Blank Check with Griffin & David - I Wanna Hold Your Hand with Patrick Willems

Episode Date: September 6, 2020

Your March Madness winner series has arrived! Chosen by the listeners, our latest subject is Robert Zemeckis, a Hollywood hitmaker who gives us plenty to cover. But before we get to Forrest Gump and Back To The Future, we're starting with 1978's I Wanna Hold Your Hand, which centers on a group of girls sneaking into the Beatles games Ed Sullivan show performance. Patrick Willems (@patrickhwillems) helps us kick it all off as we talk iconic dork performances, the best Beatles movies, and the confidence in this directorial debut. Subscribe to our patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram Merch is available at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Oh yeah, I'll tell you something I think you'll understand when I say that something. I want to pod your cast. I want to pod your cast.

I want to pod your cast. I want to pod your cast. I want to pod your cast I wanna pod your cast Hello everybody Very nice Wow Thank you Thank you

Thank you for that America The world We wanna pod your cast Hmm That's not the name of this miniseries But By God

I could not let that opportunity slide can you do a good ed sullivan though and so i want you to be prepared for excessive screaming i feel like that's not great i feel like i'm going to lauren michaels very very quickly chevy a famous new yorker you know ed sullivan but such a weird voice true weirdo true that's the word yeah that's the turn key word for sullivan right we got a great show today it sounds like a great show i feel like i'm getting very canadian i don't know what's going on all right ladies and gentlemen chevy for whatever reason chevy is the name that feels it best to say in lauren michaels voice oh chevy chevy well he has to sound disappointed oh chevy oh chevy chevy chevy don't throw out slurs to our cast members

blank chevy is that what you just said chevy hello everybody this is a podcast called blank chevy my name is griffin newman my name is david sims it's not called blank chevy we're gonna have to check the rule book on this one question yeah this is just a question that just popped into my head and this is really a question for ben uh is the question uh do you want to hold my hand no yeah no not right now that's not a thing we do right now no we can't do that now when if this fletch reboot with john ham that's being discussed you know if that actually comes to fruition gets made are we gonna we're gonna cover that that's that's like that's in the right we gotta we gotta do that right because's like that's in the cap right we

gotta we gotta do that right because i'm gonna be in it too so we really gotta talk about it wait have you guys started a campaign on the show to just get ben in it no well i guess yeah yeah yeah i mean i feel like we informally started the campaign four years ago or whatever to have ben play fletch and now that that feels like it hasn't gained steam, I think the campaign should be for Ben to play the steak sandwich. Oh, God. Yeah.

Because there are two of those. You could play either one. Either one. You could play the steak sandwich. I've got range. I mean, I could do both two, you know. You could play the steak sandwich or the steak sandwich. Yeah, exactly.

Easy. And this, of course, is primarily a podcast about fletch even though we tend to do non-fletch movies directors filmographies right right right okay sometimes we cover the careers of directors who have massive success early on are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby and one time we covered fletch which means this is primarily a fletch podcast right uh that one time and then we can just go back and do um is it matola is that how you say his name greg matola david what's that sound yeah i hear that too what is that there's a

sound off in the distance it's like artificial piped in crowd noises. And I'm looking off and those bleachers are filled with cardboard standees. Okay, good. Computer generated faces. All right, good. Oh my God. And yet here is a very, very nervous baseball player stepping up to the mound. They seem uneasy, like they're being held at

gunpoint to be forced to do their dangerous job and with that crack of the bat no fans in the stands to catch it it's the start of a no miniseries why do we do a baseball thing where did you come from what does it have to do with anything because griffin loves sports right yeah it's because i love sports it's because i'm the number one sport oh right i guess that's the reason it's just you're such a big uh fan of america's pastime look my my my my blood is uh i don't know i couldn't please please just just just get out of that one this is just one of those bits where it ain't broke so we don't need to fix it you know absolutely definitely but you know it is broke the record for home runs okay look out i mean like mark mcguire bonds okay

blank check has caught up oh is it barry bonds now barry bonds beat mark mcguire bonds okay blank check has caught up oh is it barry bonds now barry bonds beat mark mcguire although of course you know every everyone in that era everyone in that era was chemically enhanced but hey that's just part of life when did that happen recently when when did barry bonds break the home run record yeah 2007 is when he did it i guess i was busy that day so this is a new mini series on the films of robert zemeckis winner of our blank check march madness competition and the mini series is of course called podcast away when it's that short a walk you gotta take it you gotta take it and i'm sorry to anyone who wanted it to be insert in elaborate awful sounding thing here which they're always like the future podcast but uh when there's a

movie with cast uh you just you kind of have to do that and i wanted to make something clear barry bonds broke the single season record in 2001 i thought 2007 sounded too late 2007 he broke the cumulative he has the most home runs of any player and that's why i don't remember it because they're a bunch of asterisks and i don't really recognize it as a true record broken of course yes to you it's still the babe right the babe ruth oh my my my top guy the bamb, the Sultan of SWAT, they called him. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And much like Babe Ruth calling his shot, I'm pointing to the bleachers and going,

this is going to be our longest miniseries ever. Wait, is it really? I think so. I think Burton might be long. I can't remember. It's up there, right? It's right up there. We always think Burton might be long I can't remember it's up there right it's it's right up there we always think Burton was longer than he was because it felt so long I think Bobby is

breaking last year's winner Jonathan Demme's record I feel like now the blankies all congregate around making sure a long miniseries wins in March Madness. Bobby is going to be 19 episodes for us. Okay. I think that's more than Demi, I believe. Is that including the witches? It's not including the witches, which will come out when it comes out, which we don't really know more than that, right?

It'll get here when it gets here. Yes. But our guest today, joining us, a long-requested guest on this show, and especially once Zemeckis started taking the bracket, people went, well, you gotta have him on. He just did a 40-minute video? How long was the Zemeckis video?

I think it was 35 minutes. A tight 35. Yeah. A gentleman's 35 on the career of Robert Zemeckis video? I think it was 35 minutes? A tight 35. Yeah. A gentleman's 35 on the career of Robert Zemeckis. Ladies and gentlemen, from the Patrick H. Willems

YouTube channel, Infanticast, Can't Get Enough of Keanu, many more things, Patrick H. Willems. Thank you so much for having me.

Big fan. Excited to be here. Of course. So, so much for having me. Big fan. Excited to be here. Of course. So early this year, I watched them all. I took like two weeks and just burned through the whole filmography. And I was happy to talk about all of them because, like, I was really gunning for Bobby Z in March Madness. I was hoping it would be a him versus Bay showdown. Yeah.

And every year I try to get people to vote Bay and it still hasn't quite worked out. I don't think he'll ever win. He's too polarizing. Yeah.

He's the Bernie of Canada. Every year he's got his fans. Yeah. Yes. I mean, people always say that like, I don't want,

because a lot of people watch the movies along with you guys and they're always like, I don't want to watch five Transformers movies. And I'm like, but remember the prequels episodes? I want to listen to Griffin and David talk about five Transformers movies and lose their minds. Patrick, this has always been my exact argument for it. That's Griffin's argument, yeah.

Because Zemeckis, not Zemeckis, I'm sorry, Bay, we've talked about this before. not Zemeckis, I'm sorry. Bay, we've talked about this before. Bay is the only miniseries we had booked guests for, scheduled, and then welched on it because people started getting really negative about it and we like pulled back. People recognized that we were hinting at it and were so negative.

We were like, let's reconvene. Let's question this choice. And my whole thing was, it would be good to do Bay because those five Transformers movies are going to be the closest we can come to replicating the manic sort of cabin fever energy of the prequels yeah and my argument is we don't need to do that and the bit i would love to do michael bay my argument is more it's not the trend i like the i think the first three transform more of his movies there's tons to talk about and pain and gain obviously is an extremely interesting masterpiece everything post pain and gain is

where i think we might start to suffer he's the last night has a lot of banana stuff that we've talked about on this podcast but like the sort of 13 hours six under great you know that's where i'm starting to be like man is he kind of kind of just like, whatever. Like, he seems to have lost his juice slightly. Hey, his next movie, like, my theory is his next movie, it's like, it has the number five in the title. The Robopocalypse. Oh. I think it's like Black Five or something like that. Yeah, he just announced a new thing very recently.

But he's counting down to something. Wow. And I don't know what it is, but that that's my theory and there's also my pitch for why people should vote michael bay next year anyway but that said i'm really happy that zemeckis won uh and i'm i was happy to talk about anything because i think he's got a wild career uh bobby z oh yeah he does and he also has such distinct phases in an interesting way. You know, like he's a guy who very much goes through like, this is this period. This is this period.

And it's like, what a decade. Yeah. It's so clean. Yes. Yes. And now he's in his fourth decade, which is how to describe. It's his strangest decade yet, I say right his fourth i feel like marwin was the end of one period you had like the flight through marwin i suppose it depends on i suppose right what what is the witch is going to look like you're right we're about to

answer the fifth decade it does feel like a swerve away from marvin marvin probably i have no idea what this fifth decade is going to be and also with now he's supposed to do fucking pinocchio right he is although you know who knows but yes who knows if anything's happening yes aren't there always like four pinocchio movies and developments like at any given yes this is the one the disney one the the sort of uh clear uh a live action remake of disney classic written by our friend uh chris whites yes and bobby z is now supposed to do whites and king i believe are the credited people on that paul king was supposed to direct it originally uh but also as you said patrick 87 people were supposed to direct it originally right it's bounced around and you've got like Del Toro working on his version, right?

I don't know. There's always Pinocchio's. You're right. Wait, I forgot. Zemeckis is also lined up to make The King starring Dwayne Johnson and written by Randall Wallace. Right.

Oh, which is about King Kame, uh, the King of Hawaii. Kamehameha, I believe is how you say it. A Hawaiian historical war epic? I mean, I don't know that I want Randall Wallace to be the guy writing that movie,

but that sounds kind of cool. I don't know. This feels like it would have been a post-Castaway movie if he didn't go into the mocap phase i also feel like i would be so happy to see the rock do anything that feels that personal and passionate it would be nice to see him use his cachet as arguably the biggest movie star in the world to make something he deeply cares about uh well he's not gonna do that probably also i don't think he's the biggest movie star in the world anymore i think he i think he blew that that's why i said

arguably but also who the fuck knows now you know what what is a movie star anymore what are movies these are the questions we're asking who framed roger rabbit we'll get to that question later but this week we're asking the main question do you want to hold my hand and the answer is an emphatic yes i want to hold your hand uh yes i want to hold your hand what a good movie this is i've never seen this movie before oh it's a delight can i throw out a really hot take it's charming i don't think that's a particularly hot take. I think that's pretty obvious. But yes, it's a very charming debut from a man in his 20s making a movie about Beatlemania in the late 70s, correct?

We'll get into the context because this is obviously us laying out the track for our entire miniseries to follow. And this is one of those movies, I mean, this was sort of a big angle of your career-spanning video on Bobby Z. Patrick, is like, this is one of those movies where you see the seeds of so many things that are sowed in the rest of the career. But it's also a very assured first film. It's a first film where you're like, everything's there. Not even in like a foggy way. No, it's a very confidently made movie. mean he was 26 i think like it's it's crazy considering that yeah uh we all watched this really thorough special feature on the criterion uh release that

we'll talk about that explains the whole evolution but i just want to throw out a thing that really fascinates me about zomacus and it's shared with our previous March Madness winner, Jonathan Demme. There are these two guys who are like massive American directors of the 20th century, right? Mm-hmm. Yep. And they had like ultimate Oscar movies, like these movies that were massive runaway successes, totally minted movie stars, won across the board. They won the Oscar for directing at the pinnacle of both of their careers.

Like, maybe not quality-wise, but in terms of success, right? And then never receive a follow-up nomination. It is this fascinating thing to me where I feel like Zemeckis and Demi were continually thought of as, like, Oscar-y type directors. Even when they made weird

things, even when they flopped, it was still like anytime there's a Zemeckis or a Demi movie coming out, maybe it's in the Oscar conversation. And they literally, like the only movie that Zemeckis has made post Forrest Gump that had really any actual Oscar traction was Cast Away. And even that was viewed as sort of like, I feel like despite being a huge box office success, something of an Oscar disappointment that it really only got like the Hanks as a major nom. Cause I feel like that year people were like, oh, this might be a best picture play. This might be a best director play, not to nom, to win. And then it was a huge hit. And then it just kind of got the Hanks nomination.

win and then it was a huge hit and then it just kind of got the hanks nomination his career is screenplay nomination for back to the future and uh director win for forrest gump and then flight also gets an actor nomination but zemeckis himself never gets a nomination and he doesn't get screenplay nominations for his movies director nominations picture nominations uh did polar Express get an animated feature no no okay no huge huge backlash against any mocap movies especially

right right the only image movers mocap movie that got nominated was Monster House the best one we will talk about this on the castaway episode but the reason that movie

didn't get best picture was because Dreamworks was throwing everything at gladiator but we will talk about it can we have a volleyball as a guest absolutely it's booked it's on the it's already on the spreadsheet absolutely 100 just in the separate zoom call we're gonna figure that out we're gonna have to create an email account for the for the volleyball to set up a Zoom account. It'll set it up itself.

No problem. Yeah, of course. I'm so sorry. You're absolutely right. What does that give you? Incredibly rude of you to think that a volleyball can't set up its own record. Robert Zemeckis, right? Much like one of my favorite directors, a good Chicago, you know, boy, right?

Like sort of the son of, you know, Southside, you know boy right like sort of the the son of you know south side you know catholic immigrants yeah put some casing on that meat yeah right you know i think man is uh jewish immigrants but you know you know you know what i'm talking about right like who like is just like watching tv and it's like i love these like i want to make the movies like he's spielberg how do you describe robert zemeckis come on like apart from the thing you just said about weird sort of oscar peak and then valley he's got this weird gee whiz energy to him that i feel like certainly comes through when you see interviews with him but also in his films there's something bizarrely kind of like earnest and innocent about him in that sort of like,

as you said, every one of his movies feels like you can hear him behind the camera going, God, I love movies. He's just like, man, this is so much fun to make. Can you believe they let me do this? At least there's an exuberance for like the first half of his career. I do feel like he's now a little more kind of jaded and leery-eyed of the modern industry. I mean, my take on Zemeckis is that, like, he has always loved toys. And before, like, the filmmaking toys showed up,

I feel like he viewed, like, making the movies, just simply, like, constructing a story as if, like, putting together an elaborate toy. They all have, like, even before there were visual effects, there's, like like this clockwork precision to everything. There is these sort of like, even like this movie has the sort of like proto

Forrest Gump magic trick of like inserting fictional characters in and around an actual like historical event. It's like the idea of playing with toys in some way or like creating some kind of magic trick on screen has always been what has driven this guy.

Yes, he's absolutely a guy who loves construction, not just in filmmaking technique, but especially in story construction. So many of his movies have, if not some gimmick, some sort of gambit of this is how the story is being told. And then trying to do that as tightly and concisely as with as much energy and emotion as possible. He is not technically a movie brat because he's sort of coming up right below the sort of 70s movie brat guys. He's like five years behind. He's like half a generation behind those guys. He's like Spielberg's first protege, right? The first guy that Spielberg sort of like, you know, helps get work in the industry.

But much like Spielberg, right? Like basically constructed the blockbuster as we think of it, right? That like, you know, he is one of the architects of the modern blockbuster that we all grew up with that basically kind of still echoes into now, even as franchises are sort of rewriting how that all works. I don't want to jump too far ahead,

but the amount of failures at the beginning of Zemeckis' career is so wild considering the insane run of massive successes he had. Because he's involved in the one early Spielberg movie that people don't like. And then his first two movies flop right i mean 1941 is a bomb is actually slightly over it actually made money but it was not liked as you say this movie went nowhere i want to hold your hand was again well liked but you know didn't really go anywhere used cars maybe did a little better kind of didn't go anywhere. But the thing is, then he does Romancing the Stone, and it's like, okay, you know, whatever you want.

You just, you just, your movie made 10 times what it costs. Like, and that becomes the norm. We'll get to this, but Back to the Future was supposed to come right after Used Cars. They struggled for many years to get that movie made. By all accounts accounts romancing the stone was a thing where spielberg was like take this shot you need to do a hit like it was like just do one thing for hire show them you can do it the script is on rails you have two big movie stars attached just do it and that was the hail mary pass that saved his career because he was

in this gale zone they were bobby z and bob G. They were sort of like the Wonder Kid team. And, you know, they were going to be in it together forever. And romancing the stone was like the one sort of early for hire thing he did. And he very much was in a sort of like two strikes situation at that point. Yeah. really kind of three strikes if you also chalk up 1941 to them which i feel like a lot of people did because it was like here's spielberg he's killing it he can't miss he's announcing that these two kids are his mentees and the movie is his first kind of face plant in his career ever i think people were like why is he going in on these two bobs the two bobs but this movie that we are discussing today is good not only is it good it's very good really good and i do think that anyone who saw this movie was like well this is

just like an obviously talented person behind the camera like just you know forget forget the beatles stuff forget like this this person just knows where to put the camera that is an unusual skill like you cannot just have that skill did you guys watch you watch the short films on the criterion right yeah i did not but you i i watched one of them i watched the one with the what's it the elevator one forgot the names yeah yeah exactly yeah uh the. Yeah. The Lift, which is his first, the earlier one, I don't know if it's his first film, but they're both USC films.

And that's like another perfect example of you watch this like black and white, nonsense sound student film, and you're just like, this guy immediately knows where to put the camera and when to cut every single time. It is so perfectly constructed. It is incredibly simple.

It's essentially just a guy feels terrorized by his elevator in his building, right? It's the Bradbury building, right? Right. And it's like, is the elevator actually sentient and like sort of like fucking with him? Or is the guy just kind of going crazy?

It's this dude who's sort of overworked in the rat race. And he like feels like he's sort of being demonized by this elevator that he keeps on chasing that he can never fully catch until he has a heart attack and his body is sent down in the elevator. It's really simple. It's seven minutes. It's just like you watch this and you're like, yeah, this guy knows how to make a movie on a fundamental level. This guy knows how to make a movie. were like yeah this guy knows how to make a movie on a fundamental level this guy knows how to make a movie it's similar to what the myth of spielberg was when he was like this like 22 year old who could walk on set and be like the cameras should go here or whatever and everyone was just like

this kid's a little genius like who cares if he's young like he's you know he was going on to colombo or whatever and like doing shots that people would not usually attempt on TV, all that kind of shit. It's a similar vibe. The second short is the one he does with Gale, right? Uh-huh. That's what I thought was weird. Gale, on each movie, has a credit, but on The Lift, the first one's The Lift, right?

Yeah. The Elevator one. Gale is one of eight production assistants. Right. And then on the second one, Gale is one of like eight production assistants. And then the second one, Gale is only credited for like the credits design. So he's there and they're friends, but he's not like he didn't co-write them. He doesn't seem like one of like the primary crew members on it. And I didn't recognize any other names. Field of Honor is the second one. That's their sort of anti-war one, what Spielberg calls their anarchist cinema one. But Spielberg takes Sugar Land Express to USC. It's his first theatrical film as a director. He's doing the rounds, showing it at film schools. And Zemeckis and Gale run up to him afterwards and hand him this short film and he watches it and goes oh a game recognized game i can see this guy's sort of like me you know five

years ago uh and and so he like latches on to these guys and uh brings them around the movie brats uh it just starts really trying to show them the ropes it's his thing again he talks about usc it's the early 70s everyone there is like i love the modern reinvention of cinema that is happening now like i love the french new wave like i love like how movies are changing like you know people are have a more arty revolutionary like a lot of students feel that way and he and bob gale are more the types who are like we love television hollywood movies we love james bond we like disney we like clint eastwood like we want to make blockbusters we want to make like fun movies and that's kind of the spielberg thing too right spielberg doesn't go to film school but

it's that similar kind of just like pop culture brain that that like i assume is what he sees in them right like i think spielberg said he loved that their short film had this score to the great escape the elmer bernstein score on it yeah and like he's you know i just that's just that kind of like you know revival house dork you know mindset that spielberg had right but it also speaks to just sort of like uh uh how lucky they were that this encounter happened after sugar land express sure right because at a certain point spielberg's going to be too right a hundred percent right yes right they're in the fold at the last moment that you can have a somewhat level relationship with steven spielberg that's what's wild like he was their mentor and he was like what three years older last moment that you can have a somewhat level relationship with Steven Spielberg.

That's what's wild. Like he was their mentor and he was like, what, three years older than them. He must've been like the most five years older or something like that. I looked it up. It's a five year difference. Yeah. Okay. That's what was really interesting in that conversation because they're talking about the idea of like mentorship and stuff like that. And're saying yeah uh really the way we did like mentorship was just we like just hung out a lot and talked about movies and went to restaurants and then my favorite part uh went skeet shooting with john millius yes lots of skeet shooting i think john millius who's like was like was the sort of one the rest of the movie brats were like

god he's so macho like this guy's crazy like we all just like to sit around and not talk to women like this guy is like right the opposite of that john milley's like the ryan atwood who would like like beat up the bullies for them while they're just like cowering in the corner i was gonna say he's like the mickey rourke to their diner like the rest of them are paul riser arguing nuance uh but but yes, it's weird. Spielberg keeps mentioning how much Milius kind of equally mentored them. Obviously, the Spielberg mentorship helped their career more, but like that they were very much a unit and that he was also bringing him around the other brats. And did I miss here?

Did he say that 1941 they were originally writing for millius millius has a story credit on 1941 i don't know if he was initially going to direct or if he was just also working like helping them work like break the story i don't i i'm sure i could look i can't tell if they were just the three of them were working on it together with no clear intention or if they were working on it for him to direct but it very much wasn't being created for spielberg originally spielberg was mentoring these guys uh then he has jaws and then he reads their script and he goes oh this is great i would love to do this so he sort of takes over it uh and it's a big move that you're like spielberg post jaws is putting his chips in on this this

movie is similar as spielberg i believe points out this is all this conversation we're referencing this is on the criterion release this movie which is very good 1941 is about americans losing their minds out of world war ii paranoia right like this movie is about americans losing their minds through beetle like there are both about these kind of like hysterical events like very focused hysterical events in american like modern american history yeah with this sort of like wind-up toy energy just this like constant kinetic comedic sort of chaos and they they talk a lot about how they view this as kind of like a spiritual cousin to american graffiti yes sure very very sort of of a piece with american graffiti it is and it's not as pointedly dark as american graffiti but no it does kind of pepper in like

the cops you know setting up barricades like you know you you do have the sense of like oh this is an innocent time getting ready to curdle much like american graffiti yes right and and that it's sort of the one night the ensemble cast the main group all splitting up and meeting other people going on their own adventures that it's very much about the sense of what's going to happen to these characters afterwards what's going to happen to america afterwards that sort of ominous feeling but the big difference it's a bunch of jersey kids it's a bunch of jersey girls making kevin smith proud yeah but primarily i think that's a big thing like you you don't see very many movies especially of this era right you have so many films in the sort of like post-america

graffiti wake things like diner where it's like I'm making a movie about what me and my friends were like in high school, right? Like a director's early get-the-foot-in-the-door movie is largely autobiographical, and this is a work of imagination for Gale and Zemeckis. They are not incredibly personal filmmakers, and they are making a film about four women that they have created reacting to this situation and it is immediately startling to just like watch this type of film and go you never see these types of movies with the women-centered uh you know without exception you know yes i just it's just bobby de chico's character i mean ben is mentioning jersey types you know the the you know just got to shout them out. Yeah.

There are boys in the group, but they're secondary. They're secondary, yes. And most of those sort of driving around looking to have fun on a Saturday night movies of this era, especially the ones that are period pieces, the women are largely goals. You know, they are, I got to speak to this lady at the end of the night. I got to get to this party to see her and it is unusual to see that but um yes they're working on 1941 uh spielberg's in the post jaws zone they're talking with spielberg they sort of talk through this idea they're talking about this memory of that moment in time uh and i guess you know they later add the idea of this fictional band to it um but the idea of just sort of like uh right this this moment in american pop culture and spielberg goes like

that sounds like it could probably be a movie and they immediately just go to work trying to write this thing uh they uh pitch it to warner, I assume probably just because they have the heat of people knowing that Spielberg has sort of anointed them and that 1941 is going to be a film at some point. And Warner Brothers acquires it, but knows that the movie only is going to work if you're able to license all of this music. Because in the criterion, they say license all the music, but obviously all the songs, the Beatles songs were written for this movie. This is a weird bit.

I'm not doing a bit. It's like, but it's a fictional band. The songs don't exist. What is this bit? This is a terrible bit. I hate this bit. I know, I'm confused. What do you think I'm doing i don't the beatles are not

a fictional band obviously they're real band what is this bit this is the worst bit of all time this is hands down the worst bit of all they made a movie about this bit and it was great you know what that's what i should have been saying the entire time i was watching yesterday this is the worst bit what is this bit that's what all the characters should say like what are you fucking talking about this bit sucks of course the beatles exist man i wish i i wish i could smoke something phallic or drink a carbonated beverage to calm down from this but god i can't think of anything that exists would help take the edge off right now what if during yesterday he had gone to see i want to hold your hand in a revival house and that's the only way people know the beatles they're like yeah the fictional band from i want to hold your hand sure it's pretty niche yeah they're like du jour okay Okay, so wait, question.

What about something like Purple Rain where Prince plays a guy who's not named Prince? Right, that would count. And then people would go, it's weird that this actor just came out of nowhere and was so good at playing a musician. God, this bit annoys me in every version. Anyway, yes, Warner Brothers licenses successfully in 1978 licenses the beatles music i don't know how they did that but they i don't know how they did it wait can we talk about this because i'm

i've always been so fascinated by like the like how difficult it apparently is to license beatles songs like i was looking uh this up last night i remember in like 2012 when uh an episode of madman uses tomorrow never knows they spent a fortune on that yes they spent a quarter of a million dollars for one song and they said they'd been trying for years and kept getting turned down it is an incredible moment in madman because it's don listening to that song and turning it off and being like whatever like it's great it is the it is turning it off and being like, whatever. It's great. It is the future passing him by. It is him realizing, I don't know what's happening anymore in culture.

But the number of times that a Beatles song appears in a movie or TV show, I feel like in the past 20 years, you could count on one hand. Social network at the very end. Yes. Before that, Ferris bueller's day off i mean that's the thing well no tristan shout isn't really a isn't really a beatles song though it is their cover that's used yeah it's their recording right yeah um but uh yeah no instead i think of like across the universe or i am sam things that do covers like that are like, we'll do the songs, but we'll have our own interpretation and all that,

you know, yesterday's I am Sam across the universe. All three were movies where they were like, we're negotiating a bigger deal. Like this is a movie where the Beatles are part of the marketing campaign front and center. Like even I am Sam, where it isn't part of the actual plot of the movie.

It is part of the movie. He is part of the plot of the movie. He's obsessed with the Beatles. You know what I'm saying. But you know what I'm saying. Like, the hook, the one line on Yesterday and fucking across the universe is Beatles songs. I Am Sam has a first one line, and then the second line is also he's obsessed with the Beatles. But the poster was, like, featuring 17 songs with the Beatles. But the poster was like featuring 17 songs from the Beatles. Like the soundtrack was such a first and foremost element on that movie.

It feels like those are the cases where it's like the entire movie is pitched to the remaining Beatles trust and they have to like come up with some deal and the movie only gets green lit based on that. And even then it's almost always using alternate versions and covers so my question is in 1978 they were able to license like the entire soundtrack is just yeah songs and so when did things change well john lennon dies and i think yoko is much more protective of his legacy and so she is incredibly reticent just to be clear griffin for i am sam that's covers because they couldn't get the beatles to license it you can do covers like

that you don't need anything from the beatles if you do a cover and i am sam was specifically they were like we're going to negotiate with the beatles and the beatles said no or whoever you know oh wow i didn't realize that and so that that's why it's covers i don't know about across the universe ice ice no i remember yoko yoko was involved with that i mean the the widows were involved with that and yesterday right that's more that's more of a direct tribute right but both of those are uh cover movies too and even things like uh uh hey jude in rural tannenbaum's is pointedly a cover like all these things were directors wanting to use the original songs and they couldn't it costs a fortune and they they just

dismiss most requests out of hand i think what's wild to me is not that they were able to get 17 beatles songs in 1978 uh which you know is kind of stunning but you're like might have slipped through the cracks might have right been right before the sort of hammer came down. What's more surprising to me is that their rights were this locked down that this movie hasn't had any issues getting released on home video. That having been said, not streaming anywhere. That's the thing. I think it is tough because I assume that's one of the reasons it's not streaming. I think the rights to it are sort of complicated. And it wasn't on DVD for a long time.

And when it did come out on DVD, the cover is like Silhouettes of the Four Beatles. And it says featuring 17 original songs from the Beatles in almost bigger font than the title of the movie itself. And this movie was going to be called Beatlemania, right? And eventually they were like, let's not even put Beatles in the title because we'll get in trouble. Then they switched it to Beatles 4, number 4, hyphen ever. Terrible title. Which is a bad name. So they set this film up at Warner Brothers.

Warner Brothers negotiates for all the song rights because they know there's no movie without that. But at that point, the movie is expensive. And also in a post-America graffiti landscape, after George Lucas had such a nightmare getting that movie off the ground and they want to punt it to TV, now this type of movie is seen as valuable. Like this could be a big hit. So Warner Brothers starts to feel like we might have something hot here. So they go, well, we can't let Zemeckis direct this and they want Jonathan Demme to direct it. Yes, they do. A few steps up on the ladder,

I guess at that point, right? He's, he's young in his career, but I guess he's made a few movies. So like, you know, he's,

it's around when he's making like handle, you know, see a citizen's band and he's about to do last embrace. A thing I was thinking about is i uh i didn't have time to listen to the entire commentary track but i watched like 20 minutes of it and a thing that zemeckis and gail mentioned in it is that they were like our big comedic influences are like uh frank capra and uh like three stooges and Marx Brothers, and our approach is have everyone talk 20% faster than they would in real life,

which is very clear in this movie. That's how everyone talks. And I feel like Demi would have a, even for a movie that's structured this tightly, would not have quite the manic pace of it. No, definitely not. And I also, I feel like they were writing movies that in a way only zemeckis knew how to direct as evidenced by the fact that like spielberg read 1941 and was like oh fuck this

seems like so much fun to do and then he did not have the right touch to pull it off it's a very fine line of what he pulls off and and it's it is that kinetic energy it's everyone constantly being in motion you know i mean i feel like that's such a defining zemeckis thing yeah and spielberg is not really a great comedy director like his good funny movies like catch me if you can or whatever there's a like light dramas you know the terminal um like you know those are well he has very funny stuff like jaws has all kinds of big laughs in it jaws is a goddamn pleasure to watch like like the sharky people yeah no you know like you know like robert shaw's you know nails on the chalkboard right like you know we're gonna need a bigger boat bubble but like he's not he never made made an incredible comedy comedy. No. It's certainly, I mean, he might be even marginally better at sex scenes than he is at comedy.

That's not true. Sex scenes is the thing he's worst at. Yeah. Are the Indiana Jones movies his funniest movies? Yes, absolutely. I was about to say the exact same thing. Last Crusade is his most successful comedy. Yeah.

And that's where he can do comedy, where it's like old 30s, you know, genre. Layered onto something else. I will say about like Zemeckis and like approaching this and also like 1941. It's been like maybe like five. I've only seen 1941 once and it was like five or six years ago. So it's not super fresh in my mind but i feel like part and i like enjoyed it even though it's not it doesn't entirely work but i feel like what that's missing like 1941 doesn't really have characters the way that like uh or like it doesn't have human beings in it the way that i want to hold your hand has

human beings like a key thing in like the best zemeckis movies is like, and I know I'm just rehashing points I made in that video. But I, but like they have characters with very like clearly defined goals that they really, really believe in. And it's about like their like really intense process of like trying to reach that goal. And 1941 is like, also has this like very intricate construction with like a million moving pieces. But I feel like there's no really like humanity in it. The way that like, I want to hold your hand has humans who have like human,

like desires and goals. Absolutely. And I, I also feel like it's, it's fascinating that the two scripts happen almost simultaneously, right? I mean, it's like 1941 into this, and then this comes out before 1941. of plotted and constructed this movie with their note cards and the color coding system to be able to visualize how the threads were interweaving and how much balance and screen time each character got and the fun fact that the four girls have their names have the same initials as john paul

george moringo pretty clever which spielberg never realized uh but they they are very much like once they said that i was like right they're kind of the ultimate note card storytellers like they do have that none of this is coincidental these guys don't feel like they're running on a sort of loose improvisational bent you can tell that everything is very very tightly constructed in this sort of clockwork way which that's that's the modern blockbuster that's what we're talking right like that's the spielberg thing too right yeah where like the hit on it is this feels too clean but i mean it's it's it's pure serotonin not to talk greasy but i've been watching uh the russo brothers film school which is very bizarre their youtube series where they keep on sort of talking about how they've like figured out the perfect storytelling algorithm and they

believe that every screenplay that they do and especially the stuff that they're now producing through their agbo film company or whatever it's called uh has to like work through this, like this has to happen on this page. You have to track this, this character has to have this and this and that. Like, and I feel like the Russos have done some stuff I've liked a lot. They've done some stuff I've liked less, but in both cases, I do feel that sort of studiedness with them where they're very like sort of unwavering and like, this is the page 15 moment. You need to have the page 15 moment. And on page 15, these three things happen. And that's a specific example that they talk about that I'm throwing out. And the joy of Zemeckis and Gale is, as you're saying,

Patrick, they make it still feel organic and human and character driven. As much as it is clearly a very tightly sort of constructed automaton it it is so behavioral and every character has such personally specific uh sort of uh charming interesting uh internal struggles going on that it doesn't feel that forced just out of curiosity like i don't know about this russo brothers film school they have a youtube channel yeah they have a youtube channel now there's pizza involved right griffin um it's they have a guest on and they talk about a movie uh and they break down pizza yes they call it pizza film school it has this insane rap song talking about the Russo brothers being

the two greatest filmmakers of all time. Truly, that's the level of hyper- Wait, are you gaslighting me? Probably. No, not at all. And this Adult Swim style animation of them partying and vomiting themselves out of their mouth and whatever. It's called Pizza Film School

and only because at the very beginning they go, so we like to eat pizza while we talk about movies. What pizza are you all eating today? And then Joe will show what pizza he's eating. Their guests will show the pizza, which is often just Marcus and McFeely. Most episodes it's Marcus and McFeely. And then every episode Anthony very sheepishly says, I actually ate my pizza before we started recording,

but I'll tell you what I did eat. Every episode he fucks it up and he doesn't eat pizza on screen. I agree that he seems like the nice one. I like him, but the show is called Pizza Film School. Eat a fucking slice on camera, Anthony, or retitle it. So this is all over Zoom? This is all over Zoom. Yeah, it's all over Zoom.

Right. And it's mostly them with Marcus and McFeely. And then a couple times they've had actors for movies on and the actors talk about their experiences working on the films and then joe and anthony goes but the filmmakers must have been doing this for this reason because this is how stories work and then like josh brolin will go like no the cone brothers don't really think that way uh it's very fascinating i recommend that people watch it they are contemporary the right the contemporary blockbuster which i have a lot of problems with which is what you're talking about

the only thing i'll say about the russo brothers is because i've been binging community partly on your advice griffin yeah yeah like i sort of rediscovered i was like jesus right these guys were kind of doing something perfectly like you know like that you know i forgot that that how much of a hand they had especially in the early seasons i like a lot of what they've done a lot i'm just saying they very openly talk about every movie we produce is gonna have this exact structure and i i think like i remember them in an interview saying their goal explicitly with Civil War was to make a movie that CinemaSins couldn't criticize. They were like, we ran through and made sure that everything was airtight and that every thread was like this and that. And it's like, why put the energy into that?

Whereas Back to the Future is a perfect example of a movie where you can pluck out 87 things that don't make sense, but no one gives a shit. Back to the Future makes no sense at all. Yeah, you answer the right questions, you ignore the wrong questions, and I feel like, whatchamacallit, this movie is just them testing this out in a very low-stakes way. You don't have a sci-fi premise, you know? You don't have mortal dangers for the character. The objectives are very clear. You have four girls who start out the movie together, who will end it vaguely together.

And along the way, they all have the same driving force, which is get to the Beatles. And I mean, even though there is the main four girls, there are like they do. There are other characters. There's the other two boys who tag along. And then we'll get to Eddie Deason, obviously. But I, but the two boys also have their own goals and everyone like, like everyone has that clear journey over the course of it.

So I'm not trying to derail this because I know we haven't really started talking about the plot of this movie, but can we talk about Bob Gale? Cause I'm so fascinated by Bob Gale. And my favorite era of Zemeckis' career is the Bob Gale era. Yes, he is the best collaborator. He's so much the collaborator. When people talk about this time, it's like they were the Bobs. They were a team. They were clearly a unit. And then it is very bizarre. They seem to get along very well. They do stuff together all the

time. But he seems to be one of these guys who just post Back to the Future was like, my job is being the keeper of the Back to the Future flame. And he has done some stuff after that, but it's primarily been managing the Back to the Future legacy and all the additional outputs. Do you know the last thing I remember that Bob Gale did? He did a Spider-Man run right that was it well in 2008 when they did the amazing spider-man relaunch where they had like the brand new day era where they had like the writer's room of like like dan when it was basically weekly yes yeah yeah and gail who i hadn't heard about in years suddenly he's like one of the writer's room guys on the spider-man comic and then he was there for

like a year and a half and then left and i have no idea what he's been up to but it's not like he and zemeckis had a falling out like they're absolutely not like they seem to be on incredible terms they do shit together all the fucking time just not projects yeah well that's the thing they seem to be on great terms but like when you're watching that conversation on the dvd which is spielberg gail and zemeckis and i've interviewed zemeckis he seems fairly ornery now i will say like about the state of the film industry it's it does like they're all in the past like they're having these wonderful nostalgic conversations about like the beginning of their right you know like but maybe there's just some point at which gail is like i'm not that interested in whatever you know whatever project you're eyeing next and then it just kind of like naturally drifts apart it's weird like i feel like he did

some like theme park movies he directed a film that my father actually produced is that route 66 interstate 60 oh that's it yeah yeah which i think is either newman it's an okay movie it's very bizarre it was kind of like oh this is bob gale's great unmade screenplay and i feel like there were a couple of those post back to the future where it was like oh do you know gail has these scripts that he wrote on his own that never got made he's maybe not a natural director and the film is very bizarre tonally because it's half got this sort of manic early gail zemeckis comedic energy and is half weirdly dark and sexual in a way that kind of bumps with that cartoonishness the only thing i want to say about bob gill is that he seems like the nicest man in the world in all these conversations these interviews these panels like he seems like a real kind of aw shucks guy he's from i believe he's like a jewish guy from missouri from like

a college town in missouri like he just seems like the friendliest fella and maybe there's just got to be some point where he's like you know what i'm i'm doing all right and like i don't need to keep mixing it up with all his hollywood bullshit you know like maybe there's he just kind of like soft retired because like you said he does sort of manage the back to the future whatever yeah look i'll say two things one back to the future residuals are certainly enough to live off of for the rest of your life. Oh, are those movies popular? Do they do okay? They did okay?

Second thing is, there's always Back to the Future shit going on. Like, from the moment pretty much the first movie came out, you've had a near constant stream of different forms of merchandise and animated series and theme park rides. There's the Broadway musical that's been in the works for a long time that was supposed to, I think, open in London or just did open in London right before coronavirus. There are comic books, like all these fucking things, and not to mention conventions and the constant retrospectives. And every five years, there's another round of anniversary shit. And he very much seems to be the guy who either approves of everything or leads everything. Like when I worked on Draft Day, there's a guy who's part of Reitman's company, Joe Medjic, who's a great producer in his own right,

but he's also like, I'm the guy who deals with all the Ghostbusters shit. Like, if it's not a movie, if it's something with Ghostbusters, I'm the guy who, like, has the red stamp and does that. And I think Gale does a lot of that, and he also, like, wills a lot of that stuff into existence on his own.

But it is also interesting that, like Trespass and like Interstate 60, there's sort of this bounty of unmade Gale Zemeckis scripts and also unmade Gale scripts that never really get talked about. I know he wrote a Doctor Strange script. I mean, he's a nerd. He likes comic books. Look, I love the man. I know, obviously, they wrote the um tales from the script that

eventually got turned into bordello blood right like that was like something they wrote back in their you know partnership days i just want to say the final thing and then we can get into the movie itself now that we sort of set up how the movie came into existence uh they're in this sort of weird zone at warner brothers because uh, they want Demi to do it. They don't trust Zemeckis to do it. The movie seems a little bit stuck at a standstill. Uh, Spielberg slips the script to Universal, says, take a look at this. They go, this is great. Spielberg says, I really think this guy's a director. I think this is a major filmmaker. This is the start of a career. You want to get in early on this guy i think he can direct it and uh what's his name uh sid

scheinberg says really and he goes i trust him so thoroughly that if a week into filming it doesn't work out i'll take over as director so to universal they were like look either it works or we get a free spielberg movie Who gives a shit? Now, Spielberg was very aware of the fact that DGA and PGA rules. There's no way he could actually pull that off. Right. A producer is not able to take over a film as a director. But he promised them that, which got him through the door.

And Warner Brothers still felt they had ownership of the movie. And Spielberg's agent just called up the head of warner brothers and said come on man you're not gonna let this guy direct the movie this could be the start of his career can you give the guy a break and he went yeah sure another classic example of people in the entertainment industry doing things out of the goodness of their heart it happens all the time it's just very weird that that actually happened i'm being sarcastic here but it's weird it's it's the height of spielberg's power i mean it's not the hype because he reaches greater heights but it's the it's an example of how powerful he was even then like that everyone

wants to owe spielberg a favor so they're willing to agree to things that make no sense in the idea that someday they will be repaid with a spielberg film so the film is off to the races now right universal takes this movie on and it you know it doesn't do very well so but like but nonetheless it was a like you say everyone was like yeah and and right and everyone's everyone's on good terms with everyone or what you know what i mean that that's the sort of like like you say everyone owes each other a favor and once again this was a thing that studios used to think about, which is like, I don't know if this movie is going to be successful, but it's worth the investment of maybe trying to make this filmmaker a member of our roster.

This might be a good long-term investment. I feel like you rarely see that happening outside of maybe like the horror scene in Blumhouse and things like that. But anyway. Yeah, well, you know what, what guys ben's changed his zoom background to the boycott the beatles yeah do you not like the beatles ben fuck you you don't like the beatles oh god damn it i'm quitting this podcast if you don't like the beatles because they're the best because they're the fucking best and not only do i like how would you know that all right shut up is that watching this

movie i literally bought the beatles anthology on dvd while i was watching this movie because immediately i was like man i gotta watch the beatles anthology again which i've seen like twice in my life right the big anthology thing that's like eight this everyone knows what i'm talking about right i yeah i do not no wait it's a great no no no it was like a documentary miniseries oh okay you wait yes i know what you're talking about the vinyl they they released albums that went with it it's like a big but like it is the definitive beatles documentary it is so good i recommend it to any it's one of the greatest like uh just documentaries about the 60s in general and it's unavailable like you can't

stream it again unsurprisingly because the beatles uh music is so complicated so i bought it on like some used dvd that's how much i love the beatles and how good this movie is that it had me immediately like in my beatles nostalgia feelings whatever can i also say i i love beatles movies like i i feel like they're good you know i'm more of a movie guy than i am a music guy but for me as a kid the beatles movies were the things i really latched on to and it's like they made these three theatrical films that are very distinct and very different and use the beatles in different ways in different sort of styles and they fucking slap the thing about the beatles though is it's your parents music shut the fuck up i'm gonna kill you ben i'm gonna come over where are you

are you in your apartment yes you're close i'm gonna walk over there i resisted when i was a kid for that very reason because i was like i don't care about the music that my parents like and then i think i was in high school and i like i was like it's undeniable i gave in that's the thing i fought it for so long and eventually it's just you hear revolver the white album like abbey road you just can't deny these songs are amazing talking about how many good beatles songs there are and it's one of those things where like we're of a generation where you take beatles as a given right like we just grew up with like the understanding And it's one of those things where like, we're of a generation where you take Beatles as a given, right? Like we just grew up with like, you understand where it's just like, oh, yeah, everyone just tells you the Beatles are the best band of all time.

And in the same way that like, it's not until you maybe as an adult, or at least, you know, an upper age adolescent, after hearing these songs play in the background of your entire life, sit down and like really listen to an album from beginning to end that you really register like wow this is like pretty insane that they made full albums like this and multiple full albums like this and have this many songs that are this iconic to the same degree it is very hard to like sit down and process the extent of beetle mania just the idea that it was like here's this band that has taken over the rest of Beatlemania. Just the idea that it was like, here's this band that has taken over the rest of the world, and they're coming.

Like, here's a date, they're going to be on TV, and America is, like, bracing itself for the fact that society is going to catch on fire. Well, but it's a specific part of society, which I think is part of the thing, right? Where these adults are like, what is going on with all of you? Like are you guys like what are you all so excited about my mother was the perfect age which is one reason i love the beatles for sure because my mom was a

beetle maniac same with my parents my dad my dad went to the shea stadium concert that was their first american concert my mom i believe was at the candlestick park but the same tour this is their final tour where they were like fuck this we can't even hear ourselves you know um but uh my mom was 12 years old she like specifically recalls like being shown the first lp like maybe the first single like at the record store and being like look at their hair like had never seen that haircut like had never seen boys with long hair in her entire life like it's so hard for us to think about that like you know like looking at the Beatles long hair yeah they're right yeah exactly all those look like nice boys and at the time it was like have these

boys never cut their hair like what is this what's going on with them like this is outrageous like you know how could they look this way? And, and like, just, it's just this crazy, like sexual awakening for an entire generation that is not quite given that description because it's still the early sixties, but like just the, it's so crazy. It'll,

I mean, I know obviously people go see, you know, that it's true for every generation that you go see music relax and you scream, right. You know, freak out like, you know, it's true for every generation that you go see musical acts and you scream, right? You know, freak out, like, you know, but like this, there's nothing like that. Like this is sort of the original. I mean, I know that the Elvis had happened before, but like this is just so unique and strange. This is sort of the first generation that really has a youth culture where there's not just, you're a kid and then you're pushed into the adult world

of serious concerns and the workforce where there's actually like culture directed at youths who are driving like industries and that's also driven a lot by a sense of counterculture and a sense of sexuality all things that scare the old guard elvis was very openly he was like a sexual creature so i think that was obviously part of what was so shocking about him right he was so he was so unexpectedly you know physical yes they didn't lie hips the hips and like you know and right but like he's the beginning of like teen counterculture as just like jailhouse rock like movies like that that are being marketed to these you know kids in a way that no one had ever thought about before that's what's also funny about this like elvis was like sexual and also he's like start like in jailhouse rock he kills a guy at the beginning

and then is imprisoned he's he seems like a bad influence and the beatles are just nice boys who stand in one place and play guitars they're goofballs and they're cute they're goofy they do they tell jokes like john really loved especially like you know john had grown up with that sort of 40s 50s like sort of dour british comedy that he really like that sort of channels like they're nice and also but also they're kind of collectible you pick a favorite like you know all their like you know likes and dislikes and all that. It's the beginning of that whole template. There was this perfect Storm thing for them too. I mean, Elvis was obviously a very kind of constructed, cultivated image. I'm not saying that he was a phony, but Colonel Tom Parker very much,

it was like they built a thing around him. And even the idea that he plays a murderer in his movies, they were trying to build up this sort of like mythos of the bad boy thing. Where did this guy come from? What side of the tracks is he on? And the Beatles, like, especially at this point in time are there.

They're so seemingly guileless. Like there's something to the fact that there are people like fainting around them and they're asked questions and they give these like glib sort of half joke answers and then like do like full body laughs and shake their hair and stuff like the juxtaposition between the chaos around them and how much they aren't playing into it and you also talk about like elvis set the stage for this kind of thing but i think a because at this point you have like parents and adults who have seen the impact that elvis had on culture they're even more freaked out about the beatles hitting and b they're for beatles and c they're not even

american like it's a thing that comes up in this movie that you have that little strain of xenophobia especially with the teenage boys where they're just like these fucking brits want to come here and make our girls want to sleep with him yeah but like and and all the boy well especially the bobby duchico character like he's like uh he's an elvisy kind of guy he's a sort of a greaser he's got the hair up he's got you know like he's he's like wait i've cultivated this whole image you telling me this isn't the thing anymore it's also great that there's the two-layer thing of like the parents saying like we've barely gotten over elvis we can't have this happen again and then that character is like hey i thought we

all liked elvis can we stay in elvis what also is funny about that guy is he keeps talking about like he likes like frankie valley in the four seasons yes and like this kind of divide it's like kind of like an early version of like the like rock versus disco thing or like the boy bands versus nu metal thing. And it's funny because like the Beatles are playing rock music that would seem like more aggressive like then the Four Seasons. Which is like doo-wop. Right. But that's what he knows. And Doo-Wop was based in these weird, like, you know, these greaser, like, sort of, like, street kids, like, energy, even if they weren't trying to seem dangerous. Whereas with the Beatles, especially at this point, you're just like, do these guys take anything seriously?

You know? Irreverent. So, yes. So, the four characters we start off with in this film, much like American Graffiti, we start with them all together, spread out, and their web extends to other characters. But you have Officer Anne Lewis herself. Nancy Allen. She's Pam. I want to establish a new sort of trope here.

It's like Chekhov's wedding. It's the opposite of chekhov's gun if a character at the beginning of a movie is very very adamant that they have to make it back in time for their wedding they will not end up married to that person at the end of the film there's they're not even going to be with that person at the end of the film the world's biggest red flag if you're not even seeing the case of the other the're not even seeing the other, the husband or whoever, like the other person, like then, yeah,

that person's obviously a stiff. But the idea that just, her introduction is like, okay, but you have to promise me the most important thing. My entire life depends on this night. It's like, spoiler, it's not going to, it's not going to,

you're not going to marry this guy. So they're in high school, but she is also like eloping with him. like when because when rosie is talking about like her wedding she's like keep it down i don't want people to hear yes yes she's eloping and he seems older possibly older right yeah um and he's just ready to make a career and make babies and have her you know be his partner and cooking meals or whatever exciting new industry of all plastic furniture covers and she's really gonna take off huge i mean you know it feels like there may be secretly eloping to bypass the parents and be like too late we already did it now we have sex that's why you

do it yes you're gonna move in together or whatever, right. So you're going to have to elope. Yep. So we have Wendy Jo Sperber, who of course plays one of the disappearing siblings in Back to the Future. Her name is, what's the character's name? Rosie, yes. She rules.

I love her. She's kind of like the most fanatatical right like the most sort of uh hysterical she loves paul she loves paul correctly uh and she's yeah she's right she's just high energy too like she's a little more i guess shamelessly high energy than the other ones like which which i love she's she's in 1941 she's in used cars like and back to the future like you say she's in a lot of those are and and she was on um bosom buddies with uh t hanks yeah well that's the thing about this movie like this and then 1941 kind of established like this collection of zemeckis players that appear in a lot of these movies like the same

i can't remember the actor's name the guy guy who plays Jimmy Olsen in the Superman movies. Yes. Yeah, Mark McClure. Mark McClure. Yeah, he's Marty McFly's brother. Older brother, yeah. Right. Like Eddie Deason shows up in 1941.

I believe he's also in Used Cars. And yeah, Eddie Deason, I mean, Eddie Deason, we'll talk about him, but what a great guy. We'll get to that in a little bit. Yeah. Then you got Teresa Saldana. Yeah.

I was just going to say, of the four girls, it's like Wendy Jo Sperber is the one who is really sort of like pushing the plot into existence. Because she's the one who's like, I got to do this. I'll just die if I don't see the Beatles. And the other girls all have their sort of alternate viewpoints where it's like Nancy Allen is just sort of along for for the ride trying to be a good friend she thinks she doesn't really need to do this but she's the one who ends up getting the most affected by it then you have uh theresa saldana who's grace uh who is the aspiring photojournalist who really sees that she was able to get some good pictures of the beatles this could make her entire career she's she's the craftiest one she's the one figuring out like you need to rent a limo you need to go on the floor below right like she she's not going

to just charge head first into paul like she's trying to figure out a back way yeah uh and then you have susan kendall newman who is uh newman's daughter newman and joanne woodward's daughter and does this movie and robert altman's a wedding in the same year has an uncredited role as a pharmacist and slapshot and never acts again commits most of her life to philanthropy and protest she's pretty good in this movie i think she's very good and she's the one who is uh anti beatles and is using beetle mania as trying to use Beatlemania as an opportunity to message larger issues. Well, she likes folk music. She likes authentic. You know, she likes Dylan. She likes Joan Baez. She likes this sort of like the real stuff, not this pop. But she likes that they're also speaking

to the the ills of society and that she feels she needs to refocus up the youth of America. You got to pay attention to the lyrics. Yes. And, and so, yes, within the, the web of, of who these characters connect to, you have Nancy Allen's,

uh, uh, fiance, who you almost never see, uh, until the very end. Then you have, um,

Saldana has roped McClure into this, uh, who is sort of the nice boy she is, will they or won't they energy with, but always seems too nervous to actually ask her out make a move and importantly he plays the accordion a poorly plays the accordion also he can kind of drive a car little nervous about it well especially because he's driving this fucking purse he's driving this

goddamn boat and then you have bobby domicoico is like the greaser guy who literally jumps into their car. Like the end of Fast Ampersand Furious. From window to window in motion. Oh, yes. Like none of them like him. No, none of them like him. He's a pain in the ass. Oh, I like him.

He's a great guy. I'm sorry. Ben likes him. None of the characters in the them like him he's a pain in the ass oh i like him he's a great guy i'm sorry ben likes him none of the characters in the movie like him he's thirsty on maine he sprays beer into the face of of the driver yeah he's got no respect i get it i'm with him he hits on those two ladies and when they just mentioned the beatles he's like you're gonna make me puke over here what's going on like you know he's he's i mean i i admire his i mean he tries to take the whole fucking movie down with an axe like he is impressively committed to hating the beatles yes he also won't stop hitting that i want to hold your clams joke which i have no respect for anyone who doubles down on a bit that hard.

No, of course not. Okay, can I actually raise a question about that? Because, so again, there are five quotes from this movie on IMDb. So I always heard it as clams, but in the Criterion essay by Scott Tobias, he writes that it's, I want to hold your glands yeah i heard glands is this like a like a like what is it blue dress black dress or gold dress or whatever

thing i don't really get glands though that's not funny i thought it was a weird sexual thing basically claims could be sexual too it's definitely sexual whatever he's doing it's sexual but it's a joke that no one finds funny except for him and he keeps repeating it i don't understand how someone could do that it's like so wild to just like hold your friends hostage and do a bit over and over again over like years for your own amusement it just feels so perverse to me. I don't understand why anyone would put up with it. Anyway, they come across a little boy. This is the Newman character is the one who interacts with him most and D'Amico.

But he's a little boy who's a Beatle maniac who's got the haircut. His dad wants him to get a military crew cut. But he's holding mana in the form of three tickets to the Ed Sullivan show. Yes. And, uh, and wait, what's,

what's the name of the greaser character again? Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony.

Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony.

Aggressively tries to just cut this kid's hair off. Yes. Like in public. He's being a big old bully. um yeah uh while they're all waiting outside the plaza or wherever it is they're supposed to be is it the four seasons the four seasons i can't remember no it's it is the plaza hotel new york's finest hotel experience but it's shot in la so it's not yes really the plaza almost all of this movie is shot on the universal back lot and spielberg talks about that in that that little featurette which by the way zemeckis to me is the universal backlog because like back to the future as well like you know he's such a

universal backlog guy like that kind of like nice uh movie version of america but also it it is that wild thing of like spielberg talks about oh the way you just you filled up the streets and the way you dressed it and putting smoke coming out of the manhole covers. Like it was the first movie shot on the universal like street stages that actually looked like somewhat real to me and not like a backlot. And then back to the future, you're like we I feel like we talked about this in another episode. Maybe we'll certainly talk about it in the future. Hint, hint. Future.

But the fact that that Hill Valley set is in like 87 million things, but you think of it as Hill Valley. Like when you watch Hill Valley, you don't think of the movies that came before it or the movies that came after it. He somehow makes that feel like a tactile place. And this is another example of just like, I didn't like, I live in New York City. I know what New York City looks like.

It wasn't like I felt like this is New York. They clearly shot on the real streets, but it also did not feel like I was looking at it back. No, it's very well done, especially considering that I'm sure this movie was not, it was 2.8 million. You know, like it was looking at it back no it it's it's very well done especially considering that i'm sure this movie was not it was 2.8 million you know like it was not an expensive movie and you're right it it feels the very very similitude is is there like it feels new york to me like when they pull up to the ed sullivan theater which again is also on the back a lot watching this again i was like that must be the one that they at least did in new york like that that must be a real location i don't know though because how many alleys have you guys ever been in new york city and it's always in movies with like that are set in new york there's

not a lot of alleys honestly no i just meant that like the the front of the building uh like like the alley definitely not but you know that about the one alley in New York that's in every movie, right? The one like in Chinatown? Yeah, Courtland Alley. Yeah. Okay. Courtland Alley has been used. Anytime you see a New York alley in a movie, it's just Courtland Alley.

It's the one. It's the one. I have shot so many videos there just because it's the only place that looks like a New York alley. So there's just like production value immediately. But that's just it. And there's like all these like fire escapes there. It's great. I think I've maybe filmed four different web series in Cortland Alley.

I'm looking at photos now and I'm having a lot of really negative muscle memories come back to me. There's always a photo shoot there every time I walk by. The final main character, major character here is Eddie Deason who i don't know if you guys checked out eddie deason's wikipedia page but it is a journey uh i guess i mean i know eddie

deason let's see what what's uh what's going on in his wikipedia page though okay so my question for you guys is when did you first become aware of Eddie Deason? Grease, I think, definitely. Because I saw Grease when I was a little kid, right? Like, and, like, you know, that's where, like, because he is, to be clear, Eddie Deason is, like, the nerd for the 70s and 80s, right? Or I guess, is that the best? Like, he is Hollywood's version of a nerd. Anyone who's doing a nerd is kind of doing an Eddie Deason kind of thing, right?

Because my thing was like, I think I saw Grease when I was like a little kid, but I have not seen it since then. So I knew him from, well, I loved Dexter's Lab. Yeah, he's manned up. When I was like 12 years old. He's manned up. The best. Like the most iconic voice. When I was like 12 years old.

He's Mandark. The best. Like the most iconic voice. Like genuinely, when I was 12 years old, my family got a cat and I insisted that the cat be named Mandark. And we had it for like 15 years.

Wow. I loved Mandark. Mandark rules. God, Dexter's Lab is so good. I hope that holds up. I haven't watched it in a long time.

It's fucking, Genndy, Tartakovsky, it holds up. Until they rebooted it without Genndy. I was about to say, it's the early seasons thatakovsky it holds up until they rebooted it without gendy i was about to say it does it's the early seasons that he was involved with right and then they add yeah they change it up and it gets kind of bad right he did three seasons it's on yeah it's on hbo max now it

fucking rules it holds up beyond belief that show is so much more experimental than people give it credit for it's perfect i loved it to be like i was obsessed with it when it was uh whatever just constant repeat on cartoon network um but so i knew just mandark i didn't know who did the voice i just loved mandark and then like six years ago i watched 1941 for the first time and lost my fucking mind because suddenly a guy with mandark's voice was a real person and i just assumed that that was like a voice that like Tom Kenny did or something. I didn't know there was just a person who is Mandark. See, this is my thing. My mind jumped to, oh, this must be how like all of Hank Azaria's characters on The Simpsons are his bad impressions of different movie stars.

Like the way that he talks about like, Wiggum is Edward G. Robinson and like Moe is his Pacino and stuff. I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that Mandark is someone like Tom Kenny dining out on this character actor's real voice. And then you realize, no, this is this guy's real fucking voice. This is what he does.

And as you said, he mostly has transitioned into voiceover in the later half of his career he sort of talks about his wikipedia page feels very much maintained by him but talking about how his live action film work sort of dried up in the 80s due to a number of things one is which he's apparently been plagued with an inability to remember lines his entire life he tried to be a stand-up comedian at first and gave up because he couldn't remember his own routines he was gonged on the gong show i believe

for very similar reasons by paul williams by paul williams of all people correct but um but but then he switched to acting he started auditioning greece was the breakout and then uh uh zemeckis really kind of takes him under his wing and goes like oh this is one of my stock company guys but there's the thing where it's like he is this as i'm looking at his wikipedia page as it notes he he wanted to voice roger rabbit and he loses that role to charles fleischer wanted to play judge doom lost that role right for ll Lloyd. It feels like, and again, this is just from the Wikipedia page,

but it's also, it's hard not to think about it. Like he kind of suffered from not being in Revenge of the Nerds because it was like, finally they made a big blockbuster movie about nerds and he didn't get to be in it.

Like even though they are doing an Eddie Deason kind of thing right like everyone they're dressed like him they're acting like him yes yes he makes it sound like they pointedly didn't hire him i mean the quote they have here is he was deemed uh uh too geeky uh that they would rather dress up quote unquote normal people as nerds than book the real thing he says it's still the thing he gets recognized for the most despite him not being in the movie but that's like his arc from like you know the 70s into the early 80s is like revenge of the nerds kind of ends his career because suddenly other people just start being able to make money doing eddie deez and

impressions rather than having to hire Eddie Deeson himself. I just also want to call out, he apparently had a starring role in a 1984 film that has what is now officially my favorite title of all time. He played the villain, mad scientist, Menlo Schwartzer in the film Surf 2 colon the end of the trilogy there you go which is like it's like a surf numerals yes yes it's like a parody of surfer movies right like it's some weird look at this yeah he's in it he's got a big hat i'm seeing wait eric stoltz is in it eric stoltz is in it uh eddie deeson is top build uh there of course was no surf one it doesn't exist there's only surf to the end of the trilogy uh i i want to see this thing so fucking badly the tagline for the movie

is the movie that gives insanity a bad name i believe it is on youtube griffin if you wish to uh if you wish to enjoy it i think it's easily viewable these days it used to be a cult object it looks like i will say i'm glad that like i i'm not a huge fan of the polar express but i do love the eddie deason comes back in it i can't wait that's interesting huh okay yes well anyway i love right i love those zemeckis players we're're meeting them all here. It's much like Demi. Yeah. But they said Deason was very much a thing. Yeah.

I mean, Greece, he's mostly used as like a site gag, right? Like they use him as sort of like a fucking rim shot at the end of sequences to get a pie in the face or whatever. This Gail said he wrote this character based on a real guy. He knew who was insufferable and Deason walks in and they're just like,

well done. Right. We got it. Here we go. Like, fucking job's done for us. Deason is like a self-professed, he claims that he's the biggest Beatles fan in the world. So the fact that he seems to be so plagued by not remembering dialogue and that hurting his career,

you have to wonder if like half of his monologues in this movie are just him stream of consciousness spewing out shit yes i mean that is definitely he's so good though he it's one of the you just can't fake what he's doing like the his weird sort of disconnection from conversation like the way he kind of just talks through people and like isn't really hearing what they're saying and just kind of has his weird monologues like he's he's he's great he's very very funny well it's also just that weird thing of like he's one of these guys who would seem like a cartoon character except you can tell this is really who he is that he's not putting on a voice that he's not dressing himself up right that this actor is is pretty close to what he's playing and then also that

he's one of these bizarre performers who is in no way naturalistic but it's so clear that this is his actual course of behavior that the weird stiltedness of it becomes very honest because it's like oh the naturalism is the actor being comfortable being this uncomfortable and odd and stilted on camera if that makes sense uh yes he just never makes eye contact with anyone the entire film right i think of him as you know toby radloff the the uh harvey picar sidekick yes uh who you know he's the other one like Like, both of those guys, similar kind of generation, where it's just like, yeah, you can't fake this. This is just a type of a person.

The internet doesn't exist. My brain is the internet. Yes, exactly. Right, he doesn't feel like an actor. He feels like as if Zemeckis or Gale had some weirdo friend that they just dragged into the movie and said, do that thing that you do all the time. Which, I guess, I mean, he wasn't their their friend but it's almost kind of what's happening right well

and the character the guy they based it off of gail says like a guy who drove me absolutely insane and deason somehow makes this character kind of appealing because he is so earnest and good natured even if he's like so bizarre you know yeah he's not a malicious person he's just right he's a sort of a buffoon and like it's also kind of funny when he's he interacts with uh the wendy joseph over character rosie right and like after a while they're they're they're they're at such similar energy levels that she's like i guess you're my boyfriend he's like what no i only care about the beatles like you know like he's like that's just that's not his agenda He's like, what? No, I only care about the Beatles. Like, you know, like he's like, that's just, that's not his agenda.

It's like two Furbies like put next to each other, talking to each other. And it's like, I guess that's a conversation. And, and, and she, and he's like,

I thought you loved Paul. And I love that thing where she's like, well, yeah, Paul, I mean, but he's Paul, like,

which he's, he, Paul is like just this godly figure to her. He's not like, she doesn't really expect that she's going to have a conversation with him. She just wants to like touch him. Like she just has this weird urge where she's like, I just have to be near him.

Something's going to happen. If I do that, it's religious for her. Uh, yes. Can I also just throw out last real life Eddie Dees, in fact, from his,

uh, Wikipedia, uh, for over a year on his official website, for her uh yes can i also just throw out last real life eddie dees in fact from his uh wikipedia uh for over a year on his official website deezin featured a difficult beatles trivia quiz i know i've been devised by deezin himself with a hundred dollar prize for anyone who could answer all of the questions correctly deezin later in an interview revealed that nobody had ever claimed the prize it is absolutely impossible i don't have the answer to any of these questions i found it it's it's it's crazy i love the the plot point of uh the trivia question of who's the radio show right yes yeah right and and they interpret it differently where wendy joe sperber thinks of it as who is the youngest and deason thinks of it as who is

the youngest in terms of being a beetle because they joined the group last. Like he is so wildly overthinking it and overthinking the fact that everyone else must be overthinking things to the same degree. And then that pays off. It pays fucking off. Yes, it pays off, which is hilarious. I love that all four of them get to the concert in different ways. I mean, I know we're jumping all over the place,

but it is one of these movies that's so split up and episodic. It's hijinks. They're trying to get to the show, right? They all have their little adventures. They're all, we know, we kind of know they're all going to end up probably at the show, right? You know, like, or whatever, like by hook or by crook, you know, but yeah, it's a bunch of different adventures.

God, the physical comedy is wild. The part whereie falls out of the moving car i love that it's incredible right she's trying to get to the phone booth to answer the question yeah right and kind of the notion that they're all somewhat superhuman when they have beetles beetle mania surging through them that it like sort of activates some new power for them right well that's why the adults are all scared because they're children turning into these like superhuman monsters well right and you have these cops being like stop and like the kids are like barreling through cops and like attacking them dick miller is so funny they're destroying the cops it's the kids gaining superpowers and going to war with the

police and kicking them in the shins yeah god dick is dick miller another zemeckis but he is right does he count as a zemeckis player i don't think so he's a corman guy and he's a big joe dante guy he's in every single joe dante movie i'm trying to see if he is in even one more zemeckis movie he's in used cars um okay i'm not and 1941 but that's obviously not right um love dick mullet though obviously yeah but then no after this it's he he moves to the the dante zone primarily um yes it is like the the dynamic between the cops and the kids where the cops kind of hate that this is the fucking beat they're on and also that somehow this has become the most difficult beat they've ever worked like the resentment of we have to fucking protect these limeys combined with how is this so hard how is

this the thing that's like physically knocking the shit out of me and that's the thing that like wins janice over because she hates the beatles because they're just this frivolous pop stuff and they're not about like they're not singing about real issues like the protest music she likes but then when like the beetle fans like protect her and the kid from the cops suddenly like that's like her wake-up moment where it's like oh wait maybe this is like an anti-establishment thing maybe i do like this yeah and that it is like it's its own counterculture like that it's not in competition and that there there are also things that can come out of this this nascent sort of movement that's building around this band and i love that

whenever you see the beatles who obviously you only see the backs of their heads or whatever you hear their voices but like you know when they come into the hotel room when nancy allen's hiding under the bed they're singing the beach boys because obviously they were obsessed with the beach boys and always like felt inferior to them and like and they seem kind of blasé about the show and they're like god we sound bad like is this even like gonna work like you know like they're they're kind of just like oh whatever like it reinforces the beatles were not really into their own godhood, you know, especially right now. Yeah. I just kept thinking about, cause we, we so recently did our beyond the lights episode. So I watched that movie so recently and that's a movie that's like someone

desperately trying to attain this level of fame in a very manufactured, like what are all the chess piece moves I need to make with the giant corporation behind me and my mother is a manager and all this sort of stuff and she's like totally collapsing inside and this is a movie where it's just like part of the magic of the beatles and how they hit in a way that is hard to replicate is that they just seemingly were like oh no we like playing and like even when they were at the eye of like the hurricane, they were just like, this is weird. And it only somehow stirred up the chaos around them even more that they

seem so sort of like confused and unaffected by the chaos. Right. And you have like reporters being like, Paul, Paul, like what about that? And then he's just like, well,

I don't know. Do I, you know, like they, they would give like, I like to put jam in my shoes. Don't I? Like they were always giving these fucking nonsense answers that early interview scene where the

girl is like i have to marry like john or whatever and and he's like isn't he already married and she's like yeah but what if she dies yes there could be an accident divorce or death so that's right her little trio is her and um uh smirko and the kid all three of them want to get to the concert they have such a weird relationship with the kid because it's like they're protective of him but they're also openly just using him for the tickets he's the only one who really wants to go then you know the smirko wants to go to literally like fucking like clown the Beatles, like to take them down in their biggest moment, sabotage their entire American career. And Newman, you know, ostensibly like wants to use it as like a protest moment. So you have these three people unified who all have very different objectives in terms of what they want.

Sperber just wants to win tickets. Like she knows everything and she knows that between all these radio stations somewhere, somehow, eventually she's going to be able to call in and prove her knowledge and win something, which is how she ends up with Deason, who is similarly fanatical and even less socially competent. with Deason, who is similarly fanatical and even less socially competent. Who has basically just been living in the Plaza Hotel on the seventh floor for an unknown period of time. He just stole a key and took over a room. It's like Basil and Frank Weiler shit. He's selling shit swatches, yes. Yes. Yeah, I mean, the fact that his Holy Grail is just a piece of grass like like a piece of like

the grass the just the ground like it's like a square foot and he's like i don't know which blade paul stepped on but it was one of them and it's wrapped in tinfoil it's just the unveiling of that is beautiful when you meet the character he's ripping up carpet yeah it's a great moment that's the best plot line right like that's that's the best plot line i i mean i i love nancy allen's performance so much in your ear that's just robocop's band zone yeah you're just you're you're too in the bag for robocop anything nancy allen does you're like well that's the best the the payoff with her having this like like after she ditches she just blows up her life and uh like like calls off her wedding

ditches her fiance and then just like breaks down sobbing watching this concert and and grabbing her dress like the shot of her like like clenching her dress that to me that's like unexpectedly moving in a movie that has been just so manic up till now and so the payoff of that makes it like maybe my favorite just because i'm like i feel something after i've just been like laughing through the whole thing this is my argument i don't think she's the best plot line but i think she's the best individual performance and the most satisfying character journey. And the other moment is like when she sneaks into the hotel

and has the moment where she's just gawking at the guitar and everything. That sequence is pretty incredible, especially because she's the one who feels sort of most like apathetic about all of this compared to the rest of the group. You know, she has no real clear game she's like yeah the beatles of course they're good but my marriage is the real thing and then she has this moment when she's like up close with their guitar that feels like she's seeing the eye of god it's also very sexual yes yes like when she puts her ring in her shoe and then just strokes the neck of paul's base i think they represent some sense of freedom for her and the idea that she doesn't need to like

perhaps live the exact same life that like the previous generations have that she doesn't need to be married by 18 you know and like with kids by by 20 and everything yeah no of course not like she should have a youth like she should have a youthful like experience as a person uh which i guess you know right teens barely you know teens are brand new basically the idea that anyone cares about that section of your life as a section of like you know as a sort of independent section of adolescence but um yeah i just like that right i like that it acknowledges the sort of sexual awakening aspect of beetle mania which is obviously part of it um and she's great i love nancy allen very

underrated actress nancy allen because i think she seems a bad actress in the 80s uh right like you know um yeah i also feel like right yeah yeah go ahead the depaul movies are so stylized and her performances in them are so stylized that i think people wrote it off as like she's a bad actress because she was a naturalistic actress but she was i love her in the department what was asked of her in those films she's matching those films perfectly in her performance and this is really nuanced and naturalistic and really sweet. I also think there is that sexist thing very often where when a director has, when an actress's career is primarily in their husband's films, people tend to discount them as an actor in their own right

and more as just like, oh, they're like an extension of the director. They're like a piece. Like they're using their wife as like a prop, you know i i think yeah because like a lot of her biggest works were the movies and they're so specific and uh she worked with him so much i don't know i think she's a really underrated actor in general me too and officer lewis rules uh their friendship is the last uh true good thing left in this world. So, that is that plot line. I like, I'm not putting a bow on it, but we're talking about all this stuff out of order.

I do like that Nancy Allen has this like, total like, spiritual awakening moment and sexual awakening moment. And Sperber just faints immediately, misses the entire concert. And when she comes to and they tell her that, she's happy about it. Like, she's like, of course.

I just had to know I was in the room. happy about it like she's like of course i just had to know i was in the room like i did it's seeing the concert's almost irrelevant right because my mom's uh description of i think she was a candlestick park but it was it's much like shea state it was that tour as i said like it's just she was just totally frustrated she couldn't hear a thing everyone was screaming and it was just like, you either have to, because the whole, you know, the sound systems just could,

could not stand up to 55,000 screaming people. Like you need that to just give yourself over to it and be like, yeah, no, I'm not actually going here to see and hear the Beatles. I'm going here to have a collective maniacal experience. Like, and like,

I think my mom was more like, but don't you uh right you know like it's just like i guess i'm just gonna look at the beatles you know standing on home plate or whatever like standing on the pitcher's mound like i'd be like okay well there they are it's also like sperber is gonna spend the next 70 years of her life telling people about the time she literally fainted at the ed sullivan Like she's going to dine out on this. It's a better story than if she had watched it and had the same experience as everyone else. It's a fair point.

Real quick. Can we just touch upon the mustard boy? Cause I found that part. It's a big third act twist. Disconcerting. I didn't love that whole moment in the movie. I understand that the commitment to her wanting to get the photograph, she'll go this far, but rough. It's a type of comedy that I think peaks late 80s, early 90s, which pieces of like what's this guy's fucking kink and having a scene where the person kind of gets like embarrassed and someone gets the upper hand

on them i think the joke of him being like it's gonna be a picnic and then we cut and then it turns out he just wants mustard on his head like is somewhat funny just because i assume he has a much more pedestrian role play he wants to do. I agree with you. And then cutting back mid-role play where he's like, yeah, I am a sandwich. That's what's going on here, okay? And you keep hearing his voice before it cuts back. Because he's just like saying like, faster, faster, faster.

Right. And so they build up to the reveal. And that's the whole thing. Like when I first saw this, I was- It's very silly. I was dreading what it was going to be for a while and so it was kind of like a relief that like oh it's it's it's just silly well the and the initial fear also is that you're thinking like you're like oh my god is she

gonna like you know take the place of a call girl is she gonna just try like you know like what what on earth is going on here and you realize like because she needs 50 bucks to to get in the back door but no she's she's got a whole blackmail scheme worked out essentially she's she's the mover and the shaker she's already always looking at the big picture looking for an angle yeah and he wants to be a sandwich look the man wants to be a sandwich and it also like in this sort of zemeckis way where it's like you got to just move all the pieces to the right position on the board. That misunderstanding is what pushes Jimmy Olsen to finally have the courage to be like, I need to actually tell her how I feel and ask her to the dance and go after her. And to also straight up do a line that they would just repeat for Back to the Future.

Roads where we're going, we don't need roads? No, exactly. You know, he busts in and shouts that. My name is we're going, we don't need roads? No, exactly. You know, he busts in and shouts that. My name is Marty McFly. Is that the line? You might not get it, but your kids are going to love it.

You know, he busts in and says, get your goddamn hands off her. Oh, right. Sure, right, right. Yes, yes, yes. Very true. You have to wonder if Eddie Deason was ever in the mix for george mcfly

or if they were just like we need him to be five percent more normal right you can't yeah it can't be although crispin glover is arguably weirder in a way but in a in a quieter way also weirder in a way where you're like well this is an actor making weird choices i can feel comfortable right whereas with deezin you'd be like does this guy know that he's being filmed the thing is also like glover gives a weird performance but there's also like dynamics that he can modulate it can go big and it can go quieter. And Deason is just like at a 10. He's all guitar solo. He has one thing that you hire him to do. And that's what he does.

And it's not going to change at all. It's like, I feel like you can't direct Eddie Deason. No, absolutely not. Probably not. Like for how much he talks about on his own Wikipedia and in interviews, like his career sort of drying up and everything. It feels like that's a lot of it and animation is a pretty good lane for him to be in which he has uh done successfully he's like either snap crackle or pop he's like a bunch of different cartoon spokesmen

yeah he almost was the affleck duck uh but pre-chihuahua when taco bell had uh uh cat and a dog who were mascots he he was one of them. He has a lock on the annoying character roles. And he's fucking Mandark. That's, you know, Hall of Fame performance right there. I do love, though, talking about, like, how cartoonish this movie is. And Zemeckis and Gale talked about how influenced they were by, like, Looney Tunes and Tashlin and Chuck Jones and all that sort of stuff. they were by like Looney Tunes and Tashlyn and Chuck Jones and all that sort of stuff.

The reveal of Deezin dressed up as the elevator operator is such Bugs Bunny shit that she's like, finally, I'm safe. And then he turns around and it's him in a disguise. He's breaking levers. He pulls the lever out. Yeah. Don't worry. I got it. I can fix it.

I can fix it. That's the one time that he actually like i get annoyed at him because i'm like you were dude i love you but if you fuck up her chance to like get to the theater that's that's like crossing a line yeah i just knew they didn't figure it out but i i also love that he doesn't he's sort of out of it until he realizes she has the tickets and then he's like oh my god we we have no air like it's funny it's a funny movie glass door dexter i also like that when she's operating the elevator she can never line it up and she's always just like jumping in and out of the elevator anyway um which is also i mean not a clear line there but uh when i watched the lift short film afterwards i'm just like

okay okay we we've got the same kind of like film afterwards, I'm just like, okay, okay, we've got the same kind of old school elevator. I'm just, I'm always looking for those little connective tissue between multiple things he did. Actually, not to derail this, but can I rewind to the very first shot of the movie?

Yes, I just want to quickly say, man, Robert Zemeckis, you could call him the special features deleted scenes on the DVD for Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith. Because this guy likes his elevator antics. Wow. I mean, I saw where it was going. Yes, opening shot, Patrick. Take us back.

So, in terms of like, one of the things i love about this movie one of the reasons i wanted to talk about it on this episode is i i always find it fascinating when a debut film is like when someone shows up fully formed to their debut film when all of the pieces that they become known for are just already there and you and this movie is that in so many ways, whether it's just like, okay, his fascination with just historical moments of the past that he lived through, like major points, like inserting fictional characters into big moments in 20th century American history, whether it's that sort of screwball mechanical clockwork precision of plotting. And even the first shot, because Zemeckis likes to do a thing with his opening shots that where, especially if you look at like Back to the Future or Forrest Gump or Used Cars, they tend to be these elaborate tracking shots that are like extended and like reveal multiple things or like follow an object through something. And the opening shot of this movie, it's like a simplified version of what he would go on to do.

It's like, it's still a shot that like goes through like a few positions and reveals like three things at once. And so it's not like a really noteworthy, notable shot or like opening shot, but it is like right right there you can see the beginning of a thing he would do in like every movie going forward and i just wanted to point that out yeah that you're you're talking about what comes after the open credit sequence right no it's uh it's the first shot where it's the it's like opens up with a close-up of like the words like do not cross oh yes pulls back into this crane shot and it's like opens up with a close-up of like the words like do not cross oh yes yes back into this crane shot and it's like he'll do a more elaborate one yeah you'll talk about it

next week on used cars but i but like right from the beginning he was always like okay i want my opening shot to like have like multiple stages to it and reveal multiple things it's like i want to start and bring you into the world yeah with a sort of also be kind of show-offy like right at the start i was going to just say that opening credit sequence using so much uh stock footage is i think really important and wise for a movie that has the right approach which is no one's going to accept anyone else playing the beatles make the beatles feel mythical cleverly use as much original footage as we can, but like starting it out with like all this sort of like hard days, night, black, black and white, sort of like, here's the true mania of the thing is such good mood setting. And especially for like, I feel

like younger generations or future generations watching that down the line, people like us to be like, right, it was this insane. Like, you do need to remind yourself that it was actually this insane before the movie you're about to watch starts playing out at such a manic madcap speed. And then, yes, it's like one of those things that's just such a clever fucking move and feels like a tip towards, like, the things that Zemeckis would become obsessed with

and possibly become overwhelmed by. But the, we're going to deal with the concert by shooting around the actual concert as much as possible. This fucking gambit he comes up with of having body doubles perfectly mimicking out of focus in the background and then in the foreground monitor showing what's happening on the camera. So you sort of get the best of both worlds. It doesn't just feel like you're using stock footage. It's integrated into the environment, into the movie we're watching. But you're also like, you're not going to get better than the actual Beatles. You're not going to make it any better than the actual

thing. It's just, it's so simple. It's so lo-fi. It's so so effective and as like a comparison point the guy he has the impressionist who does uh ed sullivan is like good and he shoots him from a distance but you are never not aware of the fact that you are watching a man with weird like wax museum makeup doing an ed sullivan impression but it works for the movie and it. It's fine to impersonate Ed Sullivan, because he was a weird wax figure character in a weird way. Absolutely. But it underlines how correct the choice is

to deal with the Beatles themselves the way he did. You're only ever seeing the back of their heads, an isolated line, and then for their performances, it's the footage, and then it's some out-of-focus limbs in the background. I mean, it's basically just a simplified version of what he did in all of Forrest Gump. Yes. Yes. It's right. Another way in which he's just sort of like calling out his future. Right. But like in that movie, we don't see Elvis's face, right? When he's like staying at

the house. No. Right. And then they reveal like the footage on the TV. Right. Right. And then of course, right. There's all that other footage where he puts Forrest Gump into the historical settings. Yeah.

Um, can I just say, cause I want to hold myself accountable to this. I'm going to say this on Mike right now. Uh, David, you're about to get married to, to Forky.

Uh, you're going, you're looking at me with dread. I'm not saying anything that you think I'm about to say. Sure. You're going, you're looking at me with dread. I'm not saying anything that you think I'm about to say. Okay.

You're going on like a two week work sabbatical as your honeymoon. So we're not recording. So we're banking up episodes before that, right?

Okay. I have purchased and my goal is in those two weeks since we won't be recording and I won't have movies to watch for the show, I have purchased both the Forrest Gump novel and the sequel Gump & Co. And I want to read both of them. Good Gump & Co.

Wow. They're very much darker, I think. That's why I want to read them. I'm not sure, but yeah. Gump & Co. is written after the release of the movie and features Forrest Gump, the man who Forrest Gump the movie was based on. Yes, exactly. Right.

It's like a weird kind of jokey satire of the movie's success or something. You should read them. I mean, I approve. In the first book, he goes into space and meets aliens, I believe. Once I read that, I decided I needed

to track these down. Yes. He definitely goes to space. I'm pretty sure that's true. I believe he meets aliens. Are there any other things

we want to talk about with this movie? Is there much to say about the... Oh, oh, oh! Another thing that Zemeckis brings back. The climax takes place

during a lightning storm yes yes that's true yes the the lightning storm that is essentially god intervening and telling bobby to chico like you will not be stopping the beatles like you know he's taking an axe to the satellite dish and the lightning and he's like fine i give up you know it's okay i also i love the the ending for the saldana character in mcclure where right she has the 50 she's she's uh she's uh blackmailed the sandwich man she has the back door entrance she sees the cops coming for him she chooses to use the money to bail him out with a corrupt cop rather than get into the concert. Like she she makes the sort of human to human choice rather than the career choice and which gives him the courage to finally ask her to the dance. They have the sweet moment.

You're like, that's kind of nice, but it's still a bummer that she's the only one who doesn't get to go to the concert. And then the Beatles get in the backseat of their fucking car because they're parked in the right place and the limo couldn't get to them and that like just the reveal of she's there in the front seat she's got her camera they're all there in the back seat and the Beatles manager is just saying drive drive drive I don't care if you're the right car we have to get out of here and the fact that the movie like ends you have the other friends go those jersey license license plates, it couldn't be. You don't even see her taking the photos or anything. They don't do anything more with it,

but it's just the idea of like, she's made out like a fucking bandit. She's going to get the best photos of all time. Her entire career is going to be made on this. Well, also like that her limo gambit worked eventually, right? Like it actually finally pays off. Yes.

She got the guy, she got the car, she got the pics. Right. Well, that final moment is kind of, for me, the biggest difference between this and American Graffiti because like American Graffiti feels like the end of something.

It's like a last hurrah before it all kind of comes to an end. And this kind of ends with like the promise of like what this, like this new wave of excitement that had like you know arrived in the country and everyone like leaves this full of optimism for like you know like suddenly pam like has like is now free and could do anything her life has opened up yeah exactly like uh grace gets her photograph. She gets like the Beatles connection. Maybe she is going to have that great career as a photojournalist.

Right. Yes, because Rebecca's an optimistic guy. Rosie's going to have a really, really functional marriage to Eddie Dees and everyone. I do love that his name is Ringo Claus because his real name is Richard and he feels like if Ringo could change his name from Richard to Ringo, then everyone should change their name from Richard to Ringo. Yeah. I mean, they should have done like a more American graffiti just called like,

I want to hold more of your hands where we just return like a decade later. Now that the Beatles have broken up. I would love that, especially if it wasn't directed by Zemeckis and was directed by someone else and half of the cast members sort of showed up and not really.

I also, I wish that Fredus uh there was a third brother and it was eddie dezen reprising his role of ringo claus i wish it was ring ringo fred and santa claus agreed they should they should do that at least on disney plus uh david we've done 1978 as like the year in box office or have we not done that before we We have. That's the, like, I just don't think there's anything to be done. Like, there's just so little. Star Wars was still the number one movie

when this came out. That's the only thing I could tell you. Or I don't know if it's still playing. Superman is the number one movie of 78 for sure, I think. So this movie came out in April. Yeah. Yes. And movie came out in april yeah yes uh and superman came out that christmas um but the other big movies of the year greece animal house heaven can wait and this is why i remember that we had done this before every which way but loose which um you're you're looking

at deezin and mcclure two of the biggest box office stars of 1978. Deason's had a great year. Yeah. You also got, of course, Hooper, Burt Reynolds' big hit of the year. You got Jaws 2, which stinks, right? So Spielberg's already being sequel-fied. Yep. You got Up in Smoke is one of the big hits of the year. Cheech and Chong. The deer hunter.

The deer hunter wins best picture. Yeah. You end up a smoke fan. Oh, fuck. Yes. Wait a second.

Cheech and Chong is a franchise. Yes. Right. Yes. They are a franchise. Here we go. Here we go.

Who baby? No, we're not. We're not doing six months of campaigning. Exactly. Because because they made like eight or nine they did too many movies you know it's like to do a corsican brothers commentary oh wait no i only thought it was the three no because he got up in smoke then cheech and chung's next movie uh yeah then you got nice dreams uh which is sort of them doing an action movie right

uh then you got things are tough all over i don't really know that one then you got then then they went back to basics still smoking still smoking uh and then you've got uh you've got the corsican brothers you've got that's the weird one i remember and being like okay now they've really lost it yeah that's kind of the last live action movie i guess after that they've done an animated movie but uh yeah yeah that one looks really weird jesus and their animation uh enough french novella yes go ahead yes no i was just gonna say their animated movie is called let me check the title here uh cheech and chong's animated movie i wonder yeah i wonder uh how how that they arrived at that title that's really intense yes i wonder who the lead characters are and also what medium

they chose to realize their story i mean the weird thing is that cheech and chong right they like they should feel like like one hit wondering but of course like cheech marriage such an amazing character actor like he's good anytime he pops and he does so much tv and then like tommy chong right he's like on that 70s show for forever you know right he would he would get stuff keeps on selling water pipes he's he's killing it yeah yeah uh well patrick as someone as someone who watched all of the Zemeckis filmography, do you have any guidance for us? Are there any things you want to sort of leave us with as we embark on this journey? Ooh, that's a very good question.

I will say I'm so excited to hear your take on the most recent decade. The weird return to prestige dramas that don't click with audiences. The weird return to prestige dramas that don't click with audiences. The allied flight, the walk, you know, that, that, that Marvin, obviously. Yeah. The decade of them all. Yeah, exactly. It is so wild how cleanly it almost tracks where you're just like 2000s mocap, you know, like you have the two live action films films at the beginning but then he's like in mocap world 2010s he's trying to save the adult drama right he's like listen up hollywood

you don't make movies like this anymore so i guess i gotta do it right but they're also insane i mean the big thing that it's funny that it like did not come up in this episode but it's going to be such a major part you'll just be talking about this for the next like five months uh is just technology yes because it it's really a thing where it's like that's why like i think back to the future too is going to be a really interesting discussion because like that like you know that right after roger rabbit and then like like just the way that technology is going to come to dominate more and more of your conversations. He's always been a cutting edge guy and it sort of gets ahead of him in a weird way. Like where he was ahead of it and then it flips.

That was your whole take in your video on him that he's like this ultimate toy guy. Like that's the defining thing is how much he loves his toys. And it's a thing that comes up a lot on this podcast because a lot of these guys fall prey to it where they make the one movie where they get all the toys and then they kind of can't go back to thinking any other way. They have to keep getting bigger or pushing new things. And it's like Ang Lee with the high frame rate,

Peter Jackson with everything, you know? A lot of these guys just get stuck. The thing is, this is actually, this is kind of the the mini series that you guys have been building to for years because you started with george lucas who was the ultimate example of it yes and now and zemeckis was kind of like he was like the next guy to get sucked into the digital toy world. Yeah, yeah. And you look at like, I feel like Ang Lee keeps on saying, or when he was promoting Gemini Man, he kept saying like,

look, maybe I'm going to flop. People don't like these movies. That's fine. But like, I have the clout to be able to try to push this technology. And I think it's important for future generations to have. And Zemeckis was saying such similar things during like the Polar Express Beowulf run

and everyone's like, shut up, stop it. Go back to using normal cameras. But now you're like, he did kind of work out the kinks for everyone else. Like everyone's fucking working on like the shoulders of what he did. Avatar certainly would not have existed had zemeckis not done those three movies oh yeah right did he need to spend a full decade uh

doing that maybe not but he did he committed but that's the thing you also kind of can't argue with it big picture like you can argue with the individual films and we will patrick yes thank you so much for being on the show. Long overdue. Thank you for having me. Hell yeah. People should follow everything you do on YouTube. By the time this comes out, the beard will be gone? The beard will be gone, yeah. It'll be gone not

long after we record this episode. So I'll be able to see my face again, which will be exciting. Right now, your beard is bigger than your head. Yeah, totally. I'm doing the exercise. If like, if we flopped you, if we just turned your skull upside down, the beard half is taller and broader

than the rest of your skull. It's a weird time in everyone's lives. And a choice I made was to just not shave for like five months. But your quarantine videos have been great. And I have to say in particular, I really admire the fact that you have been taking a strong stand

in terms of like, we got to get out of the echo chamber of just discussing the same four franchises and filmmakers over and over again that you openly are like, I don't care if I lose subscribers, I'll do an hour on every adaptation of Little Women because if you have a platform, you want to try to start new conversations.

Thank you. It's tough. YouTube is a weird place where people are not really open to anything outside of the stuff they're already very familiar with, but I'm trying to do what I can. Yeah. I think you're doing a great job. And also, I should say that Patrick and I both co-plug the Playmobil movie, the most evented film of 2019, which we saw in theaters in a much simpler time. We handed over each of us a $5 bill. A crisp $5 bill. No change back. Sat, watched a first run screening of the Playmobil movie. We had no idea how good

we had it. Movie theaters would never be that safe again. Tickets would never be that cheap again. Oh my God. If I could just go back to that theater feeling as safe as I did in December, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would watch the Playmobil movie every day. I know I have a tendency towards hyperbole, but i truly have never felt safer in my entire life than i did during that screening of the plan mobile movie not since the womb not that's the thing like we weren't thinking about all the things wrong with the world we were just trying to figure out what was up with uh jim gaffigan's magical hay that he was trying to sell which they never really explain that was the beauty of the plan bale movie was we we were so consumed by

trying to figure out what was wrong with that movie that all the other ills of humanity were suddenly out of mind out of sight um well uh thank you again for being here of course thank you so much for having me thank you all for listening please remember to rate review subscribe i'm excited for these five months we have ahead of us. Some weird things and also some of the biggest and most beloved movies ever made. Yep, it's going to be great. Knocking down some big guys. So keep tuning in for Podcast Away.

I got to say, we booked this season out pretty far in advance in terms of guests. I don't want to announce anything because we haven't recorded them yet, but I think we got a really good lineup of people coming for this one. It's looking great. And a lot of new faces, hopefully. I don't want to announce anything because we haven't recorded them yet but I think we got a really good lineup of people coming for this one and it's a silver lining of Zoom and distant records

we're going to have some people who previously were unavailable and yeah a lot of new faces couple Angelenos let's let's say and some old friends some Angelenos we got some Holly weirdians coming on the show soon

and We got some Holly weirdians coming on the show soon. And, uh, wherever you subscribe, uh, go to, uh, blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. Uh,

you can go, uh, uh, check out our, our merchandise, uh, that we now have. It'll be in the description,

uh, but our limited edition run of fifth anniversary designs for the live shows that could never happen so get those while they're hot and thanks to Andrew Goodo for co-producing our show and Ben Hosley, Richard Jacobs for editing assistance, thanks to Joe Bonaparte

for artwork, Liam Montgomery for our theme song and as always above all else, I Want to Hold Your Hand is a movie about Mandark, Officer Lewis, and Jimmy Olsen hanging out together.

And that's canon.