Blank Check with Griffin & David - Finding Nemo with Rebecca Alter

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

Welcome to PODD-C, our series on the films of Pixar stalwart Andrew Stanton! This week, we're kicking off with 2003's Finding Nemo, a film that ushered in nearly two decades of Ellen DeGeneres supremacy and made millions of children remember the exact address of one "P. Sherman." Writer Rebecca Alter joins us to chat about Nemo's immaculate screenplay, the Finding Nemo attractions within Disney Parks, and the under-the-sea craze that had Nemo, Spongebob, and Shark Tale all hitting at the same time. Pixar obsessives - rejoice! Griffin really gets to nerd out here. Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guess what? Podcasts? I recorded one. And it was three and a half hours long. Three and a half hours long? Yep. Oh, because Sandy Plankton said they only run two hours tops. Sandy Plankton?

You think I would do an entire podcast and not know as much as Sandy Blankton? It was three and a half hours, not two. Very good. So it's the end of the movie. Yeah, it's one of the last lines. It makes me cry. It does makes me cry too. There's like five different moments in this film.

that at very least get me right up onto the edge on the brink of the tears. To me, the big moment is just crashing his age. That's the moment that gets me. That's the one? Yes. Interesting. Beautiful moment. It's so beautiful. This movie is just filled with these little grace notes that are, I just think, so elegant,

that are, like, funny and charming and don't feel like they're hitting too hard. I agree. It is, in my opinion, this is, like, one of those movies that should be taught in every kind of, like, conventional Hollywood. Sort of storytelling lab or whatever. Yeah, because it's just, it is an incredible set-up payoff movie. Another thing that's filled with Grace notes is the notebook of the character, the main character from Project Hail Mary.

Oh, because his name is Riland Grace. I think there's not enough discussion of the fact that Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace. Riland Grace. Because it's a Hail Mary full of grace, I believe, is the... Jesus Christ. I think that's what Andy Weir, who's, in my opinion, a master of subtlety. is going for there. I enjoy that movie greatly, and I think I'm

now forced by law to knock it down a star now that you've explained that to me. I mean, it's just my read on it. I mean, look, why is it called Tinder? Why is it called Tinder? Because you get matches. And it's one of those things that I tell people all the time and they're like, that can't be true.

And I'm like, that's literally why it's called that. Unfortunately, I came up with that name in 2012. I am required by law to go onto the app store and knock Tinder down a star as well. Because famously you rated it five stars in the app Perfect app. Only good things have ever come of it.

In my mind, there are only a few perfect apps. Facebook, Twitter. X. But yeah. Yes. Truth social. Truth social. Very good. I count Twitter and X as two separate apps

and both of them get five stars for me. It's Terminator versus Terminator 2. Right. X, I wish I could give it six stars. That's the problem. They did. I'm just saying that to invoke another Albert Brooks film, everyone made a fucking meal out of, you're telling me Emma Mackey is Ella McKay.

We've gone too far. No one's saying, really, in this day and age, in this economy, Ryan Gosling is Riland Grace. Rhineland. Oh, you can't spell one without the other. They're just very similar. It's weird. What's the, oh, Rocky.

The rock character. called Rocky. Yeah. That was also one of our biggest movie stars. I would say now he's maybe top 10, RenTrack. What was Tony Erdman called? What was Tony Erdman called? Sandra Heller.

You know, it'd be funny if she's just called Tony Erdman. I know that's not her name in that movie either. Yeah, it's the dad's character's name. I know. What's her name in the movie? It'd be funny if she was just like, hello, I'm Tony Erdman. I run space over here. Sandy Heller?

Yeah. I do think now we need to have her singing. every movie. I agree. Look, I mean, I assumed that was a reference to, you know, to Tony Irman, right? That's Lorda Miller being cute having her do karaoke and I thought that was fun. And also being like, hey, you know, she does this in a movie. It kind of like knocks everyone's socks off. That's an effective move that we've identified that 90, 9% of the audience won't have seen. Like, we all sit there pat ourselves on the back going like, oh, interesting Tony Erdman reference. Maybe they should do Tony Erdman in IMAX.

Wasn't there going to be an ill-fated American Tony Erdman? Lina Dunham. Lina Dunham. Two chillest stars. You were wrong. Lena Dunham was writing and directing Kristen Wig was going to co-star with Jack Nicholson. I didn't actually know that Wig was involved. I mean, the weird thing about that is it's like, don't do that.

But I'm like, those are the people to pick, I suppose. It's also a movie. I would say on paper, Force Major had this, but downhill didn't nail this, where you're like, there is a version of this premise that works as a much broader studio comedy I would not resent you trying to remake it and just doing the more obvious version of it Maybe don't make it two hours and 40 minutes long or whatever

They have the scene where they all get naked? Yeah, Nicholson was going to show a lot of dick That's what I heard But Tony Irvin's the one who doesn't get naked in that scene, right? Because does he show up in the outfit, in the animal out, in the beast outfit? No, that's the very end. Yeah, that's the end. She's naked and the younger woman that he's with is naked.

Yeah, and the boss is. The boss shows up. Right, the boss is naked. Maybe he's not naked. I think Tony Erdman, yeah. Do you know that the younger naked woman, and I already resent framing it this way. Dear me. Do you know that that actress?

I love Tony Erdman. So good. Do you know that that actress co-wrote Malignant. And I was like, why did that happen? Ingrid B-Soo. And then I dug deeper. She is married to James Wan. Wow.

Dang. Wow. Engaged him in 2019. Tony Urban came out in 2016. Maybe he saw it. It was like, who's this beautiful woman? And what movies could she possibly have in her head about monstrous coal creatures? It is funny that she was like, you know what I've always been thinking about? What if there was face on back of face? Yes. What if you had one extra face? One extra face. And it does martial arts. Wow, she's in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Yeah. And she's in all his movies. She's in the nun? Well, he didn't make that. But she has a screenplay credit on Malignette, right? She sure does. And that is a delightful screenplay. That's a well-written film. Another film that should be studied in schools. That's a great film. The only problem I have with that film is it came out in the deep pandemic and I kind of don't remember it is I need to rewatch it.

Yeah. You know, that was a Project Popcorn movie. I saw in theaters and I overheard one of the worst post-movie conversations I've ever had. Just two bros at the urinal saying, like, dude, is that like bad on purpose? Like, he needs to have his filmmaking license revoked. Like, how do you not understand that you're making a movie that is, like, literally bad? Right. And they just kind of kept stewing in that zone.

I have no patience. No. For people who view things like malignant in that way. You just don't deserve movies. It's not even you don't deserve nice things. You don't deserve movies. I deserve all the movies, though, including the movie, Finding Nemo. In my opinion, a perfect film.

Yeah, I almost think we don't deserve it as humanity. I think it's the Tinder of movies. Did we deserve it in 2013? I mean, 2003. We needed it in 2003. I don't know if we deserved it. It was like the dark night. We were in Iraq.

It was the hero we needed, not the hero we deserved. We were in Iraq. I was 17 years old. I saw this film in America. I was here on vacation. On a holiday. On holiday, I saw it by myself, I'm pretty sure, at the Regal Union Square. And I'm sure you spent the entire movie fuming.

Oh, yes? At the consideration it showed towards the Australian people. Oh my God, I didn't even make the connection. Why do these fucking fish want to go to Sydney? A David Australian corner. It's a lowless land. I would say this movie does not make Australian humans look good. The only two speaking Australians are the dentist and the granddaughter or whatever.

They're both a little villainous. The dentist is a fun guy. He's kind of fun. I guess he's sort of... He's kind of the classic dentist. I think the humor of that is really good where he's like, Ah, you do it? And he just, like, tortures people all day.

Now, David's whipping the stereotypes back up. Well, that's what he talks like. Sure. Oh, you know, it might. Yeah. Do you think the dentist should realize what's going on with Darland stop giving her fish? I guess he doesn't know the fish talk.

This is the thing I really like. He doesn't know that, like, Alice and Janie could voice one of these things. No. It's the thing I really like about the Toy Story, certainly the first two. Toy Story One has this. This has this. Some of the Pixar movies have this. But this is a movie.

in which no one is consciously a villain. Yeah. Yeah. I guess you're right. Because like... The conflict isn't... Even the sharks are nice. Yes.

And the anglerfish doesn't really have consciousness. That's like not a sentient fish. Although Becca, good point. Like, what's up with that? Why doesn't he? Well, there's also, we learn that they... There exists in the ocean petting zoos with snails. Yes.

So snails aren't people, but then like little... There is a cast system. I love when a Pixar movie just has a fun joke because they're like, that's a fun joke. And then like 20 years later, I'm like, but I don't, how does this fit into their theory of consciousness? Yeah, this works into the implications of like they're being a cars pope. David, David, I can explain it. It's very easy. The witch from Brave carved 20 wooden sculptures, each of them given life.

Are they still doing that with like, you know, like Elio will come out and they're like, hey, how do we fit this into our grand Pixar unified theory? Well, LIA just exists, like, in present day Earth and present day space. Yeah, I guess recently they've been kind of hitting... Here, Griff, let me tell you something. And then we'll introduce the show. Okay, I just want to tell you one thing, okay? I was at the bar last week with my friend Caitlin, co-host of Hits Different, my baseball podcast. A secret podcast.

It's not a secret. I want everyone to listen to it. Watching the Mets game. And then they're like, hey, we're doing trivia. You know, hey, you want to do treat. They, like, they have a sheet. This is kind of how you and I became... This is true.

Excellent. And I was kind of like, bro, you're a sports sport. don't need tribute like pick a thing right like I'm already watching but okay and they're like there's four rounds and you get to double one of the rounds and you have to pick we'll tell you the categories now like like daily double you make it double or nothing

for the value of the points Franklin Park does it too wasn't the bar was it was 99 Rogers not Franklin Park but same idea same region and so he's like the categories are going to be like this one's music this one and then he's like the category three is animation and I said to Caitlin like we're going to double that one and Caitlin's like really and I'm like I'm pretty sure you're now

I'll be good at that yeah and it was 20 questions write down every Pixar movie, no sequels. Yeah. So write down every Pixar movie excluding the sequels. There's 20. Did you break a sweat? I didn't. I was like, okay, great. And I kept going, and I

got 18. Do you want to know the two I forgot? Then I run out of steam and I'm like, what the fuck? You know, like... Did you forget LEO? Nope. Had L.E.O. Does Lightyear count as a sequel? No. Yes. Lightyear counted as a sequel. He didn't want Light here. This is tough because I'm like, The ones that are...

Soul. Did you forget Soul? I did not forget Soul. I'll give you a hint. One is a bad and somewhat forgotten Pixar movie. Good dinosaur. Bingo. Do a dinosaur, which I've seen many times and yet still...

I was going to say, I assumed you to remember that one because it is the shorthand, easy punchline bad Pixar movie. And yet, even then the tantanimity still heard it. The other one is one of the most iconic Pixar franchises, the worst one, but nonetheless a huge one. Correct. You forgot. Isn't that crazy?

Just because like cars suck so bad that I kept me like and what? I had fucking Elio. I had soul. Where were you in 2006 that? I didn't see cars in theaters. I'll tell you that much. I still haven't seen it. You still?

That actually boggles like my daughter never got into it. Like she never, she's seen it but she never yet. Although I don't know. It hasn't really happened. I don't know. She still hasn't watched any of it. I love the concept of Lightning McQueen. I love the concept of Lightning McQueen.

I love the concept of. Mader and Bonnie and Luigi and Doc Holiday or whatever. Like, I love the concept of all these cars. I just haven't seen the movie. I'm a little surprised. It feels like a thing you would hyper fixate on because there's like a lot of rabbit holes to fall down in the Cars universe of just lines of thinking. Not even like actual things to study.

That is true. Well, I love those. Like, I'll watch a YouTube video where someone, yeah, does this thing where they connect it all and Cars is actually sci-fi post-upon. That's the stuff to me. I mean, some of that's interesting to talk about with cars. No, but it's too literal having to make it all. I just think like in the way that the way that you're saying like, oh, they have a petting zoo with snails.

Like, what does that mean? Cars has seven things like that in every single frame. Every frame. It's so true. Right. And it's not stuff that like Pixar people are digging into online. It's the kind of stuff that like William S. Burroughs would spiral over at a bar. You know what?

Maybe if it was a movie called high speed rail. Go on. Thank you. Exactly. Yeah. Maybe I just don't like this. Our culture. Wait.

The Biden video that came out yesterday. Where he's like, doesn't this guy look like Obama and he just brings a black guy on state? No, but then the thing that makes it funny. You should be standing on the other side. He looks like him just enough for it to be the funniest. Right. I mean, it's not like he brought out like an 80-year-old man or something.

Like what's going to happen. Right. You think it's just going to be like some. you know, like random person in the crowd Biden is just being senile. He didn't bring like Aaron Pierre on stage. Lanterns, they're going to solve the crime with their powers. Where are the jackets?

Mufasa? You don't need the full drum suits anymore. Just like a person. Aaron Pier was the voice of young Mufasa. He's young, well, he's like middle. He's middle Mufasa. Middle Mufasa. Right.

And then. Because young Mufasa sings my favorite song in the world. Which is called the I always wanted a bird. brother song. I always wanted a brother. You don't remember that? I'm not. I have seen Barry Jenkins'

Mufasa the Lion King. I'll admit it. It washed over me pretty fast. It didn't, I didn't really retain. I'm making you listen to the song. I've still not listened to that, watch that film.

But the trailer only had one snippet of a song. The songs, of course, written by friend of the show, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Is it the Mads-Mickleson? No, it was just, you heard them repeat.

I always wanted a brother like five times. He always wanted a brother. So it was kind of, memed. It's one of the many hooks in that song. Always wanted a brother. Bye bye is a song?

It is... Yeah, that's Mads Mikkelson's villain song. It is a little insensitive of you to invoke hooks on the Finding Email episode because of course those are the true unseen villain. Yes, man. Like Bambi. The hook. Or hook like Peter Pan.

Yeah. If he went hand fishing, hook fishing? I mean, sure. I've lost this thing to pop. on that. Yeah. This is what I'm saying? The dentist is benevolent. He's not fucking catching Nemo frying him up.

He thinks he's just like my little niece. It's nice to have fish in my thing. He says that he saved him. He's like there was this little baby clown fish all alone and I like rescued it. That's a little bit of a savior complex thing where it's like all. I mean, he was in the fucking water. He found Nemo. Sure, okay.

He saw the poster. Oh, fish found in water. Challenge accepted. But you're right. there's no real villain. The closest thing is Bruce the Great White Shark, and he has worked to overcome his villainy. But that's like a sequence.

Anglerfish is a sequence. In 100 thrilling, perfect, funny sequences. Yes, yes, exactly. In 100th thrilling, perfect, funny moments. There are contained... Self-contained conflicts within the larger conflict, which is just how do you get across the fucking ocean? I think this movie sets up so perfectly.

The moment that Nemo's taken, you just start doing the math and you're like, How could he possibly find him? It's sort of the Pixar magic of the moving truck drives away. Yeah. And Woody is but a tiny, little man. Right. How hell is he going to get wherever they're going?

I think this is the simplest and most extreme version of that, where you're just like, I don't even understand how he could begin to make contact with him, to locate where he is, to scale that distance. I'm getting emotional at you saying that, thinking about everything that Marlon and Dori accomplished. It is the movie. The moment in this film that makes me cry without fail every single time is when Nigel recounts the news that has... That's a lovely moment.

It's a lovely moment done well by Oscar winner Jeffrey Rush. Yes. It's a pelican called Nigel. And Oscar nominee Thomas Newman kind of going hard in that moment. Oh, the score. His eyes widening as Nigel's story goes down in the mix. Of his dad's heroism.

And you see him pantomiming all the things that have happened. And Nemo realizes how much his father loves him. It makes it gets me choked up just thinking. about it. Today we're talking about Finding Nemo, which is one of the most successful movies in history. What is this miniseries called? I'm telling you what it's called. Please. I was talking about it with a guest who will be coming up on this mini series. I'm not going to say. And I said, I've had this one locked and loaded in the chamber, no need to pitch. This miniseries is called, and it's not going to work when I say it out loud, but it's really going to work visually.

It will spell. This thing will spell. P-O-D-C-O-D. P-O-D. D-D. Hibon C. Mm-hmm. I love it. Pod C. I mean, what else are you going to call it? We're not going to call it,

potting neemcast. Right. Or finding podcast. Who cares? Potting casto. In the pod of a cast. Potting castee. That's what was pitched to me.

And I said, I don't think that's what's... Pod C. Pod C. Great. I love it. We're discussing here on Blank Check, the films. Pod Carter? Pod Carter.

Name it after his most famous, memorable, bloved film. You know what I also like about calling it Pod Carter? It implies that it should have been called Pod Carter of cast, and then the of cast was cut out. That is fun. It could just be podcaster, but then it would be impossible to tell what that even is.

We can't do that is. Right, right. But also, to pay respect to John Carter, it has to be the version of the title that doesn't really work. We here are discussing this summer, this lovely summer that we're, I assume, having, the films of Andrew Stanton. The six films, total, I believe?

Yes, two of them released in 2026 alone. Yes. Yes, a man after our own hearts. This is Blank Trick with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their career,

such as releasing Finding Nemo, what at the time was the highest grossing animated film in history. The highest grossing film Disney had ever released in any division. And I believe it was at the time the six. highest grossing film in history. I know you always get angry when I try to get you to I'm furious. Pull up these, what was the record at the time.

I can't. I did some research. I found fucking way back machine archived box office mojo pages. It was the sixth highest grossing film of all time. I remember when this film beat the Lion King to become the highest grossing animated film of all time. Because there was a big fight on the Oscar Watch forums about which was the sort of more worthy film for that title.

Yes. Like some people like, ah, this sucks. like this stupid, you know, fish movie, Lion King's so good. Other people are like, Lion King's over. I remember that. Nima's a fucking masterpiece.

It also was humongous overseas. Yes. In 2003, it made, I believe, $850 million worldwide. Yeah, sounds about right. It's the number two of 2003. The only movie that beats it is Return of the King

and Return the King becomes only the second film to ever make a billion. Can you name the animated films that since dethroned the movies for talking about? This is what I was trying to do. the math on, right? Because it has the record for a year. It kind of like blows the ceiling off of what an animated film can do, especially globally. And then Shrek beats it a year later. It beats the opening

weekend record. Trek 2. Trek 2. Sure. Shrek 2 beats it domestically, beats the opening weekend record. Right. Trek 2 becomes the third highest crossing film in history at the time. We love it. At the time, I think it was Titanic, Star Wars, and then Shrek 2 domestically. Of those I know my favorite. Now, I would argue this is the beginning of, I say this respectfully, the inshittification of the all-time top ten. Yeah, it just starts to be a lot of crap. It also starts to be like every year two movies enter the ten so the churn becomes so fast. Yeah.

Up until 2003, it felt like there was a ten where you're like, of course, there are two Star Wars in there. Gone with the wind. There's tight hand. Oh, it's not adjusted. Not adjusted. Oh, well, then it's a useless. metric not adjusted. You could look, you could compare the two lists, but it also felt like the unadjusted numbers

were like even unadjusted E.T is still bigger than most movies ever released. And then everything starts kind of like usurping. So Shrek to Throne, Shrek 2 to Thrones finding Nemo. And then I think Shrek 2 has it until Toy Story 3. You are correct. And then basically it becomes a sequel rally. This is the thing. Despicable Me 2.

It does well, but I think doesn't quite be Toy Story 3. And then finding Dory overtakes it. You have Dory, but what about, yeah, that's, no, Dory never overtook Toy Story 3. Although this is a little complicated because a lot of re-releases have adjusted these numbers somewhat. Sure. But I can tell you, Frozen certainly beat it. Frozen becomes the new number one. But beat Toy Story 3.

Domestically? No, worldwide. This is all worldwide. Okay, okay. I don't have domestic. Okay. This is worldwide. And then it's sort of like, do we count the Lion King remake?

This is the big question. It is animated. It's entirely animated. Computer graphics and animation. They tried to pretend it wasn't. I would argue it held the record, but only for a little bit. Yes, because Frozen 2. No, no, Lion King actually grows slightly more than Frozen 2.

And did Incredibles 2 take over at any point? Incredible 2's peak was 2. Okay. A second. But I do think. Incredibles 2 did take the domestic for a moment. Yeah. But then Inside Out 2 and Zootopia 2 and Nexia 2. Right. Naysat 2 is now the number one highest grossing animated film worldwide. It has made $2.2. And Zootopia 2 is the highest grossing American animated film. Right. And also the

best. Yeah. But this is another. I like that. This is another thing. There were very few animated sequels until Shrek 2. Theatrically released. Right. Shrek 2 helps break the taboo of like... Toy Story 2 is an outlier. The straight-to-video Disney sequel. Toy Story 2 is an outlier, of course,

bumped up from home video to theatrical. It's massive, but it doesn't overtake Lion King. And then Trek 2 is the first sequel to take the crown. And it does feel like the stigma is off of doing animated sequels. And then it's just everyone playing, like,

I don't know, it's a baton race between the It's crazy that they did rescuers down under. Yes. Especially when they did. Wasn't that, well, go ahead. No, he knows why. I'll tell you what the logic was. Right.

It was like Eisner and Katzenberg takeover. Right. And they're like, we want a sequel. They're like, we should do a sequel. That feels like a thing we should do. To like our least beloved one. No, but I think they were just kind of like rescuers is one of the only ones that makes sense for a sequel.

Truly. Most Disney movies have a pretty definitive ending. That's the thing. What's wild is they were like, it feels like good business sense to do a sequel, but also we should do a sequel that. doesn't betray the integrity of the original film. So they still were making kind of like an artistically driven story decision where they're like, well, Rescurers is a book series.

It feels more episodic. You can just send them on another mission. Every other Disney animated classic feels like a closed loop. With someone getting married or whatever. Pinocchio becomes a real boy or whatever. It was truly like people... Captain Hook is beheaded. People won't be insulted if we do rescuers, too.

It won't be betraying the sanctity. They should do Cinderella too and just... She got divorced. Well, they did two or three even straight to video. And one of them is a crazy time one. One of them is like a back to the future two. Shit. People like it.

Oh, they do. Oh, people like it. People, humans. I'm going to ask our guess. Have you seen any of the direct-to-video Cinderella's? I have not, but I'm sure I've watched some Jenny Nicholson or some such person recap them. Yes. Yes.

I think it's called a Mastitch. in time maybe. It's a something in time. And the weird thing about those. Cinderella three, a twist in time. A twist in time. Weird thing about those. They came out at the same time as all of the Barbie straight to video ones, which we're also doing some very exciting things with the same IP. This does say, unlike most direct to video sequels, this received generally positive reviews. Yeah, people like this one. So it's, maybe it's like, what's the fairy gobmother goes back in time and, like, kills Hitler or whatever. Yeah, that's why they like it. So, yeah, focus groups were really happy. about that. Do you know who wrote, or I shouldn't say wrote, but much like Malignant has a screenplay credit part of the team on many of those Barbies, 2000s animated films? Can you give a clue?

He was played by Brian Cox in a movie. I don't know. Robert McKee? Yes. Yeah. That's one of those things where Robert McKee's story, the book that everyone talks about of like, this is everything you need to learn about like. Oh, the three-act structure.

Studio, Western, you know, popcorn screenplay structure. And they'd be like, what is this guy done? Why am I listening to this guy as an authority? And you look it up and it's mostly Barbie animated movies. Where he was like a story consultant. Today we're talking about Finding Nemo. Our guest, Rebecca Alter. Becca!

Hi. Is this your main feed debut? It's my main feed debut. Wow. And I'm going to say the best movie you've been asked to cover on this show. Absolutely. I think this movie's a little better. No offense, Ben, than Look Who's Talking now.

Okay, fair enough. It's slightly more successful. Has had slightly greater cultural impact. Both talking animal movies, though. Mm-hmm. True. This is true. I'm happy to carve Elaine.

It feels like it is an interest of yours. Is that fair to say? Yeah. This is one of your beats as a journalist. I guess so. Just other Finding Nemo records, it is still the highest grossing physical media release of all time. Is that so?

The Finding Nemo DVD is like, And part of it is just it comes out at the peak of DVD as a medium. That DVD went triple platinum in the built-in minivan DVD player. True. In my mom's minivan. It's the accessibility of the video game consoles are adding DVD players. DVD players are in cars now. DVD players are in computers.

You know what else was in cars? Cars. Cars. I don't know if you guys caught this. A very insidious announcement. The baby cars? No, home entertainment. That's the most evil shit I have ever seen.

They're doing baby cars? They announced Ben and Becca, they announced this week that there is a Disney Jr. TV show that's like Muppet Babies with the Cars characters. Oh. Wait, but Lightning had never met them before. I love that you know this much about the chronology without having seen any of the films.

Well, do you know why? Why? Because I love Radiator Springs in Disney's California Adventure. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to on Earth. So I said I need to know the lore. Fellow gentlemen of the Blank Check podcast, there is going to be a good amount of theme perk talk on this episode. I regret to inform you. I warned David in advance.

Have brought like a sleeping bag. I could just like curl up under a or hammock maybe. Pour the caffeine. Hammock on the porch. You're staying wide awake for this shit. Question about the cars. Yeah. The baby cars.

Yeah. Are they wearing diapers? No, they're just kind of squeak. They're like, they're leaking oil? They just like, it's a good question. I guess. What's the term I'm looking for? Kauai.

Is that that? Yeah, Kauai. I mean, like, they just make them squished and rounder and their eyes are bigger. I mean, we'll see this with finding Dory, of course, when they have baby Dory, you know, like. What is genuinely a billion dollar idea of, like, put baby Dory at the beginning of the film. Dory small. It saved the economy. I think the most consequential thing to come out of cars is on the entire culture.

We all grew up with the little Tykes red car yellow roof. Uh-huh. That was a car. Yeah. Sometime after cars, they gave that car a face, like eyes in a face. Sure. And now kids grew up with that car being like a person. Yeah.

Car that they're inside. And I don't think that would have happened. This is not for cars. Lightning Racers looks like. It only looks like 10% cuter than the regular car. Yeah, they actually look identical. But I imagine they're going to have little kid voices. But is this suggesting that like lightning went to Radiator Springs as a child,

a new meter? Because like in cars, he's meeting them all for the first time. My understanding is that what it suggests is who gives a shit, it's going to make trillions of dollars. much like Muppet Babies, which doesn't really make sense as anything other than a what-if alternate universe. The series follows Lightning McQueen as he takes on fresh challenges and races around Radiator Springs

alongside his old pal Maider. Is it just kind of like, fuck it? Like, it's parallel. Don't worry about it. The new friends are thrill-seeking drag car pipes and mud-loving monster truck Miles. Perfect. Which is a great name for a car. I mean, it sounds like the fucking movie cast

is back. Owen Wilson, Larry the cable guy, Bonnie Hunt. So they're all going to have grown-up voices. They're recasting Paul Newman. Yeah, well, he's dead. So, I mean, that is the reason to recast him, right? I'm hearing this for the first time. Um, Fighting Nemo, best-selling DVD of all time. It's also, if you look at all the video game platforms of this moment, Game Boy Color, PS2, GameCube, it is like amongst the top 20 highest selling games on all of those platforms. It is just a movie that kind of coincides with like keek mainstream American media and the tendrils of it all just like rise to the top. We had the Shark Tale PlayStation 2 game, but not the Nemo.

And what happens in the Shark Tale video game? There was a level where you could make the Will Smith fish dance to you can't touch this yeah sound pretty good was it pretty awesome was it like parapa the Rapa style dancing

like dance revolution style dancing so I'm watching a full gameplay walk through here that's the only part I remember but we didn't have Shark Tale on home video and we did have Nemo yeah kind of kind of everyone had Nemo Shark Tale came out what a year after Nemo yeah I just remember being one of those things where like

Nemo which the movie we're going to talk about the water effects and like the way it looks it's just such a staggeringly good looking movie it still looks incredible i think it's maybe like the most beautiful movie pixar ever made yes and then shark tail comes out a year later and looks like a fucking like PlayStation game yes it like like the fish designs are horrendous but all of it looks bad but it also like there's like no water effects there's no lighting and you're like how do they move and it's like they sort of just walk upright in the water, not on the ground, not on the ocean floor.

And they have like houses and stuff. Yes. There's a thing. Ants and bug life. Uh-huh. Bug life. Bug life. Sorry.

Mm-hmm. I'm using myself. Like, they just like look distinctive. They were going for different things. And in fact, you could argue that the DreamWorks one is the more realistic looking. It's absolutely the more realistic looking one and it kind of pulls it off. Yeah. Ants ain't blue and ants do not have just.

two legs, you know? Right, right. In the, in the, in the DreamWorks one, they have four legs and two arms, it's, you know, whatever. It sort of was okay. And then, like, the comparison wasn't as drastic, I guess, is what I mean. Uh, sure. Finding Nemo Shark Tale disaster. I saw a thing, Andrew Stanton said that really stuck with me, which he, when, when they started working on this movie, he was like, the challenge I posed to all of you is, I don't want to anthropomorphize these fish. I want to figure out the way for them to be able to convey emotions within the physiology of how they actually work. It's a good call. And it's one of these things where you watch this movie, and it's like they create this rule for themselves that they hold themselves to.

And the movie really doesn't fucking cheat on it. And it makes it all the more impressive how good I think the performances are in this movie. And I speak of the voice acting, which is obviously like this is just an impeccably cast movie that changes a bunch of fucking careers and shit. Sure. But also the actual like character animation performances of the movie are insane. Who's your favorite? It's so deep. Deep, deep, deep.

It's impossible. I think Brooks is the reason this movie really works and we'll get into it. Watching it this time, and this is a movie I have seen, more times than I can count. I was really, really locking into the Defoe performance, which I think is incredible. Who are your answers? Oh, I was thinking more about... Stingray teacher. All day and night.

The model of pedagogy. That guy is the best. Mr. Ray. he diffuses various things. There's nothing to see here. That and also when Nemo's trying to say and he's like, all right, kid, don't knock yourself out. You know what I mean? Like things like that.

So good. This is, to your point, Becca, though, it's like this movie has like 130 perfectly executed bits. Yeah. Like any character in this movie that would be kind of just like a functional point A to point B, exposition driver or whatever, they give a character game that is so efficient and memorable and charming. Yeah. Where no one in this movie feels like they're just filling a spot. The games are clear and distinct and they're all like, they all feel so satisfying to the creature that they are.

My other favorite is Allison Janney. I love, love, love Peach so much. But this is what we're talking about, right? Where it's just like there's a chain of logic that is very satisfying of like, what is the personality of a starfish? Right. And you're like, well, if she's... in a tank. She's stuck to the wall she surveils. Right. She's watching. Right. And then what's

the superiority complex she has about that? She basically becomes the know-it-all because her job is to be on watch. And then who's the person who voices that will, of course, get like the fucking lady from the West Wing. That's what her personality would be. Like, all of these choices are so satisfying

in a chain of logic way. I love Vicki Lewis. Everyone's incredible in this. Is anyone bad? No. And like Bob Peterson, who you're calling out as Mr. Ray, is one of the Pixar guys. Oh, I know. He's Ross. He's my friend. He is Doug.

Yeah. He, of course, was the original fired director of The Good Dinosaur, the movie you can't even remember. Ugh. The fire director. Oh, fired. Okay, right. Because it was Sone.

Sahn. It became a Pizsson picture. But that is the chaos period where suddenly, like, every director is getting fired, every movie's being replaced. Is Sond getting a third? He's doing Incredibles 3. He's doing Incredibles 3. A little bit of a step down.

It should be the next generation, and it's like Jack, Zadad. That would be pretty funny. Craig T. Nelson's old. David's laughing. I'm laughing. I don't know, maybe it'll be good. It's totally not. It's totally going to be Paddington in Peru, in my opinion.

I wrote the script. I know, so that's cool. Like, my guess is it'll be something where I'm like, this resembles what I like about the, you know, all of this. But it, you know, it feels a little ginsie. It's a little frustrating. It's a little frustrating. Pete Stone has made, this will be the third film he directs.

We're going to talk about a lot about Pixar director careers in this series, a thing I study deeply. But he's directed three films. He's one of the kind of Pixar Brain Trust, top story guys who's worked on all these projects. And he himself has voiced so many beloved characters, like Amiel and Ratatoui. Sox, who is arguably the only good part of Lightyear.

Sox is fun. Definitely the only good part of Lightyear. Yeah. Like he's a really, really fun voice actor. Noted. Yeah. Gun to your head, can you name that character? I just remember that he's rifting on a level that's just sublime.

It is. He does some shit with a pen. I couldn't name any fucking character in Lightyear, and it's called Light Year and stars Buzz Light Year, and I'm still like, is that character called Buzz Light Year? I don't want you to call mental health hotlines on my behalf, but I did the other night fall down a rabbit hole of watching Light Year videos on YouTube. Well, it's the movie about the man on which the toy is based. It's, Becca, I'm sorry, but this is not a movie about the toy. This is a movie about the real purpose. person buzz light you.

The real person upon, on which the toy was based. Squirt in this, uh, movie. Is Brad Birdson. I was about to say the little baby turtle. That's Brad Bird's son, Nicholas Bird. Who Andrew Stanton heard him speak and was like, this is our generation's thumper. Rarely do you find he might also be the, what are you waiting for to do something incredible, I guess, kid in Incredibles, if I'm not mistaken.

Something amazing, I guess. Yeah. I think that's him as well. This is the cross-pollination of all these things. This is a period of time where Pixar has been super tight and focused. Basically, one, like, dream team of people working in all these movies. And for the first time, it's starting to spread out. They're starting to have multiple productions running at the same time.

You know, the first three movies are all directed by the same, very normal man with really normal boundaries, who just loves Huggin. and Pete Doctor and Andrew Stanton were the first two people hired at Pixar. Yes. They have their sort of initial fabled kind of like early, what kind of movies could we do meeting, right? Where they like supposedly... We're going to crack open the dossier. David, Ben and I are four-eyed cool guys.

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podcast 15. David, I'm sorry for excluding you from this act. That's okay. Basically, you know, Pixar is originally a computer technology company. They're like, we should have an

animation division. Someone should be fucking around with this computer animation thing and seeing if there's any money there. It's, of course, a company started by George Lucas. John Lasseter is fired from Disney, where he was kind of constantly the guy who was next up

to maybe direct a feature. The one that comes really close to happening is where the wild things are. There's animation test you can see that's really interesting. Lasseter, like when he saw Tron was just like, this is the future. There's some future in combining these things,

which Disney ends up obviously doing with like Beauty and the Beast and Lion King with their big set piece sequences using CGI backgrounds. Where the Wild Things are was supposed to be that. He also develops Brave Little Toaster, which is taken away from him. Which feels very spiritually Pixar.

It's a movie with Pixar juice, even if it's right, like, kind of cheap and light on execution. And Toy Story definitely feels like a refinement of everything he was starting to noodle with. But he gets fired. He goes to this computer conference. I think it's Sigraf. Yeah. He makes the play. They hire him to be the animation guy.

He's one dude noodling. And when they finally go, like, we have some extra budget to see if there's more that can be built here. Who do you want to hire? He goes to his two CalArts classmates. Pete Doctor, who becomes the first. first person other than Lassar director picks our movie, Monsters Inc. And then Andrew Stanton's the second. That's sort of the next phase is the anointment of you guys get to make your own movies.

This is true. And yeah, they were pretty good. Before I opened the dossier, Becca, your experience with Finding Nemo, you're slightly younger than me. Did you see this in theaters? Absolutely. And I feel like everyone I've spoken to really remembers seeing it in theaters as well. I would have been nine and I think I loved it

but it was also a time when like every year of my life like one new landmark animated movie would come out that felt like it was just a constant heightening because it was sort of like tail end of Disney Renaissance and the early Pixar and throw Shrek into the mix

throw you know as a kid it was huge Ice Age into the mix like every year there was a new animated movie that felt like the biggest thing in the world. You have basically concurrent with the decline of Disney feature animation. You have three new animation studios rising. And it's still basically only like two or three animated movies a year. Yeah. It is so different than the current landscape where we're just inundated with shit. Yeah. And they were like really trying shit like an equality like way to one up each other. So even though I didn't see Anastasia, I was too young when it came out, like, that was a really important VHS tape.

But Anastasia. From random third studios joining the Macs. I was going to say, Anastasia is part of the kind of like 90s rush. And there's the 80s rush as well of like Don Bluth has left. Other studios are trying to see Disney's week. Is there a chance to dethrone Disney and be the default animation studio? And then when Disney rises again, it's even more of a feeding frenzy of Jesus Christ, they're making so much money, we should be in this business. But you look at those movies in the 80s and 90s, and it's primarily either feature-length adaptations of TV shows, which are sort of their own thing and are often junkier and lower budget, right?

Or it's other studios trying to figure out how to crack the Disney playbook. Anastasia is very much, can we do the Disney thing? When Toy Story comes out, it's like this absolute lightning bolt of like, wait a second, is there actually not a one kind of formula pattern for what an American animated movie can be while being seen as like a level, you know, highbrow? And then I think DreamWorks and Blue Sky, these other studios are all going like, fuck, is there a chance to like define what your own thing is? There's new visual styles possibly. There are no storytelling styles. or new styles of humor. Suddenly these things don't have to be musicals.

They don't have to be based on fairy tales. Plus there's some stop motion entering the mix. Absolutely. Yep. I'll also say, like, even though I was, like, becoming aware of movies during the era that, like, people, that some people see as the decline of the Renaissance. Sure. Because of when they came out and the age, like,

Tarzan is still maybe my favorite. This is something that, as, you know, I, like, am in media and whatever. and I'm like, I know people who are a little younger than me. And I'm like, right, Tarzan, like, I don't, I saw that in theaters, but by then I was like, oh, the juice is out of this. I mean, Emma Stefansky and our Treasure Planet episode great, where I was like, right, I didn't even see this shit. And she's like, oh, I, when I saw this, I assumed it was the biggest hit of all time.

Like, it was just a giant movie for us. The difference is. Tarzan was a huge hit. Tarzan was a huge hit. Tarzan, like. And Tarzan rips. Massive soundtrack. I mean, you'll be in my heart. Right.

Phil Collins. Yeah, I don't mind Tarzan. I've seen it since. He's got the invisible touch. My personal bias aside, Tarzan is like very well reviewed, right? It is a massive hit. The soundtrack is really like culturally important. But five or six months later, really culturally important. At the time it was fucking humongous.

We've gotten criticized for being like the Tarzan soundtrack obviously sucks. I'm pumping the brakes. I don't think it sucks. I just don't think it was. It's adult contemporary. It was not like a Lion King level, earwormy. It was the second closest they had ever gotten to that. I disagree.

And you'll be in my heart. Was their last sort of like credits adult contemporary hit song of the 90s? They closed out. I don't care that much for Tarzan, but I just think these are objective facts. I think the tree surfing and the vine swinging looks awesome. This is my bigger point. It's like big hit totally works. There is this sense of like, is Disney back have they saved themselves?

Five months later, Toy Story 2 comes out, and it feels like the takeaway from everyone is, like, Tarzan's the end of an era and this is the future. We all had fun with Tarzan, but like we're moving past this. The formula, it's no good anymore, right? In the 2000s, Lilo and Stitch is the only Disney feature theatrical animated movie that I would say unequivocally works. That is the only one. No, I think Empress and the Frog is that I'm saying financially, critically, and test of time. Okay. And personally,

it was a disappointment at the time. I guess so. It was at the box office. Financially, it was a little. You've heard about what they're building. They're building an Isma coaster in Villan Land.

What? They're doing a pull the lever. What? Because they've downgraded from it was going to be a Maleficit water ride thing. And I think... What is Villan Land? Here's a fun game.

David, what do you think villain land is? From saying what Becca just said, from hearing her say that. So it's... Because I'm like really bad at this. Is it just in Walt Disney World or is it in both? It would only be in World for now.

Because World's larger. There's more space for itself. That's Orlando. But and I know World has. It's made up of multiple parts. Right. So I know there's like Epcot and Animal Kingdom and all this. You name two.

Can you name the other two? Is there one that's just kind of like Maine Disney? Yeah. Could you think of what it's called? What would your guest be for what that's called? No, I have no idea. Magic Kingdom. Yes, I did know it.

I did know it. And then is like Star Wars world Its own thing or is that within one of Some sections. Yeah, right. See, this is where they get me. Think of the movies. The movies? Now the problem is this land has changed names many times. Okay.

Give me another hint. It was called Disney MGM Studios. It is now Disney Hollywood Studios. Yeah, I would have accepted. I would have accepted MGM. So that is them competing with Universal Studios. I get that. Is there another one?

Epcot was Walt's dying way. There's two water cards. An Animal Kingdom was them competing. with SeaWorld and Bush Gardens, and all that shit. Okay. Those are the four in Orlando. There's fucking water parks that I think back over on the same page.

Don't fucking count. That's not a proper game. Yeah, I still haven't ever been. The villain world is in the magic kingdom. Correct. Yeah, it will be. Now, why are they doing that? Villains are probably the descendants.

No, no, no. What are they competing with? The Dark Universe, of course. Exactly. No, truly. Really? Is that Universal open their new park in Orlando Where they reclaimed the name Dark Universe

And applied it to Monster Theme Park And so now Disney's like fuck They have a cool scary thing We need a cool scary thing Villan Land Now all the rumors had been It was gonna be built around Maleficent As the centering force

And they are sort of realizing like Maybe Maleficent's like kind of old news Oh no they still are doing Isn't that why they were thinking To begin a Milleficent Water Ride A third Maleficent Movement I mean, like, they're always claiming they're going to do that. I mean, that's part of why Tron Ares happened because they also had spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a Tron roller coaster.

Yeah. And they wanted object permanence for that franchise. But interesting. So Yizma would be its own right. It's not replacing Maleficent? Yeah, it's not replacing Melificent. But this was announced after the first announcement. And I think there were conversations about them actually scaling back the scary on Maleficent.

This is the thing. He's a little cowardly about getting too scary. Eism was more funny than scary. Does she get them an easy out? Right. Like, but then it's just like, why are you, why are you doing it? And they love getting Patrick Warburton something to do. Sure.

Looking up villain. Emperors New Groove is a masterpiece, but it was not a major hit. Yeah, it was a minor hit at best. And it was not really appreciated at the time. Yeah, and then, I mean, obviously. You're like, treasure planet Atlantis are just like complete belly flops for them. Home on the range is the last hand drawn. Lilo and Stitch is the one-up swing there

and it's the movie that basically sneaks through the cracks and then that first CGI runs a disaster And then you have Princess and the Frog at the end where it's like, they're pretty good, people liked it, but maybe even that underwhelmed And had the pressure on it of Can This Bring Back the Disney Princess movie

And Hand Drawn? It does okay But it does well But the next year Tangled comes out And once again it's like this is the future Here's our model, this is what we're doing We've redefined what our sort of Disney animated movie form format is.

Um, but. So that leaves the floor open for Pixar, Dreamworks, and Blue Sky. To invent a new thing. And, and to really be like, right, it's, it's all open game. And what Andrew Stan talks about is, uh, feeling like toy story, Monsters, Inc. And Bug's Life all shared a similar vibe. The first three, obviously, a lot of that's that they're directed by, uh, same huggy guy. Lotso.

Lhazzo Huggin Lassiter. But also that, it's the one core team working on every movie. Pixar basically at this point only has enough employees to be focused on one movie at a time. And when Lassiter goes, Doctor, you get a movie stand, you get a movie. They start expanding the crew and they're splitting up who's getting Peterson, who's getting Joe ramped, who's getting Pete So in all these stories. He said that to his doctor. He was like, Doctor, you get a movie.

The doctor was like, I think you should give it to one of your horror. The Doctor I am movie? That'd be good. Why wasn't Dr. Mario in Super Mario Galaxy? I was sure that was going to be a doctor. you a video, the theory, that Dr. Mario is legally classified within Nintendo's copyrights as his own character and not Mario himself. So it would have to be like Mario has a cousin who's a doctor.

This is the way. That's what the dad should be disappointed about. That would be funny. Why aren't you a doctor like your cousin? He's got so many pills of all colors. I send you this TikTok video that someone pointed out in the first Super Mario movie, there was an empty seat at the family dinner table where Mario's dad's like, I don't respect you being a plumber.

And there's like a little nephew. whose dad is missing, and the implication is maybe does he hate his plumber son so much because his other son? Successful medical students or whatever. And if Mario's the last name, then his name might be Dr. William Mario. This is the thing. Now every animated movie and kids movie in a bad way is about like weird dad angst, but this is really groundbreaking and genius about weird dad angst.

This movie is made by a dad working through his. his things versus I think a lot of animated movies and specifically illumination films and who knows why this is the case feel very driven by... They've been told to be about this, yes. Well, and also, people who cannot get over, my dad doesn't respect what I do for a living, which is a little limited as a story, as an emotional arc, unless you're digging really deep. Finding Nemo feels like it comes out of a very honest place, and I also think all these early Pixar movies are really defined by these guys as young fathers.

You know, overgrown children, people who went to the field of animation, suddenly crossing this line of like, I have a kid, and now I'm kind of like dealing with existential terror of like, wait a second, I have to be a grown up, how do I raise kids properly, what do I feel about how I was raised, what is the world I want them to live in? And also, they're in this insane industry working on these movies that are so intense, that takes so long, and they're all kind of fighting this, like, concern of, am I not spending

enough time with my family? Sure, right, right, right. And it makes sense, all these workaholics, like, yeah. To give joy to all the children of the world, they must miss their own child's dance recital. Right, right, right, soccer practice. So, Andrew Stanton, I'm opening the dossier. Please do.

Born in December, 1965, in Massachusetts. Hmm. He heard of it? Yeah. He does, he has a couple voices in this movie, but one of them is the lobstas. the Boston Lobsters. Born in Wellesley,

moved to Rockport because whatever, apparently his dad was sort of like, Wellesley's two sort of fancy. I don't like how like rich and white it is here. His father, Ron Stanton,

was an MIT graduate, founded a company called High Corps, which the New Yorker says did confidential radar work for the Department of Defense. Cool. Andrew says that Ron

was a classic authoritarian figure away from home a lot, kind of tight-lipped. Gloria, the mom, puts it this way. When Andrew had done something wrong, his father never needed to say anything. He'd just come and stand in Andrew's room silently and Andrew would tell him everything. I mean, to what we were just saying... Whereas Gloria is a fun mom. She was an actress who gave up acting to have a family and she loved, you know, to entertain and be fun.

All of this makes a ton of sense. Yeah, he lives at the intersection of weapons, tech and acting and fun. Right. That sort of Pixar is right in the middle. To your point, Becca, what a relief that the movies aren't about this. Yeah, about like my parents, right. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad doesn't respect me being a plumber.

So, Gloria, this is all from, like, a New Yorker profile of him. I think for Wally is when they did this. There's also an incredible New Yorker profile when John Carter comes out that we will talk about extensively in that episode. It's 2011. It's right at the fulcrum point of what's going to happen when this movie's released. So his dad introduced him to science fiction. including the John Carter novels.

He was a rocket scientist. He had Pulp sci-fi novels throughout the house. He dragged him to like every single sci-fi movie. It's not, the culture stuff isn't just coming from the mom. Stanton said, basically he was a precocious little boy with like undiagnosed ADD who just like wasn't quite like a child prodigy, but was clearly like very like very energetic and creative and like doing lots of stuff kind of like without much encouragement. He would make little skits with a Super 8 camera.

He had a show he did with his friends called The Silly Show. Mm-hmm. Sounds pretty good. When you watch all the vintage Pixar special features, because they were really at the forefront of DVD bonus material and showing so much of, with every release, like, here's more about, like, how Pixar works and pulling back the curtain, not just on the technical process.

Which is so classic Waltz. That's so wonderful world of Disney. This is part of why Lassiter gets pushed into the Is He the New Uncle Walt position. But you watch those things. and I'm just going to say this, Andrew Stan is charismatic in a way that none of those other guys are. That's interesting.

Andrew Stanton is like... A little more like personality. He is just clearly like more of a people person versus like Lasseter had always felt was kind of doing an impression of an uncle Walt. Yes. And Pete Dr. By his own admission is a pretty introverted guy. Right. He seems like a pretty reserved kind of guy.

He's a kind of classic animator. Right. I want to just like draw a thing and slide it over to you rather than talk. And interesting, I think did a fair amount of like school acting and such when he was growing up, which also comes across in his movies. And the silly show. And the silly show.

That he's a little bit more of a performer. He went to University of Hart for one year, but then transferred to Cal Arts, Griffin's alum. I dropped out, but yes. So, obviously, it's part of the sort of legendary program there. A. 113. That you just, you know, invoked earlier.

But also, I mean, that classroom, that era is also like, I believe, Stephen Hillenberg, who creates SpongeBob. Oh, that guy. Brad Bird is there with them at that same time, even though he comes to Pixar later. I mean, it's like 10 people in that year who went on to make an outsized cultural impact in animation. He had been dating his now wife, Julie, basically since he was 15 years old. She went to Georgetown.

They got married right after they graduated, basically, settled in Los Angeles. Stanton worked in a sex education film starring Martin Short for Croyer Films, animated the sperm. Is this the journey of me? Is this coming all the way back around to look who's talking? I think so. I believe there's an attraction that at one point was part of Epcot called The Journey of Me. The Making of Me. There we go.

I've seen this. So yeah, it's a sex education short that played in the sort of the wonders of the human body part of Epcot. It was Wonders of Life Pavilion. Fair enough. Like many CalArts students, he wanted to work at Disney. He was rejected three times. But then he meets John Lasseter and he had, I guess, some student films. I had these student films that were luckily entertaining enough

that they showed some at festivals that also had, like, Luxo and Tintoy the early Lasseter shorts playing at them and they kind of hit it off. My favorite's the bicycle one. Red's Dream. Red's dream. Always liked that one. Yeah. Stan's stuff is really funny, too. Yeah. He also, I mean, I don't, time might be off in this, but I know he worked on the Ralph Bakshi Mighty Mouse cartoon.

Yeah, I mean, the Sexa Ed thing was, I think, also Bakshi Studios or maybe, or I can't remember. Right. It's so funny to think of Bakshi making something for like Epcot goers. Right. This is this weird era where Bakshi's like trying to play a little more mainstream, but all the stuff he makes is just kind of subtly off and weird. Not that I think he's trying to be transgressive, but that he can't be normal. There's something inherently degenerate.

Right. Coursing through what he does. That Mighty Mouse cartoon is like that and is fascinating. I highly recommend looking it up. Stanton, I think, had writing credits on the whole season and was pretty involved in that. Can you watch the shorts? Are those available? They must be somewhere, but Mighty Mouse is one of those things where I could not even tell you who has the rights.

I'm like, are the Mighty Mouse rights owned by like Crest's toothpaste? Through some weird, like, conglomerations. So he's hired his Pixar second ever animator. Obviously, Pixar has been taken under the wing of Steve Jobs at that point. Andrew, happy go lucky, they say? Relyed on humor to get by. He works on Toy Story, obviously. That's his first Oscar nomination.

He's one of the many credited writers of Toy Story. So let me just unpack this a little bit. Because A, I think he is, as I said, he's a very charismatic guy. He's very sociable. There's a story I'll tell later in this episode. That's kind of a thing that makes him as a filmmaker. But he is an incredibly anxious, somewhat cynical person. He talks about like the constant battle between those two forces within himself and trying

to probably the battle between like his mom and his dad, you know, being someone who is avuncular and outgoing and sociable but is constantly kind of like wrestling with these concerns inside of his head. Everyone at Pixar says that

like Woody is him. That's interesting. He says Stanton, he says he's Sid. I can give reach of the quote. So he, Ben. He came up with the character. He was the guy who wrote Sid essentially. And that Sid is the reflection of what he was like as a teenager.

He liked to break his toys and then like remake them into new things. Right, as creative projects. Right. Which is back to this point I'm making of like, Sid doesn't know he's a fucking villain in Toy Story. Andrew Stan has always said this. He's like, Sid's a creative kid who just hasn't gotten an art school yet. He doesn't have an outlet, you know? The kind of like myth making here is within Pixar, they're sort of like, I guess we need to bring in an outside screenwriter,

a Hollywood screenwriter, a number of people take passes at Toy Story in years of development, including a similarly normal person, Josh Whedon. One of the fake Coens, I can't, it's not E-Tan Cohen, but maybe it's the other Joel Cohen spelled differently. There were like four or five credited screenwriters on Toy Story who are mostly... Joel Cohen. There we go. Mostly other kind of like Hollywood spec script, punch-up, rewrite guys.

And they kept having people come in, they'd pay them to work. on the script for like a couple months. They'd fix a couple things, but other things wouldn't be fixed. They had never really solved it. Disney wasn't giving them more budget. And the sort of like myth-making part of this is that Andrew Stanton goes like, can I just like try and see if I can do a pass? And Stanton sort of holds away with the script and is the guy who like finally fixes everything

and cracks everything and makes it cohesive. And Pixar realizes like, oh, fuck, we have a screenwriter here. We have a guy in-house who knows how to do this stuff. especially after the infamous Black Friday screening where there was the very dark, very cynical version of the movie after... Where Woody was like an asshole originally. Yes, Katzenberg had kept saying like,

I think there's a future with edgier, funnier, darker, more adult animated movies. And little did he know. He basically gets there with Shrek. Shrek is what he always wanted to make. But he kept pushing Pixar past their natural instincts. And so there's the screening they show of the story, reels right before it goes to animation.

That's like a disaster where Disney's going to pull the plug on the movie because they're like, this lead character is like a complete asshole. This movie is just unpleasant to watch and they beg for three days to rework the film. And I think Stanton does a lot of the story heavy lifting and they do the just like, fuck it. Let's get back to the exact movie we want to make. They green light that conditionally and the film ends up happening as it is. But there is this kind of like Stanton's attitude mirrors.

Woody very much of constantly being frustrated but wanting to put forward the face of like, I got this under control. Right. I'm looking out for all of you. Right. Yeah. Right. Well, that makes sense.

Yeah. So, uh, Jim Morris says he's the best sort of genius for story structure. Yes. That's one Pixar guy. Uh, Michael Arden, that guy, you know, says that he's kind of good at being harsh in a story. Like, he'll, he'll say the thing that's not working or whatever. Like, he's more blunt.

I saw him saying in an interview. that that was a big thing from Steve Jobs, who, you know, in this era is still very hands-on with Pixar, that he was just like, people would get really turned off by how blunt Steve Jobs was, but he was just kind of ruthless

and identifying what is the problem and what is the thing that needs to get done. Right. Yeah. Some of the other credits before Nemo, obviously, he's also a co-director and writer on Bugs Life. Yeah.

He's also the voice of Bugsapper, Bogue 1, and singing Grasshopper 2. Uh-huh. In the Disney parks, there is an attraction that is now closed called Tough to Be a Bug that took place inside the tree and animal kingdom and had a giant animatronic hopper that they didn't need to remove when Kevin Spacey got canceled because Kevin Spacey refused to do the record. Andrew Stan did it instead. Andrew Stan does a weirdly good Kevin Spacey. And that was already one of the scariest things in Disney parks without Kevin even doing the voice. True. And it has been replaced by a horrible Zootopia attraction.

Interesting. Tough to be an animal. He's the voice. No, I was just going to say, co-director in animation can mean a number of different things. Sometimes it means that two people are directing a film equally. In this era of Pixar, it's sort of the junior director thing. Lassiter taking him on as co-director for a bug's life was sort of to train him to be able to make his own film.

But he is, by all accounts, kind of the main screenwriter of a bug's life. And also, when Toy Story 2 is saved from direct-to-video and reworked, he is the guy who does that. So across those first three movies, he is, like, the main writer guy. Right, right. So Toy Story 2 has got the credit. Of course, he's the voice of Hammond, Buzz Light, Your Star Command, The Adventure, Begins. Can't say I knew that. Yeah, that's just in the opening.

This is the thing. He's a really good performer, and he would often do sound-alike voices for when the stars didn't want to come do something like a ride or a commercial or whatever it is. He is the voice of Zerg canonically in Toy Story 2. That is him. He's the real Zerg voice, obviously, with a bunch of modulators on him. So, Finding Nemo's been swimming around in his head. Interesting. Use some words there.

It's about fish. Since Toy Story, he says, he'd always wanted to do the ocean. He was fixated on a child on his dentist's water fish tank. When he was a child. He would look at the fish tank. Yeah. Which was a weird way to see humans. What's the movie about?

What makes me care? He says he's in a walk with his. with his five-year-old son, Ben, and he has the terrible anxiety that he realized that his terrible anxiety was making him a bad father. Like, he kept being like, careful, you know, like... That he was, like, pulling him from running

into the street and all the sort of things, and he went... Like, you should do that. Yeah, yeah, but it was the intensity of his worry that he felt, right? And he was like, here's my day, I have a, you know, a day alone with my son. And I'm going to have no good lasting memories of this because I spent the entire day

concerned about everything he was doing and not actually connecting to him and that's the real like germ the idea i want to make a movie about that he uh also had seen an early cut of lion king and apparently remember he's just slamming on it says like sort of shows what i know he hated the idea of the sort of circle of life of like uh we're all just part of this grand chain and we're all you know it's all helpful he likes the bambi idea of like it's a real scary predatory world and if you're if he's like, Nemo is set in the Bambi world. This is another thing that I really give him specifically credit for changing in the language of American movies. Because I really think it starts with Toy Story.

Animated movies in which characters talk like grown-ups. Right. Where you're not dealing with kind of like mythical, representational voices of reason, cosmic evils. And so much of the comedy in this movie is just that it's funny that two fishes are talking in this casual away. and that they are so recognizable as personality types. But I think, right, he's speaking to a very specific human anxiety rather than kind of like a larger just so stories type of lesson. Yeah, without tipping too far into the like shark tail, like, A, I'm swimming here,

which I'm just going to guess they say. Right. If they don't say that, it missed opportunity. Arcomen fucked up. They do sound like grown-ups be and not in that dreamworks way, which is a different thing. Yes, I think. I think it's that the DreamWorks movies start really iterating on other things in pop culture in a kind of postmodern,

metatechual, self-referential kind of way. And what Stan sort of identifies is like, an audience will laugh if a character suddenly reminds you of a type of person you know. Not an archetype in sitcoms, you know, but like a type of person with a specificity. Yeah So finding Nemo He settles on clownfish because he sees like a coffee table book And finds them arresting

I mean it's obvious like it's a great idea He saw a picture of two clownfish coming out of an anonymity And it looked like they were sort of hiding And he was like and it looks like a parent and a child He presents an hour long pitch to Lasseter Lasseter is a long time scuba diver Because he was hugging the fish down there too Unfortunately

And Lassiter says you have me me at fish. Yeah. And then he's like, how about a hawk? The other part of that story is... Bring it in, buddy. Anyone else want to join? Stanton, the worry work planned an hour-long pitch that involved him doing all the voices,

sound effects, and he had audio cues. Lester's like, fish, that's a great idea. We can sell fish. Truly. They're colorful. We also can't stress enough how big SpongeBob was at the time. Everyone loved underwater. We were underwater crazy.

Let's call out, though. this is, it's a little bit of parallel thinking. Like SpongeBob premieres in 99. There's four years in between. Yeah. But the lead time on animation is... This is around 2000, I think, when this movie goes into production. Yeah, yeah.

Spongeb was immediately a hit, like, right out of the box. I think that was a little bit of them getting lucky with timing. Another thing, I think I saw Jim Morris say this that was unique about this movie, is so often they would come up with a big idea at Pixar, and then they would all sort of brainstorm together. and then they'd hire an outside screenwriter or three or four people would noodle on it and they'd keep iterating and adding things to it

until they finally got to something vaguely resembling a script. Stanton literally just sat down and wrote a script for this one. It is like right after a bug's life. It's different from the prior. Yeah, I know there's other people now. Like other people credit it and all that, but he had a screenplay. But in a kind of complete vision way

it gets changed in regards, but it was like, here's the arc of my story, here's what it's about, here are the major beats. However, the problem was the tank story. Like, he had the search for Nemo stuff, I think, much more set. But the tank story kept derailing the narrative is how the other Pixar guys put it in this sort of initial pitch. Right. How does that not feel like you're cutting away to an inactive thing?

Exactly, right. The original script, also, the loss of Marlin's wife was communicated with re-flashbacks and hers through the film. And only in the third, we talked about this on this podcast before. Only in the third act, do you see that it was like this barracuda attack? Allow me to restate this. Please do it now. Because it's like, basically the audiences were like, what the fuck, right? Like, why is he so stressed out? It is the most important thing in Andrew Stanton's career, and it swings back in a different way in John Carter in a way we need to talk about. So this is the thing that needs to be established.

He, as a guy who now in the time between Toy Story and Finding Nemo, has gotten really serious about screenwriting and read the books and studied other movies and really tried to understand screenwriting as an art form was obsessed with movies that are able to do this as a storytelling device. Isn't that fun when a movie can kind of slowly tease out information and backfill it in multiple flashbacks? And so he just, that was the shape he conceived in his head of the movie starts with Nemo waking Marlin up, his first day of school, and yada, yada, yada, and across the film, you start to get these flashbacks until you finally at the end realize, oh, his wife was killed by a barracuda. All the other eggs were destroyed. Nemo's the only son he has left. And they would play the story reels for audiences, which are basically, it's usually, sometimes it's Pixar animators, sometimes it's the final cast actors and the voices, lightly animated storyboards, usually with temp music. Just so before they do the expensive part of actually starting animation, they can feel the flow of the movie. And they play it and people are just like, we hate Marlin. He sucks.

Yeah. This guy drives me crazy. And by the time they explain why he has this level of neuroses, it's too late. The audience isn't on board. Right. And he keeps trying to crack it and he can't. And then he's just finally like, what if I just put all this stuff at the top? Yeah.

And it makes sense. I just do it. It's also really helpful for me because I can just not watch that with my daughter. Just skip right past him. But as you said, he was like, everyone was concerned that's too scary. You can't front load it in a movie. And he said, like, that's Bambi. Bambi exists and Bambi survives as a beloved film.

Right. I think you need to like look at the scary thing in the eye. And the second he did that, the movie worked. The other thing that happens is. Dory. I don't know if you know if that's what you were going to say, but to him it's Dory. What are you going to say? There was a different actor cast.

Well, we'll get to that. Let's get to that. Okay. The other thing for him is Dory. But I just want to say he has a TED talk around the time of John Carter where he shares the storytelling lesson. He learned there of not trying to out clever yourself as a storyteller, that it's important for audiences to have the emotional information they need to understand what's going on with the characters. That makes sense.

And very often, if you try to be smart or stylish in your sort of devices, you actually, it's cutting your alienating the audience. Correct. You could just as easily, because with this, from the very beginning, you're like, Marlon has suffered. Yes. You know, you're rooting for him. It's an incredibly devastating thing, and you understand.

It works perfectly. It is so. Elizabeth Perkins is crushing it. That's the other thing. Like, Elizabeth Perkins is great. Within 30 seconds, you understand the dynamic of their marriage. A scary thing happens. You see his anxiety.

Like, it's just... And it also introduces you to, like, in finding Nemo and in the ocean, it's like, danger at every turn. These fish's lives are very precarious. Like, we're going to encounter a lot of scary creatures. There are actual stakes from the beginning. It's not just that this kid is lost. It's like the mother dies as do.

Hundreds of eggs. At least hundreds of fish every day die in the ocean. Yeah. Dory, to him, kind of takes the film to another level. She bridges the two main characters. He was inspired by the structure of the novel Cold Mountain for this. So Dory's the René Zelliker character? That's what I assume he means by that.

David Reynolds, who's a Conan writer and had worked on other Pixar movies. And Bob Peterson, who... Mr. Ray. Right, who hadn't written a movie for Pixar yet. But it's one of their main story, guys. Exactly. Like, those are the other credited screenwriters. William H. Macy, first cast as Marlon.

Yes. They wanted someone with a lighter touch. Is the cited reason. As Stan has always put it. This is never revealed until there's like a Pixar book that reveals it, right? So Stan always talked about the fact that they had originally cast a dramatic actor and it felt like it made the movie too heavy. He cast a guy who was funny but comes from a dramatic background and that he felt like he was playing the end. anxiety too real and too weighty, and it fought the comedy of the movie.

And he always kind of, in a gentlemanly way, never named who the actor was, but then said, when we brought in Albert Brooks, he didn't need to play anxiety. That's his natural state, and he could riff all these jokes on top of it, and it worked. The book, The Pixar Touch, is the one that finally puts William H. Macy as the name. It's never really been verified, but it's basically been commonly accepted. That's who it was. It makes a lot of sense to be like, Andrew Stanton thinks, well,

wouldn't like William H. Macy's character from Fargo in an animated movie be the correct version of this. But that's a very dark movie where you kind of want to watch that guy suffer.

Totally. Albert Brooks had... It was making the in-laws. Comes out the same... Summer. Around the in-laws, essentially. He said 11 sessions of four hours. hours each. That's all we had to do. Yeah. It doesn't sound like that much to me. The other thing he said is that

he basically would never read what was written on the page, but then would improvise for like 20 minutes. He's really good. He's like, you can't get him to say the same thing twice. He doesn't want to do line readings. Right. But he, because he's a writer and a filmmaker in his own right, would look and be like, what's the thing that needs to be conveyed in terms of story information in this line of dialogue? and then now I will give you 20 iterations of the funniest ways that could happen. He's a really funny guy. And and...

Good governor. Yes. And a good... What's he becoming? Secretary of Labor or Commerce or something? In the country in which he was born and raised. We assume. Yeah.

What if he's a dirty Rusky? What if that was cut out of Elma Kevner? He's becoming president. He could be a Canadian or something. A Canadian's in the room with us right now. Canaan's in the room with us right now. Hi, Becca. Okay. Brooks comes up with the clown thing. He comes up with the joke, like that he can't do jokes. That was Brooks's idea. Right. Stanton's watching Ellen, the sitcom. Yes. Much better than the talk show.

Late 90s. Yeah. And she kind of, you know, the Ellen delivery thing of like she changes her mind five times into a sentence. One line where she changed the topic seven times and turned to his wife and said, I think, that story. Now, Dory was written to be male. Right. And speaking of this kind of like, interesting in coming in and saying, how do we break the mold of what a Pixar movie is a little bit, right? That he felt like Toy Story,

the two Toy Stories of Monsters Inc were all buddy pictures. All had Randy Newman scores. All had a kind of similar design language, sense of humor, and that he really felt like, we need to start stretching out what these movies can be so it does to start to become formulaic. And I think there's a way in which you can see finding Nemo is a buddy picture because it is Dory and Nemo on this journey together.

But the nature of Dory as a character prevents it from feeling like that. I think they're going on a sort of buddy journey. And I think it's like one of my favorite things about the movie, especially in the context of what Pixar was before, is I love when the goofy one, funny one, stupid one is a girl. I think that was really missing in a lot of kids entertainment as the time. Because at the time. It was seen as like retrograde at some point or like, and they stopped doing it. It was just like, girls need to be like perfect love interest.

Yeah. For the girl to be the hilarious comic relief, silly, stupid one is so awesome. And I still love that when that happens in like an ensemble sitcom or something like today. Because it still is semi-rary. And so Dory, I think, is like huge. I give him super credit for just being. being like, oh, Ellen would work for this, even if it is not how I conceived this. Obviously, you know, it's Pixar's famous for when they picked a subject being like, let's do a ton of

research and let's find story discoveries from learning about the real thing. And certainly they did a lot of that with a bug's life. He replicated that model here. He found the thing about certain fish have like five second memories. I feel like that was already a joke about goldfish. The old goldfish memory thing. And he was like, that's kind of an interesting character challenge. And it could so easily be that's a character you meet for five minutes and one of many segments of the movie.

Yeah, it's like one bit in the movie. Right. It gives himself like a real fucking tough challenge to how do you make that the other character in the dynamic and not have it be annoying? You know who's pretty funny? Ellen did I know. Story. Story rules. Story's amazing.

It's a great bit. But I. And Ellen is so funny in this movie. It's crazy. So funny. But like how does it not to write that character and perform that character where it's not frustrating that she's the obstacle in the movie. Because the actual goal of the film is get to Nemo.

But then the person who's joining him in that goal... She's kind of not helping. Has her own dilemma. It makes it all the more satisfying when she can push through things. Sure. It makes every, like, when she has, like, so much more heartening. I mean, without her, Marlon is a pain. Totally.

So what are you going to say, Becca? Oh, just not to skip ahead, but one of the big moments that breaks my heart. Like, as a kid, when he abandons her... But to your point, Becca, to have this character be female, to have it be an entirely aromantic relationship between male and female adult characters, they do not, I'm going to say this on the record. Marlon and Dory do not. I regret even saying.

Not only that, but you don't even want to ship them. You don't want to ship them. Not really. This is a great point. They'd be a nightmare couple. You don't want to ship them. It's closer to being a surrogate parenting relationship. Yes.

Sort of. Which is why it helps Marlin have a name. narrative within the film, an emotional arc of he's in trying to keep Dory safe, realizing the things he's fucked up with Nemo? He's realizing his parenting mistakes, but he is also, Dory is also helping him overcome, like, you know, like his anxiety, his sort of his executive function problem of kind of, like, never making choice. Just keep swimming, man.

Like, sometimes you need someone who's just, like, kind of positive energy. We got to keep going, you know, like, he'd never make it to Nemo. without that energy. No, and even with her condition, there's the fact that she is an adult means that he talks to her a different way than he talks to Nemo. Right, he can't be quite as patronizing.

And when she pushes back on him, he listens a little bit more. Yeah, he learns to trust. Yes. Dory rules. Dory's good. Ellen's great. Yeah.

I love to order her lunch. Just, that's what I love to do. I mean, this is. And get it right every time. This is the movie that saves her career. It transforms her career The talk show premieres This fall after this movie is released

So obviously it was already in the works Yeah but she You know she has the failed second sitcom Yes 2001 to 2002 Which was called the Ellen show Yeah Which is like that's the one where it's like She is gay

Like it's like baked into the show Verses the first sitcom like that is a revelation That comes late in the show Yeah And that had like Jim Gaffigan in it and stuff in Martin Moll. And it was like a big CBS show and it flopped. Yeah.

And it was kind of the thing like, right, was Ellen kind of just, you know, she had Ellen. She had the show. Like, she was important culturally, but like, that's kind of it. They were putting her in movies. She's in their TV. She's in their TV. She's in her TV. She has a line to think about all the time.

Can I say it? Yeah. It's so funny. It's just a good line. It's like Rob Reiner comes in and he's like the mean bot, the mean seat owner, network. network guy. Yeah. And there's something to do about like, you know, he's like, if you do, if this happens,

I'll get you more money. And she's like, could we get coffee filters? We've been using a Yamaka. And it feels like something Ellen might have made up because it's just such a specific image. That they just have this socky yon. Yes. Anyway. That's awesome.

Sorry. She was so big in the 90s. Yeah. And the arc of what happens to her is really fascinating to study now because there was just like years of speculation of she's gay, right? We're just not saying it. Right.

There's like short-haired lady with pants. There's the Larry Sanders episode that happens like two years before she comes out where the whole premise is Rip Torn's character is pressuring Larry to be like

if we could get Ellen coming out that would be a big boon for the show. So Ellen's kind of winking at it within that show. And within the episode, I feel like they never say it. They never put a name to it. And then the twist

in that episode is that her and Larry sleep together and he's like, I think maybe she's not. But much like the Seinfeld contest episode, they're never saying the word. So it was enough in the ether that she's even making jokes about the fact that she's not acknowledging it. And then they

do an episode where she comes out. The character is going to be gay. And Ellen's going to come out. It's the front page of fucking Time Magazine. The puppy episode? Yep, I'm gay with her sitting crisscross applesauce. No, she was doing a little fun, uh, fun, Fun Neil.

Oh, you're right. Yeah. She's doing a gayer stance than Chris Press officers. Ellen. She's the best. But that episode is huge in the ratings. Yep, I'm gay makes headlines. Right.

It's one of these things where, like, she gets this huge bump of visibility, and then everyone sort of applauds her, and then immediately is like, but obviously we can't, like, sell car commercials on a gay show. All the sponsors go away. The listener. That's a good point. Yeah. The viewership drops.

I'm just going to get canceled. The show's basically canceled within a year of her coming out. And the attitude is like, thank you for your bravery, but obviously you're not part of the popular culture anymore. And then she talks about for years

fighting to be like hosting the Emmys or hosting SNL when she didn't have anything to promote, trying to just get herself back out there as a comedian after all the offers had dried up. Ellen, she ran a bookshop?

Yes. Was it a bookshop? What? Ellen. True? Ellen Morgan, the character in Ellen. Oh, okay. It wasn't in a bookshop?

Yeah. Yes. It was called By the book. Funny. But this is the movie that launches the second half of her career. That reintroduces her in undeniable kind of way. Does she make a lot of movies after this? No.

Because she's doing the show. Yeah. So the only movie she made after this in which she's not playing herself is finding Dory. Is this film called Finding Dory. Yeah. In which she played Dory. She did play Dory. And that's it.

And she's never made one since. She did more specials. She did some stand-up. Yeah. Like any movies? No movies. Yeah. She's just a story from then on.

I think about that tweet all the time. Becca, you know what I'm talking about? Of like the loss of her of her talk show. Oh, yeah, yeah. Where she's like she would have extracted. The balance of the universe is off. Right. She would have extracted everything usable out of Hock Tua and like discarded her, like a carcass.

Like Hock Tua got to like have a whole year because Ellen wasn't there to just kind of be like, here is Hock Tua. We've presented her to you. You've asked all the questions, and now she can go. Yeah, they're like Ellen extraction machine. Yeah, right. Like, that's how it used to be. It was like, there's a funny video of you ordering a donut in a weird way.

Come talk to Ellen for an hour and then never be seen again. But it also is just fascinating that Ellen went from being like, Hollywood, like, threw me out. They, like, said, thank you for your bravery and then, like, close the door on me. And then she's the voice of one of the most famous and beloved animated characters of all time to the highest grossing animated films in history. Right. and becomes like the voice of reason for every mom in America. Mm-hmm. Like, it's a 20-year run of just being like,

she kind of controls this like sliver of the national conversation. Of just like, I'm deciding which viral people get elevated. I'm deciding, like, what the new style and throw pillows are at Target. Yeah, it is interesting that Ellen show starts. And then this rise of like viral videos and social media starts. she immediately becomes, yeah, the curator of that for moms. Yes. And dancing?

She invented dancing. There's an Ellen bit in the famous J Nirvana sequence, yes? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I've heard you're afraid of clowns. No, Ellen, that's not true. And then the clown pops up out of the jack in the fuck. So there's a movie. There's a movie.

You're right. Is she coming back? Or is that? Because I know she had like a recent,ish special in the last five years. She did a documentary about gorillas. David, much like Alex Baldwin, she said goodbye to public life. On her last tour, she said, this is the last time you'll ever see me. And wasn't her last, I didn't watch the special.

But wasn't the special kind of like, yeah, I'm rich. I live in a spaceship. Oh, that's the one that had the claptor that went for like two full minutes. Yes. Oh. Yeah. Like, it looked like it was edited to be. She said something very self-congratulatory and then they kept it all in the edit of the special

and everyone claps for like an hour. It's also her dressing the mean Ellen stuff. It was like around that time she starts doing all this press, and it becomes very clear that she never, ever got over the anger of how everyone in the industry responded to her coming out. That even when finding Nemo and the show bring her back to prominence, she kind of held on to this spite forever. Of like, everyone commended me for doing a thing that was culturally important

and also every job dried up. Yeah. It's just fascinating, like this movie, so much hinging on that choice to cast her. It was the right choice? Yeah. But as we sort of said, like, every casting decision in this movie is pretty spot on. Even young Alexander Gould.

He's quite good. The voice of Nemo. He's the kid from weeds. That's right. He was the kid on weeds. I remember that. He had a little bowl cut. His mom was dealing weed.

He looked like a little, like a little Nemo. Nemo's just a round little guy with a pair of eyes. Weeds. Talk about a show that its entire premise is defunct now. She's like, I'm selling weed I'm gonna get in trouble with the law. Yeah. You know, like, oh no, the cops are after me

because I sell joints. Now you can just go to the store. Now you can just go to the fucking store. Yeah. If I'm being honest. What? Don't lie. Radically honest person in America.

It's time for radical honesty. Okay, honesty is on the table. Sometimes it is 1 p.m. Sure. And all I've had is coffee. Uh-oh. No breakfast, no lunch, just caffeine. and whatever movie I'm three rewatches deep on.

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No artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors. Yes. It's gluten-free. My wife is gluten-free. Well, that's nice to know. Good for her. No, in all honesty, I often try to watch the movie right before the episode

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There's also, you know, there's a powder for when you're home, and you want to control the texture, whether you want to just shake that up with water or mix it into something else. Right. But the RTD, you can just grab one of those bad boys when you're sprinting out the door to a record on time.

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They played Nickknack, which was an older short, being reissued. Is that the one in the snow globe with the jackhammer? Yes. And the sexy lady in the other snow globe. But because of Woke, the sexy lady in the snow globe used to have big naturals. and I think when they re-released it for Nemo, they made her a little more flat-chested. And I have been writing angry letters to Disney

every day of my life since then. I want my snow globes horny! Like those early Pixar movies, right, that's what they would do. They would show the old shorts. They would alternate because there was not as... Jerry's Game and For the Bird's story. They didn't have the young kids

making their own shorts within Pixar yet. It wasn't as consistent in a pipe. line. So sometimes they'd be like, we don't have a short ready. Let's throw up one of the old guys on. Get Nickknack out of the fucking box. Nickknack rules. They never did Redstream, though. Cowards. They didn't. That's the one they never put on there. No kid wants to see that on a big screen. It's a sad. The clown's really scary. Oh, yeah, it's a bit creepy. And it's in like a black void. Yeah, that's why I liked it. It's about a unicycle, Ben. It's a movie about a unicycle who's sad that he can't get a clown to sit on his face. That's insane. That sounds like a parody of a Pixar concept.

Juggle, right? He wants to learn how to juggle with his two little pedals. Yeah, but there is a clown in it, and it is weird. Where does he sit? Well, there's only one place to sit on a unicycle. Find the lie. But Nickknack plays. Then we got our fucking jump in Luxo Jr.

Guy. And then the movie, like, just kind of cold open, straight, like, mid-dialogue. I remember that feeling jarring. It does feel like a tonal shift against the other Pixar movies that ease you in. To a reality. Yeah. I mean, the opening line of this movie is, wow, right?

You're seeing... And you're already saying that because you're looking at this digitally animated ocean. That's also quite gorgeous. I saw this home by myself. I remember. I was here on vacation. I had to fill some time.

And I went to, like, a midday screening at Regal Union Square. And it was all kids. Yeah. Because it was the summertime. Yeah. And I felt a little weird. Daytime.

17 years old. But you'd go see a matinee in the... theater would be filled with fucking girls. Yes. I saw this movie multiple times in theaters. And that was part of its success was Pixar had become enough of a name brand that even people who didn't grow up with Pixar,

like people who were in college when Toy Story came out, were like, I guess I got to go see the new Pixar movie. Right. The track record was just so fucking strong at this point. The opening was humongous. And then it just played throughout the entire summer. It didn't go away. This was the summer that everyone assumed Matrix reloaded is the juggernaut.

Right, and that was May, and this came out, like, a week later, two weeks later, or whatever. Yeah. And then by, like, two months in, it was like, this has zoomed past Matrix, and it keeps playing throughout the entire year, which obviously can't happen. He has zero architects, so I don't know why that happened. Just kids. Yeah, they need a Merovingian fish. Oh, that would be fun, a French fish. Yes.

I guess the chef. Yeah, the shrimp chef. He goes, Jacques, you know, he's done or whatever. Sweet. Yeah. Who voices? him. That's Joe Ranft. Love it.

Who's also Weezy. Yeah. Oh. It's many, many voices. Is Weezy dead? Well, Joe Ramf is dead, sadly. Do you know what happened? Joe Ranft was working on the movie cars. No, what happened? He was working on the movie cars,

which I think he was maybe co-director on. Yeah, I think that was where he was rising up to right here. What's the worst way he could have died? Run over my car. Car accident. That's really sad. So, who else died is... the 399 eggs in coral and then...

Never forget about the 399. I do feel like they have... Like, that's why they do it as well. Because, like, fish do have hundreds of children. Right. So they have to come up with this kind of plotty way that he's like, it's like a one father, one son. It's like how Judy Hopps has like a hundred siblings.

I mean, don't get me. Do not get me started on that. It's what's really smart about the setup, I think, too, where you're like, what is the only circumstance in which a parent would be this obsessive over a one? child. And it's where they make these choices of like, when is the characterization being dictated more by the behavior of fish versus the behavior of humans? And with Marlin, they find this exact midpoint where you're like, well, if fish has, have hundreds of children's, they

couldn't be this helicopter. But if he has a traumatic event that gives him only one child, then is he just like a neurotic parent in the early 2000s? I also think to my point of just like this thing that Stanton was able to identify of how to me? make animated characters be grown-ups. Like, this is a movie in which Nemo's the title character, but Nemo is the third lead. The two leads are grown-ups. True. And same with Monsters Inc. and Toy Story and a Bugs Life that all have kids in them, but the kids are

supporting. And the grown-ups talk like modern grown-ups. And when we enter into this scene, what's immediately kind of comfortable about it is that it has the vibe of a couple who have been looking at houses all day. Yeah, right. Right? That you feel where their in jokes are, how they needle each other. And Ike a couple.

The satisfaction of, you know what? You're right, this place is good. And then how immediately that paradise is destroyed by this barracuda. That's the villain of the movie, Griffin. Yeah. Barracuda. Baracuda. Yeah.

Baracuda. Anyway, years later, cut to Nemo Libs. He has fucked up Finn. I know we're just hyper-fixating on the first scene of this movie alone. Let's invest it. But. In my opinion. For how large the trauma of the barracuda, and as you said, like many parents who are just like, I just don't show this scene to my kid.

It is funny that when you look at the barracuda is still cartoonish looking. Like has like a big, goofy, googly eye. It's like a scary cartoon. It's also like a perfect kind of trauma by implication where you see the moment where she clocks the barracuda. I know, and then she looks down. He notices it because she's no longer riffing with him. He's inside the anemone. You are fixating on this.

He peeks out. Yes. There's perfect fucking acting of her eye line changing to the barracuda and trying to game out if she can make the move to protect the eggs. How's she going to protect him? She's just one fish. And then Marlon gets hit by the tail blackout. You don't see her die. You just have him wake up to her not being there and only the one egg with the crack.

No egg in the fins. Right. The crack is why he has a one assumes that's the bum fin reasoning. He's lucky. I don't think those eggs. can really crack because they're like jelly, but like, who cares? Lucky Finn. Yes, so they live in an enemy.

Yes. Marlon and Nemo. And Nemo wants to start school. I guess it's sort of a September because the year's starting. He's been eager to start. Marlon keeps holding him back. How long do you found fish live? Eight, six to ten years in the wild.

10 to 20 in an aquarium. Okay. Should have kept him at the dentist. Well, Dory will get to the aquarium. It's a thing that that Stanton said, also when he saw that picture of them poking out of the anemone and said, like, oh, what about clownfish? Then he looked into it, and he was like, clownfish live in anemones and rarely leave. That he, there was like a gift in researching the species of, oh, they live in this weird, like,

security net that also can sting them and try not to leave the bubble. I think it is a really smart characterization choice. They dialed in the exact right amount of anxiety that Marlin can have because there's an insufferable version of this movie where Marlin is like Bo is afraid where he is so terrified Right, that he literally doesn't want to leave the anemone There's something in the fact and even just the way he's doing bits with Nemo at the beginning Where it's like he wants to think of himself as a funny guy

He wants to think of himself as not being too uptight Easygoing dad. Yeah, the neighborhood dads like know him already Right. Once he gets to the drop off. This is true. Everyone tries to relate to him like a normal. person and then he just always puts a little too much in it. He always gets a little too wound up.

Can't tell the joke. And no one's mean. But I like when he's fucking up the joke. They're just like, all the dads are just like, can we stop? The one guy just goes, for a clownfish, he's not very funny. And then the other guy goes, pity. It's a jellyfish, a seahorse, and I'm trying to think the dad. It's the type of fish of the one who says, I'm obnoxious. Yes. Which is Dewey from Malcolm in the Metals.

Which might be a yellow tank. We're an angel fish. I think that's true. No, no. So, Dory is a blue tank. Yeah, but here I am speaking about a yellow tank. Oh, yeah, no, you're right. In fact, you're saying something different, David, and this is why you should listen to women. Oh, no, Bubbles is a yellow tank.

Yeah, bubbles is a yellow tank. So these might be angel fish. Oh. Not to be confused, though, of Pouty Teng. No. Pudy Teng is in the film, but you have to look for him. Let's also say we've invoked bubbles, but we're not yet getting to the root of the matter. We will do that later.

Okay. Willem Defoeufo. is an angel fish. Okay. Bubbles is a yellow tang. So what's the kit? A butterfly fish. Cool.

The others are a flapjack octopus, which is those octopuses with like the cute little legs that kind of go like, woo-o-woo. She is adorable. And a seahorse. So it's not a jellyfish, it's an octopus. Her one tendrils shorter than the others, but you never notice when she twirls them like this. Because jellyfish in this movie are like angler fish in that they seem to lack a consciousness, a.k.a. eyes.

Well, jellyfish in real life Definitely don't have a brain They don't have a brain My daughter has Endless questions from me about jellyfish Which I fully sent Because we go to the aquarium all the time I was gonna say like four times a day

You go to the aquarium It's the best place on earth But like where she is She has really reasonable questions Of just like Why and how? Like why do they exist And then what is this?

Yeah And I'm like how do they eat And I'm like I don't really know man They're weird Jellyfish are weird You ever been sung that jellyfish Question of the room

Oh yeah Me too. Stings. It really hurts. Sucks. Fucking sucks. You ever get peed on? Yeah, but not for that reason.

We packed sand on it. Oh, sorry, I fully wasn't. Fine. I think peeing doesn't really work and sand possibly does, right? A bit more. Yes. Peeing is one of those classic, like, old wives' tales things. It does feel like as much as he's trying to break out of a sense of a Pixar formula

that was starting to codify at this point. this is the most traditional Pixar move of, now let's do eight minutes of basically blackout gags of what's funny about fish. Right, right. Like Toy Story has this the second Andy leaves the room and you're like, what's every character's game? I feel like, certainly Monsters Inc has this

with Mike and Sully walking through Monstropolis the first time. And you're like, okay, how does a Monster City work? You have all of this, which also feels like it's him knowing you have to counterbalance the trauma of what just happened in the movie. It's nice that they have a nice dynamic, but also kids need to feel comfortable now. It's very economical. Yeah. You get right to Nemo going away without it feeling rushed, you know, getting, you know, in trouble.

It's basically, I mean, like, Nemo was taken at like minute 14, and I think Dory enters at minute 16. Like, he basically gets both of those things set up within the first 15 minutes of the movie. Of course, right, their school is that they will ride on the back of a Manta Ray and he'll tell them things about fish. A singing teacher named Mr. Ray. He's just so good. Who likes diffusing conflict. Right. Who's right, very, very good at handling interpersonal.

Yeah, it's cool to have a teacher who's also sort of also the bus. Yes, great, great point. And the other parents are commanding Marlon for seeming kind of chill. Right. Even if he's not funny. But then Nemo, he pushes it a little too far. He's encouraged by the other boys. But what also happens?

He finds out that the day he's finally letting his son go to school also is the day they're going at the drive. Stop off. Yes. The dads are giving him credit. The edge of the reef. Yeah, you seem pretty true. Drop off. I was stressed out.

Right. And then that's, I regret it. I never should have let him do this. He runs out. He embarrasses Nemo in front of his friends. And Nemo feels the need to rebel. He's going to touch the butt. He's going to touch the butt.

Classic comedy. And it's also nice to have the comedy there because that's hilarious if you're a kid. And it helps diffuse the situation a little bit, which is very scary. It is an acting moment that I love in this film. Nemo's silent performance of. challenging his father to touch the butt and they play it like Nemo is in like an FBI

standoff where he won't break eye contact and he just taps it really quickly and intensely. I love the kid going Yeah. It's really fun. But there's also such a loud smack sound when he hits the butt. There's so much force on it.

And his point has proven. He's ready to swim back to his father unfortunately. A big bad dentist. Right. The deep sea divers come. One puts Nemo in a Ziplock bag. The other one, really rudely, takes a picture of Marlin. A detail I love is that when the flash

goes off on Marlin, Marlin reacts by turning sideways and his eye goes wall-eyed, so it's like the pose in the photo is what a fish would look like versus a cartoon fish. It's a really quick gag. His fish's eyes go this away, but in the movie, they have to look this way. He becomes flush and pointing

out. Right. I remember reading a fucking, like, screenplay guidebook. that was showing how all Hollywood movies fit into, you know, certain storytelling formulas. And it tried to argue that the dentist is the antagonist of this movie, which is wrong. The antagonist of this movie is Marlin's anxiety. Yes, right. That is what needs to be overcome and defeat it.

Right. I mean, also, Nemo does get captured in that it does suck. It's a problem. No one's villainous. Right. Yes. But it is. The same as these creatures just doing what they're want to do.

Right. All through the ocean. Like the seagulls are, they're not villains, but they're not, they're not sympathetic. You could argue that the obstructions that almost feel malevolent in the movie are not circle of life, but like just the survival of the fittest mechanisms, right? Of just, this is the ecosystem of how fish survive in relationship to each other. But there's also, like, the reason why the tank stuff doesn't feel stagnant is Gil is able to, to kind of teach Nemo the thing

that Marlon's afraid to teach him. That Marlon is so... Philip Marlon. Pull up Marlon. Marlon is so terrified by what he perceives as Nemo's weakness because of the lucky Finn that he wants to teach him

how to live a life devoid of risk and is overcorrecting. And Gil is someone who similarly is like scarred and empowers Nemo to feel like he has the ability to actually do things. Yeah. We'll get into his initiation ritual, but I love that. They give him that little thing to feel brave.

Ah, ooh, ah, oh, oh, oh. Okay, so Marlon bangs into Dory, trying to find him up. Bangs into Dory immediately. She can't help him. Who's that character introduction? Well, of course, I know right this way. And then while he's following her, she starts doing the panic looking over her shoulder. Who's this creepy guy?

And then she does the agro, like, you got a problem, huh? Huh? It's a tossed-off joke. Obviously, it then becomes the premise of an entirely new movie. It runs my family. At least I think it does. I think it does. Where are they?

Makes me laugh so hard every time. It's just a two-shot that holds for like 10 seconds of silence. I'm not thinking about it. And then she looks back and she goes, hi, I'm Dory. That it's one run on thought. The timing is so good. Right. Where are they?

It's just so fucking funny. Because like you never need to explain it. The whole movie then explains it. Her dad is fucking pattern baldness, blue tang or whatever. We'll get to that. Yeah. But the movie's been moving so fast up until this point that when you have that sustained two shot of just letting the joke rhythm of Ellen drive the movie,

it feels like a nice reset point. Dorian him then pretty much the next thing is the sharks, right? Like pretty much immediately. Run into Bruce. This is the one thing in the movie that always felt an incy bit cute to me. The entire shark dynamic. I don't love. The self-help therapy speaks.

I don't love the trope of characters. Same with Reckett Ralph in a group therapy or in like a blank anonymous. Overdone. It's not my favorite. Now, can I play devil's advocate and say this was pretty early in that? It is wildly overdone now. I remember not like an indebted. 2003.

We must acknowledge that the sharks were kind of the immediate breakout characters. Bruce was big. Bruce had a big summer. Well, Bruce looks awesome. Well, Dory's a movie star. Dory's like a leading lady. Like Dory's like, Dory's first on the pole she's.

She's an old chenoo. Yeah. But one of the big posters was Bruce's big face. I love, of course, that it's the great Barry Humphreys, Dame Edna herself. Playing Scary. And then Eric Banna and who's the third one? Interesting. So the third shark in this dynamic is played by Bruce Spence.

Now, here's what's interesting about this guy. And hold on to your seat. He played the gyrocopter pilot in the Road Warrior, aka Mad Max 2. Whoa. He's also Tion Miedon in Star Wars Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith. This very year he is the train man. His Matrix Revolution is out in just a few months. David, he was arguably the king of the box office in 2003.

Except he got cut out of a lot of the rings. Entertainment Weekly did a little sidebar in their 2003 year in review where they said he was the highest grossing actor because he had Matrix Revolutions and Finding Nemo. And if he had made the cut of Return of the King, I think he would have had $2 billion in box office. Wow. It's like how Jonathan Bailey was king of the box office last year. Now, now why is that? Well, apart for, oh, because Jurassic, was that last year? Yeah.

Was that but last year? It was. That he saw a dinosaur? door and went, oh, cool. He cried. Can I say? Then he was the scarecrow. Yes, Ben.

I like the shark house. Thank you. I like that they live around bombs. The bombs. Attached to chains. The bombs are cool and them being blown up is cool. It is funny that Ben's like, attached to chains. Not just bombs, my friend.

Let's not forget. And I like a shipwreck, too. Yeah. I also feel like, what is it, chum and what's the other shark's name? Crunch or Crush? Let me find out. Anchor. Anchor, Chum, and Bruce. Anchor and Chum. Oh, Crush is the turtle.

And Anchor is a hammerhead. Yes. And Chum has the hook through his face. They just feel like very Ben characters. Specifically, Anchor and Chum. They should get their own movie. But, yeah, like the joke obviously right is they don't eat fish anymore. What will they be eating? It doesn't really come up.

Kelp or some shit. I just think this was like real vegans. I think sharks need like. a tremendous amount of food to operate, right? Like, I think this is incredibly well-staged action sequence. It's so good. It's incredibly well done. Yeah, the bomb's exploding.

Dory's, um, the, Dory's blood coming out of her nose and then the way his eyes changed. Like, it's so cool. Yes. He just starts tripping. Oh, that's good. And they're like, no, no, Mike, don't do it, Mike. That's really funny. I think, like, several points in this movie in a film that you would not classify as an action film,

Stanton kind of like pulls off a fish version of an Indiana Jones sequence, where even just like Bruce leading them through the establishment of the mines in the sea, right? Like all the sort of visual stuff it needs to teach you that's then going to pay off in the sequence, the missile silo that they can hide out in, how they can activate that to get rid of Bruce, which then even has the comedy within it of Anchor and Chum jumping in between Bruce's bites to apologize for his behavior. and it's just all like he keeps teaching you things that don't feel like

overstated setups that pay off in very satisfying ways where then you can just have action happen with real tension because you know this is a universe in which death can happen characters can die in this movie

and still get jokes in. Ben's laughing at how excited I am. Tori is so funny when she forgets that they're being chased and then launches the missile so that they go back towards the shark. Yes, yes.

This is, oh. Any Dory joke like that works. We should call this out too. This is the other thing is that Dory can read English, even though she can't remember things. 32 Wallyway. That's the reason that Marlon has to stick with her because the only thing they have to lead them towards Nemo is the address written on the back.

Yeah, so during this is when they find the goggles. Exactly. The diver's goggles, he clocks them. Right. We learn she can read English because she sees the sign that says, Esk. Cup pay. Yes.

Right, right. This kind of perfect, like, he's stuck with her because she can do a thing that he can't do, even if she doesn't understand what she's doing. And she's constantly getting it wrong. But then in this, like, chain of events, it's, like, going after the goggles and the snap of the elastic band is what causes her to bleed, which is activates Bruce. Yeah, she's so good to even just doing the kind of, I'm fine, I'm fine, you know, like the... This is also a character design that should not be...

like a plausible nose bleed coming out of it. She's so fucking narrow. Her face is basically a pencil when head on. With eyes sticking out either side. Right. And she's just got like a nose bump in a mouth.

There's a lot of blue tangs at the Brooklyn Aquarium, the New York Aquarium. Yeah. And my daughter's, I was like, Dory, there she is. This is an incredibly difficult actual species to get emotion out.

I got no notes. Yeah. I got no notes on any of the animation in this movie. I think it's perfect. I think it's the apex of Pixar. Yeah. I really do.

Yeah. I mean, maybe Rattatatatitude. Like, Ratatoui has such a beautiful kind of, like, approach to all of its things. I think this is a better movie. Well, that's... Everyone relax. We're all saying stuff.

This is the five-star tier for me, right? The two toy stories, Monsters Inc., finding emo, Ratatoui, Incredibles. Those are the ones at the very, very top of the heap for me. Those are, like, perfect movies, in my opinion. I do think Stanton is the guy within... Pixar who starts getting most fascinated by the idea that in computer animation you can simulate a camera in a way that you can't in hand drawn. And he pushes that really far in Wally, where Wally is really selling the illusion of there

is a human operator. Like Wally has delayed zooms and shit like that. I know this is basically spoiling our list. But do you like this more than Wally? Where are you there? I'm not sure where I am. I think Wally's a little bit more imperfect than this film. Right.

Right. But the static highs of Wileylander. Also, you just have to, like, think about when that movie got announced and it was like, Andrew Stanton is making a robot rom-com in the style of silent films, I lost my fucking mind. When it was like he's making a robot Buster Keaton movie, it felt like they had designed a film specifically for me. That makes sense. Becca? Huh?

Wally or Nima. Oh, Nemo. Like, Wally is, like, I love Rattahue so much. So that's not far behind Nemo. But Wally, I have a harder time with the things that are imperfect about it. But you think this is Stanton's best film, maybe, but Wally's more of a great. Look, this is the debate. This is the grand debate we'll have over these six weeks, I guess.

It's like a Godfather versus Apocalypse Now situation where you're like every... Oh, that's interesting. I don't find that a tough situation anymore. I recently rewatched Apocalypse Now and was like, I think I think I can see Like this movie has left me It's a messy

A film It's such a big movie for me as a teen Obviously it's incredible I also think like The most ecstatic things That movie can accomplish Are part and parcel With its messiness

Right totally Which feels the same as Wally to me Where I'm like Wally is like A couple steps off Of being perfect for me But if it was perfect It maybe wouldn't able To achieve the weird things

It's able to pull off But this film It feels like Stanton is with really fucking limited technology at this time still. And this shit's so fucking expensive to do and they talk about the methods they had to develop and the strategies of how to stop it from costing like $500 million. How do you continue to visually maintain the relationship between the characters and the water they're in?

Right, right, right, right. Like in Shark Tale, it's just characters floating. In this, they're like, we can't in every shot show the bubbles or the waves of their fin motion. we can't always show the distortion of, you know, the thickness of the water at this point at different levels in the darkness or whatever. But they choose their battles really well. They're all these insane hacks they do where basically they create one texture surface, which is the surface of the water whenever they're peeking their heads up above. And then they copy that and put a different layer on top of it to make it the ocean floor. So basically the sand in the water are the same element, but one is fixed and one is in mind.

motion. Similarly, they couldn't figure out how to make the anemone. And the Monsters Inc. team, which was working on the other side of the studio, had cracked the fur thing. Right. And someone went, oh, if you take a ball of fur and then, like, size it up like crazy so every strand is really thick. Whoa. Then the anemone is just overgrown hair. So there's stuff in, like, animation that's like when you hear stories about Sam Ramey figuring out a hack for, like, how to pull off a special effect in a cheap way, that this is. That they, you know, this movie is using to, like, insane effect because none of it feels like shortcuts. And it's just so painterly and beautiful.

And even just the fucking, the lighting on this movie. I wanted to bring up the lighting, especially because we're in a crisis in 2026. To see a movie where it's so thoughtfully done. So vivid and beautiful. And Pixar is like a big part of their process is what they call the color scripts where they do these pastel kind of storyboards. not of every shot, but basically of every sequence, to look at the color tones of the movie. Which is like a classic Disney 50s type thing as well.

To establish the moods of like when is it brightest and when is it coldest and when do you need to establish a tone of things feeling ominous versus sad, you know? And I think this movie uses the like depths of the ocean to convey those things. Things get brighter when they're closer to the surface. Right. Very cool. Where you see more reflection of the light. And obviously the whole anglerfish sequence, you know, is such a bravura demonstration of all that, you know, the light on the English.

Right. So they get away and pretty quickly they're swimming down to retrieve. Right. When they get away from Bruce, that's when they come across the angler fish. They don't get a second to rest. No. Yeah. You know how male anglerfish reproduce?

You know, right? They suck their own decks. I'm taking a guess. They're little, and they fuse to the girl anglerfish and, like, melt into her and just leave behind their balls. And then the female anglerfish uses the balls to, like, make it lay-act. Do they come and get the balls back? No, they die. That's the end for them. They're, they mate.

You know, they're just like, blah. Go out on top. Exactly. I mean, nice work if you can get it. And it's one of those, like, diomorphism things were, like, the woman. is like the woman. The woman. The female Angliff is like 10 times bigger than the male or whatever.

Yeah, like the ocean floor stuff brings up like deep sea is as scary and unknowable as outer space. Of course. The creatures that are in it are alien. This one looks like an HR Geiger alien. Like, it's terrifying. This is a great call. James Cameron taught us about the aliens of the deep and the ghost of the abyss. Goes the abysailing to the deep.

That's right. I think it is very smart that this movie avoids. Yeah, they can't go down there. If you were to anthropomorphize the deep sea creatures more, it would feel like this is a bad neighborhood in a way that was coded very dangerously. Leave that shit for shark tail. Exactly. It makes it much easier to just be like, this is basically outer space. And we don't understand the rules of what's happening here.

These characters don't have faces that you can like understand or talk to. Yeah, I feel like if it had a voice, it would be. too scary for kids. Totally. It'd be like breathing. It's already kind of scary. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's, right. It's selective which characters can't speak. It's the ones where even just being around them is potentially a danger, you know? Yeah. So to move on from the, you know, from this, like pretty quickly, we are also in the tank, right? Like, around this time is one we're sort of cutting over to the tank. I was looking, I feel like the tank basically comes in 30 minutes in. stay with just Marlin

and Dory for a while. No, excuse me. It's right after the bruise sequence because the bomb goes off. It cuts to the two birds and the one who thinks the other one farted. It's a really good tension relief gag. And a really good way to bridge ocean worlds

and silly dentist world. So the tank comes in minute 25. Cool. And the tank is like we've already, at this point, we've already been introduced to like 12 incredible characters. Yeah. Let's throw in a whole perfect

little chamberpiece sitcom ensemble of characters who are going absolutely stir crazy. You got Gil. Willem Defoe. Yeah. Willem Defoe. William Defoe.

Sorry, I'm being a Catherine La Nassah. Baby Cheeto? Baby Cheeto. Baby J. Doe? There's a baby Jaintoe. In the pit, season two. Early on, there is an abandoned baby.

Okay. And Catherine La Nassah. Who's going to look over this baby chain? He's like, there's a baby Jainto. Sounds good. It rocks. And like pit fandom, which is very normal, not toxic at all, totally regular.

One of the recurring jokes about this season is like, they're always like, predictions for finale. Baby Jane Doe, you know, saves the day. You know, like she will have laser vision, you know, that they keep being like this abandoned baby. Yeah, someone was like, I've seen the ending and just, I won't spoil it, but don't look up baby Jane Doe and rocket launcher. I don't say this lightly. Yeah, go. But just three shows I don't. engage with in the last four months

I've just been reading insane headlines about the way the fandom is treated these actors I'm like broken containment on like right like that you are reading about it. Fandom needs to die. It really does. It's really what's happening in Pitt world. The shit that was happening to the heated rivalry guys. I'm like

this isn't good but I'm not surprised because this is a show that's driven on a sort of team Edward team Jacob over obsession with. But Blankies are great and we like that. We love your money. I mean, and your fandom. Easy, easy, easy, easy.

But then, like, the pitch shit that's been happening. And then there was the fucking Percy Jackson kid was like, I can't go to prom. Oh, yeah. Because he was harassing whoever. Whoever he takes to prom, the fans are going to send death threats to. He was basically, like, the fans have, like, track down every girl in my high school class and is sending death threats saying, like, you better not go on a date with him because he belongs to me. Oh, my God.

Everyone needs to show the fuck out. But it's the internet and it's the way the algorithms feed and all that. It's so crazy. But Pitt is the last show I would expect to have that. Of course. And I just keep reading these insane things. I think that's why it took everyone by surprise. Yes.

Where they're like, it's like a sober hospital procedural. And everyone's just like, I can't believe that Robbie did that. It's like, he's a fictional character. But then they're like angry at which actors aren't coming back when it's not. Oh, yeah. They're being real normal about everything. This group. Okay, so we got killed.

Right. And then it's like sitcom fucking all-stars, right? It's like Brad Garrett. He's the puffer fish. We have Allison Jenny from the West Wing. We love her. Stephen Roof from News Radio. Brad Garrett from Everylalows Raymond, obviously.

Vicki Lewis also from News Radio. Austin Pendleton is Gurgle. And he's, you know, he's a guy. Heck of theater, actor, million movies. Yeah, we love that. Max from the Muppet movie. And then Joe Ramf is Jacques. But immediately everyone has their bit.

He is clean. Nemo wakes up and sees all the scary imagery of the like aquarium toys and everything. You feel like, okay, so this is going to be like analogous to him being in prison now. And he's stuck with a bunch of scary inmates. And then immediately it's like, no, this is like a mental hospital. Yeah, it's cuckoo's now. They all have conditions. They're so sweet.

Right. Right. So, okay, let me try. So Gil is scarred and he's kind of battle, you know, hard. And we learn he also has a bad fin. He's got a bad fin too. They basically. And never stopped him.

I don't know if you've noticed this. The scarring pattern on his face is basically one to one with platoon. I was about to say it's platoon, right? They give him the same scars. Defoe plays it so straight, but also I think it's like incredibly warm in this movie. Yeah. He's his alternate father figure. I know. I want Gil to believe in me.

He's so good because you're just like there's a universe in which they go like the joke is you're really intense. He's the drill sergeant. You play it really seriously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at the end, you show a little bit of warmth. But even from the beginning, he's playing the vulnerability of this guy. It's important, too, that he was the only fish that ever lived in the ocean. Yeah, he's the, the rest of them are tankies.

Yeah. Brad, the puffer fish, so he sometimes, he goes puff mode. I guess that's his problem. Yeah. He doesn't really have any other problems. He's got like a hair-trigger anxiety response. It's the equivalent of having, like, panic attacks or whatever. I guess Peach is kind of maybe the most balanced, but she's a bit of a gossip, I guess.

And I know it. at all. Yeah. Bubbles, loves bubbles. Yes. He's obsessed with the bubbles.

He's OCD and he's obsessed with the little treasure chest that releases bubbles and trying to keep them in there. One of the great

fish tank toys. If not, I think the top. Or I guess, no, gurgles the one who's OCD. Yeah, gurgles like, hmm.

And then, and then Deb, I just love the idea that she's obsessed with her own reflection. This is my sister, Flo.

Who she thinks is a liar. She told Memo not to trust. It's so funny. It's really good. Yeah, and then Jacques is just a high-statist, elitist Frenchman. He's kind of good, actually. Yeah, shock rolls.

So they all want out, though, right? Like, they all want out of the tank and they have, like, you know, a sort of developing plan that Nemo fits into. Yeah, he's dropped into a great escape situation where it's like there have been years of failed plans. They keep on trying things that don't work and Nemo feels to them like he offers some new opportunities, specifically in the fact that he's not. he's small. Right. Right. Yep.

You can go into the filter and put the stone in the fan and all that stuff. But speaking to how complete the kind of vision of this movie was when Stanton wrote it, the major changes you hear about in the film are taking out things that were gilding the lily rather than needing to figure out how to ultimately get to things. So like, you know, unwinding the flashback structure. He originally had Gil be more of a, I don't know whether to trust this guy or not character. He played him more scary up top. Sure.

There's a scene where Nemo gets Gil to open up and talk about what happened to him and how he ended up in the tank. And he tells this whole story about his family that went missing and where he came from. And then Nemo finds out later in the movie that Gil has been lying. It's like a Joker, do you want to know how I got these scars thing? and that every detail that Gil told him is in a picture book that's in the dentist waiting room that he hears a kid read. And he was just like, we don't need this. Just let Gil be actually invested in helping this kid.

Yeah. This movie is already stuffed to the gills. Right, right. There were originally two seagulls. How many comedy points there? One trillion comedy points. No, one trillion. I know OU comedy points.

You're in debt. There were originally two seagulled. Seagulls, or not seagulls, what is it, Pelicans. Oh, yeah. Right. So the one who ends up trying to eat them was originally a fully developed character, and there was kind of a good and bad pelican, and Nigel's trying to protect them, and this other one's trying to eat them.

And they were just like, none of this is necessary. Because they already have the seagulls. Right. That's their thing. Yeah. But I love Nigel as a character as just this kind of like, Jeffrey Rush just playing fucking warm, right? Just playing like a lad who just loves coming in.

because he likes dentistry. Right. It's funny how they all know about dentistry. Yeah. Because they've been in this tank all these years. But they're stuck. Nigel comes and visits of his own accord. He likes to hear the like dentist update.

What's the gossip? What drills he using? It's funny because it's like they are out, they are watching the dentistry like television. They are so invested. Right. But for them it's also like studying their captor to be like, where are the vulnerabilities?

What's genius about Nigel too? is you immediately recognize that is how they are going to get out of there. This is what I'm talking about. It's like there's such intentionality of this story that any time a character is introduced, you're like, what's the function they're going to serve? Yeah. And anytime you're shown a visual element, you're sort of like, oh, right, he could keep people in his beak. Right.

And none of it. It's all what everyone, you know, talks about being the ideal of what you want to achieve in dramatic storytelling, especially in like film narratives is, surprising but inevitable. How can you in 90 minutes pay off the things that felt like they were they had to happen but yet when they happened they don't

feel deregure. You really locked into this movie. He's seen it so many times. And I mean so have I I. I truly this is one of my go-to I can't sleep movies. This is like a real comfort movie for me and you know

we were talking about we did our edge of tomorrow episode on Patreon which I guess we'll just come out or recently come out. Right. And we were talking about how you will often identify a sleep movie and watch it like literally every night for like a couple of months. Pretty much. And then you kind of like squeeze all the juice out of it and you move on to something

new for a while. Yeah. Nemo has just been in the rotation for 20 years for me. I probably haven't seen this movie until you rewatched it yesterday in over 15 years or something. And it was like, I know every word. Every line. Yes.

A lot of the lines are also so catchy, so sticky. This is like full of just these effortless feeling catchphrases. It's not like donkey catchphrases. No, they're not dumb jokes and so much of it is the specificity of the actor makes a really interesting choice in the rhythm of their line delivery or the character, the design of the character that is saying that thing and the animation of what they do when they're saying it. So where do we leave off? Well, we've done the tank for a while. The Dory thing. They escape the angler fish.

Right. We go from the tank to the angler fish. And then it is when basically like Dory doesn't absorb the directions of like avoid the jellyfish and they go into the jellyfish. So. Yeah. Or is this Marlon's fault? It's Marlon's fault.

She sort of remembers that they shouldn't do it. And Marlon's like, what are you talking about? This is the right way. Yeah. The like, the like, the like, school of fish. Yeah. They're like, they don't like him. Or they keep in person.

That's John Ratsenberger. That's John Ratsenberger. Yeah. So we're going to get back to them. grumpy guess. In an amazing way. But he's like Marl, you have Marlin. Okay.

You have Marlon dejected that they lost the goggles, right? And that's when Dory introduces the Just Keep Swimming to cheer him up, that she's also invested in him. She was able with the angler fish because he used the light like a reading light. She was able to do P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney. They've lost the goggles. But this is for the first time she's learning to remember. Yeah.

Which I just think is so. elegantly done that it's a gradual thing rather than at one moment suddenly. You have your payoff moments with her. You have the like her making the emotional plea to him that like when I'm with you, I remember things. And you have the moment where the whole Nemo thing comes flashing back to her. But she's so proud of herself right now for she's like, I've remembered the address. It's incremental.

You give her little victory so it's not just like at one point in the movie suddenly she's fixed. And because her, well, A, she repeats the, she repeats it a hundred times. but also like because the remembering the address is something so emotionally important to her. That like I won't remember the address of a house I grew up in. But I'll remember P. Sherman 42 Wallyway, Sydney, until like I die. And especially her riffing on it and her turning into the songs. Ask me again and I'll tell you P. Sherman 42 Wallyway. So they get to this trench and the trench looks dark and scary.

Marlon. Sorry, I was pulling up to remind myself where I was. Instead, I just got the scary sounds of the trench. And Marlin is obviously like, well, we don't want to go through the dark scary trench. We need to go over. A fish who she had asked for directions earlier told her. It's the school of fish. It's the final thing.

After they've been making fun of Marlon and he's like, fuck these guys. Then they're like one last thing, but it's after he swum off. So only she's there to hear it. And they don't know that she can't remember. Oh, right. That is then. I thought this happened later in the movie, but I'm getting them confused with the school of fish in the end who we'll get to.

We're also a big silver school of fish. But the clockwork kind of precision of just like, there aren't any cheats in the story. They are so funny. They're so specific, like the conflicts they find themselves in, why they're there, why there isn't an easy out, why they need to fight to work through the thing. Like, if Marlon wasn't offended by them mocking him because he's so self-serious, then he would have heard the thing about the trench. Right. And he doesn't like asking for directions. She's very friendly.

She doesn't mind going up to anyone. His stubbornness screws them. They do the like, hey, is this fellow bothering you? Yeah. It's funny. So they play a game of charades to cheer her up. And then because, and so we've seen that they can move in this really fun way. And then they do a big arrow because they tell them they need to get to the EAC.

Oh, right. They show the Sydney opera. They show the little waves. They show the opera house. They turn into Marlin and they do like a sad face Marlin, which is pretty funny. They do a mocking impression over his shoulder. They are very funny. Yes.

Yes, so they give them the directions. Right. Swim through, not over. Yeah, he doesn't trust her. So he distracts her. He's like, look, a shiny thing. Yeah. And they go over.

The jellyfish fucked them up. The jellyfish fucked them up. Yeah. This is the sequence. But then they're woken up. I mean, we cut to the tank, and then when we cut back to them, they're woken up on the turtles. But it's so scary, intense, and so beautiful. It's another camera decision where he said they animated this whole sequence, and he was like,

it looks too neat and clean and purples. perfect. There isn't tension to this. And the guy who was head of camera on the movie was like, let me try something. And he clicked twice to zoom in. Like literally just did that. Sure. And did it kind of like arbitrarily. Right. And Stanton was like, oh, if the compositions are asymmetrical, if the jellyfish's bodies are cut off. Right. And it feels like there's just this weird environment that you can't see as full bodies. And so all of the camera placements within the sequence, which is a lot more quick cutty, are all kind of, a little disorienting.

How did they stop the camera from getting wet? Really good question. It's a fun sequence. Fun. We're getting to the turtles. Turtles, okay? In my opinion,

the most positive representation of a Californian in the world. This is a really good take. Like, of that kind of like the surfer dude thing, Andrew Stanton, a Massachusetts, although he's probably lived in California for like decades at this point.

Yes. Doing like a surfer dude accent. Oh, man. You know, right? Mm-hmm. But it's, like, the whole point of Crush is he's just like, I'm 100 years old or 150 or whatever he is. Look at me. I'm fucking chilling.

There's nothing annoying about this guy. No. He's not forcing his worldview on it. Not at all. But the more you talk to and go with the flow. This guy's got it fucking figured out. He's like, you know, when there's like cool teen, like when there's cool Jesus for teens. Do you know what I mean?

Crush is cool Jesus. You think he's kind of like a youth pastor, but like a really nice youth pastor? He's like the cool Jesus. He's the cool Jesus. he's the cool hippie Jesus that the youth pastor is talking about. Yeah, I guess a youth pastor wishes he could be crushed. But he is showing he's demonstrating an extremely different parenting style. Yes.

Right? Marlon is being exposed to it is actually healthy for your kid. Much less helicopter-y kind of parenting. He'll find his way. A way to teach your kid, a way a kid learns to be safe in the world is to fail or fall off the swing. To let them be empowered in their choices and feel like it's based on a experiences rather than rules being placed around them. Yeah, and feel to have a sense of adventure that feels safe. Just the whole idea of like, you know, locating the EAC as a real phenomenon than being like, man, okay, so turtles would they be like surfers?

Yeah. If they're literally just in the flow of this. It's sort of like a highway. Right. Like when you see the fish that are merging on. But it also is skydiving. Yes. Yeah, right.

Right. Oh, when squirt gives their big. the big, like, skydiver, like, okay, we're going to have a great jump today. Totally. I mean, incredible performance from Stanton. It's another one of these early examples where here's a role that they earmark of, like,

well, at some point we'll hire, like, a celebrity to do it. And he would do it in all the story reels and the presentations. Much like Bradbird doing Edna Mode or whatever, right? Well, that's the opposite story where they hired, much like William H. Macy, it's never been named, but everyone believes it's Lily Tomlin. Makes sense. that he hired Lily Tomlin and she was doing the records and he kept on giving her really specific directions of being like, no, I think it's more like this and it's more like this.

And Lily Tonlin literally, excuse me, I got myself to a tongue twister. Lily Tomlin literally goes, I think you should just do this. Why don't you do it then? Right. And then he just does it. Edna was born. Right. This was the opposite where when they were-

Edna mode. When they were in the early stages, everyone around Stanton was just like, you should just fucking do this. He's like a Hawaiian shirt. Well, all the Pixar guys at this point in time are Hawaiian shirt goods. This is a little prepier. He's got that New England thing going on. Yeah. But this is outside of himself, but he just, like, he fucking found the character.

No one's going to do it better. Should I have a Hawaiian shirt era? No, absolutely not. That would be a fucking nightmare. I think you're wearing a baseball shirt and it's awesome. I'm in my Mets era. Yeah, that's here. I keep buying jerseys.

So the other thing, as we've been saying about how all the character choices make sense for the type of animal, this type of more relaxed parenting style, not only that they're surfers and whatever else, but it's also because they hatch their eggs really far away. And Marlon goes, how do you trust that they'll come and swim all this way in the big, big ocean and find you? And it's like, oh, when they're ready, they'll, when you know, you know, you know. But it's finding those gifts of like you do research on different species

and you go, oh, that's interesting. That's an interesting character detail. Yeah. Rather than forcing things on to characters, you find these discoveries. I want to mention that in between, right before Marlin waking up. Oh, we have tank stuff. Yes. You have the first attempted tank escape.

Yep. Which is genuinely, like, pretty upset. That's also an Indiana Jones type. I really like that it's a moment for Gil to be like, I push the kid too hard. Or like, I was being crazy, like, thinking this would work or whatever. Also, that he's only been dealing with other adults and that he's pushing Nemo to the same extent. He's the opposite of Marlin, where rather than not letting him do anything, he's making Nemo do too much. Yeah. So he pressures him. The plan is because Nemo's small, he's going to swim into the filtration

system and jam one of those little tank pebbles into the rotating motor to jam it and then the tank will get gunky. They will all have to be put into little bags while the dentist cleans it. We get a really fun visual where he's explaining how the plan is going to work. Talk about the camera placement. It's like this POV of these bagged fish rolling across the highway. Stan, I think, talks about it as the Fincher sequence. He's like, this is my homage to the fight club. Here's how we're going to infiltrate. You know, talking through it and all the crazy camera movements and whatever.

It's really fun. It is a really smart plan. It's a good plan, but it has this assumption to it that I do like that it's like, there's a fish logic. Yes. Of like humans will only do one thing. Right. And they don't realize.

that like, yeah, human can just fucking go on Amazon and buy like a new filter. But I like that Nemo gets close. Like, it's not like it's a total failure. No. But it is so scary that it does actually set Marlon back, not Marlon, I'm sorry, Gil.

It makes him question everything to a degree where he's just like, these are the lies I'm telling myself so I can survive in this fucking tank. We're never getting out of here. And it flips the dynamic where Nemo is going to have to console him, basically. Because Nemo finally does it because he hears about his death. That's heroism.

Well, I'm sorry. Let's just run through because I need to get through this. Because you have this lesson with the turtles, right? And they send them off the EAC, but they start spreading the message. Right. This is a sequence that they talk about is just like kind of Pixar at their best, where one night they were like, fuck, we got to solve this story problem. How can Nemo possibly receive a word that his father is looking for him?

At this point in the movie, wouldn't he just give up? How do we stop the character from just conceding? And they're just like, well, what if it's a fucking, like, game of radio, right? What if it's a chain of conversation? And then what are the opportunities for characterization and all of those things? Because all these have to be like a four-second gag of what's funny is, oh, our swordfish, like, upper crust British fensers. So fun. And they basically just, like, write this all in one night, all do the voices.

These are all Pixar people. It's all like Peterson and Stanton like repeating different, you know, archetypes and cultural stereotypes. And it's like a really fun journey that just feels like a fun story exploration. But then you get to Nigel hearing it, Nigel recognizing it, being like,

I got to tell this. Wow, no, little clownfish. But you can tell that he's like, this is going to mean a lot to this kid. I got to tell him right away. Flies through with urgency. Nemo immediately is like, what?

actually no, not possible. He's immediately heartened and then rejects it as like, that is not a thing my father could do. Yeah, that my dad would never battle a shark, like, let alone even, like Sandy Plankton's dad wouldn't even battle a shark. If you told him, your dad is just swimming

really far to get to you, even that would test his notion of his father. But this is a beautiful moment because he, Nigel says some identifying features, about marlins? A little sport fish trout tuna. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. His name's Marlin.

Yeah. So, um, you said he fought a shark. I heard he took down three. And you just, you just fucking, like Spielberg shot push in on Nemo's face and his eyes widening. Right. As he realizes the expression of his father's love in a way his father could never say to him. The understanding of what his father has gone through to try to get to him. Yeah.

I just find incredibly emotionally overwhelmed. you're right. I think you're right. I think it's very emotionally, it's very beautiful. And so Nemo makes up his mind. He's going to try the plan again. Gil wouldn't have wanted to push him. He disappears in a cut. Like Nigel's telling the story. All the other fish in the tank are so excited for Nemo. And then they realize he's missing and he's already gone back up the pipe. It's like hearing of his father's bravery has emboldened him to believe that he can do things as well. We should also, of course, around now is when Nemo, I mean, when Marlon and and Dory gets sucked into a whale. And Dory speaks whale to the whale. But that's right after this.

And that changes humanity forever. It changes the world. Everyone just could not stop talking about it. It was seismic whale. It is so funny, I've seen Finding Dory so many times now because of my daughter vastly prefers it to finding Nemo. And that movie, I think, is pretty fun. And we will talk about it on this show.

Yeah. But the way that they're just like, well, Dory has to speak whale. That should be crucial, actually. The fact that Dory doesn't know where her family was, that's the emotional arc of the movie. That throwaway line like in the first movie. And where did Dory learn to read? Correct. Like they're basically like, what are the things about Dory?

Now that is the spine of finding D. I like that movie a lot. Everything that drives me crazy in it is the checklisty sequel. Yeah. I hate that in prequel type things. Yes. Like, I hate that they bring the turtles back, even though I love Crush. And it just feels like they're like,

guys, you have to bring the turtles back. We need to sell like Turtle March. You know? There's stuff like that that's really annoying. Turtle talk we'll get into as well. We'll get into turtle talk. But whale. Yes.

The whale. The whale. Speaking whale. That is one of the most biblical, ancient, important archetypes in myths and sagas and legends. Sure. Being swallowed by a whale. You just have to do it. Pinocchio, one of the greatest animated films of all time.

True. Swallowed by whale. I think it's some of the best decor. Inside of a whale? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Baleen or whatever.

That's their little teeth things. Yeah, they're like filters. Yeah, which is so funny because you think of them as being sort of soft and small, but they're so packed in and hard when Marlon's trying to escape. But anyway, they... Also, their taste buds being so pronounced that the fish can hang on to them. That part, I do not like Marlon rubbing up on the taste bud. And also the water coming, like as...

Flowing against the... the where the whale is swimming. It's so interesting. Yeah. Whales are crazy. Them having this fight where Marlin's like really reaching a breaking point with Doria of being like you keep thinking you can do, you know, you can speak to whales, you can do all this fucking shit. And meanwhile, it's just the whale approaching them so fucking slowly. Right. And because of the weird perspective and lighting and all the tricks in the water, she's going like, hey, little fella.

I don't think that's a little fella. That's Pyocon. Yeah, that's Piocon. He is such a Piocon because he is is helping them. It's interesting that way of water inverts what you're talking about where the villains go inside the whale and do something terrible. Take their immortality juices. Yeah. Well, that's a lesson about

whales are something grander and more sacred than us. And we can't be trying to mess with it. True. I do like that the whale basically becomes a location, right? That it's like... Yeah. Where they have a fight and they talk it up. Right. But I like Beck's thing of like, right, also this kind of like, they're passing through a siege

perilous here. Yeah. the biblical thing. Yes. That they are transformed by being expelled from the whale. Right. And it's much like

Nemo's character growth happening in him listening to Nigel's story, like just really elegant show don't tell stuff through action. It's just such a fucking perfect piece of screenwriting

when Marlon is yelling at Dory for trying to come up with a solution for how to save themselves. Yeah. And he's just saying no to everything she's fucking doing. And then he finally breaks and says, my favorite line, you think you can do these things, but you just can't Nemo.

And what I love about it is you see the shock on her face, the reaction of why he called me Nemo. She can't quite comprehend it. But then it cuts back to him and he looks so fucking embarrassed. Like he realizes what he just said. Pretty embarrassing. Her name's Dory. Yes.

Well, that's the only reason. Who's Nemo? I thought your kid is Harpo Chico Fabio. Fabio. Yes. Yes. but that he like he gets it the second it comes out of his mouth what harpo

just laughing about dory it's another classic comedy thing anytime she confidently says the wrong name and he just has to go Nemo he just has to correct her so fast so Nemo is a very fun word to say it's awesome that it said like a trillion times in this movie it's a really cute fun name of course Nemo himself escapes all by himself

like you know Marlon does not rescue Nemo. No. He's there for Nemo when he comes out of the, you know, into the harbor. Right. Out of the sink. But also, Dory is correct. Like, Dory gets them out of the fucking people.

Dory's been talking to the whale this whole time. He talks like these. And I think whales don't speak the same language as all the other fish. Because they're, again, like the Tocoon, sort of like on this elevated plane of intelligence, the same way that we can't speak the same language of whales, but whales do have language. Yes. So that's sort of what's happening here in my mind.

communicating with the whale. The whale is like, you need to do the counterintuitive thing, which is fall down into my throat so that I could then blow you out. I've driven you to Sydney. I'm dropping you off. Which is also what teaches Marlon to trust Nemo in Nemo's escape, that she's doing the counterintuitive thing. Why would you go deeper into the whale? And Nemo similarly is not trying to swim up out of the net. No, he's got to swim down. That's how we're going to escape this thing. He learns about swimming down also because, yeah, when the fish have to get scooped out, usually to be sent to their doom at the hands of Darla. It's in a little net. And if a lot of them are in the net, they can break it.

And Nemo, you know, the big transformation is he knows what to do. He persuades Marlon to let him do it. Marlon, you know, lets him do it. Right, Marlon has the wherewithal to let him do it and they escape. It's the story thing I love across the Toy Story movie is that also feels very influenced by Indiana Jones, where you set. out like here's the clear plan. This is what needs to happen and the order of actions that will get us to the other side of this thing and then immediately shit goes wrong

and your characters have to improvise but it's like a heist movie where you're so trained into how this is supposed to go that it's exciting every time they have to veer off of the plan and the movie is telegraphing the all drains lean to the ocean thing so

loudly throughout as like if they can just get there than they're in the clear they're safe. Yeah. It is a thing that Pixar people have talked about that there were a lot of incidents after this movie came out of kids flushing fish down the toilet.

It's like they're not making it to the harbor band. They thought that was the humanitarian act. Oh, no. Fish shells went way up after this movie, of course. Sure. And like Aquarium attendance, I feel like permanently went up after this movie. Oh, yeah.

But there was a lot of kids trying to free fish by flushing them down. I do think there's a very beautiful of its time sort of Y2K Frutiger arrow vivid blue and orange

aesthetic to the whole thing that feels like it was big at the time Let's go met I also like calling this Fruitica layer Is that how you say it Frutiger Arrow Sure

Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes I know what you're talking about Like that one Windows background Yeah Also a little frutopia I miss it Oh frutopia I miss That is like crush and squirt

Yes, that's true. I miss my, like, Windows 98. Bring it back. Bring it back. Also, a good reason for them to be clownfish is the blue-orange contrast is the best contrast. So... Did you know if you ate a clownfish that it would be gross because they're covered in a special mucus to protect them from the anem-enem-namus that they live in? All right, kid, don't knock yourself in.

No, and then we're done. Like, I mean, right? Like, it's like, oh, no, my friend. Right, you think you're in the clear when he escapes. tank gets super fucking dirty. Awesome Pendleton's freaking the fuck out. Can't you see that we're all surrounded by shit, which they cut him off? Yeah, she goes, shh, because the dentist is coming in.

And he takes his readers digest into the bathroom. Right. Yeah, is that when that happens? Yes, yes. And the kid in the waiting room is reading the Incredibles comic. I don't know if you noticed that. And there's a little buzz light you're in the toy chest. Yeah.

But the thing they didn't account for is that he would just buy some new high-tech cleaner and install it while they were sleeping. Yeah. that he doesn't need to take that out, or he took him out, but put him back in really quickly. So they wake up, the tank is clean,

all hope is lost. Right. It does not know that Dory and Marlon have gotten so close. And today is the day that Darla is coming and she's going to take Nemo and shake him until he dies.

Yeah. She even gets her hands on him. I mean, she's got him for a second. She gives him a hearty shake. Yeah. She's like the opposite. I think a lot of like the depiction

of Australia and this was this, This and, you know, kangaroo Jack were like my only exposure to Australia in, you know, the first decade of life. And it so goes against the lovely, intelligent children of Bluey. Darla makes it seem like the children of Australia are monsters. I do think it's vital in Bluey that Bluey is a relatively obnoxious child. Yeah, but she's not like, Darla is like. Oh, no, Darla is much worse. But I mean, like, I mean, I just, you said Bluie.

A character with an Australian accent calls Dory Bluey at one point. Well, she is blue. She is blue. But, you know, in Bluey, like, one of my favorite episodes of Bluey, a hugely controversial episode is the one where Ellen comes out. The puppy episode. They're all puppy episodes of Bluey. Is the one where bingo, you know, first they both turn into blueys, right?

Bingo turns into bluey, like bingo paints herself blue. I don't know about this. It's so good. It's called mini-bluey. Why is it controversial? I'll tell you in one second. So Bingo turns herself into Bully And Bluey's like, this is what it's like if you're Bluey

And essentially is like you need to be more obnoxious Like you are not like you are the good sister I'm the more annoying sister Don't listen to dad when he tells you to do something right Ignore people be a little bossy Make weird noises yada yada and they do that for a while And then Bluey's like this is boring How about I be bingo

And so they both turn into bingo And then they're being nice and helpful And the dad goes this rocks This is great And then Blue is really upset Like, Bluey gets upset And they, you know, they have to resolve Like, you know, that, you know, Bingo's like,

I'm also annoying. Like, Bingo helps her out. Bingo is a much sweeter kid. But, like, bingo's an empath. Like, of course, like, they think that. But, like, I'm also annoying and weird and demonstrates how. But then the episode does end with the dad being like, but it did kind of rock when she was being bingo, right?

And a lot of fans don't like it because it's like, it's not an example of amazing parenting. Like, the dad never really apologizes. It can't be these perfect parents all the time. That's why I love it. The issue with the blueie parents is they're too perfect. So we need these moments. Anyway, where are we in this?

Here's the thing I like in the movie. And I like this just when movies can give me this feeling, where you feel like it's wrapping up and you're like, it's a shame. I've been having fun. I guess if it's time to end, it's time to end. But I could watch some more of this. And there's basically a fake out day newmacht, right? Oh, yeah.

Darla's here, ticking clock. It's coming to a head. Marlon and Dory have made it. basically right. In Nigel's mouth, which was another moment of learning to trust because he's like, you need to hop in my mouth. Simplified, this is the only thing the other Pelican needs to accomplish is just being a basically non-speaking rival for like three minutes.

And they're all like lads who are perched above a fish and chips stands. We also need to call out the mine seagulls who we haven't even talked about yet. Right. Which we're also, you say Bruce is a breakout star. The seagulls were huge. Humanius. Yeah, Seagull. Mine? Mine? Mine? It's so funny.

It's just another really good identification of like, what do Seagulls feel like to us when we see them? Right. Yeah. So, and also, Nemo is playing dead. Yes. So that he'll get flushed down the toilet. And that's what Marlon and Dory come in on. So they think... The dentist is scooping him to give to Darla. Gil's final advice is to play dead. He wants to get to the drain. But yes, there's like this tension of Nigel getting Marlon Dory to the window. They make it there just in time to see what they think is Nemo dead on the counter.

So they give up. Nemo wakes up. Gil recognizes the panic of this moment and does what is potentially the sacrifice. Load me into the volcano. Another thing we've set up in the movie that doesn't feel like it's going to be a sort of mechanic for action. Right. It was just sort of a fun gag that they could make the volcano speed. Right.

That's just part of the ritual. But then we've shown that, like, it's not actually dangerous. But of course, yes, you could launch yourself from that. So they all work together and they launch Gill over to the dentist tool tray. Right. Who uses basically the tools to break Nemo's bag to be able to let Nemo flip into the drain of the dentist spit sink. But it's too late in the sense that Marlon and Dory think it's too late. Yes, they think he's dead.

Nemo is flushed to sea. Yeah. And Marlon and Dory are back in the ocean. And Nigel also thinks Nemo's gone. And it's like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I truly am. His second, I'm sorry.

Truly am. Really gets to me. The gravity of it. Yeah. And then he just fucking flies away. Yeah. And Marlin has his lowest moment of just like, I mean, genuine grief. Yeah.

He's crossed the ocean. He came so close. His son is dead. and he's like, Dory, we're going our separate ways. He's not even angry at Dory at this point. Yeah. But it's just like I, it's over. She gets the beautiful thing about like, I don't want to keep forgetting when I'm with you with this relationship I'm able to remember.

And he's like, I don't want to remember. When I'm with you, I'm home. Yeah. Yeah. She makes her big plea and it falls on deaf ears because he's just going through too fucking much, which leaves her alone. This is where you're like, I felt like the movie was about to end, but now they're all split up again. Where's the movie even going? What moves does it still even have?

And it's, oh, Nemo can bump into Dory and Dory cannot understand what that means. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. So at first, Nemo very sweetly is like, oh, like, are you lost? Yeah, right, right. It's very cute.

He sees, he's just escaped from, like, the most perilous situation ever. He's seen more than any little baby fish should. But he wants to take care of her. Yeah, he wants to help people. Yeah, he's immediately like, okay, like I'll help you. He sees she's in distress. Right.

And once again, like, if Marlin had listened to Dory's plea, he would have been reunited with his son in five minutes. Yeah. Right. So Marlin goes away. There's these crabs who are fun. Dory doesn't remember. You have the moment of like, Nemo.

That's a nice name. Yeah. Oh, really funny. Yeah. Perfectly played. And then what is it that helps her remember again? It's like a flashback. Yeah, but what prompts it?

What triggers the P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sidney? Because she has the moment where it all comes flooding back. Yeah. Her like Kaiser Soz-Zamo. moment. I'm trying to remember what the verbal trigger is. I don't remember. Okay, well, so that, the fact that we're forgetting is very, no, no, it's metatextual that we don't remember and it will come to us in a flashback and it'll be like a parallel and whatever. Yeah. So that happens. She remembers and they need to find Marlon. Yeah. Right. And Marlon's just sort of following the school of fish. Right. I mean, you could argue he's borderline suicide.

at this moment. Yeah. So there's this big school of fish and they're all like, hey, watch where you're going. They're like really dour. He's sort of caught up in that. They briefly reunite.

It's the pipe. I'm sorry. It's the pipe where the crabs are looking to catch the fish. Yeah, that come out. And it says Sydney on it. Oh, right. She sees that.

She reads it. There you go. And P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sidney comes back to her. Yeah. And then she's like, oh, Nemo. And she's hugging him with her little fins. Yeah.

There's this big school of fish. And I'm sorry, but just incredible Ellen DeGeneres line delivery. She does her similar, like, seven thoughts in one sentence. We thought you're dead and you're not and your father. Your father. She has her one kind of scolding. Yeah, well, she's like squishing his face. It's really cute.

She's really good. But we see this school of fish where they've just reunited. Up above on the shore, there's a fishing trawler that's going to. This is right. The net. Yeah, it's going to drop a big net and scoop up all of these. fish. Yeah. And Nemo's the only one who can basically save everybody. Right. Oh, no, because Dory gets caught up at it. And Marlon is now, even though he just, he realizes his mistake from abandoning

Dory, he's not going to lose her again. So it's like, we need to get her out of there and free all the fish. Nemo goes inside. And Marlon has just got his son back and he's like, you cannot do this, but then it's like, you know what? This is going to work. You need to trust me, though. I know that you can. Yeah. And it's, you've already had their moment of reunion. Mm-hmm. So it's what's impactful is that Marlon has just gotten him back. And he so quickly accepts that he needs to trust him and let him go for another moment. Yeah.

So he schools all the fish. Huh? Uh-huh. So true. To. Yes. Swim down. This is based on a real event.

Yes. That's, that Stanton read about in the news. There was some event where a school of fish seemed to somehow figure out how to beat a net. To break the net. Right. Which is another great, like, oh, shit, if you're telling me that happened for real. Yeah. Or at least someone claims it.

Yeah. Movies over, right? I mean, like, we end up back at the school and all that. Excuse me. My opening quote, another moment that makes me cry where he's looking at Nemo who has succeeded and freeing all the fish, but he's lying kind of knocked out at the bottom of the ocean floor, at least this tear of the ocean floor. Oh, yeah.

This is brutal. And you have the mirroring of him going to Nemo and cradling him like the egg. And then to console him as he's like half a week, you know? Yeah. He tells him the Sandy Plankton thing. Right. Yeah. It's a lovely moment.

To me, the lovely moment is when he gets information. When he gets the what? When he's like, how old are you? And Crush goes, 150, dude. Like, that just makes me cry. But see, it's the tail of it for me. The payoff's good for me. Both are incredible.

Both are so sweet. But the fact that he's able to tell him that and that he knows that and that he understands the value of having experiences and learning things for yourself. And that's what he like yells at Nemo about, which is just so funny. His genuine frustration of why do you still give a shit about Sandy Plankton? Yeah. Is both very funny and very emotional. Albert Brooks saying the name Sandy Plankton to very important SpongeBob characters.

Yes. Good call. He just delivers it in a really funny way. And then you cut forward basically to their new found family unit. Right, they're back at the anemone. And now it's Marlon jumping on Nemo because he's excited for him to go to school. There's also many credit scene where the tank, the tank gang does escape. Which is fun.

Oh, and squirts an exchange student now. Oh, that's right. Hey, man. Best, I just want to say this right now. But it was part of the reason why I was so concerned when they announced they were even making a sequel. Is this movie does end just perfectly. It does, but it's not like the Monsters Inc ending where you're like, I truly don't know what you do. No.

Finding Nemo does end with like, they live in the ocean and are friends. They could have another adventure. It's Nemo swimming back to hug him and say, I love you, and then swimming off and Marlon saying, I love you, son, at a distance. You know, that he says it to himself, kind of. It's good. Yeah. He says, go have an adventure. And Nima says, okay.

But the last line is, yeah, I love you, too. Yeah. Dad stuff. Right before Nimo got taken away, he said, I hate you. Exactly. With, like, full force to his dad. Guys, I hear you. I love this movie.

I will say it does not quite activate my parent buttons in the way you guys seem to be. That is interesting. But, like, not in, like, a way where I'm immune to. Does it activate your child of a parent button? Is it more like the opposite identification? I just like it because it's about fish and Dory's so funny. It's pretty awesome. But I think all of the stuff you're saying is very well done.

Like, I'm not, you know, but it doesn't, this movie doesn't like, I'm like, it's about how secure attachment styles are formed. Yes. In the crucial early years of life. Yes. I also need to correct myself. He does the swimback love you, but then he just says bye dad while on Mr. Ray yelled out at a distance. And then Marlon says, by son very quietly to himself.

Right. The end. Beautiful. Fucking Robbie Williams Beyond the Sea. Oh yeah. Obviously, famously,

if you see this movie, what's the language where the end is sleut? What? What? So there's a language right and it comes up on the screen who just says slut.

Slot. And that became an old like Twitter or YouTube of like the end of YouTube but then it just goes slut. Well then wouldn't that happen in like a, 100 movies?

Yes, but it's just especially funny in Nemo. Also, most movies don't say the end at the end anymore. It's Swedish. That is awesome. I will find it now. Slut. Do you know, speaking of languages, this is only the second movie ever that was dubbed into Navajo. That's amazing.

Whoa. Here we go. See, here's the ending. Water. Looking at the shot. You know. And it does just say. In fact, it does just say Slug.

Best supporting actress of 2003. Here were the Oscar nominees. I want to say this right now. The nominees were Renee Zalwiger for Cold Mountain. One. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Shorei Agadash, Loufer, House of Sand and Fogg.

Lovely nomination. Mediocre. Patricia Clarkson for pieces of April. Better in the station agent, but still pretty good. Yeah, that's a weird one where that movie... It was a combo. Doesn't exist, but there was a moment of, hey, Patricia Clarkson's always been good. She has two great performances this year.

Let's give her a lifetime kind of... You pick. And the piece of April, she has cancer or whatever. It's a little more... But a totally forgotten movie. She's very good. She's very good. Marcia Gay Harden and Mystic River.

Kind of an odd nom. She's not bad in it. Holly Hunter in 13. A very good performance because she's a good actor in a very sort of over-rob movie. Yeah. Ellen DeGeneres is better

than all of those performances, like by far. Like, it's not even a question. Did Bafton nominate her? No, they nominated Eddie Murphy. I think they flirted with it, but like she might have made a long list or something. She got a couple of, like she won the Saturn, but the Saturns are, you know, a little. She got a couple of critics award, you know, like Chicago nominated her. There were a lot of critics saying like, this is the time to finally do this.

And this still has not happened. It still has not happened. A vocal performance. No. There are very few that are at the level that deserve it. It is the kind of transformative performance that I think the Oscars, especially when you hear those five names. Yes. No offense to them.

No, but that's like a pretty... Well, the NG circus film was also a big thing at the time, right? Yeah, yeah, that was also a big thing. Yeah. But that's also like motion. Like, whatever. We did get a Oscar for anime film, obviously. It was nominated for screenplay.

It got four nominations. Yeah. The music, I think. The music, the score is a great score. It's a great score. It's going to ask you. Because I know sometimes you can be a little snarky about Newman. He has a thing that he does.

Yes. And I enjoy. the thing that he does, but I do feel that he, you know, you kind of know what you're getting with the Newman score. I think this is his best score. I agree with you. It is a secret power of this movie just that it, even though he and Randy Newman are part of the same lineage, that all the Pixar movies musically sounded so similar and this one

starts so differently. And when you hear the opening strains of the Thomas Newman score over the, the anemone house hunting scene at the beginning, you're immediately like, oh, Thomas Newman's whole thing he does all the time sounds like the ocean. It does. There is no better fit for his style. It's 100% than this. Obviously, Lord of the Rings won that year and that is very,

very, very good music. But Howard Shore already won for the first. He won for fellowship, but you have to give it to him for return. It has the beacon lighting. Like, it just, it has the most, like, bravura shit he ever did. They didn't give it to him for two towers? No, they didn't give it to him. Who want to

let's find it? Because also the hours... Let's travel through time. Keep being corrected that the hours didn't win and wasn't nominated. No, no, no, no, no, right, because that's the Frida year. Gold Info swipes it from glass. Interesting. I think this is...

Incredible year, because Catch Me if you can, is also nominated the wonderful Elmer Bernstein score for Far from Heaven. And Thomas Newman's, very nice road to Britishian score. I love that score. Very nice. But this feels like a real... They fucked themselves by not giving it to Thomas Newman the year where it made the most sense.

And now they're just constantly living in the show. of how many nominations they've given him. Yes. And the idea that he's maybe never going to have a moment as clear cut as this one again. I wonder. Scores incredible, script's incredible. I feel, and I feel like this is the point you're making.

What was that? Even with the anti-animation, you know, stigmas. This is a year where, like, Wally becomes a breaking point in 2008. We'll talk about in that episode that as much as Dark Knight, I would argue, leads to the expansion of the 10. It was part and parcel.

But this is a year where people were really like, do we have to nominate finding Nemo? And it felt like the conversation couldn't get traction, even though everyone sort of sensed like, this feels as important as Beauty and the Beast and sort of signaling a change in the industry, on top of it being such a seismic success. In a year without Lord of the Rings

where you didn't have a more obvious blockbuster film, maybe this would have gotten in. but even with the anti-voice actor prejudice, I feel like fucking Ellen DeGeneres was like seven or eight on the list. Might have been. And part of that's just how weird and kind of weak

that supporting actress field was. But you're right, it does feel egregious that she couldn't beat any of those five. I agree. I was transitioning, but then I wanted to interject quickly. I never saw this movie before. What?

That's insane. I knew what I was talking. It's true. It is the wettest film. When I was talking about how adults would go see this film, you were giving me a look like you were holding something back. Yeah. It's so sweet.

I loved it. I guess it makes sense that you weren't in the market for finding Nemo at the time. You were just enough older than us, and you've also talked about your sort of like teenage, like fuck the mainstream. I only saw it because I was like a nerdy film fan. Like, right, I had no reason to see it otherwise. 2003, that summer. is when I graduated from high school.

Right. Pretty cool. Now, I will say, I'm somewhat similar to Dory. Mm-hmm. Because at that point, I had already really dove headfirst into a lifestyle that has led to memory loss. Ben has written this out. He's reading from a prepared statement. I'm not making fun of you for that.

I just think you're saying, I want people to know the level of intentionality with which you're speaking right now. But I think it's long. long-term memory. Oh, sure. Yeah. The short-term stuff you remember, the bits. But we should, I think, introduce the podcast. Oh, sure.

This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. Swish. I want to point out, as I'm sure Griffin, you already know, that every Pixar movie before this one had come out in November. That was the Pixar spot. Yep. And originally, this was planned for November 2.

But possibly because of sort of the aesthetic of the movie, right? summer it's a little bit. They're like, no, May 30th. There are also a couple other things that factor into that, right? One is, I think they didn't want to, this not getting stuck in a rut thing we've talked about. The other thing that's happening around this time is Lassiter goes out and poaches Brad Bird, who now is sort of orphaned after Warner Brothers animation has collapsed. And part of that was we're worried about repeating ourselves.

We need to get someone else in to shake this up and change the pattern. And they talk about a little bit like Lilo and Stitch being seen as the secondary film Red-headed Stepchild or whatever. While Treasure Planet was the main focus. That everyone was so fucking amped up about Incredibles. And it was like, we got Brad Bird. He's a genius. The script is perfect.

We're making an action film. It's a little bit older. That Nemo's sort of slipping through the cracks a little bit is seen as less exciting and less sexy. But there's also this thing that Disney is sort of pushing on Pixar, which is, if the movie comes out in May, we can sell merchandise in May, have the home video release come out around Thanksgiving, make it the number one Christmas gift,

and do a second wave of merchandise in December. Sure. Which basically Eisner pushes on them as like, it's big to be a holiday film, but now that we know that Pixar is basically a proven brand and the movie's going to hit no matter what, we'll make more money on these characters if you release earlier.

And most of the Pixar movies swing to summer after. this. Famously, what were you going to say? No, what were you going to say? Famously what? There's the original

Pixar deal after Toy Story where they sign them up for five films. Yes. There'll be an autonomous company, but Disney has distribution rights and will own the characters in

perpetuity. Right. And those five films are supposed to be Monsters Inc. Nemo, um, uh,

Incredibles, cars, and a bug's life. I forgot the first one, chronologically. Where they get fucked on this deal, is they said sequels don't count.

We want you to make Toy Story 2 right away, but sequels don't count. That's going direct to video. When they up it to theaters, Lasseter goes, so that's one of our five films. And Eisner goes, no, we get that for free

because it was meant for video. That leads to the tensions between Pixar and Disney that made people think when they're done with the fifth film, which is going to be cars, they're going to leave. Every film was more successful

than the previous film. They kept out grossing themselves. And everyone around Eisner at Disney was like, you got to do what you, anything you can do to make good with Pixar now because we can't lose them. And what Eisner kept saying was, they're going to fail at some point.

One of these movies is going to flop, and then we're going to own their asses because they're not going to have negotiating leverage. And he was really confident that Nemo was the one. Well, he was wrong. He kept saying to people, this one's not as commercial, fish aren't going to sell as much merchandise.

even if it's just down a little bit, they're weaker and they'll come begging us. No, he's their biggest hit, yeah. And that basically, like, puts the death knell on Eisner. It's a big part of why he's pushed out of the company that he fucks that up with his arrogance. And that's a little bit, I think, why they wanted to go to summer to see, like, if, whatever.

But the other part of the story is that it was seen as the secondary film. No one was confident about it. There were these big, fucking, like, cinema and licensing, you know, conventions where they have to go and sell these movies years in advance in order to get people on board with them for merchandise and for, you know, the theater partners and whatever. And there was one of these where they didn't have enough footage to show

or it wasn't in a good enough state. And the movie had a bit of a stink around it because Eisner kept shit-talking it. And they need to go combat it. And they sent Andrew Stanton out and he basically performed the movie for 40 minutes similar to the pitch that he did for Lasseter and everyone walks out of that being like,

that's the fucking biggest hit. That shit, the way he told the story and did all the voices and the emotions and everything. It's like Nigel telling the story to Nemo. Truly. And you can see it on, it's on the DVD and the Blu-ray and the fucking iTunes extras. There's like a super cut of the moments of him doing that.

Wow. But he basically just kind of willed this movie into not being totally disregarded because Disney kept trying to like slide it over and anyone who was engaging with it was like it feels like this thing has the juice. It opens

to $70 million? Cumulgus. Biggest in their career in their time so far. Monsters Inc did 62. Ends at 39 domestic, 871 worldwide. It's made more now with re-releases and stuff. The 3D re-release which Stan oversaw

is what convinced him to finally do finding Dory but it also added basically another $100 million dollars to the gross. Or something else convinced me. We'll talk about it. It's number one at the box office on May 30th. Number two is the film that was number one the week before.

Matrix has been out for, I think, three plus week. Okay. Let me go through May in my head. So the opening movie of the summer is X2 X-Men United. That is number seven. Then Matrix comes out the following weekend? Matrix Reloaded is number four. And no, I think it was two weeks between them.

Okay. And then the next May blockbuster. A huge comedy. Oh, oh. It's Bruce Almighty. Got a yo-yo. That's the Earth. Like, also opened a $70 million?

Huge, huge hit. This month was through the room. America was just doing great. Yeah. Movies were doing great. America was actually doing horrible. You basically had four consecutive $70 million opening weekends. I remember it so well.

It was my IMDB pro era. Right. My mom got a subscription for work. Yeah. And so I had it. And I had such good box office imagery and stuff. And like, I just remember like Bruce. Terrible movie.

Yeah, awful. It's a bad movie. But it was the biggest comic. opening weekend of all time. Matrix had a five day. So, three day was a little smaller, but it opened over 100, if you count the five day.

Nemo's the biggest animation opening in history. X-Men was the biggest super sure opening. Yeah, you got pirates coming down the pike later summer. Hell yeah. Oh, those crazy pirates. Bad Boys 2. Bad Boys 2, Terminator 3.

But, yeah, number 3 at the box office, opening against Nemo. Slightly underwhelming in its opening, but I think it kind of legged out a pretty good gross. Italian job. It's Mark Wahlberg and Charlie Staren in the Italian. Was a sleeper.

I mean, it's a 100. In my memory, it's pretty fun. It's fun. I've not seen it in 20 years. It looked like dog shit, and everyone was like, why would they remake this? And then it kind of was a word of mouth hit. And Britain was seen as kind of like a national crime. This is offensive.

Yeah, it was like you're making one of our things. You already did get Carter. Why are you kicking us even further? I find the British obsession with the Italian job a little insane. Like, that movie is basically like, boring until the end which does rock. Okay. Like the stuff with the minis is great.

That's mostly not the movie. Interesting. But it's pretty fun. Do you like the Italian job with Mark Wahlberg and Edward Norton and Charlie Stherin and Moestaff and whoever else is? I can't say I've ever seen it. I remember it being huge and back when Canada's Wonderland was Paramount Canada's Wonderland, there was an Italian job coaster where you were riding in the Mini Coopers. That sounds fun.

David, Canada's Wonderland, a theme park that used to be Paramount Brand. and is not anymore, has like 10 rides that are all clearly connected to Paramount movies, but they lost the license and now they're just generic. Yeah, so Top Gun is now like flight deck. Right. And the Italian job one is called like stunt track or some. Yeah, and Tomb Raiders called... Like a Temple Explorer.

Yeah. There was a Wayne's World coaster at one point called the Hurlinator. Okay, that I don't know about. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm trying to think what the other ones are. But that park is very funny for that reason. Yeah, the Italian job is called. The backlot stunt coaster.

Big icon of the park instead of like the Disney Castle is like the Paramount Mountain. And now they're just like, it's a mountain. But yes, the Italian Job roller coaster still has mini-Coopers. And they're like, it's just one of those chase sequences from any Hollywood movie. Yeah, I see it right here. Well, you're not going to change them. No. Number five of the box office is a film you've seen many times.

Many, many, many, many times. It's specifically one of my movies? You don't like it, but you've seen it. Maybe you like it. You don't love it. I don't love it, but I've seen... Your sister love this movie. I do think this movie's very good.

This is way up on the list of the movies I have seen most in my life. Why? Because my sister Romilly, past and future guest, longtime sister, was not a kid who obsessively watched the same thing over and over again other than this one film, which for seven years was in constant rotation. Is Eddie Murphy's Daddy Daycare? Daddy Daycare.

Oh, yeah. We've spoken about this because this was a similar thing where it's like, I was watching this genuinely every single weekend at my friend's house. It's like, we're going to have a sleepover. It's daddy daycare. I think daddy daycare is very funny, but it could be Stockholm syndrome. It is a movie I will defend as like, no, that one's actually well written and it has a good cast. But also, I've seen it so many times that if I didn't find it funny, I wouldn't have been able to survive.

Number six opening this weekend new is my favorite Eliza Dushku Horror franchise. Wrong turn, which Wikipedia calls the first installment in the wrong turn series. It's like, let's relax. What's your second favorite Eliza Dishku Horror franchise? That's curiosity. All those are the ones she's done. I do love Dushku, though. Who doesn't love a little Dush Koo?

Yeah, do you shooch it up. Number seven is X2. What do you say? I'm a Dushab. Yeah. Number seven is X2. Number eight is the in-laws, so that's with Albert Brooks, right? Bombing at the same time.

Big bomb. Yeah, huge bomb. Number nine is another bomb, but a great film. with love. Love. And number 10 is probably the most important cultural text of 2003,

the Luzi McGuire movie. Yeah. Oh my God. Made the mistake of opening against X2. What a summer that was, the summer of the Lizzie McGuire movie. Hey now, hey now. This is what dreams are made of.

The only risk in taking... Sing for me, Paolo. An adventure is not taking it at all. I have a very defined... Sort of the finding Nemo message. A real kind of defining memory of all the girls. in my grade going to see Lizzie McGuire movie that Friday, opening day, same day that

X2, X-Men United came out. And the girls were angry that none of the boys wanted to go see Lizzie McGuire. And I, quite a big fan of the X-Men. And I remember the girls in my grade basically being like, if you come see the Lizzie McGuire movie with us, someone will make out with you. Did anyone? No, I didn't go see it. Of course. I went to X-2, X-Men United. X-Men. The X-Men are united in this film. I was like, I'm sorry, you don't understand what you're up against here. You have no leverage in this conversation. X2 was a pretty exciting day.

Yeah. That was pretty cool. I was like night crawlers in this one. I know. And it was just kind of the thing of like, the first one worked so they're going to get to be a little more off the leash with this one. You could promise me that Jessica Alba would make out with me and I wouldn't go see the Lizzie McGuire movie right now. Can we talk about theme parts, please? So a couple of very important things.

It was revolutionary at the time. Turtle Talk with Crush. So Epcot has the second largest research aquarium in the country is within Epcot. It is something that Disney does not take enough advantage of. It's a wonderful little aquarium. And I think of interest to David was basically seen as on the chopping block in the early 2000s. All this educational scientific shit is lame. We got to get characters back in here. They have rescue manatees there. So they decided they had a Blockbuster Fish movie saved all this shit. The Seas is now going to be rebranded. as The Seas with Nemo and Friends.

And one of the great attractions there is Turtle Talk with Crush. Yes. That's where I've seen videos of this. Yeah, it's really at the time. It was live puppeteering basically, Ben. They had animated model that could do crowdwork. So the audience would be there. It's like, your name's Griffin. Wow.

They had cameras. They'd make jokes about the guy wearing the silly hair. It's so cohesive because they're looking at all these fish tanks at the aquarium. And then you go to one that's like a fish tank, but it's a screen and it's crush. And he makes jokes with all the kids and it's fun. There's also a little ride where you're riding in shells and the characters from Nemo are being projected onto windows into the real tanks. But then there are also some sculptures and you're seeing real fish. It's like they kept using Nemo characters as the bait to get children to engage with real aquatic life.

There's also, I don't want to talk about it because it sucks, but they re-skinned at Disneyland, the submarine voyage ride with Nemo stuff. I could not disagree more. This is one of my favorite attractions. I want to skip over that. It is one of my safe spaces. It's now called Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. Convince elevator pitch. You go into a submarine that is on tracks.

They make you feel like it's free floating, but you're genuinely underwater. And then it is a technical marvel where you are going around in a loop while the Thomas Newman score soothes my anxiety. And you see a combination of real fish and, like, incredible projection where it looks like real. animation is happening outside the window of the submarine. I'm going to be honest, you're selling me. But what was lost? Nothing was lost. It was just already kind of like a dull experience.

But you're right. Adding the IP onto it doesn't. Yeah, it was more like... It's a unique ride mechanic. A big fake octopus attacks you and you have like a Jacques Cousteau style narrator just telling you about it. It's just funny because it's so, to most people it would be

very anxiety inducing. You're going into a small claustrophobic capsule and going How many people are on the sub? It's a very slow moving line. Yeah. But it's you all have your own seat. The seats face in opposite directions. Everyone has their own little hole they get to look at.

I think I would find it anxiety provoking. Did it not have my good friends and the Thomas Newman score and the vibes and the colors? Maybe that's why I like it so much. It's 12 minutes. Yeah. That seems very long. I love these rides that are just like, shit's going to slow down. You just get to stay seated.

Nothing's going to happen to your tummy. These are nice kind of refresh points in a theme park day. Yeah. Of like, I can just vibe out here. Yeah, and it's less overstimulating than like a small world or something. Yes, I never skip it. The last thing I want to bring up because I think it is one of the great achievements of the 21st century at the theme parks, which is at Animal Kingdom, Finding Nemo the musical. I think this is a really, really significant piece of theme park entertainment.

The Big Blue and Beyond? This is the re-so. A few years ago, they were like, we need to cut down the runtime. Just looking so I understand the context. That's a bastardized version. 40 minutes and now, it's like 20 minutes. This was the first time Disney worked with Robert and Kristen Lopez. This is what's interesting about this, David.

So they got them off of Avenue Q to be like, you need to write a 5-Me music. He's holding up big foam fingers. My sign is so far away, Ben. The way that the stage uses. The vertical space for these underwater creatures. It looks cool. It's some Julie Tamor style. You see the puppeteers visibly, but the puppets are in different ways worked around their bodies.

The Nigel puppet is the most impressive biggest thing. Outside of the King Kong musical, it's like that Nigel puppet is jaw dropping. And the song that they do for the turtles is so good. It's like a beach boys type thing. And it's just awesome. I also think not my dad is a great song. D'Bos, where's, well, first it's where's my dad and then it's not my dad.

Right, when Nigel tries to tell him the story. In the big blue world. Like, these songs are genuinely for theme park entertainment. It is an excellent family musical. I don't understand why they've never tried to do it on Broadway. The Lopez is over-delivered on a theme park musical, which made Disney go like, oh, fuck, we've got to have these people work on everything, which leads to obviously Frozen and Coco and all these other things.

Yeah. I have never understood why they've never attempted to transfer this to Broadway. Because even just like the visual approach, they cracked the code on how to make these characters work on stage. They cracked the puppets. The songs are good. I'm like, if you just doubled this length and I'm sure they would just write more songs. Easily. Right.

And there's so many good songs packed into it already. This thing would be a huge fucking hit. And instead of ever transferring it after like 15 years, they were like, let's make it shorter. Yeah. And now it's like a 15 minute like greatest hits, a bridge version. Yeah. But I will never stop. Is that just to move people through?

Like why a bridge? Maybe kids' attention spans nowadays and also probably some equity thing with the performers. This is a really, especially Crush's song. Yeah. For a guy to be singing that, it's tough on the vocal cords. It looks like Crush's song is called Go with the Flow. It absolutely is. But David, theme parks love having shows like this that are successful because they're people eaters.

They take pressure off the lines for the rides. If you can get someone to sit down for 40 minutes and if you can pack a half, house. And this was one of the few shows that people were like, this is actually good. It's not just kind of like a shitty restaging of, you know, there was the 11. I know Becca has to go. I'm going to say, you guys could just keep going. I feel like you guys can do this for another hour.

Oh, God. I really do need to go soon. Have you ever been on Podcast the Ride? No, because I haven't been. We've spoken about it, but then like, I don't know when I'm going to be in LA next. Podcast the Ride and Doe Boys are the two that it feels like you have been inevitable on for years. and the schedules never line up. This is the beginning of my

like life's wish triple crown. I feel like for you like being on blank check is an enjoyable lark, but like it's a mere stepping stone to podcast the right where you belong. You misunderstand. I love Blanketcherow. That's very nice of you. It's, I love everything you do.

A masterpiece of podcast. It's a dream to be on the podcast that I like so much. Is there no other Nemo theme park stuff? Well, there's Crush's Coaster. Paris. There's a simulator in Disney C, but... Oh, Crush's Coaster. Yeah. Crush's Coaster is... It's very good. It is the exact kind of right. You hate.

It's a shell that's moving fast and spinning. You're in an indoor roller coaster. It's a mousey type ride. They play the kind of surf rocky, yes. Hey, I like that you knew the time. Right. Isn't that what they're called? Tiny Mouse? A wild coaster. It's very fun. It's in the... It doesn't sound fun to me. Yeah, but

you would hate it. It sounds like bullshit. Yes. What's the other thing you said? But they play the Thomas Noonan and like Surf Rock score. The Environment very fun. They have lights and colors. Yeah. And that's in the bad part of Disneyland Paris, right? Although it's just now. They rebranded it.

Now they have Olaf there. They have Aaron Dale. And children get to learn about death by watching Olaf power down in front of them. Oh, you're ready. I saw that. Which is so Parisian. It's so the enwi of they made an animatronic for Disneyland Paris who dies in front of you. Yes. I will say Crush's coaster doesn't look that intense.

I'm watching. Yeah, it's a family coaster. This is the other thing with Disney. Nothing is. I know. Nothing is that like hell racing. But that is as close to being a thrill ride as Disney gets, basically. Yeah. Oh, disagree. What do you put higher? Even at that park, Indiana Jones is way more intense.

I made the mistake of getting, my brother was living in France at the time, and I took him to Disney, and he showed up with his backpack and his laptop because he said, I'm going to have to just do some work at some point. Sounds like a brother. And so he was really worried about the security of his laptop. And he was like, this thing isn't going to go upside down, right? And I was like, no, it's Disney. Nothing goes upside down. He was very angry at me at the end of that ride. Does it go upside down?

It does. It's the mind cart roller coaster. It does one loop. I think so. One little saucy loop. He was holding onto his backpack for your life. I will plug vulture.com. Sure.

And that's pretty much it. I think. Popcorn bucket. They've canceled. They've canceled my ass. It's bullshit. Oh, yeah, there's a loop. The man.

The man. didn't want me speaking truth about Devil wears Prada bucket shaped like a bag. We tried to fucking... Michael Jackson bucket shaped like a hat. They don't want me revealing these stories. And I'll say, tried to force the issue through critical darlings.

Yeah, we really did. So actually, let a writing campaign. Very. Comment on all of all true social videos and bring back the popcorn. The bucket still exist. I came in today asking Becca to do a bucket trade because I never got the Fantastic car from Fantastic Four First Steps. And I said I would promise to,

to trade her the F1 popcorn bucket that was supposed to be part of the Critical Darling's Oscar nominees segment you're in review and Becca has made it clear that she does not want the F1 bucket.

I have five Melania buckets on my desk. I don't know what to do with them. Those things. Talk about being worth negative comedy points. Yeah. Well,

the Melania bucket. They make me laugh. Okay. Does Lee Kronin's the mummy have a bucket? I don't know. I don't know. I'm off the beat.

They pulled me off the case. It's an injustice. And let's just. What if it was just Lee Kronin? That would be good. Just to honor Lee Cronin's the popcorn. Yeah, exactly.

Let's make it clear our listeners. Let your voices be heard. Yes. Becca, previously on the Mastead chief popcorn critic. Yeah.

Popcorn bucket critic. And we want this reinstated. We want the coverage back. Bring back bucket. Yeah, but in the same way that you should all join Blank Check Patreon. You should subscribe to a magazine. Subscribe to our magazine. I'm a New York Magazine.

subscriber hashtag bring back beckas buckets sure and on the day of the release of this episode june 21st over on patreon robocop 2 is coming out oh a movie i love as much as finding me a movie a commentary where we're kind of like this isn't very good the whole time oh i'm sorry can we take that we reveal our deepest secrets i get pretty worked up i don't want people to think i'm apathetic no no no you get pretty worked up i get pretty worked up i get pretty worked up but i think we're even handed and fair about its flaws i try not to be an asshole right right right we're not just like shitting all over we're just kind of like my cousin shows up randomly that we've never talked about

before and he kind of looks like me like you're doing like fun sweep sweep kind of stuff uh yeah right uh joe Biden's the guest urkel earkle earkle appears right we it we have orkel stephan orkel Steve urkel and the urkel bot all appear on the episode yeah take us out

um when a j recently plugged urkel in our group chat. No, did he? Yeah, he did. This is another thing I've been thinking. Interstanton and AJ kind of look similar. Yeah, sure. Sure.

Got some AJ vibes. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, you're just talking about like a guy in a half zip with like hair. I mean, like not to insult AJ. It's kind of like a normal looking guy. Yeah. Yeah. AJ's very handsome, but he looks like the default video game avatar before you make me.

He's your sim before you start doing stuff. Sorry. Sorry, AJ. very good looking. I prefaced it with very hands. Everyone we employee is good looking. JJ especially stupid sexy. It actually sucks.

I hated spending a weekend with his fucking hot ass. I'm gonna stand next to him. And former employee Nick texts me after meeting Ben being like, what's his skincare routine? Yeah. I was like, Nick,

why would I know? I mean, that is funny that he asked you. I don't fucking know what he does. Where's my secret? I don't do shit. Yeah, that would have been my guess. AJ and his family came into the city, and we got lunch with AJ and his son. And he was telling me that he's into SNL now. AJ's son who's like eight, I think.

And so I was asking him about, like, which sketches he likes and which cast members he likes. And I was like, do you like Colin Jost? And he went, who's Colin Jost? And AJ went, the guy where he comes on screen, you point and go daddy. Dude. Someone at one of our live shows texted me like, I think Colin Jost is here. And I was like, that's a guy. And I was like, that's AJ.

Like, that's just AJ. Yeah. So Colin Jost, Andrew Stanton, A.J. McKeon, all on a spectrum. I just want to establish this at the beginning of the miniseries. You guys are huge. Colin Jost came coming unannounced to sit in the... Not that's AJ. I overheard Colin Jost talking about making edits to a Patreon episode?

Why is he doing that? I'm going to pee. Take us out. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate review and subscribe. I'm very excited to be talking about the films of Andrew Stanton. I mean, a few filmmakers, we have. have recovered or will ever cover more conform to the intro of this show.

Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear Wally and sometimes they bounce, baby, John Carter. In three films, that's the whole fucking premise of this podcast. That's all. I just, I'm very excited to be doing this. And I'm very excited that we're going to talk about Toy Story 5 on Mainfeed. and I'm very excited,

and I'm glad that David's in the bathroom when I'm saying this so he doesn't get jealous that Forkey's getting married in Toy Story 5. Forky's wedding. Forky's wedding, Ben. Forky's going to make Karen Beverly

an honest knife. Tune in next week four, Wally, with David Ehrlich, a man who has seen that film 800 times, I think, approximately. And as always, Fulkey is getting married Okay, I'm just

I'm making these edits here, David You're gonna have to be Nemo Okay Okay, I think that's the lighter left Born for that role What do you mean? It's not a lighter, you have to be Marlin If you're not Marlin, it's a disaster

Correct I mean, I think you should just do your Marlin line That you've been doing on this show for 11 years Which is the way? It's like, you think you can do these things But you can't. You've said that so many times on blank check I think it's one of the best lines of screen writing it

Well, it's also like clearly your Brooks is like locked into that line. Yeah, it's my activator. Right. Yeah. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Grimm.