Blank Check with Griffin & David - Drive Away Dolls with mxmtoon

Episode Date: November 30, 2025

Two gals and a briefcase full of dicks. What more could an 84 minute caper need? mxmtoon joins us to chat about Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s lesbian road trip movie Drive Away Dolls, and brings with her the fascinating perspective of someone whose first Coen movie was…Drive Away Dolls! We’re chatting about Ethan and Tricia’s unconventional relationship, the legacy of Cynthia PlasterCaster, and the unlikely leading man trajectory of Pedro Pascal. Plus, we’re mourning the dearth of lesbian bars and Geraldine Viswanathan vehicles in our current cultural climate. Check out mxmtoon’s YouTube Channel Read Ethan’s Collection of short stories  Support The Lipstick Lounge if you are in Nashville Or  Sugar and Spice Bar, The Cattyshack, The Cubby Hole, Gingers   Check out Demon Slayer Follow mxmtoon on Twitch Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blank Jack with Griffin and David Blank Jack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Marion, you have got to have a good, steamy podcast Now, what I wanted to do originally was Is the word fuck? Yeah, correct.

What I wanted to do originally was, and then I realized I don't think the context clues are quite strong enough, was, won't anybody podcast, Curly. Yes. That's my favorite line in the movie. But I think if I put the word podcast in for save, it sounds like I'm saying, fuck. That's what's weird. Won't anybody save podcast. Curly. But you can't say, won't anyone save podcast.

David, that's nonsense. You're right. And this is a serious movie with no nonsense. This is one of the most serious films. we have ever covered on this podcast. Such a heavy, weighty film. We've talked in the past the many times we've covered

the films of Holly Hunter, someone who's come up in this miniseries, my struggle to do a Holly Hunter impression. And you think that Margo Cali is struggling throughout this film to do a Holly Hunter impression? I think I'm pretty well teed up to do a Margo Quali

in Driveaway Doll's impression because it's very close to my bad Holly Hunter. Now, Margaret Quali. And I'm not saying that as a slam against the performance. performance. It just is convenient for me. Obviously, her mother is a Southern Bell. With a famous accent with a lilt.

I think she's doing some of her mom. She has a lilt. I think she's doing some of her mom in this. Yeah. But Margaret Quali, it's kind of like born in Montana. Her parents broke up when she was five. She lived in Montana. She lived in North Carolina. And then

they split up and then she moved to Asheville. So she's got a lot of Southern in her. Yes. But she don't talk like this, I guess. She doesn't. I guess in the interview, she's not like, well, yeah, park my keister and, you know, in the audition and I got it. Like, she doesn't talk like a... No, she doesn't pretend to. Right.

No, I do think she's doing a bit of her mom. I do think she's doing a bit of Holly Hunter. I'm not the first one to make this. Do you know where I'm going with this? I think I have a sense. Does it start with an S? Three, two, one. Sandy Cheats.

Yeah. Yeah. Sandy from SpongeBob. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, right. So I don't have, like, the appropriate amount of SpongeBob, like, sort of awareness. That's a perfect example of the minor age difference between you and I is missing the SpongeBob thing entirely.

I've seen SpongeBob SquarePen. What's crazy is I'm younger than both of you. And I'm actually closer to David, though, because I did not watch SpongeBob at all. But I do know Sandy. For SpongeBob? No, I wasn't too late for SpongeBob. I was kept from SpongeBob. I had crunchy granola parents that were like, it's going to rot your brain.

You can't do it. Could you watch any TV or was it? I watch PBS Kits, so shout out to PBS Kits. So who should we be shouting? Obviously, Daniel Tiger, or were you too old for Daniel Tiger? Honestly, I don't know. Just look at the back of my phone case. I've got like so many stickers on the back.

We've got cartoon stickers. We have W.DW on there, Cookie Monster. Permit, et cetera, dragon tails. That was kind of my area. We got Arthur in the mix. I wish I didn't have room for him, but also representation for sisters of all kinds. DW is your first pick. So I'm going to talk about this far too often on the podcast.

That sign doesn't mean. anything to her because she can't read. See, I know a lot of these through memes. You were not an Arthur kid either. I read the books when I was a kid but I didn't have the show. The show was that maybe I was too late for it. It was around. It wasn't a big show for me.

It wasn't a big show for me. It quietly has as many episodes as like Gunsmoke. It's got 493 episodes. No way. Yeah. What? I mean, I think the episodes are like 10 minutes long. But they kept going. They only ended it very recently. I did not realize. 22. That's the other It was weird. Arthur got hit by a car.

He just dies, and they're like, roll credits. You joke about this? My little sister Romilly was obsessed with Cayu. Oh, man. The French Canadian animated show that was another PBS kid's staple. That was her favorite show. It's the little boy who looks like, yeah, he's bald. He's got a little, like, sort of, he's got a hat missing a propeller, but it looks like a propeller, but it looks like a propeller belongs on top of it.

It's the most gentle, conflict-free show in the world. world, which my sister always really wanted that. Like, Peanuts, and Arthur maybe sometimes got a little too intense. And Cayu. And there was one day my dad woke us up and he was like, we have to do everything we can to make sure she doesn't see this. And it was, on the New York Post, the voice of Cayu had been hit by a car. Oh, my God.

But the image was like the face of the voice actor and the cartoon character and the car. No. Where we're like, even if she can't read this, she's going to ask follow-up questions. And we have to shield this. That's awful. It was like Arthur. Yes, she was the second voice of Cayu.

There we go. And she was hit by a car. That's very sad. She died very young. And she was replaced, of course, by another Canadian French actress, Annie Bouvier. Okay. Just telling you guys what's going on with Cayu. I don't know why you guys are so hostile and furious.

I thought it was Genevieve Bujol took over the role of Kaijoult. No, but Genevieve Bujol was famously, isn't she the one who quit Star Trek Voyer? or a weekend or whatever. Oh, yeah. I think that's right. Right. It's supposed to be Janeway? She was cast as Janeway.

I don't know if you guys, if you're a Star Trek person. Maya, probably not. Another great famous French Canadian actress. Okay. And she, there's like stories all over the place, but I think that this sort of settled version

is basically like everyone was kind of nervous because it wasn't going that well. And they started stressing her like, you know, it's a lot of work. You know, like, this is a big. commitment, Star Trek? Like, you're going to have to do this all year. Like, and she was like, huh, maybe I want to quit.

And they were like, oh, fuck. You want to quit? Shit, you should quit. Go, go away now. We're casting Colombo's wife. She was pushing them to do every line of dialogue two ways. Right, we got to do it. And they were like, that's going to double.

That's crazy. It's just because it was a, yeah, it's just, it's crazy that they recast their lead. Yeah. Yeah, she left two days into the filming of the pilot. To close the loop on this. Sorry, Carrie. I had like trashmonger father, Crunchy Grinola Mom. Okay.

Who very much was like PBS kids. Yes. That's it. And was like all the Nicktunes are banned, right? Like all the Saturday morning cartoons are banned. Like tried to block me from all this stuff. It was Cartoon Network because that was old. They didn't have original shows at the time.

Yep. And PBS kids. Yeah. And then SpongeBob starts when I'm 10, I think. But my sister. is nine years younger than me. And she had given up by the time my sister was born and protecting anything. So I was like just at the right age to be like,

is it still kind of cool to watch SpongeBob? Because SpongeBob's the cool one. And then watching it with her for a while. But I feel like they have been very upfront about the fact that Sandy Cheeks was like, we want Holly Hunter as an astronaut squirrel under the sea. And it feels like, okay, so Sandy is like cartoon version of Holly Hunt. hunter and this character is cartoon version of cartoon squirrel so it's just a loop it's kind of just a chain yeah yeah yeah who the fuck of the character who is she in sponge well yeah who is she

david she's very cool i believe you her name is sandy cheeks and she's basically on a research mission from the land so she wears a little astronaut suit it's like she's of course squirrel has to live under the sea and she's like a texan squirrel okay in an astronaut suit who lives in a bubble. Okay. And she's, like a main character? Yeah.

Yeah. No, no, she's a main character. Yeah, more than most. You got SpongeBob. Okay, and he's a little sponge and he works at the burger place.

He loves. I'm going to try and give you everything right now. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then his best friend is a starfish called Patrick who's like dumb. He's a little behind the eight ball.

Sure. Yeah. And then their boss is, okay. Their middle manager is Squidward, who's grumpy? Squidward is like the more tenured employee who hates how hard

SpongeBob tries. He's, okay. He's been kind of clocking and clocking out. All he wants to do is read books and play clarinet. He's very much a burt. He's a bird. He, like, just wants to take it easy.

He doesn't want to get sucked into any. And SpongeBob is an Ernie if they work together and they were never friends. Okay. They don't even really like each other. No. No, but SpongeBob always wants to play with Squidward. Right. And Mr. Crabs is the boss.

He owns the burger place. He loves money. Right, right. And his daughter, Pearl, who's a big whale. We're... This is deeper. That's not... I don't have that.

That's 30. And I guess I knew there was a squirrel maybe, but I don't think so. She's the main crew. That's the main tier. Do you know from Plankton? Is that the little guy? Yeah. And what does he do? He is all Plankton.

He is like an evil mastermind. His thing is he wants to steal the recipe for the crabby patty because he runs the rival restaurant, the chum bucket across the street, which is not popular. And he's married to a computer named Karen. I forgot about that. And SpongeBob is a grown-up? What is he? Is he like adult or is he teen?

He lives alone in a pineapple. And you see his parents, they'll come to visit. Like, what would you say if you had to guess how old SpongeBob was canonically? He's a little in that Tremblay zone where you're like, how old is he actually? How old is he playing? Yeah, yeah. Like we might. Does SpongeBob have hot parents?

It's SpongeBob. You see them. They're a little. I don't want to age, Shane. Okay. They're not in the prime of their life. they're not cutting the same kind of figure as the Trump arrived, 1999.

So I was 13 years old. So I only knew a SpongeBob is a thing that I might watch ironically as a teenager being like, oh, this is kind of clever. But like, obviously my era of clever cartoons was your Renan Stimpy and A Real Monsters and Rocko's Modern Life

and all that. And all of those were like, right, Gen X cartoons about like how boring it was to have a job. Yes. You know, like, I loved A Real Monsters because it had monsters. But like the people who were making it like fucking wage slavery.

You know what I mean? Same with Rocker's modern. And they were getting like underground cartoonists and indie comics and whatever to make these shows. And then SpongeBob, it feels like does have the same thing of like, yeah, it sucks to clock in and clock out of the burger place. But it's a little more silly, a little more kind of cute. And the thing is SpongeBob loves it so much.

Right. He's a cheerful guy. SpongeBob is happy. Yes. I have an age answer. Oh, okay. So apparently you see SpongeBob's driver's license in an episode and it's listed that he was born on July 14th, 1986.

So he's, he's three months younger than me, basically. So he is currently 39 years old. Yeah, that's my age. Wait, but in theory, when the show premiered, he would have been 13 living on his own emancipated? But like, this is, but like, what is the society that you said? When is the episode with the driver's license, Ben? It doesn't matter.

It matters. But, I mean, like, he doesn't live in America. He lives on the seat. Oh, he lives in a pineapple. right so it's like what's the government 13 years old you can get your driver's license maybe you can't like is there a president in sponge bob like is there uh you know how high does this go i remember that being a president i feel like there's a mayor so it was um bikini bob it was featured on sleepy times the name of the episode and the air date was in 2000 january 17 so pretty early

he was 14 years old so the the mayor apparently is like a big green fish yeah sounds about right Okay. Yeah. What, you're talking about New York City? Go on. I don't know. Eric Adams is like a big green fish. See?

Yeah. I feel like your satire canon kind of went off. Slowly. Look, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank

checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear. And sometimes they bounce baby. In a way, this is one of the blankest checks we've ever covered on this show. Well, I was going to say, right, then they clear and then they bounce and then maybe they evolve into, right, some new phase of their careers separate from each other and start to do even crazier. But this is just permanent revolving line of credit, right? This is, you're Ethan Cohen in any form will basically follow you to do anything you want. You can, I feel like the thing.

At a small enough size. I was about to say, I think the thing with Ethan and Joel's solo careers is it's like, right, they can always get a cast. anyone's going to want to work with them so that will give them a budget. And Ethan has continued to work with Working Title, who bankrolled so many of their movies together for so long, they seem on board to just being like

anything you write we want to do. Right. But this has been a miniseries. This continues to be a miniseries on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen together and separately, sometimes with their wives. It is called Pod Country for old cast, and today

we're talking about Driveaway Doll slash title, I don't know if I can say. Henry James's driveway Dykes. David said it. He went for it. And when it was announced, I feel like it was announced as driveway dykes and they,

then they, it was like, what was the, you know, fuck, no strings attached was called like fuck buddies. And they were like, we're calling it fuck buddies. We're not budging on that. It's called no strings.

Or it was the other one. I can't remember which one it was. No, it was that one. What's the other one called? The other one is friends with benefits. And that one's bad. I agree. I like no strings attached.

Which is the good one. That's the Liz Mary Weather fucking Ivan Reitman. Ivan Reitman, and I don't like friends with Benethe. I have to, every time. Is that the one of Milakunis? Milakunis and Justin Timberlake. And I assume various other people. Ashton Coucher and Natalie Portman.

Right. But No Strings Attached has like Greta Gerwig. It has a fairly robust supporting cast. Mindy Kalin, Guy Burnham. Carrie Elwis. Of course. Kevin Klein is really good in No Strins attached. lines there.

Looks like Jake Johnson showed up and ludicrous. Jake Johnson and Ludacris are Ashton Coucher's friends. What? They're his... Dude, I don't know about this. Whoa.

How many strings are attached to it? This is a thing we've really lost in the death of the studio comedy and especially the death of the studio rom-com. Well, that, but also specifically the casting of the best friends. Yeah, man.

Just be like, okay, we need three guys. One of them should be a musician. At least one needs to be a person. would never hang out with each other. Maybe one should be gay. 25 years apart in age. But all have a little juice in different areas of the industry. Because in, okay, so in, have you seen out of these movies, Maya?

And we haven't introduced you. Well, hello. And also, how do we introduce you? Oh, yes. So I said our guest today is MXM-Tune. That's perfect. That's great, but you can call me Maya. Okay.

It's wordy to be like, so, MXM-Tune, what did you think about drive away? The musical artist, MXM-Tune, who we will now be socially. Yes, perfect. If you've granted us curly permission to use the familiar name. I grant you familiar permission. Thanks, Maya. Welcome to the show.

Happy to be here. Thanks for help. We really appreciate you being here. So, no strings. I'm sorry, friends with benefits. Have you seen friends with benefits? And I remember distinctly being like this movie's ass. Like, this is a bad movie.

But I don't know if I've seen no strings to do. Now, Friends with Benefits. A Will Gluck joint? Yes. Written and director? I believe you're right. But that was the one that was, I think, PG-13. Right? Like, it was trying not to be...

I think that ones are. And the other one's PG3. Am I wrong? Let me find out. Okay. I mean, there's only one way to find out. It's a fast... Yes. But Friends of Benefits was R? No strings attached. Was also R. Okay. Wow. I give him credit. Yeah. So Friends of Benefits had Jenna Elfman,

Nolan Gould, Brian Greenberg. It did have Richard Jenkins, Woody Harrelson, and Patricia Clarkson as parents. And apparently Emma Stone swings in. guess that's probably a sort of a Will Gluck. She dumps him at the beginning, and I think Samberg is Milakunis' ex? Samberg shows up. I assume that was kind of a just in favor. But those are the

breakups at the very beginning that lead to them creating the arrangement. Gluck had just done Easy A. He's cashing the EasyA check. And then he moved on to do Annie Peter Rabbit, Peter Rabbit 2. It's a weird career.

And then anyone but you, which was, a hit and starred a person that everyone's normal about, Sidney Sweeney. And a movie that has actually historically bad best friend casting. I mean, that movie is so bad. I'm sorry. As much as I was rooting for it to like, yeah, save our rom-coms and all that. Like, that movie stinks. We saw that like five days into its release. So the opening weekend had bombed and it was before the second wind started where it just inexplicably became a hit. And we went with a bunch of friends and we're drunk and we're like, look, we got to support

this thing. We were like, this thing sucks, but like we're always bemoaning the lack of studio rom-coms. And let's just have fun watching this. And then we were just sort of like, well, that was a good experience of a terrible movie in a weird crowd. Right. We had a really weird experience. What was going on that made it so strange?

There was a woman with Tourette's in the theater who kept saying the N-word. Oh. It was the craziest movie going to experience. Wow. Our friend Fran Hoffner said this. This is the least real thing that has ever happened. It was one of those things where we didn't totally clock what was happening at first, but something was happening. And, like, clearly, I really think that person had booked that screening because they were like, who's going to come to, like, a 10 p.m.

It was, like, Thursday, December 29th. No way. At 10 p.m. And clearly was just like, oh, fuck, a bunch of podcasters came in. Bobby Tinger and Lindsay Weber and Fran Hoffner. and we're like, woo. And she just said the end word about every two or three minutes.

Intensified and it got clear and there was no deniability. And just, I just, I probably should get that movie another shake just because it really was great. No, it's still bad. Yeah, and like also, it's probably better watching it that.

But I think, right, like my, my, I don't know, there was a certain, like, leniency I was granting the film for just like, well, they tried. that the bigger a hit it became and the more people were eating it up, the more I was like, no, fuck that.

This movie's a mess. It's bad. Glenn Powell can't even save it. I watched it on an iPhone at the gym and I was like, first of all, it's a busted viewing experience to be watching that movie on a treadmill. I was literally like,

I might as well leave this gym so I can stop watching this movie right now. But yet, that feels like a movie that was basically designed to go straight to taxi TV. Oh, yes. A hundred percent. It should not be seen on a big screen.

No, no. It's bad. It's a bad movie. You don't need to watch it again, David. You don't. Okay, I won't do it. Maybe I'll watch it on my phone at the gym, though. That sounds cool.

So, driveway dolls. Okay, we're here to discuss driveway dolls, which I guess is the second solo Cohen. Solo Cohen, right? Like, Macbeth had already come out, or am I wrong? Macbeth has already come out. We will have covered Macbeth. Yes, of course, the tragedy of Macbeth.

It was not funny. From Joel Cohen. And I'm glad they put that in front of the title, so I could just my expectations accord. So the Coins did not make a movie after Buster Scruggs in 2018. Then they break up. Joel makes Macbeth. And Ethan, I don't know.

Ethan does his Jerry Lee Lewis documentary. Which is bad. It is very strange. It feels very high school film project. It's called Trouble in Mind. And it's a documentary, a TV documentary, basically. I guess it was at like the Cannes Film Festival. It played a can.

824 bought it, but then it went basically straight to stream. and VOD. It's about Jerry Lee Lewis, who was a bit of a controversial figure. Wait, what did he do? Normal guy. Normal things always. Oh, okay, cool, cool, cool.

What David is? Married people at normal ages and stuff like that. But they were like... Related. Oh. His balls of fire were a normal size. It is wild for your Wikipedia personal life entry. Maya, you should aim for this.

Your Wikipedia personal life should begin. Maya was married seven times, including Biggableness. including big of us marriages and a marriage with his underage cousin. No. Oh, that's just the exact like compass of what not to do. It's always great when personal life has subsection. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, man. But you got a shout out, and this was something we discussed in our King Ralph episode. I love rock piano. Sure. It's kind of a lost form. But you're being serious, right?

Yeah, I think it's so fun. I agree with you. When they start playing for behind, I mean, that's, that's so many. Put more stunts on stage. I want to see stunts with instruments on stage. Have you considered doing this during any of your concerts? Rock piano?

Work and rock piano into the record. Not yet, but I mean, Ben is so enthusiastic about it. I might. I mean, come on, this? Under the leg? Ben's doing under the leg. It's good. It's good. Well, what instruments do you play, Maya?

I know you play the ukulele. Yes, that is, I mean, on my Wikipedia page, I'm sure there is mention of the ukulele. There are no subsections about my seven marriages yet. But Maya has owned seven ukuleleys, including a big, Missed ukulele? That is crazy. I play the ukulele. I grew up playing with classical music and stuff, but I found the ukulele through like school and middle school, but then ended up learning more over YouTube.

And it became my job, which I'm grateful it happened, but I couldn't have predicted it not from a mile away. Apparently, according to your Wikipedia, you've played the cello and the trumpet as a classical musician. Yes. I only did the trumpet to learn the Star Wars theme. That was literally the only reason. I love that big brass Do you ever just fire up the Star Wars theme just to get the first

10 seconds to just like fucking shoot you out the door? Yes. I do. Do you do it? Have you ever said it as a wake-up alarm? Yes. That's how my dad would wake me up for school every day. It was. It was. It was. Like, he was the biggest

Star Wars nerd number. Very sci-fi. But it was also part of the reason why I never watched a Cohn Brothers movie until drive-away dolls was because this was the first one. That's why I think she's a great guest for this episode. This is great. Yeah. It was nuts because I only watched sci-fi.

Your dad from, oh, I see. So your dad just didn't watch Trek. I didn't watch Trek. My parents watched Trek. They were very into it, but Star Wars and, like, Lord of the Rings were kind of my fantasy and, like, sci-fi, whatever worlds that I was living in. But my dad would show, like, anything that had to do was space to me and my brother. But, like, because the Cullen Brothers, and as I was.

They've never gone to space. They've never gone to space. No. Never. And I was doing my homework because I knew I would be doing. the podcast with you guys and I had not watched many Cohen brothers movies, my boyfriend. I saw you Logan. Thank you, David. I saw some logs.

Some old Cohen's logs. Hey, I accredited that to my, my lovely boyfriend, Jack, who got me into it and he's a fan of the show. Shout out, Jack. Some people call you Messina because you'd be Logan. I'm trying to do a side version of this joke. You're launching jokes. Thank you. Yeah. Messina?

Loggins and Messina. They were a duo. Kenny, Kenny Loggins before he went solo. It was Loggins and Messina. I didn't know that. The best part of the joke is when you explain it. I've always said. I've always said, yes. Jim Messina. He was from Buffalo Springfield.

I think the best part of the joke is when you defend it. Logins and Messina? What was their big song? Not just explain it, but defend that you were right to do it. There's multiple parts, yes. Let's see. It looks like your mama don't dance was one. Well, let me put, you know what?

Let me put them into Spotify and see what the top song is. Did they do, um, am I wrong in thick and Loggins and Messina did Danny song? Yes. Even though they ain't. Bonnie. Yeah. I think that was Loggin's end

Messina. I think you're right. I think Messina was in the picture at that point. What happened to Danny? You got to listen the end of the song.

How's he doing? You've naturally backed us into this. Yeah. But met your your lovely boyfriend. He came to the Blank Check our show.

Yes, he did. Oh, did he? Did I mean? Yeah, Griffin knows. It was a day when I was rocking the porch installation. You were not there.

And we had been messaging, and I found out you were a list and he told me that he was a fan of the show. The two of you started dating. He talked about the podcast to you, and your response was,

that's the thing my parents listened to it. But I guess if all of you listen, I should get into it. But I just brought this up to Ben and David as, I think you are the first person we have ever heard of who's like, yeah, blank check, that's the thing my parents told me to listen to. My dad just loves podcasts about movies.

So you guys are like, obviously, preeminent podcasts about movies. Thanks. Yeah. And so... Shout out to your dad. Shout to my dad's name. My dad's name is Cameron.

Shout out to Cameron. Okay. So he loves Star Wars. He loves Star Wars. You grew up on Star Wars. Exactly. And grew up waking up to it, blaring over a speaker. And like, that was traumatic.

But truly, because I think my dad was such a lover of, like, sci-fi. And my mom, she was, like, an English teacher, most of my childhood. And so she taught, like, English classes around, like, Hitchcock movies and stuff like that. Oh, cool. There was a real, like, gap between like a Hitchcock and watching like Star Wars and then kind of what I discovered watching the Cohen Brothers movies this last like month was really just like, oh, that's why I never watched them was because it was just, that's not what they're doing.

It's in between the gapers and yeah, exactly. So it was a lot of fun. I had a lot. Which ones have you seen now? Okay. So I watched, we think I would need to pull up my letterbox. Okay. Let me look at your letter box. Oh, thank you, David. Because I'll say we'd been messaging to try to find an episode to have you on, and there was some stuff next year that was like, oh, some of that might work. And then we were looking for someone for driveway dolls. And I noticed you had a positive log. You said to me, you were like, it was either you were one of the only or the only person with the like on the movie. Possibly. Possibly. Certainly in the circle of people I follow. I mean, your review was, I mean, yeah, this is a movie.

That was my most recent one. So I rewatched. That was on the rewatched. Yeah. Yeah. You have seen No Country For Old Men. You watched that. You watched Barton Fink. You watched True Grit. You watched Fargo. You watched Raising Arizona. You watched The Hunger Games Catching Fire.

They directed that. I think that might be it unless there's another one like... But that's a lot of the crime caper ones, which are the interesting ones to watch for this. And you watch all of them in the middle of a sandwich where the pieces of bread are using driveway. dolls two times in theaters? Yep. Okay. And then again, this week. And you saw it, and I don't want to blow you up, but you did say you saw it because it had, and I quote, lesbians. Yes. And it's because, I mean, like, I think I'm very interested.

I identify as bisexual. There are so many queer stories oftentimes in media where, like, you know, I want to see a happy end for lesbians as much as the rest of the world. And so I was curious because this is like, I don't know. I mean, there are, of course, lesbians and cars historically in cinema that you can watch on a screen. But I was curious about this one, and I just lived above an Alamo draft house when I was in New York at the time that this came out. And so I was just

like, all right, let me see what's playing tonight. And that one showed up. And Margaret Qualley, I'm immediately sold to see what she's up to. And then I showed up and I was like, maybe I'm not immediately sold to say what she's up to. I like her performance. I really like. I like Margaret

wild. I think she went balls to the walls and did not care what the end result. it was, I think that it just didn't land with me. I also think, look, I think that is the approach the entire movie is taking and not to like pre-fight a straw man but I anticipate this will

be one of those episodes where a contingent of our listeners are like what the fuck are they talking about? I get angry comments for giving this movie a mildly positive. A polite three stars. Letterbox rating every time I log it, which is three times

which I do think is a lot of times to seen this movie. That is wild. This movie is a very breezy. It's not a tough watch. It's 72. 76 minutes. It goes down. Like, it's a movie. It's short. You can't be pissed off. It's a movie. You get to the end and you're like, that was it had all the parts, you know? This, it had all the parts. This movie is very sloppy. Yeah. In a way that is purposeful. That is not me creating like an armor of defense of anything you think is bad about it is on purpose. But we'll talk about the intent. behind this movie.

And I just think when I watched this movie, which I've now seen twice, I haven't caught up to David yet. I saw it twice in theaters, once at a press screening. Okay. And then I took my friend Molly to see it because...

Your best friend. My best friend, Molly, because she was like, let's see a movie. And it was kind of the most Molly sort of appropriate movie out there. It can be tough to find it to Molly. The death of theatrical comedy

means there are less... The death of the Molly going... Like, she doesn't want to go see a superhero and she doesn't want to see a horror movie. Yeah. And that tends to be what's in theaters. Yeah.

Especially, when did this come out? This was February. Exactly, especially in those early months. I think it was February of last year. So I saw it again. And I was like, yeah, it's still cute, in my opinion. And I fired it up for this third viewing. And I was like, okay, I think I might be done with driveway dolls.

Not an angry way, but it's just sort of like, I think I've gone as deep as I can on this one. I was feeling very tired and congested last night. I was supposed to go see weapons, past and future guests. Craigger. Best movie of the year. I refunded my preview night tickets because I was just like, I don't feel up for it. I don't want to see weapons if I'm feeling bad.

And I got to watch driveway dolls. And I got into bed and sometimes, look, our job is very easy. Yes, it is. But sometimes you're like, what's the fucking movie I have to watch tonight? Even if it's a movie I like, I'm re-watching this and I got to watch it like closely to talk about tomorrow. And I put on driveway dolls down like, I'm having a good time. Like, come on.

There you was. It's not bad. Under 90. a good time, and I'm still going to get to sleep early. Exactly. Right. Like, you can't be mad at that. I feel like any movie that's, like, short enough that I can digest it, like, appropriately

without being, like, dreading how long the watch time is. I got to give it a little credit. Certainly, I get some of this sounds like faint praise awards, but I also think we'll talk about the intent of this movie, which is, like, A, I went to see this with my sister, who is a little older than you, but generationally similar. And it was another, like, we try to find movies that we can go see together. Yeah. She likes movies more than maybe Molly does, but also there's a lot of stuff she doesn't want to see.

And I was like, let's see driveway dolls. And she was like, yeah, that looks fun. Like girls' road trip comedy. Yeah, exactly. And then I think it was maybe not until we got into the theater that she was like, Ethan Cohen directed this. I thought she knew that was part of the sales pitch. But she was like, well, that's in Congress with what I thought I was going to see,

which is I thought this was a movie made by like a 25-year-old. Like someone just had a film school? It does feel like that, I think, in a lot of the ways, which is kind of part of its charm, is like, I think that the wackiness of it feels. It's obviously very intentionally supposed to be sloppy. And I think that that is why I liked aspects of it. But it's also, I feel like it's Achilles heel a little bit in a lot of ways. We will crack open the dossier momentarily. But I think about Conor Rale, our friend on our Lady Killers episode, kept making the joke how Lady Killers, what is basically consensus viewed as their worst film, is the first. movie in which the Coens both got credited as director because of weird DGA roles. Okay, I heard about this. Yes. And because you guys, did you talk about it on another episode?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they don't start actually being co-credited as directors until Lady Killers. And every slam of Lady Killers, Connor said, but you have to remember, this is the debut film of a new filmmaking team. So for a first film, it's pretty good. And I do feel like, despite all of Ethan Cohen's experience and pedigree, this is like, is like a debut film of a new team, team and a new register, right? Like, this is him trying to do something, even though it has a lot of shared DNA with especially

the Coen Crime Caper comedies. It is very much the start of a new thing. That is continued, and we will see how long it goes on for, or if Rhodes re-diverge later. David? Yes. This episode of Blank Check is brought to you by Square. And it's hip to be a square. It's hip to be a square.

Okay. Don't get defensive. Okay. Some of my favorite murderers have told me that it's hip to be a square. I speak of Patrick Bainman, of course. There are certain businesses that make the neighborhood, the neighborhood, Griffin. And I have found in my travels that your favorite neighborhood spots often run on square. Look, I think I probably interact with a square terminal more than I interact with, like, a subway.

you know like turn style everything you know what i mean like it's just like getting a cup of coffee getting a bagel getting a pizza i live in new york okay okay um like i'm always i'm always tapping my watch on the square i love doing the tap i do my watch i feel like gregory hines doing a little tap very good thank you thank you thank you yeah square um these are you know works for businesses that make the neighbor of the neighborhood like i said uh when those businesses thrive the whole neighborhood thrives money spent in the neighborhood stays in the neighborhood so take this ad is an excuse to go support your favorite local spot and have yourself a day in the neighborhood. A beautiful day in the neighborhood. Mary L. Heller. I was going to say Mr. Rogers.

And look, also, obviously, very often, you go to see a comedy show, you go to a concert, you go to see off-Broadway theater. You're going to be dealing with some Square right there. When we do live shows, we use Square to sell our merchandise. Square makes these businesses a lot easier to run. Absolutely. It makes it. We use Square. Yeah. That's what I just said. It makes it so easy. for us as a small business to be able to sell merch. We used that at our recent art show. Absolutely. It just makes the whole process so accessible.

It makes the ability to provide these culturally enriching things and spaces a lot more accessible in a very, very crazy, complicated economy. Is that what I was trying to say? Yeah. You can go to square.com slash go slash check to learn more. But before you do, go support your favorite neighborhood spot. You'll be happy you did. See you in the neighborhood.

David, you want to crack open the dossier. Yeah, so drive-away dolls. So, yeah, so it is, you're right. It is Ethan Cohen's feature filmmaking debut in a way. But it's not really. He'd actually made all those other movies with Joel. But the point I want to make here is he has been very upfront the entire time of, like, She co-directed this movie with me.

She cannot get that credit because the DGA, she's not a member, and I'm already pre-established as part of another team. But much like the early Cohen's films, it is written by both of them, produced by both of them, directed by him, edited by her. But he's like, we did everything together. Tricia Cook. Tricia Cook. Grew up in Southern California in a town called La Mirada.

But since no one knows it, she usually says she's from Whittier. which is where Richard Nixon is from, of course. Got it. Born in a somewhat conservative community, but around the age of 15 or 16, she realized that she didn't like boys. And then she attended USC as a theater major and then went to grad school at NYU,

where it's easier to frequent a lesbian bar, perhaps. Yes. And date other women, and she tapped into queer scenes and experienced her queerness in full ways. and at NYU she remembers that Joel and Ethan came to screen

Raising Arizona and she remembers that she and her friends were not interested What did they go to scene instead? Coyana Scotsi Boom! Which of course is a movie

that I love very much and that we've covered on this show. This is a little different from Raising Arizona. Less dialogue. A little bit less talky. But after a graduation, she sought a job in the camera department

on Miller's Crossing, which was the third Coen Brothers movie. She was like, I wasn't a big Coen Brothers. fan, but I needed a job. At NYU, she trained as an editor. But it's the kind of classic. You're out of film school. You've trained a little bit and everything. You're looking for any position you can get.

She gets the camera position and has the boldness to sort of make the play to get into the editing room. And because, right, she's working on. Once she's in there, she's like, if you have any room, it's like an apprentice in the cutting room. And the Cohen's are like, yeah, we'll make some room for you. And she works as assistant editor on Barton Fink and Hudson Fink and Hudson's her proxy. She's an associate at Aron Fargo. She's a co-editor on the Big Lobowski.

Oh, brother, we're out there. A man who wasn't there. Of course, the Coins are essentially their own editors at that point under the pseudonym Roderick James. And soon after they met, Ethan expressed romantic interest in Tricia Cook. And she told him, I'm a lesbian. I'm not interested. And that's the end of the story. They never got married or made a film together.

They got married in 1993. Their marriage is non-traditional. They're very upfront about it. She has a partner. Ethan has another partner. They've been in this dynamic for over 20 years. They've two kids together.

She said that it was like she was very upfront with him. They continued being friends and then at some point to her surprise she started developing romantic feelings but obviously it is a multifaceted thing. Ethan's line that jumped out to me as he said he applies

the Alfred E. Newman philosophy to it which is what me worried. That is correct. That is how he explains his marriage. They have a son named Buster. Buster. Scruggs and a daughter named Dusty and so

she slowed down once they had kids she raised the kids a little bit you know blah blah blah started writing more and essentially you know she made whatever she's sort of like got like a bit of Cohen's she obviously like works with them and all that like she's got a little bit of the Coens in her but she's got other interests that they don't really explore

Not a lot of queer characters in Coen Brothers movies, period, right? I mean, Miller's Crossing as, like, you know, closeted characters. I was going to say, there were a lot of coded, closeted. But, yes, like, it's not territory they've really dipped their feet in too much. No, it's another quote in the dossier that Ethan says, I'm dumb and straight, and she's fun and queer. Right. And Joel and I could never make a movie like this because we're both dumb and straight. She worked on a documentary film called Where the Girls Are

About the Dinashore Weekend in Palm Springs It's a short I've been trying to find online I've never seen it. Yeah. She came up with the idea for Driveaway Dikes with her friend Marmalina when they were drinking at a bar. In the late 90s. Early 2000s, but yes. That's really all they had. But this screenplay, she starts working on it with Ethan. They liked the title. They were like, we'll just do like an exploitation movie.

right? Like, we'll just do, like, what kind of movie would have this title? It's also really funny where he was, like, in interviews, he was like, we want to make our, like, queer homages to, like, Roger Corman movies, even though I've never, neither of us have seen a Roger Corman movie. And then Trish Cook's like, I've seen Roger Corman movies. Or not Roger Corman, I'm sorry, Russ Meyer. And then she was like, but I think in a way, they're more amages to, like, Doris Wishman. And Ethan's, like, even though we've never seen Doris Wishman. and she's like, I've seen Doris Wishman. The Jamie character in the film,

who is played, of course, by Margaret Cawley is sort of Trish's idealized, like, I wish I could be this liberated and sort of free-spirited and, you know, go to the bar and just, like, connect with people and, like, be carefree and have sex all the time. But it's not exactly, it's not her at all,

really. It's more of a sort of, like, you know, fantasy hero. And then Marion is the more extreme projection, the opposite direction of the self-fear. This feels like an idigo movie. Right. Yeah. So they write this thing together. They write it probably in a similar way to the Cohen's brothers where they're just like in a room talking to each other typing, whatever.

Yes. I think they write very similarly. And then they put it on a show. I never like trained as a writer. It's not how I primarily think of myself. But I had all these ideas and characters that were things that Ethan would never come up with himself. And he's so helpful with the dialogue and the structure. They write this together.

And it's sort of talked about in a way very similar to their process. of writing Bart and Fink to get them out of the writer's block on Miller's Crossing of Ethan being like, it's nice to be able to go off and do these side things. And like Ethan's written fucking poetry in one act. I read a short story collection with the ear on the cover. He does a lot of stuff like this that feels like, I just want to like work things through the system without the same pressure and seriousness of the movies. They have this script.

They pitch it to Alison Anders, who sort of. of like a fairly legendary indie director of the 90s, I feel, like less known these days maybe, but gas food lodging was like a big early 90s indie film about women. Yeah. I think she is one of... I'm trying to think grace of my heart. The few narrative filmmakers to get a MacArthur Genius Grant. Wow.

If I am not wrong. She did get a MacArthur Genius Grant. I'll tell you that much. They pitch it to her. They call it a naughty comedy. It is announced. Yes. Alice Anderson is into it.

Yeah. To your point, Maya, a big sort of birthing point for this movie. But they never got funding. Is that Trisha Cook is seeing like a tiny wave of lesbian stories being made by lesbian filmmakers in the 90s. And she's like, those movies all have some sense of self-importance. They tend to be right, like sort of more tragic or... They're either an issue's drama or even something like, but I'm a cheerleader. Yeah.

It needs to be a movie that is, like, about coming out, about the self-identification, and is a comedy that is, like, so overcranked to sell that kind of thing. And she was like, where is, like, the trashy, like, 50s B movie where that's just the stated reality, where that is not the conflict of the film in any way, it is just the starting point for the world and the characters. The other thing is, she's, like, going to NYU in the 90s where there are a lot of lesbian bars. There's a filmmaker Alina Street who I've worked with before who's been doing this thing called The Lesbian Bar Project for the last couple of years. That's a documentary series about how much they have disappeared. Yeah.

Where I think it's like low double digits for the entire country now. And in the 90s, in the early 2000s, there were a lot. It's one of the reasons why, even though it took 20 years to make this film, she decided we should still set it in 1999. Aside from, like, cell phone tech reasons, she was like, it actually just rings false to be like, two women can make a road trip itinerary based on multiple lesbian bars in every town. I did not know that.

And that was one of the things that I was thinking about while I was watching the movie was like immediately you're hit with the 1999 timestamp at the very beginning. And I felt like while watching it, I at least because I didn't know about the fact that there is such a lack of lesbian bars now presently in the United States. I was like 35 or something. And I live near one of them in Nashville, shout out lipstick lounge. But I like didn't know that. And so it makes a lot more sense, I think, to have it grounded in the, understanding that she had, too, of, like, a road trip planned around that being a primary function

of why they were going to certain locations. Yeah. But for 1999, given the timestamp, I felt like while I was watching, I was like, what is indicative about this time period that's, like, present in the movie? Just because I don't know, for me, it felt like it was hard to be like, what about this is specifically in the 90s? I mean, whenever I see that, I'm like, first and foremost, I assume they don't want to have to deal with cell phones.

Yeah, that's fair. Right? But the bar thing makes more sense. And I also think it's when she writes the script and it's when it's like, I wish this movie could exist now. Exactly. Right? And even when they're trying to like do it with Allison Anders and everything, they always talked about they couldn't get the financing

because it was like... It wasn't tragic enough. It wasn't your, you know, mysterious skin, a movie they love, which is sort of made around that time, Gregoraki. Now, Gregoraki made, you know, more flippant films before then. But very small book of them. tiny budgets. Mysterious Skin was a small budget movie. They wanted

a much bigger budget. Like, I'm sure, driveaway dolls at this version of it costs, what do you think? Like, they say like 20? Yeah, $15, $20 million. Probably not that much then, but so they wanted too much money. And 2006, or 2005, is when Dirty Shame comes out, which is the last time he's gotten a movie made. And that was the only time he's

gotten a budget like that in the modern era. And he is like, I'd love to make another movie, but I'm not going to make a movie for $300,000. I'm fucking 70. So I think there was this feeling of like, even when they could get big stars attached, the studio didn't want to give them

that amount of money for something that seemed kind of like a lark. And I'm sure there were stars who were, like, hesitant to do it. It just felt like circumstantially, this is not the time that will accept this film. Now, the boys make Hail Caesar and Buster Scruggs their last two movies together.

But to be clear, they put this movie on a shelf. Essentially, they just have, they're like, we have two and a half scripts is how they described it, that we just kind of put in a drawer and said maybe the kids will find them. Honey don't. Honey don't is the second script

and there's some supposedly a third. It is called go beavers. It might be a college horror movie. Fine. Okay. But yes. Now, they would just mention, oh, there's this trilogy of lesbian genre films.

Honey Don't, which is obviously, by the time this is coming out, has been released and forgotten by society is more of like a hard-boiled. detective story. It still has comedy in it, but it is not as like light as this movie. And, yeah,

I mean, it's still funny. Whatever, you'll see it. Probably. Maybe not. Maybe you'll skip that one. We're doing it on the podcast, my friend. I might just skip it. Tune in next week. And, but so Ethan says, Hail Caesar and Buster Scruggs were very hard movies

to make heavy productions, you know, like not dramatically so, but just like, you know, they'd be complicated periods. movies are basically eight movies. That's the thing he talked about is like Buster Scruggs felt like separate productions. There's a bunch of stories that are not connected. And that had to keep resetting. And Hale Caesar has all these different movies within the movies. And also like they true grit not too shortly before that. He was like, we did too many Westerns. We did too many environmental things. He always sort of talked about it as just like, I felt burnout. It was starting to feel more like

a job than a joy. I don't want to get stuck in that rut. I need some time away. Joel sort of felt similarly, but maybe not as extreme as me. There was nothing dramatic. They've been very clear that nothing dramatic has happened. They see each other all the time. It's not like there is a schism exactly. It's more that Ethan got really exhausted. Right.

Of the actual wear of the production and the pressures and the money and all this sort of stuff. Now, Joel goes off to make Macbeth, which is so clearly what happens to Ethan as well, which is like Francis McDormand wanted to do that. He wanted to do it too, but like it's a project that's generating with her. she's sort of challenging him to do something like that. Ethan would never have wanted to do it. They were both very clear. They both, you know, so off he goes and makes Macbeth.

Do projects with their wives that feel like very deep collaborations of the thing they would never do on their own or with their brother, right? But the timeline is like this sort of whisper, much like the Soderberg retirement of like, people are saying they might take a break. Then they're being upfront in interviews, right? And they're just like, we're just tired. Ethan in particular is burned out. He wants some space. then Joel and Francis announced Macbeth, and you're like, okay, cool, interesting. I guess that's the kind of thing that Joel does while Ethan is on hiatus.

Then Ethan announces the Jerry Lee Lewis movie, which comes about strangely as, like, their friend T. Bone Burnett had been working on some larger project that included a lot of archival footage that wasn't just about Jerry Lee Lewis, but never quite came together. And he's just like, we have all this material. I know you're a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, his personal life, not his music. Ethan, to be clear, said the opposite thing. Do you want to do something with this? And they were like, in deep lockdown pandemic, I think what happened to a lot of aging filmmakers who were like, I'm getting tired, I'm slowing down.

Then there's like 18 months where they're doing nothing, and they're like, fuck. What if I never make anything ever again? So they start editing this during the lockdown and are like, this kind of got, like, Trisha and I are doing this together, working with preexisting material. It's just sort of a construction project.

Movies admittedly very sloppy. But they're like, it got us kind of back into the rhythm of doing it. And so coming out of lockdown, they're suddenly like, do we try to get those scripts made? So even though Ethan was the one who had sort of kick-started the retirement, or at least the hiatus,

now suddenly it's like, we've sold two movies that we're going to shoot them back to back. So they decided to keep it a period piece because, of course, they could have spruces it up, I suppose. When it was prepped in the early 2000s, Oh, it's just shocking to learn that Holly Hunter was considered for a role. Doesn't seem as was Selma Blair, Christina Applegate, Chloe Savini.

I mean, we're just sort of naming actresses. People who make a lot of sense. Indie movies and stuff. When the project was revived, they cast Geraldine Bissuanatham pretty much right away based on blockers, which is a movie she's very funny in. You know what she's very funny in? Literally every movie she's ever gone. She's basically the most luminous, beautiful person in the world. I'm obsessed with her.

She is one of those people who I have. I just think is always funny without ever feeling like she's pushing. Also, I never get over her accent. She's a babe. No, but I'm saying that she's Australian accent. I know. She's got a great accent. She has the most immaculate American accent.

That's Australian power. They're always doing all the accents. But she's great and pretty much everything I've ever seen her in. But it is interesting that they cast her in this role off of Blockers. Because in Blockers, she's sort of like the horny, chaotic one. And in this one, she's the straight-laced, you know, fuss budget. But so she did audition for, yeah, she audition for Marion. I don't know.

I thought the research threw me. I thought she was through me. Margaret Qualey also auditioned for Marion. Okay. Oh. But they loved Geraldine. So she tried again for Jamie. And she got the part.

Wow. Crazy. JJ really finding gems here. I mean, what are you going to do? They all want. Dean auditioned and received the role. Beanie Feldstein, who's very funny in this movie, I think. She's great, yeah.

You know, she had a great time making it. Matt Damon shows up for a day. Ethan had a great quote about Beanie Feldstein, which he said, there's nothing better than hiring a great actor and just telling them to play angry. Right. And I'm like, that is so much of the Cohen's interest. It's someone they think is a skilled actor

and then writing like pages of just furious dialogue. I think that's so fun to be the actor. It's always fun, yeah. They bring in Miley Cyrus and are like, so I don't know if you've heard of Cynthia Plastercaster, who is basically who she's playing in it. And she was like, oh, I'm very worried with Cynthia Plaster. And we were like, okay, great. So she got it. But yeah, I think Miley and Damon basically are just doing like a day.

I assume Patriot Pascal similarly, but they made his head. Yes. You probably got like a lot of day favorites for a week or so. Yeah. Right. I mean, I don't know. Right. Everyone's just kind of dropping in.

above the title, front and center on the poster. Miley Cyrus uncredited. Ben, you had not seen this movie before. No. I assume you are familiar with the Cynthia Plastercaster legend. Or did you not know about it before this movie? So the Miley Cyrus character is based on this real woman. The film is dedicated to her.

Yes. In 2020. Yes. Dedicated to Cynthia Plastercaster, 1947, 2022, we remember, is the dedication at the end of the film. But she was this, like, infamous. groupy I put in very strong

culture person where her signature was every rock star she slept with she would take a cast of their erect penis Frank

Frank Zappa gave her a lot of money but never got his dick cast he really liked what she was doing but he never

did it himself he's a real dangass freak famously Jimmy Hendrix Jimmy Hendrix is maybe her most famous

I remember that maybe Jim Morrison too Jim Morrison got his dick out for somebody Are you sure? That guy?

I feel like every story about Jim Morrison is like And then he got the concert ended early Because he fucking got his dick out Like it is just all he ever did The dick wanted to do a jazz set Rock piano Probably yes Oh my God

I mean I believe there's a famous museum in Iceland That is like a museum of penises And I believe some of her most famous works Are housed there What do you mean? It's called the Iceland Phalogical Museum

And it is the world's largest display Penises. Have you been there, Maya? No, I haven't been there, David, but I have heard of it. Is the Rasputin jar there? I don't know. There's the infamous Resputin jar. I don't think it's there. Okay. I'll let you guess what's in the jar. I need more info.

Oh, yeah. It is funny that they took so fucking long to kill Rasputin, right? Like, the whole thing was like, they shot him and they threw him in the river. They stabbed him. He was like, I'm still alive. And they were like, Jesus Christ. And he's finally dead. And they were like, get his dick. They're like pushing him into the incinerator.

Hold on. Hold on. I got a jar. Wait, wait, wait. I think this is a very clever thing. What's a clever thing? To reverse engineer a noir caper around. Around Cynthia Plastercaster style. The twist of this movie that is hidden in the marketing is that the entire conspiracy around this movie is that a conservative politician is worried that his reputation could be ruined by.

a mold that exists of his penis from the one time quote that he smoked marijuana and the idea of this briefcase that is five men whose reputations could be ruined as like conservative ball busters by knowing that they had promiscuous use.

I think it's fun. I just think it's like a fun twist on the like what's in the suitcase thing. It's perfect. To be like it's the goofiest and most embarrassing thing that these guys are so in their heads about. It's the weirdest form of blackmail.

Yes. that I've seen in a story. Absolutely. Yeah. But it also speaks to the sort of mission statement of this movie, which is just like, this is silly. This movie is about people shooting each other over a briefcase full of dicks. It's literally a briefcase full of dicks.

The Kinsey Institute also has many of her casts. Just FYI. I'm just really... We're locating. Academic voice here. Yeah. Kinsey. It's funny because it's like, I feel like this was.

this kind of weird underground whim of hers. And then culture and society shifted and by the 2000s museums were like, can we get some weird did? So many these dicks died at 27 that it's like, we didn't know we weren't going to have them around for this long. Anyway, so

they made the movie together. Trish is basically a co-director of the movie in every way but name. Because of as we've said, DJA stuff, Ethan is a DJ member. He can't exactly be joining a new collaboration without a lot of work.

So, yeah, he really liked making this movie, to quote Ethan Cohen, as someone says in John Carpenter's The Thing, I'm all better now. I think it's Wilfred Brimley, right before he turns into a raving space monster. It's the thing that kept saying was they were both feeling so run down and worn out that they were like, if we're going to make a movie again, we need to have fun. And this is a movie that's clearly just people being like, eh, let's just have fun. Yeah. No, I

understand it is very frustrating and perhaps perplexing to some people who are used to the very meticulous, intentional tight craft of the Cohen Brothers movies they know to watch a movie that has like every fucking I-movie

special effect edit in it and like basically like fart sound effects and feels kind of like, I wouldn't say indifferently constructed, but feels loose. But he very much like talks about this, it's his other stuff he does

like these books, like he'll do these nights of one act plays, his poetry, these things where it's clear, like, I need to let off steam and that stuff doesn't get as much spotlight on it. And this is, because it's a movie, more studied, you know, in comparison to

his canon. The, you know, the crew, you know, are you, uh, wenger, wenger, winger, wenger, I assume. Oh, yes. You know, is the DP incredibly respected cinematographer who did power the dog. Academy Award nominee.

You know, like, it's not, Carter Burwell, of course, shows up to do the score. And it's not like their... But a lot of their key collaborators are different on this. Yeah.

It's like half and half. They make it clear that, like, Deacons probably would not have operated the camera this way had they, you know, had they used him, right? They shot it in Pittsburgh, even though obviously it's a road trip movie.

Many of the bars in the film are inspired by real-life bars that cook enjoyed like sugar and spice, a bar in Brooklyn that doesn't exist anymore called Caddyshack the cubby hole, which is a famous bar. That's one of the last one still standing in New York. Yeah, well, Ginger is, of course, in Park Slope. Okay.

It's the one I have been to, and I love that bar. David put his hands over his heart. I've been going there since I used to live next door to it in like 2008. And one thing you might not have noticed about this film, it's a little different from other Cohen Brothers movies or whatever is it's filled with lesbian sex. Yes.

To quote, Trisha Cook, I'm very sex positive. I think there's a lot of embarrassment around sex and shame. And if you have too much sex, you're considered a slup. But let's just embrace love and sex, especially if it's good humor and not crass. Though I'm not against crassness. Yes. I will also say this. I would say this film is not exactly crass, but it is, you know, it's juvenile in good,

fun ways. It's silly. I also think a lot of embarrassment and shame around sex is how sex is almost exclusively portrayed in the films of Joel and Ethan Connors. working together. You know, like, sex is usually something that is, like, embarrassing or is used as, like, a weapon

or is something that feels tortured. It's just... It is very odd to watch this movie introduce characters, like, in, like, states of pure ecstasy, which is not a thing that's your usual entry point into the world of, like,

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Order online at 1,800 Contacts.com or download the free 1,800 Contacts app today. let's talk about the film driveway dolls Yes It's about a couple girls Jamie and Marion We open I've said their names many times Pedro Pascal

We open with Pedro Pascal In a gay bar doing full Kind of like noir Wait is it a gay bar Or is he's just in a regular bar But he's a gay man Which is why I thought it flips Later on in the movie

I thought Oh you might be right Yeah You're right I was really thrown Because I've never seen That guy in a movie before Who is he?

I don't know don't know. What's he up to? Can we talk about, because this is basically the start of the two-year round of Pedro Pascal being in everything. He was, yes. He's in a lot of things in 2024 alone. In 2025, he's taken a break and only been in three movies that came out within a month of each other or whatever. And then next year, of course, he will be in the Mandalorian Krogu all over it, I assume. Yes. All in it. He's inside. And then he is maybe either the most important Avenger or or it has five minutes in Avengers Doomsday whenever they settle on for that one.

I just think there was this barrage of him getting announced attached to every single thing. Yeah. And even the amount of stuff he's dropped out of like the aforementioned weapons, right? Yeah, he was going to be the dance card got too full. He was going to be the brolin roll, I assume. I find it funny, and it started with this film

that I kept being like, how does he have the time to do all these movies? And then other than Fantastic Four, the answer to every single one of those is he's not in as much as you think. He has been, It's true. Like, Materialist, he's very much the third lead.

Yes, absolutely. And I liked him a lot in that, but like, Freaky Tales, the movie that only I have seen. I know. I watched it. It's good, right? I thought it was okay. It bounced off me a little bit, but I liked it okay. I think he's really good.

He's good in it. I think his section's kind of the best. It is. Yes. But that's a pure omnibus movie. Yeah, that's, he's only in 20 minutes of him. Did you like him in Materialist? I liked him in Materialist.

I think that I have, like, a Luke Warren. take about Pedro Pascal. What's that? I feel like, I think maybe my take about Pedro Pascal is that I have a lukewarm feeling towards Pedro Pascal's performances in some of his movies. I really like him. I think he is like fun to watch on screens, but I would say the people in the movies that he has been in have been people that I've been more interested in watching.

Maya, I completely agree with you. And I don't think he's been good in a movie. Period? Whoa. In a long time. Okay. And when I, and I don't mean that, like, maybe, all right, he hasn't been great, if that makes sense. Like, I think he's usually pretty good.

But when I ask people this question, and I have been doing it, because he's on everyone's mind of, what is Pedro Pascal's greatest performance? Almost everyone says Game of Thrones, which I think is the right answer, but you're kind of like, right. Five episodes. He's still kind of dining out on that. 10 years ago. Who the fuck was he on that? He was, of course. Did you watch Game of Thrones?

Yeah, I did. I just have no memory. Period. Just generally. He played Oberyn Martel, the Red Viper. He's the guy who shows up

in, what is it, season three, from Dorn being like you killed my fucking, you know, wife, like I am, sorry, sister, not wife.

You know, I have a big spear. I want to have a fight. You don't remember him? He's bisexual. He's got a pair or more. He's like, he's coming in.

Do you care about Game of Thrones? I haven't watched it. Okay. All right. Well, I'm the only Game of Thrones fan here, I guess. I just remember, I remember my brother, James, who was watching it being, like, who is this fucking guy? Is this guy going to be a big movie star? Yeah. And he was already at that point, because what is he? He's 50 now. So he was already, like, probably 40.

Yep. And like, he'd been bumming around in movies for years, not getting famous, but, you know, being in stuff. Yes. And then suddenly it was like, he was, like, great to have as your, like, third guy, right? Like, Great Wall. Kingsman 2. I mean, Kingsman 2 is like, great, well, he's the second guy. Kingsman 2 is, we couldn't get Channing Tatum for the full time, so can you do half the part? Triple Frontier, he's like kind of a third guy in that. Right, he does a couple seasons of Narcos. You know, Wonder Woman 84, he's the villain. Beal Street, he's got a good small part, but it's sort of like...

And he's always totally solid. It's sort of like he's like high-level character actor with matinee looks and charisma. I was talking about this with our buddy Mike Carlson, a podcast The Ride, where he was just like, am I crazy in thinking? He is the rare case of someone who exploded where you can't point to, and that's the moment where it happened. Where it's like exactly what you're saying. Game of Thrones, everyone's like, this guy's good. Then there's like six years of him showing up and doing sturdy work. Being good.

And then in like 2019, everyone decided I think he's the guy now. But there was not the role that made everyone jump to it. I haven't seen the Cage movie, which I know everyone says he's fun in, the unbearable weight of masses. He's really good in that. But I know that's sort of a jokey supporting role. And I thought he was good in Gladiator, too, but that's a movie that kind of doesn't know what to do with him.

And that seems like the inverse of the Kingsman thing of maybe he wasn't available as much as they wanted. That's exactly what happened with that movie. Because he, I mean, you know, spoiler dies. And I was told by someone like, initially he didn't die. And then they were like, oh, he's got to go. Pedro is now kind of a Sean Bean because of scheduling. I mean, the bubble is the worst movie ever made. Oh, God.

But then it's, right, it's 20, freaky tales drive away dolls, the uninvited, wild robot, which he's very good in. He's great. He's good in Wild Robot. That's the movie that fucking Walton Goggins' wife wrote and directed that has every actor in it because of being friends. He hosts SNL, he does the SNL 50th,

He does the fucking Spike Jones Airpods commercial, Eddington. The last... I think he's very well deployed in Eddington. Like, I think that's a good performance. But it's not, again, it's not the crux of the movie in a way. Could we unpack the AirPods for a commercial? Just talk about some of our favorite standout. You want to do a full, like, denim invasion on this?

I think we might actually, yeah. You know what? We should just do a separate ad. I feel like that's the moment when that commercial starts playing, that's the moment where everyone's like, okay, too much. Yes. You can't also be in ads. And it's also because since everyone loves him

And the weird answer to this is like I think he's become more of a star Because of press tours than performances He's lovable, he's good on S&L. He's charismatic, yeah, etc. He's got a great mustache. He does, he does. He's a good-looking guy.

I think he's fine on The Last of Us But I think he was not well cast And whatever, that shows just kind of well. I think Eddington and Materialist cast him very well because in both cases he's kind of a fake movie star in them That's what I like about it, right? Is I'm like, this is him acknowledging that the movie is about the idea of him being the guy and he is good at showing how much of a kind of facade it is.

Yeah. I think Fantastic Four is like a pretty brutal miscasting. He's oddly cast and or the movie isn't working to like fit the character around him or whatever. I was questioning it when they announced him. I like that movie a lot more than you did. But I cannot deny that like the movie's big. biggest issue in a way is that he is not the right motor for that vehicle. Or, yeah, or just change, cast him and then, yeah, just change the part a little bit to, I don't know.

He feels uncomfortable in that movie. He does. But I wonder if part of it is that that's the only movie that's asked him to, like, really be the guy at the center. Maybe. In a certain way, that is maybe not what he's good at doing. Driveway Dolls did. He's at the center of this movie. For 90 seconds.

I mean, this is the thing. When he does stuff like this, I'm like, I love this guy. It's cool that he showed up for a day and did this and used his cachet. Like, that's the part of him I really like. Yeah. And I also think, like, in 90 seconds with almost no dialogue, you're like, he's having fun here. You're like, this guy's like making comedic choices. I don't want to oversell this performance, but I'm just like.

I thought it was good. He's enjoying the, like, broadness of it. Like, it's good. He's doing business. But this guy is basically changed. chased down a dark alley with a briefcase and then killed and then we hard cut to Cunalingis,

is that correct? Yeah, hard to go to a sex scene. Yes. And Jamie, our character, a hero, Jamie, played by Margaret Kwali, is a free-spirited lady in Philadelphia who has a girlfriend, Beaniefeld's

Dina Suki, but their relationship is essentially imploding because Jamie sleeps around a lot, I guess? She's in the middle of a hookup. Right. And And... With a cop? Is that... No, Beanie's the cop.

Yeah. This is a friend of this. Yeah, but I remember the like, right, all the cop paraphernalia. Yes. Yes. Right. I love, um, a classic answering machine goes off. Yeah.

While you're home. Give you some exposition about the character. Yeah. Another reason for this movie to be set in 1999. You know, that it's just like a tape goes like, beep. I mean... And there's no way to turn it off. The fucking Piglobasker, the dude is not in.

It is a good. way to, yeah, to set out the, yeah. Have you seen Big Lobowski? I haven't. Wow. I know. I guess Big Lobowski is the second most sexual film in the canon behind this. And yet, it feels a little overwhelmed by sex.

Yeah, but in Big LaBowardt, I mean, I just, I love that movie. But, like, it's like, Julianne Moore being like, you know, so sexual at him. And he's just like, uh-huh. It's funny. And even his sexual fantasies, he has no agency. Right. But, you know, Jamie's a free spirit and she barely wears clothes and she has a great time and then she's got her friend. She has the best look.

Go ahead. Her character, I just, I love the cut off sleeves. Yeah. I love the haircut. It's kind of like rocker chick. Like all of her fits throughout. I'm just like, damn, I want to cut my sleeves off. You can, man.

I don't know. It's not quite the gun show. You're working on it. I'm working on it. You're working on it. Yeah. I just want to call out, Pedro Pascal is credited at the end of this film as penis collector.

I think I saw that when I watched the credits for the first time and I laughed. There are a lot of characters in the movie that don't have proper names. You know, it's the goon, the goon, the chief penis collector. But we're introduced to Marion at her office job being sort of hit on by a wet blanket dude. she is literally buttoned down she dresses like office Austin Powers

yeah she she's very overdressed she's I think her intro scene is very funny just just her manner and the way of shutting the guy down and all that I think if she has a fastball a special move she is better at doing high energy deadpan than almost anyone else

you know She's working. You know, she's in stuff. But what can we do to make her America's sweetheart or whatever, Geraldine? To go back to earlier point, she is very much a star where you're like, we don't make the movies that help her. Yeah. You know? And when she, like, took over the role in Thunderbolts that I-O vacated, you're sort of just like, I guess that is good for her?

Like, just anything to get her more exposure? That role was bigger than I thought it was going to be when you hear, like, oh, she's the. assistant, you're like, well, that sounds like two scenes. And I like that she's got flirtation with Sebastian Stan. At least they're letting her not just be a functionary. She's going to be songbird, right? Isn't that the thing? Yeah, not to. Does that I mean, I think, Mia, the idea that Geraldine Vizwanathan is going to be songbird. That was a lot of talking coming at me for just a second. But she might be songbird.

I actually, I do love the MCU. I fell off after. Did you grow up? Did you grow up with the MCU? I did. Like, I had the encyclopedias. I still have the encyclopedias. I still have the encyclopedias for like but were you a comics person or was movie mostly was movies i i think comics kind of came later but i love the mc u i went and saw thunderbolts just because it was like the first movie in a long time that i had heard like yeah it's good different than what they'd been doing because i got tired it's different for what they had been doing which was bad movies yes exactly did you see fantastic four i didn't yet but i've been on my list i have to do it i'm doing the song yeah the music um no i look i like that movie and yeah

Yep, I think you're better off watching seven Cohen Brothers movies in a month. I had a great time, yeah. They're rushing to the theater. I'm not going to argue. But, yeah, my Geraldine question, right, there's a 10 years ago, hey, you're going to play Mel in this movie, but we have plans for you to be songbird in three more movies. That's exciting. Now it's kind of like, oh, you're going to be songbird. And it's like, yeah, in what?

Like, what do you actually have going on, guys? To what end? Yeah. She works a lot. She does. And I feel like she gets. She's very funny in Ohio. Good work.

She made with Molly Gordon, who I think she's friends with. She's, you know, she's great. I just want her to be in more stuff. Like Broken Hearts Gallery was meant to be a theatrical movie. I'm sorry. But I remember the reviews at the time being like, when is someone going to write a good vehicle for me? I watched that being like, a rom-com, let's go, baby.

And it was pretty bad. And she's so goodness, and I do think she's like the best reason to see this, is it is the best Geraldine Viswanathan vehicle we have gotten so far. Absolutely. She is very much the heart of the movie. Yes. Even though it's sort of Quali driving the story.

Like the emotional arc of the movie is entirely her. She's so big. It's like so hard to have the grumpy sunshine Burton Ernie vibe of like Geraldine's character, Miriam is such a wet blanket. She's tough. She's a tough thing. But that's what I mean about the high energy deadpan thing.

You know? Like she still does feel like she exists in this world that is pitched at such a high register. Yeah. David's hugging baby joy Is their point you want to make? Margaret's character, Marco Colley's character,

whose name of course, and I'm checking now, is Jamie. I keep forgetting the name. It's like, yes, does she have an arc? Her arc is that she maybe learns to be 5% less much, right?

Like, it's just like, hey, Jamie, dial it down slightly. Sometimes you go a little overboard. She is, you know, she represents my favorite Ethan Cohen thing, which is the character who takes 18 paragraphs to get across a one-sentence idea.

She reminds me of Walter in Big Lobowski, but, like, in a positive energy way instead of a negative energy way. Yeah. Not just in that she won't shut the fuck up, but also in that, like, she will start doing a plan without even checking with anyone.

Like, she'll fucking graffiti the car. Like, she'll just sort of do stuff where you're like, why would you do that? That's actively harmful to what we're doing. Those characters are often a little evil or at least malicious and dark. And she's not. like the professor of lady killers and all these people like, I mean, he's well-intentioned,

but Nick Cage and Raising Arizona, who's similarly kind of this like mischievous. I mean, I've had it with love. I know bards and troubadours are high on it, but I don't believe it's relevant to the modern 20th, soon to be 21st century lesbian, that kind of like sentence that, like, goes off into side directions within it. It's really hard. It's quite a challenge to lobby an actor. And her arc is that she comes to realize that maybe.

Maybe she actually wants emotional underpinnings in her relationships with people? I feel like, I don't know. I wasn't convinced by the end when you get to, like, yeah. It's the big question. Yeah. Because this is a movie essentially about Jamie and Marion falling in love and finding happiness with each other. It is two women of the same orientation who share a friend group who have known each other a long time but have never been romantic or sexual with each other going on this road trip that is sort of driven by this kind of. super bad, we got to get you laid

tonight thing from the out going one. Jamie's like, okay, forget me, you need to be getting laid, right, to Marion. And Marion's like, I don't want to deal with that. I just want to read Flobert or whatever it is. But there's a sort of surprising, catching feelings

thing of they never have seen each other that way. Then it's sort of like, do we need to do this just as means to an end? And then have we actually fallen into something deeper? I think Geraldine plays that perfectly. I think maybe part of what we're getting at is that like the scenes where you need to be sold that Quali is going through the same kind of or her own parallel transformation are still her just monologuing seemingly unaffected by what any other character is doing.

Would you want to marry Jamie? Not marry. Fine. Date Jamie. No. Like being a serious relationship with Jamie. No. I don't think I would.

I think it would be so annoying. I would want to hang out with Jamie. Jamie's have great hang, someone to be crazy with, and then be like, okay, Jamie, I'll see you in a couple weeks. Is there a slightly better version of this script where in the last 20 minutes, Jamie becomes a little more pulled back and Marion starts to be the one. Maybe. You know, like, yes, instead, do you sell that more if there's a transference of energy

rather than them meeting a little bit towards the middle? I think so. Go ahead, Maya, please. Well, I mean, like, I was struggling so much while watching this movie because I feel like there's kind of the... When you get to the end of the movie, I was like, that's a fine movie, but, like, it feels like there's something missing, but there's not inherently anything on paper that feels like there's, like, there's, like, actually anything missing. No. But when you look at the two main characters, I think there's, like, you have Geraldine giving, like, an excellent performance to a wet blanket character character who feels like is playing it, she's playing it so straight, the whole movie with, like, the wackiness going on around here where Margaret Pauly's character, Jamie is, like, so zany and absolutely. out there and kind of feels like, obviously, they're thrown into this, the midst of something that they were not supposed to be involved in. And that's the whole point. But I think, like, the performance from Kuali feels like it kind of does Jamie's character, makes it a little bit too left of center. But then Geraldine's character is such a wet blanket to the point that, like, you know, Miriam just kind of doesn't feel like she fits into the zaniness of, like, Jamie. It feels like it's kind of like two things dancing around each other that never kind of meet up.

And I think Miriam gets to the middle much more than Jamie does, the midpoint of them. Right. And it's like maybe that is the, I don't know, does this movie not have complete character arcs in a way? You know, the Coen's love in their work together avoiding the obvious outcome and the kind of like clean cycle and whatever. But when this movie is aiming for far less profound things, you're like, do I want the emotional catharsis of kind of the obvious thing happening at the end? And I do feel like you want the scene at the end where when they're with the two goons, Marion is suddenly able to, like, fast talk her way around them the way Jamie has before. Like that kind of thing does feel like it would be

satisfying. Basically, Mirren wants to go visit her aunt. Right. The purpose of They're both bummed out. Jamie's bored. Jamie's bored and just got dumped and kicked out of her house. Yes. By Suki. And she knows about this. The notion of the drive away that there's a car that needs to be gotten from one drop-off point to another.

They will pay you money. A one-way rental, but right, you're basically being paid for it. Right. But basically... I feel like this does not exist anymore in any way. No. But it's a very good setup for a movie. Another reason this film has to be set up in the year it is.

It's the same premise as blank check. the film blank check. They walk into the business one minute before the person is supposed to get the thing like this criminal enterprise has been agreed upon. In blank check it's you will be handed

a million dollars or whatever as part of some mob payoff or whatever the fuck is going on in that movie. I already forgot. The kid shows up a minute before and so on there it goes. In this one, they show up. We want to go to Tallahassee and Curley.

Best performance of the movie, obviously. I agree. Camp completely crushing it. has just gotten off the phone is like, okay, you're the people taking the special, you know, delivery to Tallahassee, take the Dodgers. Which they're also being

so argumentative and unclear with him on the phone like this sort of like, do we need to fucking repeat it for you again thing? That when someone comes in 15 seconds later and says Tallahassee, he's just so frazzled by it. Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson as

to Coney, heavy you know, bickering hip-man guy. Then I saw C.J. Wilson and recently. Well, C.J. Wilson, I feel like is an exceptional theater actor. Yes. Does a lot of Lonnergan stuff. Yes. Doesn't do a lot of movies at all. Or TV.

I feel like I saw him show up young in something and had that kind of shock. Were you watching? I mean, young. I'm in Manchester. Yeah, he is in those. No, you know what it was? I was watching. What were you watching?

I was re-watching Netflix's the characters. Do you remember that? Well, yeah. Sure, like when the comedians had like the... Yeah, because Tim Robinson had one. Right. That's what I think you should leave comes out of. But that 10 years ago, they were like, let's give character comedians the ability to make their own half hour special and can be whatever format they want. Tim Robinson's one has the gambling guy.

What the fuck? Lady. Have you seen this? I haven't seen this. He's playing a guy who's like a, you know... Is it just like a classic Tim Robinson? Well, he's like, hey, I'm a gambler. Like lady luck.

He's like, put it all on... Like whatever. He rolls the dice. He's like, fuck, I lost all my money! It's like three minutes of wind up. I love it. They do like Guadela's Copacabana

tracking shot of him knowing everyone at the club and being awesome. And then the first time he bets money. He's, ah! I'm broke! And then he just keeps doubling down on her. But this show was like a big flop, but that his episode was so liked

by comedy people. I love it. That like Lonely Islands, other folks were like, we'll back you up in doing a Netflix show that no one will ever watch, and that became phenomenal. Anyway, he showed up in that. But this is a lot of the stuff that I love in co-in movies of like these side characters who feel like they are living off entire stories that are happening just to the side. The whole curly thing of just like this character getting a little more time in investment than any other movie would give him. But also this

like odd side narrative to the goons who are similarly going through a weird evil version of the main plotline. It's a funny idea. Right. They have their own personal. They don't need to hook up, but they do have some dynamic they need to end. But they have hooked up. Right. That's the blow up at the end. I know. Right. It's like these two guys

are stuck in this car together, like this Fargo dynamic, yelling at each other and the one guy, the classic Cohen's like big guy and little guy thing, yelling at the other guy for not being masculine enough, right? And sort of pushing this like sexuality and this like machismo. At the end, you realize,

they, like, hooked up and both are really freaked out about it and defensive and they shoot each other. Joey Slotnick has come up on this podcast because Alex Rosh Perry is kind of obsessed with him. He was a frequent Craig Kilbourne punchline. Right. It's a classic Alex Rass Perry. You don't remember that?

Everyone remembers that. That was the biggest thing on TV in the 90s. I can't believe you don't remember Joey Slotnett. You weren't watching Kilbourne every night. I'm just laughing at this exceptional impersonation of Alex Ross Perry interrogating you. about something. The only time

take a shower is 5 p.m. You're a lunatic if you take a shower that is the big argument I had with Alex once. You weren't even at the table

I just remember. No, but I still repeat that to other people to explain Alex. I just sit down and I'm like, when do you shower?

I'm like, when do you shower? I'm like, in the morning after I wake up and he's like, insane. Insane. When do you shower, Maya?

You don't have to answer that question. You're a night shower person. I'm a night shower person. Joey Slotnick used to have Big Bufant curly hair. And I feel like it was like a definitive part of his like on screen.

Like when you would spot him in a movie, you'd be like, oh, yeah, Joey Slotnik. There he is. I believe, did he not play Larry in the Three Stooges TV movie? There was a very austere three Stooges TV movie produced by Mill Gibson that I think he played Larry in because he looks so much like Larry fine. You are thinking of somebody else because Evan Handler, the great. actor Evan Handler played him. I feel like... You know what I'm thinking of? What are you thinking?

Joey Slotnick has been doing fucking Marks Brothers on stage. Oh, interesting. He does groucho. Okay. Well, maybe he's good. I think he did a stage duck soup. Okay. Uh-huh. That sounds like something I wouldn't want to see. I'm going to be honest with you. But I think he also played... I hate to bring this up. It's so silly.

But I must bring it up. Steve Wozniak inventor of Apple Pirates of Silicon Valley in the TV movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley in which Noah Wiley played Steve Jobs

and Anthony Michael Hall played Bill Gates. I just had to say that. That was a big TV movie. It had billboards all over the place at a time where TV movies were not Legion. And I just remember walking by

that as a kid and being like, God, the casting could never get better than this. Something about it felt faded. In the late 90s to be like Wiley and Michael hall absolutely. Anyway, but it's just fun to see him here. He's an actor I hadn't thought about much and he shows up as a grouchy hip man. I thought he was pretty good. So he and C.J. Wilson are there. You've got Coleman Domingo as the chief who's, I guess, the chief of this

operation. And he wears a suit and he has this kind of, I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but he's a fairly arresting voice. Delivers lines in kind of a like melodic and interesting way. It's very much a guy I could listen to say anything. Yeah. Yeah. And then who else is in the makes, I mean, Bill Camp, we shouted out, and Beanie Feldstein is the grumpy ex-girlfriend who's a cop. That's kind of it. Coleman Domingo kind of has quietly been doing the Pedro Pascal thing, but it's totally working. But I love him. I love anything.

But it's a similar thing if that guy was around forever, I for so long have been like, this is one of the best actors on the planet, and it felt like it's finally like growing and he's catching on. This guy quietly without, like, leading man movie star pressure has gotten two consecutive best. actor nominations? He has. You know, like, this guy works perfectly as character actor, supporting lead, lead, doing every genre, every type of thing. He's very, very good in Sing Sing. I did not like Rustin much at all, but I was happy when he got the Osgunon because it felt

like a certain... I felt like, this is a nice anointment. And then Sing Sing, I was like, oh, it's great. He's been nominated for something good that he's great. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so they get the... They get to go on their trip to Florida.

Right. They got this car. They get this car just for fun. They're not aware that they're transporting a briefcase of dildos, right? That's what's in the car. As well as Pedro Pascal's head. A hat box with on ice. Why is that included?

Like, what is the plausible plot reason to put a head in there? Bring me his heads. Yeah. I think it's a crew. Just classic. Just classic. Yeah. Okay.

There's the part where she mentioned. Good enough. I'm not sure I buy that, but okay. There's the part where she mentions, like, you know, in her very flowery way, the, like, don't look in the box. I saw a movie where they keeps asking what's in the box. And when you look inside, something's terrible. That's, like, meant to be seven, right? Yeah, I guess so.

I mean, that's what I think of when I think of a head in a box. Yeah. It's just funny to think of, like, Ethan Cohen's sitting down and being like, I'm going to make a seven reference when their movies don't really reference other pop culture, especially not contemporaries. Not usually. baby Joey's going to sit in my shoulder Okay baby Joey is sitting on David's shoulder So they go on a trip And of course

Boring old Marion just wants to drive down the interstate And fun Jamie wants to go to every single Like lesbian bar she can think of And see the world's largest Dixie Cup Is that what it is? Yep Among other things And they're going to Tallahassee, Florida Which I've never been to but I do like that

Marion is like it has Spanish moss or whatever And Miami is trashy. They've got to get away from Miami. Right. Right. And, you know, there's not too much plot. There's just happening. This movie is truly 76 minutes long before the credits roll.

And it has long interstitials. Like, it is a thing a lot of people threw out of, like, how is it 76 end feels padded? Yeah. Because of multiple, like, well, wah, wah, wow, wow, wow, wow. Extended all like modelers-esque psychedelic interlude. Crazy. Yes. There's a universe in which you're like,

I am loathe to say this because I am all for the power of the movies and the movie as an art form. But there's almost a universe in which you're like, hey, Ethan and Trisha Cook, you have like a pile of scripts and like side notes. Maybe make this like an anthology series. Maybe do like a couple 45 minutes.

You know? We were talking about in one of our group texts. There was the 90s, showtime series where they got a bunch of directors to remake like Roger Corman Road pictures

like Dante and Robert Rodriguez and stuff and you could like see them them thematically fitting together more in that kind of way

that have been said I don't feel like this movie is like Jesus Christ an hour and 15 minutes and they're running out of steam no it's not I do think if it was a minute

longer I would shoot myself in the head though I don't disagree it's like it definitely needs to be done when it's wrapping up. Can we talk about the editing? You're not like, I want more.

Can we talk about the editing? Yes, we can. Trisha Cook I just cut to a little like animated sequence really quick. That has no connection to anything. Okay, and we're back. It's call forwards to

the state of hallucination that Matt Damon's character was in when his dick was being cast. Yeah, because you start to see Miley Cyrus appear in those before her actual appearance. Yeah. That is the ostensible purpose of them.

I guess I did not read that. It's why you need to watch the movie three times, Ben. It's a naughty text. It's a naughty layered text. Okay, well, we have that interlude, and here's how we're going to cut back to the main conversation. That was me doing my impression of some of the transitions in this movie. That was really good. That was super good.

Yeah. Get no frills. Delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for $2.50 a month. Learn more at pceexpress.ca. This Giving Tuesday, Cam H is counting on your support. Together, we can forge a better path for mental health by creating a future where Canadians can get the help they need when they need it, no matter who or where they are. From November 25th to December 2nd, your donation will will be doubled. That means every dollar goes twice as far to help build a future where no one's

seeking help is left behind. Donate today at camh.ca.ca.giving Tuesday. This movie is co-directed by an editor who is seemingly enjoying breaking every rule of respectable editing. Yes, Trisha Cook edited it after working for many years as the assistant. an editor to the Coens, right? It's not like Trisha Cook had never edited any before. No. This is an experienced person. So I think there's a thoughtfulness

to how the movie's being presented to us in terms of like, this thing is rickety. It's barely standing on its two feet. Like, it's silly. You're supposed to get that it's silly. And I do get that it's silly. They make it very clear. Yes. I think, and I think that's fine. I like the idea that it's ramshackle and that's this car that's

going to fall apart in a minute's notice. And that's like playful. That's just trying stuff. I do understand perhaps some cinema goers sitting down and being like, you know, I paid like $18. I hired a baby. I mean. Is this an affront? You didn't want to just like think about some of this stuff like for a second?

Yes. But I do think that's the atmosphere of the film. But like not expecting this movie to have like a great show, awesome job vibe. Imagine me. This is the first Cohen. brother movie I've ever seen. But I think that's ideal. It was awesome. Right. You're like, oh, so they're just guys

who like... Exactly. I literally was like, oh, so this is their deal. Like, they're just wacky, silly guys, putting whatever they want in a movie. And, like, truly, I walked in, I used my movie pass. That movie cost me $0. Wow. It was a last minute decision to go and see drive away dolls. I walked out being like, yeah, I liked

it. Like, it's great. This movie is a perfect argument for movie-going subscription programs. Like, you're right, David. If I recommend it to someone who does not see movies often to pay $18 just to see this. But I'm like, if you're spending $20 a month, make driveway dolls one of your two or three in February when the pickens are slim. Oh, God. The pickings are so slim when this movie came out too.

Like, I remember feeling like, oh, well, I guess this is it. Yeah. A little bit. I have this. And you will see, like, what's that old tweet of like, oh, fuck, let me find the tweet. You say your thought, I'm going to find the tweet. I have this theory, and this movie falls into this. right, but it's this sort of old master thing.

We were talking about this in one of our group texts the other day of like old filmmakers who contend when people are like, why did you go to digital? Why did you like change your filmmaking style? And they're like, I think this looks as good as any of my films. And you're like, your movies used to look immaculate. And now you're old and people are offering you less money and you just want to get it over with quickly.

There's a lot of that vibe where it's just like, I don't want to belabor this in the same way. And you need to judge those movies differently. Of course, it doesn't mean they're better than their best films. But you're like, this is the prism of like this person's at a stage in their life where they have something they want to say, but maybe they're not as obsessive about the craft and the construction. And I think when Megalopolis was coming out and there was this feeling of like, Hopola is going to return to the main stage. And he's ready to make like, you know, it's been decades, but he's going to make another apocalypse now, another godfather, David's hugging Joey, very tightly. and then people were alarmed when they saw the trailer

and they were like, why does it look like this? Why is it look like the dialogue like this? All of this shit. And you're like, this guy has not made a normal looking movie in 15 years, right? And I think there's something like late period, Wachowski's has a lot of this as well, like Sense 8, and what I think threw a lot of people off in Matrix Resurrections were especially people who like early in their career

are so obsessive about like technical innovation and craft and visual storytelling and, like, perfect construction and whatever. And then you get to a point where it's like, congratulations. You have made perfect movies. You have made movies that not only will, like, go down in history forever, but people will study as every hair on this head is, like, perfect. How do you challenge yourself at that point? You don't.

You make driveway dolls. I really think there is a point of, like, the only way I can actually push myself and challenge myself now is to sort of. try to make something incorrectly on purpose. Which isn't to say make a bad movie on purpose, but like I followed all of the roles and even evolved them and I got to the end of that. And then I transmuted it onto lateral genre exercises and I did that as well. What more is there to do other than to sit down and go, well, everyone knows a movie

shouldn't be edited like this. But what if I try it? The tweet I'm referencing is by Mike Ginn, G. G.N. I'm not sure. That's his name. And here's the tweet. I think about it all the time. It's a very famous tweet. Why must a movie be good? Is it not enough to sit somewhere dark and see a beautiful face? Huge. And that is how I feel a little bit about driveway dolls. So I'm like, look at all these pretty people.

I agree. Yeah. Driving around, taking their tops of, being silly. Like, everyone's having fun. I sat in a room and there was a big machine behind me that projected a bunch of light onto a screen in front of my face and then colors moved around. It's exactly what I was here for. Nothing more, nothing less. So, yes.

Okay, what are some of the things they do? In this very short movie, it's basically the halfway point. Like, the 30-minute mark is when they hook up, which I also like that is not something that has held to the very end. It's sort of like... They go to a make-out party with a soccer team.

High school soccer players. Yes, and they make out... Aren't you a little too old to be at a sleepover. Right. They're in a basement, and everyone's making out and then someone blows a whistle and everyone moves one to the right or whatever.

I chuckle too. I think the whole thing is funny and obviously this is what, right, gets them to make out because they have to move along. And they're like, oh, fuck, we don't, you know, quality's kind of like,

this is no big deal. It doesn't mean anything. And then there's the moment where Geraldine pushes away and is just tearfully says, please don't bring someone back to the motel room tonight. Because we've already set this thing of like she's going to pick up a new partner for that night in every single town while Vizwanathan sits in the fucking lobby of this shitty motel and the Europeans reading a novel. Right. Reading Henry James.

Yeah. Right. Of course it's Henry James because that's the joke. Henry James is driveway dykes at the end. So that happens. They do hook up. They found the head at some point. She runs away.

Right. Collie kind of recognizes, oh, I think maybe an emotional thing happened that I need to reckon. but then she gets picked up by the cops yes Geraldine does Geraldine gets picked up by the cops for what like vagrancy because she's like walking around in the darkness I don't even know yes but basically they get split up for that night is the point and you have the flashback

sequence to her sort of like activation moment which also helps make her feel like more of a character even though these are not like super complicated scenes that there is just like a kind of viewpoint and perspective on it and then yes the arresting thing

is just that they get split up for the night but then discover back to like the police officer and that's why I'm arrested for being mouthy right

discover the dildos call up Eni Feldstein to try to get her to help them because now they realize we're being chased we're caught up

in something bad yes and then they make it to tell The greatest moment, of course. Kind of quicker than you think. What's the greatest moment? The goon's going back to kill Curley.

Yes. And Beanie Feldsing going to check in on him. And this kind of like cruelty of the universe, Cohen's moment in a movie that otherwise is kind of devoid of it? Yes. Of he is lying, dying, his final breaths, and he takes all the sheets of paper around him and tries to throw him up just to get her attention

before she leaves the window. And it doesn't happen. The paper falls back on his chest and he says, no one's going to save him. Don't somebody say curly. Do you think he dies or do you think he's just in pain? I think he's just in pain. My first time I watched this, my letterbox review was,

rumor is has it. Curley is still on the floor. So I like to believe he's still with us. I think he's still doing fine. There's no driveway doll's wiki yet, so I can't check in on Curley's individual character entry. They need to come up with a name for what they're calling these movies. Do you know what I'm saying?

Because then we could make a bigger wiki for the universe. I assume they're not interconnected because we already have two qualities. Correct. They are not. Honeydon't has nothing to do with driveway dolls except that it also feels like it was made very quickly. And has a bunch of famous people in it, which is fun, but right, being silly. Driveway dolls. So they go to Tallahassee.

They go to this hotel. It's a lot. I realize on my third watch, as I've now become an expert in this movie, I'm the mayor of driveway dolls. Like, they get to the hotel kind of fast. then we are in the last act of the movie for almost half of the movie of this short movie. But that's...

Like, the Alamo's dropping your check. They are. They are. Yeah. I do like the decision that it's not about them getting to the hookup. That it's like, there's the makeout, then there's the sort of like,

we have to reckon with these emotions. The dinner at the hotel, which is Geraldine doing this like very overwritten. What are you saying? I'm saying I want to try having emotions. for once. Right.

I want to have emotional sex rather than just fun sex. Both, I think we should sleep together that I'm the person to get you out of your rut but also maybe

me living this life without letting myself catch feelings for any people is depriving myself of something greater. Falls asleep, wakes up,

Margo Collie going sicko mode. Yes, I was going to say I was going to bring this up earlier where it's like Quali's or Jamie's emotional depth or her evolution where she's like, I simply had to jerk off.

I could not contain myself. There's a whole suitcase of deltos. I cannot wait 20 fucking minutes for you to wake up or whatever. It's not only that, but she plays that scene. Physically, it feels like a cartoon character with their finger in a fucking life socket. Like, that she can't even stop to say, sorry, like, I couldn't contain myself. That she has to continue doing it. That it feels like she's waking up next to someone in bed having a seizure.

Like, she's in danger. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. But from that moment on, in the movie, they're, like, together. Yeah. And they start having more emotional sex. Yeah.

Right? Like, the shower sex. It's like, it's all shot in this kind of, like, not Looney Tunes way. It's all very gentle and lovely. It's fine. And Qualie's been doing, making her own sidecast, backups. There's a really funny moment in the shower where Joe, Geraldine is like, I would like to,

and you think she's going to say something emotional, I would like to also use the dildo. Yes. Right, that everything is still very, like, point of fact with her. And I like the fucking conciergear's at the hotel a lot. Yeah, his name is Josh Fitter. Flitter.

No, he's the bell boy at the end who finds the dildo. Oh, that's right. So, okay, so who plays the, um, because he is funny. He's funny, and I just like it a lot as, like, the movie is setting you up to think that this guy. is going to be like, well, I never about everything. No, we accept the rainbow card. Right, he just loves everything.

He's just super cordial. Yeah. I'm trying to find his name. Yeah. Or I'm trying to find the actor. What do we think his name is? I'm going to find it. Okay, while we're looking, did we talk about the goons and their whole, like, sort of

the plot? We touched on it. Yeah. Of just the game of them, sort of the one being like, I appreciate talking to people. You're so aggressive. Mm-hmm. I think it's fun with. with the two goons

visiting the previous locations that they've come from interacting with the cheerleaders is really fun that was good they misdirect them they end up in this like bar way out of the way

from Tallahassee oh yeah that is a funny what is this then it just is like a guy who starts talking to them about nothing and then it's done and then it never comes back

it's well then he distracts the other guys yeah right John men Mentionon is that actor. I'm so glad I looked up the Conquistador desk clerk. Oh, here he is. His name is Braxton

McCallum. What a fucking name. He's only, it's his first role. Yeah, it seems like he only did like short films before them. Correct. Yeah, but he's very good. He's got a funny face. Yeah. But this is like, getting to this point of just like, there is no scene in this movie that I don't find pleasant to watch. Uh, exactly. Totally.

it can be a bit of a chore on your third viewing, maybe, but it's pleasant and it's fun and it's bubbly and you know what? Get off my back. Three and a half stars on that are box. Can we talk my...

Comments on each log. It's like three to half stars. Come on, buddy. This is why I don't do the stars. I basically, I will only give a star rating if it's a one or a five. Right.

And then otherwise I'm like it's binary heart or no. Heart and Heart is basically liked it. Yeah. I do the same thing. I used to actually give star ratings and then I was like, I think I don't know what I'm talking about when I give a movie like two stars. But if I like it, I'll give it a like. If I don't put stars, it doesn't mean it's a bad movie. It's just like not worth being like, wow. I just never want the quibbling of like

3.5. That's the same rating you gave this. Yes. I love that. So like, 3.5 is either like the glowing review of like, whoa, you're rating this way too high or somebody's like, it's fine. Right. It's just, yeah. But I like giving star ratings precisely for this reason to fuck with people. And then I like that I'm constantly adjusting everything in my letterbox. I know it.

Nothing is finite. I'm always thinking about like, okay, how's that movie settled with me? Or how did it do on rewatch or whatever? Like, and I love fiddling with stuff. And I'll see now because people pay attention to me on letterbox. I'm not bragging. People being like, you took it down to a four and a half. What does it mean?

What does it mean? I'm like, I don't know. I just liked it a little. Or I'll take a look at my year list and I'll be like, maybe nothing's actually really reached kind of top for me, right? And, like, actually, the stuff I like the most is, has a bit of a ceiling on it or something. I don't know. Yeah.

Having fun. No, I like doing it. But that's why I'm like, I can walk out a Jurassic World Rebirth and confidently be like one star. Oh, you didn't like that one? You know? And I can, like, rewatch Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and be like five, no question. Anything in between I just kind of don't want to fucking deal with. Distorcious Rex?

you think he's going to show up in something else? Did you see Jurassic World Rebirth? I didn't. Oh, no. Because it's, as I hear, a one-star move. It's a, it's a bit of a... Yeah, a bit of a pooper.

It's not a chore. It's worse than a chore, for sure. I found it very boring. I did too. There was a point... In my Superman Patreon episode where I went off in the rant, the thing I forgot to mention was,

there was a moment where I felt like the movie was ending. And I was like, oh, thank God. At least it's almost over. That feels right, right? And then I remembered, oh, the big mutant dinosaur that they show you at the very beginning that was all over the marketing has not come back yet. And I turned to my friend and, like, defeat.

And I was like, oh, fuck, there's another half hour. There is at least another half hour. And walking out of that movie, I would have been like, that was three hours on the nugget. And it's like 206 with credits. It feels. It feels longer. Yikes. Do you like Jurassic Park?

I do. I love Jurassic Park. Yeah. Cool. This is what I want to dig into a little more. Okay. Your Cohen's experience with now watching them later. Yes. What has been your experience in watching a handful of the classics now? And especially the crime capers.

Really fun. I, of course, have to mention my boyfriend has been a really good guide because he knew that I would be doing the drive-away dolls episode. And he is well-versed in the Cohen's universe. And so he was like, I think these are kind of the closest we can get based off of what they're filmography is to what drive-away dolls ended up being. And so we watched a lot of the crime keepers. But I truly, like, every time we watched a new one, I was like, these guys love law enforcement being present somewhere in a movie. Like, it's very, but that is, that is it. But I, I had so much fun with it. And I think that, like, it was more fun for me to view these movies with fresh eyes

at an adult age than, like, being, I don't know, introduced to them when I was younger and not necessarily getting to like understand the full scope of the characters or the worlds that were being crafted or anything. Yeah. I also, I think, you know, the Cohen's films are for me so much about like trying to find a way to live in a like cruel merciless world that lacks meaning. Like they are not completely nihilistic because the characters are fighting to find something through that understanding of the lack of meaning. Um, but this. This is one of their few movies where it is like, and then they ended up happily ever after.

That is so awesome. Where things can be defeated. Like the cleanness of, oh, Matt Damon is going to be doing the handoff at the same time that Beanie Feldstein is there with the cat and she can shoot him and his whole corruption can be blown open in a newspaper cover story that no one questions. The newspaper cover, I want to find it because it is so funny.

Senator shot outside of lesbian. bar or something? I want to read every single moment of it, every single line of it, but yes. Erbate them, please. Yeah. Let me find it. Okay.

As David looks at this. Keep talking. I got a signing to pick up. I was watching the very limited special features on this Blu-ray, which are basically three, three-minute or under YouTube featureettes. They're like so bad and apathetic. But one of them has like the three main actresses talking. And Beanie Feldstein talked a lot about like the canon of the Cohen Brothers cop is so big.

it is such an honor to be like a cop in a movie. Exactly. Written by Ethan Cohen. But then it's also so funny where you're like a lot of times it is like these deeply corrupt immoral characters or it is Marge Gunderson who is like the ultimate moral good. Yes, exactly. Like one of the purest characters that has ever existed in film and feels like almost this rebuke to not just real cops but also the way cops are usually depicted in movies.

But that is a character who is like working hard to like fight for some sense of light for like the value of like the three cents stamp but also she can't solve shit and like this is going to keep happening and it's happened before you know all she can say is like why all this for a little bit of money and then in this the stakes are sort of like even when people get murdered it is not landing with any actual weight even i would say the deaths in lady killers feel more dramatic than this it's definitely some pretty lighthearted death senator shot outside lesbian bar subhead channel channel, oh, that's his last name, I guess, was carrying human head, plaster

penises. I can explain. This is recovering. It's a good joke. It's great. But the idea that they could, like, catch him all in one and be like, here's the weapon, here's the motive, here's the backstory. He can explain. Wow, Peacock trying to start up, love hurts

for me. That's what happened to me when I watch Driveaway dolls, and I was like, that's the craziest segue. And so trying to watch that does feel like a reach for Peacock. Have you seen love her. I've not seen love her. That's the Kehue Kuan actioner. I have heard it is quite poor. I have also heard this. I have

many friends who went to the film with very open hearts and were just like, I want this to be exactly this guy. What it's being sold as. And they were like, it so fails to deliver on the bare minimum of that idea. That's a bummer. I like him. I do too. He's ruined for him.

I mean, look, he's the main villain in Zootopia, too. I'm sorry. I'm checking the title here. Zootopia, Snake. in the form of a two? Told my daughter recently. I alerted her. You've been shielding her? There will be a Zootopia, too.

Yeah. And then we will be seeing it, I assume. Yeah. She was excited. But now she's all in on Spider-Man right now. Oh, wow. Watching what the... Which one?

The amazing friends. The baby ones. Is she watching the one with the dinosaurs now? There's one with dinosaurs. Jesus Christ. There's a new one... What does that mean? Where the Spideon friends team up with dinosaurs.

What? Why are they doing that? There's like a spider source wrecks and a green... goblin wrecks and whatever. The multiverse is getting too wide. Yeah. We need a, right, we need a doomsday for these spidey friends.

There's an Iron Man one too that I think... There is. Okay. And my daughter, he's popped up and my daughter's like, who's that robot? And I'm like, it's hard to explain Iron Man, I guess. This guy's got conservative. He's getting radicalized by baby Irony. She loves Hulk, or as she calls him, Hulk.

Hoke. Hoke. Hoke. So it sounds like she's saying, hook. because he's green and angry. That's sweet. Is that her favorite character? Yeah, she talks about him the most. I think she's kind of transfixed by how he's like kind of a good guy, but seems angry.

Yeah. He can be angry and be good. He's like a toddler. Yeah, that's true. Right? You're well-intentioned, but sometimes you just Hulk out. In the spidey friend's verse, he seems pretty gentle to me. Like, he's not so much like, ah, my rage!

But he's a little angrier. David, because I can already sense our listeners gripping their armrests, needing the follow-up question. Does Rolk exist anywhere in the baby animation? I have not seen him yet, but of course I haven't visited the White House and maybe he's there. He's a little baby president. Did you see that interview with Harrison Ford because he's doing interviews? What's for shrinking, I guess, Emmy campaigning or whatever?

Where they're like, has Fagie gotten you to like, you know, play Red Hulk again? Nope. Nope. Did you see Brave New World, Maya? No, I didn't. Okay. So that's. Maybe not very patriotic.

I know, guys. Just pay your respect. to the office. I'm so sorry. The position still means something. It's been enough time that I feel like I can do a bit of a Brave New World spoiler here. Yes, please. They spoiled the movie in the trailers.

I mean, basically. Yes. Here's a non-spoiler spoiler. He does not die in that film. Okay. Right? And the movie called the Thunderbolts that has already now come out. In the comics, that is a team led by that character.

Hence why they are called the Thunderbolts. It's like he's doing the bad guy Avengers and he's the Nick Fury for the bad guy. Right, he's kind of the Amanda Waller. Red Hulk is? Well, Thunderbolt Ross. That guy before he became Red Hulk, before when he was just Hulk's girlfriend's dad.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So everyone was like, oh, William Perth dies. They hire one of the biggest movie stars of all time. He's going to play General Ross. And they announce a Thunderbolt's movie, multi-picture contract for Harrison Ford. And then I kept on hearing from people

He dies at the end of Captain America He has nothing to do with Thunderbolts They got him for one movie He's never coming back And I was like, that's a weird choice Liv Tyler was photographed Filming Brave New World 18 years ago Somehow was filmed doing that

Before she had been in Armageddon Or the Lord of the Rings Shooting a funeral scene Right Paparazzi photos of horror at a cemetery Right seemingly mourning his death, her father's death, right? And it's a big plot point in the movie that he keeps trying to call her and says,

Oh, my daughter won't pick up. How are you doing? She hates, I'm a ralke. You guys are good at that. Thank you. Yeah. I've been thinking about him a lot in that movie. At the end of the movie, he...

I need my pills. Yes? At the end of the movie, he does not die. No. In a sequence that feels like it was being re-shot as you're watching it. Whoa. It's not so good. And then he goes to supervillain jail.

Yeah, the rest. And Liv Tyler goes to Ville. visit him in jail, and that's the emotional closure of the movie. Live Tyler in a performance that absolutely was not done by a physical person on a set. It is very clear that she was like, I can't do the reshoot. If you can't rework that cemetery footage, you got to fucking construct it some other way. And I don't understand why they end that movie with him being alive if they don't ever want to, they know specifically use him again.

And he's like, I don't want to fucking do that shit again. They just probably were like, who knows, maybe we can just have like. computer Red Hulk smash someone. Then just put, like, Rolk, like, spoiler alerts in the edit points in and out of this segment. You definitely do not. Rolk! Let's play the box office game for driveway dolls. Do we want to say any other things about driveway dolls?

I don't have anything more to say on driveway dolls. I don't think. It's fun. Of the coins you've watched now, which is your favorite? My favorite is probably, oh, man. I loved Fargo and I loved... No country for old men. Those are good ones.

Those ones do be hidden. Actually, man, yeah, they're all good. It would be funny if you were like, driveway dolls, I think. Driveway dolls, five stars with alike. But those are both a bag of money ruins everyone's life movies, right? That are like held by like... This is bag of money goes great for them. Right, right.

You're right. Well, it's bag of dicks. Bag of dicks goes great for them. Ends up perfectly. Need more movies like that. Yeah. But I liked it. It's fine.

I think people just got... I think people, it was marketing. for a group of individuals that were showing up expecting something or not marketed, but I think the people that were expecting what it ended up being were obviously going to be disappointed. Whereas people who have never seen a Cohen joint

could walk in and walk away, feeling like they were happy with what they thought. I think that's a great point. And I think understandably the folks at Universal were like we have a movie that was co-directed by a Cohen brother. We should push that really hard. Which maybe doesn't do the movie

any favors in its framing. I also just think there is this impatience of like they are arguably amongst the best filmmakers on the planet and people are like are they really never going to mix them together again? And it's like, okay

Ethan and Trisha did another one and now like Joel and Francis have announced another one and then like can they get back together after this? There's right. There's rumors that they are, the brothers are working on like a horror movie together. They have talked about it as of a year ago they were writing

it, yes, there's a thing they want to do. And I do kind of feel like, not that this movie's ever going to be reclaimed in a serious way, but I think some of the intensity around like, what the fuck is this will be removed if within the next five years we get the Coens doing their thing together. Yeah. Yeah. And then it'll just be like, this was that weird exploratory period. Yeah, let him have some fun, you know. I agree with that. Yeah. I agree with that, Maya. Why, you know, again, like, it's not right. It's not like he made. sort of self-important drivel that I would really have a problem

that would make me miserable right exactly it's like oh this is what you were sort of like and of course we talked about it already probably and we will talk about it again but like it was so interesting to watch Joel go off and make something that is so visually distinctive and like beautifully presented

and then Ethan make a silly bullshit thing about a bunch of idiot criminals and you're like right these are the elements of the coens we've like split sodium and chloros into, you know, two separate... Right, you know, like, so now we don't have table salt,

we have two interesting things. This is a good thing to talk about, is that, like, when this came out, I do feel people went, oh, so now I know who does what. Yeah. Right? And there was the sense of...

Certainly felt that way. All of their collaborators and the actors who worked with them forever would be like, no, they really are like a two-headed director. They do everything together. They finish each other's sentences. They're on the exact same page.

It's crazy. And then they made these two movies that felt very like, oh, this guy is adapting the most like proven source material in the world and just going visually ham on it and the other guy is doing the like goofiest version of his usual obsessions

and they're both like you know through the prism of their wives and collaborators showing the things they wouldn't do together and I think the takeaway from a lot of people there is like oh okay so Joel's the director and Ethan's the writer conclusive and that Joel needs Ethan to add humor

and Ethan needs Joel to add like structure or discipline or whatever it is. And I think it's more that like maybe each of them certainly leans a little more in that direction. And then left to their own devices they're just going to do the hardest

most hardcore version of that. I also think in both cases when people are like even Macbeth which was well liked and we will have discussed people were just sort of like this isn't like a knockout in the way all their other stuff is this is sort of like handsome and impressive

that the juice with them is so much that you have two brilliant filmmakers working together it's not that I don't think oh they can't make things without each other it's like right

but they're twice as good as other people when they're working together David what are you looking at? The box office game which we're going to now play I'm also ordering myself some sushi film came out February 23rd

2024 and it opened it number eight Which I think it was not ideal because that's $2,300. It's $2.4. And I believe it opened to $2.4 million, which is not a ton of money. It made worldwide 7.9. Okay. Which I think was not good. When did they start production on Honeydon't?

Oh, like, so you're like, when do they maybe get their keys taken away? I know this was on the shelf for a little bit because this was also a movie that got pushed back, because of the sag strikes and not having actors to promote it? I think it was supposed to come out summer 23. Honey, don't start a production a month after this came out March 2020. Okay. So I just want to quickly salute the fine folks at Working Title for being like, Ethan, Trisha, just keep doing this.

It speaks to the level of cachet that they have that it does feel like similar to 824, not just doing Macbeth, but also buying the I-movie, Jerry Lee Lewis documentary that it feels like all of the film financiers and distributors in town are still like, we want to be working with you in case you ever decide to go back to doing your thing

together again. Yes. We want to stay in the co-in business. Yeah. But a flop. Number one at the box office is a somewhat surprising success of, I remember, not huge or anything, but a music biopic. It's a second week at the number one position.

Is it Bob Marley, one love? Bob Marley, one love. I couldn't remember what the order was, what was before and

after the Colman. You nailed it. The Renalde, Renato, Reinaldo, there you go, Jesus. Marcus Green film

starring Kingsley Benedir who is the guy who was Malcolm X in that other movie, right? He's playing a lot of famous people. This is one of

my least favorite trends right now is the top gun mavericking of music biopics where I'm like, you get to pick. Either you're

title is the name of the person. Oh, you don't like the title. Or it's like the song lyric. I don't like Springsteen, colon, deliver us from nowhere. No, certainly not. But they just announced that title too. And I'm like, you're either calling it Bob Marley or Bob or Morley or Root B pick a song title. Yeah. Maya, did you see Bob Marley one love? I didn't. I'm just not on the music biopic train. Like, entirely I... Until they make one about you. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Obviously. Which, of course, it will be called, like, MXM-Tune crying in a prom dress. Exactly. Who will play you?

I was going to say Texas. Who will play me? I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking about Asian women in movies. I'm thinking about... Chase Sui Wonders? Oh, yeah. Can we do that?

Yeah. I love that. I'd be very honored if Chase Sui Wonders was me. She's very charming. You have not seen... I know what you did last summer. I have yet to see... The new one.

Have you seen that? I haven't, but I was watching the studio and my uncle texted me being like, her character reminds me of you. And I was like, wow, thank you. I think it's a compliment. Yeah, she's successful. I don't know.

That's another trend I want to die is a legacy sequel that isn't a remake with the exact same title as the original movie. It's very annoying. It's just very confusing for our brains. I agree with that. But she is very good in that movie

in a way where you're like, she might be kind of bulletproof because this thing is disastrous dog shit. And she comes out on Skaith. Wow. Bob Marley, One Love, the trend I thought you were going to bring up, which is a trend I do think is a problem, is this sort of, you know, music biopic approved by the estate. So it's sort of like we get to use the songs, yay. But unfortunately, like, we cannot delve too deep on this complicated person. Also a huge issue is the reason the Scorsese Sinatra movie has not been made for 20 straight years because he keeps being like, I'll make this if you give me freedom.

Right. And they just want it to be about like, what a gent! I think that is... Never yelled at a lady. I think that is even more of a pox on documentaries now. That is the thing that's driving me insane. It's the celebrity profile documentary

that is completely produced by the celebrity and director they hire. But it means... Where I'm like, are we never going to get a crumb ever again? Right. Do you like Bob Marley, the musician? I like Bob Marley. I'm less familiar with his whole discography and everything.

But I, you know, I saw all the trailers for One Love, One, Marley, One Love. I haven't checked it out. We also have the trailers. It made a lot of money. Yeah. It made a decent amount of money. Made almost $100 million. I mean, in one way, you're like, yeah, well, he's really famous.

Like, that's not that surprising. But I just remember at the time, people being like, oh, people are showing up for this. Yeah. Are you a reggae guy, David? I've had my reggae phases. Yeah. I love reggae. I like Ross Perry is just rubbing his hands together.

He can leave right now. I am no expert on reggae. I grew up in Britain and I do feel like as respected as reggae is here it's so ingrained in British culture so I you know

there's just a lot all this you know right the ways that the influence on other British music and all that stuff and I like like dance hall music and all this and then when I went to the Caribbean when I was a teenager

I remember at like the airport I bought a bunch of like random desks CDs because like I was like I bet you there's just kind of like, you know, basically like indie music, right? Like, you know, just kind of like music that will never

escape this country. And I still have those discs. They rock. Because they are truly just, you know, guys making fun, silly, you know, dance hall music from the early 2000. We got to get we got to get our hands on what these CDs are. I'll dig one of them up.

Okay. I mean, my CDs, Jesus, where are those? I mean, that is something that truly has been like buried. My reggae. Reggae, it's fine. It's not fine. I don't want to say that in case there's reggae heads listening to this podcast. I'd be like, fine.

Why'd you just say fine? I like reggae. I enjoy listening to it. I don't know too much in the weeds on the genre. I'd say ska is more of my vein. Yeah. Big no doubt fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you listen to the Lonely Island Seth Myers podcast? I don't. It is excellent. It is highly recommended. And, of course, they delve very deep into this in the Ross Trent episode. Yes, which is very fun. But it's just. They go through that song and stop every three seconds,

and they're like, often footnotes. And they're just like, look, we're just white guys who like reggae a lot, but you're like, that song has eight trillion references in it that are all very specific. Yeah. Number two at the box office opening new this week is a crunchy roll release making $11.5 million. You will never guess the name of it,

but you might guess the series that it's a part of. No. Fuck. Do you think you know, you might be more equipped to answer this? I will say, demon slay. Correct. Can you get the subtitle? No.

It is the, I think, the third theatrical release of Demon Slayer stuff. It is called Demon Slayer Kimetsuno Yaiba to the Harish Hashira training. I'm sorry, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I don't know anything about this. I'm so convinced. I'm Tim Robinson. I don't know what any of this stuff is.

And I'm confused. And I'm scared. The car driving. Yes. I don't know. what Demon Slayer is. What is Demon Slayer? I assume it is manga that was then became anime. Yeah. Yeah. I'm fairly certain it came from a manga and then turned into an anime. I myself only watched the anime and I went and saw Mugentrain, which is another theatrical release for Demon Slayer. Yes. Mugentrain was also such a big deal because it

opened really big in 2021 when people are like, are theaters ever going to come back? And then Mugentrain made $20 million. I'm always right. People are riding the Mugentrain. That started the Crunchyroll thing of Like, we are going to put wide-release anime. Absolutely. Almost every other month. Jiu-Jitsu Kaizen Zero was another one that I ended up seeing in theaters. I love Demon Slayer. It's very good.

I would recommend. I was a little bit of it. Okay, I love it. I only made it through, like, the first maybe 10 episodes. And then I just, like, fell off. It's a great show. It's great. It's great.

They slay demons. They kind of, there's a villain in it that almost looks like Michael Jackson. Interesting. It's very... What era of Michael Jackson? Oh, I don't know. The errors of Michael Jackson like that. Like easy smooth criminal.

Like he's wearing like a fedora type vibe. He's got like kind of curly hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, smooth criminal. But it's great. But the premise is basically there's like one original demon who keeps then creating more demons and there's like a special team that has to, you know, kill these demons.

Number three. Three of the box office also new this week is a Christian inspirational drama film, but kind of as like vaguely legit one in that it has like, you know, Oscar winner in it. And it was like... Is it the Hillary Swank one? It's the Hillary Swank one. That was also pushed back because of the fucking strikes. This is like the dumping ground of movies that were supposed to come out August, September 23,

and we're like, we need to wait until stars can do talk shows. It's called Better Angels? It's called Ordinary Angels. What is so weird about it. It's her and Reacher. Yes, Alan Richardson is in it. I haven't seen it. It's based on a true story about something that happened during a 1994, like, cold weather thing.

Sorry to be dismissive of this real event that I don't know anything about. What's weird is that it was written by the actress Meg Tilly. That is very strange. Who people might know from like Agnes of God and the Big Filmship and the Big Filmship. A nominee, sister of Jennifer. And then, and co-written by Kelly Freeman Craig, who's the great filmmaker who made, you know, Edge of 17 and Are You There Got, It's Me Margaret. So, you know, it's got like a bit of a, like, legit.

Who directed it? John Gunn. Of course. Who directed a bunch of Christian, you know, movies. Uh-huh. Christian inspiration. What's it opening to? It's opening to $6 million.

It's going to make 20 worldwide. What was the drop-off? between Demon Slayer. Oh, yeah, right. So it's 13 for Bob Marley, 11 for Demon Slayer. Yeah. Six for Ordinary Angels.

Slow weekend. Number four of the box office, I think your favorite film in 2024. Are you joking? The one you watched the most? Sort of. Sort of? I mean, like, I don't think it really was,

but you were kind of obsessed with this movie. I was kind of obsessed with this movie is called Madame Webb. That's right. I have seen it, I believe, five times now. Wow. Hovering over the purchase button on the steel book because it has yet to go on sale.

And I'm like, my love for this film is not ironic. And yet, do I want to spend $40 on a four-case deal? Or, oh. And sometimes I'm waiting for like, is there some deal where I could combo, like, buy one, get one kind of thing. Have you seen Madame Webb? Oh, yes, I've seen Madame Webb. Have you gotten caught in the web? I have gotten caught in the web.

I went and I think I probably saw it opening weekend with my brother. Our, like, favorite thing to do as we all do with our siblings is find a movie that we want to go see and things. theaters, but specifically the shittiest movie that is accessible to us at any time in Madam Webb, one of the shittiest movie. It's been accessible to me. We went and saw it. We had the best time ever, rivaled only by seeing Morbius. And I...

In person. Yes. When he came to introduce the screening of Madam Web. Exactly. And we had a great time. But I didn't watch it after I saw it in theaters until I came back to my apartment when my family was in town in New York. And I saw my grandpa, who is 81 years old.

old, I think, sitting down on a couch watching Madam Webb by himself because he was like not wanting to join us for dinner or something. And he looks at me, goes, this movie is so bad. And I just had to nod and agree. There's a reality distortion field. I also feel like you frame that story with an apology of it took me this long to watch Madam Webb a second time. Which we just acknowledge culturally. All of us need to watch it a couple of times. you cannot get your head around it in one viewing it's great uh maybe i gotta see the second time you just want to see a second time i have not seen it i'm being the villain david is doing his impression of entire thing is overdub number five at the box office is an animated

film that came out in like december it's been hanging out for three months it's the film migration it's the film migration which made a hundred and twenty seven million domestic it's a classic it opened really fucking low and then it just hung on there like a family of ducks just cruising Kamail Njiani Elizabeth Banks Now I'm seeing here that Kegan Michael Kee and Akhena provided voice talent They don't do that kind of stuff

They are allergic to voiceover booths If you were to put them in a voiceover booth It would be like Spock accepting the radiation At the end of that you cannot get them To stand behind a microphone and do a silly voice I have not seen migration I haven't either I think Davido is in as well

All people that have never been in a voice It was written by Mike White, who, of course, created the White Lotus. Right. And it was on Survivor. Yes. And also wrote the emoji movie. Yes. His live action canon is very good.

I would say basically every live action thing, he's written is good. Sometimes you need a check, and that's just the reality. He's also credited on Despicable Me Four? Really? The worst one? He's very much in the, like, illumination, the house. Number six to the box office is, and then he's like, right, I want Jason Isaacs to poison his whole family and I want, you know, whatever's going to.

Also, my dad and I are going to do the amazing race again or whatever. It's an interesting life you lead. Number six of the box office is Argyle, which was a bomb. People forget, did make $45 million. It didn't make nothing. Like, people went to see it. This is the thing I feel like you and I need to push sometimes. It's like, this movie was a flop, but we must acknowledge that millions of people left their home.

Right. To go and see the movie. Argyll. I saw it with Friend of the Pod, Rachel Lang. Have you seen that? I haven't, but I'm curious, and I could be misremembering this. I feel like there was a wave of this, like, semi, maybe it was a joke, and I was totally misreading the situation, but people who thought Taylor Swift had written the book.

And I'm all curious if that was, like, why there were people showing up was because people were, like, almost like, I'm supporting T. Swift in this. Like a week before it came out when the reviews came out, they, like, gave up the goose on. Yeah. The person who wrote the book is the fictional character, and here was. the ghost writer and whatever. And then it got kind of... It's all because of the cat is Taylor Swift's cat.

Right. Like she's got that cat in the movie. But the reason the cat is in the movie is because that's the cat that Matthew Vaughn has and he based on his real cat, but the reason that's the cat he has is because his daughters were so obsessed with Taylor Swift that they were like, we want that cat. That is nuts. It's nuts.

That is a movie that is infinitely more interesting to talk about everything around. the movie. It's not even interesting to talk about the movie. It's interesting to talk about the bubble around the film. The movie is dog shits. The anti-Madam-Wab is actually tedious to watch. I agree with that. Number seven of the box office hanging out for three months as well. Huge hit, Wonka. Wonka. Paul King's Wonka. Very fun movie in my opinion. Driveway Dolls at number eight. Number nine, the beekeeper, which I preferred to a working man, which I tried out last year, this year, which is pretty bad.

Maya, have you seen The Beekeeper? I haven't. I do remember when it was rolling out. Have people spoiled anything about the beekeeper for you? I'm going to guess. About a fucking beekeeper. I'm guessing there's bees involved and maybe a keeper of them. Sort of.

But I don't really know. Here's all I'm going to say. I cannot strongly enough implore you to watch this film. Okay. It's pretty fun. It is truly a movie where every 10 minutes you could pause and write down what you think is going to happen and you will never get anything right. That's fun.

I like that. oh, he'll get revenge on people. Okay. But it has the craziest narrative turns I've ever seen. The way this movie heightens, where it gets to by the end is insane. We're recording this episode very far in advance. All I ask is,

if you watch the Beakeper between when we're recording and November, please send a voice memo. MGM Plus. Of just your feelings on Beakeper, but I strongly recommend watching. That is the easiest thing anyone's ever assigned me to do. Yeah, it's pretty easy to watch it. It's an easy watch and the end will blow your fucking

Mine. Okay. Hello, Blankies. This is me from the future. I ended up doing my homework. I watched The Bekeeper the other night, and Griffin was right. There was no way I would have ever predicted how high the stakes were going to be by the end of the movie. That was crazy.

But as a fan of the Hitman video game franchise, I was majorly rocking with an angry, bald guy doing some occupational-based shenanigans on an assassination run. That was pretty fun to see. I'll be tuning into more Jason Statham job-based cinematic universe movies in the future. I want to just shout out Minnie Driver for showing up for an hour and a half, getting her money and leaving. And also, Josh Hutcherson's perm. Highlights of the movie for me. All right. Back to the pod.

Number 10 of the box office is the chosen season four episodes four to six. I mean, it really is. There's still just a lot of that happening in the box office. Are you aware of this phenomenon of the church? The Chosen is a self-funded TV series about Jesus that I think is now in its third or fourth season. It was the biggest Kickstarter project, I think, of all time, and now has outside financing. But every year or every other year when there was a new season, they released the season in theaters first. So they'll be like, this week, the Chosen season four, episodes one and two.

And it will be number three at the box office. And then two weeks later, the next two episodes will come out in theater. They release them two at a time in theaters They make millions of millions of dollars And then they go up on like Amazon Prime or whatever Whoa, I did not know about that It is a bizarre thing that's been going on for years That no one talks about

Imagine if any other TV show was released that way It's very silly Number 11 is anyone but you Just to shout that one out Perfect time We came back. It's still there What's it up to at this point?

I made a healthy 87 to this point And it ended up at, oh, 88 So it's almost done Anyone but you where Sidney Sweeney's there and she's got the issues, I assume. I mean, you nailed it in your review of why does she always sound like she just came out of an egg?

That is my take on Sydney Sweeney. My take on Mad on Web was that every line delivery feels like it's on a Zoom delay. And my take on anyone but you is Sidney literally feels like she just hatched out of an egg. Or you can say, beam down from a spaceship. Like, it's just like she just feels like she's never had a hand.

handle on dialogue sometimes. She can be... Totally. She has given really good performances and shit. And in a way where you're just like, there are obvious ways you miss cast her where she is not going to be able to do anything. But the times of what she has been good,

it can't be an accident. And yet it feels like it's a very narrow strike zone. Yeah. But, uh, normal person. She's just not good in that movie being like, oh, my life is so crazy. I mean, she's not funny.

I think that's really it. No, she's not funny. She's just not funny. I also. Always be like a nun who's being terrorized. If you want to. She's good at trauma. Exactly.

She's great to cry. She's got those giant fucking eyes. Right. If you want her to be funny in a movie, you have to frame the movie around what she's already good at and then have other characters comment on it rather than having her be like, oh my God. It's the David Borian. I don't even have time to wash my hair. I think about it with David Borianas all the time where like he's in Buffy as Angel, where, like, he's in Buffy as Angel. where, like, what's your job?

It's to be good looking, to be mysterious and dark and, like, you know, yeah, yada, yeah. Then they're like, we're going to make a show about you now. You're going to be the lead.

And I remember when Angel was announced, I was like, but Angel's boring. He's got to bounce off of... But they correctly were like, yeah, no, no, no, no. Everyone else around him will be kind of goofy and his straight man shit will be comedy. Like, you know,

and he's a bit of a man out of time and you're like, that makes sense. That's good. And then Bones starts, right? And in Bones, he's a goof. And I'm like, where was this? For fucking 10 years of your career. In Bones, he's like, ah, bones, you're so, you're dumb nerd.

That's very similar to when they offered 21 Jump Street to Channing Tatum. And he was like, I'm not funny. I don't know how to do comedy. I shouldn't do this. And they were like, we'll build it off of you being the straight man. And then you see him get comfortable in that movie and find his moment. And then he's just like, I know exactly how to be funny. He's one of my favorites to watch.

I love him. He's great. I love him, too. What's he doing right now? Well, you know what? I think Roofman will have just come out. Roof Man. That looks fun.

We talk about him a lot in the Hale Caesar episode and wondering what the future of his career is. And we weren't talking about Roofman, which I hope Roofman's a hit. Roofman looks fun. Yeah. And of course, he's in Avengers Doomsday. A film with a plot. The science is what I'm doing here. What's his fucking line?

We're about to do something. Make a name for us. Yeah, like, crazy. Great. But yes. No, comedy Channing is my favorite. Yeah. Well, that's quite a top 10.

Yeah, that's the top 10. And you know who else is top 10 person is Maya. MXM-Tune. What do you want to plug, bro? Oh, my gosh. What do I want to plug? That's David's new catchphrase. That's really good.

I like that. Well, bro. Honestly, just hang out. I'm online. I'm there. I'm on Letterbox. You do a lot of Twitch streams. I do a lot of Twitch streams.

I'm a big gamer and a big nerd. And movies have been kind of something that I have always loved, but I think I'm now more in the weeds on it. like building the physical media collection, et cetera, et cetera. You've been throwing off some good discs. I'm doing my best. Especially when you're touring. You've been like finding local shops and posting some good stacks.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's been really fun. So I have really enjoyed that. You can find me on Letterbox at M-A-I-A-P-O-G, Maya Pog. And on Twitch under MXM-Tune, but really anywhere, I'm M-XM-Tune. What are you streaming? Like literally anything.

Okay. I feel like I'm the queen of side-questing. And that's why it's hard to plug stuff. because I'm doing everything always. But I've been streaming a lot of Fortnite classically, but I play, I love indie games. That's my bread and butter. So if you know a game that's been made by a singular person

who has a hyperfixation on making it? No! What is blueprints? Oh, you got to check it out, bro. I'm not going to tell you anything. Just play it. David exists in this world a little bit. Our researcher, JJ, every week is plugging some new indie game

made by someone with a hyperfixation. That's exactly it. Those are the favorite ones to play. We'll start passing along the JJ recommendations. The last thing he needs feeling like his knowledge has any value in this world. What's your main Fortnite skin? My main fortnight skin right now is Chen Lee,

but usually it's xenomorph. Fucking shout out Chunley. That's my street fighter two main. Yeah. I do. I haven't been playing for a while. You've been playing Fortnite? I didn't know this.

I was playing a lot with my little cousin. You got to play. I do remember that. I do remember that. And then now he's gotten too caught up in baseball. He doesn't have time to do anything. He likes baseball? He's really good at baseball.

Well, he should call me up. No, you are not meeting him. Okay. But now I haven't taken into a movie in like months. We don't play Fortnite because he's doing like baseball five days. Like his weekends are very occupied with baseball. He's not, it's not, I don't think he's on like a professional MLB track, but he's like at that level where it's like you're really good at this and you like this a lot.

You got to hone it. Yeah. I know he's told me and I don't know. Well, is he a pitcher or not? I don't think so. Okay. I'll find out. But anyway, come.

I was doing four-day with him. You know, the season will be over. We have plans to do a Superman Fantastic Four double feature at the end of the summer. That's exciting. Yeah. But I was playing with him every Sunday. And with our friend Sarah Rubin, a past and future guest, we would all do it together. I was, I was doing Chewbacca.

Okay. But I was using the accoutrements of the wasteland. I've never heard somebody. Magrino? Wow. Magnino? What? They did a Marvel event.

Yes, it did. And there was a really good Magneto. And you could get like classic Magneto. but there was also this wasteland magneto where he had like a tattered cape and shit. So I give like Chubaca the tattered cape and the magneto like pickax and stuff. So it kind of looks like a fucking Mad Max Chubaca.

It's pretty cool, David. I haven't played in months. I played Fortnite once and I didn't like it. Come on, guys. There's four of us here. It's not impossible to create a squad and reframe your enjoyment of Fortnite. Get you back into playing Fortnite.

Ben, have you played Fortnite? I assume it's more fun if you're being social. I would play with you any day. I play with you guys anytime. I just like loaded it and was like, okay. And it was also years ago. I know that Fortnite has now become like very complicated. I'm going to get my, I'm going to get my nine-year-old cousin's schedule and we're going to figure out a squad.

Yeah, I'm so down. A squad night, a squad afternoon. That's the thing I want to plug. That's it. Great. Perfect. Cool. Fortnite.

When are we going to get our own skins in Fortnite? It feels like that's inevitable. That has to happen. Sounds good. Yeah. Ben with bone pickax. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate review and subscribe.

Remember to tune in next week for Honey Don't, a movie that David clearly is calling in advance. There's a lot to talk about. Oh, boy. You think Honey Don't is going to make more or less than driveway dolls? It has to be less. Has to be less? I guess it's a low bar, so maybe not. But, like, I don't think it's going to be.

hit. I don't either. Yeah. But I guess it would be that hard. But the driveway doll's bar is low. I don't know. Chris Evans. I think it's gonna be higher. Chris Evans is there. We like him trying. We like him trying. And he's, there is. He is not the problem with that movie at all. And it's not like a Pedro. He's like a proper role. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but it's kind, it's not like a Pedro, but it is kind of the thing of these movies of like, you know, they clearly, yeah, they had him for a few days. He did silly stuff. And like, yeah. Yeah. I'll go for

that. Yeah. Sebastian Stan will star in Radu Hudei Yeah Frankenstein Okay wrap us up Alright bye Another Frankenstein?

Yeah well That's true Wrap us up Oh okay Well you interrupted Now I'm just spinning On the Frankenstein thought And as always

More movies should be centered around A literal bagful of death Yeah Yeah Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas,

and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKin and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick.

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to Blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank CheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.