everything's wrapped up in 22 minutes right anything but too much of a conflict would stress her out and she didn't like watching shows with kids in them um so she watched a lot of classic sitcoms and but which was one of her favorites my mom took her to see it and i thought i had seen this movie because my mom and Romilly, Romilly, who must have been seven at the time, explained it to me in depth. Sure. And it was seared into my brain as I can't believe those things happen in this movie.

Well, I this movie came out in 2005. I was working at the Boston Phoenix. I was a little intern, college intern boy. And I lived in Boston. I didn't have many friends. So I would go see movies all the fucking time by myself. And so I saw Bewitched by myself. I guess mostly probably out of boredom, but also like I was, I was all in on Will Ferrell. So I think I was probably just like, well, you know, maybe he's gonna, you know, he'll be good.

I don't know. The advertising was all Will Ferrell all will ferrell him going like sherpa all that like there was the trailer is all ferrell hummus hummus the height of comedy is saying saying hummus with a little on it that's that's such a 2005 joke is just what just, what if I pronounce something correctly? Right. And this is, I mean, this is his big flop year. We're going to talk about it. Well, because I was going to say, I was all in on him.

And it's going to have to be a lot of career context on Farrell, who I feel like we haven't really talked about before. Kidman's come up before, right? Yeah, but we can talk Kidman. But Kidman, yeah, there's career context on both of these that are kind of crucial i this movie just made me feel so bad for nicole kidman i think any great gorgeous woman who has starred in movies where her romantic lead was tom cruise and ewan mcgregor should never have to pretend to be attracted to will ferrell and certainly not

with with this in this character He's probably a lovely man, whatever. In this context. I'm trying to even figure out just how to organize this. I'm so overflowing. I'm going to start with the first billed actor

in this film, Nicole Kidman. Yes. The reason she's first billed is this is three years removed from an Oscar win in the hours. She's really two years.

Let's say because of the time that movies take to get made, three years is where you really see the full force test of someone's power post-Oscar win. It's like these are the projects that they're signing on to right after the Oscar that go through a full incubation period development. That's exactly what I want to talk about. Because the year after the, you know, the 2003, the year after the hours, she's in the human stain supporting role, whatever.

Shot before. Right. And Cold Mountain, which is, you know, big collaboration with Anthony Minghella. Yeah. Obviously a big deal movie. But also was in the works before she won the Oscar. Right. So I would say that her big sort of chunk post oscar is this

two-pronged thing where she is pursuing these very daring projects with interesting directors dogville uh dogville birth fur which didn't hit but you know still counts right uh that that's sort of her being like i will use my clout to make interesting stuff yeah like box office be damned all of that is interesting yeah and then you've got hollywood being like all right nicole we're gonna we're gonna figure it out we're gonna find all kinds of great stuff for you like don't you worry the hollywood machine is is whirring away we gotta we're gonna reboot the stefford wives for you we're a thriller. You can do The Interpreter. You can do Bewitched.

Hollywood is throwing all this garbage at her. Because they're like, you're like a sort of scary robot lady. That seems to be what they think of her. There's this thing that happens. And I feel like it's now finally dissipated a little bit. Probably largely because of TV and actors being less precious about their careers. But there was a thing that existed for a very long time that was like Tom Hanks is the best case scenario. Here's a guy who's like a star, but then he wins the Oscar.

It's his anointment. And then for a decade, he is bulletproof. Like this is the moment where you graduate to being just like guaranteed money in the bank, America's favorite movie star. And you get to unlock new rooms. That also happens way more if you're a man. I feel like winning the Oscar is not always good for the woman. And also, Nicole Kidman, not only is she a woman, but she's in her mid-30s at this point. Not only is she a woman, but she's in her mid-30s at this point.

And I feel like, you know, she already had her first career wave where she's in Batman and she's in, you know, practical. Right. Like, you know, like she and so like she's in her 30s. She's a woman in her 30s. And Hollywood is just like baffled. They're like, let's reboot anything that ever had a woman in it. I don't know. They're like, let's reboot anything that ever had a woman in it. I don't know. Well, David, as you can tell from this movie's multiple audition scenes, a 30-year-old unknown actress, Hollywood has none of those. There are no good actresses in Hollywood who are 30 years old.

Yes, absolutely not. No, I mean, there's a reason they don't work. It's on them. Absolutely. And I want to say that unequivocally. No, it is that thing. It's likeocally um no it is that thing it's like what i think of it specifically as is here's like an actress who's very famous and is like beloved but is not necessarily like a solo like classical movie star box office draw usually because they're

a little more interesting as an actor than that and And then after that, Hollywood is always like, we need to find some movie we can overpay you for. Like there has to be some movie where we can pay you 15 to 20 million dollars to just put you on a poster and have it be money in the bank. And it's almost always a mistake like this. It's like Catwoman. It's Eon Flux. It's that kind of like you're very, very famous. But now we're gonna put everything on you the idea of nicole kidman is a steppard wife hallie berry is cat woman like that's it

you know let's find the property to put you in on we on our happy feet episode we discussed her her biggest hits and they're all movies that she has supporting roles in. So like Aquaman, happy feet, Batman forever, the upside, just go with it. Right. Those are her biggest five hits. Her biggest hit as a star is the others, which is sort of like an organic hit.

It hit because it was a good movie, but that's like her only zag, you know, it was like a ghost story when Hollywood didn't have a lot of, you know what I mean? That's her only solo $100 million movie, right? I think, because Cold Mountain is kind of a trio movie, I guess, certainly.

Did that hit 100? Did it end up at like 98? It's like 95. Yeah. None of these movies hit 100. As a box office nerd, doesn't it stress you out when movies get that close to 100?

I hate it. Didn't Moulin Rouge do okay at the box office? Really well overseas. Moulin Rouge did well overseas and did okay considering the movie that it was. Yes. But it made 57 domestic. It was more of a cult thing from the beginning. And also like a huge, huge DVD movie.

Like at a moment that was peak DVDvd it comes out in like may and by the time it's nominated for best picture it's like exploding on dvd it had the sort of leg up on everyone else kidman's best movies are either things like moulin rouge and um the eyes wide shut like which are like big quote-unquote movies but that are weird and are sort of kind of daring and unusual or smaller films where she's working with you know auteurs like like birth or but she works best in a somewhat transgressive zone there is this weird aspect to nicole kidman where it's like not only is she best there but it seems like that's the stuff she likes the most. Yeah, 100%. Like, I interviewed Karen Kusama for Destroyer.

And she, like, had nothing but, like, she was just overflowing with praise for Nicole Kidman's process. Like, not just like, oh, she's a nice lady. I feel the same thing, that she's like an incredibly serious, committed actor. Like, she is one of those people who just, like like takes it really seriously as a craft and is not that engaged with sort of movie star bullshit. I love her but she does need the right thing. It's very weird to have

this and Stepford Wives back to back. I think she is capable of being funny. I mean certainly one of her best performances ever is To Die For but that's a very different strain of comedy. But that's right. She's funny in that, but it is sort of like an actor-y kind of funny.

She's funny because she's so serious. She's taking that role so seriously. Has she ever been funny? Now I am thinking about this. She's similarly funny in Eyes Wide Shut in the same way. Not exclusively funny. She's amazing in Eyes Wide Shut. But right.

But like, because I haven't seen like Just Go With It. To's amazing in Eyes Wide Shut. But right. But like, because I haven't seen like Just Go With It. To Die For is a comedic role, though. You know what I mean? Yes, she won the Golden Globe. Actress in a comedy. I would say I think

she's far better in Stepford Wives than she is in this. I think Stepford Wives, neither of these movies are her fault, but her performance doesn't work in this.

In Stepford Wives, I think she does what she's asked to do incredibly well in stepford wives she has a character her character has a place where she starts and a place where she goes and this they just like sort of plug her in it's so weird all right i don't think this movie is her fault but she is god awful and she's awful it is a. It's not really her fault. Zero percent her fault. As you say, I don't know what her character is. She's playing... This character's written like she's 12 years old.

Like a child! Or an alien or a robot. It makes no sense. But not just a 12-year-old, a dumb 12-year-old. Yeah. Who's never been outside. This movie needs a prologue

that explains that she, like, lives in a witchy dimension where technology doesn't exist. This movie needs a prologue that explains that she like lives in a witchy dimension where technology doesn't exist. This movie needs some Lady in the Water shit where it like, yeah, there's like a narrator who's like, you know, since time immemorial, witches have and then lay it out for me, baby. But also then they're very inconsistent.

Like then she does know how credit cards work and then she's really good at things and then about 30 minutes into the movie they decide that she knows everything and is very smart and has been in the world before. But here's another thing. Like, spoiler alerts, everyone else we find out is a witch in this movie seems a lot more comfortable existing in the human world, which raises the question, is she not from a human world? the human world, which raises the question, is she not from a human world?

They try to explain at the end, if you leave, you can't come back for a hundred years, but then she goes, that's not true. I don't know what the mythology of this movie is. And Michael Caine clearly fucks mortal women all the time. Right. It either needs a prologue explaining that she's from like Brigadoon,

or it needs to be witches coexist among us silently. She gets everything. She's a normal human being. She just has magic powers. I just glom the Sabrina the Teenage Witch world onto this movie. That's how I have to think about it. It's like witches can live in our world,

but there is also a witch realm that they can also live in. They can move between them and it's really neither here nor there what they decide to do. But I'm pretty sure in the original Bewitched, there wasn't a witch realm. Correct. It was just people,

witches live among us. And that's a thing. They know how credit cards work because they live in our world. They just are magic and everything works for them. We have so much to talk about. I want to get through Feral so that we can get to, because I have an article. I found a really good resource about the development history of this movie so i cannot

wait will farrell obviously an snl star now here's my big question before we run through the films in chronology has has any movie star had their success so so directly tied to one collaborator as Will Ferrell. In terms of the discrepancy between the good movies and the bad movies. Yeah, I know what you mean, right? Because it would be like, if Will Ferrell's not working with Adam McKay, it's a write-off. It's almost always a red flag. And there are exceptions. There are ones that are hits but that haven't

the thing is i would say no because his his emergence is not tied to that's what's crazy it's but once he makes anchor man it's like you can tell whether the movie is going to be good or not elf is right before anchor man okay yeah it's before it he has a good run working up from character actor to movie star. And then once he makes his first McKay movie, it is like, A, most of the non-McKay movies flop. B, the non-McKay movies that succeed at the time have not aged perfectly well. I'm not saying they've aged poorly, but people don't think about that. No, no, but no, yeah, 100%. So here's Will Ferrell.

He's on SNL, obviously. It's very funny. I assume you guys agree that Will Ferrell has the capacity to be a tremendously funny comedian. He is a perfect sketch comedian. I'm not saying that in a backhanded way against his

movie career. He is just one of those people who is so perfectly suited for sketch comedy. He throws his whole body into it. Yes. If he's in a thing, you're immediately like, I want to know what he is comedy. He throws his whole body into it. Yes. If he's in a thing, you're immediately like, I want to know what he is doing. He also does funny faces. There's people like Jim Carrey

that just know how to do a funny face. Will Ferrell can do a funny face. But in a way, unlike Jim Carrey, it feels like, oh, there's something just inherently funny about this guy. When Jim Carrey does a serious interview you're like oh wow jim carrey's really drained of all comedic energy here you know right but when will ferrell is serious there's still something funny about him it's just like it's a

problem his he's got a perfect body for comedy his eyes are so beady his height is funny like everything about him is just but it's it's the thing about Downhill. Just was it this year, Downhill? Where like they're like, oh God, you know, it's about this guy who's just sort of exposed as a bit of a buffoon. Like he sees himself as such. And I'm like, you cannot cast Will Ferrell for this.

This is malpractice. And this movie has the exact same problem, which is just like, you know, this guy's a buffoon and you know, he's going to fucking lose it. There's no tension to will he or won't he in a Will Ferrell movie. I would say I would argue it's even more ridiculous in 2020. In 2005, I suppose Hollywood's still trying to be like, can he play a regular guy? You know, like this is the other thing is as much as we're saying he's a perfect sketch comedian.

He does not feel like an obvious choice to become a movie star in in any sense there isn't like a clear pathway in a head to but neither does this guy mike myers you know or whatever right i feel like the other important through line in the characters he plays is there is that like childishness like he's a he's an over he's a man child he's an overgrown boy boy. Right. Which also then is like, well, you can't really be romantic interest because adult women aren't sexually attracted to man childs. I don't know what the plural of that is. Man children. Man children.

No, that's why it's especially weird when like Zooey Deschanel and him go on a date. An elf. An elf. Because he literally like has the mind of a child. Yeah, like, okay, if you're going to throw a romance into a Will Ferrell movie, like, okay, but that can't be the point. That's just like a gross thing that I guess

is season. It can't be the point. The best ones are the ones where the romantic subplot feels like a parody of romantic subplots. Like Amy Adams in Talladega Nights, Christina Applegate. Anchorman. Right, right.

Well, the fact that the other guys, the joke is that he's married to Eva Mendes and the whole time Mark Wahlberg is like, I don't understand. We have to begin with how did you marry this woman? Like anytime they're talking and he's, that's a good joke. Right, I just think about there's like a quote.

I remember Fincher doing some interview after the whole extended casting process of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Remember that when there was like a year of people breathlessly speculating? Who will play this bit? Right. And it had apparently come down to Scarlett Johansson and Rooney Mara. Yeah, I pierced my nipple for that role. Didn't even get a callback. I did too. And I didn't even get a first read.

I did too, and I wasn't even auditioning. No. We just all had the fever. We'd gotten the Lisbeth bug. But he said this thing that I think about all the time, where he was like, look, Scarlett Johansson gave a really great audition. I was very impressed.

I didn't think she had it in her. But what it boiled down to for me was Scarlett Johansson gave a really great audition. I was very impressed. I didn't think she had it in her. But what it boiled down to for me was Scarlett Johansson was acting. Like, Scarlett Johansson was doing a really good job acting in a way I had not seen her do before. But Rooney Mara is inherently weird. Like, there's something just inherently weird about her. Her energy. He looked at her and he's like, this woman has never eaten a pie before. Right.

He's just like, everything about you is fucking strange and with a movie like this and the way i work what's important is what is the inherent movie star quality that you have which is what is the thing that at four o'clock in the morning when we've been filming for 16 hours and we're on the hundredth take cannot be beaten out of you you You know, it's just like, what is the thing that is just innately in you that I will get on screen every single second I shoot of you? And I feel like with Will Ferrell, it's a similar thing that Hollywood has constantly struggled with

outside of McKay, which is like, how do you use what he's good at and how do you not apply him to things that he fundamentally doesn't click doing? Because there are just these things about him that are so inherently there even when he tries to play serious you know even when he's playing more of a character even when he's playing more of an everyman it's just like there's shit that you just cannot control with him um but welfare yes go ahead snl then it's sort of like building this career of like does small parts

the first two awesome powers dick uh he does you know a couple movies that are based on sketches night at the roxbury he's very funny and dick in a very small very funny right he does all three that's those three paramount snl movies that come out one year after another when lauren michaels is like i'm gonna make an snl movie every year every fall there'll be a new SNL movie right and he is then superstar then the ladies man he is co-lead in all of them I believe he's second build in all three of those movies that sounds plausible I'm looking up the lead the ladies man is the one I remember the least even though it might be the funniest of those three movies i think so he is fundamentally the second lead of that movie he is the antagonist um and then you know and he'll pop then yeah he's the villain in old in zulane yeah right he's

getting a little bigger and then old school old school he's just doing that thing where it's like he's the wild card right like he doesn't he's a co-lead but he doesn't need to be playing a realistic person but he's silly he's in a perfect strike zone it's a comedy but he's playing it a little bit more like an actual human being than he maybe has been asked to do in the past

so it's showing like oh maybe you can put him in a less heightened environment even though that movie is obviously heightened but I think the line at the time was okay but you still you can't make him a leading man like that movie works because he's the third guy you know he gets his sections to run wild but but i will say i do think i know i like old school a lot more than you do and a lot of it does not hold up well but i think that movie has just never meant anything to me i feel and a lot of it does not hold up well but i think that movie has just never meant anything to me i feel like a lot of people watch it all the time yeah i've seen it like twice

it was a big one for me at the time it was i think for me what like wedding crashers was for a lot of people which was a movie that was never anything for me but of that era those slack pack movies that was the one that like clicked for me i do think he plays the scenes with the dissolution of his marriage with with actual pathos good actor or right that's the thing but that was like that was a turning point of like oh this guy could maybe handle the emotional scenes if you push him up to a lead but I feel like at the moment that elf happens people were like this can't sustain an entire movie everything about that 10 months later right that seemed like you can't pin the whole movie on him. And this premise seems wafer thin.

How is that going to last? And the trailers are all, you feel like I've seen all the jokes. And Elf is a whole movie. And I remember feeling this when I watched it where you're like, oh, they're pulling it off. Like the whole time is you being like, oh, they haven't fucked up. Elf's great. Is, I mean, like the only, like, I know how we we david you and i feel about one of these movies i'm curious to hear dana's opinion but i feel like there are only two movies that have like

entered the christmas canon in the last 20 years successfully and they're elf and love actually yeah and i think love actually is pretty much a war crime terrible movie yeah i think as a as a film it does not work i think there's there's there's uh there's sections there's sections of it that i enjoy and i think i'm i have like a nostalgic attachment to it but like if i'm looking at it through like the cold lens of like is this a movie like no it's it's not a movie it opens with that monologue about 9-11 yes it does yes it does one day i'll do a commentary for that movie for the patreon that's just me screaming yeah but i i do like elf i haven't i haven't seen it for a long time but i

i would hope it holds up i feel like i've watched it like on tbs a thousand times i love it i think it's a masterpiece i watch it with my family once a year we almost always watch it on christmas or at least my sister and i i think it just really fucking works. But that's the moment. Anchorman's in production. That's already going to happen. But now he like, that movie made $175 million domestically.

It was a huge hit. It was humongous. Huge domestic hit. It was not a big international hit. The important thing that we do need to flag about Elf though, is I think the only part that doesn't work, as we were talking about earlier is the subplot with Zooey Deschanel the love interest

and for the exact reason you said it's just he's a child and she's playing to the top of her intelligence in that movie I think she's very good in that movie but you just never at any point believe that she would view him as a sexual entity it's not her fault but just make them friends

that's fine he can teach her the magic of Christmas and they can be friends would view him as a sexual entity. It's not her fault, but just make them friends. That's fine. Right. Yeah, totally fine. He can teach her the magic of Christmas, and they can be friends. No, I don't think anyone sees the baby at the end and is like, I'm okay with this. I don't want to imagine him having sex. I don't want to imagine Buddy the Elf being like, oh.

It feels perfunctory, and then when Anchorman comes out like six or seven months later, and all of the sexual stuff in Anchorman is treated like a joke. You're like, this feels more comfortable. This is how this should work. He can play as ridiculous as he wants to. And it's all, nothing has any real stakes here. That movie does well.

It obviously grows a lot more past its initial release. But it's not as big of a hit as Anchorman. But this 2005 is the year where it's like, okay. He's everywhere. Now we're going to start giving him $15 to $20 million paychecks. He's in five movies. He's in Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda, which is a movie I've seen.

I don't really remember that well, but I remember being fairly bad. I think he's all right now. He's fine in it. He's playing the Woody Allen, right? Which is weird. Yes. Yeah. I don't know.

I mean, it's just the whole, right? It's like Rod and Mitchell has two versions of the same story. One is comedy. This has the makings of a great comedy or delicious tragedy. That's my Wallace Shawn. I'm sorry. It's not better. Come on.

That movie goes nowhere yeah correct kicking and screaming which is the soccer the kids soccer comedy with Josh Hutcherson with Josh Hutcherson that is sort of like

the perfect example of Hollywood looking at his output till now and just being like should you just yell all the time let's let's just construct a project around you screaming your head off that's also a movie where the director got fired like a week into production bob dylan's son was like a pinch hitter on that movie because it was going so catastrophically wrong like five days in but that's also this thing that i feel like is very often the downfall of most comedy leading men which is you become so valuable your quote becomes

so high that if a script is actually good they don't want to give it to you because if a script is funny you can hire someone who isn't expensive yet and they'll make it funny. What you want to pay someone $20 million to do is a high concept comedy where they're like, on paper, this seems to us like it should be funny, but no one has successfully written any jokes for it. If we hire you, you will, through sheer force of will, make it funny. Right. You'll just scream the lines and the audience will laugh out of habit. Right. Oh, you'll do your improvs or whatever

and you'll make it funny. Like that's how Eddie Murphy ends up doing Meet Dave is just like he costs too much money where the only scripts that are going to get

offered to him are it's blank does a blank it's blank inside of a blank blank works as a blank and they're just like you take care

of making jokes. Mike Ditka is third billed in that movie. That movie's insane. As himself. And mike dick is third build in that movie that movie's insane as himself uh and you second build in that movie uh robert duvall yes academy award i saw it on a plane he's like his dad is the rival right the rival code it's a comedy version of great santini sent around centered around children's soccer league. Yes, yes. Where Mike Dicka has a large role. Yeah, Mike Dicka

is like his neighbor or something. Yeah. There's all this stuff with Mike Dicka. His assistant coach. Yes, it's a terrible movie. Okay.

Fourth is his small appearance in Wedding Crashers, obviously the biggest hit of the bunch. Right. And then fifth is The Producers. The third is Bewitched.

We'll talk about Bewitched. The other thing is Producers. He just plays the Nazi in Producers, right? He does. Yeah, he's the crazy guy with the pigeons. But we all remember his very deserved Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for that movie. What?

No, Dana, of course you remember that, because we were all talking about that performance in 2005. I mean, The Producers, which was all, you know, Nicole Kidman was supposed to be in, correct? And was recast with Uma Thurman. They almost did two movies together. They were almost our new Hepburn and Tracy. Four Golden Globe nominations.

Yeah. Picture, actor, supporting actor, original song. But this is a perfect example of this comedy this this comedy a-lister thing where they're like okay let's test you out what can we slot you into like what works does he do stranger than fiction somewhere in this time that is uh the next year the next year is you know is a goddamn glut as well because you got got that, you've got Talladega Nights, which is obviously a genuine hit.

You have that indie movie Winter Passing that doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. Isn't he a voice in Curious George? He's the man with the yellow hat. And we all remember that, of course, for Stranger Than Fiction, he got his second Golden Globe nomination

for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy. He has two? Does he have more than that? He had two in two back-to-back years. The weird thing about Stranger Than Fiction is I feel like I almost like that movie, and he's so miscast to me that it upsets the whole balance

of the film. That movie is just not as good as it should be. Well, that's it. That's what's so frustrating about it is I like Maggie Gyllenhaal, and I'm like, it's so close. I think Maggie Gyllenhaal's really good in that movie. Yeah, and he's so so off his tone is so different than the tone of the rest of the movie. But I think it's that same thing too of just like you watch I remember my dad seeing About Schmidt

a movie I'm curious to rewatch but I asked him how it was and he said it's just weird you spend the whole movie waiting for the scene where Jack Nicholson pops and it never happens that's crazy that movie rules i agree with you and i i think that's just that was my dad's preconceived notions but his take on it was you know jack nicholson is capable of being jack nicholson i assume if you cast him it's because there's going to be some scene where he finally loses it, you know? And I think in that example, that is an incorrect expectation. But I think with Will Ferrell, you put him in a movie in something like Stranger Than Fiction, you're like, okay, Will Ferrell is mild-mannered in Act 1.

Act 3, he's going to lose his shit, right? Something's got to happen. Otherwise, you don't cast him. Right, he's got to blow his top. They gave us him blowing his top in the trailer. I remember that very distinctly. Right. So cast him. Right. He's got to blow his top. They gave us him blowing his top in the trailer. I remember that very distinctly. Right. So much screaming.

Yes. He didn't need to scream. This era was just, oh, five times a year. You see a trailer in which Will Ferrell screams. Anyway, so this is just,

but I think this movie is, this is the perfect example of Hollywood, not knowing what to do with him, trying to slot him into the more traditional rom-com-y, like, you'll be funny, sure, but you can also be a leading man, right? Yes. You can do it all. I don't know if there's a version of this movie where Will Ferrell is playing a more conventionally appealing person. Obviously, this movie is completely hamstrung by the, you know, insane concept.

Like, yes, it's hard for anyone to be real. The most fucking grounded character is like Stephen Colbert, who just looks concerned. And where's nice sweaters. But where's a nice sweater to wrap up this, this,

uh, Ferrell loop. I feel like after that two-year run you're talking about and Talladega Nights being far and away the biggest hit of that two-year run, he's sort of like, okay, I gotta stay

in my Gary Sanchez, Adam McKay lane. They have their production company. If a movie isn't directed by McKay, it's very often produced by McKay. It was very often produced by mckay it was very often developed by mckay the ones that are less good are very often things that mckay helped incubate and then said i'll let other people make them like things like glory yeah and land of the lost which is really really fucking strange but started out as a mckay movie and then became like a very

overblown over budget thing um but it's it's stuck between those two zones rather than just being let's slot will ferrell into some old tv show but then it is like i remember people constantly being like oh will ferrell star is done he just had two big flops and then another mckay movie would come out and it was like oh he's rebounded it's the other guys people like him again it's a hit and bewitched is predicated on the idea that if an actor if a movie star has a big flop his career is over and everyone hates him women in in coffee shops waitresses yes he is universally derided because he had a big flop they hold it against white men so hard if they have one flop they never get to work again. A couple things I want to say.

One, I guess I'm trying to think, will it have come out by the time, I think it'll have come out, but Netflix has a Eurovision movie? Yes, directed by David Dobkin, director of The Judge. I believe coming out the day this releases or somewhere around there. With Rachel McAdams.

Yes. And Pierce Brosnan. And I hear that that movie completely rules. Like everyone is telling me Rachel McAdams. Yes. And Pierce Brosnan. And I hear that that movie completely rules. Like everyone is telling me how good it is. Yes. I'm so excited.

I love Eurovision. Like serious film critics that I know have watched their screener multiple times. Wow. Someone told me it made them cry.

Oh my God. While mostly being like, it's funny. I was ready for that to be a calamity maybe it's also being everyone being stir crazy but the hype on that one is good but it does sort of that one looks more like a holmes and watson where you're like well this is probably going to be something we just ignore i when holmes and watson came out i was a a writing for entertainment weekly they did

not have any uh press screenings. I'm sorry, Dana, we're just going to have to take another take of that. Can you say that again very quickly? Sure. When Holmes and Watson came out, I was... Ew. Oh, I'm sorry. I was overeager.

Let's take three. Okay. Yeah. Okay. When Holmes and Watson came out, I was writing at Entertainment Weekly. Ew. Okay. Ben, keep in all three tips.

And I, there were no press screenings for that film, which I had to write. No, they did not hold press screenings for that. I had to write a review for, and I believe I was assigned that movie because it came out on Christmas Day and they knew that as a Jewish person with no family in Los Angeles,

they were like, well, Dana has nothing else to do. So at 10 in the morning, I went alone to the Grove to see Holmes and Watson alone on Christmas Day. And it was, I think, probably the worst Christmas I've ever had. Holmes and Watson. They don't have a clue.

As I was leaving the theater, I overheard two strangers say that movie was fucking awful two people who voluntarily saw that movie at 10 a.m on christmas day presumably because they didn't have to review it somewhere else people were vicious about that movie i mean it was the worst reviewed movie of that year it won the razzie for best picture and best director like it was right yes i'm sorry um but that's that's another thing is like okay so he has this period where it's like the McKay directed movies are the highs but then you have like Blades of Glory will do well in this and that and then it's the point

where McKay is like wait a second I want to be very serious and not only does he stop directing comedies but he also stops developing them and producing them with Farrell. He's so much more in like the succession lane and they've now dissolved Gary Sanchez. That's when Farrell is really like, now we're into get hard territory to daddy's homes, homes in Watson. How much do you think it broke Will Farrell's heart that he wasn't W and

vice? Oh man. I wonder, I wonder if that was a conversation where they were like, we can't do that. I wonder. I mean, it would break the movie. It would break the movie, but fucking break that movie.

What do I care? Absolutely. And I would kind of like to see McKay figure out how to use him in a McKay movie. Well, look, Anchorman 2, I saw it once and I have not revisited and a couple people have been like check it out again there's something there and i've been like and we'll see i haven't really gone back to that my take on that movie is that's a movie made by someone who

doesn't want to be making comedies anymore yeah that i sort of agree that right and there and what funny stuff there is is because you have these funny actors and they're doing things. There are individual bits in it. The best performance in that movie, comedically, Greg Kinnear kills it. Kinnear's funny. I love Kinnear. I'm a big Kinnear head. Oh, yeah. This is a very pro-Kinnear podcast. But like,

post-Anchorman 2, his hits are the Lego Movie and The Daddy's Homes. Like, the Lego Movie, I think he homes. Yeah. Like the Lego movie. I think he's actually, he's really wonderful in that, but like, obviously that's,

but both the live action and the voiceover, I think he is incredibly good in that. In the second one, he's a cameo in the second one. It's barely in it. Um, but, uh,

and the daddy's homes are, I mean, even people have tried to talk me into those and I've tried to find them. I have not been able. I can't watch the second one. I'm not fully defending them. I think there's stuff in the first one that is incredibly strange and interesting. Him and Wahlberg are very funny in the other guys.

Agreed. It's not like they are not a good team. I'm not arguing. The first one, fine. The second one, I can't. Hey, look. I have not watched the second one. I can't deal with the second one.

I refuse to deal with the second one. I refuse to deal with the second one. John Lithgow's reveal in the trailer, one of the great moments of comedy, but I'm not watching that fucking movie. The first one has some good bits in it. It's not a particularly good movie. It has some good bits. And let's just pull back, though,

because I think Farrell will figure it out. He'll do something else. Like, I don't know. Maybe he'll make a movie with McKay again. Maybe he'll... Maybe Eurovision wins Best Picture. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe he'll make a movie with McKay again. Maybe he'll... Maybe Eurovision wins Best Picture. Yeah, maybe it wins

Best Picture. Maybe it should. He's supposed to do some series with Paul Rudd. I don't know. Like, I don't know. Eurovision is perfect. He'll probably do a funny voice

and be like a big character and everyone will like it. He's wearing a wig. Yeah, great. I think it's what people want out of him. Yeah. That's what I want out of him.

I want him to do a silly voice and make me laugh and sing a song and and be an accommodate yes um bewitched yeah okay can i read through this bewitched yes speed round through this okay so the movie is set up in the 90s okay this is when there's sort of this like feeding frenzy for like 15 years on the shows that are in syndication need to be made into movies be they animated be they live action sitcom dramatic like everything's getting fucking turned into a movie like adam's family fugitive brady bunch yeah you know the jetsons movie Like all these 60s, 70s, 50s TV shows are getting regurgitated. And it's just like peak syndication, reruns, cable.

You have these shows that now like three generations have lived with. And for Hollywood, that's like dollar signs in the eyes. Right, right. Exactly. I think that's the calculation. Brand recognition, 100%. And just the existence of cable TV and like you say, reruns,

has just burned these things into the collective consciousness whether or not you've even seen them. Right. So there's the Scooby-Doo movie. It's the generational thing.

Right. Yeah. Like, you know what's a crazy one that I think about? The George of the Jungle movie coming out in the 90s and us being like,

oh yeah, George of the Jungle movie. I know George of the Jungle. I know the song. That show had less than 15 episodes in total. It had one season that ran in the 70s and 20 years later

we still knew it deeply because there was not enough original programming for children that those 12 episodes were still being replayed at Infinium. And then following the Brendan Fraser thing he was in a Dudley Do-Right movie.

He was. That was them going too far though. That was them being like can we do anything? No. Not a segment from Rocky and Bowie.

Yeah. But think about it this way as like an equivalent. If you were to tomorrow announce a live action Ah Reels Monsters movie that would be pitched at

90s kid nostalgia. I'm in! Nothing. I would watch that movie. But that's my point. We would be into it, right? I don't think that would mean anything inherently to a six-year-old. No, you're right, because things have grown more diffuse and there's not, like, yeah. A monoculture. Right. But hey, give me that

Aureal Monsters. Come on, come on! Come on! Give me a live action rocket power i want to see people surf on waves that are the size of a city skyscraper i am here great for all of these but it's very much the point that the things don't have the same sort of meaning i do think now we're seeing friends and the office hit a level that we viewed Happy Days at when we were young and watching Nick at Night. You know? Yeah. The success of those shows on streaming services

shows that same kind of thing of, I want to watch the past generation's comfort food. But in the 90s, the film is set up. It's bought by Paramount for a large amount of money. The rights, because it's so high concept, it's one of those shows that replays everyone knows the theme song. Everyone knows the nose wiggle. The advertising campaign sets itself

up. It's originally supposed to be a Ted Bessel. It's supposed to direct it. An actor. Who? Ted Bessel. I think it mostly done sitcoms. Okay. But it's set up by Penny Marshall's first look deal at Paramount with Bessel, who I think had mostly done sitcoms. Okay. But it's set up by Penny Marshall's first look deal at Paramount with Bessel supposed to do it.

And she hires a former staff writer named Monica Johnson from Laverne and Shirley to do it. Then Richard Curtis takes a crack at the script. Then Douglas Carter Bean takes a crack at the script. So already, first strike at making a Bewitched movie in the early 90s, they were like, huh, this is weirdly difficult.

No one can crack this. We're getting increasingly overqualified writers to try to tackle what seems like it should be a gimme, and no one can find any way to make

a fucking movie out of this. And I imagine at this point it's not the idea where they're making a Bewitched TV show. At this point point it is a completely conventional bewitched movie it is normal guy marries a woman finds out after wedding that she's a witch that's all they're trying to do they're trying to take the shortest walk to a bewitched movie yes then ted bessel dies suddenly of an erotic aneurysm. Okay.

So the whole thing is halted. It's done. The thing shut down. Then Penny Marshall goes, fuck it. I'm not giving up on that. But which movie premise? It seems like at no point does she want to direct this herself,

but she gets producer. Yes. This movie is two main producer credits, Penny Marshall and Nora Ephron. So she carries the movie over to Sony where i think she's set up at the time they go through whoever is hot at that moment cameron diaz kristen davis lisa kudrow gwyneth paltrow alissa silverstone reese weatherspoon uh everyone has sort of talked about it um and uh ellen simon who wrote one fine day uh lorise alshanani who wrote my girl the brady bunch movie all everyone's taking crack at it and no one's getting anywhere there's a certain point

where it morphs into jim carrey is loosely attached to the movie but the movie without being about the making of a witch tv show is maybe taking more of a self-knowing brady bunch tone and one of the big conceits of the movie is that halfway through the actor playing darren is going to change that was funny sure one of the things the sitcom is famous for is replacing the actor dick york right literally just he just quit because he was fucking tired right like he was like ill and he was like i can't do this anymore was he had had a really bad injury i think in the war and then had a bad surgery and became addicted to painkillers after oh that's and he was was struggling with both uh his pain and his drug addiction and there was like a day where everything came to a head on set and he said

like i need to step away yeah this I need to take care of myself or something like that and there's just like it's like the director was just like do you want to quit and he was like that's alright with you instead of just being like you know what we did five seasons let's wrap it up they're like fucking get yeah alright get someone else like we're gonna get

a new Darren right now another strong jawed white guy right and it went from Dick York to Dick Sargent. It was like the joke was like they both have the same first name. They look kind of similar when you're watching in syndication and they're in out of order you're always trying to remember which

one it is you're watching. So they were like oh maybe that's a hook of the movie is like you do the Brady Bunch movie style thing where you're sort of playing off the tropes of the sitcom while existing in the world of the sitcom, but you have one actress playing Samantha, two big comedy stars playing Darren,

and you switch them halfway through. And for a long time, it was like Jim Carrey's on board. They're having a hard time finding another equally famous actor who's willing to only be in half the movie. And Jim Carrey was bandied about because apparently dick york was one of his big inspirations and they look really similar so he wanted to do it yeah but then in the mid 2000s early 2000s it this is like the same position that green hornet was in

where someone's just going like we've been sitting on this property for fucking 20 years we have to make something that's That's what happens. It becomes a thing where they're just like, if we don't make a Bewitched movie, I'm going to blow up this studio. I've been in too many meetings about Bewitched for us to not make it now. Things have gone too far.

The next Bewitched pic in the door gets an automatic. Exactly. That's really what it was. So Amy Pascal calls up Nora Ephron, who she's close with has worked with before and says like nora i need someone to rescue bewitched anything anything first thought right right and truly i think she just says look i wouldn't be interested in making a movie about that tv show is there anything to making a movie about someone trying to make the TV show?

And she goes, yes, absolutely. Here you go, Greenlight. Like it was just sort of like full speed ahead. What if a novelist or TV writer wrote about how hard it is to write a novel or a film? Has anyone ever thought of that? Well, I get it. Because I get how that pitch can seem appealing. Because like you say,

Bewitched is famous for switching actors anyway, right? Uh-huh. So you can sort of do a jokey, and like, what, things are getting rebooted. We got Scooby-Doo movies, right? I can see why they're like, yeah, perfect. That's a funny angle on an old-fashioned thing. There's one more wrinkle here in the development process, which

ties the whole room together. It's that Nicole Kidman had already loosely been in talks for the nebulous, we don't have a script, she would be a good star for Bewitched. Then she wins the Oscar, and everyone's like, fuck, she looks a lot like Elizabeth

Montgomery, now she's a big movie star, we assume she's gonna become a big mainstream comedy star. So we have to lock this shit down. Right. From The Hours. Her performance in The Hours was so side-splittingly funny. Right. We need to lock this shit down, though.

Because, yes, obviously, she made us yuck with The Hours. And people are going to want to keep that train rolling. So they signed Nicole Kidman to a $17.5 million pay or play contract. Nicole Kidman will get $17.5 million even if the movie doesn't get made. That's what that means. Hey, yeah. Get it, Nicole. But so that's when Amy Pascal reaches out to Nora Ephron and is like, anything.

We have Nicole Kidman. There's a ticking clock. I've been, I've seen too many versions of this movie. It has to be this. So then they go back to Jim Carrey and they go, Jim, we got Nora Ephron on board. We got a real filmmaker on board. And Nicole's on board. Are you down to do it?

He's less into doing the one that isn't meta in the way that he thought he was going to do. And so he leaves it for fun with Dick and Jane. And that's when they're like, we need to slot in who is like the new Jim Carrey? Like who else is just in that zone of like funny man? Let's not even think of what their persona is. Who is just an A-list comedy star? Because this role kind of makes more sense

with jim carrey well jim carrey as you said looks a lot like dick york but because he has that sort of old sorry i knocked my mic he sort of has that old school hollywood face like that jaw and that chin and the hair like he looks like a 1950s movie star when he's not being silly yeah he's and i look i think will ferrell is handsome but he is more like sort of adorable, I would guess. Yeah, he's cuddly. Jim Carrey's hot. Jim Carrey's hot. He can fuck me.

Jim Carrey can be a very beautiful man. Like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar is like a great, like kind of hot dirtbag white guy. So, okay, so now- In a suit. Like, am I too horny on main like he's hot no he is and even just when like he's like in his sort of like off the you know uh off the farm like bearded like dirty white t-shirt zone i'm like but he's the hottest version of that like he he's just got

that energy and this is a thing dana i feel like you asked at the beginning of the episode and now that we've done all the table setting we can get into the many questions about the internal logic of this movie what kind of star is will ferrell supposed to be in this movie it is a thing that drives me crazy in movies about fictional movie stars where you cannot even identify an analog for what he's supposed to be because it's like it seems like are we supposed to accept that Will Ferrell is a very self-serious conventional A-list drama star because that seems to be the types of projects they talk about then the mid section where he

gives her like the comedy lessons it seems like this is a guy who came out of sketch comedy and learned like funny faces and funny walks and is teaching her pratfalls and then you see all the clips of the movies he's been in and all of them are like bad prestige movies yeah like serious they're they're parodies of incredibly serious movies but the and i'm putting joke in quotes like the joke is that in these prestige serious movies he's like doing bad mugging right because yeah does not look like he is a guy who was in mel gibson movies if that's what we're supposed to believe he was the thing there's the one yes what are the other parodies there's a boxing one right and then there's a vietnam one the vietnam one right those are the

three you see yeah right there's the thing that's most infuriating to me that i could not wrap my head around was also that he is a hated movie star. Women are like, oh, Jack whatever. Jack, what's his last name? I dare you to tell me his last name. His last name is Wyatt. Jack Wyatt. But when

they find out that he's in this Jack Wyatt movie, everyone's like, oh, Jack Wyatt? He's this A-list movie star who was in a flop but like women hate him sort of like was he me too did he have like a Mel Gibson scandal his wife left him his wife left him for a male model would you think people would have sympathy for him yes he would totally get sympathy for that and she would be dragged extensively like in all horrible society.

Yes. There is no way that he ends up hated in that scenario, especially when his big vanity project is that artsy. Like, people just

wouldn't care. They keep on talking about how the movie, like, maybe we shouldn't have shot it in black and white. And they say no one saw it, which is fine. Yeah, then he makes

another movie. No one saw it. It wasn't offensive. It wasn't like he did blackface. You know what I mean? Like he's not coming back from a scandal. But something like Tropic Thunder where you're like, okay, this movie is trying to pretend

that like Ben Stiller is like a Stallone type character who's had too many flops in a row. Obviously, Ben Stiller does not realistically play like someone who could be that sort of serious, straightforward action star. But I understand this movie takes place on wackadoo planet. At least they've told me what kind of star he is. Give us the fake trailer so we know exactly what type of star he is. He's supposed to be

Schwarzenegger somehow. Or whatever. Or Tom Cruise, I thought. Any one of them. Any combination of them. But the point is, we get the analogs of what he's supposed to be. In this, I'm like, are we supposed to accept

that when he walks down the street, people view him as a conventionally sexy leading man or not? This is a problem I also have with Birdman, where Birdman, they act like

Michael Keaton's character is this dumb, lunkhead jock who's straining for serious credibility. And I'm like, Michael Keaton is fucking weird everything about him michael keaton yes has always been unconventional right that was the whole people rioted when he was batman like you're never gonna convince me that

he was like some empty like like muscle-bound star yeah that that he needs to try to be taken seriously as an actor right and then the will farrell thing here is the opposite which is just like the movie is like are people gonna buy him in a sitcom yeah are they gonna buy this like hated sort of uh hacky act hack in a in a cash grab sitcom which is like yeah of course that's what this character was will far, of course. That's what this character was built for. Will Ferrell, of course, would be, yes. Who could he be? This is now, I'm wrecking. I was thinking 2018 Ben Affleck is who they're trying,

they're going for. They're preemptively. I have one take. He's just a douchebag. Even though there's not like one thing. It's just that we all know he's a douchebag. Can I give you what my take is? Yeah.

Knowing Nora Ephron, I kind of feel like this is who she was using as inspiration. Dennis Wade? Burt Reynolds. Okay, because Burt Reynolds was on a sitcom. That's why. But no one hates Burt Reynolds. A waitress wouldn't, like, spit in his coffee. No woman in the regular world was mad at Burt Reynolds.

But there was a period in the 80s where it was like, Reynolds. He was certainly a famous pain in the ass. He became too big. He became too arrogant. Another messy divorce. And then it was viewed as a real taking your lumps that he was suddenly on a CBS sitcom. It is crazy that he did Evening Shade. Yes, that is crazy.

So, yes, it doesn't make sense. The public would not lash out at the guy. Burt Reynolds became a joke and he was broke and he didn't have a movie career anymore. And him being on a sitcom was weird, and he notoriously had a big ego. But the public didn't treat him this way. And that's the only sort of analog for this where you're like, okay, a guy who wasn't like super self-serious as a movie star but was. You know, it's a Matthew Perry. That's the thing. That's what I sort of get. And it's not that heious as a movie star but was you know it's a it's a matthew perry that's the

thing that's what i sort of get and it's not that he's a big movie star except that he was a tv star it's like he was a big tv star i i got the vibe that this is like matthew perry doing the odd couple reboot sure that's my mental analog for this people are sick of him i guess is probably what it's supposed to be right they're just sick of him like right maybe he didn't do anything specifically evil they're just like i've had enough of you this is a terrible introduction to uh a romantic lead though absolutely what's also very weird is that he is never once charming no they early on early on they they tell us they explicitly say she only took this role because she had a crush on him yeah and you're like okay even if this was the first man you've you've ever seen in the human realm he's incredibly off-putting well he's not charming

and he's not flirtatious they don't have a meet cute they're like for someone who's so good at romantic comedies there's nothing in their interaction where she'd be like i have a meet cute. Like for someone who's so good at romantic comedies, there's nothing in their interaction where she'd be like, I have a crush on you. I just, I have to say something. Cause I need this out of my head before I, okay. So the first,

the first scene of the movie that he's in, apart from that, like when he's at the pitch meeting and he's nice for cold open is this feels like a bewitched movie. Cold open is Nicole Kidman lands in some Californian suburb. She sees a nice house and then, if I can just take

one minute to dissect the logic already, tearing apart, tearing itself apart at the seams. She sees this house she likes. Hmm.

She wiggles her nose. She magically makes appear a realty sign saying that it's for sale. Yeah, Griffin, you're pointing out that she manipulates the laws of magic so that she can

make a successful real estate transaction rather than just wiggling her nose and be like, I own this house or I'll make a house. What she wants to do is go through wiggle. Here's the house. It's for sale. Oh no. Additional wiggle tours today.

She seems to wiggle into existence, a real estate agent who then tells her that she needs referrals and then she wiggles no referrals necessary and closes the i wonder what happened to the family who lived in that home these are the many questions it was a pre-existing house that wasn't for sale we just saw them all explode into goo? Like, that's the side effect. This is the movie in a microcosm. Why is this movie making everything

so much more complicated than it needs to be right away before a line of dialogue has been introduced? What would be better is if she buys a shitty house

that is already for sale and using magic makes it nice. We get it. Right, she's it up. Or she doesn't have the money and she uses magic to increase her bank account. Or she uses magic to build a house. The limits of her power.

She's omnipotent. She can do anything. She can control time and reality. She can make time go backwards. She can rewind time. She's fucking Thanos. So why is she going through a myriad of steps of bureaucracy? She has infinity gauntlet power. She can control time, space, reality.

She can do anything she wants. But that is where this movie almost immediately tries to set up the one concept that is trying to do the heavy lifting of what you were saying, Dana, which is she is tired of being able to do anything. She wants her life to be boring and banal. She wants to deal with the daily inconveniences. What is a compelling character

if not someone who just wants her life to be boring? I'd love to see a woman with infinite powers and be like, you know what I want to do? Nothing. I wish I had less to do. And then she even says, I want to date a man who is broken and imperfect. It's literally like, I need a fixer-upper. i want to date a man who is like broken and imperfect like it's like literally like i need a fixer-upper i want to date a man who sucks i'm gonna say as a as a

woman who uh has dated men who suck it doesn't work it's not it's not gonna make you less existentially tormented um and i sorry i will say uh i as a man who has dated women who try to fix me it doesn't work i'm also the thing that it was interesting about the original bewitched in a modern context looking back on it is she tells darren her husband samantha tells darren that she's a witch and he in a 1950s 60s housewife way doesn't want her using magic in a sort of analog to like, I don't want my wife to work. That's sort of the joke and tension of the original sitcom

is this idea that it's like, well, now you're married and you know what that means. You don't do your job. And she tries and there's some fun tension there. And that's the interesting tension that I would want to see

confronted in a modern Bewitched. But instead they're like, what if she just doesn't want to use magic because there are no consequences to her using magic. There's no reason or social tension. Just she doesn't want to. But then she will forever. Like she never stops using magic. And it's almost like they're trying to set up an elf premise where it's like,

okay, it's a fish out of water comedy. It's someone who comes from such a different world where everything operates so differently that it's about them trying to understand how normal people live. That as you said, there's no tension inherent in her character because she keeps on breaking her own rules.

It's just the idea that she's saying, I want to not use magic. But there's nothing at stake in either direction for her. And David, just like how you were talking about that they don't establish like a witch realm, what works about Elf, first of all, is everyone knows the lore of the North Pole. That is a collective vocabulary we all have.

And then the movie additionally establishes, we see a world of the North Pole as it exists. So then when he makes jokes about the North Pole, we all know, oh, ha ha, that's what it's like up there. This, we don't know what being a witch is like. No, this movie, as I said, needs to open either with five to ten minutes in like a bog, right? Like in like the moors. With her talking to like fucking merlin no and just explain that she like grows up in like an alternate dimension in a cave before she comes to the world and you go

it's not sitcom coding witch it's not just she wiggles her nose she actually comes out of like some different fantasy realm but a fantasy realm where you understand that sometimes apartments for rent have showings that day right here's what happens in the movie she's revealed to be a witch and her experience being a witch is that she has unlimited powers and then she also has a dad played by michael caine and he uses witch powers to get hella laid those are the two examples given to us in the first 10 minutes those are the only examples there's no further rules defined. And he's like, you gotta use your tricks.

You gotta use them. They're the best thing in the world. Keep using them. Only to get laid. Only to get laid. But also there's no consequences. His whole thing is getting laid. The weird thing about this movie is there are no consequences to messing with reality,

people's free will. Like there's no, he's like, use magic. It's the best. And she's like, no. And it's like, well, do it's like use magic it's the best and she's like no and it's like well do it you should it's the best right no i dana it's a really good point you make that like i feel like and and the movie even calls it as a joke but uh i dream of genie and bewitched were very much a pair at this point in time but the difference difference is, I Dream of Jeannie is very much a male power fantasy. It's a kept woman. I never watched that.

It's a woman in a bottle. I mean, it's similar to Bewitched in that she was capable of magic, but she does, right, she's got the physical gesture. But it was very much like an astronaut finds a woman in a bottle

and she lives there and she does whatever she wants for him, whatever he wants, right? Sure. Like, it's that power fantasy. And Bewitched, as you said, is, like, being like, you can't, you can't run shit. Like, it's that power fantasy. But Witches, you said, is, like, being like,

you can't run shit. Like, it's the tension of the guy always ends up pratfalling because his wife uses magic, and he's trying to make her conform to, like, the nice-kept-woman, domestic-wife standards of its day. Yeah, isn't it funny of a male power, like, the male power imbalance?

It's like The Crown, where it's, like, it's weird that we're in the 50s and I'm your husband and I should have the power here. But you literally have all the power here. Now, I don't know what it is. The movie makes the joke about her being like, oh, let's do a rewrite and make her the CEO of a multi-conglomerate. Like, maybe that's the way you do a modern bewitched movie. Maybe it has to be her existing in the world of business. I don't fucking know. Or maybe you go,

it's hard fantasy, it's elf, the premise is that she's coming out of a different movie. But to do the same sort of wafer-thin rules of magic that the TV series does, where the extent of magic is pretty much you can make your face appear on a label

at a supermarket. Like, what the fuck are you doing here? But after that cold open, it almost immediately goes over to Farrell for 20 minutes. Michael Caine as the

Jolly Green Giant is kind of funny. Kind of. His little face on a really buff body, that is funny. That's comedy. We switch to Farrell. Fareral is washed up for whatever reason

his wife has left him for a male model or something he's getting pitched on this sitcom he's nice for five seconds that's the weird thing is he's a nice reasonable guy and we meet him and he seems fine and then it's a huge problem jason schwartzman says like you're being a pussy and he says that a thousand times right and then do you want to be the mayor of pussy town no you want to be the mayor of balls town that should have been the quote i believe is it balls town or balls really close i came dana really close to uh uh a pod town and castville or whatever. No, yes. He's like the first meeting he has with Stephen Colbert and Jim Turner, right?

Who are the showrunners or whatever. He's really nice. Jim Turner, of course, from Arliss, someone I now have watched so many hours of. Absolutely. And he's nice. And then Schwartzman, his little pipsqueak agent. I love Schwartzman.

And also he is soft in temperament the way that he works as an asshole is like the listen up Philip way which is like this is the guy who's just dismissive to everyone he doesn't work as a guy where you imagine that he could dominate in a negotiation

he's not the mayor of Ballville he's not the mayor of Ballville and that's a compliment to him he drags him away and he's like what are you a cuck he gives him this whole speech he's like you got to be an alpha and then so farrell makes a bunch of ridiculous demands which i guess is funny he wants a leopard and that just feels like where they're like we're gonna we're gonna roll camera will say some funny shit right like that's what that has that they brought on mckay to try to punch up his stuff i think mckay to try to punch up his

stuff i think mckay was on set for a lot of this movie but that makes no sense part of them getting the green light for right but he can't be ron burgundy for half the movie and anora efron leading man for the other no absolutely not absolutely not but that's like part of the frankensteining of this movie is like we're gonna we're, we're going to allocate certain scenes in which McKay takes the wheel and helps pitch Farrell a bunch of riffs. But anyway, because of his demands, it's established that Samantha has to be played by an unknown.

Then the movie kind of begins. And I could not tell you, I could not say the rest of the plot and not go mad. It changes every 10 minutes. Yeah. What were you about to say i was gonna well now that we go to the audition scene i like that now the main conflict of the film is they cannot in los angeles they cannot find a pretty 30 year old actress who could deliver a

line you can't find an unknown actress who can say a line? There's a montage. Everyone blows the line. So here are a series of quick thoughts, okay? One, as both of you said, Will Ferrell introduced in this movie, very low status, vulnerable. He feels bad about his career. He's worried.

He's a little bit sympathetic, right? He goes to the meeting with the negotiations. He's like, this thing has to be a two-hander i love the original bewitch i want to find someone to play samantha and kill it schwartzman pulls him aside is like you have to be an asshole and then he's an asshole for the next hour right then everything he's doing is just a status play it is just trying to throw his weight around and make everyone value him more. There's something there. Jackie Earl Haley, a great man, once said to me,

the thing you realize that's terrifying when you get a little bit of success in this industry is everyone starts daring you to become an asshole. There is a system that falls into place where it's almost like if you don't act like an asshole, everyone will take advantage of you. And so a very... It's the thing we talked about with George Miller rejecting his trailer on Eastwick.

And so they're like, oh, you must be a total wuss. Like, we're going to push you around. I don't know if that belongs in a Bewitched movie, but there's a thing there. There is something to work with in a more realistic way of someone feeling the need to still exert power in order to sell the idea that they're not washed up and tanking a project in the process. But here's where you get to like this movie making everything a longer walk than it needs to be. This movie refusing to follow like Occam's razor.

With the way this character is set up at this moment, it would make so much more sense. It would be so much more believable if they keep on reading big actors for the role and he feels threatened by the idea of having someone who's at the same level of him as him. Yeah. Then, then he sees this woman in a bookshop who he wants to fuck and he goes to the studio and he's like, you have to hire her. bookshop who he wants to fuck and he goes to the studio and he's like you have to hire her you know like you would buy this character being the kind of guy who is like i'm telling you this unknown actress has it because he is sexually attracted to her and and kind of like collapses the entire project rather than this weird immediate miscalculation of oh we need to hire an unknown actress before i've even signed on to the project

because I need to make sure that I'm the number one in every capacity and them agreeing to that. It's so much funnier, like you said, if that's the unspoken thing in his head. We as the audience are smart enough to understand that he'll be threatened if he's in a scene with like a great actress and they cast it with a great actress

and she's getting all the laughs. I can understand why we would put the two and two together that he's like, I don't like this. That is the obvious way

to go about this movie. And when you're watching a montage of 80 women mangle the easiest line in the world, which A, as you said, what the fuck? What do you mean

no one can play this part? What are you talking about? It's like the montage of, like, in High School Musical, where, like, every kid in high school is bad. But it's like, this is Los Angeles. You can find a blonde woman who's a good actress. You walk down the street. Right. If at that point they had faced that much failure, they would not let him screen test a woman he met at a bookshop.

Right. They would say, i'm sorry jack yeah but he needs to be an established his power is not well defined we just don't really know so look what follows is he's a jerk for a while okay he sees he sees her at a bookstore she does the nose thing goes to her. She doesn't understand what reading is. She only takes this job. I think the important thing is what they try to establish with her is that she doesn't want everything to come easy. No, she's like, I don't want everything to come easy. I want to struggle. I want to struggle. And he's like, being famous is great.

You snap your fingers, anything happens. She's like, I don't want that. So she doesn't want to be famous, doesn't want to be an actress. The only reason she does it is because she has a crush on him the only reason even though he is the least charming man in the world she's not interested until he starts saying we'll be husband and wife yeah which she takes on a literal level she's never met because she's 12 years old yes that's the thing the whole way she's playing it is that she's never met a human before. He's showing interest in her

and so she's just like, well, she's bewitched by it. Anyway. At the screen test, she doesn't know how to read the script but then she starts explaining her actual witch logic and they think she's ad-libbing

and they cast her. She's popping. Right. On the spot, they cast her. It's sort of like Splash a little bit in that way. Yes. Yeah, that's got a sexy born yesterday trope.

They treat it like Splash in a weird way. So then it's like huge press conference. They built a set that looks like Lollapalooza. They're at some outdoor space where they're bringing her on stage and announcing her for the first time. Everyone's reporting on it, only to reveal 20 minutes later that this is the pilot that they haven't even gotten a series order that they're doing this sort of like promotional song and dance just for the pilot it's not even up front yet

yeah it's not even up front they haven't shot the pilot yet we have to move through because after this nonsense she gets sick of him because he's mean. There's a whole rigmarole, but then the end point of it is she's sick of him because she's mean. He won't let her score. She has no lines. She overhears him talking to Jason Schwartzman about how they tricked her into having no lines. Because she's having fun up until that point. She doesn't realize that she has nothing to do until they tell her she has

nothing to do in a movie that has given her almost nothing to do for the last 45 minutes and then it is revealed that even though bewitched is fictional yes aunt clara and later uncle arthur minor characters from bewitched are real yes i guess they're the only ones who are real right they do exist like andora does not no she's got a father she doesn't have a mother yes she's a father who's not her father's an entirely different character type except the actress playing andor also is a witch so you have one relative witch who is exactly like the character from the show the same name the same relation. Then you have Uncle Arthur who seems to have magical abilities

but only appears to Will Ferrell and never interacts with the real witch in it. Maybe they hint that he might just be in Will Ferrell's mind? Maybe, but then who's driving the car? Is he having a full play club mental breakdown? Who's Aunt Clara?

Who's sister is she? She's in dora's sister no and she is like oh come on just i'll cast a hex and he'll be in love with you yes and then the next phase of the movie plays out in which will ferrell is head over heels in love with nicole kidman and is only nice to her and this is will you can't go big enough. Anything you want to throw on the screen. It's right. It's like, more. And they try to convince us as a woman

that she is charmed by this instead of being immediately put off. Instead of immediately being like, oh, this is weird and bad and I will undo this in a second. They have them go on a date and she almost kisses him and she's like, oh, this is what and bad, and I will undo this in a second. They have them go on a date, and she almost kisses him, and she's like, oh, this is what I want as a woman. I almost forgot.

So in a mid-film twist, almost on the level of Gambit, this movie proceeds for 15 to 20 minutes as, oh, the high concept premise now is that she's tricked him into being in love with her, and he's too nice of a guy and he's too adoring. And that plays out for multiple scenes through to their flirtation and seduction. It's like 20, 25 minutes. And date and maybe first kiss, almost their first kiss.

Almost first kiss. And then she pauses the movie, appears as a second version of herself looking at it and goes, this is too wrong and the movie rewinds 20 full minutes and just goes none of that shit you saw happened at all we're just gonna now proceed with some different things happening what's weird then is the character of aunt clara in addition just to being wildly confusing in the plot of this movie, is entirely unnecessary and I think doesn't appear again.

So it's like, just cut that whole thing out. Michael Caine could have done that. Whatever. It's too long of a movie. It's too, but that whole sequence is too long. It's just so weird that they're like, we're going to do Bewitched. We can't do the actual show.

We have to do a home editing, but we have to have Aunt Clara. Like, what are the eight conversations happening? It almost feels like there was a legal obligation. Like, it's's like you have to get the kravitz's in there they can be their real neighbors aunt clara is a coincidence that she seems to be the same as the character it's one of those things where it's like if we include aunt clara we get 10 of her be fully loaded it's just a deal we made i don't like it some weird fucking thing because they're just like, we need to check every single classic character box

in one form or another with no consistent internal rules of how they appear in this universe. Here's the thing that I think is the most offensive of all the things in this movie from a storytelling perspective, okay? They have the hex plot. He's very nice.

She's not into it. She rewinds right because there's a running joke i just want to mention as well there's a running joke where she keeps on confessing to people that she's a witch and no one believes her including kristin chenoweth who's a delivery woman who's also a life coach who turns everything into a song be it a laugh or a line of dialogue she so badly wishes she was in a musical i mean role that was written for Kristen Chenoweth, I learned. Yes. It makes sense.

Right, because I think she originally auditioned for something else. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Right, but then also Heather Burns, who is like the writer's assistant or the producer's assistant,

but then becomes her closest friend who teams up with her to help her destroy the show she just casually now that ant has appeared out of nowhere covered in soot and the area surrounding her chimney is suddenly dirty and she's been telling him she's a witch forever and they keep on taking it not at face value incentivizes them to join into a hex with her. They wear classic pointy witch hats and stay around the cauldron. They implied that Aunt Clara hexed them to get them on board with the hex.

To do a hexing. There was a pre-hex hexing. All right. So after the hex is taken back and Will Ferrell is no longer obligated by magic to be nice. And Aunt Clara has nothing to do anymore. Aunt Clara only existed for the movie

to have a 20 minute detour. We go back to the scene where Will Ferrell is given the ratings where she has tested really well and he's tested really poorly and the first time he reacts to that with positive energy. This time he's mad. That's the joke. You expect he's going to flip out but he loves it.

He's so happy. He wants her to score. This time we see him flip out. He gets mad. There's a big fight and he loves it he's so happy he wants her to score this time we see him flip out he gets mad there's a big fight and he fires her and she pulls a you can't fire me i quit okay yes but she also dresses him down in front of the hole yes and then he he comes after her and he's like no one's ever done that before this is great no i i'm sorry no what is this you can't give me a fourth character update where it's like and that makes him behave normally like right it's clearly just the thing of like well now we need to start getting to the end so i guess he's gonna have to be a human being again not but then you pause the

movie and you go wait there are 50 minutes left right but the weird thing also is they had sort of established that he was a nice guy beforehand. Right. For one minute. And it was Schwartzman. And like this movie could have worked if he was a sad sack the whole time who's so insecure that it sort of makes him an asshole. But he's just an insecure sad sack. That's the thing.

The Hollywood daring you to become an asshole. That's almost something. Every time he pulls away from asshole behavior, he goes to Schwartzman. He's like, are you sure? Are you sure this feels unnatural? And that movie also would necessitate a twist that Jason Schwartzman's character is Satan himself, who has long been waged in a war with the witches. Like, that's almost the only way this movie makes sense.

Which they sort of imply at the end, a tiny bit. A tiny bit. A tiny bit. They make a joke about it but you're like oh but then it's like another montage after we've seen this montage of them falling in love that is feral saying i'm gonna stay overnight on the set with you and i'm gonna teach you everything i know about being a comedic actor even though she was being great before she was getting great ratings she could deliver a funny line She had no problem being a comedic actor.

She was naturally pretty good at it. But he teaches her physical comedy. He's totally selfless and collaborative and hardworking. We need to be a team. This is a show about a marriage. And then they kiss. Now they have the actual first kiss. It's bullshit.

They have no chemistry. It's completely insane. Then it's like Nora's like, all right completely insane then then it's like nora's like all right time to bring in the ex-wife let's do 10 minutes of this oh no it's it's it's nonsense she almost kills the ex-wife with a light rewinds it does another there's another rewind and then manipulates her brain into making her move to reykjavik. Right. The also crazy thing you're saying is that you pause at this point and you're like, there's 50 movies, 50 minutes of this movie left.

What finally, after all of these arcs and turns has established is they like each other now. They had their first kiss. They're together. She hasn't told him that she's a witch yet. We need to get to that. But that is the opening credit. That's like the opening narration

of the original Bewitched. That has to be the premise. The premise of Bewitched is Guy finds out post-relationship that she's a witch. And the movie takes an hour to fucking get there. More.

An hour ten, I think. Something like that. That's the crazy thing. And then she tells him she's a witch. Crazy. he has the i'm a clippers fan line this is all in the trailer of the movie right it makes it seem like this is the first 30 minutes of the she does magic powers and he lets out a big will ferrell scream probably the biggest laugh of the movie just because he's good at those but just to pause again i'm sorry

but but the katie fitter and scene is the first time we find out it's only been a pilot. Because he says, why are you coming around again? Did you hear that the show's probably going to get picked up? You're too hung up on the pilot thing. It's not even the pilot thing. The show's not picked up yet? That's what's crazy. They didn't have a series order? It's not even that.

It's beyond that. It feels like at this point the movie has spanned six months of time. And you're telling me either they've been shooting a pilot for six months or this movie has taken place over like 15 days, which is insane. work, hypothetically, if it starts with here's a young actress who's been an unknown who somehow magically got cast in this sitcom, washed up actor who they sort of have chemistry with, and the first moment of this movie is they have chemistry, they get cast, they get a big laugh, they're actors in this movie

and then she tells him she's actually a witch. Would this movie work? Here's what's fascinating. I mean, it would work better. Yeah,. It would work better. Yeah, absolutely it would work better. I will also say I rewatched the trailer because I was trying to remember were the big Will Ferrell joke lines they front loaded in the trailer.

The trailers for the movie were all structured that way. It was, here's the perspective of Will Ferrell. He needs the show to be a hit. They find this unknown actress and then only after she's cast does anyone find out that she's a witch. The trailer, it's structured that you wouldn't find out.

It makes you seem like the movie wouldn't tell you that until after. Which would work better because that's how the sitcom is structured, where they meet, they fall in love. I mean, she doesn't do any witchy things to make them fall in love. It would be almost funny if they meet, they fall in love. I mean, she doesn't do any witchy things to make them fall in love. It would be almost funny if they imply like,

wow, this beautiful unknown actress, it's so hard to make it in Hollywood. Did she have a little extra help? But then they have this massive party that I guess is the wrap party for the pilot. No, it's something even worse. He just throws a party. Is it because he fired someone?

The team thing went well? It's not a wrap party. On set, something happened, and he goes, let's have a party at my place. It's to celebrate his divorce. Yes. His wife signs the divorce papers, and he's like, let's have a party.

It looks like a party that took months to plan. And here is where she's like i need to tell you i'm a witch uh doing anything she can any trick she can to show him he keeps on taking them as you're an amateur magician is meanwhile kate walsh is at this party yes we also have the the b plot at this point which is michael c, who's mostly been existing in the film to tell her to stop using magic, now is in love with Shirley MacLaine,

the actress, who the comedic premise that seems to be set up is she thinks that her and Nicole Kidman are similar in terms of being weird, that it's weird actor diva tics,

which Nicole Kidman interprets as, as oh you're a witch as well michael cain is attracted to her wants to use his magic to fall in love with her and now an hour and ten minutes and we're finding out no shirley mclean is also a witch and now is using magic to stop michael cain from fucking other women yeah then we get to the scene, David, that you talked about where Will Ferrell screams. He scream, he scream loud and it big scream and trailer put in trailer and he says he's a Clipper fan and she flies away and he waves a stick at her.

He waves a branch at her. Waves that branch. And so she's gone and i guess that's when they're like let's recast her yeah then he like disappears to mexico but we don't see right he's he's brought back in by the police which is wild because the premise of the original sitcom is let's see two people deal with the fact that two people in love just found out that one of them is a witch. And this movie decides to just hand wave. They're like, we're not going to have fun with that at all. Right. The witchiness tests the preexisting strength of the relationship.

And this movie, the second he finds out she's a witch, it's like, let's separate them. Let's make sure they're not on screen again together until the very end. And not even show him dealing with it. Just have him be brought back by the police because he went on an existential bender. Right. But then she's not in the movie.

We're all feral. He imagines himself being interviewed by Conan. Yes. And then he is visited by Steve Carell playing Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur. Yes. And then he is visited by Steve Carell playing Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur. Right. He is playing

a magical manifestation of the actual character, not an actor playing Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur, who was his favorite character on Bewitched, he is imagining

that Uncle Arthur is there and that he curses him. But I think also Isabel's uncle in this narrative? I can't know figure it out because at first it's okay the scene is

Carell who's right on that threshold about to pop gets the and in this movie it's and Steve Carell in the credits he gets the and and of course yes he'd been an anchorman the year before so like it's sort of like putting Farrell in fucking wedding crashers right it's the end. And of course, yes, he'd been an anchorman the year before. So like, it's sort of like putting feral in fucking wedding crashers. Right.

It's like, right. And 40 year old virgin is later this year. Right. Um, but, but yes, it's like,

okay. So Clara is her aunt. So his uncle, Arthur, her uncle, I can't fucking based off of her family because she said she never watched it. Cause it was like, it was like blasphemy to her. Cause she said she never watched it. Because it was like blasphemy to her because she was

a real witch. But maybe it was because her parents didn't want her to know that they sold her life rights. When she was an infant. Yeah. So to bring back Jim Carrey, it's the Truman Show. What the fake out of the Uncle Arthur show? She never married Darren because it's

not real. I'm going to throw something. There's not real I'm gonna throw something There's not a real Darren This is for how many Like serious sci-fi movies We've covered on the show This is the most perplexing internal logic Of a film we have ever had to discuss We haven't even gotten into the fact that Stephen Colbert

And David Alan Greer are both in this movie And are it's like a law Was passed that they're not allowed to be funny it's like you can only deliver expositional dialogue that's it this movie has three different daily host correspondents in it one of them is correll who's uh in a big two scene sort of like cameo performance one of them is colbert who's in so much of the movie, but with almost nothing to do playing entirely straight. And one of them is Mo Rocca who it just feels like is any day player on a TV as an entertainment tonight correspondent.

I swear David Allen Greer hosted a nightly show at some point too. He did chocolate news. Yeah, there you go. Right. Exactly. This movie sort of decides, makes the commitment

that if it looks like a Hollywood movie, like it's glossy enough and they put enough funny people in it, it'll just like, by the law, the war of attrition,

it'll just be funny through sheer force of will. And it's not. There's that thing that Roger Ebert always says where it's like, I that thing that roger ebert always says where it's like i i run the internal test of is this movie more or less enjoyable than watching the cast have dinner together right oh that's and this is yeah this might be the greatest ratio of no

right or it's like i would i would watch a thousand hours of this cast not making this movie versus one hour of this movie colbert even schwartzman probably has great stories katie finneran michael badalucho he can regale us with tales of the practice but you're just like kane and mclean doing like old hollywood stories amy? Richard Kind? Fuck Conan. You can bring in Conan. Right, right. It's the ultimate example of just like- Ed McMahon is in this. All of it.

The stories ever would have the bits. Yes. It's so goddamn insane. But this Uncle Arthur thing, right, okay. He's backstage at Conan. He gets the reckoning from Uncle Arthur, the character he's talked about loving, explaining to him,

you have to go, you have to go, you have to run to her. Then he's like, I don't know what to do. Runs out to Conan. Uncle Arthur has cursed him. He's naked. Okay. This is that moment. Except no, he wakes up. It was a dream. It was his subconscious speaking to him, but he knows what he has to do. He has to run to her. Except no, he turns over in bed. Uncle Arthur is still real in this reality or he's having a full-blown mental breakdown that is haunting both his waking

and sleeping hours with the same figure. So then he gets in his car and drives to the Hollywood lot where Uncle Arthur tells him the rules that she's about to leave and go home to where she's from. And the rule of witches

is that if you leave, you can't come back for a hundred years. He can't figure to where she's from. And the rule of witches is that if you leave, you can't come back for a hundred years. He can't figure out where she is until he realizes, oh, she's home. Because the real home for her is their fucking sitcom set where they've only filmed one pilot that apparently took six months.

And where he was mean to her most of the time. Mostly a traumatic experience for her. But there is a good gag in the pilot. Can we just shout out when he has the big lobster claw? That's funny. That's funny. I do laugh at that.

I do laugh at that. And you also are just like, why am I not watching that fucking movie? Why am I not watching the movie in which Will Ferrell is sort of cuddly, but kind of inept, suburban dude, dealing with weird magic. And play with the tensions about gender roles in the 90s.

That's an interesting... Using bewitched gender roles metatextually to the 90s is an interesting movie that I would watch. There is a version of this movie that probably still doesn't exist, that probably is still viewed as that was a weird point in Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman's careers. But it's a gentleman six. It's an ultimate cable movie.

It's an ultimate like whatever. It's comfort food. It's just a TV show stretch out for 90 minutes. It's middle of the pack Efron rather than the worst thing she ever did. But you are right. The joke of him with the lobster claw is funnier than any actual joke in this movie right it's not good right that's the thing it's like 30 rock correctly knew that the show they were making was irrelevant and probably not very funny yes bewitched

anytime you see a glimpse of the show you're like i don't know maybe this is worth watching i'd rather watch this its use of magic seems more interesting to me than the real world uses of magic behind the scenes well that the crazy thing to me with all the whiffs and wild things that this movie does is they try to make it so that she should she's like i shouldn't use magic for no reason even though she does things that like violate all rules of space and time where if they want there to be consequences of magic which this movie seems to sort of want they could do that but they don't magic has no consequences in this universe no absolutely she learns no lessons from using magic and there's

also no kind of like cliche ticking clock thing of like if you fall in love with a human you have to give up your magic powers are you sure you never want to have magic again? The arc that this, that, that Isabel, the Nicole Kidman, Oscar winner, Nicole Kidman's character goes on is she moves out, decides that she doesn't want to use magic, has a crush on a boy who's an asshole,

falls in love with that boy and continually uses magic. The biggest sort of satirical angle Nora Ephron is bringing to it is if they rebooted Bewitched today, it probably wouldn't even be about the witch. They would find a way to make her as incoherent and as incoherential as possible to the show. But she is at the same time doing that to the character

who is having that done to them in the show within the movie like it is crazy how little interiority how little agency this character has how little screen time she has relative to feral and what you think they're almost trying to do is say all right in the 1950s 60s the woman had less power than the man in society yeah and on a hollywood set the unknown had less power than the man in society. And on a Hollywood set, the unknown has less power than the established movie star. And I guess that could cause some tension. But they don't interrogate that beyond just putting it on the canvas and saying like, there, we did it.

There's a Meryl Streep quote, which I've invoked before on this podcast, but where she said that you look at like the 40s and the 50s and women were very strong and tough and equal co-leads with agency who would give it as hard as they took it in like all those screwball comedies. And men did not feel threatened by it as audience members. They would watch something like His Girl Friday and they would not say this is an agenda being pulled.

Or Nenetska, which is a movie we talked about, which in which the woman is so strong and so powerful that that's her whole thing. That was not viewed as a threat. But what Meryl Streep said is men feel more threatened by that today because it is closer to reflecting an actual reality. At the times in which those power dynamics were on screen, it was like, well, Catherine Hepburn can be like a ball buster because in real life she can't actually tell me what to do, you know? And now men feel more threatened by it. And as you're saying, yes, that is slightly more of an angle for this movie to have. That, like, the idea of, well, you couldn't keep her at home anymore you couldn't tell her that she

can't have a job makes this character more of a threat if she has magical ability but there are 8 000 different things this movie could have done that would have felt like nora front had an actual angle for why she wanted to make this rather than lucky numbers had bombed really hard it was a guaranteed green light and a lot of especially i feel like comedic filmmakers if they've been working for long enough or like i don't know i'd kind of like to make a movie about how show business works because they're filled with such contempt for how stupid the industry is that they think they're gonna be the one who makes the take that mainstream audiences give a shit about and almost always people go inside baseball i don't fucking care i don't fucking care bewitched at the end they fall in love i don't know i don't have anything and then they move

in then they move into the house from bewitched and then the neighbors from bewitched are actually there and it's richard kind and amy sed Amy Sedaris and Richard Kind and I'm immediately like, oh, Forky was literally like, oh, Amy Sedaris and I was like, credits are about to roll, my friend. That's all we're getting.

In this from the beginning. It would be, that made me, seeing Amy Sedaris and Richard Kind as the neighbors who I remembered from the original Bewitched

was so charming and nostalgic and fun for me that even if I would be like, I want that movie, please. At the end of this. So it was so charming and nostalgic and fun for me that even if I would be like, I want that movie, please. At the end of this movie,

I was like, this is where the movie should have began. Ab. So it literally should have been the opening after the credits is, Oh, who are these neighbors moving in next door? They're newlyweds. You know what this movie,

yeah, this movie should have been two actors who they just get married she's an up-and-coming starlet he's sort of in the decline of his career yeah they get married i'm a witch opening credits here's the movie and the power dynamic could be that her career is becoming more successful than his and he's threatened that is an issue that women working have today that men when they start dating you, are more powerful and then get in a lull and then they are not okay

with that relationship dynamic anymore. But as you said, the central metaphor of the series tracks well onto that of just like she has more power than he does, literally. She's magical and he feels threatened by that. Give us Amy Sedaris and Richard Kind as wacky neighbors.

That sounds like a delight. And make the show that they work on not bewitched. I don't think Kidman is good in any version of this.

And again, no offense to Nicole Kidman. She's not. She's necessarily the right casting. You know what? I think she's just badly cast.

Who, um... God, I'm trying to think of, like, who... Amy Adams. Is she too serious? No, no. Think, Enchanted is two years after that. Okay.

I was thinking more like an Elizabeth Banks, but she might be too broad. Banks would be great, too. I think Adams, like, is right before she gets big enough to be playing this role, but would have worked in it. This is the year before Talladega Nights. Oh yeah, Talladega, of course. Kidman is too innately dark.

Like that's where her mind lives. She's not funny. I have no beef with her. She and Will Ferrell live in two different universes. I think before recording, we were talking about how they're the exact same age. But to me, it's like when people are like, oh, it's like people who are like, oh, did you know that Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. were born the same year?

You're like, I just I think of those two people never intersecting. That's how I feel about Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman. Right. It's the same thing where you're just like, but she was already like married to Tom Cruise and hosting SNL eight years before he got on the cast. They're clearly

from different generations and it's like, no, she got successful very young and he didn't get really big until later. But also their comedic styles, their acts or personas

just don't intersect in any way. What a fucking bizarre goddamn movie. I think this is one of truly the weirdest films we have ever covered and one of the blank checkiest movies we have ever because it looks expensive it looks expensive and it's also just it feels like i mean we're talking about it coming out of we just need to make some bewitched movie but this one feels like they're literally writing the script in real

time like in the no chica episode of your podcast that I recorded, Dan, I was talking about how much I love in like the best comedies of the 40s, like the Lubitsch and the Sturgis movies. They're not concerned with sort of like, act one has to be entirely this, act two has to be entirely this. We're stalling for time. We're putting off the conflict being resolved. That every 10 minutes

they'll introduce a new conflict. But the way that happens is organic. It is following the logical interior lives of the characters and what they would do next.

This feels like a movie where every 10 minutes they go, fuck, this is running out of steam. What's a new thing? Yeah, what's a thing we can do to fill time?

What's a thing? Right. Yeah. Let's play the box office game. Let's play the box office game. Let's play the box office game. I didn't expect to get so angry about this movie. I thought I was going to not talk a lot. Oh my God.

It's Nora's... I mean, we haven't seen Lucky Numbers yet at the time of this recording. It's the one we've done out of order for this miniseries, pretty much. I'm a big Adam Resnick fan. I'm assuming I will find a lot more to like in Lucky Numbers than I do in this.

But her flops are not fiascos in this way. And you can always see, I get what she was trying to do and she couldn't pull it off. This, I just cannot even figure out how she explained this to friends while she was working on it. Like I was running that test

of like imagine being at a dinner party with nora efron and going nora what are you working on right now and her going but which and they go oh great i can see that in my head and she goes well but not exactly and she tries to explain this to you over drinks i'm fine up until aunt clara that's when it breaks me that's when the movie. Aunt Clara definitely is when the movie completely shatters. And then I think the double reverse reveal of McClane being a witch is a further... That's where you're like, no, excuse me. I need another movie for this

if you're even going to begin this. Whatever. Right. You have to save this for movie three. But it's right around the same time as Rumor Has It where Shirley MacLaine is dropping into movies as like meta characters. Yes.

Anyway. Anyway. This movie came out June 24th, 2005. I definitely saw it at the AMC Fenway by myself. And I also, because I saw so many movies that year by myself, and I just would see anything, I think I saw the trailer for this movie like a hundred times. I think that's why I keep referencing it.

Number one, Griffin, is a movie I saw multiple times at the AMC Fenway. It's one of the big hits of the summer. What is it? Wait, where is the AMC Fenway? Oh, Boston. You're working at the Boston Globe at this point? Boston Phoenix.

So it's in Fenway Park. You're seeing movies projected. It's very near Fenway. Next to Wally the Green Monster. It's on the Green Monster. That is where the Phoenix used to be headquartered. Yes, right next to Fenway. I used to have a Green Monster shirt because I hated

sports and when I would go to sporting events with my dad and my brother and he offered to buy merch I would go to sporting events with my dad and my brother, and he offered to buy merch, I would buy whatever merch had a cartoon character on it. Because I was like, I don't care about players. So they had a shirt that was like the green monster, like anthropomorphized with a face,

and I would get such shit as a kid in New York wearing that shirt. Like, people would, like, fucking throw shit at me. And I'd be like, I like that he's got googly eyes. This means nothing to me. Griff, were you like, I like that he's got googly eyes. This means nothing to me. Griff, were you a Yankees family or a Mets family? Or none?

No, my dad, father, and grandfather were big Mets fans, and I wore a Yankee hat a lot because it was a hat that I owned. Because you wanted to look like Zoe Deutch and set it up. Just admit it. We've brought a set it up

so many times. I know. I just love to bring up that she goes to the Yankees. It's so good. But I was more Yankees for no reason. I guess I liked that logo and the colors more. I didn't care about anyone's games. The men in my family all liked the Mets.

But you did shut down production on Gone Girl for two weeks because you refused to wear a Yankees hat. Listen, if I wear a Yankees hat, my skin melts. That's just how it works.

My version of that was Fever Pitch. They fired me off of Fever Pitch because I refused to wear a Red Sox hat. The amount of times I have seen Fever Pitch.

Sorry, let's get back to the Fox. My brother's favorite movie. What was number one? I thought your brother's favorite movie was ollie i'd say that's top five for him okay fine okay there was a bit one year where three different members of my family bought my brother fever pitch on dvd because we were like i don't know what else to get him he watches that movie incessantly okay so we already had access to

it why did he he need the DVD? He was watching it on cable every time it was on. Sorry. I'm so sorry, Dan. Number one at the box office, Griffin. And he never opened any of the DVDs.

They remain. Griffin, it's been number one for two weeks. I mean, now I'm doing it as a bit. Okay, number one. I'm sick of the bit. Number one. First time that's ever happened

on this podcast. Number one. What, that I've been sick of a bit? Yeah. It's, come on, it's two weeks. It has a very good drop for a blockbuster. It's a big hit, but it's going to spawn much bigger hits. It's a big hit, but it's going to spawn much bigger hits.

It's 2005. It's July or June? This is late June. This is late June. It's been out for two weeks is it uh fuck uh i'm trying to think of franchises it's not fuck it's not fuck is uh fuck the movie what is i believe is a film from 2005 yes oh yes yes. Documentary about the word fuck. Is that a Kirby Dick movie? Uh, Steve Anderson, I'm seeing. I don't know what to tell you. Wait a second.

I'm seeing, it's not a Kirby Dick movie. The director's name is Yoshi Penis? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, that I liked. That, that was fine. And I won you back. Uh, okay, wait.

I'm trying to think. It spawns... What are franchises that start in 2005? It's not Fantastic Four. This isn't the beginning of a franchise, but it is the relaunch of a franchise. It's the relaunch of a franchise that gets bigger from here.

Yes. And was the previous incarnation of this franchise a movie as well, or was it in a different medium? I mean, there's so many versions of this franchise, but the last movie of this franchise is eight years prior, and it's a movie that Andrew Lee loved. Oh, oh, it's Batman Begins. That's right. It's the Bartman Begins. I can't believe that took me so long.

This is one of those ones where people are yelling. Yes. I can't believe that took me so long this is one of those ones where people are yelling yes isn't that weird how different a time that was where people were like they're rebooting Batman I don't know it's been seven years like people might have forgotten about Batman

and when they tease the Joker at the end people are like I don't know that Nicholson played the joker 16 years ago i think it's too fresh right but also that movie like opens to 50 it ends up around 200 and people were like yeah it was like kind of like a sleeper like it like underperformed opening weekend relative to the previous batman movies and then had good word of mouth and it like stuck around but it was very expensive and they weren't even sure if they were gonna make a sequel but they were like i don't know they were

like running the calculus on like if the second movie does better we'll make a profit this one we kind of evened out so insane yes the bartman is insane and bewitched i suppose in a perfect world would have knocked it off its top but it was a bit of an underperformer. But it did open to $20 million. This is a crazy thing. You look at any sort of big comedy starring a big star from this period, by and large, opens to $20 million. It's just automatic. Land of the Lost also opens to $20 million.

These movies that you think of as huge flops. Land of the Lost. It's another movie that the trailer was just all feral screaming matt lauer right matt lauer take that mac lauer or whatever in your face matt lauer in your face but this movie's just like yeah i don't know you make an easy 20 million opening weekend the question is how you multiply um number three at the box office is a big hit of the year i'm sure we've talked about it many times in various box office games um it was sort of like a uh jesus um it's an action movie two big stars mr mrs smith yeah okay i don't need to do any more do i one of the big the big 05s. Not a good movie. I think it's fine.

I think it's funny. It has its moments. They have chemistry, at least. They have chemistry. I just think Pitt is so dialed out of that movie. I haven't seen it in many years. But in his defense, very handsome.

Very handsome. Although I've never been the biggest fan of I haven't seen it in many years. But in his defense, very handsome. Very handsome. Very handsome. Although I've never been the biggest fan of very close, you know, the crew cut. The shaved head. Shaved, yeah. Not my favorite Pitt. I like his hair long.

I thought, I agree he's hotter with long hair. At that point in time, I thought he looked so hot in Mr. and Mrs. Smith that I was like, oh, that's the key. If I shave my head, I'll be hot. And I shaved my head and I was like, no, that's the key. If I shave my head, I'll be hot. And I shaved my head and I was like, no, I look... You're like, oh, I'm not Brad Pitt. I have my face. My head is not as well shaped as his.

It's better. David, what's number four at the box office? It's a movie that I mentioned earlier as a joke, and I believe I mentioned it because I had looked at this box office. It's a reboot or whatever. office um it's a reboot or whatever i guess it's a reboot um of an old franchise it has a a big star of the time who is a pretty much cresting this is you know kind of the end for her um one of your favorite actors is in it one of my favorite actors is oh it's herbie fully loaded yep starring lindsey lohan and michael keaton which is the last lindsey lohan film aimed at

young people correct michael keaton is in that movie he plays yes he that was the wilderness that's the wilderness 100 right yeah wilderness, 100%. Right, yeah. She does not make another movie aimed at even teenagers after that. No, her next film after that is Just My Luck, where the pitch was she's going to play a grown-up. Right. I guess that one is still basically. No, no, it's Chris Pine.

Oh, I fell in love with Chris Pine in that movie. He's so cute. He's very cute. That was still a movie aimed at her young audience, but the difference is that's the first movie in which her parent is not a co-lead of the film. You know? Like where it's like,

here's a woman with her own apartment and career and she's falling in love in the city and then that one underperforms and then like at that point, the tailspin of all of the press had just sort of collapsed. Like her next movie after that is I know who killed me. Oh, there's all near forgetting Georgia rule,

my friend. Oh, fuck. You gotta, you gotta think about Georgia rule. But there was that point where her entire career was freaky Friday, parent trap, confessions of a Teenage Drama

Queen, Mean Girls, Herbie Fully Loaded, all of them were hits. She had only ever been... She was in... Which I think she's very good in. But that wasn't a hit. She's fine. No, it wasn't. But I'm saying, up until that point, it's like,

she's only ever been the lead of a movie. She's going up, yeah. And she's only ever been in a hit. I think she's good in Prayer Home Companion. I like that movie a lot. That movie's fantastic. She is fine in it. I remember seeing Just My Luck, and the only thing I really remember about it as a teenager

is falling in love with the British band McFly and falling in love with Chris Pine. Pine in that and Princess Diaries 2. He's in Princess Diaries in love with Chris Pine. Pine in that and Princess Diaries 2. He's in Princess Diaries 2. The hottest Pine. It's so weird to think about. That's one of those guys where it's weird that it took him that long to become a star.

He's so, well, not in my mind. Sure, sure. I was a big Princess Diaries 2. That's what I'm saying. After Princess Diaries 2, I was like, give this guy every fucking part. What's happening here? Oh, he's so charming.

I have to show you the poster for Just My Luck because it looks like she's a Barbie doll. They couldn't get her for a photo shoot, clearly. It looks like the life-size poster. Oh, wow. This is crazy. Are you looking at this? It doesn't even look like her.

It doesn't even look like her it doesn't even look like her no it looks like mila kunis they couldn't really doesn't look like but he crazy he looks like ryan reynolds he's so handsome though his hair he has that that tooth that that aughts hair i think it looks like mila kunis and jay baruchel that's what this poster looks like he can kiss me and give me bad luck anytime which is the premise of that movie. Number five at the box office is another long delayed sequel. The fourth in a franchise, but the last movie came out decades ago. Last movie came out decades ago? That's right.

It's the fourth in a franchise. The last one came out decades ago. 80s or even further back? believe the 80s let's double check though why don't we double check all right we're gonna double check let's give it a little double check uh yes 20 years prior 20 years prior and does this one do well or did they perhaps wait too long no this one does well and it was sort of heralded at the time as like thank you great you made another one of these that's great and you made it on this big scale and that's great like and then they made more and they were ignored and they made more

and they were ignored this movie's existence is sort of a weird little pop culture moment. Is it a horror franchise? Yes. Fuck. Yes, it is. 2005. This one does well. It's not Amityville Horror, is it? Nope. Think like people were

actually thrilled that this movie existed. People were thrilled. They were thrilled. So it has to have been is it like someone returning to the franchise is it like that yeah i mean it's only his franchise although there are many other like remakes and spinoffs of it i suppose or whatever but it's but he wrote and directed all six movies But he wrote and directed all six movies. He wrote and directed all six? To the extent that it's like X's title. You know, like it is pretty much

billed with his name in it. The fuck? I feel like this is fun where fans are just This was on the bracket. This franchise was on the bracket. Is this John Carpenter? It has to be. No.

It's not a Carpenter. It's not a Craven. Zombie? Oh, oh, oh. There you go. There you go. It's Land of the Dead. Yes.

George A. Romero's Land of the Dead. A movie that is- $20 million. Perfectly fine. It's fine. Yeah, it's pretty good, right? It's okay. Yeah.

I feel like people were just like good for you he got a blank check because the people who had been influenced by him right we're like come on right and it's so many things that ripped him off were becoming big hits yeah yeah like shawn of the dead or whatever and like so like and i feel like it's the apotheosis of that like fangoria type you know fandom right there's a lot more of that out there at that point the internet and the you know ain't it cool news is of the world right like there's this sort of reverence for these old genre guys that i don't know it's just funny that that movie was such a big deal he'd been canonized more than he had in a while. The Dawn of the Dead remake came out the year before, and that was such a big hit.

He was supposed to direct the Resident Evil, the first movie. Yeah. Like, he kept on getting fired off of bigger films, and then all these filmmakers who had been influenced by him got big, and then, like, the online, like, nerd sphere was like, when are they gonna let Romero

actually make one of these movies? Then they saw it. They got really hot on it. And the other things had done well that they were like, we're so confident about this. We're going to pull up the release date. This was going to be a Halloween movie. And now we're releasing it in June. And it was a horrible decision.

Yeah, that was a bad decision. They definitely should not have done that. They got way too confident. That was an insane thing to do. Yes. Insane. Because it made $20 million, which is way more than any other dead movie but still like you know it would have been twice as much in october yeah some other movies

in the top 10 madagascar your favorite my favorite uh revenge of the sith my favorite your favorite uh the longest yard which of course is your favorite my favorite um the adventures of shark boy and lava girl in 3d which might is your favorite. My favorite. The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, which I feel like might be your favorite. I mean, legitimately a pretty good movie. And then Ron Howard's Cinderella Man, which is just like the most like movie, right? The most like five out of 10 thing.

We watched that in my AP US history class to learn about the Great Depression. I mean, great. Look, that is definitely that movie's greatest asset for society is an educational tool. Some other movies, oh my god, opening at number 12 this weekend on 352 theaters

is Dave LaChapelle's Rise, the documentary about crumping. Is there anything more 2005 than that? I saw that in theaters it was pretty good do you remember just like seeing that first teaser for cinderella man that was mostly just the voiceover narration of him in the press conference over like slow motion imagery from the movie and i forget they use the score from some other big

prestige movie sure sure over oh you know what it is it's the one track from the end credits of castaway which is so good the one alan sylvestre credits track from castaway which rules uh because there's no score in the movie proper um but that trailer is just like his voiceover the the sort of great depression like handsome august imagery and then like from academy award winner ron howard and academy award winning writer akiva goldsman academy award winner ron uh russell crowe academy award winner renee zellweger and then giamatti is the one guy who hadn't gotten the oscar anointment can i tell one really quick akiva goldsman story please please it's the shortest i'm so sorry um i was a freelance uh writer in uh new york at the time and i think i was writing movie reviews for

marie claire and i was working on a a piece about uh like the the the Stephen King renaissance that was happening. And I think Akiva was producing the man in the gunslinger movie. Dark Tower. Dark Tower. Yes, yes. But earlier I had seen Transformers The Last Knight to write a review about that. And that was the only Transformers movie

I had ever seen. So I went and called. It makes a ton of sense if you're watching it called. I had never been more flabbergasted by a movie. It was truly a nightmare. Akiva Goldsman

did the story of that movie. I clocked that he had the story credit. Because he ran the writer's room. They were like, we're going to treat the next 10 Transformers movies like it's a season

of television. Yeah. He's the showrunner in terms of generating ideas and they put 10 people in a room with him who are all overqualified. So this movie was awful

and baffling and maybe the worst movie I've ever seen in the theater. And I was interviewing Akiva Goldsman about something else and just really quickly at the end and I was like, and can I just, I was interviewing Akiva Goldsman about something else. And just really quickly at the end, and I was like, and can I just, I just have one, you know, quick question about Transformers The Last Knight.

Did it, you know, turn out the way you wanted it to? I know with these big projects, you know, they go through, was it your original vision? And he goes, I don't know how it turned out. I never saw it. Wow. Wow. Fair enough. I thought, great. You should, it's a bathroom.

It's the Michael Caine question where they ask him why he did Jaws the Revenge and he said, I haven't seen it. By all accounts, it's a horrible film, but I have seen The Weekend House. I bought with it and by all accounts, it's wonderful. I love it. And that, of course, is Bewitched's own Michael Caine.

And, Len, we're done unless anyone has a take on The Perfect Man starring Hilary Duff and Heather Locklear. It's a bug nuts premise for a movie. It's a movie in which a daughter catfishes her own mother to make her feel less depressed. They try to make the guy from Superstore, I think, the romantic lead. A young, I can't remember his name. Oh, Ben Feldman. That's right. Ben Feldman is the romantic lead.

And I remember. Is her love interest? I remember even watching it at the time. And thinking, nope. And this is, my dad once called, because he's so Jewish looking and she's not that like, but like, I'm very Jewish. My dad once called me on the phone and told me that I needed to see the movie

Obvious Child with Jenny Slate. Sure, sure. Because, and I quote my father, her love interest is conventionally Gentile handsome

and he thought it would be good for my self-esteem. Oh. To see a Jew hooking up with Jake Lacey. Yeah. Who I believe she refers to as like

a Christmas tree. Yes. She's got some good burns on Jake Lacey. Who I believe she refers to as like a Christmas tree. Yes. She's got some good burns on Jake Lacey. She pulled some like laundry in that movie. Yeah, I do. I do just want to very quickly say for those of you who don't know the premise of The Perfect Man

is Hilary Duff feels bad for her lonely Heather Locklear mother. So she catfishes her in online conversations. She cyber bullies her own mother. Right and then when her mother is frustrated and wants to meet the man in person she hires Chris Noth to act

out the script she writes for him Cyrano style. Insane. Your mom may fall in love I assume. Of course they do. Eventually. So she's flirting with her mom. Yes. Is what you they do. Eventually. So she's flirting with her mom. Yes. Is what you're telling me. Yes.

Great. She's sexting with her mom. She's sending dick pics to her mom. One other thing. Is falling in love with a man who speaks with the full intelligence of a 15-year-old's creative writing work. One other thing I have to shout out is that also March of the Penguins opened this week on four screens. I didn't just notice that. And we would end up outgrossing Penguin Renaissance would end up outgrossing Bewitched many times over.

What was the final total on Bewitched? The final total on Bewitched is a cool $63 million. 131 worldwide. I don't know. No one. It was probably OK. Right. People probably could live with that. Yeah. No one took a bath. I don't know no one it was probably okay right people probably could live with that

yeah no one took a bath i don't know yeah they're all really rich people and i'm sure nancy myers this home is lovely and she didn't have to put a second mortgage on it what if yeah what if a movie did something oh my god oh my god i will say that obviously any i'm clearly thinking about the nancy myers kitchen well no also dana we've been recording for the two hours and it fucking I will say obviously I'm clearly thinking about the Nancy Meyers kitchen well no also Dana we've been recording

for more than two hours and it fucking fries your brain but her kitchen in this is very Meyers-esque it's a great Meyers kitchen

yeah this is the Nora that feels most like a Nancy but in the wrong way yeah because it's set in Hollywood

yes and there's a lot of nice interiors yes this thing lacks Nora. Yes. You know what I mean? Like this,

that's one of the big problems with this thing. Like I don't really see a lot of Nora Ephron in this. No. It's not that, like I guess it's kind of

trying to be biting about Hollywood, but like it just doesn't have a lot of insight into anything. That's what makes it a fiasco rather than a failure.

That's what makes this the lone fiasco of her career. It's the shoe. It's the shoe. Is that a reference to Elizabethtown? Again, it a fiasco rather than a failure that's what makes this the lone fiasco of her career is it it's the shoe it's the shoe is that a reference to elizabeth town again a movie i love david after losing your mind over this movie what's worse elizabeth town is worse oh elizabeth town is disgusting that is your number one least favorite movie my bonus episode is we're going to review elizabeth town and again. You'll come over.

Whenever COVID is over, it can just be Dave and Ange on the couch. The first thing I'm going to do is peel your eyes open. Watching Elizabeth Downe. It'll end with me going on a suicide cycle. A suicide cycle. The real tragedy of this movie, in my mind, is that Nora is so good sometimes at genuine human chemistry and connection and like feeling like two people

who bicker have a spark. She's good at putting a spark on film. And this is like the anti-spark. This is like the spray that makes you not have static electricity on your skirts. It gets rid of all romantic chemistry. It's amazing. There is a quote on the You've Got Mail Blu-ray I own

that says Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan should win the Nobel Prize for chemistry. That's a funnier joke than anything in Jewish. But in those terms, this movie is like building the atomic bomb. It's like applying chemistry in only the wrong ways it's like hiring physicists to create a weapon of mass destruction yeah they should have known that's what's so baffling about it uh well dana i hope you don't

resent us uh uh making you talk about this movie no i'm so sorry I got so angry about it. I didn't expect to be so animated. It's hard to stay chill. I mean, it's a witch challenge. Watch it for two hours and stay chill. Impossible. You can't do it. You do a Will Ferrell scream yourself out of frustration. Hummus!

Sherpa! Hummus. Hummus. He does yell Sherpa at one point he does uh dana thank you so much for being on the show thank you so much for having me i'm a big big blank check fan this is a delight i'm sorry it took us this long to get ahead on the show to get you on the show i think people don't realize how far ahead we now plan compulsively out of fear.

This has been, I was actually going to come record this episode in person that I had a trip to New York that was canceled because of coronavirus, a thing that still is happening. I was like, I know this is sort of silly. It was so early on. I was like, you know, they gave us a memo at work. We're not really supposed to travel. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience. You were the first COVID cancellation of our podcast. Right.

It was before the lockdown had happened, but when you were like, it doesn't seem like a great time to get on a plane. It was in that last week where you were still like riding the subway, but still starting to feel like, is this fucked up? Should I be doing this?

I know. And our thing was, but look, we hate doing podcasts virtually i guess we have to find a new guest if dana can't come to new york anytime in the next two months what are we gonna do record the episode over a computer i won't stand for one episode done that way uh weird it's been weird uh but dana thank you for being on the show thank you for letting me do it virtually. Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, subscribe. Thanks to Andrew Guto, co-producer of the show, social media, Rachel Jacobs for editing help, Leigh Montgomery for our theme song, Joe Bone and Pat Reynolds for artwork. Go to blankies.rat.com for some real nerdy shit.

Patreon.com backslash blank check for blank check special features where we do franchise commentaries. We're doing the Mission Impossible movies. And David is probably enjoying being alive temporarily for two hours at a time. I've never seen any of those. Oh, my God. Dana, it's been the best quarantine watch.

I highly recommend. Do I start at the beginning? Do I start at the first one? Of course. Luxuriate. We actually watched backwards and then like started up, went back to one.

It doesn't matter. They're mostly all entertaining. Yeah. I think you can either start at one or start at four. Okay. Yes. I think those are the two entry points.

Yeah. Okay. But the first three movies are kind of standalones and then four is when it starts to become a unified franchise. Good to know. But like nothing has pumped me up like hearing that theme song kick in. Oh, I rolled.

Three is kind of episode zero of the franchise. Yes. I'll just start at the beginning. Just start at the beginning. This is way too convoluted. They're fun. We're all stuck at home and the world is going to end. Why not watch all of them?

They're fun. We're all stuck at home and the world is going to end. Why not watch all of them? And as always, here is a 15 minute and 27 second phone conversation between Alex Ross-Perry and Jason Schwartzman talking exclusively about the movie Bullish. But yeah, all right. So I'm doing this now. So yeah, I mean, what's your, your what was the how did the involvement start like where did that come from if you remember it came from uh the i uh you know our usual the very um channels, which was that, you know, they were, I got, they were making the movie Bewitched, and that there was a part of this agent-manager type,

agent manager type um uh and i thought maybe um it would be i could try to do something uh with that and i was excited because i wanted to work with will ferrell who i love and so i really was the first thing was just like maybe i I could work with Will Ferrell. And I don't even know if I knew, nor if I was doing it. Because she wrote the script, so it would have, you know, come with her name on it. But no, I didn't even react. This is just hearing about it. Right. At this point.

Then I got it. Then, and basically, I was very excited, very nervous. And I had, I just, I remember going into the audition, which was in, at Sony, I believe. And I went in, and she was very nice. But I did some, I remember the second I sat down, I said something about a birthday. And then I, and I don't know really much about, you know, horoscopes and zodiac signs you know but I said something like oh that's Gemini I knew

one of them because it was near my birthday and she goes oh you don't really believe in that shit do you that was like the first thing she really said to me was you don't really believe in that shit do you which I thought was a great way to start the conversation.

Yeah, a great icebreaker for your... Yeah, I loved it. It made me so happy. I said, no, not really. So you were in there to read or to meet? To read, I think. I don't recall exactly. I won't try to...

I'm not going to lie to you. Yeah, well, good. Thank you. But I know that I ended up reading. But anyway, I just thought it was just such a... Typically, like, my personality typically would... If I bump into something like that, like, you don't believe in that shit, do you?

Like, right up front, it's kind of like a roadblock. And I go, oh, never mind, I'll just go back. But I really, for some reason with her, she just had a look in her eye and kind of just a smile. really i i i understand why this woman is who she is i mean why she's so you know well regarded and made so many wonderful you just see it her eye yeah um and anyway um then we and she was a combination of like quiet and strong and when she laughed it meant a great deal to me um and uh like the kind of person that like once you know you crack them up then you feel oh i just i just wanted because i liked her you know i i was such a fan of her her work and had you seen lucky numbers lucky numbers which was the last movie at that time no I hadn't seen it the earlier, Heartburn you're mentioning

oh yeah I just I really love Heartburn and her story her whole story but I hadn't seen Lucky Numbers and I still haven't seen Lucky Numbers

I think you're probably fine and I will haven't seen Lucky Numbers. I think you're probably fine. And I will haven't seen Lucky Numbers by the time this comes out. But I will watch it at some point if you want me to. You know, I wouldn't. Having watched it last night, I don't know if I would say that you have to. I'll do it if you want me to. Just tell me. Anyway, but then I told her, we started talking about – and the truth is I was very nervous to go in.

I didn't really have – I didn't really have such a concrete idea of what I – why could I be good to work with this person? Why do I deserve to get – but then I started to talk to her about she brought up like the idea that a lot of these types of people that I would be playing in a way, not to generalize but have a kind of like not jock quality but a kind

of like you know just that kind of like you know, just that kind of like, you know, kill or be killed in, out, just this kind of like this nature that she kind of pointed me in the direction. I thought that was really interesting, just kind of like being like in the in-group kind of, you know? Yeah. And then I told her a story about that a friend of mine told me, and I actually think that I used it.

I've used this bit actually later in something else, which was that this person said they were having a meeting, and in the meeting, this person was interrupted. I think, is this the delivery of the... Yes. I think about this story all the time. This is one of my top... Okay, so sorry, go on.

No, you know. Because it's the best. Right. So basically, just like this person, I was trying to figure it out, and this person said well i'll tell you a story one time i was in a meeting with a person and um they they someone ran in with a um like an overnight fedex um delivery like you know just gotten there

and it tapped tapped him on the shoulder he said it's here he said oh great he keeps talking rips the package open you know with that kind of like tear here thing like one quick thing and then um held it upside down and a power bar fell out into his hand i think about this all the time especially i was gonna i was going to text you because the other day uh like an envelope from amazon came that had Anna's name on it. And when she came home and opened it, there was a bag of Jolly Ranchers in it. Oh, my God. And it made me think of this exact story, which I think of all the time.

It's great. So you told her that. Well, I loved it because this was like he had obviously said to somebody, ship me a power bar yeah like it wasn't through a company it wasn't through he's like it was like a personal delivery overnight me my power bar right um and i told her that and she laughed a lot and i said i don't know really what that means but she's right that's one of the best one of the best stories i think I was like, I don't know what this means, but that is the kind of person that I think I would try to portray. And then she said, great. And she was laughing and she was into it.

Yeah. So then was there anything that like. And then, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, I mean, you go ahead. Well, then I just loved her like when we were working. So once we were working, I just thought she was super, just wonderful. I thought she was great. I thought that she was, you know, such like a great, she ran the set, made you feel encouraged, but also made you feel like you should try more.

You know what I mean? She had that beautiful ability to kind of push you forward without making you feel like you were failing before that. And also, I worked on that movie with Jim Turner and Stephen Colbert in that movie. They're like the two other guys that I... Basically, me, Jim Turner, and Stephen Colbert had all of our scenes together with Will.

And it was just such a... They were so funny and just really watching those guys talking about things and the election was happening then and hearing Nora talking about the election. Um, it, I really felt like I was privileged to be there. I was sort of like, I really am not smart enough to be these people. Um, so I, I quickly just fell into a role of being quiet and just trying to listen. But I do remember one day I was sitting, I walked over to the,

to get food at like the craft service table. And there was this really nice spread of something, I forget, maybe it was cheese or something, and I was over there, and then Nora was over there, she came over, she was the only one, and she was just cutting little pieces of cheese and talking to me, and asking me questions about my life, and just eating little pieces of cheese, and then walked away, and it was just but it was like a 15 minutes of just her sampling cheeses on a from a cheese board um and just taste little bites and with that little type of cheese knife and then um anyway then i had a really then later i saw her um at a at a party years years later but and it was uh this, I hope this isn't bad,

well, I won't get into details, but basically, like, she said something that was so fun to me, which is that I had, when I knew her, when I was working with Nora, I had a girlfriend, and then, by the time I see Nora by chance at this dinner party, at this house, the girl and I are no longer together. And I was sad about it. And anyway, the first thing she said was,

oh, how is so-and-so? And I said, oh, you know, we actually, we broke up. And she was, oh, that's a shame. She was the best. What a great, you know know and then she started telling everyone around like uh how great she was like this girl could do this and this and this and this and i was just like yeah i thought it was great yeah um and just um so that was so you didn't keep up you know you maybe see her around i saw her yeah but my whole thing and just, um, so that was, so you didn't keep up, you didn't, you know, you maybe see her around.

I saw her, yeah, but my whole thing, and just so sweet, but like coming out of nowhere to say hi to me and just like, um, I, I felt that, but what I felt was she has, uh, what I, what I think like I meant earlier when I said like a kind of smile and this thing, like when you, is that she's a super perceptor. Do you know what I mean? Like, I just feel like she's picking it up on so many things. And obviously, you know, when you read her books, I mean,

well, she's, that's what, you know, she has that eye. Yeah. Coming from the writing. No,

we love, I mean, we love those books. We love them. Yeah. Obviously. They're great. Yeah.

So it was just, you know, for you, like, you know, someone that it was fun to just kind of get to hang out with and work with for a little bit, cross paths and just say like, wow, you know, that's kind of like an older, like an old school kind of intellect that I got to sort of as a young person brush up again. Yeah. I mean, for me, it was like, I was, I wasn't like't like I wasn't I'm never really casual about it.

Like, oh, yeah, try this thing. And like I was pretty I felt pretty like I'm here with these people. And this is really a big deal for me. It's funny because it all stems really just from, oh, Will Ferrell's going to do. I would love to work with Will Ferrell. And that was amazing. And I learned so much from him. Obviously, as you can see.

Yeah, that's why you made 12 sports movies. That's why I've done it. As you've seen, it speaks for itself. It's important. But really getting to spend time with her and watch her direct. I mean, I watched her a lot. Because sometimes I'd be in a scene where it's a dinner party scene and I'm in the back, but it took five days to shoot it or something.

You know what I mean? Because it's a big, huge scene. And I had a lot of time where I wasn't on camera five days to shoot it or something you know what i mean because it's a big huge scene and big and i had a lot of time um where i wasn't on camera and i just she was so i just sat there and watched her and uh i watched her work and her just the way she was was really great and um and uh but she'd probably be saying like oh that's bullshit right now she right maybe her be saying this yeah did so that when when you right now. Right. Maybe her be saying this. Yeah.

So when you saw the finished movie, was it sort of what you had always pictured it as it would come together? I haven't seen it in over 10 years. We saw it once years ago. I haven't seen it in over 10 years either. But I remember, I just remember learning a lot from being there. I remember, like, Will Ferrell, he would jog, he would run to the set every day instead of getting a ride. Okay. Which is amazing.

Like he'd run like 12 miles in the morning to get to the set. Now that you mention it, that explains why you've always done that. Right, that's where I got it. I got it from him. And he got it from Oliver Reed. Uh-huh. And now I hope to pass it on to the next, you know, the next one of us. Well, is there anything else that you want to put on the record here?

Well, yeah, her sister is amazing too and their connection and working relationship is really fascinating and I'm sad that she's not alive because I think that she's rare to be

I think such a keen eye and, and so smart. And so, so, and also able to make big movies and things, you know, I think like it was nice.

Great. Nice having you around. Well, uh, thank you. I'm going to press stop on the recording now, but then I'm not going to hang up just yet. I'm going to say a few more things,

but I'm going to stop recording right now. Okay.