Blank Check with Griffin & David - Eyes Wide Shut with David Ehrlich

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick. Ehrlich. We’re concluding our Stanley Kubrick series with 1999’s EYES WIDE SHUT and a trip to cinema’s most famous masked orgy. Indiewire’s David Ehrlich joins us as we discuss liminal spaces, the late-90s ABC sitcom “Dharma & Greg,” Nick Nightingale’s skills as a piano player, and Sydney Pollack’s barrel chest. Are there “more Christmas lights in this movie than there are in an NYU student’s dormroom?” What is the platonic ideal of a Tom Cruise hairstyle? Did making this movie kill Kubrick, or was working to finish it what kept him alive? What can one expect to find where the rainbow ends? And more! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

I do love you. And you know there's something very important we need to do as soon as possible. What's that? Podcast. No, no, boys. I, obviously, that was going to be the line that you used for the start of this episode. We've all known that since time immemorial. So I took the liberty of preparing a few alternate, alternates.

I just had to get out of the way. I know. It's absolutely proform. It had to be done. Yeah. I have to adopt my best Alice Hartford voice here. The podcast is making you aggressive.

That's a good one. Not on my list. I'm glad it's not on your list because that's my personal favorite line. When she is having her little titties squeezed, do you think she ever has any fantasies about what handsome Dr. Bill's podcast

might be like? A demented line delivery, let's say. That is a true, that's a perfect example of a, that's what you do on the 800th. Right, 100%. It grows for me every time. Because I always forget that she says,

like that, and I'm always like, oh, damn. It's the Pacino. Great. I'm so tired of saying this line over and over again. I don't need to know what grows for you every time when you watch that scene. Hey, now. Victor Ziegler says,

Bill, I don't think you realize how much trouble you got yourself into last night just by going over there. Who do you think those people were? Those were not just some ordinary people. If I told you the name of their podcast, no, I'm not going to tell you the names, but if I did, I don't think you'd sleep so well at night. Red scare. And finally, the truth is nothing happened to her after you left that party that hadn't happened to her before.

She got her brains podcasted out, period. I've seen one or two things in my life, but never, never anything like this. And never such podcasts. You know what? I may have to see the podcast. This movie has good lines. It does have good lines. They're just all delivered in a way where you're like, huh.

Yeah. I wouldn't think to say that that way. And that's part of the magic, right? No, there was a J.J. Bircher, a beloved researcher, in his dossier included a lot of the negative reviews from when this movie came out. Yeah, sure. Top critics at top outlets. Not a well-reviewed film. No, no.

It was dismissed by almost everyone at the time. We'll talk about it. But there was, I want to just get this verbatim, because there was a negative review that had, I think, one of the best positive descriptors of what I think works about this movie. It's right at the bottom here. I'll find it. Right at the bottom of the DOS.

Are you talking about Gleiberman's review or Denby's? I can't find it There was this fucking Review line That's like It feels like a dream That's already been Analyzed That is pretty

By your therapist Yeah You're not even watching A dream like State I'll give it to you You're watching someone It's from Gleiberman Thank you

Our cohort In the New York Film Critics Circle And I shall say no more Brother in arms I've always been An Arent Kubrick fanatic, but Eyes Wide Shut, a movie that views sexuality as not just an experience,

but a ritual, has an oddly formal closed-off quality, like a dream that has already been analyzed on a shrink's couch. Yeah, I mean, and yet I disagree so fundamentally with that because I found in returning this movie on virtually a daily basis.

Or I disagree with Owen Kleeperman. I mean, no disrespect, Owen, but every day, you know, for the last 23 years, that this is a movie that I find so open and inviting. You know, it's such an invitation to project yourself onto it,

which is by design and goes back even to the casting. We'll get into that. Absolutely. But I think to other David's point, we got two Davids on the show today. Not to front load the material here. I don't view that as a negative quality, but I think when David's talking about like how odd the delivery is in this film,

the visual look of this film that's so unlike anything where you're like, what is the weirdness hanging over this movie? It is that thing where like it doesn't quite feel like a dream. It feels like an analytical exploration of a dream the whole movie exists in that liminal space between dreaming and reality you know by design it's not supposed to feel too much like either at any point and the performances are very keyed into that whether or not you know nicole kibben and tom cruise knew at the time that's what they were going for okay it feels like describing a dream to someone before we do anything yes one we have to fuck we do have to fuck we should we do anything. Yes. One. We have to fuck.

We do have to fuck. We should. How many years in? Eight. Almost eight. Let's just do it. The whole they want the attention has been driving people up the wall.

I'll fucking do it. Ben and I are sitting on the other ends of the table just staring at each other between this. Like, help. Put on the Jocelyn poopies. And you know what you guys need to do.

Yeah. Fuck. Well, I'm the peeper, so I'm going to watch. Yeah, you just watch. I'm just watching. We got a closet. We're wearing our masks.

Only one awards body dared have the bravery to give Sidney Pollack a supporting actor nomination. The Hollywood Film Critics Association. No. Hmm. Only one. Pollack gets one total. Obviously, this film was not like lauded and did not get a ton of critical or whatever nominations. But that's the thing that should have happened.

New York Film Critics? The Blockbuster Entertainment Awards nominated Sidney Pollack for favorite supporting actor, drama slash romance. He lost to Dennis Leary for the Thomas Crown Affair, an underrated performance. Sure, no argument there. Three nominees. Yeah. Leary, Pollock, and Paul Newman for Message in a Bottle.

Can't say I remember he was in that one. They did so many genres. They did. But nonetheless, Pollock got a block. Do you think he got a phone call from his agent? Sydney, I know you're hard at work on The Interpreter or Random Hearts or whatever.

I've been watching a lot of Inside the Actor's Studio recently. I've brought this up on other episodes. It's been like a go-to-sleep YouTube rabbit hole of mine. Lipton, when he does his introductions, because the first couple years of the show, it's mostly people who are in the actor's studio.

Right. And then the pedigree is high enough, the clout is big enough that he can get the biggest movie stars in the world. So when he has someone like Cruise on, he lists like all their accolades and he will say Mission Impossible 2, for which he received a fifth Blockbuster Entertainment nomination. He does information that Cruise is learning for the first time. So many of these. He always fucking mentions their MTV Movie Awards, their Blockbusters, and sometimes even their Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

Like if someone like Cruise has like two nominations, three nominations, but he wants to pad it out even their Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. Like, if someone like Cruise has, like, two nominations, three nominations, but he wants to pad it out to put him on the level of Paul Newman. What's the statue for the Nickelodeon Awards? It was a blimp. It was a blimp. I believe the blockbuster was sort of like a big clear sort of like Perspex, you know,

videotape, wasn't it? Oh, yes. Let's see. I guess you get one. I want one. Nickelodeon was the blimp and it was a kaleidoscope. That was the thing. When people went and accepted it, they'd always hold up to their eye and go, whoa.

And I'd be like, what the fuck is inside there? And the answer is it was just a kaleidoscope built into a blimp, like a fiberglass blimp. Feels like something you could like buy on eBay

for a hundred bucks. We heard a studio that desperately needs to be decorated, but what a space. I mean, this is my first time. It's my first time here. I do want to say the first time I was on this podcast. The unnamed Blank Check Studios.

First time I was on this podcast, we recorded in like a sock drawer. We recorded in a space that maybe covered this table we are sitting around. A closeted at the now defunct UCB office. And now we are sitting in a building made out of marble. Not the whole building is made out of marble, but there are parts of it. Yes. I took an

elevator. You sure did? Yeah. Don't give it all away. I'm sitting in a chair where Richard Lawson himself once sat. The seat is still warm. He hasn't sat in this chair yet. He's not done warm this year. Are you our first in-studio guest? You're our first in-studio guest, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, because you're the first person I texted to say like, hey, you know, take the elevator, blow off the floor. Yeah, so you're christening this seat guest-wise. I'm breaking it in. All right. Yeah. We should put tape on it.

It does have that new podcast studio smell. It does. It does. And we got a couple things. We got a DaMovie shirt. Yeah, that's Chris White's. Chris White's. Wilson the volleyball from Castaway.

Wilson the volleyball. We got a HelloFennel embroidery there. We got Ben Hosley. We got King Ralph on VHS. We have the envelope that Griffin will make a joke about beta motion. We sure do. That's up there. This is a nice little collection.

Yeah. Oh, we got one of my Red Boys. Remember the Red Boys? Yeah, Red Boys. Of course. And some Legos. And the Wreck-It Ralph arcade. The, what's his fix it

felix yeah nothing like uh describing something visually we'll post pictures people will love it i've been trying to one up the the envelope bit not on this podcast but in real life in life and and the only way i think i could potentially do it is i when i learned that a friend of mine is having a child uh I wrote the name of the child to our other friends on a text message thread, and I'm waiting until a few weeks from now to finally find out. I'm very confident. Wow.

But we'll see. That's cool. We'll see. Yeah, cool. I should mention this is a Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success. David's like miming jabs. I'm like John Holt. Judo.

I'm like doing karate. Yeah. Or Elvis. He's so proud of how quickly he did it. Yeah. Podcasts about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, like being arguably the most acclaimed, revered, studied, analyzed American director of all time, 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 after their premature death. People are befuddled by the movie and then like 20 years later, basic consensus comes around to it being a masterpiece. Yeah. Well, I would say, by and large. I feel like 10 years ago, it was,

it was like,, there are... It was like, you know what secretly is kind of the best? Yes. Ice White Shot. Right. And now I feel like it's almost widely accepted as like, oh, no, Ice White Shot rules. Yeah, I don't think it was ever like quite bona fide Phil Maude status, you know, where it was like this really cursed thing.

I think it was... Sure. The fuddling was exactly the record for it. But I, yeah, it's definitely quickly sort of after the first wave of critical, you know, machinations went through and people sort of got it out of their system and were able to reckon with what the movie actually is and not what it was sort of mythologically

meant to be in their minds. I think its reputation has gone way up. And then, yeah, now you see a topping list of the best films of the night. You know, it is the first, and no disrespect to John Carpenter's Vampires or Indiana Jones' The Kingdom of the best films of the night. You know, it is the first, and no disrespect to John Carpenter's Vampires or Indiana Jones' The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but of the

various movies I have been on this podcast to talk about, this is the only one that is on my sight and sound list of the 10 greatest films ever. You put it on your sight and sound? Not on the ticker. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, there are actually, and I think there are like two other films that this podcast has covered that were on my top 10. Are you willing to say uh can we guess oh no what's the fun in that

okay one of them's pinocchio um and the other one the other one to be clear yes you had to call up in a fury run to the doors of sight and sound knock i need to make a change i i bought a trans atlantic flight just so i could go and knock on the door myself who thought that in arguably the greatest film of all time would be released on Disney Plus one week after submitting your ballot? You couldn't have known. I should have waited. It was really, we all should have seen it coming. The writing was on the wall.

I thought about putting this on my site ballot, but I did not. I expect that this is a movie that will make an imprint on this year's list. Like it feels like this is the first time the movie's reputation has crested enough to. Yeah, it feels like this is the first time the movie's reputation has crested enough to... Yeah, it was... I mean, certainly a few people, both filmmakers

and critics, had cited it ten years ago. But I do think it's going to be a lot higher. That's interesting that they put that on there. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. My experience with this movie is just that... We can get the details of it for us all later, but I think that, you know, there are... I really have no time for the best versus favorites dichotomy.

This is not how art works to me. If something is your favorite, is thereby, we're talking about a subjective art form here. It is therefore the best. But I do think there is a discrepancy between the best films, like the films that you recognize as great,

and the ones that sort of become like focal points on the horizon for you over the course of your life that you can sort of measure where you are in time based on your distance from them and what they reveal about you and you return to for unknown reasons time after time after time. And this is definitely one of those for me. It's like this. Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Did you put forgetting Sarah Marshall on your test? I certainly thought about it, but I chickened out. Part of your wedding. Yeah, it was in the wedding. It didn't make the top 10 can I reveal anything about your list? I mean I don't really care

you put Titanic on it right? I sure did cool one director put Eyes Wide Shut on their 2012 ballot Mia Hunts and Love oh and did any critics put it on?

four critics none of whom I know but um just a flutter of interest. Right. But I'm sure that will rise. I think it will have a lot more mention. We should say,

miniseries on the film, Stanley Kubrick, called Pod's Wide Cast. We finally got into the titular movie and his final film. His final film, Due to Death. Yes. The greatest career killer. The ultimate cancellation.

It really will set you down. It's really hard to get a project together after your death. Okay, but if death's so canceled, then why are we still talking about him then? Well, also, Orson Welles put out a movie after he died, so I'm waiting on you, Stanley. Well, Stanley did put a movie out after he died. He just couldn't get another one greenlit.

That's true. But he tried. We did get AI, which is sort of a happy medium. I was thinking about this recently. If I told Spielberg that AI is maybe my favorite Spielberg movie, would he be offended in that kind of way of like, that's half Stanley's movie? I don't think so.

I also don't think, I think he would be more offended by you calling it half Stanley's movie. Well, I wouldn't say, I just wonder if he would say like, you know, I was doing that for Stanley. I think he'd be happy, especially because it was so, it had a very similar reaction to this when it came out. I think in the early 90s when he was so fucking fed up

of Stanley Kubrick faxing him and faxing him and faxing him. He would text him, but he would just text, you know, at clans.

He was like, you know what, I don't need this in my life. And he moved on from Stanley Kubrick. Our guest today is David Ehrlich, of course,

from IndieWire, Fighting in the War Room and our Crouching Tiger episodes. What were the... I'm sorry. I'm going to read them all right now. The Village. The Village. That was in the UCB. The Village.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yeah. Howl, Moving Castle. Yes. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Yeah. And Vampires. John Carpenter's. So now you've got... Seven. Seven appearances. A gentleman's seven. Plus a Patreon. Patreon yeah you were on Guardians of the Galaxy

volume two you were sure was yeah oh yeah good move yeah I was back no memory of that

wow back on Halsey Street Spielberg's gonna be offended to hear that you can now say where you used to live yeah I lived on Halsey Street yeah

oh shit I mean it's a long yeah yeah no all lovely memories this is this is as I guess we've already Street. Yeah. Oh, shit. I mean, it's a long-ass street. Yeah, no. All lovely memories. This is, this is, as I guess we've already sort of recounted talking about Sight and Sound, I think,

my favorite of the films that I've been on to cover. This is my favorite of his movies. I said that going into this miniseries. Barry Lyndon was the biggest outlier I hadn't seen. Seeing Barry Lyndon for the first time in theaters, I was like, fuck, run for its money, tough. Rewatching this last night, I was like,

I just think this thing has a hold on me that is rare. I'm obsessed with this movie. And I have been for a very long time. And I've often also said, it's either this or Barry. We're going to do our list. We'll do our list. And we'll forget Darkman.

What if to correct the remaining mistake? We'll put Darkman on here. Let's put Darkman in. Okay, it'll be sort of around number nine. Darkman's like, I have to go against 2001. Yeah, fuck you, Darkman.

Darkman is better than Fear and Desire. I mean, he can feel good about that. I think Darkman can take Fear and Desire and Lolita and probably Killer's Kiss. Yeah, I put it above those three. I think I put him over Spartacus. Maybe not.

I would. That's my taste. I would watch them fight. That would be fun. Absolutely. Watch them fight. And then Darkman could put on Spartacus' face and say, I'm Spartacus.

And you kind of would be... Hard talk. Right, yeah. And then the winner has to take on Arnold Vosloo. That'd be cool too. They should have done... And Durant. Spartacus, the return of Durant.

I switched out the return of Durant. What if Universal started pumping out? Because they obviously, the Universal home video department is the one that really is holding the torch for like the Jarhead sequels, the Rob Zombie Munsters movie, the recently announced R.I.P.D. 2.

Hell yeah. The 47 Ronin 2. Like every forgotten movie they went into a franchise. They went full Disney Plus on the Eyes Wide Shut extended universe. Well, I was going to say Spartacus. It would be funny if they today announced like Spartacus 2 Ring of Fire.

I mean, there was a very successful Spartacus TV show. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying this is the proper direct-to-video sequel to Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus recast all roles. I'm just saying if Disney Plus dropped tomorrow just a title card that said Nightingale I would fucking lose my pants lose my pants lose my mind shit my pants vomit

I would definitely lose my pants no but I mean the hat trick I like the brazenness of an Eyes Wide Shut sequel like Eyes Wide Shut 2 like you know

the masked guy in red or whatever they should have put the fucking Fidelio party people in Space Jam A New Legacy that's a real

that's a layout and That's a layup. And they already had the renders from the censored cut. They have those. They should have put the PS2 cut. What if LeBron, yeah, he's like running through the algorithm. He's like, what's this place? And everyone's fucking it. He's like, I gotta get out of here.

Like fake censorship, like Jimmy Kimmel style. But funny. But like, you know, just like fake silhouettes in front of completely anodyne things. Yes. Like LeBron's going through that. Who's singing backwards here? This is weird. I was watching this on iTunes and it was...

Just as Stanley Kubrick intended. It was the R-rated CGI. Oh, it had the body. Because for the last 15 years or so, the unrated cut is pretty much what exists in circulation. So then I was like, fuck, it's on Netflix.

Is there any chance Netflix has the nastier cut? And they did. They do. Netflix has the unrated cut. It's wild that Apple doesn't. Yeah,

it is wild that Apple doesn't. I'm shocked by that, actually. Yeah, I'm sure until Leon Vitale died earlier this year I mean you could have gotten a very detailed answer As to why that happened

I'm actually now wondering if I've ever seen It's really just that there's just kind of like Robed figures standing in front Of the action right The first time they introduce it Oh and there's some naked ladies That's the one where I think I had not seen This version before.

Famously, this movie, when it was, Kubrick died, delivered the final cut. We'll get into all of it. Contractually, he had to deliver the movie in R, and they submitted to the MPA his cut, and they were like, there's too much on-screen sex acts. Here are the things you need to cover up.

So rather than cutting it, they digitally placed mostly robed figures. The naked ladies are the things you need to cover up. So rather than cutting it, they just put people in front of it. Mostly robed figures. The naked ladies are the ones where you're like, that looks fake. That looks weird. The robed figures are kind of seamless, but you are like compositionally, that's weird. I don't think he would have framed that. No, he probably would not have

appreciated any of that. Yeah. Although some people have said, like, well, we can talk about it, but there's some speculation that he was planning for because there were these digital renders of the bodies, right? Right, that he knew that was something he might want to do. He could whip up a digital render

of a body in no time. Yeah. Cooper's got those lines. It's a controlled C. I don't know. That actually means something else. You saw this film in theaters. July 16th, 1999.

I knew that about you. I tend to lead with it. It was my dating profile back in the time. Your bar mitzvah present. Oh, 1999. I knew that about you. I tend to lead with it. It was my dating profile back in the time. Your bar mitzvah present. Oh, sure. It was the theme of your party, right? It was. I was actually, it was several years before this movie came out, but I knew.

I knew that Kubrick had been thinking about making it for almost 50 years. And so I figured it was going to come out one day. And you've been thinking about becoming a man for almost 13 years. Yeah, I still am. Yeah. But the, you know, we were talking about the movies that sort of orient you in time. And this is something I think about when I listen to this podcast a lot, because Griffin has this sort of like eidetic memory of, you know, not just the box offices, but where

he saw things and whatnot. And my memory is spotty, but it can be… It's not a competition. Well, not about the box office, but where I saw things. Yeah. I'm good at that. But it's like, I don't remember… I'm not not about the box office, but where I saw things. Yeah. I'm good at that. But it's like, I don't remember. I'm not good at the box office.

I don't remember when I became X and Y part of myself when these things happened in my life. But I remember that when Eyes Wide Shut came out,

it was important enough to me. I was at a certain point in my interest in film that I took the risk to go to my parents and be like, listen,

this is opening the Majestic on Friday. That's the place where the movie Nazi works. He'll boot my ass out. He's done it before. This is too important to me. No orgy for you.

is dead. And I was like, I know this is going to be uncomfortable for everybody, but you guys have to take me to see this. And sure enough,

they did. I sat between them. The Majestic Peter in Sanford. I sat between them. You know what? I just thought that I would

further ensconce myself away from the movie Nazis flashlight and also wanted to hold each of their hands and squeeze them

tightly no it's not raining you were allowed with a parent right yeah absolutely

yeah I just but he would look for people for teens who didn't seem to have chaperones and he would be

like interrogated I mean he called them the movie Nazi for a reason so it's said on his regal name tag and he

yeah and so I did it and we had all sorts of fun conversations the way home it was worth it did they like the movie I think they were

to go back to the familiar word we've established befuddled yeah I'm sure it was as well I have

some very embarrassing flashbulb memories of what I was thinking in certain scenes. Sure. I think it was the first time since puberty that I had seen a woman pee. Wow. Yeah. It didn't manifest in any sort of fetish or anything.

I just remember being struck by that. And we'll talk about this. It's not a particularly raunchy movie. No, it's just one of the things that kind of doomed this film upon release. But it was certainly something I didn't regret. It was forcing my parents to take me to see this. And we all had a grand old time.

I assume you did not see this in theaters. I did not. You would have been like 11. I was 10. You know, even with movies that I knew, no go, my parents aren't going to take me to this, or I'm not specifically interested in seeing this. I remember my parents went out for a movie night and came back. I was like, tell me everything.

Right, give me the report. I want the report. I want to know where this stands. I want to know what the consensus is. I want to be able to talk about this with adults. Why is it good? Why is it bad? Right. And I just remember them being like, it's like a mess.

It's embarrassing. It was just this total... Which was the end of the take at the time. They were just kind of like, it's like a mess. It's embarrassing. It was just this total. Which was the end of the take at the time. Right. They were just kind of like, doesn't work at all. Which I remember them having a very similar take on AI. But the difference was I had seen that movie before them and was like, you're wrong. Right. It was the first time I was able to sort of push back on something like that. But so I just, most of the adults in my life were that sort of befuddled and dismissive and like well it's a shame it's a shame that's his last movie sure what a mess made a mistake casting tom cruise didn't see it until probably about seven years ago okay i got to see it for

the first time in a theater oh cool uh with with the uh the unrated cut the non-cgi body it's become a perennial here in new york at least. Well, because they showed it at Christmas a lot. Yes. Yeah. It was 70, maybe even a little bit more than that. And I've watched it a couple times since then.

But it was one of those things, I feel like when I saw it, the tide was starting to turn on it. But it was like, oh, some people stand up for this. I don't know how I'll feel about this. And I saw it in the first like 30, 40 minutes. I was like,

okay, I get it. It's interesting, but it's obviously not at the level of the best Kubrick movies. And by the end of it, I was like, this thing fucking rules. It's his best film. Everyone who dislikes this was dumb. Ben, did you see it in theaters? No.

Had you seen it before? I had seen it before, but I saw it so like late in life. I kind of like wrote it off because of the reputation i wrote it off for so long and not only that when i met someone who liked it i'd be like eyes wide shut weird take yeah i was like i haven't fucking seen it shut up griffin but some girl i was dating convinced me to watch oh yeah and i was like wait isn't this movie freaky wait this movie is full of dang ass freaks. What the fuck?

But I love it. You want to watch that crazy movie with me? That's what you were like. Yeah. The one with all the Shostakovich? That's wild. I didn't see this film in theaters. Roast me now, because I lived in the United Kingdom.

I'm sorry. Britain and Northern Ireland. What? And it was rated. They're united? They sure are for who knows how much longer. And it was rated 18. So I couldn't go even with an adult chaperone.

Sure. You had no choice. You had to be 18. It was illegal. I had no choice. And I do remember my parents seeing it and having, I think, a fairly similar... My mom was very down on Cruise and Kidman, generally. Sure. My dad may have been more neutral, but my mom was just sort of like,

those are not serious actors. Those aren't movie stars. She loved, like, Jerry Maguire, but she was just like, get out of here. Big thing with my parents, too. I think Jerry Maguire was the only thing they liked him in.

And, I mean, the most specific takeaway I remember from them was just, like, he made a mistake casting them. Right. They're out of their league. They can't handle this.

They're lightweight. It's a problem from minute one because of them. Have you guys talked about how Kubrick basically did a reverse Sims in the trajectory of his life? Moving from New York to London. I know you weren't born in London, but moving from New York to London and then literally never leaving.

And also being terrified to get on a plane. I mean, he did not come. I think the last time he was in the United States was at the premiere of 2001. The man didn't like planes. It is crazy for what a notorious, you know, control freak, obsessive about every detail of his film was like, you guys go shoot second unit establishing shots in New York city without me. I cannot be bothered to get on a plane. I wonder like how much into the weeds to get,

but there's two things that are interesting to me about that. One is that one of the few things that he was still tinkering with that we know for sure at the time of his death was some establishing shots, some second unit shots, which ones he wanted to use of like Ziegler's House and whatnot. And the other was that Leon Vitale who became the, you know, his right-hand man we talked about in Barry Lyndon, I'm sure,

you know, plays the red cloak here. His first big job was to go to America and look for kids to play Danny Torrance for The Shining. So, like, yeah, it's interesting the way that he thinks about New York, remembers New York. We'll talk about that in the vision of New York in this movie, but it's so predicated on him in the way that the city lives on in his memory, but not in the present tense.

Yeah. I just want to say, I had, like, friends. I think I had a friend who saw it when it came out on video. Uh-huh. Because it was like, doesn't that movie that movie have like an orgy in it and I remember him being like I you know we're talking about like 14 year old just it was boring I couldn't really and so I never went to it as a teen because I was like I heard it's not even like sexy I would have those friends growing up because my mother was so overprotective about what I'd watch and there'd always be the kid at school

whose parents let them watch anything and there'd be the kid that kid's the coolest yeah I was about to say that kid was me but I was not the coolest but sometimes there'd be the kid who got to see a serious minded art house you know auteur film just because

they loved R rated movies and everyone else was just like how are the boobs and And I'd be like, is it well made? Right. Right? And Eyes Wide Shut felt like one of those movies

where even the kids who could get away with seeing R-rated movies would see everyone to flaunt it. It's like a married couple arguing. Right. Would just be like, I don't know,

the boobs are kind of sad. Yeah. I felt weird. And so, I didn't see this movie until college. I rented it and I watched it on my eight- inch square CRT computer that I had by my bed.

As Stanley intended. As Stanley intended. And I was like, it really did kind of feel like a secret dream movie. Like that's, it was, even though it's maybe not the best way to watch that movie. It was very special to me. As just like, I just watched this like secret movie about like a secret world. They are.

So some of my best first time movie watching experiences were my like, yeah, like tiny eight inch by eight inch TV VCR combo I had in my bedroom and watching certain movies late at night when I should have been sleeping. I saw Schindler's List for the first time

when I was working at a wood shop at camp over the summer on like a 13-inch TV with the VHR built in. The VCR built in. And over the course of like three days as like younger kids, I was like 12, were making wooden cars in the background and I was not paying attention. They were like

using buzz saws and stuff. I watched The Godfather on a porch. Yes, of course. We know this. Iconic moment in American history. We all learned about that. Any watched The Godfather on a porch. Well, yes, of course. We know this. An iconic moment in American history. We all learned about that. Any serious film was watched on a porch. No, but that feeling of like, I'm like five inches away from the screen because it's too small.

I can't see it otherwise. And with me also, it was like, the volume has to be low enough that my parents, if they get up to get a glass of water, won't hear that I'm awake. I had headphones like this that I'm wearing right now.

I would do headphones sometimes too. And I would plug them in to the front of the TV. Yeah, isn't that a weird thing to think about? Yeah. It's all, like, I watch so much stuff on that tiny TV that I bought at Argos. Shout out Argos. Nobody knows. Argos, fuck yourself.

Yeah, Argos, fuck yourself. That was a great little thing. I wonder what happened to it. I think I gave it to my roommate. Argo, it won Best Picture. It did. That little thing. That was a great little thing. I wonder what happened to it. I think I gave it to my roommate. Argo, it won Best Picture. It did. That little thing. That was a great little thing.

Let me give you some context and I'll just wide shut. Please. After Full Metal Jacket, one thing that Kubrick wants to make is this Holocaust novel, Wartime Lies, right? It was going to be called

Aryan Papers. That's one of the sort of lost projects. Full Metal Jacket comes out of him searching for the right Holocaust material. It was a thing he was stewing on for 20 years,

how to make his Holocaust movie. Bumped him out, right? Stanley Kubrick stewing on something for 20 years? That doesn't sound like him. I know. But, like, supposedly, the research for that movie

was a depressing affair. Unsurprising. I don't really know much about that book. Like, I don't know what the hook of Wartime Lies is. Do either of you? No.

No, but, I mean, he is... Obviously, Schindler's List kind of killed it, has always been. Yeah, that was right. It's just like, there's not, this town's not big enough

for two Holocaust pictures. It's about Polish Jews who get Aryan papers and delude arrest so they're trying to survive, I guess, they're like passing, you know.

But so often, he was not picking obvious material to adapt. He'd respond to one specific thing that to other people's inscrutable and then it's like he goes through 20 different writers trying to see if anyone can crystallize

the thing that jumped out to him the other thing obviously is ai which he continues to tinker away at he continues uh to throw it to screenwriters and he keeps saying like pinocchio pinocchio and they're all like everyone is like i don I don't want to do Pinocchio. Only Zemeckis can get that right. And he even, I mean, the... That's when he hooks up with Spielberg. He's the short story writer. He was like, I want to take your story

and combine it with Pinocchio. And he's like, don't fucking do Pinocchio. Right, come on. I wasn't going for... If I'm Brian Aldiss, I am probably pissed off where I'm like, just because he's a little boy doesn't mean he's Pinocchio. We talked a lot about the history of different people trying to

or successfully making the auteur obsession with Pinocchio. There were points in the AI process where he was like, maybe I should just fucking do Pinocchio instead. Like he did toy with the idea of just doing straight Pinocchio at different points. Yes. I think especially when the tech felt prohibitive. I'll never understand it. I don't either.

I mean, and I am interested. I remember like celebrating the day that PTA's Pinocchio fell apart. It was announced it wasn't going to happen. I was just like, thank God. Go on and make, you know, the master. Yeah, I do. I would like to just see, for experiment's sake,

what would happen with him making a studio movie at that budget level one time. I want to do it one time. I would love for that to happen as long as it's not a Pinocchio story. Pinocchio is put him in the box. We don't need him. Right. Sand him down. I wish he had made Duel of Linston.

Yeah. Should have done that. But obviously the things with AI are he knows that he's going to film for two years so he can't cast a real child actor because the kid will grow and age too much. Yeah. So he wants to build a robot child. He's going to Spiel for two years, so he can't cast a real child actor because the kid will grow and age too much. Yeah. So he wants to build a robot child. He's going to Spielberg being like,

can you build a robot child? And Spielberg's like, probably not. He sees E.T. and he's like, you've cracked it. And he's like, E.T. has to look like a potato. Right. And then he sees Jurassic Park and he's once again like, well, wait a second, CGI. And it's like, you know, so they talk a lot.

Did he die like several months before Bicentennial Man came out and his dream was finally realized? Well, the Bicentennial Man actually killed him. That's in the notes here. Okay. Bicentennial Man, activate murder mode. His eyes go red.

Watching this movie, knowing it's his final statement, I kept on thinking about things that Stanley didn't live to see. Oh, sure, right. In, like, a good way. 9-11. He missed out on that one. Thank God. There's the thing that people say with certain actors who are not well cast in period pieces

where it's like, that's a face that's seen in iPhone. You can't put him in. This is the shorthand that people use today. I'm so grateful that Kubrick never saw an iPhone. Never saw an iPhone. Never saw an iPhone. And he never saw the film Jobs. Or Afton Kutcher. Which would have helped him understand the iPhone. he never knew you could

have a thousand songs in your pocket he did see steve jobs he did well because he gave notes on that he asked fatali to can you give me a screen for a movie that's coming out in 16 years yeah sure why not just do it he it is unclear when hubrick first read Tram Novelle, aka Dream Story, the Arthur Schnitzer novel, Kirk Douglas claims he gave it to him during one of their shared therapy sessions when they were so mad at each other making Paths of Glory or Spartacus.

There's other people. Some people thought maybe Ruth Sabaka, who is Kubrick's second wife, who is Austrian, the novel is Austrian. Maybe she gave it to him. Has anyone read Dream Story? I have not. Have you? Yes. Oh, fuck. I picked it in book club once. It's like, it's a slender tome. Like 110 pages.

And it is very similar to Eyes Wide Shut. Sure. To the point that when people are like, Stanley was trying to tell us about Jeffrey Epstein, I'm like, read Dream Story. It's the same. Like, you know. Arthur Schnitzler was trying to tell us about it. Yeah, exactly. Schnitzler was on the case a hundred years ago. It's modernized.

Of course it's modernized, and of course he is talking about the weirdness of the upper crust of society, but so is Dream Story. But the plot of the movie is very, very much the novel. It's modernized technologically and culturally in some ways, but it's also very pointedly

set at the end. No one in King's story wears Uggs. Right. And, right, I mean, still shocked to my system

to this day that one character It's fucking crazy. And he wears them inside. He's wearing Uggs and he's drinking a beer out of a high glass ball. It is so,

a high ball glass, sorry. It's so weird. How obsessive Kubrick was about every detail. You know that he was like torturing himself about the Uggs and he made a conscious choice.

Yeah. He was like, the Uggs day. I just look comfortable. What if we found out that Stanley Kubrick developed Uggs? They were like, Uggs came out of his obsessive pursuit. It's like how we have nylon because of the space program. He accidentally invented Uggs. I don't know what to tell you.

He was trying to find the right shoe to find this character and accidentally. But, you know, it is a turn of the century novel, a fin de ciclo novel and a fin de ciclo film. Have you read Dream Story? I haven't, but they both are set at the sort of the precipice of a new age. At the lip of a chasm that's sort of stretching out below the characters. It feels like fundamentally kind of right that Kubrick didn't live to see the 21st century and that this is his final object, which is like really at that precipice.

But he never got to own a sidekick. He never did. An N-Gage. He would have loved the N-Gage. He would have fucking loved. He would have been a big Belieber. He would have been so. He would have.

I really. I always have said that. I'm so into the Minions. He would have fucking flipped for the Minions. He would have been doing Minions memes. The Minions are brilliant. He's like on the phone with the Pierre Coffin. He absolutely would have.

Always wanted to make a movie about Minions. He would have been typing Yogi Berra quotes and MS Paint over random Minions images and acting like they had any correlation. Posting it to his Facebook group. You know how there's just so many legends of Kubrick like calling out Brett Brooks and being like modern romance. You know, it's just funny to think about him doing that for like whatever Transformers 2. This is what I'm saying though. I'm like, everything

in culture becomes dumb in a way that is inescapable. Right. It's because he left us. Culture got dumb because he wasn't watching over it. I mean, you hear about him just having like eight hourhour phone calls and faxes and letters and all this shit. And you're like, I don't, I'm glad that Kubrick never texted anyone. He didn't live to have David Zaslav tell him that the film he's been working on for 23 years is going direct to HBO Max.

Right. Or being pulled directly from HBO Max. I think he would have minded that a lot less. Yeah. In 1971, he mentions Trumnavel as a project he might work on, along with Napoleon. So that's how long it took him, right,

to actually make it. To your point about the book being very similar to the movie, it is fascinating for how long this movie was in the works in his mind. It was this thing he would go back to. He went through so many different writers. It felt like at different times

he was trying to use it more as just a starting point for something different. And then ultimately got back to a much closer adaptation. It's like you said, I mean, it's worth noting that the book is not, at least according to its title treatment, it's not adapted from Schnitzler.

It's inspired by. Right. And as you were saying, I mean, he pulls so many different pieces from not just like Schnitzler's entire body of work, but so many other things that he had recorded and jotted down and kept and took little bits and pieces from over the years until it becomes this collage of ideas that he'd filtered through the filter of the story. But it's also I think that had always made me think that it was just loosely inspired by as a starting point. Sims is leaning over into my face space and, you know, glowering his eyes.

I haven't read the book, but I read the Wikipedia page for the book where they were breaking down the differences between the book and the movie, and I was surprised by how much they were, not superficial, but like surface level elements. Yeah, little things. And then there's things that he adds, certainly. Sure, but the motions

of the story are pretty one-to-one, right? Like fucking, you know, the piano player, you know, the whole thing with the patient daughter trying to kiss him,

you know, professing her love for him. All, you know, the prostitute, you know, all that stuff. Tom Cruise, this is from Tom Cruise, famed actor. Thomas Cruise. He, you know, the prostitute, you know, all that stuff. Tom Cruise, this is from Tom Cruise, famed actor.

Thomas Cruise. He's in the film. Says that, says that Kubrick had told him that Christiane Kubrick had not wanted him to do it because they had just done Lolita. Oh, sure.

And she said, please don't, not now, we're so young, let's not go through this right now. Now, that's Cruise relating a quote from Christiane, but it is funny for her just thinking,

an orgy movie? No, come on, man. Like, can we just do something else? And he had said, you know, around the same time, this was going to be the hardest film for him to make. And it's funny that I'm sure he believed that until, you know, the day he died, when he finally finished making it.

That, you know, even compared to Full Metal Jacket or 2001, or an Abakov adaptation, like, this was was for him the hardest movie he had to make but you've already mentioned it but that that famous story if you like reached out to albert brooks after seeing modern romance and said like jealousy right and he was like how did you do this this is this thing i've been trying to bottle this dynamic this exploration of sexual tension relationships between men and women I can't figure out how to do this.

And all the stories you hear about the development process for this movie over decades were him waffling back and forth between like, is this a comedy or a tragedy or is it somewhere in between? And he often would defer to,

like at different times, he wanted to make a Woody Allen version of this movie, Bill Murray, Steve Martin. Adam Sandler. Steve Martin's a big one. But Woody Allen, right, that was the earliest option, right?

Who said that he was never contacted by him. He only heard about it later. Correct. Kubrick had wanted him. He never told Allen himself. Steve Martin, I believe he like met with,

had talks with. They, they, they, and they had conversations on, basically they were how funny should this be. And this was before, you know, Kubrick had decided that he wanted to make the movie

as non-Jewish as possible. Right. Obviously. Right. But Steve Martin, he was off of the jerk. Like, he had almost made the jerk.

Wait, well, let me go through this. No, it's fine, it's fine. I'm sorry. He asked Anthony Burgess

to read the novella at one point. He asked Diane Johnson, who co-wrote The Shining with him, to read it. He basically would show it to, like, every writer he met Being like you have a take

He goes to her who's like I just got out of Full Metal Jacket It's taken me 12 years to recover from this I want to do another thing Right Neil Simon Steve Martin he loved The Jerk So he talked to Steve Martin about it Terry Southern He told Terry Southern

He wanted to do a sex comedy with a wild and somber streak running through it. And then he goes to Full Metal Jacket. He reaches out to John Le Carre, one of the great novelists alive at that point. He's not alive anymore, rip. And Le Carre said, like, I don't know how to figure this, to update.

I don't know how to modernize this, right? Like, I don't know how to, because he was very much like it should be contemporary not like set in 19th century Vienna or whatever but the phrase

Eyes Wide Shut it may have been inspired from Tinker Tailor's Soldier's Pie which is a fun little bit of factoid can I just step back to Steve Martin

for one second here the thing I find fascinating is by the time he makes this movie in the mid 90s Steve Martin would be great for it yeah for him to call that in 79 when his persona is just

wild and crazy guy doofus it's big like casting Bill Murray in Lost in Translation Energy no it would have been it would have been cool I mean God knows what the movie looks like

I think Tom Cruise it's entirely different it's entirely different film but yeah we're talking like post Father the Bride he makes perfect Bride, he makes perfect sense. You see the version of this movie. And a moment earlier, you're like, why would you cast him?

What are you talking about? I just love this idea that John le Carré's note was like, why don't we set it in like a medieval walled city? And Kubrick was like, quick. But then finally, he finds Frederick Raphael. He meets him at a dinner party hosted by Stanley Donan. That sounds fun.

He wrote Darling. He wrote, he's like a veteran screenwriter. He has an Oscar, I think. He gave a bunch of graphs of the screenplay to him and he puts it, this is Raphael's quote,

he does not want and never wanted a collaborator. He wants a skilled mechanic who can crank out the dross he will turn into gold. Yeah. So I guess he just, like you say, he just wants someone who's like, well, here are the bricks of it. Like, here's how this can work. He wants like a contractor. Yeah. Yeah. He really didn't want it

to be Jewish, as you say. Yeah, we'll get into that. We'll dig into it. I'm sorry, what? Well, the dream story is about a Jewish person. The novella is about a Jewish person. Got it. Kubrick wanted it to be upper crust wasps. Vaguely Jewish.

It's not like the character is Jewish, but it's not to my understanding. Oh, my bagels and schmear. But like this scene. This orgy's got no white fish salad. I'm leaving. I say this as someone who just read the Wikipedia page. Sure.

But the scene in the movie where the bunch of, like, frat boys yell at him and throw a bunch of gay homophobic slurs at him. Yeah. In the book, there's a recurring thing

with people yelling anti-Semitic shit at him on the street. Because it's, you know, it's a fraught time for the Jews. Right. So it is, like,

it's part of the texture of the thing that there's this sense of otherness from him being Jewish. Got it. Okay. But here,

this movie replaces it with a sense of emasculation. Yeah, he's looking for, like, the most, sort of, like, waspy aspirational, every man kind of quality. Tom Cruise is playing a wasp who's handsome and who is a high-powered doctor, but he's still, like, he's not in that, like,

further upper crust, and he's sort of glimpsing, he's, like, brushing against. They are sort of the platonic ideal of like the James Gray family in Armageddon time, which is a movie that will be out by the time this podcast drops.

But like very aspirational in their social status. But those are like lower middle class. Of course. But he is like the, like he has achieved his success,

but he still. He gets to go to that party, but he doesn't know anyone there. He's what every Jewish mother wants their son to be. Right. But he's not Jewish. But in this,

but he goes from like his status is... Would that be good or bad for the Jews? And it's funny because Kubrick was saying that he wanted, like, a Harrison Ford-type goy in the role Harrison Ford, not a goy. But he wanted that type. But, like, the character Bill Harford

goes from high status at the babysitter to low status at the party to super high status, you know, for the, like like portion of his night and then the lowest that it's an interesting journey goes on but he is not sort of he inside and outside he exists in this liminal space like the whole film does and i think while there's an element of like passing that being a white jew can break the table i think he wanted it to be uh less sort of barriers to entry for people he He wanted it to be more a holistic idea of this character,

you know, being able to go into all these spaces without being othered. Harrison Ford's a quarter Jewish, right? Not too shabby. Okay, I was just trying to remember that. Is he a quarter or a half? I mean, a quarter Adam Sandler, it's a quarter. He has the thing where he has that quote where he's like,

I've always, as a man, I've always felt Irish, and as an actor, I've always felt Jewish, where you're like, all right, Harrison. Wow, what does've always felt Irish and as an actor, I've always felt Jewish. Where you're like, all right, Harris. Wow. What does that mean? I don't know.

Ding. Just flipping a coin. Okay. Comedy point. Eyes wide shut. Warner Brothers co-chairman Terry Semel says, could you cast me

a movie star, please? Right. There's the weird quote. He says, you haven't done it since Nicholson and the Shining. It's like,

well, he's made one fucking movie. And also that movie, you know, does have Matthew Modine in it. It wasn't like a movie movie star. What is his name? No, but you also...

Matthew Modine is the biggest movie star I can think of just in terms of height. Very tall. Very tall. Very tall guy. Skinny. Tall, skinny guy. Right, but even at this point, 1996, Hollywood is moving more and more in this direction where it's like, if you're going to do something weird, get one of the 10 bankable names.

Yes. 100%. Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, and Bruce Willis to me more, both supposedly considered. We're talking about hot couples of the 90s. He seemed very into the idea of casting a real couple. Would have been like Chris Pratt and Anna Faris.

Well, not today. Not today. Why would it be today? Who would it be interesting if they were in it why would they come to mind who would it be today Olivia Wilde Tom Holland and Zendaya wow well we sort of

already got this with that Netflix movie Malcolm and Marie but they're not together I know I hear Dr. Washington is really good in Death of a Salesman

I mean sorry in the piano not in Malcolm and Marie isn't he in the someone was just telling me he's in a play on Broadway right now. I was like, he's in Amsterdam. That's definitely not what you're talking about.

He's in The Piano Lesson on Broadway. And someone was telling me that he's the standout. And I was like, that I got to see. I'm interested in seeing him be the standout. Has anything in hindsight made more sense than Tom Cruise dropping everything, including his $20 million payday

to or salary at the time, to be in this movie? It's incredible. It's incredible. It's so clear to me now, having seen the last 20 years of his life, that he would drop anything to be like, I need to do this.

He would never do it now, which is so sad. Well, I'll say this. It's hard to even imagine the person that would hold that sway over him. Right. Right? I think it needs to be someone

who he grew up revering, who felt unattainable to him, especially for a guy who was already checking off so many major directors, but they were directors who were closer to being contemporaries. There is the Cruise thing for so long,

it was like, I'm fighting to be one of the great movie stars of all time. Right? Fighting to be serious, but also it felt like the thing he was in competition with was, I want to be one of the great movie stars of all time. Right. Fine to be serious. But also it felt like the thing he was in competition with was I want to be talked about someday in the same tones as Paul Newman, as whoever,

you know, these great movie stars worked with great directors, developed great projects, whatever. It is fascinating that like right after this movie, uh, I mean, Magnolia obviously comes out the same year as this is the thing he jumps to, but like his first movie after this movie. I mean, Magnolia obviously comes out the same year as this. Sure does.

Is the thing he jumps to. But like, his first movie after this properly is Mission Impossible 2. And then it's like, Vanilla Sky's there, Last Samurai, Collateral,

like, Minority Report, War of the Worlds. He goes much more into blockbuster. Yeah, but he's still working with major filmmakers until he jumps the couch. I'd argue phase two is he's doing big genre, epics, things that have more blockbuster appeal, but he's doing them with a list of tour directors. And Vanilla Sky is very much like, can we do all that dream shit again?

That was fun, but just with none of the effort. It's just fascinating that Vanilla Sky is like the one outlier in that run because it does feel like post Eyes Wide Shut, he's like, I need to make movies that have a commercial hook. I can't do total art.

The couch jumping thing was not long after that. It was 2005, if memory serves, around there for Mission Impossible 3. And so that period that he had to really

fuck around and the flexibility was not long-lived. It's that phase of 2000 to 2006. But I don't know if he was, like, I can't imagine him ever being happier than he was during, like, a day on set acting

opposite Sidney Pollack in a Stanley Kubrick movie. No, but it's also, it is fundamentally the most fascinating thing about this movie, where it's like, here's this actor who is obsessed with being able to accomplish anything, right? Is just the most like, tell me what to do, sir.

I can fucking put my mind to it. I can get it done. Like prostrated himself in front of Kubrick. He was like, I am your tool. Use me. Right. And it's like he's finally found the challenge he cannot beat, which is what Kubrick is trying to harness for this movie. This guy who is so desperately trying to be in control of the fucking situation.

And Kubrick's process is so intangible that he's like, if you told me what to do, I could execute it. And if I don't know what we're searching for, and I don't even know what the movie is. He's like, that's what I want. Right.

I want you to do that. He has the ultimate Hollywood extrovert playing this implosive character who is just blowing up on the inside. And yeah, I mean, it has the ultimate Hollywood extrovert playing this implosive character who is just blowing up on the inside. And yeah, I mean, it's exactly the phenomenon that he's hoping to sort of bottle up. And, you know, the irony to what you're saying is that he ends up giving, you know, one of his greatest performances as a result of that. He does end up sort of mastering the challenge, just not on his terms. Yeah, yeah. It is that thing, too, where, you know, you hear all these stories that Cruise would be like,

what do you want this character to be? And he was like, just you. I think you're right for the part. And Cruise was like, I'm nothing like this guy. I'm nothing like this guy. Don't say that. And I need to create a character. And he's like, no, I just think your face is right for this.

You have the right voice. You should just like act like you in these scenes. It's the exact thing you can say to Tom Cruise that will drive him insane. That having been said, he, by all accounts, loved working on this movie. He did. It was very easy, right?

It was incredibly easy. Well, I'll read all this stuff. But he starts calling Sidney Pollack a friend of his because he had just made The Firm, a fucking six-star masterpiece.

Better than Eyes Wide Shut, but so, it's better than every film ever made. Pollack said they had... The Firm is one of those movies where you put it on and you're like,

yeah, i know this is like not good but like this is the best movie i've ever seen i have tom cruise on on speaker phone right now to yell at you for saying that it's great movie um pollock and kubrick had uh a phone a phone friendship over years and he said that pollock he would sort of use as a sounding board to keep tabs on what was going on in Hollywood because he was so removed from all of that. So anytime he worked with actors, worked with different people,

he'd ask them about him. And from the time he was working on the firm, he was very fascinated by Cruise. Right. He would ask thousands of questions. What's he like? What does he eat? What does he do?

What does he dress like? And so Pollack's like, I really feel like I have convinced him to use Cruise because Tom's a wonderful guy. And then he would go to Cruz and say like, Huber's always calling me about you. You should work with him.

Right. You know, and then Cruz, Cruz just always talks about it in every interview in this like very hallowed way where he's like, you know,

we were honored to work with him. We did whatever we wanted. We do whatever we could to work with him. We knew it'd be difficult, but I would have kicked myself for not doing it. And Kidman has all that thing

where she's like, it was a good time. Yeah. Like, it's so interesting because obviously they get divorced not long after. It's like two years later. And people wanted the narrative

to be this movie broke their relationship. He like ripped their marriage open in front of them or whatever. I mean, that's what I thought. But like, Kidman has very much been like, we were all on set. We all lived together

with the kids. Like, it was obviously took a long time, but we like, it was a nice, I can, I'm going to find the quote.

It's like a kind of normalcy for them. Actors at that level and the schedules and the traveling demanded upon them to be in the same place to have their kid go to

school regularly. This is much more demanding of Cruise than Kidman. Not that it's not demanding of her but he is all over the movie and she is and by all accounts by the way like the i'm going clear the book covers this a lot but like right after this movie is when scientology is like cruise has kind of drifted away we have to get him back in that seems to be the main culprit that broke up their marriage was for the first whatever years of them being together he he had sort of stepped away. And Scientology really like lured him back in.

Well, Scientology would never interfere in the lives of the people who are. No, of course not. Scientology is just saying this as a friend. Like, do you really think she's right for you? We loved, this is the Kidman quote. We loved working with him. We shot it for two years. We had two kids.

We lived in a trailer on the lot. We made spaghetti because Stanley liked to eat with us. We were working with the greatest filmmaker, learning our lines, and enjoying our lives. We would say, when's it going to end? You know, we thought it would be three months,

and it turned into a year and a half. But you go, as long as I surrender to what this is, I'm going to have a great time. Stanley wasn't torturous. He was maybe arduous, but, you know, he, like, they liked him,

or whatever. They, like, enjoyed him. And this is the best part. We were happily married through all of it. We'd go go-kart racing after scenes. We'd rent out a place and go renting at three in the morning. I don't know what else to say. Maybe I don't have the ability to go back,

look back and dissect it, or I'm not willing to. So she's sort of like, look, maybe my marriage was crumbling, but I don't think of it that way. And I believe her. I think it feels like that was maybe the healthiest time in their relationship. It is that thing, I mean, we talked about in the Full Metal Jacket episode, Gabrus made this point where it's like,

if I got hired to be on a Stanley Kubrick movie for a year, I'd be thrilled that I had a year's employment. And I think it is that difference of like, are you, you know, some actors are control freaks who really want to have a complete understanding of the situation and the structure of what they're doing and get it done. But it's what she says of like, if you surrender yourself to the thing, it's like you now just have this ecosystem that you're existing in for like a year and a half. Yeah. That sounds kind of peaceful.

If you're not Tom Cruise going like, what do you fucking need from me? You know, if you're like, my job is to show up every day and we try stuff and it works or it doesn't. If you're not frustrated by that process, it does sound pleasant. I mean, I would bet that their marriage, not that I'm super invested in this, but I would bet that their marriage was sort of in a place similar to the place that the Hartford marriage is in at the end of the movie where they've sort of gone through this trial together and survived.

Yeah. And you've been like forever. And like, I don't know about forever, but let's go fuck. But the thing that is most frustrating about filmmaking is fighting against time. You know? And that's the one thing they had, right.

Right. It's that feeling of, you know, do we need to move on before we've gotten the thing? Coming up against the constraints. And everyone just says, like, the main thing he fought for was time and that he really, he tried to alleviate pressure

from his actors as much as possible. As much as people want to believe in this sort of, like, Taskmaster Kubrick thing, that it was sort of like, this is all exploratory. I'll know it when I see it. There's no pressure on this.

If you're not feeling it today, if you're not in the pocket today, it's fine. We'll know it when I see it. There's no pressure on this. If you're not feeling it today, if you're not in the pocket today, it's fine. We'll just shoot it again tomorrow. I don't feel the need to get this scene done today. But the irony is that they were ultimately under sort of the ultimate clock. I mean, they didn't know it at the time, but they had a drop-dead

date quite literally. Yes. And, you know, there's sort of this thing that I was wrestling with recently is like, was the notion of making Eyes Wide Shut keeping him alive or, you know, like was finishing it, you know,

what he needed to sort of, did that kill him? There's so much stuff from like his, you know, one way or the other. Family of like, oh, at the end of filming,

he seemed like he was dying. Like it was, the first time he started to age. Vanessa Shaw has a very cute quote about how it was one very long-winded line that she couldn't get. And he was like,

I'll give you a cue card. And she was like, I don't want to do that. You know, and he gave her a little, he said, she says, he gave me a sneaky smile

and then I forgot the line again and in the middle of the take he just, he just held up the cue card and she used it and he was like, if you need it, don't be embarrassed. So like, it's like one of those things where it's like it's so far from the you know scary exacting stanley kubrick tomorrow but don't be embarrassed about it just

the idea of this little like bearded gremlin in a raincoat being like here's your cue card you know it's todd field tells a story about when when he was happy with a take he'd walk out from behind the camera and like give them a handshake and just sort of say, Like Paul Hollywood. Thank you so much. Yes, right. Yes. He would take you to the side, shake your hand, and say congratulations, like you'd finished a long journey together.

All the anecdotes from this sound like he was really appreciative of actors and tried to use the clout he had to create a very safe space. Let's take as long as it needs. They were insulated from any of those. Right. to use the clout he had to create a very safe space where they were insulated from any of those. Right, because it is that feeling of just like, oh, it's the big scene and I have a fucking head cold, and we have to get it done today, and who knows if they'll let us reshoot, and if we reshoot six months

from now, is it going to be the same? We missed it, and it's like, it sounds kind of incredible to be able to a production like this feels like it was, it was a healthy stop on the synecdoche scale. It starts to become

its own universe, its own world. Right. I mean, and like the only thing I can think of that ended up shooting for a more continuous,

a longer continuous period of time was like the Dow project, which was not on the healthy end of that scale. So that is what ultimately eclipsed it. But you know, he didn't, wasn't always, as I'm sure you guys discussed in the Shining episode,

which hasn't come out yet when we're doing this, is not, wasn't always creating such a safe space. No. For his actors, maybe didn't always have the time. Yeah, we talked about it. But when you read about people talking about like shooting the orgy sequence here, which one would assume might be

the most fraught with potential for things to go awry or be uncomfortable. Apparently it was like the most pleasant time on set. And, and Kidman said, you know, he was describing to her,

you know, I, how he wanted to shoot this sort of fantasy sex sequence, uh, that that's intercut her pieces throughout the movie. And she felt uncomfortable doing full frontal nudity. And he was like, anytime you're naked,

I will give you full frontal editing approval. Right, yeah. You show the footage, any footage you don't want out there is killed. You tell me what's in it or not. And she said, like,

that was not a thing that anyone was offering at that point in time. Uh, right. No, right. That's in the 90s. It's like, shut up. Come on.

It's in your contract. Do what I tell you. Right, Paul Verhoeven, like, tricking Sharon Stone to take her underwear off because, oh, you're reflecting the light. The light is bad.

Wow. Right. This Hotfield thing that I really like is that he was like, I was so freaked out because it was Tom Cruise and Kubrick.

And at a certain point, he got better. And Kubrick was like, he got over it. Yeah. And he was like, and then he made tar. The better story there

is that he did a take. He nailed the take. He goes over. He shakes his. And he was like, and then he made tar. The better story there is that he did a take. He nailed the take. He goes over. He shakes his hand. He was like, thank you so much. And he's like, yeah,

sorry. It took a little while. And Kubrick was like, first couple of takes fucking stunk. They went bad. Yeah. Why were they so bad?

But he was like, you freaked out? Yeah. You know, so we know that fucking Keitel was in this movie, obviously,

and got fired in the Cinepolical. Keitel was not apparently movie, obviously, and got fired in the city. It's always not apparently super enthused about anything. Yeah. How things are going. Well, Kubrick was a genius. He did some things I objected to. I didn't like it. I thought they were disrespectful and I won't be disrespected by him or anyone else.

I mean, like, all right. Yeah. There are a million urban legends around what led to the firing. Well, because, like, there's this weird, like, thing, like, that he had, like, come, he came on Kidman's leg, but then everyone's like, well, no, he didn't. That's not a thing. For so long, that was the story was he insisted that he insisted on masturbating for real and the ejaculate hit her leg. And it's like, in what scene? Like, what are you talking about?

They filmed this movie for a year and a half. Certainly, there are entire scenes that are not in the final film. Everyone's ejaculate was getting on everyone's legs. Right. But that was always the story. Like, Keitel was such a method actor that he said he had to do this. That feels like it's bullshit. There's the thing that JJ put in the dossier that, like, you know, they need to build a new set.

They wanted to keep Keitel on hold, and they weren't going to pay him for the hold. Right, right. I think it's what's difficult about working on a Kubrick film is he's essentially saying, build a new set. They wanted to keep Keitel on hold and they weren't going to pay him for the hold. Right. I think it's what's difficult about working on a Kubrick film is he's essentially saying, I want you blacked out for these dates into eternity.

And Keitel wouldn't surrender. He wouldn't surrender his body, wouldn't surrender his time. Right. And like, you know, Kidman and Cruise are in a position where they're willing to surrender

because they're like two of the biggest movie stars in the world. They have so much fucking money. They don't, they can take the break because they're like two of the biggest movie stars in the world. They have so much fucking money. They can take the break. They can remove themselves from the surrogate for a couple years. If you're Keitel and you're like, I could be doing fucking 12 movies this week.

Why do you want me to stay in a goddamn hotel room? And we've talked about it. This is Holy Smoke here at Keitel. He was fucking working. And also, he's like, it's an orgy and you don't want the Colt 45? Jennifer Jason Lee's the other one,45? I snubbed those pistols. Jennifer Jason Lee's the other one, right?

That was literally when they went to reshoot it. She was like, I'm sorry, I have a bone gun. I'm in Existence right now. And so they... So she was the woman who... The daughter of the dead. It's funny. She was just giving her a bone gun and kept her. It's funny.

She was like, you told me I was going to be wrapped out in three months. It's like, three months? She's in one scene. And he was like, I'm sorry, it's gone from wrapped out in three months. It's like three months. She's in one scene. And he was like, I'm sorry. It's gone from three months to six months. I need you to re-up. So I'd love to see her, though, in this movie.

She'd probably be amazing. Yeah, it's kind of she would. She would. It does. I really like this scene. Like, yeah, I really like what Marie Richardson. Is that her name? Yeah, I think the scene would have played differently. I don't know if she could have done the watered eyes,

you know, total vulnerability, I'm throwing myself at you, sort of act in quite the same way. I think it's to this movie's advantage that outside of Keitel, outside of Cruise and Kidman, most of the actors are not really bringing previous baggage to the table. For sure.

Even the actors who have had bigger careers after this, it doesn't feel... I don't know how to say his name. Do you know how to say his name? Well, but also he gets Batman a coat. Or no, he gets a coat from Batman. Here he gives Cruise a coat. Here he gets a coat from Batman.

Well, I mean, a truly iconic performance. He is so fucking good in this movie. In this movie, in this movie is alan cumming you love to see him i mean i i had been actively following the orgy master's acting career for several uh years before i went check him out i loved him in little little big league yes great in that so yeah let's talk about the movie so i just wish is about one crazy night in the life of Dr. Bill Harford. Ben, by the way, we're not exaggerating.

This movie started filming in 1996 and wrapped production in 1998. Yeah, it was, it was a, it had the record

for the longest continuous shoot. And it still does, right? Or has it been beaten? Because it was certainly the record holder as long as I ever knew.

Yeah. I mean, I think Dow would technically beat it, but that is sort of not a single narrative. It feels like an ad. That's right I think Dow would technically beat it, but that is sort of not a single narrative. It feels like an ad. It doesn't count.

And I guess it's, at this point, it's just what you're saying. It's like, the man just won't work under the gun. He's just going to take as long as he needs

on everything. Right. And so that's how it just gets so, so expansive. Right? Because you watch Eyes Wide Shut and you're not like, I can see why this took two years.

Like when you watch Apocalypse Now and then you hear like, that was like a really brutal shoot, you're like, sure. Yeah, sure. It seems insane. This movie ended up costing $60 million. It sounds like maybe $65 million.

Most of that was Christmas lights. Sure. The rest was, you know. Most of that was paying off the Illuminati. I understand it's 1999, so it's like you just replaced it. You own the rights to rights to being the illuminati you can't just put us in movies oh fine fuck what do you need write a check to the illuminati i just remember at some bank of america at some early point in the podcast uh ben when we were throwing out budget numbers you were like can

you guys explain to me why movies are so fucking expensive? And we broke it down for you. That's like the thing that doesn't get accounted for very often is that you're essentially like starting a company. Right. The amount of employees

you need in all positions. You've said a company in another way that's been helpful is like describing even as like you essentially have like the budget of a country.

Right. Right. And you need You're like founding a country. Right. Right. And you need, you're like founding a country. One of the many similarities between Eyes Wide Shut and Flying Jack. You need doctors. Like you need, it is sort of like building a country.

So it's one of those things where you're like, to essentially operate an independent sovereign nation for almost two years, $65 million is surprisingly low to me. Yeah. It was expensive though. Yes surprisingly low to me. Yeah. It was expensive, though. Yes. No, expensive. Yeah.

And they had to build New York City. No, I know what you're saying. It's a pretty cheap movie per day. I mean, he was very thrifty, not maybe as extremely as like a Clint Eastwood type,

but he would have Leanna Batali, who played one of my favorite characters. I've mentioned him a little bit again, the orgy master. He had him play

like eight other characters in the orgy just. He had him play like eight other characters in the orgy just so they could save money on extras. Yeah. And like that's the kind of penny-pinching. And also,

in the orgy, I feel like he especially, he used his guys because he was like, this is the most complicated thing. It's, I want my guys. I want my guys.

Well, so he knew they fucked good. He did. Because he, Stanley liked to orgy. The great anecdote is that, like, you know,

Kubrick wasn't a guy who really wanted visitors on set, but crews snuck Paul Thomas Anderson on because they were meeting about Magnolia at that point, knowing that Magnolia was going to be what he did next. Right. And introduced Kubrick to PTA and was like, this is incredible, you have like five crew members here. Like, is your crew always this small?

How do you keep it this small? How do you keep it this small? And Kubrick's response was like, how many people do you have on set? And PTA is like, I felt like such a Hollywood asshole immediately. Right. But it's amazing to think about like 27-year-old PTA

being like, how do you only have five guys? And Kubrick is just like, what do you mean? But like when he gets to Phantom Thread, it feels like he sort of, as his career went on, tried to find a way to minimize, you know, simplify in that way, even down

to him being like, there isn't a DP, it's just me and a couple camera guys and whoever picks it up, like you know, the Masters, one of those things where it's like, they're all just on that boat for however many months and Amy Adams was called to set and put in wardrobe even when she wasn't in the scene. Like, it feels like PTA sort of learned some lessons

from being on this set that took years to seep in. The DP on this movie, he'd never been the cinematographer on a movie before. I mean, he'd done

lighting work for Kubrick before. But I can imagine this being a movie in the room. He called him over to his place to talk about

visual concepts and went like, so, I don't know, do you want to shoot it? Yeah, I mean, and he went on to make, you know, Beer X.

He's actually had interesting careers. He shot Marmaduke? No, he's done, he does the John Michael McDonagh movie, so he does like The Guard and Calvary. Calvary looks beautiful. We were talking about it the other day. Yeah, and he did Bronson. He did a couple of record movies,

Beer X being one of them. Only God Forgives he did. So that's funny. Recently he did that movie Dark Harvest that's coming out this year. Anyway, David Slade's new movie. But anyway, so this movie starts with David Slade. He's trying to get production ready on 30 Days of Night. It's a weird opening. Right.

Right. And then we cut to Bill Harbour. Sun can't come up at all. It's Bill and Alice going to a party. But first we see Alice dressing. Is that the first shot of the movie? The first shot's for Tush. Nicole Kidman's buttocks.

That is one of those flourishes that is controversially maybe added after the fact of Kubrick's death. The world's longest back? Can I say that? Oh my God. She looks about as tall as anyone has ever looked on screen in this

movie it is disorienting when cruise stands next to her because especially when she's like undressed and you're not seeing any like she is a tall she's a tall woman but you look at like the way she's built and she looks like an nba player whether whether it was kubrick's idea or not to open the shot with that movie you know beyond just the instant sex appeal of it. I think it's, it works so well because the first thing that we hear Bill say to his wife, when the movie like starts proper is, you know,

she's saying like, you know, how do I look? And he's not looking at her and he says like, you look beautiful. And it's like already that sort of, he's nagging her hair. Like we've been,

we've been sort of struck by the physical beauty and he's not even, and then we meet this man who's taking it for granted. I also think, look, it is important to mention just right off the bat, as we start digging into the plot of this, this movie, per Kubrick's wishes, had like very limited, elusive marketing.

The teaser was famously just sort of the moment of the two of them in the mirror together, naked. Did a bad thing. And then it was just like, Cruz, Kidman, Kubrick, eyes wide shut.

Pretty good shit. So effective. Everything about this movie was like fucking mysterious. I remember like just as a kid would watch fucking entertainment tonight. They were breathlessly reporting on rumors about this film. They dropped the trailer at Comic-Con, right? But it truly was like talked about as if it was a

Marvel trailer to be scrutinized. And there was all this rumor mongering of like, they're going to have full penetrative sex on screen. Yeah, right. People are like, here it's the craziest shit

that ever happened. It's going to be the craziest shit in the world. So even just opening with her fully naked feels like, here we fucking go. But it's just...

And then people, I think, are flummoxed the more this movie goes into this weird, austere, sad world. But this is like, you know, vintage Hollywood and something we still do today. We see it to a degree with Blonde.

You know, where you put... You won't believe how fucked up this thing is. You get people excited for the movie, but it fits in a very particular prism. And then the actual movie ends up contraventing, you know, what they were trying to make. You know, I don't have any great love for Blonde. Quite the opposite. There was so much fascination

with the two of them as a couple and how weird and secretive and protective they were that this idea of like oh we're gonna see something really intimate but how you know it's not like amsterdam where i mean you can't it's like how did anyone fuck up the marketing for this movie so bad because it's such a clear story to tell you how would you sell eyes wide shut if not on the Mystique? I mean, it's like, you can't. You can't. It's about a guy who like, is kind of tucked in. You can't. It just, it sort of was

a don't worry darling of its time where people were so fascinated by all the different stories about what was or wasn't happening on set and especially because the director

then died and couldn't put his foot and his mouth in the press. Not that he was ever going to do press for it. That like, things like the Keitel ejaculating story,

it just like became this box of like, what is in this movie? I just want to put a button on the side note that no one wanted in the first place, which is the reason

that I bring up Amsterdam is because the reason they couldn't mark that movie is because the whole plot started. Be quiet. I don't care. Shut up.

And they didn't want to include that. And so they were just like, we're just not going to tell anyone what the movie's about. It's a mess. I haven't seen Amsterdam. Well, you don't need to. You're going to bleep it up, we're just not going to tell anyone what the movie's about. It's a mess. I haven't seen Amsterdam. Yeah, well, you don't need to. You're going to bleep it up.

But I was texting. No, it'll come out by now. He just spoiled it for me. Everyone will have seen it. Everyone and their grandma will know Amsterdam by heart by the time this podcast ends up. I saw it.

I was texting with David and Marie and they were like, what is the movie even about? And I explained the plot to them in three sentences and they went, are you kidding? That is what the movie is about?

It's a real life situation where it's like, no one could explain what it's about. Enough. We we're talking eyes wide shut i can't believe we went on an amsterdam tangent i'm actively angry about it bill harford and alice go to a party damn uh let's talk about the christmas party this is the first major sequence of the movie wrecked truly uh more christmas lights than an myu so many lights we talk about the look of this thing? Which I have seen people break down in technical deal.

I can give you what they did, but obviously, I am no master of lighting. No. What they did was they shot faster. You know Thomas Kinkade.

Right? And then they would force develop it down. Which is something you do usually like in a pinch if you're like losing the light, I think. Correct.

And it's usually seen as like well that's not gonna look as good the back lighting was too intense uh because of all the christmas lights and so they had to drop it's like a desperate fix yeah that is seen as like a little bit of a cheater and unseemly thing and they like lean into it and then it's all this sort of very soft diffuse lighting the christmas, china balls, warm bulbs, but trying to avoid standard Hollywood lighting setups.

You create this very, already, even though we haven't gotten into the dream element of the story, already you have this sort of like dreamy St. Elmo's

fire of a glow. Right. But one of the- It feels like Christmas. It really is. It wasn't just the warm. The Jewish element of the movie to me is that it feels like a Jew's idea of Christmas. It really is. But it feels like a... The Jewish element of the movie to me

is that it feels like a Jew's idea of Christmas. It's all the aura of Christmas and none of the symbology. It's like it's all just that the feeling of it. And that's why... You know, they have those lights that look almost like a menorah. You know, there's like triangular Christmas ornament

like with lights. Oh, sure. You know, they have that and I spot it. I'm like, wait, they're not Jewish. And then I realized like, oh, that's not a, sure. You know, they have that and I spot it and I'm like, wait, they're not Jewish. And then I realized like, oh, that's not a menorah. You know, things like that. Obviously, the Pollock character is Jewish.

Yes. I mean, he is, you know, potentially like a collection of very vile Jewish stereotypes. Sure. But I think Sidney Pollock's able to weaponize it away from that. The fact that it was Keitel at first too.

Yeah, no, I don't... Gives me a level of solace where I'm like... Well, so... Okay, so it wasn't intended you know a lot of that is just pollock bringing his own aura to the table but the thing i love so i mean this movie has so many great lines as a jew as well yeah oh no no i mean he was he i think had his you know complicated relationship with his own jewish but the thing i love about that first scene is it sort

of epitomizes how well coded the lines of dialogue in this movie are. They say something, they mean another, but they're not always insufferably on the nose about it or ever. And I love how something I was just thinking about last night watching this movie for I truly have no idea what number of times when Bill and Alice are dancing and she says, do you know anyone here? And he says, not a soul. And he's like holding his wife. And he's, you know, it's the sort of the precursor to this idea of mystery in a marriage

and these like the blind spots that you have between two people who spend their lives together. But I love how physically close they are when he's saying that. Yes. I love this whole thing so much. This opening sequence yourself?

Yeah. I mean, I love everything in Eyes Wide Shut. The Pollock stuff is all my favorite. I don't know why. It's just that weird veneer of like respectability and the way that quickly he's in the bathroom with a naked woman

who has overdosed. Well, you're at this party. You're introduced to him with his wife. Thank you for coming. We're entertaining all these people. Enjoy! I have a marble staircase. It's like the most incredible apartment. Everyone here is some sort of fucking count or whatever.

I think what works about his performance is that we feel the same welcoming, welcome to the fold sort of warmth that Tom Cruise does. He's not even like gregarious. But there is something kind of real about him that's not real. But, like, you know, like, whatever. He doesn't feel like he's laying it on too thick. No, well, it's that thing, too, with, like, you know, famously,

the reason he ends up playing the agent in Tootsie, which was his first acting role in 20-plus years at that point. He was no interest in being back on camera. He's so good at Tootsie. I mean, he's good in there. He's so good at Tootsie. He's so fucking insanely good at Michael Clayton as well. Anytime he shows up, Death Becomes Her

We talked about this in the Death Becomes Her episode where it crystallized it for me where I'm like, he's the exact actor I would like to age into being. And that wasn't even his main career. Right. That was just something he would do as a goof But I look at the Tootsie to Michael Clayton run of Sidney Pollack, sometimes character actor working with great directors.

And I'm like, that's the exact body of work I would like to have. I would like to age into him. I can't wait till my nose gets bigger. You want, you want a little more hair on the chest than you first of suspenders over the bare chest. The Tootsie thing though,

it's important. My ideal male body, I think, is Sidney Pollack in this movie. That's what I'm aspiring to. Men, what's preventing I go to the YMCA

and I bring a little photo and I just show it to the people at the desk and I'm like, make me into that. Make me into this. No, I just want to be him. But the Tussie thing

was famously that Hoffman was like, I need you to play this because I need it to be someone I'm intimidated by. I'm going to feel like I can act any actor off the screen because I'll be scared of you because you're the director. Right. It'll work.

And similarly, it's very smart to cast Pollock in this because Pollock is a director who's worked with Cruise before. And Cruise is still going to be a little. A little deferential to him. And just like the audacity of bringing the doctor into the bathroom and saying like, look, she had a bit of an accident with a speedball to a fucking unconscious hooker who's apparently been out for five minutes. This is what I want to unpack for a minute. And he's just zipping up his pants. And the way he talks about it, you almost are like,

ah, poor Sidney Pollack. He's really, this is a tough situation for him. He almost gets you on his side. Yeah. The time that elapses between Pollack and his wife welcoming them to the party, right? And suddenly just guy in a suit come upstairs. We need you immediately. Very calmly door opened.

Here's one passed out. Pollack putting fucking suspenders over his bare chest, casually saying, you know, it's one of these things where we were fucking and I, uh, uh, the speedball, snowball, whatever the fuck, the thing, the heroin and cocaine, what can you do about this? Like, that thing where he's so nonchalant about it that he makes it feel like you're weird

if you act like this is weird. It is a thing I think this movie captures so well, what I think it is so good at, not above all else, but one of its main strengths that I don't think most films are able to convey, this very peculiar feeling of when you witness something or someone says something to you that in an instant fundamentally changes your perception of reality. There are those moments in your life where someone says something to you,

the weird unspoken thing under the table that you never even sensed, where suddenly you have to re-engineer your entire sense of self, your past, everything you knew about this person yourself. Or when you witness just a very bizarre act and you have that sort of disassociative moment. The speed at which Cruz just gets to work doing this, part of you goes, well, here's this dude. He's this doctor for

these upper-crust people. Maybe he's constantly getting called in as, like, you know, the Michael Clayton of physicians to clean up rich people's messes. But part of it is just, everyone's acting like this is normal. But it's not. Right. Right. The fact that this is happening upstairs at the party where his wife is with all

these people entertaining, you're just like, this isn't a house call happening at a Sunday at the party where his wife is with all these people entertaining, you're just like, this isn't a house call happening at a Sunday at 3 a.m. It's like he's saying, I fucking dropped a lamp. Can you help me? I can't find the pieces. You know, the nonchalance of it. Right, right. This is a movie about...

When Cruise is like, give her another hour. He's like, oh, I shouldn't put her in a cab right now because she's just like, oh. Right. And he's just like, no, I would give her an hour. But he doesn't say it in a chiding way. You think of the Dennis O'Hare scene in Michael Clayton where he's like, you need to fix this right the fuck now.

And Pollock's like, so what do you recommend? What's the protocol? The difference between Bill Harford and Michael Clayton is that this is a movie about seduction. It's a movie about desire. And it's about in the scene what Ziegler recognizes the weakness in Bill Harford which is like this is a guy

who's so horny for access into this kind of society he is so in awe of the power that I wield

he is so at my mercy that I can bring him into these secrets that he won't tell it's a dominance display in a way

where he's just like right you get to see this and do me a favor which I will appreciate yes but you know you can't do anything about this this is a guy who in a way where he's just like, right, you get to see this and do me a favor, which I will appreciate. Yes. But you know you can't do anything about this. This is a guy who. You know you can't be like, this is really fucked up situation, buddy.

Like, what the fuck is this? But it's fascinating that Cruz doesn't play a moment of that. He's inscrutable. It's really hard to read if he's going to that mode by default or because he's made a career out of doing this regularly. The one thing you sense is this is a guy who hates the idea of a closed door, right? Yes.

Nothing will turn him on. He's always showing his doctor's card everywhere he goes. Right, he needs to be able to win people over, to achieve enough, to succeed enough that people will open that door for him. And the ultimate sort of message of the Sidney Pollack character is like, you're so much better off

not knowing. There are these questions that you think you want to know the answers to. And the reality is some of them, the answers are far more banal than you think.

And some of them are so much more fucked up than you think. And you'll be disappointed or horrified by both. That's a very generous reading of that character. I also think that he probably takes some pleasure

in putting Bill Harvard in this place. Absolutely. But he recognizes, like, you're not a guy who can exist in this world. Yeah. But it's also the whiplash. You're talking about Cruise's performance in that scene and how sort of unflustered he is.

I mean, it's the whiplash of him going from being so high status that he doesn't even remember the babysitter's name, even though his wife told it to him like eight seconds earlier. Yes. To going into a party where he is the low man, you know, so he it to him like eight seconds earlier to going into a party where he is the low man, you know, he's sort of like in reverence to Ziegler.

I mean, it's like that constant checking where he is in the scheme of things and orienting himself. Anytime Cruise is low status in a movie, it is solely so that eventually he can have his just desserts by proving everyone fucking wrong by being the one person who can fucking fix anything. And the fact that this movie just distorts reality around Cruise, who never loosens his grip,

right? His palms just get sweatier and sweatier, like clutching onto anything he can. But he just becomes more and more pathetic and just sort of,

you just, by the final scene, you just feel like Pollock where you're just like dude, did you just fucking back away from this? The only other movie that fits that description for Cruise is Magnolia, which she was filming right after. Yes. Obviously, the other thing happening at the party is

that Nicole Kidman Alice is dancing with a Hungarian who's basically like, come on, let me take you away. And Cruz has this flirtation with the two models. Yes. They each have their brief.

Those both happen before he gets called into Pollock's office, right? Well, it's like, he's with the models when he gets called in and then she just keeps dancing with the Hungarian while he's dealing with this.

I mean, she doesn't know what's happening, obviously. And he is clearly delighted at the thrill of being able to pass up this opportunity to have sex with these two young models because he's so happy and secure in his marriage.

And, yeah, do you think the Hungarian's hot? I don't know, kind of getting a he's going to disappear me after this vibe. Yes, I don't like him.

He is a cartoon of hotness. He's a cartoon of like a sophisticated rich guy who's very European. Right, show you a good time. It's like out of a Stefan Zweig novel. This is sort of a New Yorker cartoon

of you know or Mad Magazine cartoon but he doesn't even have like some sense of like the Stellan Skarsgård kink to him where you're like this guy's a little interesting

absolutely Stellan Skarsgård I will throw down I will if the table was between me and Stellan the table's going against the wall

right he is outmatched by Nicole Kidman in terms of just like who has the upper hand? She, by the way, just looks so good in this movie. It's crazy.

This whole aesthetic, the little glasses, the up hair. When the hair was still curly. A thing that she's... Curly hair is so good. Yeah, why did she abandon the curls? I don't know.

When was the last time she was curly haired in a movie? Does she have some curls in Rabbit Hole? I felt like that was her trying to strip it back again a little. I don't know. Because I've never seen that because I didn't want to. Because it seemed like a depressing movie.

I would not recommend starting now. It looks like she's got a little bit of... Yeah, I'm not going to want... No, she's kind of just got standard, like, Nicole Kidman of the 2000s hair. She's one of those people where it's like, the amount of times she's dyed her hair, done different treatments to them.

I don't think she could make her hair look like this again if she wanted. And you look at like BMX bandits where she has like, you know, fucking a slash mop top. Dude, her big, yeah, her big orange, you know, bushy hair. It's so good. This is pretty much the last vestige because I feel like when you get to Moulin Rouge and the others, everything's become straightened out more blonde. It's hard to remember now. Moulin Rouge and the others, everything's become straightened out, more blonde. It's hard to remember now. Moulin Rouge is red,

but cartoon red. It's hard to remember a time now when people didn't take her seriously as an actress, but this for me was really sort of like the ultimate dividing line of like anyone who says that is wrong because she so,

I hate to use this phrase because it's been so played out, but like so understands the assignment, you know, however she had to get there, like the kabuki of the performance, the intonation, the way that she talks, it's so clearly building towards this particular mode and she embraces it and owns it.

It feels like very serious. It's also just funny that she doesn't get the credit for it at the time. The validation happens right after this. Right after. She becomes serious. Oh, you know what? She's proven herself.

It's the others and Moulin Rouge. Those two in one year. And by the time she wins the Oscar the following year, she's almost viewed as overdue. And overrated. Yeah. I would say pretty quickly

people turned on her and that sort of Stepford Wives bewitched her. Right. People are like, oh, what the hell? Did she just win because she had a big nose

in The Hours or whatever? But it so quickly went from is she just famous? Is she a movie star? To die for, was she just cast right? Right, right, right. Did Vincent get a good performance

out of her? Did she really want to chase Batman and Batman forever? Or was her character's name just chased? Was there any correlation between the two? People get obsessed

with all the symbolism in this movie, obviously. But this party is filled with all the weird shapes and lights and all that stuff. But anyway, I mean, that's... It's also filled with Nick Nightingale. in lights and all that stuff but anyway i mean that's also filled with nick nightingale oh and he's there playing the piano that prick piano

player what did they say never a doctor never a doctor great line um but speaking of doctors if tom cruise was your doctor my feeling is you would literally never die but yeah well i would also be like can you check my boobs again and he'd be like i did that like 10 minutes ago i don't know maybe you should check again but the thing is i would be like, can you check my boobs again? And he'd be like, I did that like 10 minutes ago. I don't know. Maybe you should check again. But the thing is, I would be like, could I please have any of the several prescriptions I need to function as a human being? And he would be like, get out of my office. Right.

So it'd be a real balancing act. Yes. Totfield is someone I would like to see. I'm very excited to see Tar. I'm happy he's back. I just met him for the first time, which I never thought would happen. Very exciting. I would.

Hey, David. Yeah. He already told me about me. I already heard about you. I was going to ask about your eidetic memories. So, you know, now we're all just

talking up ourselves. I would love to see Todd Field do a little Sidney Pollack sidebar acting career. Come back. It's been 20 years plus. I'm like, show up in other good

director's movies sometimes. He's so good in this he is great in this he's like genuinely great and obviously his last acting part no well he was of course in jan de banc's the haunting oh yeah after this the same year same year and then he was in like three movies that do not like exist um so it is the tail end obviously he makes In the Bedroom in 2001 right so like he's he's about to work on being a filmmaker

yeah and Leon Vitale this is such a big moment for him like Leon Vitale goes and produces or associate produces go marry Leon Vitale

I would love to he's sadly no longer with us but I don't know they'll tell me and he produces Little Children or associate producers yeah

and Kubrick was I think by all accounts, recognized that he had potential as a director, that his interests were going that way, and brought him into the process a little more in a Vitale sort of way of like, I'm going to let you learn. I mean, what cooler thing,

especially given how long the production was. And Field has essentially like, he's in a lot of the movie because he's the piano player. He has the two big scenes, but then he's also a lot of the movie because he's the piano player. Yeah. He has the two big scenes, but then he's also in the fucking orgy. Right. So he must have been

on set a ton. A ton. Right, yeah. Like, which is probably pretty cool. Yeah. I really, I've said this to Griffin,

I need to rewatch In the Bedroom and Little Children. I don't think I've seen either of them since theaters. Yeah. Do you remember the Little Children trailer?

Yes. The trailer is unbelievable. Well, because we were all, that's the thing, we were all like, oh, shit. Here we go. Like, this is gonna win Oscars. And then it came out and everyone was like, hmm, pretty weird. What's with the narrator? You love that movie? I do.

This is also gonna be... I remember liking it. I don't remember it that well. I mean, the trailer really captures the vibe of the movie, which is surprising, even how sort of particular the trailer is. But this is gonna be the least cool thing that anyone has ever said on any podcast. But I literally, we had like six or seven people over our house the other night

and we just like, I put on the little children trailer. We were not just like out of the blue. We were watching trailers for like new films. And I was like, hey, I had tar in the brain.

We watched the tar trailer. That's what it was. And I was like, we got to put on the little trailer, the little children trailer and like 240p on YouTube. Yeah.

And I was like quietly losing my mind. People were like, all right, trains. I mean, what, Tar, it's his first movie in 17 years.

What's the time span there? 16. Yeah, 16 years. When we were promoting The Tick, Jackie Earl Haley, who was on the first season of The Tick and obviously was in Little Children, got an Oscar nomination.

But not in the trailer, which is so weird. Anyway. Yeah, but an interesting thing where it felt like they were really kind of hiding. Like, your exposure to him

had to solely happen within the context of seeing the actual movie. We were talking, I was asking questions about that movie and that performance, and he went,

that guy's such a good director. Griffin, if you ever get a chance to be in one of his movies, you should not turn that down. And I think about all the time where I'm like, the generosity of that statement. Acting like of all here's a guy acting like you would be like a field one sweet for his first movie a movie in 10 plus years i wrote this film

for you it's called tar you play an embattled conductor it's just like griffin i really would encourage you to if you can get cast in one of his movies, do that. And I'm like, yeah, yes. If I can't get Newman, Blanchett apparently said she'll do it, but I really want Newman. Todd feel great in this movie. Nick Nightingale. What a G. Yeah.

Seriously. By the way, if I'm Nick Nightingale, I'm dropping Fidelio to the first friend I see where I'm like, I have to tell you something. They play piano at a crazy orgy. You're getting murdered. I know. I couldn't keep it play piano at a crazy orgy. You're getting murdered. I know.

Okay, but I couldn't keep it to myself. There's no way. Piano work is not that hard. No. No, no. The music he's playing, yeah, they could probably get a player piano. It's more complicated than the score to this film,

but it's not. Sure, sure. I'm saying he's like an accomplished jazz pianist. Right. Sure. What he's playing at that orgy is not that fun. But do you think... No, but you need...

This is the exact level of guy you need as, like, a journeyman. I mean, I just love Cruise's, like, confusion by his existence where it's like, you have four kids.

Yeah, you're in Seattle. You're married. You're in Seattle. And it's like, is this your usual band? And he's like, I met these guys an hour ago. No, but this is...

Where do you usually play? Wherever they let me. And it's like, how do you have this little control over your life this is my question do you think

he plays the orgy he gets like 200k no questions asked that's a lot but it's a it's a fucking orgy

from the richest people in the world that's not even my orgy yeah but I feel like those people it's like you just do that twice a year you come out to New York

for the orgy twice a year you get a a briefcase full of money. And then so then the rest of your life can be like, I play in jazz. My guess is he gets 20 to 40,000 for playing the orgy. And the reason they hire him is they know he's the kind of guy who doesn't think to ask for 200,000.

Yeah, well, that probably is true. So he gets 20K. Right. He gets like 20K and he's like, can you believe they pay he gets $20,000. Right, he gets like $20,000 and he's like, can you believe they pay me $20,000? And to be fair, he does just have to sit blindfolded

and go like, do-do-do-do-do. But if someone had a better sense of like, this is your crazy sex orgy, I'm holding secrets, you should hang me out the nose, then they don't want him.

No, but I think if you say, hey, I know some secrets, they're like, well, I know a secret, this is a gun. You know, like, you know, like I think it's, you need someone who's kind of not gonna the interview process is all that longer involved uh right and that the thing that like he's most the one thing he belies to cruz is like they're like great hits at this party but he's not really upset he understands

this is a man has four children right he'll take what he can get. This is a secret thing, but he's not like, there's some fucked up shit going on here. He's like, you wouldn't believe the nips in this place. Like, he's just basic enough to not really be a risk to them. My big question about the orgy,

and I don't think we're quite there yet, is just, you know, it's supposed to be all these like 40, 50, 60-year-old masters of the universe. They don't start fucking until, okay, they don't get there. Strato, Smackin' Eric, Ram Man. Right, universe. They don't start fucking until... Okay, they don't get there. Strato, Smackin' Eric, Ram Man. Right, right.

They don't get there until 2 a.m. They don't start fucking until maybe 3 a.m. Yeah. I don't believe it. I'm asleep at like 11. Like, there's just... But these guys are doing snowballs, Erlich. Dropping dead.

Yeah. That's a lot to ask of an old man. No, it does feel like this would be an afternoon activity. I know it's less mysterious and cool, but you guys kind of want to stay awake through this. Well, I think it's like David says, though. They do it maybe once a year. Yeah.

You know, so it's like, it's a conference. It's a sex conference. Right. You get yourself, you have to prepare yourself ahead. Also, a lot of internet hype plans. It's like a midnight movie at a festival, because it's like, I don't have to do this every day. Right.

A lot of international members. I think a lot of people are in different time zones. They're trying of internet hype plans. for like a midnight movie at a festival because it's like, I don't have to do this every day, you know? A lot of international members. I think a lot of people are in different time zones that are trying to find a neutral. Oh, that's the move is that you fly in from,

I have to do the math in my head where it would work best. I don't know, Minsk or whatever. Yeah, I fly from Minsk. It's like, well, for me,

this is 10 a.m. or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I'm ready to bang. 10 a.m. The perfect time to bang. The banging hour,

I call it. You have always said that. It's weird. I have always said that. I say that the perfect time to bang the banging hour I call it you have always said that it's weird I have always said that I say that the first time I meet anybody and usually wildly out of context like my child the first time you meet me Asa 10 o'clock is the banging hour Asa goes to bed late these days doesn't he you'd be real Asa awake at hours

where I'm like no no no Asa is definitely ready to rock you know, when the orgy master comes in. Also, I know David. Asa would think it was fun if the guy in a big red cloak was walking around, right? Yeah, yeah.

What's he doing? Sims prides himself on being a top-tier texter. It's one of the aspects of your life I feel like you show the most pride in. Embarrassing

that I take any pride in that, but yes, you're right. No, you're right. I'm calling out. Our own Marie Barty recently posted a screenshot on her social media of her text exchange with your son Asa. It was so good. Asa's calling for the crown. Because Asa, well, he'll text like, Asa.

Well, the first text was Marie. Sure. And Marie responded, David. Right. And then the next text was poop. Yes. Yes. And then Marie said, is this my friend Asa?

And then he responded, Asa. So are you typing these for him? Is he dictating? This is a sad symptom of me letting my son spend too much time with my phone is that he has taught himself how to read and write on like the Bjork Spotify page for the most part. Cool. But he had ordered

an Uber the other day. To be fair, my daughter also once ordered an Uber. It does not require a reader, right? But I got there just in time. I had to pay $3 for it.

He'd also sent the Uber driver nonsense. Like, pages of nonsense. That Uber driver is probably like, easy, another baby.

Does that happen? Like, this is clearly a baby. But he'll text my mom and he'll be like, grandma. And so she'll know it's Asa

because her name's Fran. He calls her grandma. And then he'll just be like, poop. And he'll be like, I love you. And he'll be like, Franma. And so she'll know it's Asa because her name is Fran. He calls her Franma. And then he'll just be like, poop. And he'll be like, I love you. And he'll be like, pee. It's a good bit. It's a good bit. Asa rolls.

They go home from the party. They're smoking some pot. Yes. And they just fucking get into it. The two of them. She delivers really upsetting news. Which is? Which is this vision, this like sex dream that she has.

She had a fantasy about a hot, hype, cod, navy man. And it was so hot that she thought about leaving her husband. Yeah. And it's after her doing 10 minutes of like, come the fuck on, You're horny. Admit it. And Tom Cruise is like, I don't know what

you're talking about. Right, right. She's goading him to, like, diggy fuck them. It's kind of turning her on that those women wanted to fuck him.

Yeah, yeah. And then she reveals this thing that completely changes his understanding of reality. It's so good that it's not an actual affair, that it's not even, like,

a close brush misconnection, like the dance with the scary Nordic man, that it is just like, I had this notion and it got me really worked up and I've thought about it a lot. But what's crucial about that is it's not about sex. If it were about fucking someone else for real, that would be push it more into explicitly sexual territory this is about desire and in bill's case the idea that she's incepting him with that his wife has this like life of the mind outside of him in their marriage right because if it was she cheated on him or came close to cheating on him he could frame that as a moral failing right but this is like this is

your unconscious mind and it's not just like you don't get the sense that he has turned her into like a don't worry darling style, like two-dimensional figure. Like he knows that she has agency. We're referencing some really bad movies. Yeah, that she's, well, you know, everything's going to look that bad in comparison to Dice White Shot,

but don't worry darling doesn't need the help. But like, I think you get the sense that he respects her as a woman and a person and a partner and that she's an accomplished, she's, you know, has done impressive things in her life and so on. But he is, the mind-blowing realization for him

is that it suddenly opens the door just enough into all these alternative possibilities of what life could be. She thinks it's like we're stoned and we're saying shit we usually wouldn't say. Right.

It's sort of the game of... Let's do, come on. We were just at this party. We were flirting with other people. Let's fucking, like, come on. How will you react to this? And it just immediately destroys his complete

understanding of reality. And her. And her, too. But he's really going through the, like, wait, should I have fucked ex-people in the past? Right. Should I be doing this in the future?

Is my wife going to leave me? Am I even a man? The pot is making... Should I put those hugs back on? They were so comfy. The pot is making me aggressive I put those hugs back on? They were so comfy. The pot is making me aggressive. Yeah, the pot's making everyone aggressive. Yeah.

It is... Their performances are so strange in this scene. So strange. And it really is. Imagine this movie in 1999. You're going to see it. You're like, what's this about? When they're doing this,

I can really imagine the most of the audience is just so turned on. Seeing this movie for the first time, this is the scene where I go, okay, so this is an interesting failed movie. And then it starts

to build for me after this and get to the point where I'm like, this is a masterpiece. And even every time I've rewatched it, when I get to this scene,

I go like, am I overrating this a little bit in my mind? When I got to this scene last night, I was like, so Barry Lyndon is better than this by a hair. But part of it is their performances are so strange. They're operating at a frequency they do not for the rest of this movie, a frequency that I would argue is not

matched by any other performance in any other Kubrick movie. It's so weird, but it does sort of make sense in this way of when you are very stoned and suddenly find yourself in a serious conversation and your grasp on reality it's all your voice, your body what argument can I even make right now I don't understand but it's also one of the first scenes of the movie that's really

imploring you, forcing you out of looking at it through a realistic lens it's all about for me the most important detail of their apartment beyond the fact that literally every fucking square inch of wall space is covered in a painting. I mean, many of them

by Kubrick's wife, but like, it's just like a little bit much, you guys. Learn about negative space. But there is the windows. The windows reveal every time you look at them

that they are on a soundstage. They make no real intent or attempt, rather, to make it look like a real cityscape. It's just blue and black with little squares of yellow. It is incredibly easy to do. Like, the amount of times you are watching movies or TV shows

where, you know, especially in a pre-green screen era, it is just a still backdrop behind the window and your eyes never clock it. He is choosing to let it look this otherworldly. He doesn't want you to think about this scene as if it's super realistic.

He also doesn't want you to think about it in like a sort of lynchy, and like, this is just a dream. It's like, you know, it's unmoored from reality sort of way. It has to occupy that middle space, which it does. Yes.

But as we're saying, I mean, Cruise is just going more and more into like, Philip Seymour Hoffman is threatening me with the rabbit foot to kill my girlfriend. Or it's like you were having

a fucking argument with someone on the playground and then suddenly you're like in a courtroom or whatever. It's just like the shift of it to something really existential for their marriage is frightening.

And Kidman, as we're saying, is like every line reading is 700 take energy of just, I need to do something different. But this is where you feel it the most, the many takes. It just feels like they're trapped in this argument.

They can't get out of it. You would believe, if you were told, that this scene was six months. Straight, in and of itself. TMI for a podcast is popular, but like, my wife recently... Wait, you're going to be TMI? Okay. But my wife recently ordered that exact lingerie set that Nicole Kidman is wearing with like,

no, I didn't say anything. Shout out to Lisa. Bought it. And I was like, what message are you trying to send? What's the subtext? Is the pot making you aggressive?

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's, and Tom Cruise's hair is doing such incredible acting in this scene. It is just... The way that it dangles. Insane.

You can feel the unraveling tension, but also so tight. Look, we've covered so many Tom Cruise movies on this podcast because he is a director who works with so many. He's what? He's the best what? It's his best hair I'm just his hair in this movie is outrageous

can you pull up that blank check meta this Twitter account that I love that everyday posts a different actor and how many times they've been covered

on the show yeah it's a great account what is the account called let me find it I'm just curious what the current cruise count is especially with

the Mission Impossible on Patreon but I don't know if there's an actor whose hair... Hanks is another one, obviously. Hanks is obviously way up there. But I think Cruise might be number one now.

Well, yeah, he's got two tweets. Carrie Fisher also was way up there. No, the Star Wars one's been up there. But then, like, when Harry met Sally... I know, but it's still Star Wars. I know, I know, I know, I know. Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky, Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher, Never Go Back.

That's sort of one of them. Sure. Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Ghost Protocol, Collateral. That's seven plus this would be eight main feed movies. And then you have six Mission Impossible movies and The Mummy on the special feature. I just don't know if any other actor's hair is this versatile. So versatile. When it is genuinely... The Daniel Day-Lewis's hair.

When it is genuinely their hair and it's not like he's doing some crazy like, in this one I got a perm. No, it's, and his hair is perfect. It's exactly what it should be. It's always perfect. Yes. Yes. It's, I actually. Has he ever made a mistake?

There's no Da Vinci Code weird hair, I would argue. I don't love the longer hair. Da Vinci Code is a good example for television. Like Mission Impossible 2, but I will say. I don't love the longer hair in Mission Impossible 2, but I will say... I think it fits the time. I do. I think it's almost always

the right hair for that moment, that movie. Sure. I mean, it is iconic in its way, but as someone who doesn't really think about actors' hair, I was nervous about watching the trailer

for the new Mission Impossible because I was like, what's the hair going to be? What's the hair? If I don't like the hair, it's going to ruin my life. It's very similar to his recent. Yeah. So while Mission Impossible would fluctuate every other film for't like the hair, it's going to ruin my life. It's very similar to his recent cut.

So while Mission Impossible would fluctuate every other film for close crop. But now he's just kind of, yeah. Because he has long hair in two and four. Yeah.

Yeah. Correct. I think the missions tend to be a little more impossible when they're shorter. Not like the buzz cut, but I like when they're shorter.

I think that Ghost, what's the next one called? Fucking Rogue. Dead Reckon. Whatever. I can't wait. But it's the, I think that's the ideal shorter. I think that Ghost, what's the next one called? Fucking Rogue. Dead Reckoning. Whatever. I can't wait, but it's the, I think that's the ideal length.

I think it's really, they should call it some possible close cut. It stinks. I would hate that so much. It would really suck. I cannot tell you. You know what that movie

is going to be though? I watched the Way of Water trailer, the Wakanda Forever trailer, and the Dead Reckoning trailer at least once a week for each and just go like, I need one of these. I think all three of those are going to roll. I hope so.

But Bill goes out into the night. He's high for like half this movie. He gets the phone call that a patient died. And he goes to that house and that's where Mary and the daughter tries to seduce him. It's funny how little... In this weird way where she's like, I love you, let's run away together. And he's

like, you've literally never talked to me outside of the context of your father's illness right um but i'm with her i love him too and then a guy her her partner comes in who's like thomas gibson greg greg it's greg greg from darman greg oh that means nothing to me i know jenna elfman but i just think of her as kicking somebody famously kind of an asshole. Yeah. Oh, really? I just get big like Rodrigo Santoro in Love Actually vibes. Like the prototype of that. No, it's insane that Rodrigo Santoro is in Love Actually. Anyway, sorry, carry on. No, the fact that he's Greg, that it's like...

It's Greg. I guess he hires him before Dharma and Greg. It would be funny if she was Dharma. She was like, I just love you. And I also love Eastern medicine or whatever, whatever Dharma did. He must get cast

in this movie before Dharma and Greg premieres. Of course. By the time this movie comes out, Dharma and Greg is already at the end.

He was cast in this movie before like, must see TV exists. But Jenna Elfman was a prominent before. She was a prominent Scientologist, right?

Maybe he carried the message to her. Maybe he possibly or maybe he recommended Elfman to Greg. I don't know. The point is, at this point, he's shorthand for like uptight normal sitcom man.

What's going on? Yeah. Me and my wacky wife. There's something just so funny of the reveal of like, oh no, my husband's coming and it's fucking Greg walking down a hallway being oblivious. But yes, it is.

You have a scene where this woman sort of acknowledges the weird movie star pull of Cruise. Yes, right. I'm obsessed with you. When the last 30, 40 minutes of this movie have largely been cucking him. Yeah, well. And deflating him.

Where now he's even questioning his drop. I think he's not even, he is, he does feel unstable at the idea that his wife could cheat on him. But I think he's not even, he is, he does feel unstable at the idea that his wife could cheat on him. But I think he's also having the feeling of like, should I have been

cheating on my wife? Yeah. Like, am I actually an asshole? Should we go to the police station and be pollicking my way around town?

What happens in every subsequent scene for the next hour of this movie is someone tries to have sex with him. Yeah. And it goes so wrong. And they cut the scene where I tried.

They sure did. It was weird that they shot that. But you were in England at the time, so it all checksry. And they cut the scene where I try. They sure did. It was weird that they shot that. But you were in England at the time. So it all checks out. But like, and everyone, there's lots of kissing, which you also like. I do love kissing.

And I love Vanessa Shaw. There's even kissing with the mask. I mean, we'll get to Vanessa Shaw in that dress. There's even 69ing with the mask, which feels a little counterproductive. Yeah, it feels right obtuse. You're not mouthless there. You're just rubbing plaster lips.

But what's interesting about what Griffin said in the scene is that like, yes, that is the charm that he's radiating. It's the first time we feel it. But he's also, again, in a subservient position. He's a hired hand of this ultra rich family. Yeah. He's making house calls, you know, which is not something that normal people, myself, when this was happening in my family, we don't afford. Also making a house call to confirm that a guy has died right and he just like feels his head walking into a

dead body in a room it's so it says so much though about like the fact that he's making house calls still yes at all yes but it just makes complete sense that it would be like super rich people can basically get whatever they want

but it's also like I think he wants to get out there. Like, he likes to leave the house and just go like, have that feeling of people who need him or in his thrall. Yeah. It's like his kink.

Okay. Yeah, I can see that too. It's definitely a great excuse to get out of having that conversation. Sure. So I gotta go dead body and check out.

He's just praying, someone die, someone die. That's when he meets Domino right after the, sure so I gotta go dead body he's just praying someone dies someone dies that's when he meets Domino right after the the the the dead guy

right after the he meets Greg Domino played by Vanessa Shaw aka you know my wife she's the best

when is she bad never you know what she's incredible in two lovers that's right yep oh man

James Gray season approaches the yeah I mean what's that scene is so fascinating is she bad? Never. You know what? She's incredible in Two Lovers. That's right. Yep. Oh, man. James Gray season approaches. Yeah, I mean, that scene is so fascinating because she is the platonic ideal of like a normal man's perfect, you know,

like sex worker. Yeah. Like that. Like she is a very nice grad student who doesn't seem like she does this a lot.

Charmingly messy apartment. She's very pretty. Charmingly messy. It's just right here. It's very warm. We're going to have a nice time. I'm going to speak of you fondly afterwards. It is like cartoonish

to the degree that it is a fantasy for someone who wants to do a little dalliance and paying for sex. Yeah. She was a child actor. She's, of course, in Hocus Pocus and was in some other stuff.

And then she takes... She wasn't in Hocus P, of course, in Hocus Pocus and was in some other stuff. And then she takes... She wasn't in Hocus Pocus. She fucking owns Hocus Pocus. Yes, she owned my heart. But she's in the sequel. Good question. Probably not. Does it premiere tonight?

It doesn't look like she's in the sequel. Why is there a September release? I mean, it's premiering tonight. I don't know. But wait for October 1st. Literally wait. It's true. Could you wait three days? Come on. We've waited for 25 tonight. I don't know. But wait for October 1st. Literally wait. It's true. Could you wait three days?

Yeah. Come on. We've waited for 25 years. It's fucking Tuesday. I know. We have to be premiering Hocus Pocus on a random Tuesday in September. I'm just like, October 1st, I would remember that's when it's coming out. Oh, boy.

Anyway, all Disney Plus original movies are great. You should be able to tell your grandkids exactly the day Hocus Pocus 2 premiered. Yeah. When was it? It should have been October 1st, but I think it was end of September. I mean, the domino thing is like, it's like, what if you were approached by a sex worker,

like, you know, who was Vanessa Shaw in the most stunning dress. Yes. And she was just like, I'll take care of everything. Just come back to my apartment. I'm making out with you on the street. Like this absolute dream world, like, vibes.

The thing I was going to say, child of actors, works as a child actor, takes several years off, goes to college, isn't sure she wants to act again, gets called in by Kubrick. And there's a very charming story.

I think it's in the dossier that like Kubrick put his hand on her shoulder after a take and was like glowing. And he was like, I'm so excited for you to have the career that I know you can have. Hell yeah. Which is sort of like

She should have had a better one. God bless she's had a good career. And she still works but she's one of those people who always feels like is undervalued while being totally consistent pro. But that she was like I was at a point where I was like acting was a thing I did when I was a kid. I don't know if I really want to do this ever again. He was the guy who made

her feel that not only could she have a career doing it, but that she enjoyed doing it and felt a sense of autonomy over doing it. And she said she felt really empowered by how much he was telling her, like, you're going to do incredible stuff. Yeah.

Well, she does rule, but their encounter, of course, every time he's tempted, he gets the kiss. He makes out with her, and they go to her apartment apartment and then he's like... Make it look like you can get it. Yeah, seriously. You get paid to kiss Tom Cruise?

Continuing my... Oh, I was seeing Vanessa Shopping. And he does this sort of like, I think I should go. David's doing a very good physical cruise. He's got the fucking jacket, you know, and it feels like there's this force field

on him. It's also Christmas. It is Christmas. It's a weird, fake Christmas. It's another thing that is very off-putting about, like, the fact that he's cheating on his wife, another of his children, but it's holidays. One very precocious child. Sure. But, uh,

it's sad that it's, like, for her, too too Thinking about her character That like She's working on Christmas She's working on Christmas Picking up you know Waspy doctors walking the streets I mean that's the thing

If I'm a very high powered Sex worker I might at Christmas be like There's gonna be some rich guy Having an existential crisis If I just walk up and down Fifth Avenue But she's also He's like red meat for her.

She sees him and she's like, oh my God. No, she's absolutely. And so there's this really sweet feeling of them both sort of looking for each other and being drawn to each other. It is sort of, you know, Ben's talking about Christmas, like the gift of the magi, this between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

Like they're both going out into the world in their ways and like looking for the thing that their partner needs in the most fucked up ways. But everyone calls this a classic. Now, the take is, it's boring to say Eyes White Should as a classic Christmas movie now, right? It's like 10 years ago saying Die Hard as a classic Christmas movie. Now it's just like,

we all accept it. Do you think Die Hard's a Christmas movie? We should litigate this for a little bit. What's going on? When's it set? I think the fun take that we can start right here is that we're reclaiming it as the Jews' Christmas movie. It's like Chinese food on Christmas. I mean, I watch it often at Christmas. Is Eyes White shut secretly a great hanukkah movie wow is it the only hanukkah movie he has one crazy night he has one crazy night and there is a miracle and he doesn't get killed his life should have been extinguished at the end of this night and somehow it kept

burning when the girl woke up with sydney pollack Sidney Pollack went, it's a Hanukkah miracle! No more speedballs! Time to the girl for a second. I gotta light another candle for the third night. We gotta spin a dreidel over here. Gimel! Go ahead.

I think I wanted to say, much has been talked about Kubrick's weird, artificial New York in this movie. Yes. Which people at the time... Theater of the mind.

Right, but people went like, it looks nothing like New York. He's failed. This is the downside to his hermetic whatever. It's mostly this one major street set they built. It's like two streets

that intersect. There are only a couple things that are actually shot in the streets of London, but they built like this big sort of intersection. Yeah. And then they would

flip it sometimes in the shot so that they could change the orientation of it. And every time they shot a new scene the shot so that they could change the orientation of it. And every time they shot a new scene there, they'd redress all the businesses to make it look different. But you're basically

reusing this same intersection over and over again. And the thing that's talked about a lot with this movie is like, there are very few extras. There's pretty much no one on a street

It is Christmas time. unless they exist to actually interact with this character. Right. They're going to call him a homophobic slur. They're going to hit on him. Right. They're going to call him a homophobic slur. They're going to hit on him.

Right. They're going to offer him a cloak. It's a snow globe. I mean, the movie doesn't have to feel like that. He's in his fucking brain. Right. And I think people viewed this as a failing of like, well, New York City is not like this. It's a city that never sleeps.

They're constantly. No one's selling hot dogs out of water. But it is the thing that is very spooky if you ever find yourself in a part of New York that is just quiet. If suddenly you walk down a street where no one is. Especially at a time like some holiday weekend or whatever. Because you're lost in the wrong part of town or just for whatever reason, there's no one here. You have an accidental midnight vanilla sky moment. big secrets they do to make it feel like it's, you know, still hermetic,

but not just literally two streets, is that they have him take a cab from one part of the village to another part of the village, which is like, it's like it would have been half as fast to walk it or twice as fast. I totally believe it with this guy. Yeah, he doesn't, right. Well, I mean, he did not have the best walk over to that part of town. What if there was a really wise hot dog vendor who said, like, you know what's most important? It's family.

He's like putting the hot dog. This movie, there's, you know, I think, interesting to look at this movie against After Hours in certain ways, right? The movie that Stanley Kubrick adored. Yes. One of my favorite movies of all time. About a wild, crazy night in New York City. The Great American Griffin movie. In many senses.

But that's a movie that is very obsessed with the actual realities of 80s New York City and is the same one crazy night. But it's shot in locations and it's very much... Absolutely. Right. Feels like you're in New York. But it's also a movie where all this guy wants is for this night to end. Right. And Eyes Wide shut has the vibe of this guy being like what if i just

push this a little bit right because he's like if i go to sleep then it's back to normal yeah that feeling of look on the lowest scale level that feeling of a bar is closing you leave a bar you're walking to the subway impulsively go like what if I go into a different bar? What if I just don't go home? He doesn't leave the house until like 11. Right. But he's doing the thing like in Minecraft when you're just like, one more tunneling session and I'm not gonna die.

What if I just do another thing? What if I just keep drinking? So he goes and meets Nick Nightingale, the legend, and they're chatting. And Nick Nightingale I get it the legend and they're chatting right and Nick Nightingale gets a phone call

three performances in one night yeah the main works playing the saddest looking jazz club of all time the party they go to

the beginning of the movie was the night before oh okay okay I'm sorry still he feels like the Ray Romano of jazz pianos

I've got to do three sets I'm going to do three sets. I'm going to do three sets and then an orgy. I've got to do a stand. They blindfold me. I tell jokes about Debra. Debra!

But there is that feeling that you were talking about earlier, Sims, of like, he's itching. Like, he knows that this is dangerous. It's a big open opera, isn't it? Don't you want to ask? It does feel like... Not my last show tonight.

If he had lived another 10 years, Kubrick might have gone like Maybe Ray to play You could have seen In the line of all his comedic leading men The Aryan Papers Starring Ray Romano No, no

But this movie What the hell am I doing? I thought you meant his next movie So Nick Nightingale The G tells him He's gonna need a black cloak A mask

And a third item What's the third item? He sees the password. Tell us about the orgy. We gotta keep, we gotta move. But what's the third item? It's a black cloak. They say it so many fucking times. Maybe it's not. He needs a hood.

He needs a mask. Tuxedo? Yeah, tux. That's what it is. Tux, cloak, mask. I love that he goes like, they'll kick you out dressed like this. And you're just like, this is the most upstanding gentleman in the world. He's got a fucking waistcoat. You get a great reaction shot of Cruz being like,

what the fuck are you talking about? Like, do you know how good I look? But it's that thing, it's that level of like, you don't understand the stratas of wealth, of power, of access.

This is the layer beyond you that you think exists. Like say, you know, say this movie is just happening in his brain. It's what he thinks he can peek beyond. I also think there's this interesting thing this movie raises.

Right. Because the dumb thing of people thinking like, you know, much like the notion that the Shining is him confessing that he faked the moon landing. That a movie like this is Kubrick being like, I have the files on all these perverts and I'm leaving you the clues to solve the mystery after my death. In 20 short years, he'll figure it out.

That this is his book of Henry. He's leaving instructions for how to fucking fake Epstein's suicide. I mean, we are going to get a Room 237 about Eyes Wide Shut. I'm probably, you know, hopefully be in it.

But whenever these stories come out about these guys, I do feel like there's the question that everyone sort of stews on where it's like, is it that people this deviant need to achieve the highest levels of success so that they have the security and the sort of insulation to be able to like follow their whims willy nilly? Or is it that reaching this level of success having this much money this much access completely perverts and breaks your brain i think it's chasing the dragon i think it's i think it's like at some point you're like i have to hunt people now right it's because i've shot you've conquered everything in the world the only thing to do is to break laws with impunity right but i think i think that's right because it's like the the

thing about the orgy, which is, again, not supposed to be the hottest thing of all time. It's not supposed to be like, could you imagine something this hardcore? I mean, this is a very chaste film

by most standards, at least as far as the subject matter is concerned. But it's about these people who don't know how to have sex anymore because their minds have been so riddled by riches.

This is the only way these people can come. They're like, we can only fuck if we make it a fucking ritualistic, medieval orgy. And not to jump ahead to the end of the movie, but when can come. They're like, we can only fuck if we make it a fucking ritualistic, like medieval orgy. And not to jump ahead to the end of the movie, but like when Pollock does his final explanation, I find it in certain ways equally believable that they need to kill people to cover their tracks and that they need to pretend that they kill people for the theater of their own excitement.

There's a note that Kubrick had in a much earlier draft of the script where he was thinking about, like, they have this whole plan. They don't know when they're going to need to use it. Right. But they have it ready to go for when an interloper comes into the orgy. Right. So it's like, did they execute ghost protocol? Yeah, exactly.

Or is it like, no, our thing is this theater of pretending like we kill people. It's basically sleep no more, but like, you know, people are talking. But that is a way you can... I do buy this is just sleep no more. Right. but that is a way you buy this is just sleep no more right when he says do you think so you guys think that like that's a possibility that this is some big staged whatever like a possibility like improv event the most important thing is that

rich there is not that you know we don't put the miss the forest for the trees and think it matters no no no i know that but But the first time I watch, I like that it's unknowable. The first time I watch it, I leaned more on the side of Sleep No More with a mild side of deviancy. And re-watching it this time,

I felt like, I think Sidney Pollack's covering their tracks. Kubrick delights in swapping out the dead actress. Yes. You know, like the person you see

in the morgue slab is not the same actress. And it's actually, I mean person you see in the morgue slab is not the same actress. And it's actually, I mean, I wish I had this handy. I have this whole fucking book sitting on my lap, but there is the most.

Erlich has a book with like a 40 different little colored tabs on it. The most amazing. Which book is this? It's just the, it's the same book that I think JJ was reading.

Oh, The Idolized Child. But the woman who plays the girl who redeems Tom Cruise has the most incredible quote that I just found because it was originally supposed to be Mandy who redeems Tom Cruise has the most incredible quote that I just found because it was originally supposed to be Mandy

who redeems him, the woman from Ziegler's House at the beginning. Yeah. And then this actress, Abigail Goode, who ends up playing her, says,

Davis, who plays Mandy, was a difficult girl to work with and she was always late. She added that Kubrick liked my long legs. He preferred the way I walk or it might have been simply that I had a better body than she did it's like jesus it's like you already got the part man she's already dead

it is wild when you get to the party how it feels like the women pretty much all have identical bodies yes and it's so look it's unerotic the the the g strings which he was very particular about apparently he was sent basically every cut of women's underwear that existed. Like, as he was picking. Because he was like, no, not quite right. Are so unsexy. Is that crazy for me to say? No, no, no. It is.

Because they feel like action figures almost. Like the way they're just kind of walking around like robots. In our Showgirls episode, you talked about Pearl Verhoeven's attack on the breast. Right. How that movie makes boobs feel upsetting. And this is just a movie where, like, you're watching

incredibly attractive, like, you know, these hourglass model women like fuck on screen and it just feels like you're watching nature photography. Yeah.

Like, it's weirdly unarrived. But, you know, Kubrick talked all the time about how this was his most personal movie and that's such an enigmatic thing for an enigmatic figure to say well you know this is a documentary shot in real time but no he did

meet his wife Christiane at an enormous masked ball where he was performing and or she was performing rather and he was the only one who wasn't in a costume and he felt like everyone was looking at him what I like to think about is like, okay,

so I'm a rich evil guy, right? Congrats. Can I only come if I'm fucking, you know, anonymous strangers in a room where lots of other people are having sex in, in a castle or in a state? Sure.

Or can I only come if I'm doing that? And I know there's one new guy here. Right. Like, you know, where I'm like, so the new guy's coming, right? There's always a sacrificial lamb?

That's what I'm saying. Can they only do this and be like, and we're going to leave some bait for some random wasp to show up and think he knows what he's doing, right? It does feel like that's part of what turns them on. The whole thing's about power, obviously. And desire and being able to covet the things they already have. They love being able to

sniff him out. They love being able to kick him out. They're not angry that he snuck in. But they're like, okay, yeah, sure, three hours of mindless, masked fucking, when are we having a weird trial of Tom Cruise? Well, the thing is, the biggest boner that anyone...

They're all jerking off under their robes when that's happening. The biggest boner that anyone gets that night is definitely the moment when Cruise walks into the room and finds them all waiting for him. Like, that's the moment they're waiting for. But then finds them all waiting for him. Like that's the moment. But then they don't.

And it's funny that Kubrick put in the boing sound effect, but then they don't strip him naked, which is like a weird, it's such a good threat. It's much better than like, we're going to hurt you. It's like, we're going to humiliate you in front of these people. No, because the next day is the greater satisfaction. It's not like we could take you naked, or we could drive you insane for another 24 hours. No, for sure.

There's another thing where, like, this movie has gone through tears of hype where people are like, you're going to see Tom Cruise's dick on screen. We've seen it. You're an hour and a half into this film. Most people haven't seen all the right moves. But you're like an hour and a half into this movie that the audience is probably losing patience for, and you get to this scene where they're, like, undressed, and people are like, here we go.

Salacious, indecent. But like, isn't there something interesting about how it's a movie? They're not all, but most of these robed people have been naked and having sex for hours.

And then the idea of him taking his clothes off, you're like, God, that'd be so awful. So weird. For him to like suddenly be like, uh, okay. Yeah.

Just standing there and comfortably. Like the weird emasculation of it. It's so effective. for him to like suddenly be like uh okay yeah just standing there uncomfortably like the weird emasculation of it it's so effective we should jump back to

Rates or Bajor yeah we gotta talk about a little bit of him Jesus Christ what a performance he really does absolutely put some sauce on it

you know a very different vibe from her but she's doing great jobs he's doing the what's the thermostat thing we say oh the thermostat performance where someone is able

to enter into a movie and completely change the temperature. I feel like, would you argue that he's doing that in this film? It's also, this movie has not had a lot of levity. It's been going at a very patient clip. And now we have a guy in here who's talking like a person.

Okay, okay, you're in a hurry, I'm in a hurry. He's like fucking, he's like Wado. He's the Wado. He's almost too like much of a sort of like goofy merchant. Right. He's like,

what was it you said black? And it's like, what did you think he said? Green? He said black. Your mind tricks don't work on me. Only money.

100 I can't do. And he's like 200. The guy's like, 200? Okay. I do have two Japanese guys And my daughter up here But yeah sure 200 bucks

I'm unlocking the door Red I give you the outfit Blue His mother The weirdest thing is He's just like This is really annoying And it's like

He literally needs you to go And get something off of a rack And he's gonna pay you like Double You live above Like is this hard It seems like you were You live above it. You're like, is this hard? It seems like you were already awake considering how quickly you responded to the thing.

Like he doesn't have groggy energy. This is a guy who feels like he's awake all night. Yeah, I was about to say, I don't think this guy sleeps ever. Maybe he just kind of like sits in a chair and is quiet for a little bit. But also, so when he sees... You're a doctor and I do my hair

and you're like, is this, is he saying this as a joke or is this a genuine, I need the care from male pep talk? And obviously his reaction to the sight of his daughter with two older men wearing wigs and powder-tipped faces. But another one of these things that I'm talking about where you just see something that is inexplicable

that raises so many questions. That you can't ask any questions. Your perception of reality is immediately changed and every bit of it makes less sense to you what he knows these men why are they dressed like this it's his daughter you know everything about it is is strange he gets right back to the transaction too yes you know he's like all right anyway where were we but he's very um you know claudeude Rains in Class of Blank about this, right? Where he's like, I can't believe you're doing this.

What a shocking thing for me to see. Oh, no. The best is when he locks them in the room and he turns and he's like, I'm with a customer. This is so embarrassing for me that you would be doing this. I didn't know about it at all. And it's so distressing. All the implications of it are so distressing. Horrible.

Lili Sobieski, who's amazing, it's a tiny role, obviously, but she was such a striking actor at that point. I mean, she went from, like, deep impact and, like, you know... She's amazing in deep impact. Soldiers Dark Never Cries. Yeah, to this. But she probably went from this to deep impact, right? Right. But yes, it's the early sign...

It should be the early sign for Cruise of, like, you don't want to enter into this world. The things you're going to see are going to raise questions that you don't want answers to. Right, right, right. It's the underlying sort of stories. Is monogamy, you know, is the not knowing of monogamy. Right. Is that maybe preferable to the I'm going to blow my life up and go and chase all these stuff dragon dragon can't unknow about like the depths of of human depravity and and shit like

that but yes yes incredibly where the rainbow ends uh bizarre and strange he gets his outfit he gets his outfit and it is and then he arrives and it is weird when he arrives at the origin he's like uh hey guys and they're like what's up and he's like uh fidelio and they're like we'll take you up and they should be like who are you why are you showing up so late in a in a cab okay also fucking cab where you're like oh ripping me a hundred dollar bill that is an insane move so crazy what if he did this thing that happens in this entire and it makes me so what if he did this rips the hundred dollar bill in half hands him one hundred dollar half the hundred dollar bill and half, hands him $100, half the $100 bill,

and a roll of scotch tape. Because then it's like, you're not going to have to do any work putting this back together. I remember the first time as a kid, I accidentally like ripped a 20 that I was saving to buy like a Pokemon starter deck or whatever. And my dad was like,

if you tape it, it is legal tender. They have to accept it. Even still. No, it's a little jerky. Anytime I tried to cash a taped up dollar bill, I felt like a jamoke. And it's rude to do it to the guy. Right. Even still. No, it's a little jerky. Anytime I tried to cash a taped up dollar bill, I felt like a jamoke. Okay, but riddle me.

And it's rude to do it to the guy's face. I agree. I agree. I agree. It's a dick move. He's got another hundo in there. Like, you can spare it. But it's also a thing of like, he's still Mr. Power in the cab.

This is the last time. And he's about to stop being that. His power's been tested the whole night. Right. And he wants to assert it. But riddle me this. Where are all the other drivers? Are they all just like in a room together smoking,

being like, yeah, another orgy? That would be funny. There's like Andrew Dice Clay and company, and they're like, these guys really go. Our boss is fucking until 5 a.m. again. Jesus. I'd last 10 minutes up there.

And then we're in the orgy. One of the great sequences in all American film. If you can call this American film. Jocelyn Pook, just wild and out. Yeah, apparently Stanley Kubrick told her,

let's do some sex music. And she was like, I don't, okay. It's like Barry White? What do you mean? What are you fucked to? It would be funny if Barry White

was at the orgy. It's set in the big night. Justin Timberlake in the background doing like sexy back. Waiting for someone to do a cut of that and not put a post on Twitter. It's so scary.

I find it all so unsettling. And I do think the first time I watched it was like two in the morning in my fucking home in Newcastle where I went to college, like on this little TV. And it really did. And it really did.

Like the music and everything. You're just like, this was happening. I'm not turned on. Right. Yeah. And I'm so distressed. Look,

not to be gross about it, but like when you're a 13 or 14 year old boy watching a movie late at night on a TV in your bedroom, and it has this many boobs and it's this impossible to jerk off to, it's almost an accomplishment on a scale that's hard to compare. Right? Yeah, I don't know. What do we think of the origin? I mean, it's an incredible, incredible

sequence. I think it has that magical power that Kubrick was always looking for. The sort of magnetic pull of his scenes that he couldn't describe in words. That's why he made movies and he was able to sort of achieve it and sustain it here. I mean, the Jocelyn Pook music is,

even though he literally did say, I want sex music. That's what she came back with. It's incredible. There's the later music that's more sexy sounding. I mean, anything is more sexy sounding. Which is like backwards Hungarian monks or whatever whatever right that's what that later in the

sequence we have what for my money is one of the great needle drops in all the film which is the introduction of the leggetti score of the music for the first time it's like i mean that moment is just like yeah fuck and that gets me oh my god you cut that wide shot and all that i mean and then suddenly faces the weird in the pan across all the faces that or not even the pan just like the various three shots that he has of them like that's the image

that had haunted him for so many decades he was like that's a movie like that's something I need to explore who do you think the guy who nods at him is

do you think it's Pollock or do you think it's someone else I don't I mean it's Leon I mean it's Leon Vitale yeah whatever

you and Leon Vitale you see Leon Vitale around every corner. I just want to put a button on this by saying that, like, I truly believe that that performance that he gives as the orgy master,

which was sort of incidental. They had another actor. You know, he just does it. It's so perfect. It's one of those things that holds an entire universe together. The way, the theatricality of it, the menace.

It's such a nice camper for a guy who abandoned his acting career sort of at the feet of this dude that gets to sort of be this pivotal. Imperious king

of the evil guys. I mean, every, like, what's the password for the, I mean, it's like every line is just burrowed

into my soul. But like, another part of Owen Gleiberman's pan that actually feels like a great encapsulation of what is powerful about this movie is when he says like Kubrick turned sex into a ritual. And it was like this movie was supposed to titillate us. He's failed. And it's like, no, it's that thing of you walk into a room where the most beautiful women are doing everything you ever have imagined.

Your most horny state of mind. It's the craziest. Yeah, yeah. And it instead just reveals like, yeah, sexiest scenario. And it instead just reveals, like, wow, sex is weird. This is, like, weird that we do this. This looks odd. And the campiness of the...

No, Ben doesn't like that, and I'm with him. Sex is great. High five to say. I like having sex. I want to be very clear. But when you look at it from an angle like this, and you especially look at people watching it happen... It's an orgy, right.

Also, no kink shame against orgies. It's how they do this orgy that makes it so scary. It feels joyless. It doesn't feel like anyone's enjoying it. No, not at all. But what's amazing is that it feels joyless but also super campy by design.

But it's campy and scary and the fact that it's able to be scary while it's campy only makes it scarier. It's performative, but in a way that's very different than the kind of performative sex we see in porn or in movies. In movies, yeah. Right. But it's no consent.

And even because there's money involved, but like they're being drugged. Like it's really fucking crazy. If you turn up the volume, if you put closed captioning on, you keep on seeing subtitle woman number six. You have my enthusiasm. This is good. Yeah, please, let's keep doing this. It's like the Pinocchio-Rupier moment. There's like woman 12,

you have my enthusiasm. You in the plate, Dr. Mask, you know, get over here. God, every time I've been watching WALL-E with the subtitles on, Disney Plus is always like, WALL-E moans. Yeah, they'll do the

atmospheric subtitles. WALL-E in particular, it should all be phonetic. They should never describe a WALL-E sound. They should go like, I've, you know, I've long sort of, I like to entertain the idea. Again, this is not a movie where it needs to be understood.

But, you know, this is just a he's just having the same experience he had at the Pollock party as a nightmare, right? So he's watching a woman die. He's in this the same experience he had at the Pollock party as a nightmare, right? So he's watching a woman die. He's in this weird place of rich people and power. Sure. And instead of the refined thing he saw there with this sort of nasty incident in the bathroom,

now he's seeing this weird nightmare version of it, right? And the same energy you get with the bear guy giving the blowjob in The Shining, all of the. Right. And the same energy you get with like the bears and like the bear guy giving the blowjob in The Shining, all of the goons. This movie has some of the best goons that have ever been.

I mean, that guy with the grease back hair coming out of the back of his mask who goes up to him and he's like, your taxi is waiting. You know, like that's

such a good movie. But you asking the question about like is the guy who gives him the nod Pollock. It's once again, the point is he will never know. No, he finds out that Pollock was in that room, but he can't know for a fact that Pollock was the guy who nodded to him. And it's as disorienting.

Maybe it was Kidman. When you're walking down the street, when you're in a public space and someone gives you like a nod or a wave and you're like, I have no idea who that is. I don't know if that was someone I don't remember. If it's someone who thought I was someone else, I will never get an answer to this, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean,

that scene is just, it's just has such an incredible sort of super textual power to it. It's just like you, it has a hold on you, even if you don't always know why. And it seems silly in retrospect, as it would be like for any of the people at the orgy to talk about in clear terms later on,

they sound ridiculous. I just also love that it's like his gait is wrong. This woman immediately like fucks him out. She's like, you're in great danger, dude.

Gotta get out of here. You fuck it. And his mask is good. Credit to his mask. I think it's a great mask. Good. He's got the drip going.

It's on point. Yeah. God, some of those other masks are so scary. Wouldn't you be pissed if you showed up to the orgy in like the plague doctor mask and you had like a three foot, you know,

protuberation, whatever, like sticking out of your face. Yeah. And you were like, oh, now we're going to go have sex. And it's going like, oh, I can't. I, you know, it's just sticking out of your face. Why didn't I just go with the black mask? Yeah, right. Yeah.

So there's this thing that does feel staged, in a way, where the woman sacrifices herself, where it's almost like she's like, I invoke orgy law! Like, I will give myself... I volunteer tribute. Right. Yes.

And then it's like, well, she invoked it, of course, because she is allowed, as we all know, the bylaws of the orgy. If only the aesthetic could work that clearly, right? Jesus. You are free to go, but don't come back. And it does... I do like the idea that when he leaves, they're all like, oh, right? Jesus. You are free to go, but don't come back. And it does, I do like the idea

that when he leaves, they're all like, oh, that was great. That was great. And then we get like one of many great hard cuts. And then there's an hour of the movie to go.

Well, yeah, because like, and you would think in the pace at which this movie's gone that we might get some business of him leaving and traveling home. But the second half of the movie

is defined by these really hard, and in some cases, like, shot cuts to, like, time passing. Whereas up until this point, there's been a lot of crossfades. A lot of walking. A lot of walking, but a lot of crossfades. He's been fucking Edward Burns-ing it.

I saw Edward Burns on the sidewalks of New York the other day. I texted you guys immediately. He looked... Like a snack. Yeah. He's a handsome guy. It was pretty absurd. He's a handsome guy it was pretty absurd

he's a handsome guy and he's from Brooklyn I saw a movie once called 27 Dresses and the moral of that movie is that Edward Byrne's very handsome

that's true don't trust him though it is funny in every other movie you were talking about how it's like this absurdly handsome guy and his career became like

I'm a schmo in his own movies and in other people's movies it's like don't fall in love with this i'm a real jerk uh but no no it was the rewatchables was did saving proper ryan and they were just like it's so weird that he was like i'm the next woody allen and then every movie he writes and directs he's like i just can't get laid in this city god i'm so angsty yeah You're married to Christy Turlington. You're doing great. He went from Heather Graham to Christy Turlington.

They've been married for like 20 years. He looked incredible. I went up to him and I said, Fidelio. And he was like, Get out of here. I can't get that reference. I'll get that shit in you. I'm walking in.

Hit a cab. But so he gets home and it turns out that, you know, Nicole Kidman's been having a night of her own and she's been having this crazy dream. Yes.

Yeah, they were intercutting with these fantasy sequences. He's dreaming about her getting rogered. Right. I mean, it's him imagining

what she described imagining. A cabin. So we're like, it's an old British joke. We're like, we're like two degrees away from reality right

it's his conception of her conception of what this hypothetical affair would have been like right and Kubrick didn't let Cruise on set

when they were filming the show famously didn't let him see the footage this is the biggest part of this sort of like psychological torture quote unquote right

concept so Cruise was really caught up in the I don't know what happened on that set especially because Kubrick was like we're gonna film you in every position like you are going to be involved in the process you have final approval over what happens right but i want to get a lot of footage of a lot of different sexual acts and cruz just has no ability to watch this no oversight of this when you think about every movie after this, he is the main producer,

save for Magnolia. He is a guy who is involved in every single aspect of production. And it's like, his first movie as a producer is Mission Impossible right before this.

And then he makes two movies where he doesn't have control, and then he goes back to I never don't have control again. Must have driven him crazy. Yeah, it probably was pretty intense. Making this movie seemed pretty intense. And she was similarly in the dark

with what he was filming. And as Kubrick notoriously does, a lot of the scenes would get rewritten on the day. They'd improvise. They'd rewrite based on the improvs. They'd refine the scene. I mean, the process of this movie was they built these sets and he would like get there

in the morning and spend hours figuring out the lighting scheme with like a Polaroid camera doing tests. And then Todd Field said they filmed only at nights. So they would show up and the set was like perfectly lit to his specifications. And then they get there with the script pages and they go like, so let's figure out what we're shooting. And then it was a couple hours of like litigating, like, get rid of this what feels more natural this and that and then once the scene has taken shape it's like everything's set to go now we're just going to do it a million times until i feel

happy but but they didn't have to be there for lighting for blocking you know it was like but there's this feeling of like this psychic connection between alice and bill and what's going on there like he's enacting it in the physical world so to speak and she is dreaming although you could be said that he's to speak, and she is dreaming, although it could be said that he's in a dream and she is, you know, somewhere else, but that they have both been having this twinned experience in a way. Right.

She had this sort of dream of an orgy as well, like, essentially, but he was witnessing it. Right. And she was laughing at it. Right. And she's very upset about it. This is, I think, her best scene in the movie.

It is. It's an incredible scene. And it's kind of her last big scene, in a way until she says fuck. Right? Like, and I would,

I would flip her a supporting actress. But she also, like, she does more in, like, cuts and, like,

you know, one shots where she doesn't say anything. Like, when they, after he tells her the whole night later on in the movie

where she's just bleary-eyed that it's just devastating. There's also the one time they cut to her early and she's, like, watching TV and smoking. Yeah.

Just one glimpse of her. What a movie. So now we're in the cold light of day. Yes, it's truly the cold light of day. You go to the hotel to find Nick.

Nick was checked out by some very big man so it tells us how he's coming. I love that he's like kind of... I just love when someone's like I'm a detective, right?

There's a mystery and I need to solve it, but they're not drawn to it because they're being paid as a private investigator and they're a cop. It's just like, he has to know. He's so driven. Yeah.

But I think Alan Cumming kills this. This is the guy who's like, I'm a bit naughty. I want to tell you something. There were very big men that took him out. You know, like that's sort of like, you know, I just love like, is's sort of like, you know, a little extra info.

And just left, like, is he titillated by this? Is he testing Cruise's sexuality? There's a, I mean, so we now have, you know, this first random encounter

with another character after that long night. And we're having the same sort of flicker of desire that someone's pulled to him. Yeah. But, I mean,

I think it's possible to see sort of like a homophobic reading of this because the reality of it, now that it's sort of in the cold light of day and it's less pleasant, is that it's a gay man who's coming on to him rather than a woman.

I don't know if I necessarily believe that, but I do think that there's an element of like the sexual interest in Bill now is starkly unwanted. Yeah, right. Bill's like, I already... Yeah. That's more my breed of it. He goes... It's a thing he's not tempted by. He goes to

get the cloak back, and at that point, Milich is just sort of like, yeah, I don't care what my daughter's doing. The two businessmen come out, and the daughter comes out after him, and he's like, last night you were saying those guys would get arrested. You couldn't call the fucking cops on me. He's like, we figured things out. And now he's confronted by the horror of this guy prostituting his 15-year-old daughter.

Right, because he then offers him up to Cruz. Whereas before you have that moment when he traps the two businessmen in the glass cage, she hides behind Cruz. Yeah, and he can kind of convince himself like, okay, maybe this was. He can explain it away to himself. Not in logical terms, but in just of like the feeling of the moment. But also, there's almost a like, maybe I saved her.

The fact that I woke the dad up, that he had to come downstairs, that he caught her, she's hiding behind me. I'm the noble man. And now it's like, she's being served up to you on a platter. But one detail I really, really love

is when he goes to the diner in a string of great diners in this movie to inquire about Nick Nightingale. And the woman who works at the diner in a string of great diners in this movie to inquire about Nick Nightingale. And the woman who works at the diner next to Club Sonata, where he plays, knows where he's staying. Yeah. Which is like, what's been going on here? This weird New York

is a small town. Well, it's also you know, maybe his pants are a small town. Hey, wait, hey. It is so funny for how much this movie gets clocked. Hey, wait, hey. Hey. It is so funny for how much this movie gets clocked with this like the artificial

New York thing. The few establishing shots that do exist as a kid who grew up in like Manhattan. Right. But there's like they go to 11th

and University at one point which is very close to where I grew up and stuff. Right. Thank you. It has like real time. He goes to Grey Dog and he gets number seven.

It's like my dad trying to get the recession special Where does he get the pound cake from? I don't know Dean DeLuca maybe? Yeah sure But I just I was Dreaming DeLuca Every time

It's funny to show up to pound cake Where a sex worker works Well it's very He should have brought the pound cake to the orgy Yeah Heard there's some pounding going on I mean do you think they would have treated him differently if he brought snacks? That actually, if he was like

What's the second best one? I don't know but I have this pound cake Oh no! Go to that room There's some really good stuff going on in there 4am I'm high as hell Pass it over Not like that idiot who brought the chastity You know how much fucking incense I've been breathing

I appreciate that, Griffin. Thank you. No, I was just going to say, the like six establishing shots of real New York that do exist in this movie felt like, like really... They're jarring. No, but for me,

it was like time capsule shit where I'm like, oh, you actually in a very clean wide shot held for a few seconds have a perfect snapshot of what this block looked like exactly 23 years ago. The most real New York. He does what I would not do, I gotta be honest, which is he drives back to the orgy

house. I'm looking at Ben's notes. Usually Ben writes his notes on a yellow legal pad. Today, it looks like the scribblings of a serial killer. It looks like Mr. Detective I left you all the clues. He just wrote forget your inquiries, which are completely useless.

Keep on going. It's give up your inquiries. I mean, I just underlined Fidelio and circled it 40 times. Alan Cum is doing something here. Okay. I like calling him Alan Cum. The fear I just think it's so something here okay um i like i like calling him alan come the the the fear the like the

i just think it's so impressive and scary what's your poor name alan come come yes to hand a typed richard seaman be quiet you shut up i should hand him a note just a typed times new roman they had it waiting with his name on it. They're like, he's going to fucking show up. Get that note. Yeah, right. So scary. Then he goes to see Domino.

I guess sort of doing the thing of like, maybe I should have just had sex with the beautiful woman who offered herself to me. I could have had it by night in the normal. Guinness Book of World Record Breaking Time is in a sexual entanglement with her from the moment he opens the door. I mean, he is like across the precipice. And I'd say like three split seconds later is face to face. It's the moment where it feels like he's finally getting into this idea where it's like, does everyone want to fuck me?

Am I a guy who can walk into any room and just immediately enact upon people their greatest desires? Right. And she's like, look, I'm attracted to you, but you don't understand. I'm about to give you terrible news. Right.

This timing could not be worse. Right. So, Domino had just learned that she's HIV positive. She's not there. Sally, her roommate, is there, played by Faye Masterson. Good for her.on. Yeah.

Yeah. And then... Cruz is, like, he's still in the fun flirtation mode with her when she's like, I gotta tell you something. He's trying to, like, get that innocence

that sort of, like, you want to be back. And they hold on this, like, sort of high angle, over the shoulder shot of him getting the news and he's grinning like a fucking doofus

because he thinks she's going to tell him something salacious and him just being stuck there with this dumb smirk on his face like a fucking goober while she drops

the HIV bomb. And it's like, he knows he didn't sleep with her. He knows he isn't contagious, but it's this immediate like sliding door. But it's also this immediate of like,

like, fuck, like I really need to think about what I have going with my life. Like what I need to get, like we need to go have a conversation. Just this like very sobering splash of reality of, you know, the idea of mysterious sex partners. It's like, no, they have lives and problems and struggles. And some of those struggles are created by sex.

You can't just go around and fuck people. Tom Cruise. Yeah, I mean, it's not, it's not anti, like a sex negative movie, but it is saying that like you fuck around, you find out.

Like things, choices that you make in life have consequences. Which was the one title for this movie, Fuck Around and Find Out. It was, it was. That was the title

for like 30 years. Then it just changed to The Last Minute. But like the things, the choices you make have these, these like far-reaching complications and consequences that you will never really be able to know and that there are those

that come from you know binding yourself to another person in a relationship and there are those that come from uh doing the opposite these people exist beyond just being objects of your desire these these signposts of temptation whether you give in to them or not. Yes. And then, of course, the last thing before he goes to see Ziegler is that he finds Mandy's body. Mandy, the person from the bathroom at the start of the movie. And so then he goes to see Ziegler. And this is really my favorite scene.

Wait, what about the walking in the piano when he's getting followed? Yeah, when he's getting followed. It's pretty good. Dude. Dude. If I was walking by myself and you heard that piano heard that piano i would shit my fucking leg any is standing

behind you on a little piano they're only playing brown notes yeah truly um yeah yeah and there's uh what was i gonna say the the morgue right and there's that moment where he like leans in to kiss her maybe yeah like and he stops, but it's this like really in dialogue with the reality or lack thereof in the situation. Like he's trying to force himself into feeling a realness that didn't come through to him when he saw that she had died in the paper.

And like there's, it's really. On the double header with hearing the domino thing where it's like he doesn't even hear that from her. She immediately becomes an abstraction to him. He knows he's probably never going to see her again now this other woman is dead he can never speak to her again you know I love the cutaway to the morgue worker who's just like

looking down at the floor being just like right he needs Ziegler to tell him not to worry about it right that's what I love about this scene so much he needs to be relieved of this and he wants answers and he's fucked up, but he also, he kind of wants Ziegler to be like,

look, that line where he's like, her door was locked from the inside, cops said suicide. And you're like, oh wow, you really know the specifics of this case. Yeah. Like she died like eight minutes ago. Yeah, what the fuck?

She's a junkie, you know. You saw me injecting shit into her and then fucking her brains out podcasting her brains it's so snowball he's so scary and effective in this scene him like um you know playing with a pool table we're fucking sydney pollack just explains to you how it is yes it's just one of the greatest special effects in the last 40 years of one of the creepiest things is like he's playing pool by himself and he's just like, Tom Cruise is like, I'll just watch.

And it's like these two adult men of like vast power, one of them in particular, are just like, watch me play this. He's also like, do you play? And he's like, no, not really. This rich person thing of like, I guess I just need to have a billiards table. I guess I've got so many damn rooms. Why don't there should be a billiards room?

Just like Mr. Body from Clue. I got to be better than Mr. Body. They should call Sidney Pollack Mr. Body. They should have called him. Well, he's got one. I do just watch this and I'm like, can I just like jump forward 20 years? You're really desperate to get that Pollack barrel. As an actor, I don't want to be fucking 33.

I want to be 55. I'm not taking for granted that I'm just going to age magically into that bearish body that he's got. I'm going taking for granted that I'm just going to age magically into that bearish body that he's got. I'm going to have to work for it. You're going to have to work for it. That's the thing that's like it's hard work I don't want to go through.

He played a lot of golf, right? You know, I feel like he was one of those guys who did kind of like rich guy activities. Yeah, maybe he had really strong forearms. Yeah, right, right. This scene,

the energy of this scene, the rhythms of this scene, it's like there is that sort of magic to it where it feels like a piece of music and it just, there is that sort of magic to it where it feels like a piece of music and it's just it all flows so beautifully and you remember like you would a great song like every line from it it sort of bonds to your memory in a way that he's just

he's incredible it's it's so inscrutable because it does feel like he's shifting between like you need to believe me i'm actually giving you the truth now and sometimes emphatically explain something to him that he knows is what cruz wants to hear so that he doesn't have to worry about this anymore exactly just to get it out absolutely feels like pollock knows this is bullshit and knows that he knows it's bullshit but now i've given you the the ability to deny it because he's he's saying like it was a charade and also she just went and died of an overdose minutes later. And he's just sort of like, am I supposed to buy that?

I believe him. And that's the thing. He's such an effective actor. Because he wants to do the same thing that Bill was doing in his own way in less violent terms earlier in the movie, which is be the hero. Be like the person who's pulling him up

saying like, it's okay, I'm saving you. And also, you know, exert power over him and says, you know, I'm scaring the shit out of you at the same time and Nick is fine but that's the thing he's also he's like Nick is fine that prick yeah but then he's also like you don't understand how scary these people are right and so I get I'm what

am I supposed to walk out of there thinking like oh yeah like they're the scariest people on earth but if you betray them like no big deal they'll rough you up a little bit maybe and so when he gets home and he sees the mask on the pillow and he starts crying, we're just fucking, you know.

Right, because Razorbears charged him extra for the missing mask. He sure did. $25 is a pretty good price. Yeah, it's a nice mask. That mask fucking looked great. I know, that's an ornate mask. Yeah, but, you know, it probably fell off the back of a truck. A Venetian mask truck.

Knowing that guy. Why is the mask there? Like, it doesn't matter. Like, it's just this sort of, like, perfect, you know, like, moment of awareness and shame. You don't really think about her, like, digging around the apartment and, like, looking for, you know, like, looking for stuff for Christmas. It doesn't matter. But him crying is just so cathartic. And like, what could she, what would you infer if you came home

and saw a mask, you know, on your partner's, or you like, you know, you found that mask in your partner's space, in your apartment.

Like, what would you? I would have some very excited questions. Tell me all about it. What would you do? You'd be like Griffin when his parents came home

from a movie when he was a kid. Tell me all about it. Tell me everything. It truly, I would remember if they'd go out for a movie night and it was like, Tell me everything. Truly, I would remember if they'd go out for a movie night and it was like,

I'm supposed to be in bed at this point. The movie's long. I would stay awake just so I could get the 15-minute rundown of what's your feeling on Titanic. Yeah. But that's not Nicole Kidman's vibe in this scene, I would say.

She has questions. She has concerns. But there is I love that that cut so much when she goes just tell me everything and then it's like

a hard cut to her face like completely bloodshot having been up all night waiting for their daughter to wake up and be like what is happening

her daughter by the way their daughter blissfully oblivious I was gonna say it's funny how much of a non-presence she is in this movie but you also have to imagine

logistically much like the AI thing. They have to do it early. Right, we have to do it early, and we gotta just get a couple things with the daughter. This daughter can't be 13 years old. She graduated from college by the time they were filming. They go to F.A.O. Schwartz. Right, which is

what's the name of this? Hemings? It's, no, Hanley's. Hanley's, sorry. Yeah, isn't it Han, no, Hanley's. Hanley's, sorry. Yeah, isn't it Hanley's? I think it's Hanley's, yeah. But doubling for F.A.O. Schwartz. I love that there were Spice Girls balls in the back. Hanley's.

Sorry, I did go, Hanley's is the British F.A.O. Schwartz. I'm sure it's awful now, but like, when I was a kid, I remember my dad being like, it's the most famous toy store in Britain. Yeah, right. And obviously, F.A.O. Schwartz doesn't exist in the form it did back then, but it's a place that is very distinctive.

Iconographic has been used in movies like Big. You know that this doesn't look anything like F.A.O. Schwartz. No, it looks like him. Yeah, you're right. There are the Spice Girls dolls in the background,

which I love because it's one of the only things that stamps this movie to a specific period in time culturally. When they're having the pot fight and she gets up and starts like yelling at him, on the bookcase behind her, there's like her stereo system novelization.

But they're also like six VHS tapes. And I was scrubbing through it trying to make out that you couldn't. I couldn't. And I was like, I can tell it's a fucking Paramount. I can see the typeface. I almost thought one of them was Rain Man. And I was like, is he putting a cruise movie in there by on purpose but i couldn't make out what they were 2001 soundtrack in yes yeah i just love the spice girls thing is the one concrete thing where you're like this is where they stay in a relationship you knew they were gonna last forever he did he was like these guys are never breaking up

uh just like tom cruise and nicole kidman. And all the orgy rooms were actually named. It was the ginger room. The spice room. The baby. Well, not the baby room. That's distressing. David. All right. Well, it's weird that there's baby spice. Okay?

Let's be honest. Yeah. That was weird. And everyone seemed to sort of just fucking not think about it. It doesn't act like a baby. Well, that's why it was weird. It was like, what am I supposed to take away from this? Yeah.

Anyway, he apologizes. He's told her everything at this point we're assuming i mean he says he's gonna tell her everything right it would be great if there was actually a scene where he was like and then there was this slovenian guy she smokes another choice she's like dude this is crazy this movie you did this all at one night balera form is the what form of chimera? You ripped a hundred dollar bill, you asshole. That's the one part she was really disgusted. I thought we raised you better than that. Did you give him tape?

So he had to then go home, buy tape, re-tape it himself. I didn't have any tape on me. I only had hundreds. That's what the sequel should pick up on. That guy. No, the sequel should, and the last shot of the post-credits should be like Airplane, where he's like,

I'm going to give this guy ten more minutes. That would be funny. There should be a post-credits. Yeah, like, he goes back to the cabbie after he leaves the orgy, and the cabbie's like, so how was it? Right. What are they doing? There's something you need to do as soon as possible. What's that fuck

one of the great final which is shot which a detail I love so much is that it's one of the only scenes in the movie and one of the rare scenes

in Kubrick's filmography that he shoots just very standard over the shoulder coverage and it's sort of this return to normalcy in a way of like a back to

you know happy upper class marriage you know without any funny business going on. But I also feel like this movie has more organic compositions than Kubrick had been trending, right?

You look at like, I mean, Full Metal Jacket right before this, and it's like everything is so perfectly composed and symmetrical and tight and sharp and clean. And it's like this movie is fuzzier. It's looser. You know, he briefly considered using the Barry Lyndon lenses for this because he knew he wanted to have a similar lighting scheme.

The warm glow. And it was partially that like film speeds had increased so much that the lenses weren't appropriate anymore. But the other thing was he was like, I want to have camera movements. I want to be looser in this. I don't want to have to be like constrained by these technical limitations. I remember a film teacher saying to me

at a time where I still thought, oh, the line on this movie is that it sucks and anyone who thinks it's good is an idiot because I was an idiot. Her saying like, I don't really like Kubrick because I find his stuff too hermetic and controlled. You know, the obvious Kubrick complaint

that people throw out. And she's like, the one I like is Eyes Wide Shut because it's the only one of his movies that doesn't just feel like a series of photographs to me. And I've always thought about that where it does feel like his most sort of organic movie since The Killing. Yeah, I can see that.

I also just want to say that my read on the end of the movie is not that it's a return to normal necessarily. I mean, there's like a feeling of destruction, a feeling of renewal. It reminds me a lot like the more recent analog I think of is the ending of Before Midnight of like we are coming to grips about what it means to be together as a couple. Right. And the ins and outs that the fact that desire exists in marriage and outside of marriage and this idea that like, you know, we are still being people, but we are going to sort of choose to forge ahead, knowing the perils involved. Like any successful marriage is essentially like six or seven different marriages. When people stay married for decades, they talk about that. They're like every seven years,

the whole structure of the relationship changes. And, you know, if you're lucky, when you both change, you find a new way to be sympathical in your current form. But it's also a film sort of about how the mist, when you are just with one person for the rest of your adult life, every small corner of darkness, every shadow is magnified so large. Every mysterious element that you discover and would have assumed didn't exist because you knew your partner inside and out is suddenly like a cataclysmic urgency. And, you know, that is sort of the void that he gets trapped in.

Wait, you think people can pick up on that stuff? Over time? You're safe, Ben. You're safe. Don't worry. Comes out? That Bones hat

is pulling all the attention. Perfect. No one's looking at you guys. Eyes Wide Shut, five out of five, A+. Six out of five. plus 6 out of 5 that's my final take

yeah I don't know if it's my favorite or Barry Lyndon is my favorite I'm giving this the edge it's got seniority for you as well it does

I mean who knows if Barry Lyndon will unfold for me in further viewings in a different way but this it's what you said earlier like it's that thing

that is so rare where you find a movie that it feels like every time you come to it, you find new things in it, both because you've changed and there are so many different prisms at which to view the thing. It's kind of that's that tier of like the greatest films are the ones in which it will mean something different to you any time you watch it based on what mood you're in, where you are in your life, all that sort of stuff. It explains to you, back to you, sort of where you are in your life and what you've become.

And that is, I think, an added value, like a utilitarian value. It remembers for you who you are and who you were and who you've been. It's fascinating for that. It's an incredible film. A stat I will remember forever is that 1999, obviously, this historic year for American film, right? This sort of, not last gasp, but this big auteur year where movies were at the center of the cultural discourse and everything. But 99, a particularly big blockbuster summer, right? It was a summer with, like, just beloved populist favorites.

right? It was a summer with like just beloved populist favorites. And even things like Phantom Menace that were, you know, complicated. Massive, massive success, obviously. The stat I remember was that summer was so successful. Eyes Wide Shut was only one of two movies

to open between May and August that opened at number one and didn't hit $100 million. Like, final gross, right? Yeah, yeah. Every other film that opened to number one and didn't hit a hundred million dollars. Like, final gross, right? Yeah, yeah. Every other film

that opened to number one was like soaring to success. It sank quite quickly. Can you name the other one? What's the other one? The Haunting. The two Todd Field movies. Yeah.

But it spoke, in both cases, there was like hype, great trailer, people saw it, disappointed, don't go see it. And similar quality movies

with similar care. And movies had longer legs back then. No, they did. But also, a lot of the movies Great trailer. People saw it. Disappointed. Don't go see it. And similar quality movies with similar care behind the camera. And movies had longer legs back then. No, they did. But also, a lot of the movies we're talking about

are genuine. Blair Witch, Runaway Bride, Sixth Sense, Phantom Menace. Okay, okay, okay. Let's play the box office game. Okay.

July 16th, 1999. Yeah. Eyes Wide Shut number one. $21 million. I mean, not nothing. No, and once again, sold on nothing other than what the fuck is this movie.

But it is cursed. The two biggest movie stars, this on nothing other than what the fuck is this movie? But it is crude. The two biggest movie stars, this elusive master filmmaker who's dead. Yeah. And what did he leave behind? There's a lot of hype. Very elusive.

The ultimate elusiveness. Just a true mystery box movie. Yeah, opening at 21 million. Very healthy. Insane to imagine a movie like this having this level of excitement. A 21 million dollar opening.

A 21 million dollar opening. I mean, Don't Worry Darling is kind of... It is the analog. It is the closest comparison. It is where you're just like, everyone's just so obsessed by the idea of what happened with this fucking movie.

What is this fucking thing? And I imagine that movie will also drop off in a similar way. I mean, there was initially, at the eight news cycles of Don't Worry Darling nonsense ago, there was a lot of talk about the sex in that movie. Yeah. It is kind of the only analog, just not an analog in terms of quality. Number two, speaking movie yeah it is kind of the only analog just not an analog number

two speaking of sex is a sexy comedy do you think stanley was like jealous of will smith having big willie weekend and was like i'm gonna have big stanley weekend july 16th is big stanley weekend yes absolutely i will hold claim on this i will release one new film every 17 years right he did famously referred himself as big stan. Big Stan. What, number two, it's a sexy comedy. American Pie? Directed by a friend of ours. It's American Pie

in its second week. Jim's dad wiggling those eyebrows. Absolutely. It's only dropped. Jim, see this eyes wide shut picture?

Jim's dad was at the orgy. Jim's dad was at, you could see his eyebrows were peeking over the mask. Oh boy, back in my day. Dropping only 28% in its second week.

It's a huge hit. Another example of this is what I'm saying. These movies, in 99, they played. They stayed in theaters. They were word-of-mouth hits. Number three is less of a word-of-mouth hit, but it was a modest hit at the time. It's new this week.

It's a horror comedy. It's a horror comedy. Idle Hands? No, that was a bomb. No, no, no. 1999. It's a horror comedy. Huh. What kind of...

You know what? I don't think I've done this before. I'm going to ask for the box office game hint. The thing I find most useful doing the box office game online. What studio released it? The studio is 20th Century Box. It's not

Ravenous. No. Ravenous made like negative $4. These are the great horror comedies of 1999. That thing was released in like a sewer on Venus. It's new this weekend. July Horror Comedy 1999. I can give you a further elaboration on its genre.

Is it like a Kevin Williamson adjacent post-Scream thing? No. Give me a further elaboration. It's a creature film. Oh, is it Lake Placid? Lake Placid. There we go. Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt,

aka The Big Three. Yes. David E. Kelly script. It's a big crock. I forget that it's as much of a comedy as it is. It is. It is a comedy, though. I mean, it's a, you know. No, it is. Kelly script. It's a big crock. I always forget that it's as much of a comedy as it is. It is. It is a comedy, though. I mean, it's a, you know.

No, it is. It is. And it was sort of like a mild hit. Yeah. Yeah. Is Deep Blue Sea the same summer? Yeah. That's August.

Yeah. What a fucking summer. And that is, that movie was congressionally mandated to be released in August. No movie has ever been more released in August than Deep Blue Sea. But that's the thing. They made the shark's brains bigger, and they got smarter.

They were like, we need every high school lifeguard who's fully cooked his brain on pot for two months before he sees Deep Blue Sea. Deep Blue Sea is one of those movies where you're like, how much are they in on the joke or not?

And Lake Placid, you're like, I'm surprised there are this many jokes. Yes, this is heavy on jokes. Yeah. Dillon Skarsgård's death scene in Deep Blue Sea is just why

his movies were offensive. LL Cool J put a song out. Deep is bluest. My head is like a shark's fin. My head is just why there's a lot of good death scenes yeah uh l cool j put a song out yeah deepest bluest my head is like a shark my head is like a shark's fin has i've i've forgotten a lot of stuff in my life talk about cooking your brain with weed but i he just pointed to sims remember my head is like a shark's fin i think about it once a year it's the most insane lyric that's ever been written down and then turned into a song. Talk about things you probably forgot in your life, Ben. Yeah. Someone dug up, you know, this will happen where people will listen to old episodes of the show and then post on social media.

Like, I listened to this episode from five years ago. The boys predicted this thing. Uh-huh. In our Mrs. Peregrine episode, you were talking about how much you liked the character that was the girl with the secret mouth in the back of her head.

Yeah. And you were like, they should have done more with her. It should have its own personality and should be nasty like a venom. You essentially pitched malignant five years earlier. You malignant.

Malignanted. I mean, should I try and get paid for that? Absolutely. Hit up James Wan. Yeah. All right. Number four, the James Wan Alright Spoiler for Malignant HBO Max famously happy to just spread money

They love paying out Yeah they love it Number four at the box office is a straight up comedy with a movie star Movie star comedy It's a movie star It's not runway Been out for a month No

Oh okay so it's a June It's a June comedy with a major movie star No No that's August It's made 134 million dollars Is it Not movie star? No. No, that's August. It's made $134 million. Is it Notting Hill? No. Notting Hill has made $107 million and it's been out for two months. Okay. It's not a Curie. It's not a

Williams. No. You said it's a major star, but it's a major comedy star. Yes. Is it Eddie? No. It's not Eddie. It's not a Robin. Head is like a shark's fin. It's not a Curie. LL Cool J is not in this film. Then,

Major Star... Oh, oh, oh. Is it Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me? No. That's number 11. A movie that, at the time,

had the second highest grossing opening weekend of all time. Yes. That's number 7. Okay. Number 2. Number 11. This movie is number 1

at the box office. 4. It's been out for a month. Yes. It's up to 130. Yep. It's total gross is 16 month. Yes. It's up to 130. Yep. Its total gross is 163. Oh, it's Big Daddy.

Big Daddy. Big Daddy. With Adam Sandler. That movie got the Jon Stewart bump. Yes. Much like The Faculty. Yeah, kind of a... I just remember it being so fucking treacly at the end.

But that's sort of the Sandler thing. Works for me. I think it's a good balance of it. I haven't seen it in a long time. You've also talked about, I mean,

since becoming a father, not having rewatched it, but how much... You're becoming a big daddy. Since becoming... You are a big daddy. Yeah. One must admit.

I won't lie. Look at the size of this lad. No, I feel like you've talked about since becoming a parent without having rewatched the movie, how much the McDonald's scene

brings in. The McDonald's scene, it's immediately what I thought of again. This is horseshit! Right. And then he starts crying because it's like, yeah, I think about that a lot. But now, of course, you can get breakfast all day at McDonald's, so the scene is irrelevant. The set-up to that scene is like, they miss it. They miss it by like 10 minutes or something. Less, and it's like he stops to tie his shoes a couple

times. He has to pee, and then he wants to give money to Buscemi's crazy eyes so it's like there are all these windows where he almost makes it and he just cannot fucking deal with letting this kid down

yeah good movie sure number five of the box office is kind of a famous flop but it still has made 94 on its way to 113 it's an action film

Wild Wild West it's Wild Wild West Big Willie Weekend because the Big Willie Weekend had recently happened a movie I was so excited for and when I saw it I was like hmm Wild Wild West. It's Wild Wild West. Big Willie weekend. Because the Big Willie weekend had recently happened. A movie I was so excited for. And when I saw it,

I was like, hmm, I guess I don't like everything. And just one of them was also like, where truly from scene one, you're like, vibes are off. It starts about as bad

as it ever gets. But Kenneth Branagh gives a really reserved and nuanced performance. Great performance. Rooted in the history and culture of the American sound.

It was confusing because I remember being in the theater and going like, did they accidentally switch to a reel of a documentary? Are we watching

a Wiseman film suddenly? Yeah, it's Ken Burns. Yeah. I got in the editing room and put a spin on it. His ears are loveless because he has no penis. He's got no hair.

Everything he builds overcompensates. He drives a giant mechanical spider. He's got the giant pneumatic pumping thing. Yes, he does. Number six,

just to give you some other ones, new this week is Rick Femmion's The Wood, which is a pretty good movie. Maybe you want to make another movie challenge.

I know. I know. Remember he was going to do The Flash for a second? He was going to do Flash. It felt like, right now he's in

the fucking Star Wars TV rotation. Yeah, which he does actually a pretty good job on those episodes. His episodes are good. I'm just like, I want him to make a movie. Number seven,

Tarzan. Yeah, fine, Phil. You'll be in my heart. I haven't seen it since theater. My family.

Number eight is a little I didn't see Tarzan because I was just like, I'm seeing Eyes Wide Shut now. Like, the Tarzan days are over. I went and saw Tarzan and was like, I feel like I'm ready to watch Eyes Wide Shut.

Me too. Even as a baby. Why am I doing this? I was just a baby who likes dumb baby shit. I was like... Number eight is a little film called Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace. Number nine is... It's weird that they never made a sequel to that, considering how big of a hit it was.

Number nine is a genre of movie from the 90s you know like Eyes Wide Shut the nasty sort of crime thriller The General's Daughter is the movie one of those movies where it's like this is like just kind of 20% nastier than it could be 10 years ago also that movie is nastier than it needs to be

it is it's a little too nasty but a movie that made 100 million dollars 99 was just like everything was hitting. And this is the thing. It's number nine and it's made 87. It's going to get to 102. Yeah. It's just going to fucking churn away.

These movies like legged it out for four months and you're seeing so many films. Like none of these films are cannibalizing each other. Number 10, new this week, Muppets from Space. Horrible opening. Yeah. It's opening below the fifth weekend of The General's Daughter.

That's how bad. A bad film. I think a bad film. It's the only Muppet movie I don't like. The only other interesting thing about this box office is that new this week on 27 screens making $1.5 million. Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project. Holy shit. Holy shit. Wow. I was about to get real obsessed with that movie. That movie.

Fucking rules. Sort of the opposite of a blank check movie, and we would never do those careers, but we should just do it. We could do the Blair Witch trilogy on Patreon. That would be fun to do.

Yes. As a Patreon, you guys could recreate the Blair Witch project. I wonder what it would be like. Oh, the bits. The blank check project. I actually might be too scared of that.

Yeah. Like if we went in the woods and Ben was like, whatever, making weird noises outside the tent. if like we went in the woods and Ben was like, whatever, making weird noises outside the tent. You know how the whole thing with that movie was like, they made this for only $40,000.

Right. What if we gave ourselves the opposite challenge? We have to figure out a way to make our episode expensive enough that it costs $40,000. The only thing left to do is rank Stanley Kubrick

and then I really have to go. And we also have to figure out what we're saying. Oh, yeah. We got to make Avatar plans. We're going to be talking Tar soon. Are you guys going back to Pandora? Well, I guess go. And we also have to figure out when we're seeing Avatar. Oh, yeah, we've got to make Avatar plans. We're going to be talking TAR soon. Are you guys going back to Pandora? Well, I guess at this point, we'll have already come out.

It'll have already happened. We're going to be on the big picture to talk Avatar. So we want to go see it before we do that. We've got to go back to Pandora. I'm trying to convince David to go see it in 4DX. I think we can do that. Well, we have to do it in the daytime. That's all.

Okay, we'll do it. We'll make the plans right after this. We're going to do it right after this. I have 40x passes burning a hole in my wallet. I don't even know what that means, but okay. Just a minute.

When I saw Hobbs and Shaw, the spritzer wasn't working. Okay. I'm going to give you my Kubrick. I finally did the thing I should have been doing this entire time where I've been keeping

the fucking letterbox list and updating after every episode. All right. So I have a proper list that I'm not making up on the fly. Mm-hmm. Okay. Do yours first. You want me to do first? I'm not making up on the fly. Mm-hmm. Okay. Do yours first.

You want me to do first? Yeah, why not? Number 13, Fear and Desire. Although I do agree with the sort of context I think we did not give it in the episode that Alex Raspary

put in our head where it's like, it is important for that film to exist to humanize him, to make his other accomplishments more impressive because it's not like this guy was just touched with genius

and knew how to make movies better than everyone else. Ben, did we get to three hours? Yeah, we're over three hours for fuck's sake. Number 12, Lolita. Yes. Number 11, Killer's Kiss. Yeah. Number 10, Spartacus.

We have the same bottom four. Okay, now here's where we're going to deep it. Okay. Number 9, Dr. Strangelover, How I Learned to Stop Working. Wow, you have it at nine. I just don't love that movie. Wow. It's not one of my things. Okay. Number nine, Dr. Strangelover, How I Learned to Stop Working. Wow, you have it at nine? I just don't love that movie. Wow.

It's not one of my things. Okay. Number eight, The Killing. Me too. Number seven, Full Metal Jacket.

Okay. Number six, Clockwork Orange. Mm-hmm. Number five, Paths of Glory. Number four, 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Number three, The Shining. Number two, Barry Lyndon. Number one, Darkman. Sorry, Eyes Wide Shut.

We have very similar lists. Yeah. I imagine just... I'll do mine top to bottom just to... Jacket. Dr. Strange Love. But really, I'm one Barry Lyndon. Yeah. Two Eyes Wide Shut.

Three, 2001. Four, The Shining. So we have the same top four. Right. I agree. Yeah. Five, Dr. Strange Love. Yeah.

Six, Paths of Glory. Seven, Clockwork Orange. Eight, The The Killing, Nine Full Metal Jacket Ten Spartacus, Eleven Kills Kiss Twelve of the Later, Thirteen Kills Desire Killing disrespect Pretty good to put it below Clockwork Orange What are you talking about? It's a great movie

Killing rules Yeah, it's great I'm not beefing with The bottom three it's a stanley kubrick list i'm not putting it like below fucking dennis dugan's movies i like that barry's at your top yeah that's that's for me this miniseries i i got to discover that fucking movie discovered it's like one of my Irish liar movies of all time. Yeah. I'm going to dress up like fucking Barry for Halloween. You should.

Every year. Hell yeah, Ben. Thank you. I'm sure we talked about extensively in that episode, which is the one we haven't recorded yet,

but the experience of getting to watch Ben watch Barry Lyndon was my movie-going experience of the decade. That rules. I wish it had been there. I don't even think

I care about my Stanley Kubrick list, so I'll just say Eyes Wide Shut is number one. The end. Great. Well, what do you got? I mean, the rest is all nonsense. It doesn't matter.

I have, like, Eyes, 2001, Shining, Barry Lyndon, The Killing, Strange Love, Baz the Glory, Full Metal Jacket, Clark Orange, Lolita, Killer's Kiss,

Sporadicus, Fear and Desire. Wow. Sporadicus below Killer's Kiss? Nah. Olivier's in that thing. He was young. He was trying. Sure. Sporadicus doesn't and desire. Wow, sporadicus below killer's kiss? Olivier's in that thing. Sporadicus doesn't do much from bad to good. It's really arbitrary to me after. We're done, but we should announce

our next. And we're done with Stan the Man Kubrick, although we're not quite done because we do have to do Barry Lyndon, so it doesn't feel totally over. Your time, you listening to this. For us, we are done on this. Lyndon's the one we doesn't feel totally over. Your time you listening to this. For us we are done on this. Lyndon's the one we haven't done for schedule. Slightly exhausting but in

sort of increasingly rewarding journey I would say. Yeah look I certainly feel like I came to a very different place in my relationship to Stan Lee and his movies than I did going into this. I wasn't dreading doing this but I was very open about the fact that he's like not one my guys, and I think

we've talked about this, but episodes recorded wildly out of order. If it feels like the arc of my relationship to him is changing in a backwards and forwards way, it's for that reason. But I feel like I have a much greater appreciation of him, especially with a lot of help to JJ, truly

helping to demystify a lot of the sort of mythology around him that I always found very exhausting. True. Shout out to JJ. Yeah. And now you guys are finally entering the Hong Seng Sooniverse? No.

Oh my God, imagine. Soon, we will. I really love that one slow zoom, to be clear. I love Hong Seng Soon. No, actually, next week, we are talking Fate Woman. Yes.

That's going to be our palette cleanser in between miniseries. It's arriving right at the right time. We have two palette cleansers? Just the one because Avatar is at the end of the year. Oh, sure. On the other side of it. Right.

But then after Fablemans, we're going to talk about the career of a great animator who has a new movie coming out. And we've long wanted to do him and now it's time to do him, right? Kind of the Stanley Kubrick of animation that it's been... It's taken him a long time. 13 years since his last film? Yes. His last film made an unqualified triumph.

Yeah, you know. He made Coraline.. Yeah, you know. We're doing Selick. The reason we didn't do Nightmare Before Christmas four years ago is because we were waiting for this. Yes! Henry Selick, five films. Five? Five. Yes. Nightmare, James,

Monkeybone, Coraline Wendell. They won't let me... They don't like the idea of recording Nightmare in a hot topic. No, but I do want to record it in the giant peach. Inside a giant peach, yes. And then, of course,

yeah, no, Wendell and Wild, which is probably about to drop on Netflix right now-ish in mid-November. No, it's kind of Halloween. I think it'll all work out. Okay, so it's already on Netflix. So in celebration of that, we're doing Celic.

Yes. Yes. And then we're going to do something else. Finally a new film, giving you a nightmare for Christmas in the quarter between Halloween and Christmas. Mm-hmm.

It'll be fun. We're doing someone else, but yes, with a couple interruptions, Fablemans and Avatar. Fablemans before Avatar in the middle. Correct. And then, you know,

next year we're going to have, you know, Knock at the Cabin. We're going to have a... You want to do Mission Impossible on the main feed, it looks like. Because we've covered all the McQuarrie's. I think we have to. We don't have to, but I'm with it. I think we have to.

We've got Oppenheimer. Yes. We've got Aquaman 2. We might hear from the Maestro. We might ride in the Ferrari. I think that might be 2024. It's filming right now. It is. It depends how long it takes to edit. It's messed up that you guys aren't going to be going onto the high seas with Napoleon

because you've never done Ridley Scott. That feels like something that would be so up your alley. But isn't that maybe now coming out this year? I think a lot of eyebrows. No, it's coming out next year. Okay. No, that was not going to happen. It could because Ridley Scott does not waste any time.

Ridley Scott just filmed Napoleon 2 while we had this conversation. Ben, just a quick question. Have you been monkey boned before? Yeah. I'm glad we're doing that right during this Fraser Sons too. I know.

Is that going to be the first Harry Knowles cameo that you guys have discussed? Honestly, I actually don't think it is. I think we've done one other movie. I don't know. He's in Killer's Kiss. I have an announcement. Okay.

This is episode 401. Oh, that's true. We forgot to acknowledge this on the Full Metal Jacket episode because we didn't know. But yeah, that was the 400th episode. This is 401. Eyes Wide Shut filming for 400 days. Exactly.

And this podcast recording for 400 minutes. We were just talking before we started recording about how we used to record this podcast in a closet. We sure did.

Yes. And now we're recording in our own office and I just wanted to say it's been fun. Yes. It's been fun.

Getting all the getting's good. This office rules. No, we'll keep doing the show. We got the next, we got the first half of 2023 mapped out already. I think it's a corker.

We sure do for our sins and it is a corker. I'll say this. It's a thing we often do where, you know, post March Madness winner when we kickstart a new year, David and I often come to the table

and go, you pick one, I pick one. We both knock a long dreamed upon movie miniseries off of our list, right? You're wearing robes, there's a guy pounding his staff on the ground. There's a David pick and a Griffin pick, and they're two, I think, long-promised filmmakers on this show.

I don't think, I know. So we'll reveal that later. But that's it. We're done. Fucking great movie. I can't wait to watch it. David doesn't quite like it as much as I do. I mean, I like it as much as you do. I don't know.

But it's a keeper. It's the thing we didn't get to talk about that much in this episode of Jewish filmmakers who still don't really want to put their Jewishness on screen. The Sotho thing is a whole podcast in there. He puts it on screen in The Fablemans, but it's interesting when he does stuff for them. It's just interesting to puts it on screen in the fablemans but it's interesting it's just interesting to have armageddon time

and fablemans and have both these guys being like look we're not gonna cast two jewish it's not like my parents were jewish yeah come on

alright we're done we want people to watch this we have to book avatar we're done okay folks thank you all for listening please remember to rate

review and subscribe thanks to marie bardy bardy bardy for doing our social media and helping produce the show in a myriad of other ways. Thank you, Aunt Marie Poop Pee Pee. Poop Pee Pee forever.

Back and forth. Oh, that's a new nickname. Poop Pee Pee? Yeah, for Marie. Yeah, I'm sure she'll love that. We'll hear from Marie six weeks from now when she's listening to this edit saying, cut it out.

I don't want people tweeting poop pee pee at me. Or double it. She loves it. Thank you to JJ Birch who really built some massive tomes for this miniseries. But it turns out there's a lot of writing about Stanley Kubrick. Thank you to Pat Reynolds, Joe Bone for our artwork. AJ McKee and Alex

Barron for editing. Lee Montgomery, the Great American Owl for our theme song. Go to blankcheckpod.com for some links to Montgomery, the great American, all for our theme song. Go to BlankCheckPod.com for some links to some real nerdy shit, including the Patreon Blank Check special features. Tune in next week

for the Fablemans, as we said, and then Henry Selick after that. And as always, I think David's ready to go back to Pandora and 4DX.