Blank Check with Griffin & David - Dark Star with Emily Yoshida

Episode Date: August 8, 2021

Our long-awaited John Carpenter series kicks off with his ultra-low budget oddity debut DARK STAR. Ben goes Hollywood (actually, “Hosleywood”) to record with Emily Yoshida - the Mother of Blankies herself - *in person* in Los Angeles, and the gang debates possible names for the series. We landed on “They Podcast” - which is a departure from Griffin’s far sweatier suggestions. Join us as we set the table for Carpenter’s filmography, and go deep on this film, which could also just be called “Space Dirtbags,” per Emily. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

I do not like the men on this spaceship. They are uncouth and fail to appreciate my better qualities. I have something of value to contribute to this mission if they would only recognize it. Today over lunch, I tried to improve morale and build a sense of camaraderie among the men by holding a humorous round-robin discussion of the early days of the mission. My overtures were brutally rejected. These men do not want a happy ship they are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable last week was my birthday nobody even said happy

birthday to me someday this podcast will be played and then they'll feel sorry it was too good an option not to do because of how well for tape right right right but but i just want to share the other one i wanted to do which uh uh david oh fuck where was it you would have had to give me the alternate lines here uh but the other one i want to do was what are you going to name it what the new star what are you going to name it? What? The new star. What are you going to name it? Who cares? Don't bother me. Who cares? Don't bother me.

Right. The new podcast. Yes. Because that is the first question right off the bat. I want to get into this right off the bat because David and I are texting about it. But Ben and our guests have not been part of this conversation. I'm a little bit curious to hear their opinion. This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David.

I'm Griffin. I'm David. And it's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks

to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. True. And this is a new miniseries on the films of John Carpenter. And David texted me about two hours ago and said, what are we going to call it?

What are we going to call this? This baby just got born. What are we going to call it? He said, what are we going to call it? And I didn't say I don't care. I gave him two options. And David seems to have a preference, but I'm curious to hear. I don't have a strong preference and I need to hear them out, said out loud.

And you guys can figure it out, too. We can all figure this out. May I, may I share an idea I'm having? Please. How do we feel about the podcast? How about add one letter? They podcast.

Oh, Oh, Oh, they podcast is actually funny. Actually. That's pretty good. I feel like this is the thing with you and I. Uh-huh.

You love to just to just strangle it into the most ridiculous, awful sounding. I want to be sweating. Jammed pod and cast. Big puddle and little cast. Well, well. I think I have a better. Just on the dome here. big puddle in little cast well well I think I have a better I don't know I'm just spitballing I think I have a better angle on the same structure

but yes I like a Louis Armstrong title where you're having to dab the forehead you're out of breath so you proposed to me two options. Say them out loud now. Okay. Option number one. And we'll let's just say we're officially adding they podcast is option number three. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Option number one. Podscape from Newcast,

which is the first one you proposed to me with confidence yep you're like i mean this is what i think i got it i didn't buffer it and you just said wow your response was wow i mean that sounds positive to me but my second my second which i'm a little partial to my second pitch pod trouble and little cast hey pod trouble and little cast emily doesn't like it emily looks disgusted ben looked a little charmed i i honestly feel like syllables are the key to this thing and i don't like turning china into cast is that what you're saying like turning two syllables into one i think it's like big trouble and little podcast i know that's not as spicy it's like Big Trouble and Little Podcast. I know that's not as spicy. That's the thing. That's the thing.

Whereas I don't mind a podcast away. I don't mind a clean sounding, you just, you know, you got the word podcast in there. That's fine. So like if you told me in the podcast of madness or whatever, you know, like I'd be like, there's something thematic there. They podcast. That's pretty funny the two times we've covered a filmmaker who has a movie title with

cast in it I have let you win I've let you come up with right podcast news and podcast away for the cleaner the cleaner option I wanted to do what pod to the future cast or fucking whatever but

huge cast you know a huge cast I think I'm just kind of I wanted to do, what, pod to the Fuge cast or fucking whatever. But... Fuge cast. Fuge cast. You know, a Fuge cast. I think I'm just kind of into pod trouble. I think pod trouble is funny. I mean, we've all been in it before. We've all been in pod trouble.

Do we think... It feels like maybe Podscape from Newcast is the consensus option. Oh, yeah. It sounds like that's the consensus option. It sounds like everybody loves it. Podscape from Newcast is the consensus option? Oh, yeah. It sounds like that's the consensus option. It sounds like everybody loves it. Podscape? Podscape from Newcast.

Hmm. Yeah, that's terrible because Newcast? I'm like mopping up the floor right now. Pod Salt on Cast Sync 13? No, no, no. No, no, no. Get that out of here. Griffin. Dikembe. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Get that out of here.

Griffin. Dikembe. No, no, no. Dikembe. Get that out of here. You're Dikembe. You give me the wagon finger. I just blocked that into the fifth row.

That's not allowed. Let's percolate. And we'll know by the end of the episode. They podcast takes it. They podcast is pretty. I don't know. I hate to like give like I'm no I'm biased and I came up with it, but I is pretty... I don't know. I hate to give... I know I'm biased

and I came up with it, but I do think it's the best idea. I mean, I'm going to suggest the dangerous thing. The poll? Should we do the Twitter poll and see at the end of the episode where it stands?

Don't do a Twitter poll. We've already learned our lesson. We're not doing a Twitter poll. No more Twitter polls. I agree with that. Twitter's good. Twitter's good. What's the problem here?

Also, I'm not on Twitter anymore, so I won't be able to participate. I'll only be able to run a shadow campaign, which I'm starting right now, to be clear. I was telling Emily before we recorded how much good shit she's been missing on Twitter. Sounds cool. Sounds

chill and very understandable. Like, logical. I can follow the emotional through line really well. Even keel. Very even keel. and very understandable, like logical emotion. Like I can follow the emotional through line really well. Even keel, very even keel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our guest today is, of course,

the mother of blankies herself, Emily Yoshida. Oh my God. Hello, my little babies. And there are two big things I need to set up. Emily's coming in hot today. Emily's got like. Well, now it's 10 in the morning. I was going to say it's nine in the morning, but some time passed.

But I mean, not to not to, you know, I don't know if we're trying to keep this under wraps, but I am actually in person here in my Hollywood Hills manse. Yeah. With the producer himself, Ben Hosley. Producer Ben. So if I sound a little bit like charged or like there's an electric energy over here in LA, it's for that reason. Chronologically,

other episodes will have come out at this point. Chronologically, this is the first time one of us has been in the same room with anyone else for a record yeah yes and it's um we've had an eventful morning we've had an eventful morning we've discovered the whole like thing of like well actually when you record by yourself at home it's just like you just turn it on and go sure as like having multiple people in a room it's complicated and things come up and you need adapters and wires and whatnot.

But we made it. Luckily, I invested in an audio studio's worth of XLRs and adapters and stuff here at the beginning of the pandemic. So it's like, I guess I'm just doing this for the rest of time. We should also mention, just to explain energy at play, that Emily had a near-death experience making coffee this morning.

I texted Ben, who was like, I'm going to come at 8.50 in the morning. I was like, oh, God damn. Okay, I guess I'll make coffee, smiley face. And then I proceeded to have a, I was telling Griffin David, I was having a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-esque experience in the kitchen this morning involving scalding water and broken pots. Cleavers narrowly missing you, forming an outline of your body against the wall behind you. You got locked in the fridge at one point. Yeah, it's, yeah, so I'm... Babies crawling on a hot stove top my baby um

yeah so i'm the adrenaline is running high over here uh and then i was running extremely late you know uh i'm already really living up to the la sort of life of just like being uh delayed because of traffic you know the traffic i mean oh boy don't get me started we were on the um i don't remember the name of the road but you're probably on the 134 that sounds right okay terrible traffic oh man god uh and just just wanted to say my uber driver scary yes scary driver you described him uh and how you felt like he was putting your life at risk and i asked you if he was a toretto now i want to right off the bat because of this say two things and then we will get into the meat of this episode

john carpenter's debut film dark star but one But one, Ben, you come onto this Zoom, not from in Emily's house, but in Emily's driveway wearing sunglasses. Yes. Clear blue California sky behind you. On your phone. Just going like, hey guys, what's up? I think it is time to-

Going, hey guys, what's up? And then also being like, hey Emily, do I have to do something to the door to get in? Like making weird, like, convo. It was really. And then I came out with my laptop already logged into the Zoom. And then we had double Ben on the feed. Double screens.

Look. It was really a Dark Star-esque finagle. And then Ben ended the whole meeting. Yeah. Closed the whole Zoom. And transmission. None of us remember how to be in the same room as another person. No, absolutely not.

We've all forgotten. But I just want to say, I do think this occasion calls for, because this trip really seems to have been transformative for Ben, a new nickname. I think he is perhaps now

Hosleywood. Ooh. Ben Hosleywood. I like that. Okay, I'm into that. But this is the other order of business I want to get off right off the bat before we dig into Carpenter

Ben has of course graduated to a series of different titles across the course of different miniseries I'm not doing the full list I'm not doing the full I didn't do all the fucking nicknames but it is just a fact it is a fact it must be acknowledged that he has graduated to certain tells of the course of different

ministers such as obi ben kenobi uh ben night shamelon ben say say anything dot dot dot i'll take this opportunity to say uh ailey ben's with a dollar sign oh thank you i really uh again we kind of rushed into this no sorry continue i was struggling to remember. Warhawks? Okay, sure. But yeah, I didn't really get the... Check the wiki. Mr. Ben Credible, Eat Drink Ben Hosley, Ben 19, The Fennel Maker. Lovely home.

I wish I could show you the kitchen. Unfortunately, it's in a bit of a state of disarray right now. We forgot Purdue Urbane. Purdue Urbane. We're really down. Robo Haas. We're really down. Robo Haas. Beetle Vape Juice. Beetle Vape Juice.

What was the Nancy Meyers one? The Haas-La-Day. The Haas-La-Day. God, and the thing is, it's still going. Public Ben and Me's. Public Ben and Me's, of course. I like Haas-Leewood. I like the idea that instead of me having gone Hollywood,

it was a big through line of the beginning of pandemic last year really that's what we've decided I feel more comfortable having gone Ben Hosley met Sally yeah that one's good the secret life of Ben

I've been doing pretty good people are going to love listening to this don't worry i'll bring down the nickname part way and then okay we're gonna mix we're gonna mix the shit out oh yeah no the people like people can't if they want we'll have they'll have a separate cut where they can hear just that guys i i'm gonna be honest i my brain is starting to break i can't do all this stuff it's great no i can't do it i can't do it this stuff. It's great. No, I can't do it. I can't do it. Did we ever come up with Elaine May?

We don't have Elaine May or Singleton ones that I know. Okay. I was just going to say Singleton is Ben's in the Haas. Done. Fair enough. Okay, sure. Ben's in the Haas. Let's just get it over with.

Can the nickname be the same, draw from the same material as the miniseries name, though? I think so. Oh, you think you're just making it exactly the same material as the miniseries name though I think so you think you're just making it that's my official decree okay uh-huh I don't know I mean I don't know what's

Elaine May New Leaf Benishtar is sweaty the Hasbrake Kid the Hasbrake Kid Ben Ishtar is sweaty. The Haas break kid. The Haas break kid. Yeah, sure. That's what it is.

But also weigh in, guys. You know, feel free to clean up our mess here. Right. But I think Ben's in the Haas. Let's just keep it easy. Right? I think we can do better than that.

But I do not think now is the time. He used to spell his name with a Z. He put Z at the end of it. It's right there. Ben's in the Haas. I had a whole phase. Yeah, that spell his name with a Z. He put Z at the end of it. It's right there. Ben's in the heart. I had a whole phase.

That's true. Maybe if it chains into one of the names that I feel like we haven't done that. Ben, of course, has rebranded in 2021 to be all about chains and bones. Not that those weren't things before. He's wearing a literal hat that says

bones right now. Let's say he's wearing a literal hat that says bones right now let's say he's wearing a hat that says bones and the letters are made out of bones wait is this a congratulations production it is not I wish I could claim credit for it so somebody just really had your number that's great I know

it's just like my personal brand let's also mention Emily is wearing a directed music by John Carpenter hat. Music by. Yeah. Thanks to the folks at Super Yaki. It's great that we are all wearing like really, you know, visually important articles of clothing for this audio format. I'm wearing I'm wearing a forky hat and an Orko T-shirt.

So I'm just a fucking self parody. I know we've been on for many years but surely there's some new listener tuning in being like oh they're covering john carpenter i love the films of john carpenter yeah 20 minutes in they're just like why would anyone listen to this show david let me tell you something john carpenter was born on january 16 1948 to milton gene and howard carpenter in carthage new york yes he's from he was born on January 16th 1948 to Milton Jean and Howard Carpenter In Carthage, New York Yes, he was born in the North Country

That's true So we're just going to hard pivot into Carpenter facts Correct John Carpenter, by the way Winner of our March Madness this year That's why we're covering him Obviously a long time Mold candidate for us

Yes, long time coming And in our completely flawless March Madness tournament this year that had no hiccups. Normal. No problems. It was so normal where we pitted all the hosts choices against each other who of course was John Carpenter

being championed by but Mr. Ben Hosley. The people's champion. Yes. So Ben this is your series in a way. This is a Ben's choice. The people's champion. Yes. So Ben, this is your series in a way. This is a Ben's choice. It's really, it's like a long time coming. Please, Emily, what's up? No, I was going to say,

but you haven't seen the inaugural film, which I was very excited for you to see personally. Like I just knew, okay, so I want to clear something up also. Like I'm, this is like through the fog of war from the March Madness tournament. But I know that maybe some fans are out there like, why is Emily kicking off this series? She campaigned pretty hard against Carpenter. And this is the spirit of March Madness. I love John Carpenter. I'm wearing a freaking John Carpenter hat right now. I have his albums in my cabinet. I have a fucking Dark Star poster on my wall. I love him and I just feel

like he's a very over discussed filmmaker, but that does not mean that I'm not excited to hear you guys discuss it because I know it'll be different. But also this movie I feel like is under discussed so that's why I wanted to lay claim to it. Let's also say like a majority or at least a large quotient of the people who picked other competitors in March Madness are going to be guests in this miniseries.

Like there is not animosity in the blank check community. People had their champions, but they understood most of us like most of these filmmakers yes it's all goodwill all around all love and there's like I mean if it wasn't Dark Star there would be like five other movies

I would have liked but you said you wanted Dark Star I know yeah what are some other faves for you? I think that They Live would probably be my next top choice. I think,

I think that's my favorite. Carpenter. I, it's definitely the one I've seen the most. And I, I just think it has a very interesting,

it's, it's legacy continues to evolve. So I think that's always interesting to hear too. But yeah, Big Trouble in Little China. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What a fun, like cult classic.

I mean, you guys are going to have so much fun. Like I'm being a party pooper over here. You guys are going to have a great time. No, you're not being a party pooper because I think like with my picks,, Carpenter by far was, I think, probably the most populist. And I feel like he's just an all-around guy that so many people can get behind. But I think we're really going to... We've got a researcher team now, right?

We're going to be coming in hot with new hot takes. And facts. But also, I think we have good guest pairings for these movies. And Ben, many months ago, you and I went to a drive-in double feature in the pandemic of Robocop and Escape

from New York. A very Griffin-Ben night. And it was in the midst of March Madness. And in between the two movies, you turned to me and you said, I feel a little guilty about the fact that John Carpenter's like steamrolling everything. Is that going to be an uninteresting series? Like you were sort of saying, like, he's such a populist pick. He has so many big movies. They're so discussed. Is that going to be an interesting pick? And I was sort of saying to you, like, I think his films are very discussed

and he is very discussed as a guy. But within our format of covering everything and going week by week, the arc of his career is very fascinating. And it's particularly fascinating when you consider that he's a guy who's it's an arc we've not covered that much on this show, which is like one insane outsized hit at the beginning of the career. And then the rest of the career is failing to sort of reignite in that way. He got to make movies that are very personal and are distinctive. But, you know, he always openly complained about the fact that he had to like fight tooth and nail for everything. He never got the budgets he wanted.

He never had another hit on the same level as halloween he never had the studio support uh it is just kind of fascinating when you look at like the this movie which is a student film that then gets expanded to get a theatrical release right that's a lot of the tension of this movie that we'll get into is that they and Dan Abannon had made this 50-minute student short film that was in this nether realm where they were like, it's a little long for a short, it's a little short for a feature, it could either be the most incredible student calling card film of all time, or you can make it, shoot another half of footage

and put it in theaters and uh they did and both of the guys kind of regretted stretching it out to feature length and how they've talked about it in the decade since and it was like complete like it was just it i mean i know that it had like a proper premiere in la but like was it distributed outside of la or was it its theatrical release yes mostly after Halloween though like it had its little release before but after Halloween they brought it back out

in like 1979 with like post alien so they could advertise it as writer of alien director of Halloween you know there was a space movie they both made and that's how they they tried to sell it. I mean, this movie is... Oh, sorry, go ahead.

No, I was just going to say, I mean, it sounds like it got a release, but it was like a crappy kind of grindhouse release. Right. Yeah, but it did play. It was distributed by a porn company. But here's the thing, Emily. If you look at the reviews, most of the good reviews come from the re-release. When it first came out, most critics didn't even touch it. Right, yeah.

I mean, I... It's funny that it got released after Alien. That makes a lot of sense because I love this film as like the first Carpenter film and I love it as like the primordial soup of so much stuff to come, but I love it as a pre-alien movie

it's fascinating on that level because there's like so few examples of essentially a comedy being remade as a more serious film you know like this movie has kind of the same relationship in a way that like uh airplane has to zero hour except it's the other way around right way that like airplane has to zero hour except it's the other way around right yeah that like they make this comedy I mean the story is that like Dan O'Bannon goes to one of the houses where

the movie is playing opening weekend with John Carpenter and they go to the manager and they're like is the audience liking it like are they laughing and the guy goes what audience and they open the door. It's like opening night. There are four people in the theater and they're stone silent. And they realize that no one knew it was a comedy.

And that when they released this the first time, they had tried to like this crappy sort of porn distributor had tried to in like an Ed Wood style, like, you know, pre-packaging, like sell the genre elements, tried to sell it as, oh, this is the next 2001 A Space Odyssey. So people went assuming it was going to be this sort of like solemn meditation on space. And then they just thought, oh, this is bad, rather than understanding it was intentionally funny. I mean, it has a very like its title suggests something more foreboding and austere than it is like i the first time i saw it i didn't

know what to expect at all from it and i just thought it was going to be like a you know scrappy yeah like a scrappy spooky space space movie, which it is. It's just like a very, very different tone than what one might expect. But yeah, I watched it last night for the first time and had that exact same experience where until it started, I didn't realize it was a comedy. I had always assumed that it was like, oh, it's the bootstrappy, like, oh, look at how resourceful we are with special effects and production values movie. But that it was a totally straight serious thing yeah oh man i loved it so yeah i also just watched it like literally this morning for the first time the sense of humor is so off kilter it's yeah i love it i love future

stuff right i mean i love the vfx it's so effective like again low budget like all of the lettering all of the like screens they create for the consoles it's like amazing yeah um but there it's just like it's like a weird stoner like space crew who all are all kind of like just like morose and like half dead it's hilarious i think it's so great it's a ship event it's a real dirtbag space oh my god yes yeah it's like they just won't fix parts of the ship and they've just given up on life it's hilarious yeah i mean it's it's just funny because like i don't know i said like dirtbag spaceship and i was also thinking of like stuff like i don't know like fucking firefly and stuff like that while i was watching this and i was like but this is like

funnier because none of these guys are being sold as cool like it's just like this is actually how depressing and how like zapped of life you would be after 20 years in space and basically like a like small tunnel with like a toilet like yeah just like kind of sucks yeah so as right as we know this movie is written by Dan O'Bannon and Carpenter right and O'Bannon goes on to make Alien and Alien is the movie where space is a job

and these guys are blue collar yeah but this is that magnified this is Carpenter what's his line where it's like it's about like what about how do you like wash your underwear in space or whatever right right yeah like you know that's what i care about how do you clean your underwear when you're on a spaceship because he'd seen 2001 he was like what's all this religious mumbo jumbo no i want to know about just like having to fix the fucking plumbing like on the spaceship well to roll back to sort of general Carpenter table setting for a moment,

I feel like you sort of go like, what are John Carpenter's defining characteristics, right? He is like aggressively unpretentious. While being this guy who sort of did high-minded genre, he always like has been very saucy and sort of spoken out against other filmmakers and other popular films of the time and sort of spoken out against other filmmakers and other popular films of the time and sort of hates any movie that's highfalutin and self-serious.

There was a clip that that was being circulated during March Madness when he was up against my competitor, Robert Altman, where he was just like fucking body slamming Altman, giving him the people's elbow, just saying like, yeah, he's just like a messy, lazy, self-indulgent asshole. He's like, talked a lot about- I hate when my boys fight. Yeah, but he also, there was a recent interview

where he talked about how David Cronenberg acts like he's too classy for Carpenter now, and he resents the fact that Cronenberg felt the need to remake himself as a prestige filmmaker and all of that. But, but you know aggressively unpretentious aggressively unsentimental uh very sort of politically minded uh or you know at least sociopolitically minded and incredibly resourceful

yes although he's always like i'm resourceful because no one gives me any money like i don't want to do all this shit like he's also very unpretentious about his, the fact that he edits and scores and, you know, he's like, look, if I could hire Jerry Goldsmith, I'd do it. But no one ever pays me enough money. I mean, our research, researcher JJ Burge pulled up in here this quote where he was like, not only saying like, I only do the music because I'm cheap.

I only edit because I'm cheap. But saying like, I hate writing. I wish I could never write a screenplay ever. Yeah. Here's his line. He said, I would love to give up writing films. I hate writing. I hate editing. I'm only doing it out of self-defense because there's no one else who can do it to my liking. And the reason I've done the music on my films is because I'm the cheapest and the best I know for the price. But he's also just like one of the best. Like, I don't know. And he's clearly proud of himself as a musician. Like, he does like DJ sets.

He releases albums. He does concerts with his son. He goes on tour and plays all of his soundtracks. Yeah. I mean, he has to, at this point, at least have reappraised that because clearly, I don't know. I mean, people love it. His father had a PhD in music, was a session musician for big ass people like Johnny Cash and Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison.

And his dad was an army band leader, organist and choir director, principal violinist at Nashville Symphony. Like very kind of Tony musician background. And Carpenter started out with music at a very young age. I think that was sort of pushed on him. He took to it and then movies kind of became the hobby. And it was sort of a coin flip between movies and music for him. He started going to university of Kentucky, uh, Western Kentucky where, his father taught. Right.

And then he decided to, uh, transfer to USC to do film. Um, so, I mean, he, you know,

music is not a dalliance for him. I mean, a very Ben fact about him is that he was in a rock band called kaleidoscope in Kentucky. That just sounds like something Ben would do in the 70s or 60s or whatever. But he he's also he is this generation like the first generation to grow up with film cameras in the home. You know, he said African Queen was the first movie he saw, which is another interesting thing to consider that like, oh, right. For so long,

kids movies didn't really exist. And the first movies kids would see when they were four or five would be adult movies. Would be Humphrey Bogart, like, fucking arguing with Katharine Hepburn on a boat. Yeah. And that's what your parents take you to when you're a toddler.

But he also, like, but the things he liked was like, he saw it came from outer space and that blew his mind right like things like that like the thing from another world obviously um is king kong right like you know it's it's the genre movies that that kids could engage with right the earnest appreciation of genre movies not like claiming them like reclaiming them in some sort of trash camp way but just like this is the world I want to live in. Howard Hawks is his all time favorite guy. Rio Bravo is like his favorite movie of all time, which he sort of remakes with Assault on Precinct 13. There are interviews with him in 1978, like right after Halloween, the absolute peak of his career, where he's like, I'm out of step with all the filmmakers of my generation and the industry at this time.

I wish I could be transported back to the 1940s. I wish I was a guy who could make five movies a year for the studio and have access to that equipment and those stars and all of that. Yeah, it's funny. He's a new Hollywood generation guy, but not... He feels a little anomalous. Yeah. I mean, when you think about him, like, this coming out

two years before Star Wars or whatever, and, you know, he goes on to make stuff that's pretty populist, but, like, in a completely different way than, like, Jaws or whatever. Yeah, this came out in 75, so it's like... i mean it feels like both aware of that wave of filmmaking and like completely on another

like wavelength i don't know uh i mean here here's a really good quote from him talking about like his love of uh howard hawks right He said, I believe shots should tell the story first and foremost so much because when you use the camera to express an emotion by an exaggerated angle or something, that's fine. But if you have to do it because what's happening on screen is not interesting or compelling enough, then you're in trouble. If people are talking, that's more important than the director saying, hey, look at me. I'm a director. I can do all this. Who cares about that anyway? The audience cares about what's on the screen. Film school allowed me to grab the camera and zoom in and out and show off. I hate show offs and I hate pretension. Like he's like,

I got all that experimentation out of my system. You make the movie in the most like direct, clean way possible. And you think about like against his contemporaries there's so much experimentation there's so much like very visible in your face sort of like uh style in new hollywood right you have all the still like runoff of the the nouvelle vague influence and you have these genre directors coming in and like trying to reinvent the language and make everything really splashy and also like push forward special effects and he's just kind of a guy who like gets it done. That's also why it's funny. He says he like doesn't like writing because I think,

I mean, when you said that, I was like, I think I like John Carpenter as much, if not more so as a writer. Hard to agree. Then as a director, I mean,

like I, whatever, he's a great director, but like, I think that especially funny Carpenter is some of my favorite shit in the world like writing wise and and and humor wise

timing wise all of that I don't know it's it no you're right he's so funny and he's usually take 10 years ahead of the joke in terms of Hollywood I feel like that is why so often he sort of flops with the studios because he'll make them a movie like Big Trouble in Little China. And then like for years after, just be like, nobody got what I was going for above me.

People like who saw the movie eventually got it. You know what I mean? But like the whole time the studio is like, wait, why isn't this like points to, you know, mainstream hit? Like, why isn't this like that? I thought that's what you were giving us. He's like, no, no, no no no like that's boring like and dark star this movie feels like 50 years ahead yeah like if this movie came out now and looked you know fancy or whatever but was the same like this would still be an insanely clever bit of commentary this is an hbo max original baby yeah well oh god this movie would take it

to the max absolutely no but it is interesting that he's like i wish i was in the 40s and then he makes all these movies that don't get appreciated until like 10 or 20 years later he's like unmoored from the time he's making them and he's both like behind and ahead of the movements but it's also funny that he's like i hate this visual like this splashy show option it's like dude you invented like you know voyeuristic steadicam shots there's like all of your language is like baked into modern cinema like yeah you're you could be a flashy director but he's not a i know what the word? He's just not like a braggy director. That's not quite the word I'm looking for.

Well, he's not pretentious. Not pretentious. No, and you think of like De Palma working at the same time, someone who's like really showing off his understanding of like cinematic language. He's not pretentious. I mean, you know, like all these quotes JJ pulled up, all these interviews like from 1978, you know, where he's just shitting all over close encounters in 2001. And he's like Spielberg fucked it up. Like, here you go. Make us flying saucer movie. What's with all this like morose shit?

But this is the other thing we have to say. This will come up in every episode. I'm sure he is Hollywood's all-time shit poster. He will just give an interview to Fangoria or anyone who calls up, basically, and just growl at them. He's been doing that since he was young. It's not like he did that now in retirement.

He's gotten more salty. He's always been salty. He loves to be salty. He's a salty old space He's always been salty. Like he loves to be salty. He's a salty old space dog. One could argue. Man, I would have loved to have hung out with him when he was just like a chain smoking young guy in the seventies.

He seems like he was such a character. No, of course. But I'm just like to see him in his prime. Like he's just strikes me as such a, like, he's like in a weird guy in that he's like very like artful but kind of a tough guy i don't know that's like a real type that i love you know he also is one of these

guys where like he looks so incredible now like this is how he's meant to look his entire life and then you look at photos of him in like his 20s and you're like that's a really really young looking old dude like it doesn't he never feels like a young man. It feels like he just aged into what he was supposed to be. Like he fits into that horror director thing where you're like, that looks like what a horror

director should look like. Yeah, it's like, is this guy about to warn me not to go down that road? He looks like the guy at the gas station who's like, well, I've been a lot of trouble

for young guys, young kids out here. Right. And he has this sort of like visible bitterness on his face at all times that he can't hide. But also when he does interviews now and people are like,

will you ever make another movie? And he's like, I don't care. I'm old. I'm just going to become the best at playing Xbox. That's my goal now. I just want to get better at Xbox. But he just always says like,

that's my only thing. He's up there with Miyazaki as far as like kind of like shit post uh soundbite old guy directors and i love them both like i want them to be my grandpa and they're both guys that like i feel like people come to them on their knees being like you are my idol and they just like smoke a cigarette and they're like i am you know i'm merely a plumber anime was a mistake shut the fuck up i made a good sandwich yesterday that's the only thing you should respect about me like resentment towards anyone who respects them too much i want to be like that someday i feel like i feel like we will have achieved like gender parity in cinema when there's when there's well I guess Elaine May is

kind of like that too in a way she's sort of I think Elaine May's got some of that Claire Denise got some of that certainly when she bodied David in that interview about sweet green she didn't body me in the interview she bodied me prior to the interview wait what did she say

should we take it off air I've told this story on Mike but basically I tried to bond with her over our sweet green orders because we were eating the same sweet green thing and she looked at me like I was a worm as she should and said aren't you just supposed to ask me questions you tried to

bond with Claire Denis over your sweet green orders I just tried to begin a dialogue with her like you know what harvest bowls i can't remember true mommy imagine presenting a true mommy to her and being being like what this is called is a true she would she would melt you she'd melt you it's a play on umami the fifth taste uh uh this is this movie is a real shrew mommy it's so dark star so i wait so emily and i are the only ones who've seen it before i saw dark star i think i also expected when i watched dark star i think i thought it was a straight up

horror movie i think that's and it had that poster of the frozen guy i know it has scary it's got a very scary poster it's got a very scary poster. It's a scary poster. Right. Yeah. So I think maybe I thought it was like people getting picked off on this. And it's called Dark Star, which sounds. And then I queue it up and I'm like, it is a student film.

And like, that's their take where they're like, this was like the best student film and kind of a mediocre movie. Right. Like, you know, it should have been a student film forever. Right. It's at the top of the heap as a student film that's what a carpenter or a Bannon think but it's so special in my opinion yeah it's funny without being remotely

quippy or like what's the word not clever but like self-aware yeah and it's so dense with themes even though it also isn't that interested in exploring them or like it's not gonna dig too deep but like if you want to think about dark star and about bombs becoming self-aware and like things like that you can have a you could think about it for weeks yeah i mean i think like to go back to the title i feel like the trick that this

movie pulls and i mean it's it's it's it's weird to talk about it like that because it is a student film and it is a little off the cuff but i think tonally it isn't a parody and this when you like as i did last night when you stream it on um why can i think of what it's called when you get a movie on Apple, Apple movies, Apple TV, Apple TV. OK, I mean, I got it on the Apple. I watched it on the Apple TV. Whatever. I don't know. My brain is burnt. But yeah, when you get it like the little summary on is like in this spoof on 2001, a space odyssey, which I can see Griffin's background right now is the 2001 A Space Travesty DVD cover, apparently. But like, it's not that.

And I it had been a second since I saw this movie and I was like, I don't think that's what it is. Is it? And then I started watching. It's like, no, it's not a parody, but it's funny and it doesn't need to be a parody to be funny. Like, it's not aren't space movies stupid. It isn't even like, I mean, maybe Carpenter feels like this personally, but it doesn't feel like it wasn't 2001's stupid movie. It's just like, no, I have a different set of questions to ask about space. Yeah, like it doesn't feel like a parody. It does feel like a movie that generates from Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon like talking about

2001 for six hours after seeing it yeah and Carpenter just being like I don't understand why Stanley Kubrick wouldn't be interested in asking these 12 questions you know it's basically like like does bong rip post 2001 right and it's like

which many did what if you could just like talk to hal about phenomenology like with that would that solve your problems i'm looking at the posters here right and these are from the original release i believe both there's the one with the frozen guy and the tagline at the top is the spaced out odyssey dark star the mission of the strange love generation which is very much making it sound like some trippy absurdist comedy right yeah and then the other poster is mostly like the ship and then it says from alan dean foster first 2001 a space First 2001 A Space Odyssey, then The Poseidon Adventure, now Dark Star. A bombed out in space with a spaced out bomb.

They're going for the stone. This movie was initially distributed by a pornographer, I believe. Right? Like the Deep Stroke guy. And so they're going for, you know, they just want to try and drag in some stone college students. Just like make it a head movie, basically. Which, I mean, it's not not that. It's like, as I texted you guys before,

I think this is the most stoned movie you have ever covered. It is. And I went through every episode just to make sure that you were right. But there was nothing that even comes close. This is a stoned movie, but this is like a really stoned movie. In that sometimes it trails off and everyone's just kind of sitting in silent for in silence for a few minutes and then everyone was like what are we wait what were we talking about like are you like it actually has that energy it's not trying to do that in a professional uh populist hollywood kind of way sometimes you're

just such watching the movie and you're like you're just watching some guys sitting on mattresses and like, when did this scene begin? What's this scene about? I would love to see this movie in a theater. Like, this is,

I saw it at Metrograph a while ago. Yeah. It was a shitty, shitty print, but it was fun as hell. Well,

I mean, I don't know if a good version of this movie exists. Like there was also there were multiple sources at 16 millimeter largely. I don't think it's ever been restored. Dan Abandon always kind of shit on every home video release of it looking bad until I think the Blu-ray release was the first one he sort of approved of. He also I mean, they mean they you know did not get along very well uh split off after this movie right let's do a little dan o'bannon talk stan o'bannon is just the king of not getting along with anybody yes yeah i think dan o'bannon might

just be a bit of a rough hang if you want to you know professionally mount a movie like right like he's yeah even though he's in the fucking thing he's all over the he's let's talk about dan o'bannon and i assume you also love dan o'bannon of course yeah i mean also like like yes he goes on to do iconic things after this i love his performance in this movie he's so funny very funny in this movie in that kind of natural I don't give a shit sort of yeah like impossible to fake kind of way

so he plays pinback of course who is then I always it's the inspiration for pinbacker and sunshine there's another pin there's a lot of pinback there's a band pinback let's not forget we cannot forget uh only early 2000s kids but so griff he's a usc guy too right he's uh he he's i believe he says that he found an ad for usc film school in a play boy and was like all right i'll go. Like that was how he got to USC.

He makes this movie with Carpenter. That makes me so mad. Sorry. I'm just like... For so many reasons. Wait, why does it make you mad? Emily, do you think there's something wrong with the pipeline of who gets to work in Hollywood and who was welcome? It makes me mad, first of all,

that USC film school was advertised in a magazine as if it was like full sale university or something. And then it makes me mad, first of all, that USC Film School was advertised in a magazine as if it was like Full Sail University or something. And then it makes me mad that it was Playboy. I'm just like, oh, God. Okay, that explains literally everything. Carry on. I think back then, right, it was still sort of like, are people really going to go to film school? But this would have been a time where it was like that this is just post the time because like all the all the like 70s film rat guys were going to

school in the 60s and like i guess early 70s when it was aggressively uncool to like want to work in hollywood and then they ended up turning it around for the most part but this would have been like kind of just post that wave and like you start to see that generation kind of making good. I say making good in quotes. But even so, like them advertising in Playboy is like if USC Today

was like buying a lot of sponsored posts on r slash incels. Yeah. Like it was like, are lot of sponsored posts on r slash incels. Yeah. Like it was like, are you too horny and feel ostracized by your community? Come make movies. Listen, I have no problem with with horny people making movies, as we discussed pre-record. Sure.

All for it. I just and honestly, like, it's not quite that. Like, I think that there's there's probably a little bit of a lighter touch to the average Playboy reader in 1972 or whatever. Then people who post on our Instagram. Interesting. But they might be a little bit more sex positive in a completely retrograde way. But I don't even want to get into it. But yeah, whatever.

I don't have to. It's self-explanatory. You know, I mean, I just want to it. But yeah, whatever. I don't have to. It's self-explanatory. I mean, I just want to read JJ put up a lot of wild quotes about Dana Bannon, who was a wild, wild fucking human being, including some of his very, very odd public

statements about women. But I just want to share this one because I feel like it kind of sums up his attitude. Girls always considered me creepy, but I'm used to being alone now. Of all the areas in my life, the most terrible with the least success has been with women. When always considered me creepy, but I'm used to being alone now. Of all the areas in my life, the most terrible with the least success has been with women. When I was a kid, I wanted to get laid so bad. I was such a horny kid.

In my 20s, I grew up a little and I wanted a stable relationship with one lady. It didn't work. I see other people happy in relationships and I'm such an envious person. Dot, dot, dot. I hadn't had a baker's dozen of women until i was 28 then i got money when we started working on alien since then i must have had 300 women i fuck my brains out washington post july 29th 1979 i've never heard this before a lot of there. A baker's dozen of women? Is this a well-known thing about Dan O'Bannon?

I didn't know. I didn't know. And also, I've never heard someone cite the baker's dozen of women. Like, that's some fucking benchmark. Everyone's so excited to hit their baker's dozen.

It's the fucking 13th punch on your smoothie card. Like, that's what he's making it sound like. It was so hard for me to get to a baker's dozen it's the fucking 13th punch on your smoothie card like that's what he's making it sound like it was so hard for me to get to a baker's smoothie card i don't know i'm sorry so dan o'bannon for people who don't know after making this movie he is such an inventive uh guy especially in terms of special effects this movie is like the first ever hyperspace effect basically right this sort of like, you know, like that's the,

that George Lucas calls him up and it's like, come work on star Wars. And he was like busy working on Jodorowsky's dune. So he didn't even get to work on the production of star Wars. He worked on it in post-production. I think like he's the kind of like elbow grease and scotch tape type, like visual effects, elbow grease and scotch tape type like visual effects genius who can sort of come up with something that the movie making has not yet figured out how to represent and then also

he's this absolute fucking maniac who writes these brilliant screenplays then hollywood gets them and it's like can all right make that guy send him to a desert or something. We're going to clean this up. You know what I mean? Like someone pick him up in a cab. And then he has a nervous breakdown. And say you're taking him to the Playboy Mansion and drop him off in like Nevada. I don't want to hear from him again.

But also he created Alien. So he just made money for the rest of his life. Like, he just had that original story credit that paid out every time they did fucking anything with Alien as a property. Like, if you look at his IMDb, it's like 27 writing credits that

are created characters based on characters created by for every fucking, like, Alien video game and what have you and and you know as much as we might not have alien without this movie we might not have it without gotoroski's dude because he like i think he wrote like i don't know i read that he wrote alien kind of in the wake of having a complete nervous breakdown after that movie collapsed and like it's kind of funny because like dark stars before nervous breakdown after that movie collapsed. And like, it's kind of funny.

Cause like dark stars before nervous breakdown and alien is post like, seems like a fun guy. The two things sound like the Yodorovsky Dune experience, like turning him, curdling him even more than he was before. Made him like a complete basket case. Yeah. But also that like,

he was really fucking affected by the failure of dark star and like that moment where he walks into the screening room at the theater and no one's laughing and they don't get it's a comedy and that like alien was this vindictive movie of like oh i tried to make a comedy and they took it on the level and thought it was dumb yeah fine i'll do the same movie, but make it fucking horrifying and aggressive. Right. Did you guys,

I mean, cause I, I watched the Blu-ray like, which has a note by him at the beginning. Did you guys get the note? I did not. I, I should have gotten the Blu-ray.

I will purchase it now. There's a note that just scrolls by written by him where he, he talks about the, no one was laughing at the first screening and you know he brings that up and he's basically like this is a comedy you have to laugh at it like he's trying it ahead of you watching the movie

to be just just FYI like you don't have to there's some funny line at the end where he's like you don't have to laugh unless I'm in the room is his but it does have that kind of energy of like none of you fuckers got it. I guess I should type something up. Well, the funny thing is that like,

when I saw this in a theater, I remember it wasn't a super packed theater and I was doing like, this is a movie that elicits like explosive sudden laughter for me because it's so absurd. So I was just like yelping by myself in this theater.

And I will say that like it wasn't like riotous in the house. Like it was kind of me just making loud noises. So I don't know. Maybe it's not for everybody. It's a very particular sense of humor. It's very understated.

It does feel like the movie is not pitched like a comedy like the movie does not telegraph to you it's a comedy in its filmmaking style which i think throws people off like you have to come kind of meet it on its level it is fascinating that like considering that he goes on to work on star wars that he creates alien that he does return to the living dead which is like he writes and directs and that's a huge cult movie in its own right that dan o'bannon felt it feels like spent 40 years being like the ambassador of dark star in the way that like bob gale has committed his career to being like the ambassador of back to the future and just continue to fucking do interviews and screenings and supervise all these home video releases

and do documentaries. And like Carpenter kind of like has refused to look back on this movie is like, it's my one movie that's amateurish. We never should have made it a feature. I don't really want to talk about it. Whereas Dan O'Bannon like went back and re-edited it two times like was adamant about constantly trying to contextualize this movie so that people would get it like and and tinkering with it yeah there's a special kind of sickness of like retooling your student film that much

i recently watched my thesis film like not that long ago after i don't know a decade of having not seen i was like oh i never want to watch that again in my life. There's a reason I haven't watched that for 10 years. Right. And like Dana Bannon was like, I am committed to one day getting the response I want at a screening from this movie. Like, how do I get people's heads in the right space? How do I change the movie itself? I want this thing to play the way it did in my mind. It'd be one thing if he hadn't gone on to do anything else. I want this thing to play the way it did in my mind. It'd be one thing if he hadn't gone on to do anything else.

That's the thing. Exactly. That's what's wild about it. Yes. What a crazy man. I know you're not, you know, whatever. It's so fucking odd.

Yes. What a brilliant person. Yep. And what a performance. I mean, that letter that you uh mentioned like at the top of the blu-ray yeah i mean it sounds like i mean it just sounds very pinback leaving his his diary entry but nobody appreciates me it's so funny and if you look at like the imdb quotes page for this movie it just kind of reads like

weird twitter posts yes yes you know the increasing trend of weird twitter doing like dialogue exchanges within a fictional reality that you're dropped into and you're having to sort of like surmise the context within only 180 characters or whatever uh what is it now? 240? Reminds me of that. But yes, they get like $1,000 from USC. USC would put up a small amount of the budget for these movies, but in exchange, technically

retained the rights to any student films, which comes into play later because they literally had to heist the film canisters from the USC campus in order to be able to give it to this distributor to release. I think that's still the way that USC worked, at least when I was in film school,

because I remember everybody being like, oh, well, we don't even want to be at USC because you don't get to own your film. And it's just like, oh, but everybody who goes to USC goes on to have much more fruitful careers. Wait, did Carpenter graduate? I can't remember. Didn't he like kind of leave school and not finish because of this movie?

I'm not sure if he graduated. I don't know. I feel like he walked away and just was like, well, whatever. I'm not going to be told what to do. Yeah, he did quit. Yes, he quit at USC to make his first movie. Yes, he quit to make this movie. Wow, okay.

Badass. He made a movie at USC called Captain Voyeur that is an obvious precursor to Halloween in that it's about a person stalking a woman and it's got some of the visual elements. He worked on a movie called The Resurrection of Bronco Billy that was like

an oscar winner i think for short film yeah it won for short film he didn't direct but he wrote it and he edited it and you know he like did the music it was like his first big effort has anyone seen that no no i know i've never seen it uh yeah i should check it out i

think it was a hit enough that like universal like put it in theaters for a long time like it was it was a hit enough that like Universal like put it in theaters for a long time like it was it was you know whatever they would throw it on throw it in front of a feature right but it was like well regarded enough yeah it's a 23 minute

short film yeah yeah so that's all cool I know I say this all the time but like we can't discuss the plot of Dark Star can we there's not really like... No, we really can't. I mean, there's guys, they're on a ship... They're blowing up planets.

...that blows up planets, right? To sort of clear out space. Right. There's also this odd fact. There's like a 50-minute movie that they shot that then a year or two later they went back and both were like, let's improvise some shit. Like this is the only time Carpenter was like, I ever allowed improv.

We were sort of like making stuff up on the day, not just improvised dialogue, but like improvising plot lines and character movements and whatever. But also like the entire fucking beach ball with the claw sequences in the reshoots later. Yeah, I was going to say that feels lifted in. Right. There's like a 40 or 50 minute short film here that is just these guys have been here for 20 years. They hate each other. They hate this fucking job. They wish they hadn't signed up for it. It's like mundane hell. As he put it, it's like waiting for Godot in space.

like mundane hell as he put it it's like waiting for Godot in space and then there's like 50 minutes interspersed in the movie of these like weird closed looped plot lines or conflicts well specifically the the alien one like yeah and the like there's a prolonged kind of pinback versus the alien sequence which is just like I remember kind of the first time I saw that, I probably had had some drinks, and I remember just like my mind completely wandering. It's just... Yes. It goes on forever and ever.

It's Looney Tunes. Yeah, it is. It's like an extended Looney Tunes bit. That's what it feels like. It's literally a beach ball with claws. I saw someone describe it that way, and I was like, tunes bit like that's what it feels like it's literally a beach ball with claws like i saw someone describe it that way and i was like oh that's like them calling the alien the big chap or something and then you look at it like no it's a it's a beach ball with claws yeah um that makes

a little squeaky sound and i think they just like spray painted some rings on like it's yes it's, yes, it's so, it's so purposefully janky, but it's also like, again, like, yes, this goes on to be a Xenomorph later for, but like, I don't know. It also is such a carpenter creature,

which is the other thing I love about carpenters creature shit. Like I love, I love creepy things, puppets, all, all that stuff. Uh, and this is just such a, I love creepy things, puppets, all that stuff.

And this is just such a... This just feels like such a rudimentary first one that it's very precious to witness. It's super cute. That set, though, of where the elevator is going up and down is super impressive. Yeah. I mean, you can tell they shot with with him on his stomach and everything but it's still like that's the fun thing it's like oh that must have been so fun to figure out

and shoot and all that and be like on your shitty like school soundstage or whatever like with your little cardboard set and like make this entire you know literal cliffhanger action sequence I'm like oh that's the good stuff. That's so fun. At least as Wikipedia puts it, right? They shoot the 45-minute thing, 16mm, $6,000. Then people pitch them on the idea of going theatrical with it. This Canadian distributor named Jack Murphy gives them the support to shoot 50 minutes three years later.

And that's the asteroid storm playing the bottles as musical instruments, the sleeping quarters, all the stuff in the hallway and the whole beach ball alien plot line. Right. hallway and the whole beach ball alien plot line. Right. Then John Landis, who's friends with O'Bannon. What a surprise brings the movie to Jack Harris, who's a different producer distributor who got the rights somehow. And he thought 30 minutes of what was in the movie was boring and

unusable. So then he cut that out and had them shoot an additional chunk of 35 millimeter footage after that. So there's like three different shooting periods for this movie. And I think it's getting more and more slapstick as it goes on. Like the original. That's the other thing. slapstick as it goes on like the original that's the other thing studenty film was this more sort of solemn

odd work workers in space type thing and it just gets goofier and goofier right yes exactly and I think the more stuff is also like there's no more script so that just like just improvise just you know come up with shit and Carpenter talks

about it like where he's like I will never do anything that loose again like that. It taught me discipline to make a movie in such a bizarre way. But also, as much as he tries to fucking write off how much he cares about doing the music and the editing and the script and all that sort of shit, it's the one area in which he kind of shows his ass, which is just like the guy just does love having control over his stories. Like he is a holistic thinker about all aspects of this.

And he might say, well, I can't afford to hire someone else to fucking do it. But it's also like he prefers that all of that's under his purview. There's a little bit of the Soderbergh thing there where it's like, yeah, if I take on six jobs, I know I can make the movie cheaper and I'll get everyone out of my fucking hair. And one way or the other, it's going to end up the way I want it. Absolutely. I'm trying to figure out what the... What are you trying to figure out, Chris?

No, the final production number. I guess it was $60,000 in total. $60,000, yeah, is the site of the budget. Yes. It went from $6,000 to $60,000. I think it started at like $1,000, right? And it becomes $60,000. I mean, honestly, it's one of those things where

you're like, you're both like, this costs sixty thousand dollars, and also you're like, how the fuck did they make this for sixty thousand, you know? It both looks cheap, but also you're like, I mean, knowing what it's like at the time, you have to buy cameras and buy film and all, like, it's expensive, yeah.

Sure, and you compare this to shit like Plan nine from outer space like 20 years earlier you know and this certainly looks a lot more accomplished than that i mean this movie does like the alien uh lineage is is very obvious in this right like the whole blue collar like we're sending grunts to space and they're having to take the shitty jobs and like, kind of like nihilistic approach to like the relationship to the company and just like how human life is just like, it's like a spendable, you know what I'm trying to say?

Like it's like, yeah. And, and the ship voice and their relationship to it is so much more similar to me than what ends up happening with mother in the alien films than how, which is ostensibly what they're riffing on, you know, like how it really feels like how has a mind and a perspective and an ethos of his own. This voice has the sort of like cruel indifference of mother where it's just like, you're bug you don't matter my my like commands are to

just get this fucking done uh you're expendable um what was the other thing i was gonna say oh but the other thing the other thing with this and like it's interesting he doesn't come on to star wars until post but lucas clearly had seen this movie and was impressed by him. And this feels like maybe this was the first example of like dirty, used, worn sci-fi, you know, which is the thing that Star Wars like revolutionizes on that kind of scale, that execution, obviously that level of like mainstream success. But just even the fact that they have such a limited budget and such limited resources and like O'Bannon and Carpenter are themselves physically making most of these sets by hand. Right. Carpenter's carpentry at work.

It is so telling that rather than like trying to make a fucking forbidden planet ship on a $6,000 budget, their approach is this ship should suck. It should be depressing and drab, you know? Oh, my God. The blocking of them in that control. That opening shot going through them is like, I don't really know how you do that. That's like, it's such a good opening shot because I'm like, wait a second, wait a second. How are they blocking this it's so good yeah that is like so funny and

effective sorry David go no no I can't you're absolutely I just agree with you and and their banter they're like resigned what's the line Griffin wanted the backup but don't want to name the star that's one of the things that I just like shriek at it's so but it's just

like like these are people in space who absolutely don't care about space and it's just yeah it's super funny right it's just like they signed up for this job and they regret it you know it's like one of them didn't even sign up for it yeah yeah one of them literally just put on the suit and then they couldn't he couldn't in time get it to convince them or whatever like that's just a funny idea too i don't know yeah god yeah this thing is also it's also funny that this absolute shit ship filled with bored like technicians who don't like have the who are low status is blowing up whole planets like that it is so unimaginably destructive that like in a marvel movie we would have to assemble the fucking avengers to deal with these guys they're blowing up and instead they're just like all right bombs

away cool let's get out of here there's a there's signs of intelligent life it's like i don't want a planet with so i don't care that there's intelligent life on this planet. Give me something I can blow up. But it's also just like contract deforestation. You know, it's like they're doing this job that they know is inhumane, but for whatever reason, this has just become like an accepted evil in the world. And it's just methodically done without any thought. I'm trying to figure out where I read this.

done without any thought. I'm trying to figure out where I read this because I want to give credit to whoever made this observation or this connection. But like the helmets in the movie, right, when the guys actually leave the ship are a retrofitting of this very popular toy, a kid's space helmet at the time. It was like a very popular product, a dress up for kids in like the post-space race era. And so it's adults wearing these helmets that they've tried to class up that are a size too small to fit onto them. Oh my God.

And some critic I read made the point that it's like, even that, which is like on its face, just a reality of their limitations ends up leading this like power to the movie of like it. They're so irrelevant that their suits don't even fit them correctly. You know, they're like uncomfortable doing the thing they're supposed to be doing. There's nothing glamorous about it. I love their little bubble at the top of the ship.

Yeah. Talby talby's bubble i mean yeah i like that you have kind of these very clear profiles of these dudes too even though they're all kind of uniformly depressed and like dysfunctional but like you do have the like guy who's kind of gone space crazy up and up in the cockpit and like is kind of the more cosmic brain i mean i love those conversations up in the cockpit and like is kind of the more cosmic brain. I mean, I love those conversations up in the cockpit where they're just like where, you know, where they plant the surfing seed. But it's just that the tire just seems like two guys just shooting the shit and like space and talking about asteroids and stuff. I don't know. The blonde guy with the mustache

who's kind of the aggro one is that ben well these are all my different personalities this truly this is like my multiplicity um but he is like very um he's very much doing my favorite thing boiler oh right of course boiler is his name yes smoking like backwoods on a spaceship come on you know like what this is so great uh and then the gun that he's using that space like ray gun uh looks great like um the lasers on this look great you know man this is like i would love to like go to like a stoner screening of this movie. Oh yeah. It's so fun. I mean,

I was thinking about the context of their mission and like how we find out about it. And I just remember the whole opening part where you have the kind of transmission from back on earth. Um, and I'm thinking back on that now. I'm like, how does nobody go into this movie?

Not realizing it's a comedy from the job? That part is so absurdist. It's very like Airplane. It's very kind of deadpan, absurdist. And then, I mean, it's not necessarily the tone of the rest of the movie, but it's just like obviously setting up the fact that this is a silly, like pointless mission that's just like kind of depressing and mind-numbing and like the kind of, you know, like, oh, yeah, we kind of depressing and mind numbing. And like the kind of, you know, like, oh, yeah, we're watching it all on TV back home. We had a

memorial for your friend who died. Like, oh, sorry about the radiation. Like, you know, it's just I don't know how you like I don't know how anybody watched this. It's like, oh, this must be for real. It's also fascinating that like Dan O'bannon doesn't have an active hand in aliens with a dollar sign but this open feels so much like the riser character an alien and that whole sort of role that the first alien doesn't have of like oh this is what the like smug company officials are like even just the fact that it's communicated over the screen and whatever and you also i know it's not like aliens this, but that you have the fucking knife game with the hand, you know? That's another thing I just yelp at when he pokes himself in the hand, but it's just like a gentle poke.

It's not like he does like grievous damage to his hand. It's just like he can't do the trick. Everything in this movie is kind of just like a minor inconvenience. You know, it's like people who just hate their day job, except the problem is their day job is also their entire lifestyle. Like they have now gotten themselves stuck in this all consuming suck. It's very and there's a whole like they're sleeping in. I don't know what the room is, but it's not their bunk and they've been using the bunk for something else and it just feels like that's the part where you're like oh yeah this is made by college kids because it just truly feels like oh here are four men who like don't

know how to take care of themselves and are like not going to put in the effort to get a better sleeping situation for themselves they're just going to live in squalor on mattresses with like like food junk everywhere on the floor like it's just so they when you open the door to that room it's just like ah college well and it's also hilarious that we're train spotting dad is gone right because like the the leader he got electrocuted something happened to him right you think he's dead we'll get to that later stuck in cryo sleep which is like a truly like a cosmic like tragedy like i'm like i saw that and it's like hilarious but also like

terrifying it's like basically like tripping and never like coming out of it or something you know yeah that unsettled me yeah you say you know like that's what it like it feels like um but wait i forgot what i was saying now fuck that's very appropriate yeah accurate i would say i i also love that the the beach ball like is not an invader it is this creature that they've kept on the shit around as like a mascot and in his like dialogue before the thing starts lashing out at him he's even acknowledging like this was stupid i never should have let you stay like everyone told me this was wrong like it's like he says we needed a mascot which makes me laugh so hard that is like something i would say and then regret totally right that whole like fucking set piece

which is like the proto like type for all of alien is sort of has the energy of like we let this dude crash on our couch for too long and everyone told me he was going to be a problem and now i'm finally like fucking having to deal with it it's absolutely yeah ben you would like show up to the office with like a duck or whatever and be like it's the blank check duck like what you don't think this is a good idea yeah cut to two months later it stinks like duck it's like attacking you with its with its webbed feet yeah guests are coming in and we're like we're sorry about the duck smell duck piss yeah well well finally find out what what does duck piss smell like finally now um but i remember what i was saying so the captain though the captain's gone you get a lot of great jokes where um uh o'bannon i forget the character he's being like i want to make sure

pin back he was he wants to make sure that on the record it made him uncomfortable that he sat next to him when that happened i feel like he keeps going back to that like interrupting like you know official like recordings and what have you uh but the fact that the captain is gone and it's just now the like you know next in command who like has given up like i just i think that setup is so great it's really funny i i was uh not surprised to see that the creators of red dwarf like cited this as like, I feel like every couple of years, there's like a hot spec script going around, either as a pilot or a feature or both,

where someone's trying to crack the space comedy and not the sci-fi comedy, but like, can you make the people driving each other crazy on a spaceship comedy? Because it feels like that's so rife for like interpersonal tension comedy and it never works most of them don't get made a lot of times the pilots are shot reshot never make it onto air and then like you know uh the fucking uh what's it called the orville is like 15 years of networks trying to figure out a way to do a big spaceship comedy and then their solution was just do star trek and maybe also make it not a comedy

yeah do star trek and occasionally there's a joke red dwarf is like the one show that cracked this and yes and this movie is the one movie that kind of cracked it of like this is the type of comedy you need to do from just like four people who resent each other stuck in like a vast nothingness for eternity the thing with red dwarf that right is the lol nothing matters vibe obviously red dwarf manages also to stretch that into a sort of semi-functional space universe that makes you know it has plot it has a more expansive sci-fi reach it has the attitude uh of a dark star that is very hard to make dramatically exciting obviously and also that there's no boss like the lack of leader where it's just like here are a collection

of characters who should not be at the center of this story the anchor the hero is gone and now these people are just kind of fucking stuck and it's like odd couple comedy to the nth degree where the stakes are so goddamn high and there's just no other life well like speaking of claire denis um i i mean i hadn't seen this, I think, since High Life. And I mean, one thing about doing the comedic version of this is like what level of effects do you need to pull off a comedic tone? Like, I don't think it can be so bad that it's just a joke because that joke will wear thin very quick.

Like you have to convince people a little bit of something. But it also like if it's too slick, I don't know that maybe. I think that's a mistake that people make a lot is they think it has to look like the real thing at a level that then becomes distracting. And also on a production from a production standpoint, day-to-day filming affects performance in a way that drains comedy, maybe. But I mean, I think that Claire Denis maybe made the inverse mistake. I don't know if I'm in the minority on that,

but that's one huge miscalculation as far as what's the level of effects we need to pull this off? Obviously, that's not a comedy, but I laughed. Sure, sure. Obviously, that's not a comedy, but I laughed. Sure, sure. I love that movie. I gotta watch it again.

I've seen it twice. It's a tough balance. It is hard to know how much you need to comply with the audience's expectations of sci-fi films. Yeah, that movie's wild. Actually, I went to a screening at BAM

and Claire Denny and Bob were there. Oh. Bob. Bob. Are you talking about Bob Pattinson? Yeah. Bob. What do you mean?

Bob. I don't think anyone... Bob was there. I don't know. I actually don't know what Robert Pattinson goes by. That's how I know him. I don't know I actually don't know what Robert goes by that's how I know yeah I don't know but folks you need to

understand Ben did not say that with any glint in his eye there was no smirk on his face that was not pitched as a joke that he was waiting for us to react to yeah he wasn't like oh right

yeah I was like Weinstein yeah I truly all three of us were just taken aback doing the math on who he could be talking about. Bob. Bob Pattinson. Well, anyway, he was vaping the whole time. I mean, you know, you guys probably all have

a close personal relationship to Bob Pattinson now that you've done the whole Twilight series. Oh, yeah. Oh, his art bulbous art, yeah. Yeah. What other things we want to talk about with this movie? I also, like, I think the thing that's maybe the most directly winky

and not just sort of sad sack and dry on this is the bomb conversations with the computer. But I still love it. And I love, whoever does the voice of the computer is just like pitch perfect it's so good uh it's it's mostly carpenter right uh let me double yeah no no sorry mostly obannon is the is the bombs yeah obannon is credited with two separate names as each as bomb 19 and bomb 20 but it's a a band. No, but I mean the computer, the, like the, the,

the main system of the, the woman's voice. Oh, that, that, oh, the lady. Yeah.

That's her name is cookie nap. One of the all time. Great names. Yeah. Cookie nap. Cookie nap. Oh man. We've all taken cookie naps.

K N A P P. And yes, she is the voice of the computer in this. And then most of her credits after this, world of sexual fantasy assistant to director. Phantasm comes again, production assistant. Can't Buy Me Love, the Patrick Dempsey movie. Studio teacher.

Then she's like a studio teacher. But then she goes from being assistant on porny movies to being like on set teacher to minor actors. And then on a movie called Bodies Rest in Motion, she's credited as welfare worker. Wow. Yeah. I'm reading her obituary.

Yeah, she was an interior decorator at some point. She just turned into a teacher. She worked on a lot of movies that are not on her IMDb. Seems like one of those people who is... She should have been Siri. I think her voice is so good. She should have been Siri. But on the subject of

incels and dudes in the 70s reading Playboy, getting into film school and stuff like that, and just the general... and how that feeds the general tenor of this film like there's just something so i mean i know that like it's sort of groany or creaky to have like the sexy computer voice but there's something so self-parodic about it in this instance because it's just like these absolute foul humans

who still have this like passive woman's voice that's like coddling them and like being like are you sure you want to do that and like um and just like being the most pliant pleasant uh kind of mommy voice in the ship to these absolute dirtbags

I don't know I just it's very funny to me I love it um I just want to connect these dots now. I don't know. I just it's very funny to me. I love it. I just want to connect these dots now because I just figured this out. Cookie Knapp was married to Douglas Knapp, who was a USC compatriot of Carpenter and O'Bannon and was the cinematographer on this as well as Assault on Precinct 13 and then became like camera operator second unit for Escape for New York best boy on Badlands camera operator on

Frankenweenie and Beetlejuice and Coming to America shot a lot of Star Trek Voyager episodes later in his life I was going to bring up Voyager actually when you were talking he was director of photography on to bring up Voyager, actually, when you were talking. He was director of photography on a lot of Voyager and camera operator on even more of Voyager.

See the six degrees of this movie and and all space things. It is fascinating how it's not even that it's like, oh, this is the thing that inspires everyone. It's like this is the thing where five people then branch out and make the changes. Like this is their dry run. And then they all go out and splinter off and everyone takes their specialty and then like seeds it throughout the industry. But they also like in addition, obviously, to some some other key players like kind of build what sci-fi looks like for the next several decades yes yes um yeah it's and so there's everywhere and that's why there's some like even though there are obviously parts of this movie that are a little sloppy uh some fat that could be cut, it's still so precious to me for that reason.

Like, it's just, it feels like an actually watchable glimpse into that. Like, I think a lot of things like that, that hold that position

are actually rather unwatchable. I wish I could come up with some specific examples right now, but like, but this, like, I like this movie better

than Assault on the Super Teen. That's actually a wild take. I would say. That's close to a wild take. Yeah. I want to watch this movie more than that. And I actually watched that recently because this series was coming up and I was like, oh, I haven't watched that in quite a while. And like, I don't know.

It's just like, well, it's also like also like I as I said I like funny Carpenter best yeah right and so I feel like he's not funny Carpenter I'm also like Halloween is not my favorite Carpenter by a long shot like once he starts being funny and absurdist again then I'm I'm back in on it

like those are my favorites so you like big trouble in Little china you said obviously they live I mean the thing is the thing has plenty of comedy in it too like I can't wait to talk the thing

the thing is the movie in his filmography that feels like the natural evolution of this in a lot of ways where he's dealing with a lot of the same themes yeah and also like another thing i was thinking i was like kurt kurt russell feels like the perfection the the diamond like fusing of all the dudes in this movie yeah oh yeah absolutely like you could imagine a young kurt russell just being one of the dudes on the ship, like facial hair and everything. And it's that same tone.

It's that same, like that. Yeah. But like, don't bother me like about the naming. The star just feels like something that Russell could have delivered. Right. Like the guys are all very good in this.

We should also mention that Carpenter dubs over one of the guys that, uh, does he dump over? Uh, what's his name Trilby Talby Talby yeah oh the guy in the cockpit oh wow yeah Carpenter

dubbed over his whole performance I mean I imagine most of this was dubbed over anyway but but that you know like I'm going into it but the movie has an interesting energy as a byproduct of the fact that it does not have any movie star juice in it. And like, obviously, like, you know, he works his way up to finding Kurt Russell, right?

Like finding the perfect avatar for his onscreen sensibility. Right. Like finding the perfect avatar for his onscreen sensibility. But I mean, even something like comparing this to the first Evil Dead where you're like, oh, like Sam Raimi was lucky that his buddy actually could carry a movie, you know, and you're watching like the fact that it's just the guys with these kind of low energy performances in this makes the movie the star rather than making any kind of one guy the point. Yeah, it very much feels like, oh, these are just my buddies I would have been having a beer with like at the end of the day. But I instead we instead of going to the bar, we like went to go make a movie. Well, and like aside from the other shit we were talking about, Dan O'Bannon, his legacy was that he was this like

very riled up, paranoid, sort of like constantly monologuing dude who always had like a loaded gun near him. Slept with a gun under his pillow type thing. Right. Slept on a pillow made of guns probably right i mean yeah as we said carpenter and obannon did not get along uh making this movie they do not like exit this experience being like all right what are we doing next uh

yeah carpenter sided with harris right? With the producer guy. No, that is, I don't think that's true because famously Carpenter put in the movie a computer screen flash saying, fuck you, Harris. What? No, O'Bannon did that. O'Bannon did that. O'Bannon hated Harris. Yes.

Okay. And then, you know, Harris works with him on Eyes of Laura Mars mars which is like one of the first screenplays that carpenter sells when he's like trying to make money in hollywood like harris sticks with him but it came down to basically like carpenter was willing to play ball with certain creative like requests that were coming in and o'bannon was just being difficult and just basically was like refusing to to play the game that you very much have to and so i think that is like kind of where right right and that's kind of where

they're like uh the tension started to grow from there basically yeah and like harper's whole thing was obviously that he wanted this to be a calling card movie and that he thought people would see it and then offer him films which didn't. But he got an agent off of this. And so he kind of like pragmatically just went like, fuck, I'll just write scripts. And so it was Eyes of Laura Mars. What became Eyes of Laura Mars? What became Escape from New York? And then there was a third movie that was a Western that Elvis Presley and John Wayne were supposed to do together that never happened, which is a fascinating reality to consider.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, between this and Halloween, I think he obviously didn't give up on directing, but he was kind of like, I guess this is how I need to make my, get my foot in the door is just selling enough scripts until someone lets me

make my own thing again. Okay. I have a, I have a final thought I'd like to share about this movie. That is something that we haven't discussed as of yet okay take us home the music so first of all we have that country song yes which is great yeah it's so fun and it it's so funny and so funny to have it be like the lead-in song for your sci-fi movie. Sets the tone quite well.

Again, who would watch the opening of this movie and not realize it's a comedy between that song and the opening transmission? It's just... Especially the ending when he's fucking surfing to Benson, Arizona. Yeah. It's so...

Written by Carpenter and Bill Taylor who did the special effect. Yes. Also, I think I was just perusing the wiki of this movie that there's a town, Benson, Arizona, and there is a street in it called Dark Star Lane.

Wow. That's cool. That must be homage. Yes. But even the whole synth vibe of this movie, like Carpenter kind of stumbled into it by accident as a byproduct of just like,

we have no time, we have no money, I cannot produce an expansive score, I could play instruments myself, or I can get this like newfangled device. And he describes the synthesizer he was using for this movie as being controlled by wooden pins you had to put wooden pins in different slots to modulate the levels of it and it was just for him like that's

the it'll sound fake but that's the way i can at least get the size of score i want and then that becomes his definitive style as a composer yeah it's also funny grip well it just he says he did that in four hours how How the fuck do you... You're like, all right, what do we do? Put a bunch of pins in there? All right, I'll do a score in four hours. Get out of here.

It's wild. What were you going to say, Ben? I'm sorry. No worries. There's something to be said about the sound and it being elevator music or music throughout and how it's, it's very funny. And then it's like that, that's the entertainment that they get. Whereas like,

you know, sometimes you'll get like, um, sometimes you'll get like operatic music and stuff that maybe feels a little bit more like usual typical of like what music people listen to in space like maybe sometimes it's like rock songs like in marvel movies but like shitty jazz in space no but they're they're making fun of 2001 like in particular with the opera shit right sure but there's that that is the funniest thing to me when they're listening to the rock music in the cockpit and they're all just like headbanging.

It's the most high energy moment of the entire movie. But also it's like it's realistic where you're just like these dudes just like stuck in isolation doing grunt work. aren't going to listen to fucking like highfalutin

classical music just because it makes the imagery look poetic you know that's not what they would be playing or even have a choice of something they like sure yeah it feels like I think like the computer plays the elevator music and they

have their like recreational music. Yeah. That she turns off at some point. It is fascinating to me that these multiple different cuts he did, like the first one O'Bannon did was for Laserdisc. And then on DVD, he did a third cut. And then on Blu-ray, they've restored it only to the theatrical cut. But I read reviews of both the dvd and the laser dicks cut where people said like they're incoherent like it like he was

like look i'm just taking out this additional stuff that was never meant to be in it and people are like it doesn't make sense you cannot it's not a functional version of this movie i would assume this is also sort of later even crazier Dan O'Bannon, right? Who's like, hey, let me roll up my sleeves. I'm sure I can fix this thing. And it's like completely bananas. I mean, it is like what you were saying about Bob Gale, except it's like you have

the money from Alien. Right. You have the passion to protect Dark Star. Like it's such a, it's such a, like he's set up, obviously it's not like he's struggling, but the thing he's fixated on is this extended student film.

He could have been the Bob Gale to Alien if he wanted. Like he could have been the guy who does the fucking rounds for Alien and instead he's like,

I need vindication for this student film. And it's like quite the opposite. Like he doesn't work on any other Alien except like, he's like a consultant or something on's like quite the opposite. Like he doesn't work on any other alien except like he's like a consultant or something

on Alien vs. Predator. Like that's the one he hops back on for. Right. It's hilarious. And I imagine that was a combination of both. That movie had like

such toxic buzz that they wanted to like make good with the fans. And also he probably was like, I don't know, I want to buy a boat. I'm ready to like take this job now well he has like a just a handful of huge hits that i'm sure just like kept him afloat for the most part because he wrote total recall right right yeah and i forget what there's something else but yeah living dead return of the living

dead was like a big vhs movie you, I'm sure that was profitable for him. But also like any time they went to the alien well for any reason, the guy got a check. Yeah. Yes. Guys, I just had a great time Google Street viewing down Dark Star Road. I really recommend it. Really? Take a look.

In Benson, Arizona. It's just like empty. Wait, share your screen. Blast it. Oh, what the fuck? All right, let me figure that out. Wait, what part of Arizona is Benson in? Is it northern, southern? Let's

find out. I have to zoom out here because of course I know so much about Arizona. It looks like it's southern. It's sort of probably like 30 miles out of Tucson or something. It's near the border, near the Mexico border. Griff,

do you want to get the lyrics and sing while we, while we go on the street view? Do you want to do that? I don't know if the lyrics are findable, but I want to say a thing I was just thinking about. So I'm looking here, right? Uh, at dark road.

Ooh. All right. Okay. Wait, let's, so let me, let me, this is on the highway greener than I would expect.

Wait here. I want to get, Oh, it's on the 10. No, it's off the 10. So let me... This is on the highway. It's greener than I would expect. Wait. Here, I want to get... Oh, it's on the 10. No, it's off the 10. So wait, let me... It's off the 10. Okay, here we go. So here's Dark Star Road.

Okay. When you zoom in even more, it looks like there's like one property off of that road. That's what I was... I think I drove through Benson last summer. Yeah, I was trying to figure this out, Griff, because look here. There's a little line of mailboxes, right?

Oh, wow. That presumes there's some properties. Because I was trying to think, yeah, could we get a compound on Dark Star Road? David, this is what I was going to suggest. We're starting to look into getting, now that the pandemic is easing up, getting a studio, blank check offices where we can record the show.

We were thinking, oh, do we go downtown? Yeah. What if we just go fucking compound Benson, Arizona? Go through Dan O'Bannon, sleep with guns under our pillows. Yeah, blank check productions

on Dark Star Road in Benson, Arizona. That would be a killer address to have though for your at least like you could maybe get a post office box under yeah get mail forwarded from there or whatever like look is that a person no that's just a weird plant maybe weird this is turning into like a like a horror movie yeah i was gonna say we're gonna do man i find a murder on dark star road and we're like, shit, when was this taken?

Or we see like you standing on the side of the road, but your eyes are entirely white. Wait, this is from 2023. I don't know. All of our faces on the zoom go blurry. Anyway, pretty cool.

Look, see, here's a property. Is it for sale yeah this is this is 2016 look at street easy beware of the dog all you guys need is a nice little

double wide on on on dark dark star road and if we're being if we're being responsible David blank check recording studio should have a beware of the dog sign on the door that's true that's actually a good point

alright let's play the box office game unless right Griff anything else you want to say uh no you uh pull up the box office game and I'm gonna try to figure out how much that house costs on dark side road sure I would get hit up Zillow.

Maybe even if there was like a billboard. Hey, like John Carpenter, check out this podcast. That would be amazing. I did not see a billboard on my quick tour, but it would be funny if we paid $800 for a billboard ad. We decided for the first time to advertise our show, and that's what we do. In the middle of nowhere, Arizona. All right, Griffin, the box office for this. Now that I have my magic Kindle book

with the box office from every year ever, we're going to do this film. Technically, it was released in Los Angeles on January 16th, 1975. So the box office for that weekend. So it's the, you know, kind of the tail end of Christmas. 74 is what we've got here.

Number one, I think is a movie. My guess is this is one of your favorite directors. I think you really like this movie to a mystery, a murder mystery. Is it the, the long kiss? Goodbye.

No, the long kiss. Goodbye. Oh, well, what am I talking about? Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm combining the long kiss. Good night. The long Kiss Goodbye? Oh, well, what am I talking about? Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm combining the Long Kiss Goodnight

and the Long Goodbye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. No, no. Who's one of your favorite directors, Griff? Well, that's why I was guessing Altman, but it's not. Right.

No, no, no, no. Ashby? No. Cassavetes? No. I'm thinking of my big 70s guys yeah did I put him in the March Madness bracket

I don't think you did because his career is like 80 movies or whatever like he's got too many movies Lumet okay uh it's not Murder on the Orient Express is it no it sure is it sure is a hit yes Hong Kong beep beep choo choo

I love that movie. I think that movie's a little underrated. I think it's just such fucking Cracker Jack entertainment. It is very fun, that movie. Fun, ridiculous, star-laden, Albert Finney having a nice big hammy sandwich.

Yeah, Finney being younger than all of us playing Perrault just a blast Murder on the Orient Express is number one at the box office in its eighth week of release a hit rules I guess rules yeah big fucking splashy hit

yeah number two is a disaster film there are two disaster films this is kind of this is the peak of the yeah exactly the air This is the peak of the... Exactly. This is probably the most famous of that. Poseidon Adventure, I guess, is probably the most.

Is it Airport? No. It's famous for its billing. I think Emily guessed it. Towering Inferno? It's the Towering Inferno. Diagonal billing. Right. Exactly.man is second but higher than mcqueen so everyone can be happy or whatever have never seen the towering inferno i never have

either i tried i tried to brush up on all of the erwin allen movies recently for the sake of uh trivia which made me wonder if i should watch them all. I have always put them in a pile in my mind of like, these are movies that will only have interest as curios. They will not have

entertainment value in present day. I feel like that's a Patreon series for you guys. Honestly. Ooh. That would be super fun. That would also get me

to watch them because I think I've only seen Poseidon Adventure. Erwin Allen movies. Well, here's the thing though, Griffin. It's two hours and 45 minutes long. That's the other thing. These movies are like so overstocked.

Right. Yeah, I know. It's just funny to think like pre-Star Wars, like, you know, that's the sort of like Hollywood's like, well, what you need is you need like a building or a boat or a place and it's on fire. Yeah. And we just load it up with stars. You need 20 actors between the age of 40 and 78.

That's the thing as well. Like Murder on the Orient Express, this movie and another movie, they have those posters where there's just this sort of Marvel Comics like box of faces. Yeah, like so many faces. That's what I was going to say though.

It feels like an interesting first swing at like what, like so many faces. That's what I was gonna say, though. It feels like an interesting first swing at like what, like the four-quadrant entertainment that Marvel would become where you just have like somebody for everybody in this cast of thousands and a bunch of spectacle

and it's long as hell. It's too long. It just feels like the first run of that style of entertainment. Okay, so that's number two. Number three is 1974's Best Picture.

1974's Best Picture is not Rocky. Rocky's 75, right? 76? Rocky is 76, I believe. Okay, 74. Fuck, why am I not thinking about this?

It's not French Connection? Nope. 75. 71, sorry. Midnight Cowboy is 70. Is Freak can even on your... Is that even possible? We've put him...

He's the original blank check guy. Yeah, we've talked about him. Yeah. Okay. Sorcerer is like the original blank check. Not original, but yeah. Yeah. Okay, wait, wait, talked about them. Yeah. Okay. Sorcerer is like the original blank check. Not original, but yeah. Yeah. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Process of elimination. If I tell you something else about it, you'll just know what it is. If you tell me anything else about it, I'll know what it is. Pretty much. Pretty much. It's a big hit.

It wins Best Picture. You can't tell me genre, right? Crime. Fuck, why am I not thinking of what this is? Because it's too obvious. Oh, it's The Godfather! You fucking dummy. No! That's 72.

It's not The Godfather. It's not French Connection. What's another film about crime that won Best Picture? Here's a hint it's really related to the film the godfather it's been fucking moron it's called the godfather part two my next clue would have

been like it's I believe it's the first sequel to win but then it's like well you know right you know what that is yes it is godfather two which popular and quite good in my big hip So like, well, you know, right. You know what that is. Yes, it is. Godfather Part 2. Which popular and quite good in my opinion. Big hit. Successful film.

Part 2 came out first. Yeah. No. Yeah. They switched the order. Yeah, they switched the order. They pulled the prequel. Yeah, and part one was like a black widow.

Yeah, right. Or a relevant movie about some dead characters. Okay. So Godfather Part 3. It's just chilling out. Obviously, you know, it's the Godfather Part 2. I said two. I said three.

Oh my God. We're so confused right now. Get out of here. Number four at the box office is a movie I don't know particularly well. I've sort of heard of it. It's an indie movie, true indie movie, about a sheriff out for blood because his wife got killed by drifters. No, but you've got, yes, those kinds of vibes. I mean, there's no way. Well, maybe you have heard of it.

It's not Billy Jack, obviously jack um but it's in that walking tall billy jack sort of vein let me read you the tagline for this it was the fall of 54 a time when laughing was easy and they and laugh they did did until they crossed capital t the capital l line so that's sort of a hint is the line part of the title it is it is but that's a pretty good tagline right laughing was easy and laugh they did until they crossed the line also it's a period piece it is it's set in the 50s set in 1950s georgia the movie is called the line oh no no it's called macon county line uh okay is there anything that's more of a bummer than 70s era 50s nostalgia no it's weird that's like us making movies about the 2000s well it looks like this movie is kind of like a texas chainsaw massacre type movie where it's sort of like this is quote unquote based on a true story and it's sort of like a you know gritty uh violent movie that's like very very vaguely it's

like it's like a drive-in movie like a big you know uh grindhousey yeah sounds kind of fun uh emily to your, it remains absolutely absurd when you think about the fact that Happy Days premiered in 1974 and the chronology of the show starts in like 56 or something. Yeah. And you're like,

could you imagine if I was like, we need to make a network sitcom about the Halcyon days of 2005. But that's what that 70s show was in the 90s. Like, it's like the 20-year cycle. But's what that 70s show was in the 90s. Like, it's like the 20 year cycle. But at least that 70s show is sort of like snarky about it. Happy Days is just literally being like, these were the happy days when things were good. Ah, yes. I guess it's like the last time that people could tell themselves that about a previous decade of American history. Men could

say A and hit a juke box. Now of course, oh God, when men could do that. Now Griffin, number five at the box office. I don't think this is another Irwin Allen-esque disaster movie. I don't think Irwin Allen actually produced this one. It has a terrific title, which is

An Event... Sorry, the whole tagline whole tagline um but it is it's uh much like the towering inferno a star-laden disaster movie with incredible special effects inspired by the success of movies like airport you know know. It's called An Event? Written by Mario Buzzo. No, it's not called An Event. Sorry, that's the tagline. I said title was stupid. Oh, I thought the name of the movie was An Event, which is the same here.

I'm sorry. It was sick as hell. What is it? It's not Earthquake? It is Earthquake. Hey. Which I believe is a dam gets, the Mulholland Dam, right,

gets blown up at the end. That was like their big special effect. It collapses. Could they not at least say it was a seismic event? They should have said that. That's a good point. You got Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy. It is wild how they were like, what are you under 50?

The exit signs over there. You're not in the cast of Earthquake. It's also wild that like Mario Puzo writes this fucking like supermarket bestseller book, right? And then gets like a credit for partially adapting his own book to what becomes one of the most beloved movies of all time, one of the most successful movies. to what becomes one of the most beloved movies of all time, one of the most successful movies. And then the rest of his screenwriting career is Earthquake, The Godfather Part 2, Superman,

Superman 2, The Cotton Club. Like, done. It's so weird. Yeah, I mean, he's just like the king of hacks. You gotta respect the guy. Yeah. I don't know. it's so weird that he

wrote superman did he like i know he's not the only person i guess he's no there are four credited writers on superman right yeah they i i i was going deep on superman however long ago and he was like the big blue chip writer they brought on apparently throughout most of his script because they'd written one and two at the same time he got credit on both of them also he he fucking won two oscars uh even though i think you know coppola really fucking wrote those screenplays it's like he got to take home two trophies apparently yeah uh tom mankowitz said puzo's script was 550 pages long. Yeah, and like incoherent. It was just like horrible. Anyway, that's what some

other freebie in the bean, Young Frankenstein. Oh, wow. You've got the man with the golden gun on the top 10 there. You've got something called Law and Disorder. Looking that up with Carol O'Connor and Ernest Borgnine in crime. in crime written

70s new york city two cops have had enough that's what a law and disorder is about holy shit griff just look up the poster for law and oh no i'm looking it up right now wow please it's like an oil painting of these guys you gotta see this shit there was the tweet going around this week that went like semi-viral about how like why actors in the 70s were allowed to look like normal people and everyone's too hot now and this poster is just a great example of that where it's just like yeah put them all on the poster right it's just like four bags of salami wearing fucking summer clothes I need to see this I don't know where my

phone went I can't what's the name of it again? Lawn Disorder Lawn Disorder it's an amazing poster yeah oh my god I can get the gist of it

I got a very looks like yeah a couple bags of salami is about is about the size of it it looks like a movie that's sort of like a comedy version of these cops take the law into their own hands it's like they do that and then they're like oh shit we don't know what to do you know like it's like a like that poster drops on like 1974 era Twitter. And I immediately open a new tab and get on Fandango and see. Yes. Yes. We've talked about before, but 1974, because you mentioned Young Frankenstein, one of those just a year career years.

That's hard to fathom where Mel Brooks has Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles come out within six months of each other. Yes, crazy. That's why we have to do Brooks one day. Yeah, and also that gave him such a blank check that he was like, maybe I star in the movies now? And they were like, sure,

yeah. Like, he did the Seth McFarlane thing except it worked and people were like yeah another Mel Brooks vehicle you get to be the guy now we love it hey you know what and we did it yeah that was a fun app

Emily though has to go we shouldn't I already have caused enough chaos in your day but this was fun it's like like a group orchestrated chaos, or at least the West Coast side of things over here. Well, look, it's going to be absolute chaos when we record the three of us in person again

at 2320 West Darksire Road in Benson, Arizona, which is 728 square feet and currently going for $73,818. Guys, you can afford this. We can. That's an investment. That's just an investment. I personally would love it if the entire podcast industry post-pandemic just all ends up being run out of various compounds

in the rural United States? Yes. I believe this is the one we were looking at the photo of. Yes. Okay. As best I can tell. Really? Yeah. It is not

the house then on Dark Star Road? Yes. Apparently? No, there were four listings on Dark Star Road, but this is the one that seems to match what we were looking at. That having been said. Does it have a soundproof room? I don't know.

You got to find a house on Dark Star Road that has a soundproof room because I'm sure the vibes would be great and it would also save you a lot when you create your recording studio. But if it has enough property we could dig a hole and have a soundproof bunker. True.

And if we're gonna really go full Rogan, we need sentry deprivation tanks as well. Yeah, I think you guys should pivot to bunkers. I think it's a great time to go all in on bunkers. I've been saying it for years. I mean, I'm glad you said it.

Finally, someone else. This one is one of four properties listed on Zillow off of Dark Star Road. And three of them are off the market. And one of them sold two years ago for $180,000. So things might be trending down on dark star road is what you're saying correct yes yeah okay well still well you know look i'm seeing that there's an airfield nearby i'm sure it's a very chill place to be they probably have one of those um oh i was just talking to somebody about this you know like outside of marfa they have this like dea blimp that i drove

by when i was out driving on the 10 last summer and it's one of the most alarming things to see speaking of weird kind of fake looking sci-fi props it's just this like cartoon looking blimp and i didn't know what it was i felt like i hallucinated it was like a mirage and then i was talking to friends who were like oh yeah it's a it's a surveillance blimp run by the dea and there's a lot of that around the border so i'm sure you know you you'd have some fun chill times uh david do you want to uh uh talk us through the link that you just sent so i was just clicking around near dark star road and I found a $45,000 lot on North Faded Love Lane. Faded Love. This is not Love Lane.

No, Faded. Faded Love Lane. No, it's not even. It's North Faded Love Lane. Right. There's seven pictures. It's four acres for $45,000. Seven pictures.

So it's four acres of land and the pictures are just of desert. There's some cactuses. There's a picture of what I assume pictures are just of desert. There's some cactuses. There's a picture of what I assume is like a power box that is that's utility.

So you can so you won't be without power. That's to reassure you that you're not going to be living off the grid here. Buying this and then just yeah just sitting next to that power box

kind of plugging my computer and being like all right. David, this is the perfect bunker spot there's literally nothing built on this land we just go down you're right Griff's like okay the roof

we're standing on it we're going down baby alright perfect end to the episode nobody buy my property on Faded Lovelane no David's gonna close out of this zoom. And now I'm just imagining the conversation he's going to have with his

wife, trying to pitch her on Benson, Arizona. God, no too hot for me. I need my rain. Also, we're going to get a blankie from Benson,

Arizona, writing us a 15 page. Oh my God. Being like, being like, please, that's not where you want to be. You want to you know, you don't want to be on scenes dead on faded love. I know you guys are probably joking, but here's some overly earnest advice that I wrote in the form of a novel. Emily, always a pleasure. Yeah, pleasure is all all mine great to be back uh great to be in the room with with at least part of the pod feels like old times almost except weirdly at my house like if you're in the same room as ben that's the room where it happens that's the room that matters that's exactly what that song is about too um, I should mention, I forgot to wear for this recording. I forgot that it was my plan until right now, but I recently acquired a really good Welcome to Marwen shirt.

Oh, wow. I will send the link to the group. Where on earth did you get a Welcome to Marwen shirt? earth did you get a Welcome to Marwen shirt? Universal has a rewards website where you can type in codes that come with your Blu-rays and cash them in for prizes. And most of the prizes are

Zoom backgrounds, but some of them are like giveaway swag from movies that bombed. So I own a Welcome to Marwen shirt. They also have a Mortal Engines water bottle. Get that for me. That's my next.

That's my next. Great. Emily, is there anything you want to plug? You're not on social media. Don't look for you. I'm nowhere. I don't.

Yeah, I don't know if I have any. No, I don't have anything to plug. I'm just, that's what Emily plugs. Don't look at me. Don't look at me.

Don't think about me. Listen to past episodes when Emily was a guest. Yeah. Welcome to Marwen, most importantly. Boom. I was just going to invoke

Io Adebri, her incredible Twitter joke of no pronouns don't refer to me ever. Yes, yes. I feel that. Yeah. Listen to past feel that. Yeah. Listen to past Emily episodes.

Listen to Night Call, Back Catalog. I truly am nowhere. It's kind of, it's both incredible and sort of a drag. You're working on secret projects. You got stuff going on. There's stuff going on. Doing secret things. Someday I'll have so much to promote you guys.

Well, of course, we have our Atlantic City movie on the slate that, you know, someday, you know, the Big Bambino. The Big Bambino. We'll get around to it. Oh, yeah, 100%. Also, I feel like we need to do, if you guys ever come out here for Disneyland or for Galaxy's Edge, we have to do a Vegas trip as a sequel to Atlantic City. I'm a push for this. Wow. That would be, oh man, very fun.

Can you imagine? Emily, yes, please. I will also say David has a baby now, so I don't know when that happens, but I will be out in LA in just two months. Yeah. Come on. We got to get another in the room.

I'm very down to do any stupid trips. Alright. Alright. So we'll strategize. Put our heads together. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to... Oh, do you have something else you want to say? Sorry. No, I had to jump. I'm like...

Yes, we're done. We're done. My instincts were correct. He's just going to do the outro. So I'll clean up quickly. You do your thing. Yeah. Okay. I'll be back on in a second, guys. I just need to like send a text.

Please remember. Rate. Review. Subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Thank you to Joe Bone and Pat Rounds for our work. Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. Go to blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit and go to our Shopify page for some real nerdy merch. And I'm still struggling to remember the correct order of

these things since we've updated after being on a recording hiatus for a while. But of course, have to thank JJ Bursch for our research. Alex Barron, AJ McKeon for our editing. One of these days I will get these things in the correct order again. Tune in next week for Assault on Precinct 13. Yes. Trucking along. And should mention as always, you

can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where at this point we're Rdicking it up or are we on to the mummy now no we're in riddick time sorry yes we just did pitch black and we're about to post I believe our

F9 return to cinemas episode oh the movies are back the movies are back that should be a fun episode with all sorts of twists and turns and appearances from a lot of past guests on the show. So that is that. That is that.

That is that. That is the end of this episode. Emily has returned. She has presumably sent the text, but the episode is done. The text has been sent. The text has been sent. The episode has been real. And as always, who cares?

Don't bother me. End of transmission.