Blank Check with Griffin & David - Bridge of Spies

Episode Date: May 14, 2017

Griffin and David this week gush over 2015’s Cold War drama, Bridge of Spies. But how does this film fall into Tom Hanks’ beginning a new phase in his career? What is the standing man? What was the Coen Brothers’ involvement in the screenplay? Together they passionately discuss Mark Rylance’s Academy Award winning performance as Russian spy Rudolf Abel, Hanks’ mastering of being a good man and having the sniffles, and solidify a new shorthand for describing Spielberg’s filmmaking that involves a spice rack.

I gave them nothing. I gave them nothing. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what people think. You know what you podcast. It's good. Thank you. Hi, everybody. My name is Griffin Newman. That's a great line.

David Sims. David doubted me, but I pulled through. I didn't doubt it. I just wanted to know. And I know. Now I know. Now we know. And that's why we are hashtag the two friends.

We are hashtag Stoike Musique. Yeah. Hashtag the two Stoike Musiques. Yes. And. Ben is standing man two Stoike Musiks. Yes. And... Ben is standing man, actually, when you think about it. Producer Ben? Yeah.

The Ben-ducer? Sure. Right at the start. Purdue-er Ben? Poet laureate? The peeper? The tiebreaker? Thank you.

Don't make him questions. Birthday Benny? The fuckmaster? Yep. Not Professor Crispy? No. He is our finest film critic? I mean, that's what you guys say.

He's a fart detective. He's a meat lover. He's a close personal friend of Dan Lewis. I mean, I can't imagine that this is anyone's first episode is Bridge of Spies. Should be. Should be their first and only. That's what you're suggesting people pick it up and drop it with this one? Doesn't matter.

I suggest that. Doesn't matter. You know what you did. You know what you podcast. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You know what you did. You know what you podcast.

Patricia Benn, of course, has graduated a certain tall. Of course, a different major. Caleb Emperors, Brink and Obey, Ben's 8th, Ben, I don't want to say anything. And David Ben's with a dollar sign. No one can hear that, but okay, great. Welcome to Blank Check with Griffin and David. That's us. And Standing Man Ben Hosley. Yes.

Hello. This is Pod Me If You Cast. It is indeed a miniseries about the films of Steven Spielberg, colon, the DreamWorks years. Now, did DreamWorks have anything to do with this one? I guess they were a production company on this one. This was the tail end, kind of. This is the final proper DreamWorks movie. We're kind of flubbing it a little bit by including BFG, but it would be weird to exclude it when it's the most recent film.

Maybe we shouldn't include it. I mean, it's completely forgettable. This is part of when DreamWorks restructured as a production company with financing from Reliance, which was an Indian company. And Disney made a deal to distribute these films through Touchstone, which used to be their sort of adult imprint. Miramax was their indie imprint and Touchstone was for your pretty woman's. Yes, of course. Your Six Senses.

Right, your PG-13 or R-rated films. And at a certain point, once Disney became more franchise-based, they didn't really want to make movies like that because they had limited potential in relation to movies that can make $4 billion. Fucking Disney, man. So they make this deal.

They go, oh, DreamWorks will just be Touchstone. We'll let DreamWorks work autonomously, make whatever they want with funding from Reliance, and Touchstone will be distributing those. And this is the last film as part of that deal. BFG was a Disney proper movie and now uh dreamworks essentially doesn't exist going forward the steven spielberg movies are like amblin movies now so dreamworks is just gone i mean obviously dreamworks animation exists i was looking into it it's kind of weird because

there's stuff like like office christmas which was released recently, was a DreamWorks movie, but I think some of those are like DreamWorks is kind of... DreamWorks is a small production company, but Spielberg's productions are now Amblin movies. Amblin has taken over, yeah. Oh boy, some of the Amblin movies coming up. No, no, no.

No, no, I don't like them. But they're Amblin movies. Listen to this. A Dog's Purpose, Listen to the Amblin slate. Which is coming out. And we just had Girl on the Train and Office Christmas Party last year. Sure. Not great. But those, I think, were films that were grandfathered in from the DreamWorks series. I think were developed as DreamWorks movies.

Whatever, whatever, whatever. Doesn't matter. Sure. I don't know why you're fucking nitpicking. I'm just trying to. Then Dog's Purpose. Ghost in the Shell. Yeah.

I mean, which, look, Ghost in the Shell looks kinda cool, but I mean, you know, they fucked up. People are gonna be up in arms. They fucked up. People are gonna be up in arms when 15 months from now they leak the video of Scarlett Johansson drowning. Alright. They're trying to push her into the pool and she's shaking. Ready Player One

in 2018. Yeah, which is scary. That's scheduled to come out in March? Yeah. What is Steven Spielberg doing? Hey, the blockbusters come out. You're around now. And then Bumblebee. The Transformers spinoff, Bumblebee. God damn it. Does anyone

in the world care about Bumblebee? Or do they just think that we care? I'll say this. I probably care about Bumblebee more than most. And how much do you care about Bumblebee? A good amount. I have less... How can you care about Bumblebee more than most. And how much do you care about Bumblebee? A good amount. I have less. How can you care about Bumblebee? I have less than zero interest in seeing a Bumblebee movie. Question.

Bumblebee is a. What is Bumblebee? He's the transformer. Bumblebee's a nice friend. He's the yellow transformer who can't talk, so he only, like, he speaks in, like, clips from the radio. He's Shia's first car. He's a boy's best friend.

And he. He's got a fucking creepy. Loses his voice box, so he speaks. He's Shia's first car. He's a boy's best friend. And he loses his voice box. He's got a fucking creepy transformer face. He's not nice. Yeah, you can't make a movie about him. No. And I like him. He's one of my good friends. He's not one of my two friends.

Sure, no, no. Yeah, that's a dispiriting slate. Yeah, it is. And, you know, this miniseries has sort of been about Steven Spielberg at a weird crossroads. Crossroads. Crossroads as the film industry is changing dramatically and rapidly, you know? And at a time where some could argue the full effect of what Spielberg and Lucas created in the 70s has now completely overtaken the industry. Sure. Spielberg is

sort of fighting this last stand to try to make adult dramas. Sure. Adult dramas for significant budgets. Obviously you've got your indie dramas, your smaller budget dramas. He's trying to make fucking 60 million basement movies. This is a 40 million dollar movie. Really? Yeah.

That's very impressive. Pretty good, right? Yeah. They built Berlin. Yeah. Can you build Berlin? Huh? I cannot.

And even... Well, stop saying that. They built a wall. I know. They built a wall. They built the damn wall. I'm just trying to get laid. I keep telling people I can build Berlin.

Those girls who are hot for Berlin replicas, not the real Berlin. There's this weird thing in the period of movies that we're watching. Schindler's List is this kind of pivot point that he can't go back from. Once he becomes an adult, he can't try to pretend that he's just a kid anymore, right? Uh-huh. And Lost World is a misstep because of that. Amistad, he paints with too broad a brush. Aside from the fact that he shouldn't have been making that material,

he tries to filter through the traditional Spielberg-y things, right? Yeah. And when he's making these genre films, he's making these, I keep on using the same word, but haunted, morally gray genre films, like AI, like Catch Me If You Can, like Minority Report, like War of the Worlds, you know, to varying levels of success. And he missteps when he does, you know, A Crystal Skull, A War Horse. He does something that's more conventionally Spielberg,

and he tries to make it simpler and more straightforward. It's true. Ready Player One's a little scary to me. I have no idea how that's going to turn out. I don't either. It's a big question mark. We'll give that one some time. That one's got a whole year to come out.

BFG also is a misstep for similar reasons. We'll cover that next week. BFG, like War Horse, like you're saying, BFG is the kind of movie where you're like, oh yeah, I could see Steven Spielberg making this in 1991. Imagine it would be great, and you watch it now, and it's like... It just seems beyond him.

That's the problem. Beyond his interest. Right. Well, we'll get to BFG next week. Those are the movies where it feels like him trying to make a quote-unquote Spielberg movie rather than making what he is passing. We'll get to it next week. This movie is to me, in a certain way, the apex of what

he's been evolving towards in his career. Because of all these adult dramas, it's the one that is the most sort of classical, the most focused, the least showy. It's not showy. That's true. It's less showy than like Munich.

Yeah. And is just like every inch a masterpiece. You know? Agreed, man. I mean, you don't have set pieces. It's similar to Lincoln but you're not dealing

with a towering historical figure. Yeah. And, you know, it comes out. It makes $80 million. You know, opens kind of small

but ends up repeating pretty well. And people go, oh, pretty good box office return. Does well overseas. Gets nominated for best picture wins best supporting actor but i feel like gets pegged with like oh it's one of those uh definitely gets pegged with and you know what doesn't help tom hanks being in it sure it just definitely get pegged with yeah like oh yeah it's a spielberg dad movie it's about history oh it's him and hanks they both love war shit you know

stars you know yeah exactly i'm sure it's fine i'm sure it's some like side it's him and Hanks they both love war shit you know three stars you know yeah exactly I'm sure it's fine it's some like side poop of the Pacific yeah exactly now you know

what does help this movie Tom Hanks being in it when you're actually watching it of course because Jesus Christ what a fucking performance and what a movie

that can only work if you have someone who is that comfortable and in control as a movie star standing man start your music yeah what's up?

Oh, got him. Hey, Ben. Yeah. You like that British Spice? I love me some British Spice. Is that his fucking nickname? Is it Standing Ben? Standing Ben.

That's what it is. That's what it is. Standing Ben. I think it's Standing Ben, right? Because it's not the Ben-friendly giant. You would need another element to that acronym. Right. And we already said it's not Catch Me

If You Ben. It's not Gigolo Ben. No, it's not the Lost Ben Jurassic user. Jurassic Haas, though. I think it's standing there. The Lost Haas Jurassic. Yeah, saving. I do still, Private Ryan, I mean, sorry, Sergeant Rybin from, I really think that character

just popped so hard in Saving Private Ryan. Sure. Rybin, and he's just, you know, like there's a lot of things you don't know about him, such as that he is from Brooklyn, that he's a Brooklyn guy. Wait, the Ed Burns character's from Brooklyn? The Ed Burns character in Saving Private Ryan is as, this is in the background of the character. You know how they write Bibles for the character,

stuff you don't know? This is what I'm asking you. Is this one of those bullshit fan theories like the Pixar movies take place in the same universe? Because I don't think that's supported by the text of the film. What it is is Boo went into the past and became an old witch lady, and then that old witch lady gave birth to Private Ribbons, whatever, in Brooklyn.

Brave takes place in Brooklyn. Hey, you know what I love? I just recently found out that the whole point of the, the whole idea of the Pixar theory is that Boo is the witch in Brave. And she like loops back around. And that the good dinosaur explains why monsters exist and like stuff like that yeah you know what i love when like six times a year people who i kind of know are like hey man found this cool theory yo any thoughts on this look here's my problem with the pixar theory those pixar assholes are not helping by like putting a little postcard of the pizza planet

or whatever in the background of you you know, Monsters University. I don't like, no, no, no, stop it. I like that stuff, but it's fucking Easter egg shit. It's like putting E.T. in the Phantom Menace. I mean, that's fine. I guess you're right. I guess you're right. You know, the problem is that people want to read that

as like some canonical thing. Like it's the fucking ending of Split. Look, these people are bored. I guess is the gentlest way to put it. To be fair, it makes a lot of sense because there's nothing else to focus on in the world at large right now. That's why we're going to spend two hours talking about

Bridge of Spies. But I'll say this. I love this movie. I saw it twice when it came out. I think it was my number three of last year. We both gave it a lot of blanky nominations. It was my number five, I think. It's in the upper echelon of my Spielberg period, not just for this miniseries.

Period, full stop. For me, watching this movie last night, a reminder we're recording this in January, so who knows, maybe we will have gone through four impeachments by the time this episode drops. Hey man, impeach him three ways from Sunday for all I care. Right. We make it all the way down

to Secretary of Agriculture is now president. That's fine. That guy, that's the guy who's from Montana. I'm sure he's okay. He's probably not that great. No, he's a nightmare. He doesn't believe in global warming. God. We're doomed. We are. Watching this movie in theaters,

there were moments that I found emotional, but they were more sort of like golden glow Spielberg emotional where you just kind of got like a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face. You go like, oh, that's lovely. Watching this last night, I almost broke down crying a couple times. It's so good. And it wasn't because, you know, of a we bought a zoo type thing where I was recently dumped and I'm at a hair trigger.

I'm feeling fairly psychologically balanced these days. Whoa, sure. But watching this movie and seeing a film that's just about the decency of an ordinary American who prioritizes his basic humanity and his sense of empathy for others above all else, and also someone who just takes the responsibility of their job very seriously and wants to do a good job and use their power for good,

like fucking destroyed me last night. Yeah. It both gave me a lot of hope and inspiration, and then immediately the movie ended, and I went and checked Twitter, and I felt terrible. Okay, enough about the real world, which is bad. Bridge of Spies. Bridge of Spies. Bridge of Spies.

Which is great. Which is great. So this was at the New York Film Festival. And I skipped the screening because I think it was on like a Saturday at 10 a.m. And it was just, you know, the movie was coming out in a couple weeks. And let's say this too. Both the trailer and the poster for this movie sucked. Terrible trailer. Like horr suck terrible like one of those trailers

that's obviously worried you're not gonna think it's an exciting movie so they kind of try and make it look like this sort of like you know corny thriller they sort of cut it like it was munich yeah bridge in the name put a bridge on the poster that's just that's just common sense uh no indeed uh no um no bridges on the poster. The poster was like, well, there's two posters, but the one they had a lot of was Hanks, floating head, two flags, which, look, try a little harder, guys. That's not a great poster.

The other one with the more 60s kind of red and white and black cartoony imagery around him was a little better. You know that one? A little better. A little better, a little more. A little popped a little more. Right. But it's like a big floating head poster where his head is like 90% of the poster.

And then you have those sort of- Floating head posters. And I get like, look, you hand me Bridge of Spies, I might also be like, the fuck am I supposed to do with this? This is not a posterable movie. Okay. This is where I disagree with you. And this is one of only two serious complaints I have about the movie.

And it's not even a complaint towards the movie. It's a complaint towards the marketing department. Okay. Fine. What is it? The movie hands you a fucking poster. The poster should have been the fucking painting that Abel gives him

with the text over that. Hell yeah. That's a great call. I'm not insane. No, that's so good. I like that. It should have been the painting, which would have just looked like a nice fucking Struzani, like, here's a painting of Tom Cruise looking like a hero. If the poster for Bridge of Spies was literally just an oil painting of Tom

Hank. Instead of Steven Spielberg film Bridge of Spies. People would have lost their minds laughing at that. That would have been hilarious. And then when they went to see the movie they would have cried. They would not have seen the movie though. They would have been like what's this oil painting Hanks? I'll fight this tooth and nail. It's like the thing when the Alamo Draft House here in Brooklyn

opened the first week they served the chef special if you went to see Moonlight. And the whole thing was like you're seeing Moonlight for the first time. You're eating this dish. You don't know what it is. And then by the time the chef's special is introduced in the movie, people just go like, oh, my God. Now it means so much. That is an interesting way of arguing in favor of having the poster of Bridges Spies

be an oil painting of Tom Hanks. This is like the time me, you, and Bobby were looking at Oscar posters. Yes. And then it was just Ellen DeGeneres' face. Okay, but is the poster that they ended up going with that different from an oil painting of Tom Hanks' face? It's just a shitty Photoshop floating head. I don't disagree that the poster is bad. And they're similar images except the painted one's nicer and has thematic meaning.

Anyway, let's move on. Oil painting poster. Someone please Photoshop. No, it should have been Mark Rylance literally at an easel painting the painting. And so it's called like Bridge of Spies, but the picture is just Mark Rylance in painter's clothes. And he's like putting the finishing touches

on Tom Hanks' face in prison. Then I'm like, what's going on in this movie? I want to see this movie. Let's point out just before we get into it in the meat of the film. Mark Rylance, obviously one of the best living actors. He won an Academy Award. For this performance, it was a surprising win and upset. People thought Sly Stallone was going to walk away with it.

I feel like two months before the Oscars, three months before the Oscars, Rylance was the absolute favorite, and he won a lot of critics' awards. Creed was screened late, and the second it was screened... Creed came in late, was not campaigned very well by its studio. Yeah, because it should have gotten six nominations. Exactly.

But then Creed comes in late, Sly Stallone, and everyone's like, oh, he's going to win because this is his only shot. They built such a strong narrative around him. It just made sense. What everyone ignored was like, oh, Rylance gave a perfect performance. Rylance gave a perfect performance. Sly Stallone's reputation in Hollywood is mixed.

Yes. And I think both those things combined. It was very surprising. On the night, it was very surprising. Very surprising. But he had been the frontrunner before Stallone. It was right at the start of the show, because I think it might have been the first Oscar announced. No, because Best Supporting Actress was first.

They do one of the supportings first, often. It was right in the middle. Okay, all right. Yeah. That's a thing I always... When people talk about Oscar snubs and why they happen, I think the same thing unites why Stallone lost by upset and why Eddie Murphy lost by upset, which is nominations happen by your branch.

Actors nominate actors. But then the wins, everyone in every branch votes for everything. Right. Right. So a sound mixer doesn't get to nominate actors, but they do get to vote on actors. Yeah. And so actors, I think, can focus more on the performance.

But then when you get into the entire voting body, they go like, okay, I'm a set decorator, and Eddie Murphy was an asshole to me. Right. Like the guys like Stallone and Murphy who are known for being temperamental at best,

you know? Amen. And destructive and obstructive at worst. Eddie Murphy should have won that Oscar. Yeah, he should have. But Alan Arkin also is a really cool winner.

I disagree. That he'd be like last on my list. Oh, I think that's a great fucking performance. It's a great performance. I think he's a great actor. I love that he has an Oscar.

Or go fuck yourself. Okay, Bridge of Spies. Bridge of Spies. So yeah mean i skipped the new york film festival screening and then everyone coming out of it was like yeah it's fine i don't know fine you know it's handsome very fine people use those backhanded compliments like it's it's well made uh yeah and so i was kind of like oh okay yeah i'm sure i'm sure i'll like it but i'm sure it's like a it It's a broccoli movie. Yeah, maybe like a four out of five, right?

Like, you know, a very good, handsomely mounted Spielberg production that teaches me a little bit about the world. See, I went into it assuming even that it would be like a three. Uh-huh. You know, like a gentleman's three, and I'd be like, it's fine. But, you know, I had really liked Lincoln. It's weird, though. Yeah, we were not hyped. And, like, it was one of those things where at the beginning of the year,

you make your Oscars, sort of, you sort of look at the field, and you're like, what's an Oscar frontrunner? Ten years ago, you would have seen Bridge of Spies and been like, bingo, bingo, this one. At this point, people are kind of like, well, eh, you know, nah. I don't know. It'll do fine. Well, and I'll say, a lot of the crew that worked on the television series Vanille, HBO's Vanille.

Uh-huh. Vinyl, he's referring to. Well, I mean, sure, you would pronounce it like that. Sure. Worked on Bridge of Spies, like when our season ended, they went over to Bridge of Spies. Or it was after the pilot, rather. Mm-hmm. Between the pilot and when we went to series.

And I kept on asking people in the crew, like, hey, you have something lined up after this? And all of them were like, I'm working on a new Spielberg movie. The script's fucking incredible. So I kept on hearing from people, like, this script's amazing. Sure. Then the trailer came out.

It looked really fucking bland. Yeah. The poster was even blander. And the New York Film Festival shit was just kind of dismissive. Like, yeah, no, it's Spielberg. I mean, it's fine. The script is by Matt Sharman,

who is a fantastic playwright. It was embellished on by the Coen brothers, although I've been told that all their work is in the negotiation scenes. That's where it all is. All the scene with the fake family. Hanks' opening scene kind of feels Coen-y to me. Hanks' opening scene. Oh, where he's doing the one, one, one.

Yes. Maybe. I don't know. But, like, I, well, I don't know. I had read in multiple reports, like, that it's all the, just the sort of the talking scenes right in the middle there. Okay. The Coens just added, you know, some Coen-y humor. Sure.

And, you know, sort of, yeah, like their weird sort of circular, interesting way of doing dialogue. Circular dialogue. And another thing that feels very Coen-y to me you know this was added by uh sharman i don't know i'm just saying i feel like people kind of gave sharman short shrift because they were they saw the coen brothers names on and they were like oh they must have made it good i don't think so i think everyone loved the sharman script yeah yeah um impossible to know who did what but there's a thing that feels very coney in the movie to me, which is this movie uses the repetition of certain phrases to its advantage. Yes.

It establishes a language of just like this phrase means that. So when it's repeated, it has extra meaning. Or when it's subverted, it has extra meaning. Classic Coney. And it does it with like four different phrases over the course of the movie. And all of them have so much power. Give me the phrases. The phrases are,

let me see if I can remember all four of them. Would it help? Would it help? The use of your guy, my guy, not my guy. Yeah.

The, I have a cold, I just want to go home and get into bed. Mm-hmm. And the fourth one is, oh, fuck. Oh, it's the, it's the how many things. The one. And the fourth one is, oh, fuck. Oh, it's the how many things.

The one, one, one. One, one, one. One thing happened here. One, one, one. And then sometimes he's like, one for two. Then he's like, no, it's one for one. The idea of negotiating things. Yes.

And even to a lesser degree, I think the boss line is maybe repeated more than once. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. He may not always be right, but he's always the boss. So you and I both see this movie, I think, with very low expectations or middling expectations, and both come out of it. We're recording the podcast at that time, and we see each other before recording. We go like, we're both just staring at each other going like,

that's a fucking masterpiece. Why isn't anyone else talking about this? I know. Well, yeah, I saw it with my brother um just like maybe i think the day it came out or certainly the weekend it came out just like at an empty screening at like court street regal you know just like nobody there we just sat there quietly and we walked out like that is the fucking greatest what the hell is going on like one of our best living filmmakers made one of his best films ever. It's just like everyone's just like, hmm.

Yeah. Like what was even, what were we even excited about? I mean, fucking The Revenant like ran laps around this movie in terms of box office, Oscars, and critical reception. Everyone was jerking off The Revenant. Right. Which is objectively a poopy movie. A shit movie. That I caught 30 minutes of on HBO the other day, and it was just poop.

Yeah. That's what it was. Yeah. It wasn't like Bridge of Spies where you turn it on and you're like, oh, I'm so gripped. Yeah. By the complicated issues being fleshed out here. And here's the thing. Through performance.

I disagree, though. I'm sorry to say I disagree. I like The Revenant because I believe that nothing matters and I'm a nihilist. So you like it because the movie doesn't matter and it's not about anything. Yeah, it's just about pain and cold and wet.

To me The Revenant is just like don't go over there. Do you like live in a town that has like toilets and, you know, a store? To me, the Revenant is like, don't make this movie. That's the things, David. Like, I mean, I know, when's

the Revenant set? Like the 19th century, right? Like, I don't know, sometime in the 19th century. Like, what? It's cold. Why? It's fucking cold over there. Just chill out man but to me not to make it emblematic too much it was just like okay Revenant is like the most movie right

sure it's like so much fucking movie and it's so showy and it's in your face and it looks great and there was so much narrative about how difficult it was to make and oh my god the experience you guys see on big screen this and that Leo's finally gonna get his Oscar That was a huge part of it. You've got to see Leo's performance that's going to get him his Oscar.

Bridge of Spies just kind of quietly sits back. Yeah. You know? And it's got this very steady, very delicate hand. But it's like a movie where there's not a single unmotivated camera movement. There's not a line wasted. Every performance is note perfect. You know, from the top to the bottom.

line wasted. Every performance is note perfect, you know, from the top to the bottom. And I think, like, there is a real problem today about movies like that kind of being dismissed. I feel like

television that functions on that level gets appreciated, you know? People lean into something like Westworld and go like, oh, what do you read into that performance and this line and that shot? Well, I think this is a problem in general. I agree. And movies have to be fucking everything in your face all the time to work.

Yeah. And when it's a good movie, that's everything in your face all the time. Great. Give it the attention. Give Mad Max the credit it deserves. Give the big short its attention, I suppose.

Yeah. Trying to think of movies of that year. I feel like that's in between the two points we're talking about. Yeah, I agree. Right, and Bridge of Spies is one point. Indeed. And The Revenant's the other point. Big Short's right in the middle for me. But it feels like movies like this that are just sort of classical, unfussy,

focused, intelligent, thoughtful, tend to just get brushed under of like, eh, watch that at home. Bridge of Spies. Yeah, I saw it. AMC 25 was a fairly crowded screening. I think it was during the first weekend. But it was a thing where I was like,

I just gotta check this on my list. I'm thrilled with seeing Oscar movies. I'm gonna see it. I saw it in a double feature. I snuck into it afterwards. I was not excited about it. What did you see beforehand? I can't even remember,

but I know that was the main attraction for me. Whatever you were seeing beforehand? I was like, I'll see that, and then maybe I'll throw in Bridge of Spies afterwards if I'm feeling up to it. And I saw that, and main attraction for me whatever you were seeing beforehand I was like I'll see that then maybe I'll throw in Bridge of Spies afterwards if I'm feeling up to it I saw that I was like oh good movie and I saw Bridge of Spies and will never remember what the other movie was it Steve Jobs no was it I'm trying to see I'm looking at like

movies that were sort of like relative was it Room no you wouldn't want to do Room I mean Room Bridge and I saw Room with Romley or I saw Rom with Romley. God, talk about a movie. Or I saw Rom with Romley. Was it Pan?

Was it the great movie Pan? Yes, it was Pan. All right. Bridge, O. Spee's. Okay, so the movie opens with a bravura sequence. Ten minutes. It's a great sequence. First seven minutes are practically dialogue free.

For sure. A few kind of overheard muttered lines. No, no, it's dialogue free. Rudolph Abel. Yes. Played by Mark Rylance. Right. The film.

It's great. Yes. And is now Spielberg's muse. Like, right? Like, this is Spielberg's new muse. He is doing. He's in the BFG. He's in Ready Player One.

And he's the Pope movie that Spielberg's about to start making. Is Spielberg making that? Yes. I thought Scorsese was making that. No. Okay. Spielberg's making a movie about the Pope going missing. Right, the one with Oscar Isaac.

No, it's not the Pope going missing. It's all about some kid who gets adopted by the Vatican. Mark Rylance plays the grown-up version of that kid, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, I think Mark Rylance plays the Pope. Is version of that kid, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, I think Mark Rylance plays the Pope. Is this like a kid Pope kind of situation? Look, we had a young Pope, but a kid Pope? We're getting the details of this movie mixed up. No, now we have to know.

Now we have to know, goddammit. It's called The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. Okay. It's about a young Jewish boy in Bologna, Italy, who is taken to be raised as a Christian, and it becomes part of a larger battle about the papacy. And Mark Rylance, indeed, is playing Pius IX, Pope Pius IX. Okay.

I think, well, Oscar Isaac is the only other person who's in it. Maybe he plays the kid. I don't know. I know they're still looking for the kid. I went to a diner the other day, and they had a flyer about looking for kids to star in a new Amblin Spielberg movie. Sure. There's an exhaustive search for the kid. That's an exciting project to me.

I think Kushner's writing that, right? Yeah, it's like the third in Spielberg's scratchy chin Kushner movies. The Hindu Kush. The Hindu Kush. Take another hit of that dank Kush. But yeah, he's working with Rylance for the foreseeable future. I mean, even like the part

I mean it's one of those things where it's like Spielberg discovered you know this underrated three time Tony winning like legend of British stage Mark Rylance he was like this guy's got the goods maybe I should throw him in a few of my movies but it was weird that people didn't put him in movies forever you know

I mean he was a very busy stage actor I think didn't he run a movies forever, you know? I mean, he was a very busy stage actor, I think. Didn't he run a theater company? Yes, he ran the Shakespeare Globe. Right. And he ran that company. He did all kinds of weird things there. Like, he would do all male productions,

all female productions. Like, he liked to fuck around with the weird limited format of the Shakespeare Globe. He also did a movie called Intimacy, in which... She is a ding-dong. And that's why he's one of our best living actors. He showed his ding-dong a bunch. Indeed he did.

I've seen that movie. It's not bad. That was very shocking. Standing dick. It was a very shocking movie in Britain when it came out. There was a lot of fuss about it in Britain when it came out. It's pretty graphic. It's quite graphic.

But it's one of those movies... It's such a British movie, where it's about an affair and you see a bunch of dick and boobs and stuff. But it's really just about a couple of depressed people who don't know what to do with themselves. It doesn't have a lot of plot. But Spielberg casts him in this. He wins the Oscar, right?

He'd wanted to make BFG for a long time. The idea was always for it to be a Robin Williams film. He was waiting for the technology to catch up. Right. Technology catches up. And Robin Williams dies, and he has the idea like, oh, this guy I just worked with, he could play the BFG. Right. Ready Player One, that role was earmarked.

It's a Willy Wonka type role, the man who creates this video game world. He had earmarked it for Gene Wilder. Sure. And was aggressively talking Gene Wilder. Oh, Jesus. Don't be, have Spielberg interested in you. It's a curse. Yep.

Yeah. Seriously. Spielberg, his second choice for the role was Fidel Castro. Are you serious? No. Oh, I get it. I'll believe anything. His third choice for the role was Richard Spencer, who got off easy with only a punch.

God, that guy. You know what I just found out? That guy has like 40,000 followers on Twitter. He's supposed to be the leader of some scary movement? Yeah. Come on. Yeah, I mean, the kid from Glee has a million followers. Yeah, Jesus.

And when he says the kid from Glee, he just means one of the kids from Glee, like the ninth kid from Glee. He doesn't even mean the main one it's like a Liam Michelle yeah exactly it's definitely Mc-something it's not Kevin McHale Kevin McHale was the power forward for the Boston Celtics whatever his name is

but he had desperately wanted to pull Gene Wilder out of retirement he's Kevin McHale that's so weird that that's his name. It just says a lot that Gene Wilder can't do it. Okay. Rylance. Rylance. I mean, Rylance is a chameleon.

He can do a lot of stuff. I think this Pope movie, he mostly did because he thought it was a good fit for Rylance. That became his next project. Damn. You're going to get sick of Rylance. I mean, I love Rylance. Yeah. All right.

So, Abel, Rylance, great. As Ben noted, we should get through the first half like this collaboration. I'm sick of Rylance. I mean, I love Rylance. Yeah. All right. So, Abel, Rylance, great. As Ben noted, we should get through the first half of this movie quicker. Because this movie is kind of... Bifurcated. Yes. A little bit. I mean, the essential story is, you know, it's sort of like one thing happened and then after a little while, another thing happened.

But it's almost like a six-act movie because it's like the first hour of the movie has three acts and feels like it resolves itself. And then another movie happens. It's like a diptych. That's accurate. That movie has three acts and then the end of the movie kind of unifies the two. So the first movie is about the arrest of Rudolph Abel, who is a spy. This great bravura opening sequence where he's getting a little thingy from a coin.

He's painting. Like Spielberg grabbing you from the opening shot. It's like a close-up of Rudolph Abel, right? The camera pulls out a little bit. You see it's his reflection

in the mirror. He's looking at himself in the mirror, right? Okay, you know, obvious symbolism, but it's like, you know, this is a movie

that's going to be dealing with identity, you know, and the unknowable nature of who this guy is and what side he's on and what rights he deserves and all of that. And then we pull out a little bit further track back and we see that he's painting himself so within this one frame you have like his actual head his reflection the mirror and

the painting of himself sure and it's just like it's beautiful right it's a beautiful stage setting yeah and now you see the sort of process of him picking up the phone. No one responds. That tells you everything as he stands there. This is such a fucking, like, this is a performance where this dude's acting with every fiber of his being. Like, every single micro gesture, every muscle tells you something about this character who is very enigmatic, right? And unknowable. And then you see this awesome process shit

of him cutting open the coin, taking the thing out. Looking at the numbers. Goes outside, brings his little easel, goes and paints, and you start to see people following. Dominic Lombardazzi from The Wire. Sure.

Plays the lead agent. Sure. There's a bunch of other guys. But you're not hearing them go like, that's him, this and that. No, no. But they do kind of start running around when they know he can Sure. There's a bunch of other guys. But you're not hearing them go like, that's him, this and that. No, no. But they do kind of start running around when they know he can't.

It's a lot of looks and it's a lot of quiet, you know, reasonably paced walking and then he sort of notices them on the subway and he loses them and you're watching and you're like,

does this guy know what's going on? Is he smarter than he looks or is he dumber than he looks? Sure. Gets back to his house and they burst in. Yeah, and they take him. They're calling him the colonel.

He's very calm. Weirdly calm. He does do one clever thing, though. He wants to wipe the paint off his easel. Because otherwise it'll dry up and in the process. Off his palate, sir. Yes, off his palate. In the process, he muddies up the secret piece of paper that was inside the coin.

Yeah. Good job, Rudolph. That is the only, honestly, it's like the only sort of not even clever, it's not like a cunning thing that we see him do. Sure. Apart from that, he's all, you know, it's all tightly wrapped away. Like we don't see whatever motivates him to be a Soviet spy. We don't learn much about his history. Which I love.

We learn like a smidgen. We hear one story from his childhood. And he's arrested. He's a Soviet spy. The real Rudolf Abel was not considered like a major spy. But they did get him. So they had him. And it's a big deal.

Spielberg fades to black. And then fades back into the face of Tom Hanks. Yeah. And from the first frame, you just go like, okay, Hanks has officially entered a new phase of his career. I'm not saying this was the beginning of that phase. Yeah. But this is sort of like when it really started achieving cruising altitude, which is Tom Hanks is like fucking spencer tracy you know absolutely spencer tracy is a good analog for what he's doing here yes you know he's making films with american masters mostly he's let himself age more than most actors do he has

no illusions about trying to seem cooler hip right which in a way makes him cooler hip yeah you know i mean hanks has become a bit of a, like, a lower level Bill Murray type hipster icon. Yeah. People love his tweets and shit.

But it's also just that he's America's dad and he has no shame about that. He makes dad jokes and shit like that. But also, he's jowly now,

you know? He looks funny, but he looks like an adult. And it's just, uh, I was talking about this with richard lawson good friend of the show passing future guest sure about like this has become my new favorite like genre of movies i look forward to every year which is like uh tom hanks yeah working with a classicist

making a movie about someone who's really good at their job. Movies that are odes to American professionalism. So we're talking about Sully. Yes. Obviously. Yeah, I would even, it's not obviously an American master, but I really like Hologram for the King, which I think was kind of underrated, 2016 film. But that's not a movie about competence in the same way, is it?

Because that's more a movie about a middle-aged crisis, right? Yeah, it's got more things going on than that. I mean, it was sold mostly as a middle age crisis. I think it also does end up being about him being good at his job in the midst of a breakdown. Captain Phillips, I fall into that category.

Captain Phillips, for sure. More of a thriller, but it's also about him managing that situation so well and just being a real blue collar. Inferno, obviously. Right, yeah. I mean, that's about a guy who knows how to deal with an Inferno. I mean, no one's better at their job than Robert Langdon. Name one person who's better at their job than Robert Langdon.

Robert Langdon. Isn't Inferno about like Robert Langdon wakes up out of a coma and they're like, you are a criminal. Like he's been framed. There's video footage of Robert Langdon stealing the kind of artifact he usually protects. Yeah, like he stole the Mona Lisa by mistake or whatever. Right.

Good stuff. Yeah, he came on the... Yeah, he jacked off onto the... Man, the only thing he's got next year is that fucking James Ponsalt movie, The Circle. It looks like a piece of poop. Well, where he's playing Steve Jobs. Yeah, where he's playing Larry Page. That's the only thing he's got next year?

Well, I'm looking at Wikipedia. I hope he throws something else on the schedule. Yeah, let's get some Hanks. Let's get some more Hanks-y. The thing... The disrespect the Academy Awards showed him with Sully, and showed Sully in general, but especially showed him in a week year for Oscar.

Yep. I mean, look, I love Viggo Mortensen as an actor. I do not like Captain Fantastic at all. He's pretty good in it. He's always good. I'm happy for him to get another nomination. Like, you know, no beef, but that you're given that

an Oscar nomination and ignoring Hanks and Sully. It's also weird that Hanks, who was known as Mr. Oscar forever and is literally like on the board of governors for the Academy. But it's the same thing that they do to Spielberg. Because they nominated this movie for a bunch they didn't nominate Spielberg for Best Director they take it for granted because yeah

well I think and I don't even I don't even hate the argument of like look we gave you the trophies yeah what do you need from us

like yeah congrats we're gonna leave you off so Larry Abrahamson can get a nomination but that's the thing it feels fucking contrarian

I agree I agree but I'm just saying like that's the only other thing in his is Toy Story 4. Yeah.

Hanks should have been nominated for Phillips, should have been nominated for Bridge of Spies, should have been nominated for Sully. The fact that he was nominated for none of those is egregious. True. Is his last nomination Castaway? Is that the last one? Is that really true?

Which is insane, which is 2000. His last nomination was 17 years ago. That's... Yeah, that's not, that's not. Or I guess 16 years ago because the nominations were announced in 2001. Whatever, who fucking gives a shit? Please, will you just look at yourself in the mirror? I do, and I don't like what I see. Yeah, cast away.

The thing that Richard Lawson and I talk about, though, is that there's the metatextual element to Hanks has become just so fucking good at his job of being a movie star that watching these movies is watching someone who's really good at their job play someone who's really good at their job. Not untrue. And the key to it is, I think, Hanks, who has always been an excellent actor, right? Has gone through different phases of his career,

but has always been an excellent actor. Yes, he has. Used to have more sort of tricks. And I don't use that in a dismissive way. Most movie stars have tricks. They have their moves that people see. It makes them feel comfortable. They know that's the thing that actor does.

You know? Yeah. This type of vocal pattern, this type of face, this type of emotional beat, that's what they're good for, that's what they're known for, all of that. Right? Yeah.

Hanks, I think, has become just one of the most effortless, seeming actors. He's very efforting actors without any real tricks or handles. Starting with, like, after Castaway. Yeah. Castaway is loaded with tricks, obviously. Great performance. Well, in 2004, that doubleheader's tricky as shit. What's the 2004?

Or the tripleheader. Oh, you mean Lady Killers? The fucking terminal Lady Killers, Polar Express. That's true. Super tricky, Hank. That's true. He starts going back and forth between the tricky shit. Yeah.

But then he really, I think, hits this decade, 2010. Okay. He starts just becoming this very pure, simple, effortless actor. Well, okay. And we're not obeying our rule, which was to get through the first half quickly. So let's do that. Hanks, as you say with Tracy, he's playing this like, you know, this like shard of conscience that America cannot remove.

You know, so it's like, Abel goes on trial. Hanks is this like respected lawyer, respected insurance lawyer who worked at the Nuremberg trials, Jeffrey Donovan.

I mean, sorry, James Donovan. Yeah. Jeffrey Donovan, that's an actor. Sure. Who is picked like, look,

the guy needs a lawyer. You know, will you do your duty and just represent him in court? Someone needs to. We need to maintain the illusion. This is America. Right. This is a Soviet spy.

We're going to be better than the Soviet Union. We're going to give this guy a real day in court. Then, of course, Donovan decides to put his back into it. Takes a bit of a shine to Abel. Yes. Right? Yes, this is what's great about it. Takes a bit of a shine to Abel. Yes. Right? Yes, this is what's great about it. I mean, his opening scene.

Would you say that Abel gets a shine box out? Yeah. Yeah. Like Billy Bats? Yeah, he tells him, go get your fucking shine box. And he goes, gladly. Yeah, he does. For this guy, I'll do it.

Gladly. Do it. Do it. Do it. Not like this. Have you seen that clip, that video where every time the lightsabers hit, it just says, it's just Palpatine saying, do it? Yeah.

Do you watch Baskets? The Galifianakis show? Yeah, I've seen Baskets. Have you seen the beginning of season two, which will be like seven months old by the time this episode comes out? I have not. He joins up with a bunch of vagrants, like homeless people who live under the bridge and have their own sort of like traveling circus routine bus gang.

Cool. And all of them have names of the Nebuchadnezzar crew. Wait, really? It's never called out. Wait, really? I think it's the funniest bit. They're called like Apoc and Switch? Morpheus, Apoc, Tank, Trinity.

I don't think there's a Switch, but there are five of them. It's such a good bit. I got to catch up. Like they go like, this is switch, but there are five of them. It's such a good bit. I gotta catch up. Talk about a show that people were just like, forget it. Forget it. We're not gonna talk about it. It's so good. It is good. It's really good. It's just tough. It's just tough to watch

a couple of those. One of the coolest things the Emmys has ever done was giving the award to Louis Anderson, Which on paper sounds like a stunt thing, but you watch the performance and that's a very specific, very understated, weird performance. Okay, Bridge of Spies. The opening scene is so fucking good.

This is fucking screenwriting. Examine it. The scene where he's talking with the guy. He's an insurance lawyer. That's all he does. And he's explained that his client who started a 10 car crash pile up, right? Not pile up, but a 10-car crash. His client who, no, it's knocked over five motorcyclists. Okay.

That's what Hank's client did. Right. And he's saying this guy did one thing. Right. The guy goes, your client did five things. And accident. And he goes, if you get a strike, 10 things didn't happen. One thing happened.

Right, right. And the guy's like, excuse me, I'm representing five aggrieved people. Right. Each of which had a bad thing happen to them. Right, and he says, your guy and Tom Hanks goes, not my guy. Not my guy. Not my guy. And it tells you everything about this character is set up here. What's his thing? Whatever case he's on, he's going to take seriously. He knows the law

inside and out, right? But it's very clear that he's a lawyer for hire. He doesn't respect his guy. That's the differentiation. You know, not my guy. But what does he respect, Griffin? The law.

The rule book. Yes. Loves the rule book. He loves the rule book. And so they give him this case and they go, look, represent this guy. Don't do too good of a job

but do a good enough job. They don't even say that. They just say, just give him his day in court. It's kind of inferred. Hanks immediately is like, hey, I need more time for this case because, you know,

you've got a mountain of evidence here. And the judge, played by Dakin Matthews, who was in Lincoln, extremely good in court. It's kind of inferred. Hanks immediately is like, hey, I need more time for this case because you've got a mountain of evidence here. And the judge, played by Dakin Matthews, who is in Lincoln, extremely good in this. He's good in Lincoln too, but he's really good in this. Also gives an amazing, tiny supporting performance in True Grit. Oh, he's fantastic in True Grit. What a great movie!

Yeah, he's the guy who tells her to go to Rooster Cogburn, and he has that series of lines where he's describing Rooster Cogburn. Dakin Matthews has this great sing-songy voice. He's got this sort of English accent, like quasi-English accent to his voice. And there's something just judgmental about everything he says. There's something like perfectly judgmental. Well, there's the moment in True Grit where he's recommending Rooster Cogburn to her.

And he takes a deep pause and he goes, he likes to pull the cork. And it's just like, in his tone, you know everything about like, he tried to find the simplest, least aggressive way to say that he's a fucking drunk. To a 14-year-old. He likes to pull the cork. Love Dakin. Love him. He's in Gil gilmore girls uh he's great but everyone keeps on going like okay congratulations good job you've shown us that you're giving you're a lawyer we get a fair trial and it's just they are pushing the envelope maybe not quite as extremely as like you know a country that would do a show trial but still where they're

just like get the fuck out of here like Like, the judge is essentially saying, like, will you get out of here so I can, like, convict this man? Right. And to him, it's like, what's different about this guy from a dude who caused a motorcycle accident? Like, I don't personally like that guy either, but I'm an insurance lawyer.

He's covered by our insurance policy. I have to find out the way to best defend him. Uh-huh. Okay, they don't have a search warrant for the apartment. Yeah, he's complaining about the warrant. You can't have this. Like, the warrant doesn't apply here because it's not his. And the judge is like, huh?

Like, no, shut up. What the fuck are you talking about? He's a spy. Did you hear that this guy's a Soviet spy? I know we're moving fast because there's a lot of movie to cover, but let's take a step back and go to the first Abel Donovan scene. Well, that's a very important scene because it's where Abel's getting out of Shinebox,

or he's telling Hanks to get out of Shinebox. Yeah. Because Abel himself has a real guard. He's, you know, a spy. He's been interrogated, so obviously he's closed off, you know. What is kind of inferred through the movie is this is a man who did what he needed to

do to survive. And more than that, keep his family safe. Yeah. Right? He doesn't seem to, much like Donovan, I think he's just a man who's good at his job. He doesn't personally care about advancing the Russian cause. Yeah. But he has a Russian wife.

And it's trying times. And he does what he needs to do. So he just kind of has this guard up. Maybe. I don that's not quite but i didn't carry him it doesn't feel like he has a political investment in it but the movie exists in a gray area you don't know yeah right these things are kind of inferred and so he's just got this thing where it's like look i know what you're gonna do you're gonna fucking rake me over the coals. And Donovan goes out of his way to explain, like, I work for you. I don't work for the government. You know?

All this sort of stuff. Yeah. And Rylance is kind of testing him and says, like, can I get some stuff to draw with? And he goes, like, no, I can't give you stuff to draw with. Right. And Rylance says the, like,

if one of your American spies... You'd want them treated well. Right. Now, this feels like Rylance trying to game him a little bit, right? Sure, sure. I mean, he's trying to, like, use this as a... Let's call him Sir Mark Ryland.

Sir Mark Ryland. But this kind of hits Hanks, where he just realizes, in that moment, like, right, this is a guy who's good at his job. Sure. And he respects that. And, you know... And this is a movie that's coming out while, you know, debate is still raging over Guantanamo Bay. Yes.

Still raging over how we treat enemy combatants. you know, debate is still raging over Guantanamo Bay, still raging over how we treat enemy combatants, still raging over our general treatment of, like, people we arrest who are not citizens of this country. And just recently, our president is promoting torture. So, continue. I mean, that's the element of this movie that made me want to cry.

It's like, you know, it's just, you see this movie, it's like, what a's just you see this movie it's like what a refreshing representation of patriotism yeah and it's not but then at the same time it's not like the movie is sweet uh you know uh is uh glazing over the fact that like in the 50s and 60s we were up to all kinds of like dodgy shit okay we were messing with the constitution like left and right and i also love that and it's similar to Lincoln in this respect, the reason he's doing this is because he takes his job seriously. It's not that he's Martin Luther King. He doesn't come in here being like, yeah, I want to make sure this guy has,

yeah, he's not an idealist. Because that's another thing that he keeps saying in the movie. Every person matters. Every person matters, and he just wants to get home and get in bed. Right, right. Oh, my God. The fucking bath. So he and Abel, like, look, he gets the shine box out.

Yeah. And then there are a series of other scenes you see them talking, and they start to warm up to each other. As much as Abel can warm up to anybody, you know? He starts getting a sense of who Abel is, seeing that he is, deep down, a decent man. But it still mostly is professionalism. We're both just smiling, talking about this movie.

This movie is so lovely! Abel is sentenced. Hanks goes to Dakin Matthews, Judge Matthews, and pleads, like, hey, don't execute this guy. You might need a chip, essentially, for when one of our guys gets captured. That's his like pragmatic argument here. Right. And the movie doesn't like have some scene with him and Amy Ryan, you know, who plays his wife in a somewhat thankless role.

Yeah. Where he's like, I really like this guy. You know, like. Yeah. But you get it. You know, you get that maybe he's right when he's like, I really like this guy. You know, like, but you get it. You know, you get that maybe he's right when he says, like, I mean, of course he's right and he turns out to be absolutely right.

But you know that he also kind of just likes the guy. Yeah, but we're introduced to... I mean, he's his lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to make it that you don't get electrocuted. Right. Like, you know,

that's part of their job. That's his job. And he takes the law very seriously. And there's, I think it's the first scene with Amy Ryan, which is the dinner conversation. Right. Like, you know, that's part of their job. That's his job. And he takes the law very seriously. And there's, I think it's the first scene with Amy Ryan, which is the dinner conversation. So he's Billy Magnuson

who's really good in the first 30 minutes of this movie. Billy Magnuson who is gonna hit at some point. At some point. Already a great stage actor.

Great in Into the Woods. Like, you know, he's been- Really great in The Meddler. Really great in The Meddler. He's been popping up. Yes. What else has he been in?

I wanna look. He played Cato Kaelin in People vs. R.J. Simpson. And great in the meddler. He's been popping up. Yes. What else has he been in? I want to look. He played Kato Kaelin in People vs. O.J. Simpson. And great in the big short for a couple scenes. Oh, right. Yes. With Max Greenfield. Schmidt. Yeah. Just a great young actor. He's an incredibly handsome

actor with a character actor's range. He's sticking it to Hanks Jr. He's sticking it to daughter Hanks. Which I love the way they fucking deal with this. I love the way they deal with it. They don't acknowledge it publicly ever. Not even at the end. Like Hanks gets home and Billy Magnuson is like, I'm going to.

But you know that Hanks figures it out, right? Yes. When he says my associate. Yeah. Like two hours into the movie. You know what I'm talking about, right? Yes. You know what I'm talking about.

Yeah. So Billy Magnuson is Hanks' junior buddy. Over eager, tripping over his feet. And he makes him, he has a little fun with him and makes it so it's like, you can stay late tonight. And he's like, I had a date. And Hanks is like, you can stay late, right? And he's like, yeah, no, of course I can stay late. Hanks gets home.

And he starts talking about, hey, they want me to take this case. I love how we're just calling him Hanks. I know. He wants me to take this case. And they go, are you going to do it? And he goes, well, I'm not sure. I'm weighing over it. This is before he's met the guy. So he's got no shine yet, right?

And he's just in love with the legal process. And he starts explaining to him, like, every person deserves a fair trial. And he goes, what if they're not American? He goes, what are the principles of this country? He's going on about all this stuff. And then a beautiful, beautiful fucking Spielberg setup, right? Where it's like gesture, minimal, you know, like a bare minimum of shots explains the entire dynamic where Billy Magnusson walks in, right?

Sure. Carrying a bunch of files. Sure. It is a close-up of... And we've already established the girl got stood up. Oh, right. The daughter got stood up. What are you doing home tonight?

She got stood up. I got stood up. She got her hair in curlers maybe or something. I can't remember. Maybe not, but yeah. And let's doing home tonight? She got stood up. I got stood up. She's got her hair in curlers maybe or something. I can't remember. Maybe not, but yeah. And let's also mention the daughter is Bono Jr. Is that right? Yeah.

I didn't know that. It's Eve Houston, who's Bono's daughter. She is adorable. Yes, she is. In the name of Eve. She's in The Nick. That's what I know her from. Yeah.

She plays the nurse. Yeah, there's only one nurse in The Nick. Yeah, the one. I thought the show was called The Nurse. It's called The Nick. Are you sure? It's called The Nick. Okay. That's what I know her from. Yeah. She plays the nurse. Yeah, there's only one nurse in The Nick. Yeah, the one. I thought the show was called The Nurse. It's called The Nick? Are you sure? It's called The Nick. Okay.

Not to be confused with The Mick, a title that should not be on network television today. Oh, yeah, boy. Why? What's wrong with that? Okay, well, apart from the fact that it's a racial slur, they've enjoyed the, um, uh, someone got slipped a Mickey or whatever, like, you know, they've been doing that a lot in the taglines. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm Irish, so I could say this, but I heard the working title was The Donkey. Okay, great. I laugh. Five comedy points. Economy of fucking storytelling, right? What are you doing home? I got stood up.

Well, whoever that stood you up is an idiot, right? I believe, what's the word. He uses a great word. Yes he does. And I'm butchering it. You are. And then of course Magnuson comes in. Her face. Here's the setup. It's a close up of her. You see in the background the door open.

She looks over her shoulder to see who it is. Catches him just out of the corner of her eye and the second she notices it's him snaps back to position. Yeah. And they hold on her facial expression, and it tells you fucking everything. There's no discussion. Hanks doesn't clock it.

It seems like he doesn't clock it in this moment. Billy Magnuson doesn't. There isn't a close-up where he mouths, I'm sorry to her. Right, right, right. He doesn't put paprika on the sandwich. There's no paprika on this sandwich, and I'm glad you're using that, because you were skeptical when I used that in the split episode. But now I like it.

It's good shorthand. Yeah, exactly. It shortens my rant significantly if I have a term I can use it. Too much paprika on the sandwich in some movies. Not Stevie Spielberg. He takes it out of the spice rack. Just a sprinkle. Back in the rack.

And it's all good. Sorry that I yelled that so loud. We're back. Back in the spielberg wreck is that what the paprika sings yeah remember when paprika was a character on blue's clothes when salt and pepper had paprika as a child that episode blew my mind it was crazy um spices fucking are you kidding me that is weird. But then, way later in the movie, and I just want to get this over with, Hanks is recalling something about, who is it?

Someone's the same age as Billy Magnuson. Powers. Not Powers. I'm sorry, the student. Yeah, Predator Pryor is 25 years old. And Hanks goes like, same age as, i don't even know magnus's uh dog dog yeah and the cia guy's like who and he's and he sort of stops and he's just like uh my associate and you get that hanks is like oh i get who this kid is to me you know like i get what this kid could be my future son-in-law yes that's when he realizes it there's another

parallel with the german kid as well we're're talking about that. German kid? Wait, which German kid? The German kid who is working at the offices. Oh, yes. The West Berlin government. Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry I was dismissive. Who is that actor? He's so good. He's great.

He's so good. He's in another thing. I know that guy. I know that man. I know this man. All right, keep talking, guys. What I like about the way that this is used is it's just another color on the palette. You know, this is a movie that feels very expansive in just that every character is a person.

Every person matters. Every life is valid. And there is so much happening around it. It keeps the story very focused, all considering. Right? Sure. But it just feels like the boundaries of this film much like something like star wars you know where we talk about the thing that makes star wars so

great is that all these little things happening in the background all these characters seem to have these backstories uh to have a drama you know that takes place in the real world yes where it's humanism feels that broad uh is i'm with you 100 of the way i'm really just trying to figure out who this fucking german kid is. Okay. So that's all set up. That all happens. Abel dodges the electric chair to some controversy. I already said that.

No, but the standing man scene happens right after this. Oh, and then yes. Before they decide that he's not going to the electric chair. He goes, I think we have grounds for a mistrial. And Abel kind of just like

smiles at him. Abel gets it more than Hanks does, more than Donovan does. Abel's like, why the fuck are you fighting for me? Like, yeah, this is crazy. I'm going to jail. And he gives this incredible monologue.

That's probably what wins him the Oscar, right? I mean, this is his Oscar speech. This is his Oscar speech. The whole performance is immaculate. But this is his Oscar speech where he gives the speech about, you remind me of someone there's this man who used to come over for dinner a lot

my parents would say look at this man this is an extraordinary man watch this man I never saw him do anything extraordinary and Hanks goes like oh thanks for the compliment and one day they come over they start beating they throw my parents on the ground

they beat him and he gets back up and they beat him even harder and he still gets back up. And eventually they stop, and they leave. And I think it was because he kept standing. Right. Stryka music. Stryka music, it means standing man. Right.

It roughly means standing man. And the Thomas Newman music swells. Which I think we've argued about this before. I think the score is pretty Newman by the numbers. I don't think it's a particularly good score. Williams didn't do it because it's the first time Williams hadn't worked with Spielberg and Swell. He was having health problems.

No, it's because he was, maybe, but I mean, he was also busy with Star Wars. I believe he was having health problems and because of that, he only had time to do Star Wars. I mean, Williams is slower than he used to be. Yes. I think this soundtrack is a fucking jam. It's okay.

It's fuck music for me. I light a candle. I put on Bridge of Spies. By the way, I'm so glad I looked up who the German secretary boy is. Max Moff. He's in Sensate, people. He's Felix. He's the little rat face guy who's buddy with Dick Boy.

Remember? He's a friend of Dick Boy. He gets shot. He's in like every episode. Yes, he is. He was great on it. He's in like every episode. Yes, he is. He was great on He Should Have Shown His Dick. Then we would have remembered him. Yeah, should have gotten that dick out too.

Should have gotten that dick out. Should have slipped the dick out. I'm getting a phone call. Romley's calling me. I'll pick up later. Yeah, what's up with Romley? What if I answered on the podcast? I mean, that'd be kind of like a lame gimmick.

Right, I don't think that's worth doing. So, Newman scores swells. And the camera pushes in on Hanks. Sure. And we get, you know, this is when the movie's really starting to frame him as an everyday hero. Right. You know? Sure. So, he makes, he's made this plea to Deacon Matthews, and in a very controversial ruling, it works.

And people flip the fuck out. They're screaming in court. They're throwing shit, you know? Right. And he says to Alda, like, you know, I think, you know, he's still trying to work it and says we can get this overturned. Sure. And Alan Alda, who we haven't talked about yet, but plays his boss, the guy who assigns him the thing, and really only has like three scenes. Yeah.

But, you know, always a welcome presence in a film. I don't disagree. Alan Alda says, like, what the fuck are you doing, Hanks? He calls him Hanks, which is weird. It is weird that he does that. And he's like, tell me right now that there aren't grounds to overturn the ruling. And if you tell me that, I'll drop it right now. And he's like, you know that's not what I'm saying.

But what's the fucking endgame here? Right, what's the point here? Every person matters. It's the end game. He doesn't say that. And the rules. And the rules. At this point, Hanks has been followed by the CIA.

Oh, we forgot to bring this up. He confronts the CIA agent who is played in a fantastic performance. Yeah. That's his name, right? Something Shepard. I'm just double checking. Yes. I might be getting his first name wrong.

He's a great stage actor. A lot of good stage actors in this movie. He's from the elevator service. That's right. Right. Scott Shepard is his name. Scott Shepard. Sorry.

I knew it wasn't Matt. Matt Shepard is. Elevator repair service. Theater company. Right. And he says to him. And the guy is essentially saying to him. Why the fuck do you care about this guy?

You know he's a Soviet spy. And Hanks is like you you're German, right? Like, German extraction. I'm Irish. Mother and father, both parents. I like how he says that.

He says, mother and father, both parents. As if we don't know. The language is so good in this movie. It is, it is.

And he's like, what makes us Americans, though, is the rules, is the constitution. That's what makes us Americans. Look, I don't care if you think

this is schmaltzy. It's not schmaltzy. It's inspirational. It's genuinely inspirational. Not like a dog's purpose inspirational. Exactly. Because the whole point is he doesn't triumph per se. He wins a small battle in a large war.

It's what it's emblematic of. It's what it represents. What he represents. Which is the idea of that's what America was founded to be. Right? Yes! Welcome all comers. Take them in. Try to treat those with the respect that you would

want to be treated with. Yes. So now on this thread of conversation, I'm so excited. I hope that we can finally get to when he is in Germany and East Berlin. Hey Ben, are you trying to move us along? Yes. Yes, I am.

So I'm just saying is the relationship between Hanks and then the German official that he meets with. Dude. It's so amazing. So let me just bridge the gap. Let me bridge the gap, pun intended. They send Rylance to jail. Rylance goes to jail,

and we've been seeing concurrently these sort of brief scenes of Gary Powers and Jesse Plemons as well. You know, like these American soldiers, pilots being selected to fly U-2 spy missions, you know, spy planes. Their plane's called the Article. It has highly powerful cameras,

and they're going to fly over territory and try to get photos. Some good shit from Michael Gaston as their boss. It's called The Article. It has highly powerful cameras, and they're going to fly over territory and try to get photos. Some good shit from Michael Gaston as their boss. I love that actor. Yeah. He's always good. Some bad shit from Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, who in general is a fuckboy. Not in this movie, but I'm just saying he does bad stuff.

Good character. Love Gaston. Good character. No one fights like Gaston. But he does bad stuff. That is true. No one does fight like Gaston. Austin Stowell as Frances Gary Powers, who's like one of those, I don't even know that actor,

but like one of those things Spielberg obviously is just like perfect. You got the look. The right attitude. He's in Dolphin Tale. And they, you see all this sort of briefing of like, they give him the dollar. Do not be afraid to use the dollar. To spend the dollar. To kill yourself if you get captured.

Anyway, so this is brief. He gets captured. Francis Gary Powers shot down over enemy lines. He doesn't kill himself. Doesn't kill himself. He's put on show trial. You see it like a brief, very cool shot of the show trial where the camera zooms out and there's the Soviet banners. And it's this canted low angle.

It all looks surreal. Everyone stands at the same time when the verdict is read. And so it's basically like they've got one of our guys now. Right. The scenario he predicted has come to pass. The sequence of powers getting shot down is just a good Spielberg action sequence. Fantastic Spielberg action sequence where there's like he's not all he's trying to do is blow up the plane. Yes.

And that it's yeah he turns that into. That was like 40 percent of the trailer. Right. Because they try to make the trailer basically like a pilot like getting shot over and relines. And they play like basic trailer thriller music over that. But I also feel like I like the way... I've seen the movie four times now. And every time I read the scene differently as to whether Powers just doesn't get the opportunity to kill himself.

Or doesn't have the courage to do it. Well, no one knew, right? That's what's great. That's what's great about the courage to do it. Well no one knew right? That's what's great. That's what's great about the way they depend. And as Power says much later as we began this podcast with he says I didn't tell him anything and Tom Hanks is like look no one's going to believe you but whatever you think

buddy. Doesn't matter you know what you did. That's the other thing about this movie is it's like doesn't matter what people think about you it's about knowing that you can live with yourself because you did the right thing. I wish I'd come up with back in the rack at the start of this podcast series because then for any time Spielberg puts the spice back in the rack, we could use it.

It's a great... Back in the Spielberg rack. It's a great shorthand. Just like Too Much Paprika in the Sandwich is a great shorthand. If nothing else, this main series has established two great shorthands that we can now apply to any director. I think some

of our next directors maybe they don't put the paprika back in the rack not so easily oh i mean i mean they do a lot of just emptying the paprika yeah i would say some of our next directors dump the entire rack into the pot they never had a rack they just have a trough right including the actual rack the wooden rack is in the pot as well. All right. So, Donovan. Hanks is being threatened a lot at this point. People come, they shoot up. That's made up, and I don't like that they include that scene. I think it's too much.

I think it would. Yeah. But so now, government agencies come to him. It's our friend, old poopy diaper himself. That's right. Peter McRobbie, Alan Dulles, the director of the CIA. He goes, here's the deal. And this is like the movie is now at like the hour mark, right?

Yep. In a two hour, 20 minute movie. Yep. He goes, here's the deal. Powers have been kidnapped. Looks like you were right. Peter McRobbie is fantastic in this scene. Because he's got that kind of, oh, well, you know, he's not your guy or our guy.

And you're not our guy. You're your guy. But of course, you're our guy. And so Hanks keeps being like, where are the lies here? Like, what is my fiction that I'm going to be establishing in this whole negotiation? But this is also the first scene where Hanks says, what about my guy? What about my guy? And he refers to Abel as his guy.

This is a big emotional turning point. Fair point. And he goes, you got to go over there and negotiate this. Now, here's the problem. I don't know if you know this. Berlin, a little crazy right now. A little dicey. They appear to be building a wall which is an objectively terrible idea, P.S. Yeah, for any country to do. Agreed.

The walling off East Berlin. So East, you know, if you guys don't know, after World War II, Germany was bisected and, you know, there was East and West states, one governed by the Western hemisphere by the Allies there was East and West states, one governed by the Western hemisphere by the Allies that was capitalist and the Eastern Germany was very Soviet and Berlin

itself, which was in East Germany, was divided in half as well. And the Berlin Airlift would bring in supplies from the West for West Berlin. You should have said spoilers before that. True spoiler alert, East and West Germany. If you're watching any movie that takes place before the mid-60s, it's a big spoiler.

Hey, don't worry, though. The wall does come down. Bring down the spoiler. Spoilers, Ben. Oh, shit. Sorry. That doesn't happen until Bridgespies 4. Bridgespies 4. Yeah. Hyper Bridge.

Hasselhoff. Yeah, Hyper Bridge. Yeah. Okay, so as Hanks is arriving, the wall is being built, and student Frank Powers, no, Jesus. No, Pryor. Pryor. Frederick Pryor.

He's an American student who's studying. Played by Will Rogers. He's an American student who's studying Soviet capitalism. Sorry, Soviet economics. He takes his bike over the wall to retrieve his professor, seems to be his mentor, but then you realize, oh, his young pretty daughter, there's clearly like, this is a father figure, this is

a love interest. I mean, the reason Spielberg lays all the, you know, the power scenes and the prior scenes in there is because he wants these to be real people. The scene where prior thesis is seized from him just makes you like the guy more. Because on the page, like to

the CIA agents, to Sh cia agents to shepherd's character uh whose name is agent hoffman uh he's like fucking this prior kid he's an idiot he was in east berlin in the 60s studying like soviet like uh econo who what what kind of a fucking it's kind of like how now you hear like oh some guy like went to syria because he thought he could save the world and he got like kidnapped by ISIS. And you're like, well, I feel bad for him. But what the hell was he doing over there? You know, you know, it's not safe over there right now.

It's like why that dickhead ride his bike over the wall as they were putting the bricks up. And what's the answer? In the name of love. Very true. And also her professor dad. So he thinks he's going to be able to get back over and that he's the key to getting them back because he's American and it doesn't work.

This is historically fudge. It's not how it actually ends, but it doesn't matter. So now the second film starts. So Hanks is like, oh, this kid, we got to deal with this kid as well. And the CIA is like,

no, no, don't worry about that kid. Don't worry about that kid. That's a distraction. Each one is on a different side of the wall. The CIA is like, we want our guy Powers, who is a military asset, so he might know shit. And you're going to give up Abel, who's their military asset, so they might want him. We can get Pryor later. Pryor's just a student.

He's not important to us. Hanks doesn't like that. Hanks doesn't like that. And also, the CIA understands that because east germany has prior rather than the soviet union even though they are connected countries east germany is going to try and muscle in you know and be like hey we got hey you want a student no check it out i'm having so much fun talking about this great movie it's a very good movie yeah um good so now it becomes what what you movie to have heard are the most uh-affected stretches of the movie.

Yeah, those negotiation scenes. A series of backdoor negotiations, which are really great. And he's with all these very unscrutable people. So Mikhail Gorovoi, who's like this great Russian actor, he's the guy who plays one of my favorite characters in the movie, the Soviet. Yes. The guy who's like, oh, I'm, you know, second secretary of East German, you know, embassy. No big deal. And then like he goes, Hanks goes back to Shepard. He's like, that guy's like the head of the KGB in Germany.

Like that guy is not a nobody. And he's almost a little too friendly where you're thrown off by how sociable he seems. Whereas Hanks is like, can we just let's look. This is easy. Abel, I've got Abel. You've got, and this is where I was watching with Joanna. Joanna went, whoa! He's like, you've got Powers and you've got Pryor.

Abel for them, perfect, right? He just sort of drops it in there. Yeah. Yeah, for the two of them. Yeah, and he goes, no, no, no, no. No way, we only have Powers and Pryor, he's in East And it goes no no no no way. We only have powers and priorities. He's in East Germany. You know I have no you know.

Right. And also he keeps going like yours is the impatient plan. Like why must we rush. But he's like pouring him a whiskey and he's being friendly and he's leaning

forward and it's got a nice sort of vibe to him. On the other side of the wall is Sebastian Koch who is. Sebastian Koch is a great actor from the life of others from any other

German movies you might have seen. Yeah. Who's playing Wolfgang Vogel. Right, and he's very curt. He's very cold. Who is, yes, an East German lawyer. Yes.

Who is curt and cold and is trying essentially to be like a big player in this whole dynamic. Right. They're trying to be like, we are a real country. We are East, the German Democratic Republic. We are negotiating with America, who must take us seriously. We must be a real country if you're negotiating with us. And we have a guy to exchange. And Hanks keeps going, well, I'm just a private citizen. And they're like, no, no, no, you're not.

No, you're not. You're an American diplomat. That's what you are. I don't work for the country. I'm just here for my guy. But it becomes my guy when you realize that like the tension of the movie is so wrapped up in like this these performances that the countries are trying to give yeah whereas the soviet union essentially is like i mean yeah

sure we'll take able and he's fine this is no big deal and like the germans are like this is a very big deal well and that's the thing. This movie becomes a film. In order for this story to work, it has to do two things. One, every scene has to be perfectly written. This movie is our speed racer. Right? For Spielberg. One, every scene has to be perfectly written.

Two, every performance has to be perfectly measured. Right? Because every scene is about leaning forward and going like, God, I can't get a read on this person. And every syllable, every movement shifting the power dynamics of whether or not he's making progress or not, right? Right. Because now you're getting to a lot of just conversations and big comfy chairs. Great comfy chairs, by the way.

And then there is that also, this is the scene I've definitely been told was a Coen scene. Yeah. Is the scene where Donovan is, like, introduced to Abel's family. Right. And they are these three sort of cartoonish babushkas who are like, oh, we love him. Like, you know, is he safe? Now, earlier in the movie, when Donovan goes to visit Abel.

Right, the whole overture is made from a letter from quote-unquote Abel's wife. And this is the post-sentencing jail. Yeah. He reads the letter and he goes like, this is an imposter. This is not even close to my wife. So Hanks is already on guard about that. Right. And this is the post-sentencing jail. Yeah. He reads the letter and he goes like, this is an imposter. This is not even close to my wife. So Hanks is already on guard about that. And on either side, on one side they hire

the actors where it's like, talk about too much paprika in the sandwich. These people are ham sandwiching fucking like crazy. That's true, yeah. It's a honey-baked ham. On the other side, Sebastian Koch mixes up the name of the daughter and the wife. And so it's like, okay, both these sides are trying to use the family. Right. And Hanks starts to worry

at this point, like, wait, what do they think of Abel? Because they keep on going like, maybe you've just gotten all the information you need out of him, and that's why you're ready to give him back to us. And he goes like, I can tell you he was a good soldier, he's not told me anything. Because Hanks is also quietly worried that when he gives Abel

back to the Soviet Union that they'll kill him or they'll imprison him. Abel's his guy. All people matter. Now we've forgotten the most important thing in this movie, which is he gets to Berlin and suddenly everything is really difficult. He goes, they show him this shitty, like,

unheated apartment. And meanwhile the CIA are hanging out at the Hilton. Right. And they go, here, memorize this address, get back to us. He goes, okay, cool. And they went, no, I mean now. Yeah. You're not going to be able to take a map because then they'll think you're a spy. Like, here's what you have to do. And he goes out on the first day to do the negotiations and some kids mug him for his coat.

Some kids take his coat in a really good scene. Really good. Really good scene where there's no threat. Yes. There's no subtitling on the German. This movie has zero subtitles at any point, right? Correct. Beautiful. Which is great. Anytime someone's speaking a language, you feel like Donovan where you don't understand what's happening. Yeah, and Donovan speaks like a little

German. Denke, denke. And, uh, yeah, so what does he get? He gets a cold. It's snowing. He gets a little cold. He gets a cold. And this is what elevates Hanks' performance, which at this point has just been fucking solid as shit

to like a fucking master class in acting yeah because Hanks plays the second half of the movie he's just wearing down with a head cold yeah

and it's so underplayed it is this is a master class in sniffles it is because he doesn't fucking overdo it and I'm watching scenes

right and I'm like you know as an actor who's not good at managing my own life right uh-huh I'll watch like things I'm in and I'll go like oh right that's that day where I didn't get enough sleep the night before and my eyes look like this or I'm noticing that I'm my reaction times are

slow right yeah and I now look for that in other performances where I'm like oh that feels like they maybe were sick that day or they had less time to work on that scene or whatever it was right some of these scenes it just feels like man man, Hank's looked shitty. Was he just out late the night before? And then four to five minutes into a dialogue scene, he'll take out a handkerchief and do a little sniffle, and you're like, oh, right! He's just

putting a little bit in there. A little bit of edge, and that's where he just starts saying in all these negotiations, look, I have a cold, I just want to go home. I just want to go home and get into bed. I just want to get into bed. I'm not trying to do anything bigger.

I don't work for the government. Why the rush? Why the rush? And he's like, look, I appreciate everything we're doing here, but I'm just a guy doing his job. So you have the Soviets who are a little coy, but are essentially like, sure, able for power. Yeah.

Fine. You got the Germans who are very uptight, but are essentially like, sure, able for power. Yeah. Fine. Yeah. You got the Germans, who are very uptight and are like, not able for powers, able for prior, and not able for powers and prior. Only able for prior. You're a rug salesman. You're selling two people the same rug. A rock salesman, he says.

Yes. Rock salesman. Yes. And then you have the CIA, Shepard, who are are like why are you fucking with Pryor able for powers great I watch the movie with subtitles because like especially with rewatching movies sometimes I like to be able to physically like visually look at the language

they say rock they subtitle it as rug I'm pretty sure it's rock salesman see I think so too in the previous times I'd seen this movie without subtitles I thought it was rock I think maybe whoever just subtitled it did a bad job. I mean, that happens all the time. You'll see all kinds of weird stuff.

Especially with heavy accents. Maybe it is rock. I don't know. I don't know. He's a salesman selling two people the same thing. And it gets back to this point of, no, not two things, one thing. Yeah. Both of you are getting the thing you want, and I'm getting something from each of you.

But this is mutually beneficial to everybody. But he doesn't like the idea that he's becoming a secondary adjunct part of this deal. He wants to be making the deal. The whole point is that correctly, the East Germans understand that they're being treated like a junior partner. You give me one thing, I give you one thing. Don't have another thing

happening in the back. There are the great scenes with Sebastian Koch, but then there's also the scene with, his name is Burghardt Klat clowner or something like klausner maybe uh who is the sort of the higher up in the german democrat like the attorney general yeah and that scene where he's just like no it's nice it's good you want uh you want prior we have prior he's a young man young man good and he's really playing it right and hanks is like yeah no but the two.

And he goes like, no! And then the phone rings and he picks up a phone and there's nothing and then he picks up another phone. It's so good. This movie's so funny, too. It is. It's weirdly funny. With never like, you know.

No, there's lots of funny little moments. Like when Hanks orders the two breakfasts. Yeah. Ugh. He's so hungry. Yeah. He wants the two breakfasts at the same time. And that's where this movie feels really co-initiated. That's kind of a, I never got that. He's so hungry. Yeah. He wants the two breakfasts at the same time. And that's where this movie feels really co-initiated.

That's kind of a, I never got that. That's a joke about the movie. He gets, he wants, he's like, I'll have a continental breakfast and the American breakfast. And they're like one after the other. And he's like, at the same time. Just like Powers and Prior. Yeah. Yeah.

He goes, can you deliver them both to Checkpoint Charlotte? That just bumped it up to five stars. Yeah. Five and a half stars. One of the best movies ever made. That breakfast though. up to five stars. Five and a half stars. One of the best ones he's ever made. That breakfast, though. He orders the breakfast. He's so desperate.

He's got a cold. He's fucking tired. He's been staying at the shit flop house. And now he's at the health team, though he's not supposed to be because he goes, you know what? I'm fucking tired. I'm going to eat a nice breakfast. And they immediately tell him, like. Yeah, the CIA come and they're like, oh, great, great, great, great.

It'll just be powers for powers for Abel great that means we don't have to even tell you that stupid message we got where it was like they'll do the Germans will do it too they said they'll do it but disregard it forget it and Hanks immediately goes like god damn it I'm not gonna eat this breakfast I have to go Hanks is like goodbye stay what you're not even gonna fucking eat this

why would you because he's gotta do his job he's gotta do his job and so they line it all up, right? One of them, they're going to go to the titular Bridge of Spies. They're going to go to, they never call it the Bridge of Spies. I think, but there's a plaque on it that says the Bridge of Spies. No, it's the Glinky Bridge. No, I don't think so.

Doesn't Glinky mean of spies? Absolutely not. Are you sure about that? Yes, it's named after the Glinky Palace. Google that. I think I'm right about this. I literally Googled it. You are wrong.

You are dead wrong. Okay, well, alternative facts. Oh, boy. You were just doing that. No, they wanted to go- Oh, they actually changed the name. Oh, that's what it is. Now it's called the Bridge of Spies.

That's what it is, David. So I was right all along. Reporters began calling it the Bridge of Spies. Five fact points. Thank you. Five fact points. So they're like, yeah, let's do it on this secret little bridge over here. Not Checkpoint Charlie, which is the main crossing.

So they're like, yeah, able for powers will happen on the bridge. Prior at Checkpoint Charlie. Right. So he's a little nervous because he's like, well, we got to take them at their word that this that they're going to push prior over Checkpoint Charlie at the same time that we're doing this. But we don't have eyes there. It's pretty face time. They do have eyes, but they just have to make a telephone call. It's pretty face time. They don't have the Tim Daly starring TV show Eyes.

Sure. They don't have it in East Germany. No, they don't. It never made it to East Germany because of East Germany's restrictive censorship. Yes. They never got to see

the TV show Eyes starring Tim Daly. I'm going to work this joke. And here's the thing. I'm going to get every cent I can out of this joke. That's the real tragedy. It is the real tragedy.

That's why the wall eventually came down. They wanted Eyes. It's weird that they got early edition, though. They did get early. Kyle Chandler. Do you remember that one?

Yeah, of course. The way the cat would bring him tomorrow's paper today. He gets a newspaper early. Are you fucking kidding me? You think I don't know about early edition? Has Kyle Chandler been in a Spielberg movie yet? It seems like an obvious choice. No, he was in Super 8, which is the faux Spielberg movie.

The cover band. No, he'd be great. That just seems obvious. Get him in a Spielberg movie. Maybe he should play the boy in the Pope movie. Yeah, that's right. He should play St. That just seems obvious. Get him in a Spielberg movie. Maybe he should play the boy in the Pope movie. Yeah, that's right. He should play St. Peter's Basilica. Yeah, I'm sure they've cast the boy four times now by the time this episode comes out.

Yeah. So Eyes, it was on ABC for four glorious episodes before it got canceled. Tim Daly, great show. Early edition. On the other hand, it lasted like six seasons. At least five. Yeah. Good run.

So we should mention that Hanks pushes the Germans over the line by having that little conversation with Felix from Sense8 where he just sits him down. It's a great shot. Janusz is,

you know, having a blast as usual with his pools of light of the bikes going up and down delivering the mail and delivering the messages. And the guy goes like, I'm sorry,

my boss had to leave. And he goes, I've been waiting here for a fucking hour and now I can't talk to the guy? And he goes, I'm sorry. And he goes, look, let me explain something to you. And he starts to spiel, and Ratface is immediately like, I should go get a higher up. And he's like, no, I'm telling you.

You're listening to me. I'm giving you a message, and you need to deliver this message. You need to deliver this. This is on you. Which is essentially, like, if Pryor doesn't show up, the Soviets are going to know about it. Yeah. And they're going to be angry. Yeah.

Yeah. the Soviets are going to know about it. Yeah. And they're going to be angry. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that happens is we see Abel for the first time in like 45 minutes. That's the thing. This whole second movie is playing out without Mark Rylance's dynamite work.

Right. And you'd think you'd miss it, but you don't. Partly because he did such a good job that he looms. Yes. You know, like you get why Hanks is working this hard. Right. And partly because everyone else is great too and everyone's doing a great job it was a professionally made film with

lots of great actors and this is taking clock i mean it's a there's so much at stake but it also then they wake up able so you see the quick glimpse of them waking him up and he's sort of disoriented he doesn't know what's going on and then when he gets onto that bridge god like the two of them being back together in the same frame talking again it feels like fucking like watching a band reunite at the rock and roll hall of fame you know like the fact that he's been mostly missing for this hour and the backbone of this movie has been this weird mutual respect these two men have for each other just as professionals and family men absolutely i mean then stoica music right so now it's like the tensest shit in the world and

you're watching just like a bunch of people on a bridge standing at opposite sides waiting for a phone call tense no the soviets show up and they're like here he is powers and jesse plemmons is there and he's like oh yeah sure that's that's all right take off your hat yep that's him yeah and then and hanks is like no no no call, no. Call Trick Point Charlie. Is, you know, my guy there? This guy I've never met prior, you know, is he there? No. And so Hanks is like, we got to wait.

Because we're waiting to see if they're, you know, they're waiting to see if we'll just do the swap anyway. Right. The CIA is like, get going to Abel. They're like, you're free. Go. Well, this is the third time we forgot to mention this at all. But this is the third time they use the would it help in the movie which is

you don't seem nervous at all would it help would it help yeah you know and they say they say to Abel like your choice I mean who knows what fucking happens if we wait for this prior thing and it goes wrong you might get fucked over yeah but and also but Hanks is also saying to Abel like

what's gonna happen to you and Abel's like, what's going to happen to you? And Abel's like, well, you know, sometimes. I mean, his line way earlier that I love. Actually, let me get the exact line because it's so good. So while you're saying that, I'll say the other thing that Donovan says to Abel, which is Abel says, like, what's the deal with this dude? You know? Yeah, yeah.

Why do you care about this? Right. Why do you care about Pryor? And Hanks just has this line where he just looks him in the eyes and he goes, like, I really want this guy. Yeah. You know? Like, it would be great if we could get both of these guys. And Abel sees in him, like, okay, he's doing for these two kids what he did for me.

I know how good a man this is. And he's done so much for me. Standing man. Right. Standing man. Stocha muzyk. Where he just decides, like, Abel's like, I'm in no rush. I can wait. And it's just decides, like, Abel's like, I'm in no rush. I can wait.

And it's just like, oh my god! These fucking nice friends! They're the two friends! They were the original two friends! They were the original two friends. They were on the two friends bridge. And then we have to acknowledge that. Yeah! And they locked the gates. I just love that line. They did

lock the gates. I just love that line where, earlier earlier it's uh when hanks is asking about his soviet masters he says well the boss isn't always right but he's always the boss yes uh which is sort of being repeated here when he says like let's see how they greet me maybe it'll be a hug but he's always the boss but he's always the boss that's what he says he goes what what are you worried at all because when he he talked to our friend in Germany, the one who said, like, you know, of course you would say that he hasn't told you anything,

you know, but we'll have to do a thorough investigation and decide what we do with him, right? Sure. Abel says, you know, he says, are you worried? And he goes, I don't know. And he goes, how will we know what's going on? And he goes, if they embrace me or not. Right.

You know, if they embrace me, I'm probably fine. If they put me in the back of the car without any... Then who knows. Right. They do the trade. Pryor shows up. They do the trade. The most exciting phone call in the history of film.

Great phone call. And they do the trade, and they put Abel into the back of the car. And, you know, there's a looming sense of dread. And Hanks comes home. He's been telling his wife that he's been on a fishing trip the whole time, that he'd pick up something from the corner store. Yep. Or he says he's going to pick it up from where he's on the trip.

He says he's going to get the marmalade in Britain. He just gets a marmalade from around the corner. Right. And she's like, fuck you. Yeah. Amy Ryan underserved, although, what can you do? But a solid actress. I mean... Yeah, it's just sad

to see Academy Award nominee Amy Ryan, the role she gets. It's just too bad. I agree. Make a movie for her, Steven Spielberg. I agree. And then, of course, on comes the TV. Right. And so what happens is you see him walking through the door with her. Right? And as they're walking in, him walking through the door with her, right?

And as they're walking in, the kids who are all hung around the TV go, Mommy, Mommy, look. And it cuts to the kids' perspective and it cuts to the TV. So you don't see Amy Ryan and Tom Hanks for a little bit, right? Yeah. You see the kids watching and you see the news coverage, which is announcing successfully negotiated the return of both Powers and Pryor in exchange for Abel executed by this boss-ass lawyer named fucking Donovan. Right?

And the camera spins around to what you assume is going to be the shot of Tom Hanks standing there like a hero. And instead, Amy Ryan is standing mouth agape, and Tom Hanks is nowhere to be seen. Nowhere to be seen. Where did he go? Bed. He goes upstairs, and Tom Hanks is lying face down, sound asleep.

Could be dead. In the bed. He wasn't being cute. All he wanted to do. He wanted to go to bed. He's not in it to be a hero. Okay? Now this is obviously where the movie should end.

Yeah. And then just give us the title cards over black. Instead, we see him on the subway and we see a woman look up from her paper. They've been in an earlier scene where people were judging him on the subway. They hate him because he's- And now she's like, oh, it's so nice. And she gives him a thumbs up. Or whatever.

And he is looking up, and he sees kids climbing over fences in Brooklyn. Earlier in the film, he was on a train. He saw kids trying to climb over the wall. They get shot. And it's very shocking. Good scene. That's a good scene. Yes.

The earlier scene. He looks forward and smiles. The title cards happen over that yeah i like that he then like just starts reading his paper and the title cards float over his shoulder um but yeah and point out that abel lived a boring life in the soviet union and and donovan became like a very famous negotiator uh during the bay of pigs crisis and other right and they give you that awesome fucking stat where it's like they send him over to negotiate the release of a thousand people and he got nine thousand people

and it's like more this fucking dude this fucking dude like I love true story movies about people who aren't well known and they can give you stats like that at the end and be like this guy's even better than you thought I reviewed this movie good movie you can read my review on the Atlantic

but I talked about how like you know there's a lot of in this movie about like how a good movie. You can read my review on The Atlantic. And I talked about how there's a lot of in this movie about how we're not different, right? Yeah. Maybe that's what Spielberg's laying on a little too thick right here at the end, but that's okay. But in this age of populism, I mean, come on, guys. So what if there's borders?

We're all just people. Why can't we get along? Let's all be friends. This is an anti-xenophobia movie? Yes. Without politicizing it as such. And I like for a movie that is so mired in politics, it's actually weirdly kind of apolitical. It's a humanist movie. Right.

That's what it is. Our main characters are never fighting for political causes. They're fighting for basic human decency. Correct. It's just a stunningly empathetic movie. And to watch people act on such kindness, on empathy and decency moved me to tears, to a light misting several times during the watch.

It's exactly, you know, people used to eagerly await the next Spielberg movie because he was like our greatest fucking popcorn, like spectacle filmmaker, right? And this current mode Spielberg movie because he was like our greatest fucking popcorn like spectacle filmmaker, right? And this current mode Spielberg's in, I, you know, I will see Ready Player One opening weekend. No question because it's Spielberg and I'm curious, right?

But for me, I wait breathlessly for him to make another movie like this because now more than ever, we need movies like this. We do. I need movies that don't take me away from the reality of the world and send me to another fucking dimension. You know, I need movies like this we do i need movies that don't take me away from the reality of the world and send me to another fucking dimension you know i need movies about how good people can be yes movies that aren't fucking maudlin or saccharine you know but are hopeful with an earned hope

about hard work and hard decisions i got no no disagreement with any of this. But just the fucking just human decency in the face of all that surround us and engulfs us right now. Yeah. I love this movie. I totally agree with you. I know people flip out about the ending a lot. For me that's sort of like, that's how I feel about the Lincoln ending where it really does, you know. I don't care

about it either. Right. The Lincoln ending for me is like a stumbling block. This for me I'm like, yeah, of course the movie would be better if it ended over him lying in bed. Look we're not litigating this. Enough. It's 90 seconds. I want to play the box office game. The movie's earned at that point. Okay. The movie came out October 16th 2015.

The best weekend of all time. Well it's an interesting weekend. It opened number three at the box office with 15 million dollars. It eventually number three at the box office with $15 million. It eventually grossed $72 million domestic and $165 million worldwide. A perfectly respectable, if not incredible

turn in the theaters. Number one is a new movie that week. A comedy. A goofy kids comedy with Hutz Transylvania 2? No. That is number five. Okay. And it's fourth week.

Yeah, okay. Maybe that was the movie you were seeing the same day as Bridge of Spies. No, it's not because I saw that with Ramona at the end of the show. Number one is a goofy family comedy. Live action? Live action with, I guess, some CGI elements. What doesn't have a bunch of CGI

shit in it these days? But not CGI characters? I haven't seen it. I think it might. I have no idea. Not really. I don't know. It's a weird movie, and there's gonna be a sequel. It was kind of a surprise, critical, and box office hit. Oh, Goosebumps. Yes. Goosebumps. Quiet little hit of 2015.

Yeah, people say it's surprisingly good. People say it's pretty good, although I hear the ending is weird. Yeah. But anyway. Sure. Goosebumps. Number's pretty good, although I hear the ending is weird. Yeah. But anyway. Sure. Goosebumps. Number one, a sequel just announced. Get ready for that.

I'm sure by the time this episode comes out, I'll have been announced as the villain in Goosebumps. Congrats. I'm playing the evil mannequin. Not the mannequin, the ventriloquist dummy. Yeah, you're playing Slappy. Slappy, thank you. I was searching for that. Okay.

Number two at the box office is the kind of movie that I can tolerate in the world that we're talking about, which is essentially kind of a big budget genre movie that's just a little more grounded than some of this stuff. It's an original. No, it's an adaptation of a book, but, you know, it's a standalone movie. And the one thing I would definitely say about this movie, which has made $143 million in three weeks. Wow. Is that it is funny. It's really funny. Famed for its hilarity.

Is it a comedy or is it just a very funny? Some people thought it was a comedy. 90 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, for example. Oh, The Martian. Oh my God, sorry. Let me just laugh for a little bit. The Martian. Remember that time they left him on Mars?

The slapstick comedy of the year. On Mars. I rewatched that movie recently. Pretty good movie. Perfectly funny. It's about as funny as Bridge of Spies. It's not a comedy. It's like a race against time drama.

This is ridiculous. Gone Girl is more of a comedy than The Martian. Yes, it is. Gone Girl is more of a satire, which at least you can call a comedy. Yes, thank you. All right. Number four. Wait, I just remembered that other scene in Martian where they saved him. The Martian, I'm sorry.

Go on, it's just one of the... Oh, boy. Okay, number three. Hey, remember how he makes... Shut up! Shut up, all of you! God damn it! He makes fertilizer out of his poo-poo.

All right, enough, enough, enough. Okay, number three, Bridge of Spies. Number three, Bridge of Spies. Number four, 13 Million, an R-rated gothic romance. Crimson Peak. Crimson Peak. I probably gave it away there. No, a gothic romance.

How many? Oh, boy. Great movie, in my opinion. Sorely underrated. One of my favorite del Toro movies in a very long time. That's a half and a half for me. What does that mean? I like some of it.

I dislike other parts of it. What don't you like? This is not an episode for me to get in Crimson Peak. Why not? Let's do it. I just, I feel like,

I'd like to watch it again. I've only seen it one time. I think there is a lack of cohesion to all American del Toro movies. I'm trying to think. Well,

I really like Hellboy 2, but I haven't seen that one in a while. I think Hellboy, honestly, as we've talked about, he'd be a good blank check. He, I really like Hellboy 2, but I haven't seen that one in a while. I think Hellboy. Honestly, as we've talked about, he'd be a good blank check. He would. I think Hellboy 2 works because it owns how erratic it is. Yeah.

I just think his Spanish movies are so much better than the American ones. I think the main Spanish trilogy, the Kronos, Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth, is like so head and shoulders above all of his American work combined. They're good. They're good. I was just never into Pan's Labyrinth. It's like so head and shoulders above all of his American work combined. They're good. I was just never into Pan's Labyrinth. I don't know why. Yeah. I'm excited for this next movie he's got coming out, which is like

a Cold War monster movie. But it's not. It always sounds good. I think Crimson Peak's great, though. I think it's one of his best movies. I like some of it. You like one now? Some of it. Okay, and then number five, Holt's Transylvania 2. You've also got Pan. Pan! More like panned also got Pan. Pan.

Yeah. More like Panned by the critics. Indeed. Did I tell you that a year later I got an email? I think I tweeted it, certainly. I got an email a year later. Literally a full calendar year. Pretty much.

An email that said, just wanted to tell you your review of the movie Pan sucked. Thought you'd like to know. That was the whole email. It was all in the subject line. Burn the internet. The Intern is in there. Which is, I think, an underrated movie. Pretty rewatchable.

Yeah. I think it's okay. I think half of it's okay, and there's like half of that movie that I, when I'm watching it, I think is a masterpiece. There are individual scenes in that movie where I'm like, this is a great movie, and then'm watching it, I think is a masterpiece. There are individual scenes in that movie where I'm like, this is a great movie and then it goes to something I think is kind of a now.

What happened to De Niro? He likes money. I mean, yeah. He's like a businessman. He owns a lot of real estate and he likes doing things like the Tribeca Film Festival and investing in restaurants

and buying art and shit like that and he has more critical acclaim than anyone needs for one lifetime. And he likes getting paid money so he can do the things he really likes doing. Sicario is in the top 10. Lovely movie. Decent movie.

Good looking movie. Woodlawn. The hell is that? Oh, that was an inspirational football movie, I believe. Oh, that's right. Inspirational movie. Inspirational, quote unquote. The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials,

which is probably the last Maze Runner, right right because it didn't make a ton of movie money and they like almost murdered the lead actor they have uh scheduled a new release date for it over for the third one they stopped filming yeah like a year ago yeah because uh their lead actor dylan o'brien got run over by a truck yeah and he has now recovered started filming on another movie and they claim when this movie's done, he's gonna go back to the next May's Runner film, and it will be released

with, like, a year and a half long break in the middle of production. Uh, fantastic. Weird. Glad for that. Sure. And Steve Jobs, Black Mass, Everest,

which I just watched Everest. Okay. Yeah. Uh, anyway, so. Pretty Spies. I fucking love it. If you haven't seen it, see it, goddammit. Okay.

And if you've seen it, rewatch it again. It's a really, you know what? It's a good movie for the times we live in. I agree. It inspires you to be a better person. I certainly, I watched the movie and said, how do I actually try to make positive change in this world? Aside from the obvious things, our marches, our petitions, our phone calls, our donations,

the things that everyone's sharing on Facebook. It's like, what are the moments of kindness and selflessness and empathy for others that I can do on a day-to-day basis? Agreed. Even those who you think are your enemies. Who do you think are your enemies right now? Twitter eggs? Donald Trump? Yeah. Do you have like a showbiz enemy?

Yeah, I'm trying to think who gets a lot of my parts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like Colin Jost or someone? Well, Colin Trevorrow, obviously. Obviously. Colin Jost and I aren't going up for the same parts. I don't know. So I did audition for Weekend Update. Did you?

No. No. What am I asking that for? No. I'm trying to think of who the new guy is. There's always like at any given point

in time there's like per year there's one guy who gets all the parts that I want and then the next year it'll be someone different. Like it was Miles Teller for a while

but I feel like Miles Teller and I aren't competing anymore. No. What's Miles Teller doing with himself now? You feel like Miles Teller and I aren't competing anymore. No. What's Miles Teller doing with himself now? You know what? We should end this podcast.

We should too. The point is I've handily beaten all my enemies in show business and everything's good except for the world which is terrible. Bridge of Spies

great movie 5 out of 5 10 out of 10 would watch again. World no good. This has been our Bridge. Would watch again. World, no good. This has been our Bridge of Spies episode. Next week we end. Pod me if you cast with the BFG.

No bonus episode for this series because there wasn't one. And it's a lot of Spielberg. But, you know, BFG, there's not as much to dig into in that movie. So it probably will contain a lot of the earmarks that you might love of a bonus episode in terms of sort of finality, thesis, rankings, what have you. I don't know. Exactly. We'll do some rankings.

We'll do some rankings. Everyone loves those rankings. Hey, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, subscribe. Just do those things. Yes. And go to the Reddit. If you want.

Anything. Anything. Final thoughts, Ben? Anything you want. Anything, anything. Final thoughts, Ben? Anything you want to say? Final notes? Continue to believe in democracy in our country. Guys, I know it's bad. I'm predicting it's going to get worse by the time this comes out,

but I hope that we all can continue to hold on to some of our ideals. Hey, look, he's our finest film critic, but he's also one of our greatest truth tellers. That's true. That's not a nickname. It's just a compliment to him. Thanks, man.

You're a good guy. And, yeah. And, as always, we're back. Back on the Spielberg rack. We gotta use it again. Yeah. on the Spielberg. We got to use it again. This has been a UCB Comedy Production.

Check out our other shows on the UCB Comedy Podcast Network. We'll see you next time.