Blank Check with Griffin & David - Don Jon with Hollywood Handbook

Episode Date: May 2, 2021

He’s the kid from Third Rock. The Boy from Brick. The hitRECordjoe himself. Blank Check proudly presents a special one-film miniseries on the directorial career of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, so far consisting only of the baffling 2013 porn-addiction comedy DON JON. “The Boys” Sean Clements and Hayes Davenport of Hollywood Handbook join us as we ask the important questions, like, “Why does this movie not star Channing Tatum?” “How did he get ScarJo and Julianne Moore to do this?” “What is HitRecord?”  Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

There's only a few things I really care about in my life. There's only a few things I really care about in my life. My body, my pod, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls, and my cast. I know the last one sounds weird, but I'm just being honest. Nothing else does it for me the same way. Not even real pussy. That's it? You done? I wavered for a minute as to whether or not I wanted to say pussy.

Your voice cracked at the word pussy. Do I want to replace it with a different word? Or do I want to say pussy? I mean, I don't know. I'm probably not even supposed to be talking yet. But you just did our show and you said it constantly. I know. That's why I hesitated. That's exactly why I hesitate because i feel like i've used up all my pussy drops for the day you cashed in all your pussy i did for the we did two records

back to back and predominantly talks about pussy in the first one that's why they call them pcasts that's why they call them pcast. And look, this is the kind of blunt, no-holds-barred talk we're gonna have to get into in this episode. Finally, a look inside the mind of the man. That's the thing. Look, honestly, we

often, we come out here and we try to be woke. We try to be professional, right? We try to be above board, but the gloves are off baby there's no time for that kind of talk in this episode you can't mince around with don john this guy doesn't hold back he tells his fucking priest how many times a day he jerks off and we need to display the same radical honesty in talking about this bananas movie. A quiet career ruiner.

Quiet, like a slow bomb that is still going off, in my opinion. David, I was coming on with the exact same take holstered on my belt. But as you said, David, a rare example of the bomb doesn't go off until years later. He plants the bomb under the table off until years later he plants the bomb under the table and people are like okay i hope you had fun doing that i i didn't like that but uh you know i do i do like you and he's like uh-uh it's over you liking me is over at the time that it came out there was like a full court press kind of media frenzy of like wow yes this is really good like i do remember that the the general public perception was like hey he pulled it off like he made this

passion project yeah it looks a little goofy but there's a real movie in there and i was going like fucking really and then of course the rest of the world went like, no, not really, but we're not going to say that right after it comes out. Guy must feel like shit. I'm trying to find the number here, but I remember it getting acquired for a bizarrely large amount of money too. I remember the news story of Relativity bought it and they're ready to go hard on this thing. They think it could be a crossover hit. They want to be in the Jogo business. Okay, well, here's the thing. It was a $4 million minimum, but with a $25 million P&A guaranteed or whatever.

So they're going to sell that much advertising on the movie. I don't know. I just remember part of it being like, they think the movie has box office potential, but more than anything, Relativity wants Joseph Gordon-Levitt to think of them as his home studio because this is the start of a major directing career

and they want to be in on the ground floor. As Mike Fleming said in Deadline, I think Gordon-Levitt has delivered the goods here. He's a bright young man who's willing to do what he needs to, which is that's a weird way to put it. Yeah. I don't like that, but OK. It's also funny that I feel like the perception was like kind of weird that that's what he decided to make his first film about. But also, I guess it was sort of a proof of concept. He wanted to show people that he could do it, and he's done that, and now he's being talked about

to take over bigger projects, and then none of them have come to fruition. He's been attached to three or four big things to direct and star since this, and none of them have happened. He's not directed another thing outside of HitRecordJoe videos since this came

out. Look, introduce our guests, but there's one thing I really have to bring up right away. Well, this, of course, is 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 are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want, and sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they they bounce baby uh the half commitment there what one eighth commitment there to doing the voice do the voice i don't know what is it it's like so hard to do it and not feel like oh i'm just doing an all that sketch but the answer is he's playing this entire movie

at the level of an all that sketch, you know, not just in all that. I do want to be introduced at some point, but not just that sketch and all that are like SNL sketch. And it's a host performance. That's correct. It's not. It's not part of the ensemble.

It's not somebody who is professionally like doing characters and other voices. It's not Josh server. It's not part of the ensemble. It's not somebody who is professionally doing characters and other voices. It's not Josh Server. No. It's not even Alex Moffat. It is Joseph Gordon-Levitt hosting those shows. Sitting down at the writer's table being like, well, I got a guy who likes porn. He talks like this. And they're like, oh, yeah, all right.

Okay. We talk a lot about, I feel like it's come up recently, but it's also come up multiple times. Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing Make Him Laugh in his SNL monologue, which is very, it's like literally that. And it's another thing much like Don John's entire existence that feels like the further away we got from it, the more the smell started to like circle around it, you know? But wait, introduce our guest, Griffin, please. So I can then say that because it's connected to this. Well, let's just say this show is usually constructed around miniseries where you pick a director and go through all of their films. And we're trying something very radical here.

It's the first ever one film miniseries. Yeah, unless he does another, in which case we have to do it. And I think our guests have to come back. If he does another one, we will come back. We will come back. So it's on the books. This is a miniseries on the films of director Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The name of the miniseries is Pon... Con? I guess. There's not a lot you can do there. Pawn con? Yeah, sure. That's what it's called. And our guests today are, of course, to talk about a movie that is fundamentally about being a boy.

We got the boys, Sean Clements and Hayes Davenport of Hollywood Handbook, who infamously have already discussed the trailer for this movie at length, but you never tackled the full film. No. It was in our first episode that we talked about Don John. Teaser Freezer. Our first Teaser Freezer, first episode, and the momentum from that segment is still

petering out over the length of our show. A couple death throws left in this thing and I want to say because I saw some people upset when we just recently did Doughboys that we got introduced as a duo and never said our names associated

with our own voices. Apparently we sound exactly the same to some people. I am Sean and that other person was haze thank you so much for your consideration so this i i'm curious right off the bat did you guys both see this in theaters after doing the bit or did you not see it until later? I did see it in theaters. I saw it at the AMC Century City at the mall.

Not a huge... It wasn't a packed house. And I do think it was like the opening, not weekend, but probably week. It's very embarrassing going to this movie by yourself. It is much more embarrassing the the circumstances of my second viewing oh i i have a projector that i just like plays on my screen everyone walking by can see what i'm watching and so i was conscious of that the entire time

the movie was on not just because there is like a lot of like actual porn in it that's like weirdly not chased but like for a movie that's about porn you see like boobs sometimes but it's like it's not like a super super graphic movie but there's like a lot of like sex in it so it does look like i'm watching porn blown up on my wall. But it also looks like you're kind of scared of it. Yeah, that I'm like, it looks like you're like, it doesn't look like you have the fucking stones to watch real porn. Right. You're closing out of it real quick and switching to another video and then closing out of that and so on and so forth for 90 minutes.

But I would be relieved when it would like get back to just like Joseph Gordon Leavitt, but then realize people walking by would look and be like, is he watching Don John? And then you'd be like, please get to another porn scene. At least I seem like a normal guy. The porn guy. Oh, he's watching Don John. What if your girlfriend interrupted you late at night? Are you watching Don John?

to do late at night are you watching don john it does feel like you could remake this movie just swapping out the detail that watching don john on his computer is the thing yes yes that has yeah your girlfriend catches you watching i quit anytime i want i checked your browser history you watched don john 46 times this week my My body, my pad, my ride, my boys, my girls, my Don John. You had a VPN because it's not even on American Netflix. So I did not see it in theaters. I had only seen the trailer. And what I feel like, as mentioned, was a tremendous amount of press and promotion for it. So I felt like I had a really good sense of it. In watching it, I was surprised because really the trailer is just

the very opening minute of the film. Like that, like, and everything else was a new experience for me. I do, in that opening, when he says like, I only care about a few things in life it is funny that he goes on to list like eight things like he names family friends his home his job like i mean he's basically just it's like his car his right yes it's like most of the things people worry about day to day right you're setting up like eight pretty big umbrella

subjects my boys and my girls is so many people my pad my my car it's like okay i feel like we could have done less and my porn it is funny how much you're right. That was like the marketing campaign was just like, are you ready for the rhythm of this movie? Yeah. Like this is like the fucking speed at which the images are going to come at you. This guy's going to be narrating everything. It's the thing I wanted to say before I forgot about it. It's just that what we're talking about with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, his general enthusiasm. what we're talking about with Joseph Gordon-Levitt,

his general enthusiasm, just, I assume you guys read that like Ryan Johnson, obviously who he'd worked with had like, you know, he like had helped him with notes, but also Christopher Nolan. Did you see that? Like that?

He like, he, he like went to Nolan and was like, so what do you think about my script? Like, here's what I'm planning on doing. That makes me sick. Just to think of that.

That's what, that's what Christopher Nolan said. I'm just trying to imagine him being like, so he's like, this guy, right, this guy jerks off a lot

and Nolan's just like, uh-huh, uh-huh. Like, I just would, I would love to be there. Yeah, I'm sure. Oh, it's a very, it's a very winning premise. And you say it's reminiscent

of these, these Jersey Shore characters. It just felt like he was sort of trying to do a baby DiCaprio thing where it's like, let me only work with major directors and carry them all with me as mentors, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But yeah, he was making a pretty quick jump in terms of, obviously, he's been acting for like his entire life at this point. But you're like eight years into sort of his reinvention. Is that fair to say?

Very successful, by the way. Oh, yeah. Up until this point, he's kind of like hasn't missed a step. He's on top of the world. He has this absolute peak right everyone's just like yeah this is the guy he's like we all agree he's one of the key guys of his generation his class of actors he's good in supporting roles he's proven himself as a leading man he works in multiple genres he's got the goods romantic comedies this totally works

action movies yes you're cool this work do small indies he could do character work he can just be movie star charisma yeah and it was the dicaprio thing where he had been on a big network sitcom and it was like this is it was like the kid from third rock is doing like a greg iraqi movie where he's like like a hustler and it was like yeah he is and it's fucking good he's doing a good job that that was sort of his gilbert grape where people were like holy shit this guy can act and then it's just like up up up yeah and you're like oh he must have really like smart instincts or whatever and then he's just like can i set all of that on fire in a matter of like seconds yes because i feel like he's also one of those guys

where whenever you read interviews with directors he had worked with talking about him they would always kind of say that like i feel like jonah hill was another guy like that at this time where people would be like you have no idea how smart this guy is he really sees the whole picture he's gonna start directing movies and blow people away but here's the look this is the whole because i think he is unambiguously good in a lot of these movies that are leading up to don john right i really do enjoy him and i know we make fun of him in inception but you know i think he's he's doing what that movie wants he's good in it but like he's good in it. But like, he's good in like, just the like 50-50 Dark Knight Rises. I really love Premium Rush.

Looper. Premium Rush rules. I like that. I saw that in the theater. That was great. Yeah. And like, he's usually playing kind of cocky guy. Like it's like, he should be more annoying than he is.

And he's like, you know, kind of getting the charm across. He does Lincoln the year before this. His movie right before this is playing Lincoln's son underneath Daniel Day-Lewis in a Spielberg movie. Oh, yeah. And then he does this. And it's not like post this. It's Sin City 2.

I'm talking about this. These are his major roles. The Walk, The Night Before, Snowden, and then like a four-year break post-Snowden. And then like whatever he's been doing recently. It's like, it's close to alarming. Like, I almost want to know. I know he had kids. Maybe he's just like, eh, maybe I want to just like raise my kid.

I don't, because it's, but I think it's just that this movie is so embarrassing. It's not even noxious. It's just like, you're just like oh oh oh god like you're just you just feel awful watching it you feel tingly i did text griffin that like between this and 500 days of summer he made two of the most rapidly aging films in history where they were like so instantly out of date and like that one like just is like it's criminal and then this one just the fact that he's doing like jersey shore guy stuff like it is that fucking jim tan laundry thing and it's it's at the very very end like it's just barely culturally relevant when he does it so even watching it now

you know whatever it's seven years later or something it's just like holy shit i forgot this was even a way that we were saying people acted because it's so cartoonish because obviously those you know the situation and paulie d and shit are we're playing it up on the fucking show yeah and then that he's like leaning it in and hamming it up. And then he and Scar Jo and Tony Danza are just doing such a crazy heightened version of it was really wild. You were texting me about like we were both saying, you know, not to jump the gun, but that like Julianne Moore is, is inarguably the best part of this movie, but also is kind of disorienting because she's in a legitimate movie giving a real performance. It's a real movie when it's, when she's in it, she's a real person. Right. And you were like, as opposed to the fun trash that,

and your list was Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tony danza and silent brie larson are giving me yeah like it just feels like silent brie larson is her own performer it's not the same as saying brie larson no it's the fact that she's kind of like just looking at everyone up from her phone for the entire film where it's like oh like she's been hexed like yeah the one person who like out of the cast who is playing the role that they were assigned and I think doing it very well is Scarlett Johansson. Hard to agree. That's why I kept her off that last list. She's totally good in this movie.

She's insanely good looking. And is playing into that, leaning into her own objectification in a way that like the movie sets out to do and she is like totally on board julianne moore it totally it does feel like is is also working hard but it does feel like a completely different movie she's in a totally different movie for sure but she felt like a she also just did feel like a person to me because i would do that thing where she would say a line and I would think about what that line must have looked like on paper. And how it's like, God, if this was mishandled at all, it would just instantly be so fake and inhuman. Whereas I think there were some moments for me that Scarlett Johansson's

performance, maybe ring a little false. She just had so much more to do. Like she had so many more scenes and so much more dialogue. And her character sucks. Like that's a shit thing to have to be. But I think she is giving the movie, right.

She's doing what is required. Like she is funny. She's in the best version of this movie whereas julianne moore is in an entirely different better right but just i just have to pull it's just like who i know he's joseph gordon levitt he's pretty famous so he can sit down real people and be like hey do you have advice for me on this movie i want to make but is he literally just saying like okay he's a jerk the guy jerks off all the time he's this jersey shore guy oh this is why and then they're like okay he's a jerk the guy jerks off all the time he's this jersey shore guy oh this is what and then they're like okay and then what happens it's like then he meets a nice lady and

he kind of chills out and like did everyone just say like oh that sounds good sounds like good ending sounds like you've completely told this like everyone's just like uh-huh the lady the lady's nice yeah yeah she's she's nice she's like a nice lady she's like been through some stuff he's treating her like shit he's yelling at her and shit and like and like takes her notebook and then he uh on a dime shifts and then she fucks him instantly right then she has sex with him and it's like maybe you should like look in my eyes when we have sex and that just kind of snaps him out of it and then he's like a chill guy it is a movie about looking someone in the eyes when you come right that's it yes yeah but clearly in the pitch like and i want to talk about what you all think it is but he has like very big ideas

about what the themes of this movie are yes yes and it has to do with something like it's about image and it's about like you know like these jersey shore guys that are all about image and their public presentation around that. And it's about society and how they create these false versions of love. And it's about a guy who is addicted to the false version of love love that like porn and commercial carl's junior commercials like put out and then he finds something real but there are so many underserviced ideas in there like there is something about like there's like the pornography and the carl's junior commercials and like the hyper sexualization of like imagery you're presented in society also the idea of like being obsessed with your own image

also the this barely touched upon idea that like romantic comedies are unrealistic and that is porn for women and that is emotional porn which i guess is under the same umbrella you're talking about where it is this like false idea of what love is but it's just like we're presenting these two different angles but that gets abandoned and like scarlett johansson loving those movies the parallels never totally drawn it just kind of like dropped there and left alone and then like just brushed aside along with everything else just that just so that he could then like have sex with Julianne Moore twice and then be like yeah that's and then when the credits came up I was actually surprised

I was like oh they're not gonna wrap up anything like which fine no it's just cure all yeah everything's good now yeah ScarJo is playing a regular annoying person I guess is the final conclusion of this movie and he had a problem and julianne moore was the medicine right but the movie does to her

in a weird way what the carl's junior commercials are also doing except worse because it's like it's like showing off her body and like her image in this like a hyper-sexualized way, uh, making her just like a sex object, but also she's, she sucks. Also. Right.

It turns out she's kind of like retrograde. Right. She is. It's, it's sort of presents that first thing where she like starts dry humping him in the hallway and makes him agree to go to night classes as if like this man who is addicted to porn and whose only like reward drive is for sex now the sex is being used to steer him towards improving his own life like that is the very

first blush like look at it but then it becomes like this woman is a manipulative asshole who just wants someone who's totally under her control but then his buddy is like but you're gonna finish the night class right like yeah and we meet julianne moore and she's like this class is boring so you're supposed to be like okay i guess she's real but are we supposed to think this class is good or not? Yes. Is it good or not that he went to the class? And if it's good, then is it good that she made him do it? Or should he want to be a bartender and that's cool and he shouldn't go to school? I mean, all that stuff is so mushy.

that's cool and he shouldn't go to school. I mean, all that stuff is so mushy. It is bizarre how just completely uninterested this movie is in what is the class. You know what I'm saying? You only ever see the two of them leaving the class. But you understand that ScarJo has said she wants a guy with a career, with a degree and shit. But it's just unclear.

What is he studying is he doing well does he care is it improving any other areas of his life and then julianne moore just same thing she's someone who's trying to start fresh but you have no idea what they're actually working towards and whether any of us sinking in because we don't know what his passion is apart from whacking it like we don't like excuse me i can list like five passions his boys yeah yeah but like he doesn't say like i want to open a bar someday or if he does i didn't hear him say but like his bod this the here is in my opinion the sweet all right griffin all right that was the end of my list i'm sorry go on the sweetest scene in the movie apart from the kind of cloying julianne moore like where she's like oh my family died and he's like okay well maybe

you should teach me how to have human sex but that was one of the lines too sorry where she where i was like oh my god because it's like what happened to your family and she's like cars are terrible things or something like that and you just go whoa. Did they all get hit by one car? Were they in a car together? Were there multiple car accidents? I remember contending to people this year that there was an argument that she should win the Academy Award

for this performance in terms of just most work an actor had to do to give a good performance. Did she know him? How does she get? This is the other crazy thing. I mean, you were like setting up, David, how wild it is that Julianne Moore

and Scarlett Johansson are really kind of in like big career peaks at this point. It's a year after the Avengers, same year as Under the Skin. Julianne Moore's a year away from winning the Oscar. He hasn't worked with either of them before. If this movie starred two big actresses, if it had starred Zooey Deschanel and whoever,

and it's like, well, they got along well, I don't understand how he got the two of them to agree to do this. Even for cameos, he's calling in Channing Tatum and Anne Hathaway, also peaking. Right, we have to talk about Tatum. But before, I just think the sweetest move, the sweetest Don John moment

is when he wants to buy Swiffers and then he sincerely advocates for how Swiffers are good. And obviously this is a scene that's designed for ScarJo to emasculate him and be like, you can't talk to me about mops. That's disgusting. Men don't talk about that. But he likes to keep his

apartment clean that's okay i don't know i the only time i connected to don john was when i'm like oh this guy i don't know he seems to have gotten into having a nice apartment i felt bad for him most of the time i don't like him but i was like come on because the first 20 minutes of the movie he's like i fucking lovehub and I hate sex with women. It's so boring. I'm just like, this is a weird opening pitch, buddy. But they do that at the cost of Scarlett Johansson's character, who you're supposed to believe has a really strong stance of whether or not Don John is allowed to clean his own apartment. Yes.

It's also in any better version of this movie. The point of that scene isn't look at how much of a bitch she is the point of that scene is oh my god i've never seen you get this passionate talking about anything like this should be the scene where they're like oh there's the root of something there that you could focus you should start a cleaning business or fucking whatever you know like and instead she's like don't talk to me this is disgusting i can't see we're in public in the more functional crappy version of this movie that is an activation moment of this could be a career for you somehow there's some lateral move from you like things being clean you appreciate the value of a good swiffer

channing tatum we have to talk about him because he is the original originally he was going to be Don John wow oh I didn't know that okay good to work here's the two things that's the thing does the movie work with Tatum as Don John especially like 2012 Channing Tatum right like you know yep right after Magic Mike yes absolutely I think it works the body makes much more sense like I like he clearly like put in work on this movie he is right he looks fine up a little

bit Joseph Gordon-Levitt but like you I'm just not buying him if you were on Jersey Shore he would be like the twerpiest guy on that in that cast. And like he is, he's just never really pulling off

this working class Jersey type upbringing that he never had. I don't really know what Channing Tatum's upbringing was, but I would believe it if you told me that that's like the kind of thing that he came from. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a child actor, was like born in L.A.

Right. Channing Tatum is like he's from the south he's from like um alabama and then he lived in florida or you know something like that when channing tatum is in like a tank top and a chain you're like okay yeah this is what you're that's what you wear it's not a costume what i read was that christopher dolan's big advice was don't act in the movie if you want to write and direct it, because that will be exhausting and annoying. And he's like, what if I'm in every scene? They told Zach Braff that about Garden State. And then every interview, he said, everyone told me not to do this. And now look. Now, look, it's also that's the fundamental problem is I think he so badly wants to have the sort of like Bradley Cooper star is born moment where they're like, this guy writes his own destiny. Now, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has studied under the masters, and now he's only going to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt movies.

He's Warren Beatty, you know? Yeah. So is this movie more successful with tatum yes i would say probably absolutely yeah i think it's arguably good if if he's in it i just think about the scene in magic mike where he goes in to try to get the the business loan from from betsy brandt he's trying his hardest to seem like an adult yeah and she's being very sweetly condescending to him. And it's like, if he had that energy in this movie, I kind of actually feel for this character. And he could play a porn addiction dark.

Yes. I'd be like, oh, this is rough, you know? So Anne Hathaway is in it, and she and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were sort of seen as counterparts at this time. I think there was like even prior to Don John coming out as successful as he'd been, there was the beginnings of some backlash

to it where it was... Try hard theater kids. Yeah, where it was like they're very polished theater kids, good performers, good actors but they don't feel like people. And I think him starring in it and then him doing all this press for it where he talked about directing it

really associated you with him, the guy talking about his smart movie in a way that then wouldn't allow you to watch the movie and separate the character from it. So you couldn't feel bad for him, whereas with Tatum, you'd be like, oh God, this guy can't fucking figure it out. Like that's the other problem is Joseph Gordon-Levitt reads smart on screen, right?

Like he just kind of naturally does. And a lot of his best performances have been guys who understand what's going on and are in control. Right. And just innately, when you're watching this movie that is this director trying and failing to make big points about like society and the state of masculinity and the face on screen delivering those points is the same face of knowingness. It just feels so arrogant. And I remember some podcast around the time that Magic Mike came out, even maybe before that, when like people were shitting on Channing Tatum. And this one person said, like, I don't know if he's a good actor yet, but he's just kind of innately interesting as a movie star because he looks dumb. Like there's something just innately about his face. And everyone's like, whoa, that's mean.

And this person was like, no, no. But like I say, this is a compliment. There's something about his just natural resting face that makes it look like he does not understand what's going on. And it makes him innately sympathetic. You're feeling for the guy because it's like a dog trying really hard to understand the situation. So you can put him in something like the vow and go like, well, I'm rooting for this guy to get his girlfriend's memory back. Look at how sad he looks. He's so confused by the situation. And a movie like this where the conflict is so dumb, I would actually, I think, feel for him if he was giving that puppy dog look. No, yeah.

You'd be like, oh, can't you see? Like, this is this thing you think you like is what's stopping you from being happy. Like, you would just just be like oh no but with joseph gordon levitt you're like you fucking know the different like what are you doing right it's it's like bugs bunny looking at the audience and saying like you see what i'm saying here well when he's lying like when he has that sequence where he's sitting on his bed and it's getting more and more unmade even though we know he loves to keep his apartment tidy and he's talking about how you know

he he's even happier now that she's gone because now he gets to like break his own record of how many times he's jerked off in a day and it's like what he's saying is he's lying to himself but it just like doesn't re it's like he's not even convincing me that he's trying to convince himself it but it's also like there's no sign of like the point in the movie where he's supposedly melting down, jerking off like 50 times a week or whatever. He's been dumped. And like the only sign that there's any negative impact on him is that he like yells more when he's driving. Like he's like, especially he punches a window. And he's kind of and it just

kind of hurts for a minute right there's nothing in his performance right yeah he like he has like terminator powers but like he does not seem remotely different he's not putting that into the character i don't that is also an ego moment to be like one punch i shattered the car window it didn't make me bleed and i didn't break my hand i walk straight into church with a bloody fist i don't take time to even wrap it you know and then these scenes with his friends who are like ghosts like it's like they're these people who visit him in his apartment and no one else sees them or they're in the club but he's just talking to himself like it's like yeah this guy he's got his friends i'm like he has he just goes to different places and people talk at him he goes

to tony danza he goes to you know the family they yell at him he goes to his pad they yell at him he just does not seem like a human being at any point until the last 20 minutes. The Channing Tatum thing is really interesting. Like, it's got me like so Channing Tatum, I think, fought against that, like being pigeonholed as a dumb guy. The himbo thing. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

He was getting amazing roles. He was able to play them at an extremely high level, dramatically and comedically. But he fought against he hasn't been in a movie since 2017. Right. I mean, he's another career we talked about where it's weird because it just felt like that guy had it totally figured out. And he didn't really have the mistake moment that Jogo did. You know, I think he might have not wanted to do that kind of stuff anymore, potentially. But Joseph Gordon-Levitt

might have been doing the opposite thing where this guy reads smart on screen. This is the worst kind of failure possible. Where he reads smart on screen, he wants to play dumb in a movie, and you watch it and you're like, well, you're not that kind of dumb.

Yes. You're obviously not pulling this off in a, in a smart way, but like, it's not, this is different from the kind of dumb that this movie is. You know, your,

your dumbness is reflected in the fact that you thought you were a good casting choice and that this was a good concept for a movie it's unfortunately the dumb thing is you overestimate how how and why we like you or how much it's yes it's such a fascinating thing of just like i feel like it's a thing we talk about a lot on this show especially when we get to movies that are so much more like about the star as a tour rather than director. And especially when we're talking about something like this,

where the star is directing themselves. But just like how much of it is, do you understand the way you play on screen or not? Right. And the fatal like missteps that people can make in their careers are totally misinterpreting

how they play on screen, how the audience thinks of them. And even worse, which I think is what Gordon Levitt did, thinking I can do anything. I'm a blank slate. I'm malleable. I can reset every time and make the audience establish a whole new relationship to how I play on screen. What's weird is it is choices.

It's just bad choices because like i i've seen in movies in mysterious skin he can play he plays really dark in that movie like he can put like he can put on that face but for this character don john he decided that he should have like a dreamworks smirk yeah or like most of the movie he should have a kung fu panda energy that's what you're saying yeah and so that makes it impossible for his addiction which is like what he really wants you to like like to take home is like this guy doesn't think he's addicted but he is and we all are and they like to in these different ways but you're just like there's no impact of it because of the like sketch like way he just walks into frame.

It plays as funny and it's cartoonish. It is. There's no humanity to the guy that you would need to be really pulling for him. The movie makes no sense without that. No sense at all.

It's an SNL sketch without that that's 90 minutes long. It's an SNL sketch without that. That's 90 minutes long. It's a digital short. Yeah. I texted Griffin that it does occur to me that like a young... You should read this verbatim. I really think... I'm sorry to do this, Sean, but it was so perfectly worded last night. I said, starting Don John, it occurs to me that a young actor writing and directing his own vanity project is literally masturbatory. And that was his chosen subject matter. Is it a knowing wink or a lack of self-awareness? If I know JGL and I do, he must be in on the joke.

uh a thing i i had forgotten but i just in pulling up the the deadline story about the this movie sundance deal it was screened under the title don john's addiction yes and relativities two notes when they bought it were hey don't worry the good news is you've made a masterpiece we're putting it why we're releasing in 2000 screens in the summer you just need to do two things for us shorten the title and uh make the porn clips less nc-17 because apparently when they screened it at sundance it just had like hardcore penetration and everything you're talking about the clips being censored that was like the one note we could release this wide if you take out the genitals I yeah I assume that you can't you don't want to show like super graphic like penetration stuff and in this movie it would feel off tone a little bit too but Hayes was missing it hayes i i think it would have been a

a more successful movie because you would have been just kind of like more revolted by the content in that format you know like like if we're really supposed to be in this guy's head where he's like addicted to this stuff like it is weird to show a sanitized version of it yeah it because it's like coming off the carl's juniors commercial stuff it is like t and a for this guy like it feels like that is what it is about it is this sort of surfacy kind of maybe i mean like he's into like he he doesn't like he talks about how he hates missionary like he like he he he likes he hates going down on ladies There's all that stuff that's kind of like I don't know Obviously I know the character is not being

Presented sympathetically We're supposed to be watching this being like Alright this guy is kind of you know Messed up But I had nothing to hold on I mean my wife was sitting next to me watching this movie Just constantly asking me why he made this movie That was just her only question.

Yeah. She was just like, and she was, I wouldn't say she was mad at the end of it, but she was like disappointed in Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I think that is the clearest emotion that emerged where she's like, he put together a movie and this is what he wanted to explore what's so insanely weird about like exploring this topic which is like sexualization of of culture and like these like these false representations of love and sex and like the carl's junior commercials and all this and saying who is like the victim of this it's society it's this guy who can't stop jerking off this poor guy meanwhile it's showing super cuts of just women getting just absolutely destroyed in one way or another but the villain of the movie is a is a hot woman it also feels like such a reflection of like a very specific year of discourse that I think peaked before this movie, you know, before he even started writing it of is porn ruining people, you know, like is porn breaking a generation of young men fundamentally.

This feels like it's about the year Facebook debuted, because this is also one of those movies where he's like, I found it on Facebook. And he acts like this is some Sherlock level. How did you find my Facebook? Yeah. He's always turning on. You hear the boot up sound so many times. It's like, why is this guy turning off his computer? Keep it on.

What's going on? Standby mode, my man. If this was 2007, right? It right it's like okay streaming video and facebook or how is this changing society in 2013 i remember feeling weird the observations about porn to feel a little bit like stand-upy like he's sort of doing he's doing these like monologues about like you know porn can't talk back but but I got to find just the right clip. It's just like all this where it's just like. And when she's down there, she's in a hurry.

When I'm watching my porn, I can take all the time I want. Yeah. The only shot is him just sitting at his desk, which is like at the head of his bed just quietly masturbating in a room with like four pieces of furniture total that's kind of weird the way he does it too where he just like sits down at his desk he's going to work he sits upright and he's just like okay and he turns on his computer chair like how much of the production was just him being like all right now i have to pretend to masturbate again like okay you know like how how men how much footage is there of him like quietly you know sitting at a desk for montage essentially my my question is was there

like two days just completely blocked off just for J-O-ing. Or was it like every time they shot at the apartment, they were like, we should get a little J-O footage to end off the day. You know, like, let's get a little B-roll before we call it quits. That's part of the thing with him playing this role, too. If you told me that this was something that Josephoseph gordon levitt had actually dealt with i would on i would not believe you no fundamentally unconvincing yes the way like like when john mayor talks about like preferring that to real sex i'm like sure totally believe that uh like

channing tatum i would buy in this role but joseph gordon levitt is a weirdly asexual president. It's kind of why he worked for what 500 Days of Summer is trying to do. He's not bringing any sexuality to that role at all. So this is just something that is totally alien to him. But he's still making his first movie about. That's what's so weird. It felt like he's trying to convince us like i get laid too and i'm like yeah i'm sure you do joe like it's okay but you're but you're not like you're you're not like this is not a fixation for you i know that i just i've seen you this

movie is utterly lacking in any sort of like lived in specificity right it feels like a lot of conjecture on his part or like overheard conversations when he says i never actually touch my cock till i find the right clip i start with some stills like do you what i don't know what that means like is that like it's just like you can't touch it like because that will what joseph he's he's addicted to porn but he looks at still but also the the here's the thing that i really made me think of like stand up or like overheard conversations it's of course it has its downsides every now and then the camera will pan over to the guy right when you're starting to bust and he's like coming while

he's looking at the guy's face and i'm just like this is so old this like bit like it's insane this is not an issue you've had right how can you be that deep in a porn addiction where you jerk off multiple times a day but you're still like but i don't want to see anything with a dude though like you haven't gone down any rabbit holes at all it does feel to me like this this is the cinematic equivalent of like the kid at school who tries to convince you that he's lost his virginity yes except the thing he's trying to convince you of is that he's masturbated before like this is joseph gordon levin the director is like yeah no i totally know what masturbation is like uh

you look at some still pictures you don't touch it for a while number one don't touch the cock don't do it until you're ready you got an hour of build-up before you can even lay a finger on it how many times a day 11 yes d team i've watched porn i love it the the boobs but man it sucks when there's a guy in it was anyone else concerned about what this guy's loads look like i'm like we should talk about it like Like it's, it's just chalk dust. Oh, come on. Yeah. I mean, and then he's having sex at the end of one of these days. It's like, it's why is Scarlett Johansson ever buying that?

He's not looking at portal. She must be like, dude, nothing's coming out. Like there's no moisturizer ever shown in the movie. And I'm like, is this guy guy just like like dry going at it he's dry dogging it 11 times a day and then he has sex and and no one's going like is it are you are we good like what's going down like it's even more absurd that well he's not going down we know that he doesn't like it oh it's don't get me wrong it's fine but but uh uh he's jerking off 11 times a day then he's having sex with scarlett johansson

waiting for her to go to sleep sneaking out of bed and then jerking off more yeah yeah that's the way it's always played it's like right after he has sex having already jerked off the entire day, he's like lying in bed and he has to go turn on his computer to jerk off. The woman is sleeping like, you know, perfectly still. And he just sort of like sneaks out of bed, which I also like isn't his jerking off desk in the bedroom. I guess he has a separate like secondary jerking off area. And then like he's there. I mean, it's like the freaking 40 year old virgin bag of sand thing. Like this is this is the other.

I now I'm just looking at the quotes page where he's like for the next few minutes, all the bullshit fades away. And the only thing in the world is those tits. That is the blowjob, the cowboy, the doggy, the money shot. It's like he Googled like wikipedia like list of pornography terms the cowboy oh this is perfect this is exactly what don john would like also david just hearing you recite the quote right now it does strike me how similar structurally that little speech is to i live my life a quarter mile at a time. Like he was, rather than pulling from real life,

looking at like, what's a speech that a character gives about an overwhelming addiction to a subculture? And then he's just replacing the car specifics with a missionary, the doggy. John is, John wants the cowboy style do you know where this like I feel like this was also during the peak

of relativity media where you would like go to you would always hear about Ryan Kavanaugh he's got the algorithm he has a an actual like secret supercomputer where he knows what movies are successful and what aren't and this was probably like two years away from their bankruptcy right yeah this is right they've just

started being a distributor on top of being a production company right so like griffin i mean some of their early hits season of the witch uh the cage movie uh what else do they have the warrior's way oh boy limitless that was relativity they had two genuine hits limitless and what was it called the is it called immortals immortals uh which is the um the tarsem singh movie tarsem's 300. But that movie actually made money to cover it in the in the in the micro. Ryan Kavanaugh was like a hedge fund dude who was like, I can use my business acumen to figure out the perfect formula for making hit movies. And he was really the first guy to say, I have an algorithm. It sounds quaint now, but it is why you pointed out, Hayes, that he was the guy who was like, I hired people. They developed a computer program.

We can type eight elements in and know exactly what it's going to make, exactly what budget it deserves, and exactly which markets it's going to overperform in. And everyone just fucking bought it. And they were like a Rat Pack Dune-esque, we will help finance movies company that had such a good string of success that was largely just let's bankroll Will Smith movies, right? Like it wasn't that galaxy brain what they were doing. They were just agreeing to finance movies with big stars. Yeah, because Will Smith also had an algorithm. You remember he was the other person who would always talk about like it's special effects. It's like alien like whatever it's like if it checks a certain number of boxes then i can be in it and it'll be successful but in both cases the answer was just will smith is

in this movie he's good they got kind of lucky you know in a lot of cases and then some of the goodwill carried over onto other things but then yes, yes, relativity was like, fuck it. I think we can be DreamWorks. Like, I think we can go all in. And they buy rogue pictures, which was Universal's like short lived attempt at having like a dimension like horror genre label. And they were like, we will buy this entire apparatus. We will buy your distribution and marketing team and your pipeline. And they overspend on that and are like, we are going to make even more money now because we don't need to share it with the studios. And this was one of their early moves. This was like an early one where they were like, we're younger, we're fresher, we have the algorithm, we're making the movies the studios wouldn't touch, and it's going to bear fruit. Demented. them we're making the movies the studios wouldn't touch and it's gonna bear fruit demented this year they had they had haywire okay well haywire is 2012 okay mirror mirror remember the other snow white movie yes in 2013 right don john the family remember the family

with uh deniro and pfeiffer movies that really don't exist. Like, um, the, the like Haley Steinfeld, Romeo and Juliet movie, uh, that Keanu Reeves movie, 47 Ronin that costs like a bajillion dollars and nobody saw it. That like Scott Cooper, uh,

out of the furnace. Like these are movies that would have stars in them. Yeah. That I was excited about. Me too. It was a good cast and i was like and then you're just like oh i hear this is a good you don't even bother i watch it on a plane after being like well it's gotta be kind of good and then was like no there's nothing about it that

works for me their 2014 is so bleak right because then um three days to kill oculus i'm just gonna say these because i don't even know what some of these are brick mansions we teaser freezed three days to kill as well we it seems like i think we also did we also did the november man which was a relativity movie that's one that's in this year uh earth to echo um the best of me of course beyond the light scriphen which is actually good but was a masterpiece right brick mansions which is the remake like the the three years late like 10 years late remake of district 13 the original parkour movie starring paul walker like two years after he died everything about that movie was poorly timed everything but all these movies are just kind of cursed like the lazarus effect black or white that um kevin costner has to steal his children

from like their family or whatever like jane got a gun obviously one of the most famous extremely cursed movie right and then their last release was masterminds the the much delayed uh galifianakis comedy wow oh i saw that in the theater as well even just it's so telling that they did not make the woman in black which was a surprise hit but they did make the woman in black sequel angel of death which they foolishly did not call the woman back in black my my number one angriest they called it the woman in black angel of death they they left that on the table so it's not just uh bad luck with with that collection of movies you are actually very bad at this they made movies that were similar to hit movies but

like it just sort of felt like someone had come in and pitched to their fucking algorithm and they were like yeah this sounds like the kind of movie that people buy tickets for and that's they were all kinds of that right once you tell people what your algorithm is people go like okay now we can get inside like we could actually extract the money from them just by checking off certain boxes they are in no way filtering for like quality and it shows like why it definitionally doesn't work to just do an algorithm based on existing success of movies because it has already been done at that point. Like you're not like getting ahead of a trend in a way that can like make you huge, huge, huge amounts of money because you're doing it for the first time.

You're just doing stuff that has been done better before. But there's also, I think, a fine point that really fucked them that they didn't consider, which is. Even if the algorithm held any water, right? Let's say that was the magic formula, right? That they actually did have the code. You're in a very different position if you have the algorithm and Sony Pictures comes to you and says, this is our slate for 2010. Pick three of these movies that you want to help finance and they can run, you know, the algorithm on 10 movies that a major studio has greenlit with major stars, top talent, what have you.

Right. Versus them opening their doors and saying, come to us, pitch us your movies. Let's find things at a film festival. They're now running the algorithm only on the things that the major studios passed on that other people, yeah, didn't think would make it. Yeah, that's right. They're running the algorithm only on the things that the major studios passed on that other people yeah didn't think would make it yeah that's right they're running the algorithm on leftovers but this movie is clearly not part of the formula this is just them becoming like any other studio and saying like well we got to make this for the relationship there's no way that this is like part of the algorithm.

I'll say this. I think there's a two prong thing. One is I think they were betting on Joseph Gordon-Levitt both as a leading man and as a director. They wanted him to feel at home in relativity. It was a long term play of just let's get him in our good graces because now I think they're like, well, Will Smith won't do a relativity movie now that we're a distributor. So we need to be forming relationships with the guys who are on the cusp of becoming the A-list box office draws, especially if this guy's also an auteur. Let's indulge him, you know? hit record which i think he's like fooling people into thinking is like gonna be this hub of talent like right it's that early online early sort of twitter era where it's like hey man i'm just going to the people and people are giving me movies and all that stuff he had this really cool idea that people could make videos and like put the videos on lot no hang on yeah yeah yeah the videos would be available online.

And so you'd be watching this video from somebody who wasn't, you know, they weren't a famous filmmaker. They were just like, you know, some buddies with a camera and they actually put it on the internet on, on a website. And so this, this is what hit record Joe was all about, which no one had sort of thought of this before. You're missing, though, what was kind of his key differentiating factor, right? His competitive advantage, which was they don't pay you for the videos. That's where he really kind of revolutionized the space. You're part of a community.

They pay you in community. Right. You get clout. It's good for the resume. Yes. Well, and your video could be introduced by Joe being like, hey, man, this guy hit the shit out of record. This guy was, let me tell you, this one coming up, he was hitting record so hard and leaving it recording for the entirety.

So and then he'd go go i hope you enjoyed that damn the record got hit huh and ultimately they always do have to hit stop so please come back we'll be hitting record again tomorrow he had this affectation at the time and we talked about uh the the trailer that he introduced on our first episode he's doing a voice i remember this where he would begin all these videos and he would go are we recording like in as if he was like fake he knew he knew that they were recording there's someone else in the room you're definitely not hitting the button right now because your audio was being recorded before you even reached for the button i remember this from the teaser free. So he's like, hey, like, or regular Joe here, or ordinary Joe.

Regular Joe here. Regular Joe. That's his other thing. He would do intros on trailers. Not only this movie that he directed, but you can see there's this incredibly weird artifact that is Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the two best friends in the world, disliked the way Paramount was promoting Stop Loss, the post-Iraq War trauma movie that they were only supporting characters in. And so they cut their own trailer that they thought was a better pitch for the movie and uploaded themselves and have a similarly bizarre intro where they're like hey i'm joe levitt and i'm channing tatum we really care about this movie we worked really hard on just a couple friends really putting their heart and soul into something that was kim pierce's

like her big follow-up big flop like yeah i have a a quick as we were walking through Joseph Gordon-Levitt's career, I have a small personal story it reminded me of that maybe Hayes will remember. This will go into the list of times that I've immediately alienated myself from my bosses upon getting a new job. But it's related to Brick. So do you do you remember hayes when we had that lunch right at the beginning of the grinder where you and i sat next to nick stoller yes and he was going like oh he was just like waxing poetic about how he had just seen mad max for like the third time uh fury road and was just like it's unbelievable it's the greatest movie i've ever seen i can't fucking even understand like how they made it like it's unbelievable it's the greatest movie i've ever seen i can't fucking even understand

like how they made it like it's so good and then i having never met him before and he is you know a nice guy uh by all accounts we have mutual friends but i had never seen it before and i just turned and for some reason went like it's a good car chase and which was like a little bit my bit about like when people were talking about that movie and then he immediately got kind of mad and was like thought i was like shitting on the movie or making fun of him for liking a movie that was just a car chase and just like goes like okay man like what what do you want then like what fucking movies do you like me not being able to break out of the bed goes i only watch modern noir like brick really brutal and then he went okay like wow it was actually cool about like

i had an answer like i was like no there's a specific kind of movie i like and this doesn't fit in that category and that actually was good enough for him uh which was super generous but like then we never uh talked again and and he just immediately i think was like this fucking guy i don't like him but can i can i share my final uh little piece of theory on why relativity went so hard for this movie sure uh i don't think i i maybe i've maybe shared an anecdote about this before on the podcast. But I, in 2009, was an intern for relativity for a week so that I could get a badge at the Cannes Film Festival and sneak into movies. It was like through like a family friend, a friend, a friend had an in with Kavanaugh. a friend of friend had an in with Kavanaugh and they were like, you know, if you can fly yourself there and find someplace to stay, they'll like give you the badge and the accreditation, whatever

you could see movies. And my main job ended up being, you know, they had like a suite at the hotel that was their office and he was like wheel and deal and trying to make big moves. But this was before they'd become distributor. But the whole thing was our party has to be like the best fucking party and my main job is the lowest person the totem pole was like uh collate the list the guest list right and then when they realized that i like had good name and face recognition for not just like actors, but directors and stuff. They were like, oh, you're going to be the bouncer at the party. So it was me, even scrawnier than I am now, with two like six foot five French bodyguards who I could not communicate with because they did not speak the same language as me. And I would give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down and they would enforce my decisions. And I just had the master list. But the main guiding principle of the list was,

and Kavanaugh himself was not telling me this, but it was like the people who were extending the message from Kavanaugh. You know, if it was Will Smith, it's like he gets plus 15. This is Will Smith's best friend. He gets he gets plus 10 right we want anything in the world for will anytime it was an actress if he knew they had a boyfriend no plus one that's the algorithm just you know it's not it's not that he himself is a bad guy right this is this is wall street stuff you don't understand actresses boy actually, the algorithm don't like that. Right. Like, I would look at the list and I'd go like, hey, I think I noticed a mistake here.

Natalie Portman doesn't have a plus one. And he was like, no, she has a boyfriend. Ryan doesn't want him to come. Okay, let me just check the formula here. Okay, her boyfriend will not be coming to this party the math ran the numbers and the math is saying actually that her boyfriend no no doesn't exist i will i will also say a little like fisher price cash register that he's at the end at the end of the night when they let me walk into the party uh as a reward uh the biggest name there was jim sheridan and his wife sitting looking very confused on a couch in the corner uh and none of the big people showed up i don't think

uh but um the aesthetic of the party was identical to the nightclub scenes in this movie and i think ryan kavanaugh saw this movie and was like this is the defining story of a generation you know like he was like everyone's gonna relate to this so fucking hard joe's saying what we're all thinking this is gonna unify these guys standing there just rating the girls one to ten and arguing about it and i'm just like we're doing this scene like they don't even have a system that's unique to them or something like they don't even have a lazy like writers like she's a

dime no she's an eight this is the kind of thing that would not have made it into and didn't make it into swingers a movie that came out 20 years or also would have been cut out of entourage yeah yes any given episode of entourage

this would not have made the shooting draft the guy who plays his friend there is like a real turtle knockoff like he's a tortoise the Jerry Ferrara style man who plays one of his best friends is heartbreaking

but that like Entourage Sean watched more of it than I did but like I would give it more credit than this where they would do a thing where drama has his own weird system that's like different from the from the 1 to 10 scale

that would have been like at least like an attempt at doing something oh yeah no they would have had yeah they would have had he would have been like at least like an attempt at doing something oh yeah no they would have had yeah they would have had he would have rated them as like different like vitamin supplements or something she's a c like oh no not like a c and that like c like vitamins like that's good you need yeah vitamin c no that's actually that's premium that's expensive stuff yeah that's good writing yeah yeah it's good just funny david are there other i feel like you keep on like trying to get uh uh important pieces of context in and then we go and show crips the big no no the big thing was the tatum thing i mean i do love christopher nolan giving notes on this movie but um i can't imagine yeah this movie just

kind of bums me out like the brie larson moment where she's been silent the whole movie she's on her phone you know girls these days would they're always texting or whatever that's supposed to be another person he hasn't worked with up until this point it's inexplicable she did not owe him a favor i figured it was like a jump street relativity thing maybe that she was in that world. Right. Exactly. Like that.

Maybe that's what it is because it's otherwise it's the same with Scar Jo where you're just like, Oh, were they in like a kind of just a weird spot? No big moment for them. This is the year she's in short term 12 big moment for Brie Larson. Like, but then like when she has the like speech,

you know, she like finally speaks and it's like, Oh, words of wisdom from his, you know, it's the, it's like oh words of wisdom from his you know well it's the it's her silent bob moment if we all remember exactly what it is and it's so fucking annoying yes and chasing amy especially where silent bob has the whole monologue that it gives you the title of the film right still waters run deep yes it's been silent the entire time but then he gives you the really the premise of the entire film is

delivered by this character who's never spoken and when she gives that speech there's no speech it's like a half this is what you're gonna say right like yeah yeah you should be nice like she doesn't even say anything absolutely she says like that chick's a bitch like that is that is what the other like primary like young female character in the movie goes like, come on, that bitches out for herself. That's really what her whole shit is. And then the parents are like, wow. Yeah, because they've been complaining for five minutes.

They're like, I want a grandson. Why are you doing dumping Scar Jo, you idiot? And then she's like like she wasn't nice and they're like oh check out no monica's weighing in here all right and it just where you can wear your influences on your sleeve or whatever is a first time phil i don't mind if he thinks kevin smith is great or what like that's that's not even my problem but it's what you guys there's not even an embellishment it's it's kind of just like a shitty version of it and then that's not even my problem but it's what you guys there's not even an embellishment it's it's kind of just like a shitty version of it and then that's then it's like let's move on yeah it wasn't

just chasing him he did it in clerks too silent bob is never speaks and then he says there are many beautiful women in the world but not all of them will bring you lasagna at work and this was in fact an homage to it's a bad homage to that yeah they don't it's not even as poignant as the lasagna work line from clerks it is fascinating like on a just him as a writer you feel like chasing amy must be in his mind's eye the thing he's striving for which is like people saying like you know i mean look the thing's kind of a mess but like he's got a lot of ideas joe's got a lot to say you know he's really digging into stuff but even the argument with like talking about the parents the arguments he has with his dad are so substance free it's just like about like what's whether or not his dad knows about tivo and it honestly does sound like chuffa and like but it's

an entire scene of it like what you know about the tivo like this is like it records the tv you don't know about this i'd love to have a tivo who are you in love with he says he loves tivo it's so sad but like also the performance is i love glenn headley and i think she's actually good in this movie it's very sad that she died she was wonderful very sad that this is one of her last films it's terrible tony danza is this is horribly written he is also very bad in this movie he's also made up inexplicably it looks like he's wearing rouge at every sequence he looks like he looks like la buffona and like some comedia el del arte project it's totally inexplicable why his cheeks are so

red he's got it looks like he has eyeliner on it's only him that got this treatment in the movie and he's supposed to be like a like a like a classic italian dad type thing he and his son both have very strange bodies for these roles where they're weirdly just like too wiry. They should be a little overweight. Do you think that by casting

Tony Danza, he thought he was doing a reclamation project? Like this is going to be his boogie nights. Yes, he absolutely. I mean, remember, this is one of the cast members

he actually has a connection to because Danza is in Angels in the Outfield. It's one of the only ones where he's probably like, hey, Tony, you want to do me a favor? I think he said, hey, Tony, let me do you a favor. Yes, absolutely. I do not think it was ever framed as. I owed you one and now I won't anymore. Yeah, there was at least one sundance party where someone was like i mean danza's pretty good and don john like you know i didn't see that

coming danza and don like that there is someone tried to float that narrative yes somebody was like yeah and then was like looking like reading like do you agree do i should i try to get him right dance is pretty good and john yes we're thinking no it's uh just no no no i know no i'm doing ironic bits one reason i mean that it's kind of a bummer. What you're saying is original idea that you got 10 million or something to make. It's like the size of movie that we lament doesn't happen. It doesn't get this kind of distribution, doesn't get this kind of promotion, and made it more difficult for that to happen again. Not because of the box office. Like I think it did fine.

Yeah. Especially compared to like what it cost. But it's one of those. It's like a hangover two phenomenon. Where you're like okay. Well hangover three is not going to bring this in. We're not going to come back for more of this. Right.

It comes back to haunt you. The other thing is. I mean talk about like that's his whole thing as a writer. Right. The like. I just want people to see I'm overflowing with ideas. I have real things to say. I'm not trying to just entertain people. You know, I'm trying to start a conversation. And then as a director, this movie has the energy of like a music video commercial guy making a movie for the first time. Who's like, look at all the tricks I could show up. I can,

a movie for the first time who's like, look at all the tricks I could show up. I can when he throws a cum wad in the garbage can, I'll drop the sound of emptying the trash on your computer. So clever, like two different types of over eager first time filmmaker at the same time. And it feels to me almost like a strategic thing of like, well, once I prove myself, I'm going gonna be making big studio films this is the last time i'll be able to experiment this much my next feature is gonna be on rails you know i i'm gonna be gunning for best picture yeah exactly i'll be making or he'll be making captain america that you know like he's gonna get snapped the fuck up i'll be tied into these big franchises where i'm it's there's fan service is an element of it and so this is is really my freedom i have to leave it all on the table here like i have to i have to take a shot at the catholic church which

i will do i'm i will i'll point out that the confession system is busted i'll sneak that in at the end of my movie so the same fucking prayers for everything we all thought everyone's been saying this works but i i'm saying it's a little bit arbitrary maybe speaking of one more thing speaking of busting one more thing about his understanding of of jerking off this is a guy who jerks off all day long every single day 11 15 20 times a day but he also goes through a period where he nuts in every single pair of pants that he has because of his girlfriend like rubbing her butt on his crotch or whatever this is a guy who does nothing but ejaculate all day and is still brought to completion has no tolerance through two pairs of

denim through two layers of denim also in that same period like so he's not allowed to use his computer at home anymore to watch porn and jerk off but he is addicted to porn so he's watching it all the time

in public it's very I thought it was very an excellent delivery when julianne moore does sit down next to him in class and goes like were you just watching two people fucking on your phone like seamlessly because he's being a dick to her and he's being like high status and then she just like drops it and goes like were you just watching people fuck on your phone and he's like no no and it it's not mean, but she totally takes the power. But are we to believe that he's like jerking off in his car? Like, is that what's going on?

Like, this is now. Right. It's become like shame level shit where it's not just this guy's addicted to porn. It's like there are weirder things going on here in terms of that compulsion combined with his seeming revulsion at the idea of real people like it's so close he even has like requiem for a dream style cuts and stuff when he's like going through these sequences but like he manages to not even come close to any level of darkness about what like he thinks is a very dark subject yeah i just want to circle back like one of the major ills that is haunting society like this movie is

him saying like we have to talk about our young men what's happening to them i just want to circle back quickly and point out uh because attention paid properly to uh how quickly the guy busts a nut uh dry humping through two uh layers of denim we forgot to mention that it also happens outside of her apartment immediately after she has told him that they can't hook up like they he starts to sort of go like for her shirt and she goes like no not out here not in the hallway like i live here but then she initiates them simulating like doggy style sex yes uh in the and and takes it all the way to the limit and delays it until he'll agree to go to night school um that was a strange scene she's good at that scene though she's really she's put in work in that scene she was very successful

can i mention one other thing because we said the uh we talked about the channing tatum and hathaway film he has other movie posters and other movies did anybody take note of like who else was in i think kuba gooding jr is kuba yes uh hold on i had the list here is john krasinski in the poster oh a guy who pulled this off much better yes yes no those guys imagining the fucking bull sesh of krasinski and joe go chopping it up has me on the brink of suicide but he did it with a quiet like, cause you have to do a genre movie. This is the mistake that, uh, that, that Jogo made. But he missed first.

He did a way we go. He did brief conversation with the hideous men. That was his mistake. And they gave him more bites at the apple because his sitcom was bigger than third rock. But that's, yes, exactly. That's the thing. bigger than third rock but that's yes exactly that's the thing like krasinski knew when to strike out on a on a smaller level right away from the spotlights before he was ready to make the commercial play and joe go wanted the weird early one to also be the graduate you know yeah

saturday night fever i mean that's what he's going for he's like this is the story of like a blue collar guy and look he's got some problems but what he's going for. This is the story of a blue-collar guy, and look, he's got some problems, but he's going to figure it out. I don't know. That seems to be the big pitch. You have to imagine, though, at this moment in time,

people would have said, I feel bad for Krasinski. Joe Goh just did exactly what he was trying to do, and Krasinski's never going to be able to recover from a brief interview with his friends. The one thing i want to uh uh talk about in in specifics uh briefly before we get to the box office game because you sean you mentioned uh this movie feeling like him gunning to do captain america and have to

talk about respecting the source material and stuff i believe the first thing he signs on to after this is to do Sandman. He's going to do Neil Gaiman's Sandman, often thought as one of the most unadaptable properties. And it's like, I think I have a take. I know how to make it work as a movie. I'm doing it at Warner Brothers. He does the interviews where he's like, look, it's a big responsibility. We're trying our hardest.

We're going to have to take some major narrative jumps. We're going to adapt. It's a different medium. It's not going to be one to one. But he was going to direct and star. Correct. The other two things that he signs up to do where he was a little more wishy washy of like he's signing on as a producer. He's developing the script. He hasn't decided yet if he's going to star, direct, or both. He's Little Shop of Horrors. He wants to remake Little Shop of Horrors, playing Seymour. And he wants to do Fraggle Rock, like Jason Segel did The Muppets. And those are the three he sets up, and none of them come to fruition. You talk about him sort of just disappearing for four years after this. It also felt like he was like the next move is the most important

one. I would love to talk about this. I have to go. I'll let Sean take us out. Thank you for having me on the show. This was so much fun. Later, Hayes. Get out of your Hayes. Bye. Thank you. Isn't it true The Little Shop of Horrors is being remade with Captain America?

Chris Hedges? Correct. And also Sandman is now being done on HBO Max as a TV show. And Fraggle Rock, they did as a TV show on Apple. Like all three of his projects, just other people took them over. Yeah. Just it reminds me and talking about directors doing a movie like this and then uh signing up for a franchise next when we went to see don't think twice uh in theaters there was a q a day afterwards

where somebody asked for big leo like you know now that you've directed your second movie like have you thought about directing like a big franchise, like directing a comic book movie or something? And his answer was not like they wouldn't let me. His answer was he went. I mean, would you really want to watch that? Like, do you think that's better than this? And pointed at the screen where his movie had just played. And I felt bad for the person who asked because like clearly yes like that's what they thought right they were like you do good job

yes like it's just like they just came they just paid to see your movie and you're just like you shithead like you fucking watch that it's like taste is garbage yeah it's like well yeah i mean i i've tried to dig up the video and i can never find it but i've pulled up a bunch of the excerpts and sent them to david over months but there's a interview an interview that jason reitman did i think when he was promoting juno or right after juno on stern where he talks about all the big franchise movies he turned down like doing uh justice league and stuff and was just like i mean can you imagine how boring it would be if i made one of those movies and then they were like what about ghostbusters 3 would

he do ghostbusters 3 and he's like i would make the most boring ghostbusters film of all time it would just be guys talking about busting ghosts and you'd never even see the ghosts on screen. Yeah, he made it sound like it'd be a fucking art movie where people just in a coffee shop or whatever. Yeah, that's my kind of energy. Right. And like coming off of Juno, which was a major fucking blockbuster acting like I'm so esoteric I couldn't even get my head around making something. He was geared up for labor day man yeah yeah he was in labor day mode and then to just see like the gunner seat in the afterlife trailer i think i i think that josh brolin's saying let's put a roof on this house

in the movie labor day as he like puts his arms around um Is it Kate Winslet? To put the top on a pie that they've been making together might be the biggest laugh I've had watching a film in the past 10 years. And might arguably was a career-ruining moment for Reitman.

Yeah. I found an interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt that was done this year. Well, last 2020, you know, for the like airplane movie he was on. Remember that movie? Seventy five hundred where it's billed as like why he took a break from Hollywood. Right. Like, you know, so it's like, OK, what's the secret? Why did he take a break from Hollywood? And it seems to be just like he like took a break.

Like there's no secret here at all. So I think, Griffin, you are right that he got a little paralyzed trying to pick his next big move. And he got wrapped up in that. Sam, that was an idiotic move because Sandman is unadaptable for a movie because it's too sprawling. And I remember that script got torn apart online. It was like Goyer or Jack Thorne was involved. And so he dropped.

He's like, okay, I don't want to. He made the right decision to be like, fine, forget it. I won't do this, but that probably eats up a year. I won't do this, but that probably eats up a year. I have a friend who is friends with a real true blue A-list actor. Trying to figure out what specifics I can give because I don't want to share too much. Not like I'm plugged in, but just that like this. So basically, the person had done a string of really well-received indies and gotten to the point where they were like, it was like, now you get to be the lead in a big franchise film.

And they were offered three. And the two they did not take were Thor and Avatar. Wow. Jesus. And the movie they took was such a tremendous bomb and money loser that coming up and were totally fucking terrified to sign on for something. Because it's also it's like three or four years of your life. Like if you're making like a big special effects, like huge budget type movie. And then when it comes out, then if you picked the wrong one, you're just like, now i have to like all my credibility's gone based on this thing so i do get i'm sure joseph gordon levitt knows a bunch of people and has seen that happen to people yeah it's it's arguably the most fundamental decision is like the first

major step you make if the first one works you can recover from the second one being a misfire yeah you know but if the entrance is like well sometimes they hit sometimes they miss right right you can't be like a taylor kitch you know like you can't like enter the arena with battleship and john carter you're done you also can't have that thing where you have three movies none of them hit in one year and everyone then the joke is, enough with this guy. Like, you can't have that, which is a Taylor Kitsch thing for sure. We should mention the one final thing

in the Joseph Gordon-Levitt equation is he was like number two by all accounts for Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. Right. And I believe with Ant-Man, they chose Rudd over him, and with Guardians of the Galaxy, he turned it down.

Right. The only other thing in this interview I could find, which was an incredibly anodyne interview, is just that he spent time with his kids and he did have two kids in the last few years. So maybe that's part of it as well. Sounds good. Let's play the box office game, though, Griffin, because this is a wild one. This movie came out September 27th 2013 so in that prime

like not prime in that sort of like beginning of Oscar season slot that is for a bad movie the Goldfinch slot you know that kind of like oh yeah Oscar season begins now with Don John and everyone's like okay well so Oscar season starts in three weeks it's like

yeah but you know whatever you can get warmed up if you want. The other factor there is if you look at that deadline piece about Relativity buying the movie, it was outlined like 2000 screens, 25 million dollars P&A summer release and releasing at beginning of September is like we no longer have the confidence that this could be a summer sleeper hit. We also lack the confidence that this could be an awards play. Let's split the difference. It's sad but true. Number one though, Griffin, is an animated film. And I knew a movie you like a lot. Hotel Transylvania? No.

It's a sequel. It's opening on 4,000 screens. That's crazy. It's not HT2? It's not a Transylvania. No. Wow. No, sir.

I wish I could check in right now. It's opening to $34 million. Maybe you don't like the sequel as much. I know you like the first one. Interesting. You know I like the first one. Cars 2? It's not Cars.

It's not a Cars. I'm way off. You've got to understand. First of all all those were all summer births okay that's that's a big time summer franchise second of all david walsall i have zero confusion as to whether or not i liked cars 2 because i'm famous for saying that cars 2 makes cars 3 look like cars 1 that's all everyone knows i say that three look like cars one that's all everyone knows i say that oh boy uh cars two only came out a couple years earlier all right come on griffin what's this animated film 34 million dollars sequel 34 million dollars diminishing returns sequel is it the last one do they keep it going after this last one two and done sequel and it's i assume it's neither just disney nor dreamworks

uh it's sony and there's a laugh line in this trailer that i love oh oh oh i do like this movie and it's embarrassing i didn't get this because i weirdly re-watched the first movie last night it's cloudy with a chance of meatballs too that's right there's a leak in the boat and then you cut to the leak and he goes ah that always gets me sean have you seen cloudy too no i saw cloudy one but i never saw cloudy too yep um exactly number two griffin at the park this is a weird this is a drama, a very serious drama from a director who's getting big. He's about to be huge when this is like, this is sort of like. Is it Prisoners? It's Prisoners.

Yeah. Kind of a hit. It opened big. It made like, what, $80 million? I love that movie. I do, too. I like it, too. It's very serious it made 60

david 60 for that movie is humongous it was super dark that's one of the darkest movies to make over 50 million dollars in the last 10 20 years and it's fucking it's long well it's like two hours and 25 minutes or it's like really long and do you get the sense that they shot enemies simultaneously like that was just their days off that he was making that movie it almost feels like they were reusing the same sense you know like yes uh no i think prisoners is great i love that movie prisoners uh is a lot of fun for a movie that's very much no fun um number three is the best movie made by this director in many years a veteran hollywood filmmaker uh who made one of his worst movies this year he's actually had a really tough run post this but

this is it's a biopic it's a sports movie um i really like this movie this isn't stronger no although i do that's later it also feels like you're describing sully but that's obviously years later no sports movie i know i know up until sports sounded like sully though right i know the year was wrong i don't want anyone to question my sully bonafides but he this the director of this movie made maybe his worst movie this year and this guy has made some not very good movies in in 2020 you're saying 20 yeah sorry 2020 yeah yeah okay um maybe his worst movie in 2020 uh this is a sports biopic this This is a good one. This is sort of his best in a while and his last good one. Why am I not thinking of this?

Who made like a roundly mocked movie that still might get like Oscar attention in 2020? Oh, it's Rush? It's Rush. The movie is Rush.

Oh, yeah. The bad movie, of course, is Hillbilly Elegy. Rush is good. Rush is good. I liked it. Yeah, I saw that on a plane as well. Man, what a flight. That felt like, oh, Ron Howard's got a second wind.

He's maybe entering an interesting period. Yeah. Oh, right. It was also just like, oh, Ron Howard's still going to try and make grown-up mid-budget dramas because he's been around long enough like that's fine he'll keep that going right and then since then he's done in the heart of the sea inferno solo and then hillbilly algae is kind of the first one since

and that thing stinks to high heaven yeah it's so bad something you guys might like i don't know if you've seen it or if you wouldn't be interested but i was told by a director friend that ron howard's master class on directing is incredible so good he's like anytime i know somebody who's like about to direct their first project i'm like go watch the ron howard master class because like he breaks down the way he shot like some uh Frost Nixon sequence and you're just like it's super practical it's super clear and you're like oh I understand this better that's the thing with him if you point him at a good script he will probably give you a good to great movie like he's not bad with actors he obviously has been doing it forever and if you give him a shitty script you know you're in trouble i don't know he's like a good craftsman with bad instincts yeah i guess so i don't know he seems very nice i remember like when he took over solo

such a like weird fraught situation and he just always seemed like he's like oh i'm having a lot of fun making a star wars movie and then like came out no one liked it and everyone he was just like well all right you know well i'm just trying my darndest here all right number four griffin i don't know if you're gonna get number four okay this is a comedy can i can i just say i'm sorry i just move back one step the other interesting thing about rush is that is the one moment where chris hemsworth is like cool i'm a movie star now let me use my clout to try to bring the adult drama back and it's like black cat rush in the heart of the sea yeah well that's the thing it's three movies

right he gives it a real shot and then he's like cool ghostbusters men in black eight more marvel movies put me in every franchise you guys mentioned black hat a lot in the in the last episode i just listened to an older one do you guys like that movie is that good love it yeah movie fucking rules i thought it looked good but i just never saw it but i'll watch yeah we also use it as a metric for movies bombing like it does a movie make more or less than black hat yeah right they made eight million million and it cost $100. Don John made about three Black Hats, by the way.

That was its final total. Right, right. We use it like that. Yeah. Griffin, number four. It's new this week. It's opening over Don John. It's eating Don John's lunch.

Let's be honest. Don John's opening at five. Opening at five. Not great. Behind Cloudy with a Chance of Beatballs, Prisoner's Rush, and this.

Like, not behind, you know, heavyweights. Behind kind of middleweight things. This is a, it it's an ensemble movie it's one of those movies where the poster has like 40 people on it you know just like a bunch of randos is it like the big wedding it's like that um in that uh yeah sort of big ensemble mostly black actors i this i really forgot about this one uh it's it's it's not baggage claim it is baggage claim griffin baggage claim baby paula patton derrick luke tay diggs jill scott barris codjoe trey songs adam brody tia maury lala anthony and Jaimon Honsu. Baggage claim. I've never seen it. She's done flying solo, apparently.

That's the tagline. Yeah, that's the concept. That's sort of the conflict. Yeah. But, you know, it's just like, the poster's literally just like, it's 12 people and they all have a different pose. Hands on hips. One hand on hip. Opening shirt.

Hands folded. Like, it's just, it's a a whole journey Derek Luke's got his thumbs in his pockets they're also in like three different quadrants three three bands of people yes I don't know if they're like if their stories are related though some of the people who are credited on the poster don't get pictures but I think maybe also the opposite is true adam brody nowhere to be seen for sure um yeah i don't know have you seen baggage claim absolutely not and i like paula patton yeah right it's the big paula patton movie post like mission impossible along with jumping the broom she was like you know they was like okay well let's make her a big star. And then she does about last night. She really,

you know, gave it a shot. Two guns, two guns. Got to shoot all that money. And then, and then, you know,

she's a person who had to take a couple of years off listening and re-listening to the album, Paula and deciding whether or not to get back with Robin Thicke. Isn't that a weird box office game? Don John's five five and then you have insidious chapter two the family something called instructions not included is that a uh eugenio derbez absolutely uh we're the millers and the butler that's the 10 i will say this is what kills these movies is like when people are just like, no, thank you.

And then that's that's why Disney is like, OK, fine. We'll just fucking overload it with franchises. Yeah, because like this is the last gasp of studios just like choking theaters with like these sort of like medium to bad, you know, small to mid budget movies. Like as much as I bemoan their loss, like a lot of these are not very good. Very true. And I know they're on the way out they're in the bottom rungs of the box office chart after being out four weeks at this point but the Butler and We're the Millers both cleaned up

like that is the exact thing they used to try to do can we make this for 30? can it surprisingly crack 100? 100% those moves are both hits they're both right two months into their runs or whatever and like that's but that's kind of it then there's horror movies there's the conjuring there's insidious like those are the other hit the heat is way down at the bottom here but that's stuff i'm like july hanging in there yeah yeah i mean i don't know i was just trying to look for like actual hits in this genre no you're right uh that box office chart represents like uh five genres that just don't get made anymore right and you know so you've got next week gravity comes out

don john falls 50 it is not a word of mouth hit gravity you guys want to hear a little story about gravity so uh i made a pilot a few years back that starred myself and mr billy zane wow hey and it was right after gravity had come out and uh we were uh he wanted to have like a lunch at the polo club and so uh i went with my friend craig who had created the show uh and we sat down and we all like talked about movies for a while and i was like well i really like gravity and he was like here's my problem with gravity and i was like what's billy zhang what's the note he's gonna give on gravity right now and he goes so george clooney mr cool mr smooth like never never seen him sweat right he starts getting sucked off into space and the choice that he makes is just be like you're gonna be okay it's all right i'm with you As this man is like dying and being sucked away,

Sandra Bullock has him in her ear and he like still stays completely unflappable and kind of maintains this like Clooney style we all know and goes like, you've got this, you're tough enough. Like, you'll figure it out. He goes, now imagine the movie. If in that opening like 20 minutes,

for the first time in the history of his career, you had heard George Clooney lose his fucking shit and be like, I don't want to fucking die. Like start like crying. And, and Sandra Bullock has that in her head. And for the rest of the movie, as she's like going through all these trials, that's what's coming for her on the other side. If she doesn't make it through,

if she gets sucked out, this guy who was like so much more level headed than her, she's heard him break down. So what does that mean for fucking her? He's like the tension and the fear you would feel throughout that experience would be like so much more heightened and effective. And I was like, holy shit.

Billy Zane's a genius. Like he's so right like he would billy zane could have got in there and fucking punch this shit up he's telling truths hollywood can't hear hollywood's just like no we can't george can't do we can't show them george like that that would people would walk out of the theater billy is like this is how you make it more visceral they're like it's too much billy i i know you're right but it's too much it would have been so powerful and i was like dude it's just really and i think about it every time i think about that movie now um that's so funny but anyway yeah comedy central passed on the pilot dom was in it with me dominic and myself and billy Billy, and they just didn't, they weren't ready for what we had to say.

Well, clearly, I mean, if, Zayn's made some enemies, I think, for telling too many truths. And that's what we realized. That's my takeaway from the story you just told, because there has to be some reason that all of Hollywood isn't listening to Billy Zayn. I know, rightane on every subject. Yes. The guys

got it, man. Anyway. Sean, thank you so much for being on the show. Dearly departed Hayes, thank you so much for being on the show. Fuck him. You guys are now, you have your Patreon network, your

whole sort of lineup. That's right. Patreon.com slash The Flagrant Ones. We have our show The Flagrant Ones up there, which is our show about the NBA. We also do Hollywood Handbook there, which is, I don't know what it's about. We have Hollywood Handbook, the pro version.

Our friend Carl Tartt does a show called Carl Calls His Cousin that I, is what it sounds like, that I've really been enjoying. And yeah, please go there and support us. We love you. We really love you. The Blank Check guys are using you. You specifically love our listenership.

The Blank Check listeners we are in love with and uh and we will treat you so good we will respect you i'm very i always feel very validated every time on any of your shows you guys reference the graph rion charts because i like knowing i'm not the only person who monitors uh my performance on there so obsessively. You gotta check, yeah. But look, I'll just say this. 2020, huge summer for dirtbag right shows. I know.

Including one called The Flagrant 2. Oh, boy. And we're called The Flagrant Ones and we were like, fuck, man. I think they got created after us and blew by us at one point. We were like, were like they're like number five holy shit what is this it really kills us there are a lot of podcasts with bad politics

that i used to pat myself on the back for feeling like yeah but you know what proof is in the pudding look at how many more people care about our show and all of them have just fucking taken me a town and folded me like laundry in the last year no No, they kicked my Happy Meal ass up and down Main Street, man. Forget it. I'll do one specific plug to build onto your plug for blank check listeners. I did an episode of Flagrant Ones last summer when sports were on hiatus and you guys shifted to talking about sports movies where I came on and told stories about draft day. and you guys shifted to talking about sports movies where I came on and told stories about draft day.

And I shared a story about Chadwick Boseman and that will definitively be the last time I ever share that story publicly. It was probably our best episode, honestly. It was the one where we didn't talk about sports or basketball at all. Instead, talked about a movie. And really, we didn't talk much.

We asked you questions. So that was our best episode. Please go listen. Fuck, I can't believe Griffin's been on the basketball podcast and I haven't. This is an outrage. I do have to listen to that. Yeah, that's got to be frustrating. We'll look forward to David on Carl Calls' cousin.

Yeah, Carl should call me. And thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Joe Bone and Pat Rollins for our artwork. Thank you to Lay Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. I want to say thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. And thank you to our editing team, Alex Barron, AJ McKeon. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit.

And check out our Shopify page for some real nerdy shirts. Next week, John Singleton, Boys in the Hood, correct? That's right. Starting a new miniseries. Starting off strong. So tune in for that. And over on Patreon, we're talking about whatever we're talking about over on Patreon that has not been decided yet. A byproduct of us recording episodes four months in advance.

Something cool. That's probably something really fucking great, like the Police Academy movies or something. It's probably something really thrilling. And as always, his name is Don John because it's like Don Juan. No, I didn't pick up on that. Yeah, I forgot to mention that. It's like he shot his career into tissue paper and threw it out in the garbage.