Blank Check with Griffin & David - Interstellar

Episode Date: August 27, 2017

This week, a tired Griffin and a rested David discuss 2014’s time traveling space odyssey, Interstellar. But how are gravity and love intertwined? Is spinning during space travel the new normal? How is Spielberg involved in this film? Together they examine Matthew McConaughey’s performance, the tesseract’s design, Griffin shares Ellen Burstyn stories and introducing a special segment ‘TARS talk’ with past and future guest David Rees!

Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the podcast. Third take, people. Hello, everybody. I'm a very hoarse Griffin Newman. I'm a coffee drinking David Sims. This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David.

We discuss filmographies of directors who have had massive success early on in their careers. Oh, God. So he's struggling, guys. He is tired. I am. No one should ever promote a TV show. He's a tie tie boy. No one should ever promote a TV show.

I'm Joseph Cross from Wide Awake. And this podcast is about filmographies of directors who have had massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes they clear and sometimes they bounce. Maybe. And now this is going to be an episode where David talks the entire time.

So just work on a sense of context. So you're filming a movie right now. I am. We can say that at least.'s that we can say that at least yeah we can say that um which you booked right after making the tick in one of your stupider uh career up decisions you know one of your stupid good decisions yes i've made a very bad decision to continue succeeding yeah you have a very bad decision to take a job that you probably should take if that makes sense yes it. It's just a little role.

But you're making a movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. It's not like you're... I mean, he's not the star of a movie, but he's making a movie, guys. No, I booked this while doing the last episode of The Tick, and I've been going back and forth

between filming this movie and doing press. Doing press. Which has also required me to fly to different countries. Right. And doing post-production work. Right. And you're going to go to Australia

like tomorrow or something. About to go to Australia. Right. I'm burning the candle at like five ends. Yeah. Right now. So my body is just given out.

My body is given out. My voice is just quit. It is telling me to stop working. But we're here to talk about Interstellar. We got blank check to do. I don't give a shit about any of this. Let's push this back because, I mean, look, I know it might sound like a humble brag, all the talking about how busy I've been, all the things that are going on in my career.

But David over here is very busy as well because he's on a two-week vacation. I am very pumped up about my vacation. Now, I'm realizing now, as the vacation comes to a close, I've only got a few days left. Because after week one of my vacation, when I didn't go back to work for week two, I was like,

this is how you do it. You just don't go back. You really decompress. Like, I went away. I came back to New York. I've chilled out for a few days and going away again. But now I'm realizing next Monday is going to be soul crushing. Yes.

Yeah. The longer you're away, the worse it is to go back. That's definitely like a theory of relativity. If I want to tie it into the movie we're about to discuss. Right. It's like a time cube. You got to have that bookcase, baby. Yes.

Yes. You took a brief intermission from your vacation to record this episode because otherwise we were going to run out of episodes. Otherwise, I would be in bed right now. Yeah, no, no. It's fine. We literally have no other choice but to record right now with my voice sounding like this. It's literally this was it. Yes. Yes. There was a lot of... One three-hour window. We had all these blackboards

and we like wrote all the possibilities and it was like, no, we can only do Thursday at 10 a. Yes. There was a lot of one three hour window. We had all these blackboards and we like wrote all the possibilities. And it was like, no, we can only do Thursday at 10 a.m. Yes. Michael Caine was lying on the bed, dying, telling us, you can't record. You will have to miss a week. So we had to figure it out. Revive you from hypersleep and like pull the cord off of your saran wrap. And like, you know, you started crying when we lifted you out all wet and sad

and you didn't know i was gonna be in the bag because i was uncredited it wasn't in any of the marketing materials oh boy but it was announced but everyone forgot yeah that's the thing about damon in this movie right it was announced but weirdly like i feel it was just sort of in the announcement like matt damon's in it yes yeah right and he wasn't in any of the marketing and then when he was doing press for other movies he'd be like I just have a small part. I just did it because I wanted to work with Nolan. So I went into it thinking he was going to have like a

burst in size role. Sure. Sure. Sure. You mean he'd be the linchpin of the movie? I thought he was going to be the comic relief. Sure. I mean he's so funny in The Martians. That's what I mean. That is our finest comedy. This is a year before the martian so he was actually probably just like trying to limber up his like comedy you know muscles look he went to

his agent in 2012 right and he said it's time for a career you know what's funny space he said look i i need to rebrand myself jason bourne has run a little dry i don't want to have to tap that well again right he made the mistake later yeah but he said here's what i dry I don't want to have to tap that well again He made the mistake later But he said here's what I want to do I want to going forward only make movies Where I'm alone secluded on a foreign planet And Jessica Chastain is vaguely Trying to rescue me

And he made two and then they were like We're out there are no more scripts This is tough Jessica wants to do something else She's sick of rescuing you Sort of But I mean look she's in both movies Tough, you know? Come on. Jessica wants to do something else. She's sick of rescuing you. Sort of. Sort of.

It's a little bit of a stretch. But I mean, look, she's in both movies. Which is crazy. It is crazy when you think about it. And these are two successive years. It's 2000. And they are the only movies he was in. He was only in Interstellar in 2014. And he was only in The Martian in 2015.

That was part of his comedy rebranding. And then... God, The Martian's so funny. He makes food out of poopoo. Because this is, I'm sorry, the Monuments Men's also 2014. Remember? Yeah, no, I remember.

He poops into a potato or whatever he does and you see the whole thing. Yeah, that's what happens. He carves a hole into a potato and then he poops. He squeezes his poop into the little hole in the potato. And Ridley Scott then walks on set and he was like, you have to see it. You gotta see it. And then he leads Matt Damon over to a console and he was like, you have to see it. You got to see it.

And then he like leads Matt Damon over to a console and he's like, let's edit the footage. And you watch them. And the golden globes just hurl their globes at the screen. I always thought it was a weird choice for Ridley Scott to edit the HBO first look of the Martian into the Martian. And not even like at the end. It just happens in the middle.

It like interrupts the movie. Usually he saves that for the director's cut, you know? What a great opening to our episode about my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. Is this your favorite movie of this decade? It is my favorite movie of this decade. Wow. I thought about that when I was watching it for this podcast,

which is probably like my eighth viewing of it or something, like something around there. It's a main series called The Pod Night Cast. It's a film with Christopher Nolan. Forgot about that part. I forgot about everything. Yeah. And I was sort of like going through like my other like very top films

of the like 2010s. And I was like, yeah, no, no, no, Interstellar. And then I posted that on Letterboxd, I think, and a lot of people told me that I was stupid. Yeah, you got some. You're really griffin' it up today.

I gotta be the grump. You're a good grump. What was I gonna say? What's your number two? That's a good question. I mean, did you make a good grump what was I gonna say what's your number two that's a good question if I I mean did you make a letterboxd list that was ranked

of like the 20 teens yes I don't know what my number two would be like at first thought it would I'm just sort of

looking at like the various movies I've like ranked number one Margaret probably Margaret I was gonna say that's probably Margaret that's my favorite of the decade.

That's mine with a bullet. A bullet. A bullet. Social Net. Good movie. Would be up there. Good movie. Holy Motors.

Good movie. Wind Rises. Never seen it. No, you should see it. I know you're not really a Ghibli guy, but... It's a mountain I still have to climb. Yeah. Getting into Ghibli.

To me, the great mountain to climb, that's like the most whimsical mountain you could climb. It's a very whimsical mountain. Like every five minutes, there's a goddamn lantern with a foot that like, you know, shakes your hand or whatever. And the mountain tells you about its dreams. Yeah, it's great.

So, okay. But I do love this movie, Interstellar. Yeah. His last movie before his current movie that's out in theaters right now. Yes. It came out in October? No, November. November 5th.

November. 2014. Because it got that big Thanksgiving bump. Yeah, it made actually a surprising amount of money. Because when it came out, the opening was considered kind of disappointing. Right, people were like, ew. And the reviews were mixed, so people were like, oh, he swung and missed again. And then it ended up doing kind of a crazy number for what this movie is.

Because I was talking to someone yesterday about how Dunkirk is doing so well. And they were like, really? It's not made anything close to what Interstellar made. And I was like, huh? And I checked and I was like, right. It also made a ton of money internationally. And so, yeah, Interstellar was actually kind of a hit. Weirdly.

Yeah. Even though I feel like the initial perception of it was, yeah, a little bit of a disappointment. But he was coming off of three consecutive movies that ranked in the top ten movies that studio had ever made. Crazy, crazy hits. Just next level hits. So I think it was always going to be seen as a disappointment compared to those. And the opening was small. For what it was, the opening was small. It got beaten out by a movie

that I won't say yet because I don't want to ruin the box office game oh please don't yeah yeah yeah of course but then it lingered it multiplied

it was a dad movie you know much like Dunkirk because I think Dunkirk is going to just keep chugging along for a while it was one of those movies I think so too

you know the magic of a dad movie is the dad doesn't know from opening weekends he's just like going to want to see it eventually yes like you know and I saw this movie uh at a press screening obviously but then the second time i saw it was at thanksgiving with my like uncle you know like uh that was uh the experience

um i saw i saw it opening night midnight midnight square like actual midnight max actual midnight right actual fucking real deal big boy midnight. That's fine because you got home like 1.30, right? This is a very short movie. This is his longest movie, to be clear. It's two hours and 49 minutes long. I just remember going to get a slice of pizza after the movie because I was hungry. It must have been like three in the morning.

That was the thing. I was eating my pizza. I was taking my time, and I checked my watch, and it was like four o'clock in the morning. I was like thing. I was like eating my pizza. I was like taking my time and I checked my watch and it was like four o'clock in the morning. I was like, Jesus fucking Christ. Why did you see it at midnight? Why not at like 7 p.m. or whatever? I think the other ones were sold out.

Right. I want to see it. I saw it with Derek Simon, my best friend, my oldest friend. The great Derek Simon who just has these great dogs I look at on Instagram all day. He's got a great dog. President Bartlett is his dog's name. My oldest childhood friend and a current writer of Supergirl. That's right.

We went to summer camp together. When we were nine, we went to an arts camp. We used to touch dicks and stuff. But we were nine and we went to an arts camp. And we were like the indoor kids at the arts camp. Sure, right. Even at the arts camp. Yeah, right.

They had a required time where you had to go swimming. And he and I became friends because we both ran the same con which was we would quote unquote forget to pack a swimsuit every day so that they couldn't make us swim and so what they did was they made us stay on the other side of a fence because they were like

well if you can't come swimming then you're not even allowed into the general area so we literally sat in this dirt outside of a fence and traded X-Men cards and talked about comic books. And now he writes Supergirl and I'm Arthur on the tag. You guys are both so handsome, though.

It's true. Dirk's very handsome. You're very handsome, too. So you saw it with Dirk. Right. Who, you know, Dark Knight fanatic. Okay. Who, you know, Dark Knight fanatic. Okay. Specifically the Dark Knight. Nolan fan, I think in general, I think he would identify as a Nolan fan.

But Dark Knight was kind of a big Watershed movie for him. And I think he saw it 10 times in theaters. That's crazy. That's too many times to see a movie in theaters. I went with him like two of the times. I mean, two is fine. Two sounds good. Two is close.

I probably saw Toy Story 3 10 times in theaters. I mean, two's fine. Two sounds good. Two's close. I probably saw Toy Story 3 10 times in theaters. I don't know why I am shocked by that news or upset about it, but I am both. I lost count at a certain point, but it definitely was at least eight times in theaters. I have seen Toy Story 3 once and then maybe another 40 minutes of it total on TV, if you sort of aggregate all the minutes together.

So I've seen it that time that you saw it, plus another 20. So you saw it at the AMC Lincoln Square, New York's actual IMAX theater, which is colossal. Right, which is huge. I saw it at a press screening there,

an empty press screening. It was literally like me, Richard Lawson, Katie Rich, friends of the show, who we were all sitting in the back row, which is where I like to sit in that fucking theater. I go for the middle, baby. Well, that's where Mr. Nolan sits, I was told. They call me Patricia Heaton because I'm in the middle.

15 comedy points for me. That was so good. You get to give yourself the comedy points. And then I give myself five comedy points for me. That was so good. You get to give yourself the comedy points. And then I give myself five comedy points for giving myself 15 comedy points. Bingo. That wasn't a bad bit. No, it was good. It was all good.

It was literally like six people. For some reason, I talked my way into like the earliest screening of Interstellar. I don't know how. And it was awesome. And I had a great time uh i was completely overwhelmed by it you loved it right out the gate loved it right out of the gate but also like in imax it is staggering like just the space photography like the size of it yes and i remember being very overwhelmed like literally like my stomach dropping out of my

body you know like that's sort of like feeling a lot and then i walked out and richard and katie were like and i was like oh yeah no i think i liked it so i similarly i saw it with derrick we were both very very excited to see it and then the second we walked out it's a thing derrick and i share opinions on a lot of things there's certain things that are more on the griff spectrum there's certain things that are more in the derrick spectrum where you have a lot of commonalities but then they're the further reaches on a lot of things. There's certain things that are more on the Griff spectrum. There's certain things that are more in the Derek spectrum where you have a lot of commonalities, but then there are the further reaches. And a lot of times I've gone to go see a movie with Derek opening night.

We're both really excited for, and we walk out and one of us is like, that's a masterpiece. And the other one's like, this is not my kind of thing. Okay. You know, like anything in particular,

give me an example. Um, like I think his favorite movie of the decade is take shelter. Yeah. I think we're on the same spectrum. and he walked out take shelter and was like holy shit and i was like i thought that was all yeah sure you know um but i remember taking him to see synecdoche and i was like this is my fucking movie and he was like not my kind of thing yeah right right right you know it's not like you didn't like it exactly it's more like yeah well i see the the the artistry here but not my thing right right. Where it's not like you didn't like it exactly. It's more like, yeah, well, I see the artistry here, but not my thing. Right, right, right.

We have that kind of thing, you know? It's very rare that one of us will, like, hate a movie that the other loves. Yeah, no, I get it, I get it. But this was a weird example of he walked out and was like, yeah, not my kind of movie. And I was like, I think I like it. Like, I wasn't fully standing for it. Yeah, I was very sure think I like it like I wasn't fully standing for it yeah I was very sure that I liked it definitely understood that the last hour was gonna throw a lot of people off the train essentially you know like a lot of people who had maybe been enjoying the movie would be

like fuck that I add no no no no and definitely understood that it was very Nolan-y. Yes. So anyone who had like the traditional Nolan issues would be like, well, this is almost like it's all of it inflated, right? It's like sort of maximized. Yes. This feels like his most Nolan-y movie in a lot of ways. I mean, it's literally, I mean, we'll get into it. But I really liked it. And in Katie and it's literally, I mean, we'll get into it. But I really liked it.

And in Katie and Richard's defense, I think both of them eventually sort of come around more to it. I don't know if they think it's as good as I think it is. Sure. I think they both told me that like on second viewing, they were like more dialed into the movie. It is a movie that I think has weirdly kind of grown since it came out. I mean, the people who don't like it stick with not liking it.

Yeah, yeah. It's not like it's become a masterpiece universally regarded or anything. But I see a lot on film Twitter the take of, like, I can't believe I wrote off Interstellar as this when I saw it. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I kind of can't believe it either. I think now—so I hadn't seen it in full since I saw it in theaters. Oh, wow.

Okay. Okay. I, you know, can't sleep at night ever. Congrats on that. So I watch stuff when I'm trying to fall asleep. Sure. And I have a couple times said, you know, it was on like Amazon Prime, a great video service. Oh, yeah.

Very good. Really good company. Good company. Good bit rate. Good good. Really good company. Good company. Good bit rate. Good bit? Good bit rate. Are they pro bits? Pro bit rate.

No smit rate. They're the opposite of us. Yeah. But I would throw it on sometimes. But the first hour of that movie, I will say, is calming in a way that actually would put me to sleep. I was about to say, I could almost see... I find this movie incredibly soothing. I do too. And the first hour is definitely

the most soothing because it's like farms and the music is very quiet and choral. And I said, you know, when we did our mailbag episode and people asked where our comfort food movies were, I said that I weirdly fall asleep to The Master a lot. and this has that same kind of like hoit van hoitema long shot very like in control masterful actors having like low volume conversations you know the same sort of

like kind of music temperature um it's like your ASMR, basically. Correct. Hoy Van Hoytema movies are my ASMR. Well, he's, I mean, if he was going to replace Wally Pfister, he got a good guy. Yes. There was a point in time

when I thought I had found my new thing that helped me go to sleep, which was ASMR videos where people go through their Criterion collections. That sounds nice. It's so good and there are only like four of them.

Like I ran out. you've run out, right. They're so good. Also like two of them were like the girls like these actually aren't my DVDs

they're my boyfriends. So she's like going through the movies but she hasn't seen any of them. Just kind of annoying where she was like this looks very artistic.

It looks like they're good supplements. It just annoyed me because in the same video, she puts in some things that aren't Criterion. It's like very clear that it's not her collection. I'm only talking about one. It's one specific. What is it? I really have to know. Is it Be Cool?

I'm trying to think of the least Criterion movie. Is it National Lampoon's loaded weapon one i remember i remember the one i remember her including is a steel book of the big lebowski sure right like criterion would ever release a steel book i just imagine you like uh jerking off watching this and then being like, you know, like, yeah, I'm just trying to sleep. I'm like,

I'm like detective dormer. It's like, no, it's like been cushions to the window and watching criterion ASMR. And I'm just trying to sleep. I'm so tired. I've been working since February. You're a tired boy.

You're a tie-tie boy. But you know how people like jerk off to your appearance in what's it called? That's not true. Fort Tilden. That is not true. And they cover your face. Oh, how people do that. I don't do that. No, you don't do that. You made the joke about this once in a while.

People have to masquerade to me because I'm new to the adjacent. They put their hand over you. You cover the steelbook of the Big Lebowski with your palm. That was my bit. Great bit. Thank you. Half a comic book. Yeah, I don't think so.

It was a little sweaty in delivery. Well, you argued with me through the bit. I did. I'm still riled. I'm riled. I'm tired and I'm riled. riled. I'm riled. I'm tired and I'm riled.

So I've re-watched the first 30 minutes to an hour. Thank you. So you've re-watched, right, the beginning of the movie a lot. A couple times. A couple times in the last year, I'd say. Two or three times I've tried because I never want to like, oh, I fell asleep watching it last night. Let me pick up where I left off. I felt like I had to watch the whole

thing from beginning to end. It's a very rewarding experience if you watch the whole thing. I think it's a movie about time. Obviously, Christopher Nolan is obsessed with time, but it also is. There's just something about sticking in it and riding it through.

I always would restart it. I never made it through to the end since it came out in theaters until last night. I watched it after the premiere. Are you crazy? I'm a lun lunatic i almost texted you on like sunday or monday to say like griffin watch interstellar like today like watch as soon as you can really should have done that uh because it's very long and i just want you to have seen the movie and not be faced with like having to fucking watch it you know yeah at the last. I really wish you had done that. I put my phone.

I was like, I can't run his life for him. Like, I feel like I bother him too much. You should run my life. My life is in shambles. You should have tapped on those books on the bookcase and sent me a message to watch Interstellar last Saturday. David. I'm like making dust binary or whatever. Okay. So for the listener at home, that is ostensibly what David's doing.

But the way he's acting it out is like, it looks like you're fencing. There's something very regal. It's just funny in the Tesseract when he does that, where he's like, God, what do I do? Bang the books.

Okay. He has to like reach over and make with his hand these these dust things uh which is the beginning of the movie exactly we can dive right in on the bookshelf is the bookshelf uh and the dust is gathering it's sort of floating down you've heard about ghosts in the shell what about ghosts in the shelf you know what he actually just nailed the whole plot of interstellar right there ghost in the shelf that's what it is i nailed it yeah hey ben you didn't introduce ben do you not want to are you that tired a little bit i kept on i was like am i do i have the energy yet to like all right i'm afraid i'm gonna like start driving up and then lose energy and have to recede down the incline.

Producer Ben, hi. Are you? Purdueer Ben. Oh, here we go. Ben Ducey. Oh, okay. Poet Laureate. Yes.

The Fuckmaster. Pause. Mr. Positive. Dirt Bike Benny. Soaking Puff Benny. And speaking of dirt, this is a dirty ass movie. This is a dirty ass movie. Good a dirty ass movie and it's a wet movie it's wet it's i mean all right here's a new thing i wrote this i like a good dirty actor i

like it's underlined it's underlined because because you know like they're like on set dirty as hell all day that's so true you have to be dirty for me right and it's like sometimes even it's like let's get some more dirt back on him. Oh, can we get the dirt boy out? All right, dirt boy. And then Ben comes out. He's in like a giant hamster wheel. Let dirt boy out.

He's like. There's a character in the tick. It's not a spoiler because she's one of the main characters. Well, also, this will probably be posting after the tick is online. It will. I hope you all like it. But this character, Miss Lint, who's one of the main villains. Yes. Who has electric powers.

Uh-huh. That's a side effect of that. She has this static electricity sort of down effect when she's not powered on. Okay. So all this lint constantly sticks to her. Right. So on set,

they just have like a bag of dryer lint and in between takes, they just have to like put lint all over her face. That's great. It was just great to watch like a makeup person

come in and just apply like just sprinkle lint. Ben is our finest film critic. He is. And he loves this movie. He loves this movie, which gives it a lot of credibility in my eyes. Mine too, yeah. And, of course, he's graduated to certain titles with a course of different majors.

It's a Ben thing. Ailey Ben's with a dollar sign on Warhouse. Good job. Great. He's going to need a new Nolan name. And I'm still into producer Bane more than any of the other ones uh yeah i mean i think what the ones i'm hearing the most are mabento yeah producer bane right uh hazel ghoul uh terrific and then someone threw out for this for this movie ben durance yeah love that, but that's pretty...

No one's going to fucking get that. Yeah, exactly. That's pretty obscure. Yeah. But, I mean, he has endured a lot from us. He has endured a lot. Oh, my God. Yeah.

And he Ben-septed us. He did. That's true. So this movie... But Ben was texting us very excited yesterday about how much he loved this movie. You had never seen it before. I'd never seen it.

You skipped it in the theater. Yeah, but it was so good. I got very emotional at the end of the movie. I loved it. I like space movies. Me too. I like movies about time. Yep.

And this was a movie where, you know, a little confusing. Yeah. But it pays off at the end. I will say the first time I saw it was in IMAX, and it had the classic IMAX problems where, like, some of the dialogue drops out in weird ways, and when there's a lot of action going on, you're kind of like,

what are they saying? And you know, this is a movie. It's not, again, not like Dunkirk, you know, they say things that are important.

A lot of talking. Uh, so, you know, and then I saw it a second time and it definitely helped clarify things. Okay. Uh, I'll say right off the bat,

because now we're going to dig into the movie. Yeah. Here's my thing with it. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I agree with what Ben just said. I fucking love movies about space. I love movies about time.

Two of my favorite subjects, right? Space and time, baby. Love them. Einstein, he put them together. He put them together. Yep. Doctor who? Doctor me.

I'm the one who loves space and time. Okay. Good. Thank you. Thank you for that. No. No. You're welcome.

I have always, and by always I mean the two times I've watched it in full, had a very hard time connecting with this movie emotionally. Interesting. And I know the people who love it.

I think, I mean, other people feel the same way as you. Agreed. But the people who love this movie are like, who hits me like a ton of bricks? When it fucking pays out at the end, oh boy, I was inconsolable.

I'm definitely right there. It crushed me. And I sit there watching this movie and I go like, I love a lot of what's fucking happening here. But your problem is? It doesn't break through for me. Do you see like the bricks land,

but they just don't land on you? Yes. Right, right. It's sort of like, and you're like, they're the bricks. And there's like some brick dust on you maybe it still mostly exists as like an intellectual exercise for me when i'm watching this movie that's fair which is frustrating because i want to be very emotionally affected by i find the concept of the movie very emotionally affecting

and when i saw the trailer i was like oh shit this is going to destroy me right right right like i remember choking up the trailer and I was like, oh my God, it's about a dad being trapped trying to get back to his daughter. You've already said on the podcast how much you love the promotional stuff for this movie. You love the trailers. Yeah, I think the trailers for this movie

were masterful. Yeah. And fall into that category of trailers that I consider to work on their own as fully functional short films. Yeah. You know? I think that trailer has an arc to it. And tells a really complete story.

I should re-watch it. My Twitter avatar, which is sort of a picture of me with like, it looks like I have my head in my hands. Celebrating. It's actually me watching the Interstellar trailer when it posted the day it posted

because I worked at the wire and Joe Reed past and future guest who used to sit across from me took a picture of me because I was obviously so like lost in the trailer it looks like you're having a nervous breakdown it looks like I'm freaking out I'm not I think I'm actually just sort of like concentrating and sort of blocking out a little bit of light around my

eyes so I can see it a little better. Yeah. The dying of the light. Yeah. Uh, exactly. Rage, rage,

rage, rage, right. She was only 19 years old. Um, she was only a podcast. Yes. So,

um, this is not like a matrix reloaded where i have some like like thought through you know like theory of the movie or something password exactly well that was good though and i did that right yeah he was a login screen baby fucking killed it seraph's a login screen i love that idea someone's like i hate the matrix reloaded and'm like, I turn in my chair and I'm like, Seraph's login screen. And they're like, what? They like turn into green code. Do you remember what my reaction was when you said that on the podcast?

I just remember you getting very excited. I don't remember. Yeah. I believe it was a frustrated excitement where I went like, oh, God. Yeah, right. Exactly. You were like, I already like it more. Oh, no. Oh, that, God. Yeah, right. Exactly. You were like, no, I already like it more. Oh, no.

Oh, that's good. It's working. Right. Exactly. Like I injected something into you. You're like, I can feel it. It's like fire in my veins. Also, all those keys.

Oh, so many keys. A lot of keys. That's Ben's finest moment. That is, I believe, when we named him the finest film critic, actually. Yeah. Okay, but take us through the movie david it starts on a shelf it starts as a but no no i was just gonna finish but like this isn't i just love this movie yes uh very deeply like that's mostly what it's more of a jerry mcguire okay where someone's like if someone's like i don't like this scene and i'm like oh but that seems great all of the scenes are great it's. It's more of a Jerry Maguire. Where someone's like, I don't like this scene. And I'm like, oh, but that scene's

great. All of the scenes are great. It's great. Everyone's great. You don't got a take. You just love it. I think I know what he's going for. I have a take on the themes. He's plumbing and all that. But it's not like I have some radical take. And I also just like,

it's really a movie for me because it is about space. I love space movies. It's my kind movie for me because it is about space. I love space movies. It's my kind of space movie. It looks so good. It has a robot called TARS. It does have a robot. It has a wormhole called wormhole. Yeah.

It's got three different planets that they go to, which is like my favorite shit in the world is thinking about how planets would work. Sure. I love it. You know who doesn't get enough credit? Case.

Case is good, too. I feel like everyone always talks about this when we're like, there's only one. Case and TARS, they both do a lot of work. Weird brick robot. But, you know, TARS goes into the wormhole. I mean, to the black hole. TARS is a hero.

He also saves Brand from the water. He does. He does. Does he? Or is that Case? I thought that was TARS. I can't remember. That's the thing. Like does. He does. Does he? Or is that Case? I thought that was Tars. I can't remember. That's the thing.

Case is definitely doing shit too. Yeah. I mean, you do think that all brick robots look the same. I mean, they are basically designed to. Anyway. Starts on a shelf. Starts with a... Hans Zimmer. Greatest score he's ever done in my opinion I kind of agree

uh right up there with what my other option would be which is the thin red line which I think is like a perfect score as well apparently Nolan went to him and gave him like a series of restrictions right well the story I've been told or read is like he went to him and the movie wasn't he certainly didn't show him any of the movie he gave him like these pages that was like about the emotional themes of the movie essentially about the father's daughter shit

and he was like I want you to read this and I want you to like write some music about it and he came up with a lot of the main themes and Nolan was like perfect great start from there and just keep going I just remember hearing and he came up with a lot of the main themes, and Nolan was like, perfect. Like, great. Start from there and just keep going. I just remember hearing,

and I don't remember where I heard this, I think it was an interview with Zimmer, where he said that Nolan came to him, and he said, like, I want to avoid the typical sound that a score for a movie like this would have. Yeah, that right. So he asked him not to use, like, string sections. Yes, you're right.

Yeah, he didn't want strings. He didn't want, like, would happen. Yes, that right. So he asked him not to use like string sections. Yes, you're right. Yeah, he didn't want strings. He didn't want like big drums. Right. You know, because he knows he's making a 2001 kind of movie. But that's what sort of immediately because the trailers used

Dario Marinelli's score from V for Vendetta. Interesting. Which is a really excellent score but it's a very emotional, traditional kind of swelling, uprising. Orchestral score.

Yes. Yes. Beautiful score. Very underrated score. Um, but, uh, immediately when this movie started and then it has this weird,

like Hans Zimmer haunted organ music. Yeah. That feels like it's like what, what fucking the abominable Dr. Pheebs would play when like bringing people into his lair I was like oh this is strange very melancholy organ

a lot of organs which is a very different sound than you're expecting to hear in this movie it is and then when the movie when the score is more up tempo it's this sort of like clanging loud organ that's incredibly repetitive. It sounds like a panic attack. Which is amazing.

And the score is also very useful in like the movie's like most quietly audacious thing, which is just when McConaughey leaves the farm and you're just, you're on his face crying and the score's going wild. I think it's called stay as the track. And, uh, and then you cut right from that, right to the rocket launching.

No explanation of like anything else. Like there's no more like building the team or, you know, how like them talking about like, what will we do it's just right to the rocket launch well and that's because he's made the decision to leave so he's like we're leaving but also a big element

this movie that we have to discuss which is one of the most audacious things is silent space yeah he does that which is great which gravity which should come out a year before also I believe and doesn't I don't believe I know embraced you know there's no sound in space. Sure.

And the first time I really remember that happening was in, well, is it in 2001? I mean, 2001 is so music heavy. Right. That's the thing. I mean, it's not just that he doesn't have sound effects. It's the fact that he has these stretches, these long extended shots where you're seeing crazy things happening. There are no sound effects and there's no music and there's no dialogue.

Right. That it's just a stunning amount of silence for a movie, especially when you're in like a fucking IMAX theater and you're used to all the bombast. It's very overwhelming. Suddenly it was just like, you know, an image that looks like it's out of a planetarium documentary, but in the context of a narrative feature.

Yes. Yes. It's very powerful. Right. And you're not hearing the sort of like anything anything any kind of engine noise or as you shouldn't because there's no space yeah and seeing it at midnight screening with a bunch of you know it was the audience mostly nolan bros like a pin could have dropped because everyone was just like yeah so i i should say it actually I think Ben has something to say. He's sticking up his finger. I just had a question. Is this the start of spinning in space?

What do you mean? Just explain. I don't know. Griffin died. That one killed him. So you know how like... Welcome to Blank Check with David. Now ships they spin so that you can have gravity. That's a theoretical concept.

Is this the start here, though? No. Sunshine has the same idea of spinning to create G-forces strong enough that you could walk. There's no actual theory. No one's ever pulled that off. But spinning in space is now a thing. Love to spin it's all all of them are gonna have spinning spin time i guess so this is amazing i mean what am i supposed

to do i just want to cry enjoy just cry just enjoy i just know i just i had that thought about i can't think of anything in space now i can't think of anything else oh you know what armageddon actually has a spinning in space concept when they land on the Russian space station with Peter Stormare okay and he's like yes I will now do spinning because they obviously they're just like we can't fucking do 20 minutes of the movie in zero g like 2001 has the spinning wheel as well but it's obviously a different kind of right but now it's all that yeah spinning spinning oh space movies movies so Earth is having a dust bowl crisis right after the shelf

we see these images from the Ken Burns documentary the dust bowl right from it except for the interview with Ellen Burstyn where they're talking just about how the dust bowl worked where there was a lot of dust

and the crops were failing. Right, it's weird, because Nolan's kind of, it feels like he's pulling a Reds. Yeah, sure, sure. Where you're putting a documentary element into a narrative future. But it's about the future.

Right. But it's about the past. And you can kind of tell, like, the... Those people are too real to be actors. Except for Ellen Burst burston you were like that's ellen burston but she's good i'm not i mean she's the she fits in agreed 100 she's a great actress she pulls it off but you kind of immediately go like oh this is weird he's used

footage of people who lived through the real dust bowl and repurposed it as people talking about from the past, from the future. Yeah, no, right. The events that we're about to see unfold. Because what we are actually seeing, and when you're seeing it the first time, you don't even think about this.

Right. But like, then later you might realize like, oh, if they're old, that means we do survive the Dust Bowl because we survive it so that someone can make a documentary about it. Right. And what we're seeing is like museum pieces in the future space stations

humans are going to live in the replica escaping earth right right um which i love i love that yeah i do uh i love any like in ai i love any movie where there's like monuments to us uh yeah um blue fairy so earth is failing this is actually this is a movie we'll talk about it was inspired by science like you know like it was like Kip Thorne this physicist wrote like a story treatment for Steven Spielberg that was the genesis of Interstellar

hired Jonathan Nolan to write it right Steven Spielberg basically talked to or whatever liked this book that Kip Thorne had written he was like I want to do a sci-fi movie that's rooted in like actual concepts of astrophysics so yeah he hires Jonathan Nolan to work with Kip Thorne and I think another I forget another scientist

and like why don't we do that make that real movie Spielberg's got a lot of things in the hopper so yeah this is like in 2008 or 7 or something sort of around there yeah and all we know is like it's a movie about like black holes. That's all that was like really released.

But I'm just saying this because the crop failure shit, that's actually the most fanciful part of the movie. Yes. There's no dust bowl that would just ravage earth. Right. I mean that we can conceive of it. Sure. But still, it's a cool idea.

It's a cool idea. My favorite, favorite thing about this, and I know so much about this fucking movie, is he shot the movie in Oregon because he wanted them to plant tons of real cornfields near mountains where none exist because cornfields are all in the flat part of America.

But he wanted the extremely strange look of cornfields underneath mountains, which of course is not something any viewer is really going to pick up on, except maybe quietly, like in the back of their head, you'd think about that. My man planted corn on mountains. Isn't that wild? My man

planted corn on mountains. Because the idea is that it's the only crop that is surviving in America now is corn. Like it was someone, some asshole next door tried to make some okra

and now he's going to burn it. I do love that scene where they have the dinner later in the movie and it's just four different types of corn. Yeah, he's like, get your fritter. It's great.

All they got is this gross corn. What I was getting at was... And they had bought popcorn at the ballpark too and John Lithgow doesn't like it I want a hot dog I can't do John Lithgow my voice is too burnt he is hard to do but if you get him right

I feel like I could do it if I was batting at full voice you know how people bat at full voice yeah what I was going to say was just that yes the script was developed as a Spielberg movie first. Right. And then it wasn't really going anywhere.

No, I can't remember if Spielberg just had, oh no, it was that Spielberg moved DreamWorks from Paramount to Disney. Right. And could no longer make it. Correct, that's what it is. Because this was under Paramount. Right.

Interstellar was under Paramount. So Jonathan was like, Jonah was like, hey, why doesn't, don't you want to do it, Chris? You can do it. Chris had like crazy blank check status at this point. For sure. And could make whatever he wanted and had so much cachet that he was able to go to Paramount and go like, you own the script that I want, but also

I'm always rolling with the bros. Yeah, so the bros have to be involved. Yeah, get my bros in here. The Warners. Yeah. So it's a co-production. Do you want to know something, though? Yes. Always. In exchange for bringing in the Warner Brothers to co-produce, co-finance this movie. Friday the 13th?

Paramount was allowed to co-finance Friday the 13th and have a stake in a future film based on South Park. Oh, right. Bizarre. They thought they were going to make on South Park. Oh, right. Bizarre. They thought they were going to make another South Park movie. Yeah. And also they agreed to let Paramount co-finance a co-determined A-list Warner's property,

which I believe, I don't think it's ever happened. Legendary, meanwhile, who has also worked with him on the Batman movies. Right, who was at Warner Brothers forever, now is at Universal. Agreed to forego being part of Batman vs. Superman in exchange to be part of this. So people really wanted to make this movie. Yeah. They were like, this is Nolan.

It finally gets agreed to in 2012 right after Dark Knight Rises or maybe right before. So they're like, this is Nolan. Inception worked. Like, pushing all the chips in. Making an original Nolan film is now like as big as making a Batman movie. Right.

They were just, this is the hottest thing in the world. We gotta be part of it. I don't get, Batman versus Superman, fuck it. Who are they?

I've never heard of them. That deal is so weird because it's like, Friday the 13th was Paramount for a while. Yeah. And then the franchise went over to New Line and New Line made like the 13th was Paramount for a while. Yeah. And then the franchise went over to new line and new line made like the last four of them.

They're really shitty ones. Right. Um, so that was like this weird child that was like split between the two of them. And then comedy central used to be Warner brothers and Paramount together. And then in the early two thousands, Paramount bought out Warner brothers at their stake.

Right. So like South Park is the other thing that's like split between the two of them. It's so weird. It's like those are weirdly the two properties that those two studios each have like a stake in. So they were like, I don't know, what can we do to like make this deal worthwhile?

There was for a long time, they said they were going to make another Friday the 13th after the last one. And for whatever reason, I was listed on that IMDB for a really long time there was like Friday see Jason burying a machete in your face they had a date because it was linked up to one year where Friday landed yeah no it's always like when's Friday the 13th in October like yeah yeah so I think the last remake was like 2009 2010 and

then they were going to do one in like 2013. And I was listed. There was no information. There was no director attached. I don't know how that happened. Because I added myself to the Beverly Hills Cop 4 IMDb page. Of course, we know this. I listed myself as Axel Foley Jr.

because I was trying to will it into existence. But that was me. That was me playing a goof. Someone else added me for Friday the 13th, and it got picked up by other places. For a while, people, I get tweets from horror fans asking me. Like, what's up with Friday the 13th?

I was like, I did nothing. I haven't auditioned. Okay. All right. I'm getting back to the context. Now I'm barreling through this context. Okay. I love it.

Context. So Nolan, Johnny Nolan, Jonah. Sure. Wrote the screenplay. Chris takes this screenplay, throws out most of it, which is kind of interesting. Yep. But he kept the first 45 minutes to an hour, the Dust Bowl stuff. Interesting.

That was the stuff he kept. He changed. That's my favorite section of the movie. Interesting. He changed everything, all the space stuff. I believe you can find the original script. I've never read it. Okay.

And he saw an early cut of the film Mud, the Jeff Nichols film, speaking of, and saw Matthew McConaughey in it and thought, this guy's kicking ass in this movie. And that was sort of the beginning of phase two of the McConaughey- it and thought, this guy's kicking ass in this movie. And that was sort of the beginning of phase two of the McConaissance. Yes. McConaissance had just started percolating. Right.

Because Magic Mike comes out in 2012, but a little later. Right. I think Lincoln Lawyer isn't cited enough as. That is the beginning. Right. That's, oh, that's a solid little movie. Right. When it came out and people were like, ugh.

And then it came out, like before it came out, people were like, people like mcconaughey's so fucked up and then they see it actually and it did surprisingly well right then it's then it's the his 2012 supporting role sort of renaissance thing killed it got close to an oscar not for magic mike didn't get it mud had screened a con but like didn't really blow up there wasn't very well received. Jeff Nichols talked about how he got, got critically trashed and it didn't come out until like a year later, but it actually also did surprisingly well. It was a very big hit. And so,

but I just think it's interesting. It's always fascinating to me how these things are not that these trends happened before the movies have even come out. Like Dallas Buyers Club comes out a year before interstellar but he cast him a year before it came out like but like they just kind of know in hollywood like i just i remember i remember uh reading some interview with nolan where he said that he went to them and they said so who do you want for the lead and he said matthew mcconaughey and they said are you fucking kidding yeah you're a christopher nolan you can literally get anybody why do you

want the ghost of girlfriends past guy right Right, right, right, right. And he said, like, I've seen this movie Mud. I think he's really popping. And then it's like the one time I've seen Nolan pat himself on the back in an interview. Right. Where he was like, they thought I was crazy. And now they think I'm really smart that I got them McConaughey before he won the Oscar. Right, right.

Exactly. And this becomes like his like victory lap movie. It is. And this is sort of the end of the reconnaissance, sadly. Which I think he's so wonderful in this movie. I think this is kind of secretly his best performance. It is an outstanding performance. It's astonishing.

And it's a performance that like. It might be, yeah. Didn't get any credit at the time because it is so. Not nearly enough. In service of the movie. It's kind of thankless work, because like, Dallas Buyers Club,

he's like giving it his all, but it's a very showy character piece. Yeah. You know? I don't care for that movie. But I mean, he's good. I don't either. I don't like that movie.

I think he's very good. Yeah. But this is like, he's really just kind of like, carrying this movie on his back. And it's a complicated performance that he's doing with like this really bizarre economy. He got to this state where somehow it's like,

like, like he found oil in the ground. It's like at some point in 2011, Matthew McConaughey somehow like found an access port to all of the world's emotions. Look, he does some amazing stuff in this movie regarding that. Right.

Like he just sort of like tapped into like all of the emotions. And then this movie is like him trying to figure out how to show as little as possible. That's the thing. Right. But at the same, and also not let go of his drawl and his sort of like classic, it's like a real movie star performance

too. And he's got the weird physicality and he's got the weirdest neck in movies. He does have. He looks very strange in this one. He's always at those odd angles and he was sort of in this weird. He looks like Groot. He does. He's very sinewy in this because it was like post Dallas Buyers Club like he's got the weight back but he's

still kind of. There's something a little stretched about him and tight and he's got the weight back but he's still kind of yeah there's something a little stretched about him and tight and he's he's got the bronze skin like everything's odd about him he's tasked with saying a lot of uh sciencey shit yes uh not as much maybe as some of the other characters but still a lot and having these conversations with especially with the astronauts about relativity and stuff that should be bad there's no like it just it just shouldn't work he shouldn't be suited to it and he is very natural with all that stuff which is great especially i feel like movie stars with very distinctive personas usually belly flop hard when asked to do that right like look at i know it's a very

different movie, but, like, Mark Wahlberg in The Happening. Sure. You know, you just go, like, that's Mark Wahlberg. I don't buy that he's a scientist. He sounds like Mark Wahlberg. He looks like Mark Wahlberg. That's the worst version of it. Right.

Right. But I feel like, I'm not thinking of other examples now, but I feel like there are other examples like that where you just go, like, his persona is too big to accept him spouting jargon. You know? I do. Somehow McConaughey's like threading this needle in this movie where he's like doing

full McConaughey and also fully disappearing into the tapestry of what the movie's asking him to do. He offered McConaughey the role on the set of True Detective, which he was making. He goes over to Northern Ireland and he offers Jessica Chastain the role on the set of Miss Julie

her blockbuster hit yes we're gonna do Liv Ullman next for Blank Shack yeah of course he hires Hoyta because Wally Pfister is busy making Transcendence he uses even more IMAX

than ever before Hoyta figures out a way to make a mobile imax camera like and there's those pictures on the dunkirk set where he's got it on his fucking shoulder and you're like how the hell did he do that yeah it's huge yeah that guy's shoulders must look rough he's just he's like um freddie rodriguez in uh lady in the water with the one big arm uh yes and like they figured out how to put an IMAX camera in a Learjet to do aerial photography.

They figured out how to do it for interior scenes. It's crazy. They shot in Alberta and Oregon and places like that for the Dust Bowl ship.

They shot in Iceland on the glaciers for the glacier planet. And They shot in Iceland on the glaciers for the glacier planet. And they shot... Iceland from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? That country? The weirdest reference

you've ever made. Sure. And then they filmed in LA for a long time. You know, they did a studio ship. Okay. And then the movie came out

and I loved it and I cried. Anyway, so Dust Bowl. And Hathaway, he just said, and I loved it and I cried. Anyway, so Dust Bowl. And Hathaway, he just said, hey, stick with me, kid. Well, right. She'd been in Dark Knight Rises. He brings her back. I guess she's the Kane's back. Yes. I think that's it, though. It's actually pretty light

for Nolan players. Well, William Devane, of course, who famously played the president in The Dark Knight Rises. Now he plays the NASA president or something. This is one of those movies where it's odd how every every little two line part like that is someone crazy like David Yellow or whatever. Right. Yeah. Like that point when you.

Topher Grace. Topher Grace. Topher. When they have dinner with a grown up Casey Affleck and his wife. I'm just like, oh, his wife is just an actress. Right. His wife is pretty much the only person his wife isn't Angela Lansbury

like you're like ready for like everyone in this movie to be someone who's like won a Tony oh boy yeah sure who plays his wife actually I have no idea Leia Cairns okay but isn't even like the nurse at the end

of the movie who lets McConaughey in? She's very familiar. I think it's, what's her name? I always forget her name. She's such a good actress who plays the woman who gets kidnapped in Sons of the Lambs. Oh, Lois Smith. Yes, no. It is Lois Smith.

She's the nurse who just directs him to Ellen Burstyn's room. Right. There's another nurse character who I was thinking of who's familiar as well. But that's what I'm thinking. And it's like, Nolan's got so much cachet that he could just be like, Loyal Smith,

you want to come and do it? You want to do literally just like, oh yeah, it's right over there. Right. Why not have every line be delivered by someone

who is highly overpowered? He's almost Malick level where people are like, sure, yeah, I'll do it. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. Great, great, great, great, great. What do I do?

Great. Yeah. Because Yellowwood kind of already popped at this point. Kind of. He was building. He's in the middle of popping.

He's popping. He's mid-popping. Because it's the same year as Selma, isn't it? Yeah. Selma popped at this point. Kind of. He was building. He's in the middle of popping. He's popping. He's mid-popping. Because it's the same year as Selma, isn't it? Yeah. Selma comes out this year. Anyway. He had already reached. Jack reaching.

Yeah. Good job. Thank you. I love you. For the listener at home, I was reaching. But not jacking. David, tell them what I'm doing. He's jerking off.

And? Reaching. David tell them what I'm doing he's jerking off reaching so in this dust bowl world they live on a farm there's no like armies anymore there's no like technology anymore really it's basically just like we just gotta make food and scratch out

and survive because there has been there's these sort of unspecified like references to like wars that happened and are done and like old countries that kind of just don't even really exist anymore you know what i mean it's just sort of like and um too much dust just a lot of fucking dust really dirty uh it's very dirty and like the the schools are mad at mcconaughey's character who is a pilot and engineer who now has to run a farm for like teaching his daughter murph uh played by who's young murph she's so good it's uh mackenzie foy yeah yeah so good uh excellent uh teaching her

about like the moon landings and shit because the new thing is like no no we didn't even go to space that was all fake just to gin up money for the Soviets because like it was like propaganda right an awesome scene with David Oyelowo and what's his name Clet Wolfe who's great who's such a good actress love her love her but the two of them are just like

oh you're just like bringing in like home run hitters to deliver like a scene of just like laying track she's been great on what's it called? You're the Worst recently. Oh, I need to watch that. So good in that.

But yeah, I love that notion. I love that notion that America is just kind of like given up. Right. And that they've like folded into like,

look, it was all lies. It's just we can't go there anymore. Yeah, right. But there are weird gravitational anomalies happening at their farm that make dust fall into lines and books fall off the shelf. And Coop, who is McConaughey, Joseph Cooper is his actual name. No one ever, I don't think anyone calls him that.

No one ever calls him Joe. He's Coop. Yeah. Because Murphy Cooper. More people call him by his middle name, Robin. He's also Timothée Chalamet, who's going to be a big star this year. Yes. In Call Me By Your Name, right?

Yes. He's young Tom. He's the son. His son likes to farm, but his daughter likes to science. Right. And he doesn't like that they're already writing off his son. They're saying he can't go to college. College is a very selective thing.

They don't want to waste the resources. Yeah, at this point, you don't go to college unless you really have to. Just farm. Right. They want everyone to be farming because that's what we need. So unless you are, like, beyond exceptional,

they could just pick up a hoe. Yeah, it's time to farm. Pick up a hoe and hoe those fields. Hoe them away. And then you've got Lithgow. What do you do with a hoe? Do you hoe or sow? We got to move on. Lithgow. Shut you do with a hoe do you hoe or sow we gotta rake we gotta move on

Lithgow shut up it helps break up the dirt Lithgow what do you call the act of what you do oh hoeing

hoeing okay Donald who is his father-in-law yes and his wife is dead which is delivered in this sort of slightly sweaty

convoluted thing where he's like well we used to have MRI and that would have that would have got my wife's cancer or whatever you know we lost it at the end yeah it was it was good for a bit i'm not trying to do you were cruising and then you crashed back down mri i can say it like you know what i mean but you know that scene yeah where they're like your son should be a farmer and he's like farming farming, cancer. I don't know.

He just works it around so he can tell us that his wife died of cancer. He's great in the scenes. I'll say this. Nolan is not a filmmaker who overuses close-ups, which I think a lot of people do these days. I think too many movies are shot as just shot, reverse shot,

close-up, and it's just faces. Close-ups don't have any power anymore because you abuse them, but also you look at McConaughey in this movie and it's just faces. So close ups don't have any power anymore because you abuse them. But also you look at McConaughey in this movie and it's like, God, that's a full body actor. Like he sits weird in every scene. You're right. The way he cranes and the way he...

He's always at odd angles like this. Yeah. What do you like about... Because you just said you like all of this. Yes. Why is this... Like there's the early scene where they snare this drone out of the sky

on this sort of chase through the cornfields that's like this busted old Indian Air Force drone. Yes. And it's like a metaphor because they're like, can't we just let it roam around? He's like, it's got to adapt, you know, like it's got to learn to farm like the rest of us. Here are things I like about this.

I'm trying to think of other stuff that happens. Go ahead. They go to the baseball game. I like that in the way that AI is this weird Kubrick filter through Spielberg thing, this feels like Spielberg filter through Nolan. There's an interesting kind of handshake going on here. I did not know that backstory

that this is pretty much the section that was kept intact. This is the Jonah Nolan stuff. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think Spielberg would have made this feel a lot more... Magical isn't the world, because it's obviously... You know what I'm saying. Spielberg-y.

Yes, Spielberg-y. But I like that this is such a mundane, boring dystopia. Sure. Do you know what I'm saying? I like that too. This is what it is. And it's like basically Earth is basically dead. Yes.

But that doesn't mean that we're dead or that the plants are dead. Right. It's just like we just kind of quietly know we're close to it. I love that kind of tone, which I think this movie conveys perfectly. And I like that they don't over-explain stuff in this section of the movie, that there's just the little details. I think this is when they interweave

in a lot of the Dust Bowl talking head stuff, which I just find really interesting. Yeah, all those little details of turning your plates over, all that shit. Love that shit. And then the other thing I think this section of the movie has going for it, visually, I think the shit

Hoyt Van Hoytema does with these landscapes is unbelievable. I just think this is the section of the movie where McConaughey is so fucking in the pocket because he is so good with the kids. He's great. His connection with especially, obviously, Murph, which is so crucial to what the movie is going to do,

is, in my opinion, done very well. Because this thing that McConaughey tapped into as an actor where he just found this undercurrent of emotion and figured out how to restrain as much as possible, use his charisma to keep himself engaging but not feel the need to show what

he's feeling is really powerful in the stuff with the children because it feels like a very very specific depiction of eternal love that i feel like uh i don't often see actors play um in a way that gets me this emotionally even just the way he puts his arms around her yeah you know touches the sun there's there's a very body language he's a very interesting actor he's a really interesting actor he's it's a little heightened

but I like every moment he's on screen with one of the kids in the movie I just go like god this dad loves his kids so much

and he's so fucking worried for them because of the state of the world right and I find that very heartbreaking and he cannot

really accept this idea where like that he's being told over and over which is like we have to adapt we have to's being told over and over again, which is like, we have to adapt, we have to farm, we can't look at the stars, which is like what he was sort of trained to do when he was an engineer and a NASA scientist. There's also almost like a Brad Bird

element to this section of the movie where it's like an anti-exceptionalism. Sure, sure, sure. Like, let's just settle for just pick up a hoe. Right, right. That Brad Bird strain is very clear. So this whole section's hitting on a lot of things that that brad bird strain you know very clear so this whole section is hitting on a lot of things that i really like and i just think like mcconaughey is like throwing straight straight heat so let me move us through what happens is they follow

these gravitational anomalies that keep fucking everything up around them yes uh and we later learn actually fucked up his big test flight when he was a test pilot, which you see glimpses of in his dreams. So they've been going on for decades, is what I mean. And it takes them to a weird abandoned place, him and Murph, and it's like NASA. It is NASA.

And NASA, who are operating in secret, they are taken in by TARS, a robot. A good friend. In my opinion, the greatest thing that's ever happened to society i don't know what i don't know if you guys agree so here's the thing about tars tars he fucking rules is a robot he's the best he is is he three i think he's four three or four he's four what do you call it like just like uh i uh uh fucking what's the like I don't know how you even describe it

it's a very obvious word not cylinder but the sort of cuboid shape that's long and thin anyway a rectangle? in three dimensions a trapezoid? no a trapezoid is four sided

a rhombus? I'm throwing out terms now. You're having fun, though. I like it. But anyway, yeah. He's four rectangles, I guess is the easiest way to put it. He's like a bunch of popsicle sticks. Right.

And he can unfold them into more popsicle sticks if he wants to. Right. And he mostly stays in brick formation, but the four popsicle sticks can kind of go out. And to walk he like sort of like two rectangles, two rectangles, two rectangles, two rectangles. Let's say this. I think we're wasting time describing TARS. People know what TARS is like. You know what he looks like. I just think it's kind of delightful to try.

If you haven't seen the movie, look up TARS. TARS is great. Even if you're not going to watch the rest of the film, look up TARS. You'll thank us later. Trust me, you'll want to look at TARS. He is played by Bill Irwin. The great Bill Irwin. The great Bill Irwin who does a lot of physical acting

on stage. He's a clown. Grace-loving clowns. But also a good actor. He does the voice and puppetry of TARS. He just does the puppetry of Case, the other robot. Josh Stewart is the voice of Case. Who is Josh Stewart? I could have sworn it was Jeffrey Tambor.

It is not Jeffrey Tambor. Wait, do you actually? Oh, no. Go ahead. Oh, my God. I'm so disappointed. Why? Ben, what are you talking about?

Well, I thought, I really, I thought, so I wrote TARS as Jeffrey Tambor in Arrested Development. Because I, the whole time I was convinced that was him. I don't know. Is this a bit or did you actually think it was Jeffrey Tambrey tamp i have no idea if it's a bitter now you know i want to dine them but i don't let them tell me what to do it's my favorite tambour line interested about write that down word for word you're reading it off of your notepad i don't let them tell me what it is that is arguably the funniest thing that ever happened in Arrested Development. Right?

I don't like when he turns around and looks at the dolls. That's why, in my opinion, season two is the best Arrested Development because Tambor in the attic is so weirdly rewarding. They like write themselves into the biggest corner where he can't leave the attic, and they find so many ways to have fun with it. The one where he uses the hot tub to make ramen or whatever. He knocks himself out. My single favorite joke is from that

plot line. My favorite development joke is, Dad, I have to tell you, I have Pop-Pop in the attic, and he goes, the mere fact that you called, Dad, tells me that you're not ready. But there's so many words like Heidi Pop-Pop, like from the Nazis or whatever. And Frank jokes. Anyway.

No, Tars is voiced by Bill Irwin. Jon Stewart's just like an actor. Okay. He's in The Dark Knight Rises. Oh, interesting. He plays Barsad. Okay. I don't know who that is.

Irwin said when he got hired, he didn't know what he was playing, and then he thought he was just playing the voice of the robot, and then he was like, oh, fuck. This is why they hired me, because they want me to operate this brick. He operated it, and they digitally removed him, which is wild. I think there are a couple shots. I feel like when TARS turns

into full asterisks, then it's full CGI, but most of the movie, it's like... Full asterisks, by the way, that CGI. Then it's full CGI, but most of the movie, it's like... Full asterisks, by the way, perfect. The best. Well put. When that happened

for the first time in the movie, I could not stop giggling. I was so happy when that happened. I was losing my mind. And it's in a very stressful moment of the movie. And why it's so good is

when it happens, you are very stressed out because Tars has to rescue her and you're like, he's so slow, how is he going to get there? And then he goes like, has to rescue her and you're like he's so slow how is he going to get there and then he goes like and then starts rolling and you're like i can't believe i didn't think of that i'm so happy uh we should we will drop in david reese right here can we can we play it now let's let's play it right now let's explain it let's let's talk about yeah yeah david reese friend of the show past guests, he's on the AI app. A great friend of ours and of mine.

I would say I recently flew Delta and season two of Going Deep with David Reese was available there, which is not very easy to find. So if you're on an airplane, great way to spend your time. So when I was talking to him about this movie, he was like,

I didn't really love Interstellar, but I love Taurus. I love that bit where he turns into a thingy and he rolls around. And he was like, could I just do five minutes on TARS and you drop it into the episode? That was what he asked of me. So we're going to play David Reese's. This is a new segment we're calling TARS Talk with David Reese. Hi, guys.

This is David Reese with your Interstellar Robot Report. Hi, guys. This is David Reese with your Interstellar Robot Report. When David told me you guys were discussing this Christopher Nolan movie, I was very excited because one of the few things I remembered about it was the moment when the robot just goes completely buck wild on the water planet and basically turns into a fidget spinner and hauls ass to save the lady scientist. The only other thing I remember from the movie, of course, was the nine dimensional Hallmark book, Hallmark movie bookshelf Tesseract. I do think this is a really unsatisfying movie. It's what I would call a dumb, smart movie as compared to something like Mad Max Fury Road, which is a smart dumb movie. I think for all the praise that people heaped upon this movie for its scientific rigor in terms of accurately visually rendering a wormhole, I think a lot of the actual important science and time travel and creating Tesseracts and stuff is completely incoherent.

And so I kind of feel like Christopher Nolan is having it both ways, which is that he gets some, he gets some of that yay science cred, um, that bolsters what to me just seems like a total gooey mess where gravity and love are the strongest forces in the universe. I mean, I'm sure gravity is. I'm not a physicist. Love, I'm not so sure about. But anyway, you didn't have me on to discuss my pretentious intellectual judgments of the physics and metaphysics of Interstellar. I came on because I wanted to talk about TARS. And then I have to admit to you, David, that I realized on rewatching the movie that I actually don't like TARS at all. I like Case, the other robot. I find TARS's humor setting and style of joking, again,

I feel like this is part and parcel with what I would call the recent yay science genre. I think TARS sounds like he would be performing comedy at the same open mic that Matt Damon would be performing at on Mars in his movie, The Martian, which is also one of the least funny, funny movies ever made. And so I really don't, I love the look of TARS, obviously, and CASE, of course. I like the abstracted anthropomorphism of these robots. I like their sort of impossible movements. To me, maybe this is because I have extreme imaginative poverty that I'm operating with. imaginative poverty that I'm operating with. But I find those robots and the way they move and the kind of production design of those mechanical beings to be in a way more interesting

and more rewarding than the super abstract metaphysical Tesseract space, which visually looks great. But then the fact that, what I was going to say, Matt Damon, what's his name? Uh, Matthew McConaughey can just kind of float around from, from bookshelf to bookshelf peeping on his daughter in different moments, uh, felt too literal to me to be kind of, um, to kind of do justice to the, what would be so curious about that actual space. Again, I must refrain from criticizing Christopher Nolan and focus only on the robots. This is the robot report, and I should keep that in mind. So I will just say this. This is a long-winded preamble to my nut, which is as follows. I think when they land on, I think it's Miller's planet, the wave planet. To me, that whole sequence is so great. It's everything, it's sci-fi at its best because the environment is very dreamlike. An endless ocean that is also very shallow, to me, that is more

authentically dreamlike and surreal and wonder making than anything in his big dream movie that you guys talked about, whose name I'm completely blanking on. Inception. I think that water planet is fantastic. I think massive hundred story high waves coming out of nowhere is also very. I mean, again, I don't know about the physics of it. You have to talk to Neil deGrasse Tyson about whether waves can operate like this, but I find it very dreamlike and very surreal in a way that I respect in sci-fi. And then when Matthew McConaughey tells Case to go get Anne Hathaway and he just busts the sickest move I've ever seen a robot ever do. To me, that scene is the highlight of the movie. It has as much imagination and as much

kind of bewildering, slightly incomprehensible dustings of future technologies and future ways of being. To me, that scene on that planet is the strongest in the movie and achieves what I think he wanted the entire movie to achieve, which is a true sense of wonder. And I am afraid that I am so literal-minded that to me, the strange physical motion of that robot

and the way it moves through the water is much more captivating. And I've spent much more time thinking about that than I ever have thinking about like, oh, can I go into a wormhole that my future great grandson is going to plant in the universe so I can hide behind a bookshelf and push books onto a dusty floor so my daughter will see? I mean, the whole fucking movie makes no goddamn sense. Okay, so thank you so much for letting me share my love of the robot case. Team Case, TARS, your humor setting should be set to zero

because even when it's operating at 90%, it's effectively at zero. Thank you to everyone for indulging me and goodbye Blank Check Podcast. See you in hell. Thank you for that. That has been TARS Talk with David Rees. Yep.

Tune in next week for another installment. Of course, during Dunkirk. Because TARS is in Dunkirk. He is. He's a hero. He plays Kenneth Branagh. The thing I love about TARS is it's such a weird design, and then you look at it and you're like,

right, why would you design a robot to look like a human? Right, that's what Nolan's whole argument is. it's such a weird design. And then you look at it and you're like, right. Why would you design a robot to look like a human? Right. That's what Nolan's whole argument is like, that makes no sense. We already have humans. Right. Humans can do that shit.

Right. Uh, I think about, he's supposed to be a war robot. He was built for war and humans are not built for war. Easy to destroy. Right. It would be better if humans were walls that walked.

Uh, yes, yes. A walking wall would win all wars um like a very aggro wall too yes and you get mexico to pay for it of course um but uh i just uh remember hearing that um the first time danny boyle used like a red camera uh-huh he was like what's all this junk and they were like well it's a camera this and that and he's like right but the way a camera was built and the shape of it and design of it was because you needed all of that space to house the thing right it doesn't have to be in that shape right so like Danny Boyle

like famously took apart the red camera and like took all the guts of it and put it in a backpack and they just had a wire connected to the lens so that Anthony Dodd-Mantle could like operate it. And TARS is like off of that same logic, which is like, well, there's no reason for us to look like a person. Rethink this.

Yeah, exactly. Just what's the simplest shape? A board. And just that idea of like the board, it can unfold into a million boards. Right. Like it's boards on boards on boards. It's so good. And not only that. love tars at the

beginning of tars he is he's kidnapped mcconaughey like uh sorry murph is not is missing coop thinks something bad has happened and essentially a wall with a computer screen is yelling at him and he's like how did you get here in this like booming, scary voice. But the other weird choice that Nolan makes is... And McConaughey's like, I'll turn you into a harvester. He's like, he's trying to fuck with TARS. McConaughey's slipping away from it. Oh, I don't have it there. I only have MRI. Yeah, that's really bad.

That's what I've got. I wish I had it otherwise. Yeah. Look, if you got a good McConaughey in this business, you're made, baby. Dark Tower sketches for days. Oh, yeah. Cook that chicken, baby.

Uh-huh. The thing I love about TARS is that he made a decision not to process or treat the audio in any way. Right, right. It sounds like it's coming out of a speaker. Well, no, what I like about it is it sounds like it's clearly the live audio recorded. Oh, you mean of Irwin. Right, right, right.

They don't make it sound like it's coming out of any sort of digital. No, but... It sounds like he's just a guy in a room. It's weird. It's like disembodied. It sounds very weird. Very weird. It sounds weird to me.

Yeah, but I like that. It's unnatural because they don't The whole point is that TARS has been designed to make people feel more comfortable, so he's very conversational. He's got this dumb sense of humor. And he has a light. Which is a perfect Nolan idea. I think Nolan would prefer that we all had lights

to indicate when we were joking. Like if we make a joke and then our, I just went like, and he'd be like, great. It was a joke. I get it. And like,

do you think he has like a red light for sarcasm? Like he has like various lights. He has like an irony light. It's like a mood ring. Go on. No, I just, I just love that.

It's like this weird disembodied voice that follows this logic of just like well you're just supposed to feel comfortable because he's talking like a person right but we're not going to make it sound i think it specifically doesn't sound like it's coming from a speaker which is what i find interesting about it i mean like it doesn't matter i we we can't get into this right now i don't mean it sounds digitized in the right way i mean it literally sounds like he's blaring uh but it doesn't matter yes to mean it sounds digitized in the right way. I mean it literally sounds like he's blaring. But it doesn't matter. Yes. To me, it sounds like he's yelling his lines from off camera, which is what I like about it.

But what's happening at NASA, which we can deal with very quickly, is Anne Hathaway is there. Brandt. She is Dr. Amelia Brandt. Brandt. She is the daughter of McConaughey's old teacher, Coop's old teacher, Professor Brand. Brand! Played by a hilariously made-to-look kind of young Michael Caine

because they're going to need to age him 30 years. Let's put a little yellow in that hair. Yeah, his hair looks wild. I keep saying that, but it's true. And they're very friendly. Yes. They like putting a little scare in old Koopy, but they're friendly. Old pals. And as they

finally reveal to him, they are NASA. They're operating a secret and they are dealing with a wormhole that was noticed in space underneath Saturn's rings 48 years ago that is to another galaxy. And in this wormhole are other worlds

that we might live on. And they sent people into the wormhole to look at the planets. And now we've got to take ourselves in there. There's three that seem viable. The three astronauts. We're the two friends. They're the three astronauts.

Correct. Competitive advantage in space travel. Yes. Makes them different from all other space travels. Exactly. There's three planets in one system that seem potentially viable. So they need Coop and some scientists to go in there with a big amount of jizz. They got a jizz probe.

They got a lot of jizz. Full of human eggs. They've got likeizz probe. They got a lot of jizz. Full of human eggs. They've got like a population bomb is what they call it. Yeah, not since something about Mary has jizz been so central. And they want to essentially colonize a new world because Earth is dead. They have two plans. Plan B is what I just described, which essentially is go to a new world with the eggs. Get that jizz. Make new with the eggs. Get the juice.

Make new people. Yeah. Forget everyone else. Yes. But plan A is you go- See this building here? Right. It's a spaceship.

This building is a spaceship. Because of this wormhole and the shit we've been doing, we understand that gravity, which is the most crucial thing in this movie, is like a force that we might be able to harness. So maybe we can make this spaceship take off from earth without fuel yes and like we can start traveling at speeds that are much faster than just like and take a lot of people with us exactly save the human race and mcconaughey is

like why do you need me to drive it you didn't even know i was alive until, you know, whatever. I mean, the point is, this is when they get into the notion of like this weird sense of destiny fate. Someone was trying to communicate with you. He's been brought here by a gravitational anomaly. Right. Gravity is what's driving them over to the wormhole. I think someone's trying to communicate with us. Right.

Because the concept is- You were going to take off without me. He said, yeah, but we weren't going to be prepared. We got people who've never left the simulator. Right right we need a real pilot being in a plane right place plane right time and wormholes as anyone who studies theories of relativity know are artificial constructs they cannot exist as natural phenomenon because they require anti-energy to exist yes we all know that uh because wormholes are bridges in space time and bridges in space time can't be sustained because there's no such naturally occurring anti-energy but if you start

the dark matter hey man you know a lot of dark matter potential because we don't know a lot about dark matter we know like basically nothing really nothing yeah and we know even less about warp dark matter you know warp dark matter lead antagonist of Buzz Lightyear of Space Command, the short-lived ABC spinoff Saturday morning cartoon show? No, I don't remember that. His name was Warp Dark Matter? I just want to pause real quick. The antagonist of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command,

the short-lived ABC was part of one Saturday morning. It was maybe 20 episodes. Can I tell you one thing about it? Can I tell you one thing about it? Stephen First was on it as well. Can I tell you one thing about that? Because I actually have something to can I tell you one thing about that because I actually have something to say about Buzz Lightyear's stories it was a show yeah

it was a show I once read an interview with the people behind that show in like Entertainment Weekly or something where they said that Buzz Lightyear's hair would never be seen

he'd always be wearing his little cowl that he has and they were like it's kind of like our version of like how you don't see Maris and Frasier and I remember reading that

and thinking like are these people just idiots and who are bored and they just said that or do they really think like yeah no we need like a Maris joke for this Saturday morning space cartoon about Buzz Lightyear but I will say I would have been very unnerved as a child if they ever showed it's true it would be weird it's just the way they said it where they were like that and I was just like that's just how he looks. I don't know if that counts as Maris on Frasier. Well, but you see some of the other people take off their hoods.

They do bits about it is what you're saying. I remember I was so excited for that show. I was pumped and I went to see, they did a special screening of Toy Story 2 at Lincoln Center and I went with my dad and they had some Pixar peoplear people they're doing a q a afterwards and showing like behind the scenes clips and whatever right and at the q a someone asked about like what about the uh buzz letter

of star command animated series anything you can tell us and the guy was like uh no comment and i was like oh they don't like this show no well pixar's unhappy that this show of course they are they have a very they're obsessed with their brain not being diluted i'm sorry was i saying anti uh i can't write it is negative energy is what i'm talking about essentially i watched all the extras for this podcast and one of the biggest extras called the science of interstellar has nothing to do with the movie and it's just matthew mcconaughey slowly explaining like basic concepts of relativity over you know like basic it's just Matthew McConaughey slowly explaining like basic concepts of relativity over, you know, like basic.

It's great. I mean, over basically like PBS style graphics of like wormholes and shit. That might honestly like really help me go to sleep. It's quite nice. That sounds so soothing. Let's get back into it. I fuck with Europa. It's Matthew.

I just, I'm sorry. I just want to clarify. So is Matthew McConaughey like, it's like, it's essentially like a science documentary. It's just a science documentary. But instead of like Neil deGrasse Tyson doing the voiceover, it's Matthew McConaughey. You don't see him on screen. In his soothing voice. Just his voice.

His nice voice. But at a certain point, does it turn out that he actually doesn't know all the science? It's his boyfriend's science. And you can tell because he puts a steelbook in there. Yeah. And it's a real bummer. Your dick goes soft right away. Alright.

Essentially, wormholes are... A steelbook. Damn it. Wormholes are artificial constructs. If they exist in reality, they would disappear within seconds. So if we wanted to stay, someone had to have put it there.

What is motivating NASA so much is that someone seems to be helping us there seems to be an intentionality they've given us a window into a habitable world essentially a window more like a shelf yeah exactly so this is and of course the main thing is we know cooper hates being a farmer. Yes. He doesn't want to live this pathetic life. He hates his son's going to be a farmer. Everyone's just giving up. But he does love Murr.

We used to reach for the stars. Now we sit and worry about it. Now we reach for the tars. Place in the dirt. He has that line. Say pass the tars, please. We have 40 minutes. You have to catch a train. i'm waiting for a train okay so and as i that that cut i described that what i love here is after all this setup and there has been a lot yeah uh it's just that thing of like will you do it and you see him say goodbye

to murph in this very crucial scene where she won't look at him. That's the scene where I was like, I am on the hook emotionally with this movie. He does it very well. She does it well too, but he does it beautifully. That scene is my peak emotional investment in the film. I was like, oh man they're laying out the cards, this movie's going to destroy me and I never get as emotionally invested as I do in that scene.

That's fine. But I just think it's so good because he does a perfect job being very upset but also being very frustrated. I'm coming back. Yeah, he's trying to soothe her, but he fucks up in some ways where he's like, huh, because of relativistic theory, I'll probably be, you'll be as old as me when I come back. And she's like, not helpful. Frightening. Hard pass on that.

And not a performance review way. Exactly. He gives her his watch and she throws it against the shelf. She's not a performance review way. Exactly. He gives her his watch. Yes. And she throws it against the shelf. She's not happy. She's not happy. But I love how he plays, both being very sad to leave her and very upset that this is their goodbye.

And he doesn't got a choice. The ship's taken off. And that thing. Gotta catch a train. Him in the truck driving away crying. Yes. And the straight match, like the cut straight to um the ship the rocket taking off i think is so clever uh where it's like that emotional decision is

what he had to do forget the training and everything we don't care like it's that's what happened i remember someone saying in a review for this movie that it it felt like mcconaughey must have spent straight days looking in the mirror studying how his face works he looks amazing when he cries in this movie you know because i feel like weirdly the gif of him crying later which we'll get to yeah has become this like universal internet speak for like absolute devastation yeah you know like you know it's the new uh when people would use the clip of george uh c scott and hardcore right right yeah freaking out in the theater yeah yeah um You know? It's the new, when people would use the clip of George C. Scott in hardcore.

Right, right. Yeah, freaking out in the theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're on the spaceship. Yes. Endurance. Mm-hmm. Which is pretty cool.

Cool ship. It spins. It's a spinny ship. Mm-hmm. It has a couple of rangers, which are these sort of little glidery things that can land and take off almost like a top with gliders on

either side and yeah and it's got the population bomb in it and stuff like that bunch of jizz and his team is him it's Dr. Amelia Brand Anne Hathaway it is Romilly my sister who is played by David

Giasi who had played in casting choice i think he's wonderful he's very different than my sister though i mean if we're gonna base it off of her it's you're right you're right uh but he had played skinny prisoner in the dark night rises and christopher nolan was so taken with him that he cast him in this movie in between he's in cloud atlas right that's what i was gonna say but i i mean he he liked him on the set of dark knight rises i guess i don't know he's so interesting it's a really weird performance the way he plays it is so great because he's playing it like a scientist in a way that i think is uh very realistic rather than the usual like scientist in these ships these in these movies yes where they're kind of like, oh, well, you know, like, I don't know, like, the more sort of nerdy

scientist. He's someone who is so lost in thought at all times. Yes. Anytime something's proposed to him, he sort of, like, looks away and he's like, hmm, yes. You know, like, he has, he's so weird. He's very strange. He's doing something really,

really specific. I think it's so good. And it's it's like a big bet like uh but god i i don't even i know you're gonna hate this so i'm like hesitant to even verbalize this what is it i think he because he's going for such a specific emotional tapestry of how a scientist would process these sorts of circumstances. I find his performance weirdly jars with Hathaway's. Yeah, but I think...

You know, it's like it's hard to reconcile both of them being scientists in a way. Because Hathaway is an actor I like a lot. I think this is my favorite Anne Hathaway performance in her career. See, something about, I don't think there's anything wrong with her performance. Something about this character doesn't work for me.

And I still can't figure out what it is. I love her. Like watching a second time, I think the part where I don't fully get on board with the movie is something with her. Yeah. I'm tarzing on the table here. Yeah, he's tarzing away. Trying to figure it out. But

I think Nolan cast her and cast McConaughey because this is a movie that could be very, very cold and he wanted to cast two very emotional, available, accessible actors in these lead parts. And Hathaway's like an open wound. She's very vulnerable.

And that's what people who don't like her don't like about her, and those people are wrong. Okay. Yeah. But I think she is so emotionally accessible. Right. And Gaiassi is making this really interesting choice to play someone who, like,

only is able to figure things out in terms of numbers on a spreadsheet. In a weird way but i think well anyway we can't we gotta move on yeah he's sort of like more of the what we've been told are the scientists that have been sent through the wormhole already which is these people who are not really attached to anyone on earth so they don't have too much of an emotional stake in what happens yeah fucking nerds and losers yeah yeah a bunch of nerds and losers whereas she is supposedly that but she is this more sentimental choice. She's attached to her father, who is on Earth,

and she's attached to Wolf Edmonds, who's one of the scientists who already went through, who she apparently was involved with. Yes, she loves him. And so that's why I'm cool with her being a little more open. And we should say Wes Bentley is the fourth scientist uh and he exists and he's fine i think he's fine it's just i mean it was one of those things where he'd been in the hunger game so i guess he was kind of back but it was still like wow west bentley haven't

heard from west bentley in a while he's good i mean again he's pretty he's pretty chill yes uh so they're on endurance they go down for the long nap. And then they wake up. And it's time to go through the wormholes. Let me ask you. And I love that scene where Romilly is listening to the rain in his ears. Like he's listening to rain music. Oh, it's so great.

Or is it? I can't remember who's listening. I can't remember. It doesn't matter. What were you gonna say how long are they in the the nap like what i can never figure out what this movie is um how long their expedition is in their time do you know what i'm saying it would take like right now yeah it would take a couple years to get to saturn maybe three, I think they are going faster.

Because it is fast. They have a more advanced ship. I think the idea essentially is it takes them a while to get to Saturn, but just like a couple years. And then they go through the wormhole, and then where they lose most, they basically lose 30 years on the

first planet. After that, they lose barely any time at all until the movie is over. Right. Because then it's just real time. Okay. Then they're just hopping from planet. It's like weeks or months, right? Sure, sure.

But the major time advancement, obviously, is after the first planet. Yes. So they go through the wormhole. I love that scene. How do you feel about the wormhole? That's good stuff. I mean, I could just watch that. That's the shit in IMAX where you were like, oh my God.

Yeah. Kip Thorne, who is the physicist, he was very clear that the wormhole should be a sphere. Yes. Because wormholes are always circles. They're like doors in space. And they explain it thoroughly. Romilly does the wrinkle in time thing

where he folds the paper and puts the pencil through to explain what a wormhole does, which is fold space time. But the way it works, the wormhole, and you should really watch the documentaries on the Blu-ray. Where Kip Thorne would take scientific equations

and give them to visual effects people, and then they would put that through their algorithms to see what visual thing was created from it. That's cool. It's so cool. And like he was, and he was very satisfied with the black hole.

Cause he was like, I'm not sure how this is going to look. And then they showed it to him and they were like, Oh, he was like, wow, that's actually great. Like I thought it was going to look like,

but it actually looks good. You know? But so the wormholes, this is where this one, the visual effects Oscar did. Yeah, it it did it was the only oscar it won it also was nominated for the sound oscars and production design and music i think okay a lot of a lot of technoms yeah uh but they would instead of just going in they kind of go into orbit around the wormhole and then they just sort of let it overtake them and then they're just in this like sea of the galaxy that they're

entering and it's all all rumbly. And this weird blur touches Anne Hathaway's hand. She kind of shakes hands with the blur. Which they think is these beings that made the wormhole. And then what I love is rather than them exiting, the space just sort of unfolds and becomes new space. Yeah. Welcome to new space.

It's fucking nuts, man and and the silence of this makes it yeah the only music noise you're hearing is the ship like rattling right uh it's great which makes it very eerie i just get so the part where her happy talking about this her hand gets distorted yeah yeah that like i love that it's frightening too yeah and they again like nolan was just like he was like he says in the interviews and shit he's like i wasn't gonna like sacrifice cinema for the sake of making everything like perfectly scientifically accurate but i just wanted it to reflect science in a way that people often just don't bother to do which is fine too i mean like you know do what you want um but they reach reach this system that is orbiting a black hole called Gargantua.

And the black hole has an accretion disk, which is what a black hole would have, which is like essentially all the shit that's getting sucked into it. And it makes it look like this sort of ringed thing. And apparently, I just want to tell you, it's the only thing he fucked with. It's symmetrical in the movie.

Like, it's basically a big circle. Whereas the real thing would be blue and kind of asymmetrical. It looks really weird. Okay. Same basic idea, but it's like the circle is just sort of wrong. It's like big on one side and small on the other.

Here's my take on all that. And he just sort of smoothed it out to make it look a little more normal because he thinks audiences would just have been too weirded out by it. Here's my take on all of that. I like it. It looks cool.

So here they are in the new galaxy. Planet One is giving them a thumbs up. Let's go check it out. So they go down to Planet One. And you know the old adage, first is the worst. And they have all these conversations about how do we approach it

to use the least time. Because Planet One is right by the black hole. Because Makaniaughey at this point is like really on the clock he's like made my daughter promise gotta get back exactly and he's still thinking like plan a in which we solve gravity equations and like bring earth out coop is all about plan and anna hathaway's basically with him although she's less like emotional about it she's like no no i mean that's that's true we should she's also she's trying to re about it she's like no no i mean we that's that's true we should she's also she's trying to rekindle and she wants to get the wolf evidence but he's all the way up right she's all about plan e so they go to point they go to this planet and it's just

water yeah too much water now i i was like i'm bored it's wet because it's shallow too right they land and they're just they're just sort of like, oh, okay. And it's very heavy. Gravity's low. Very strong because they're near the black hole. It's a planet full of cloners. We should mention that. It is.

Yeah, it's in the Rishi maze. No, of course it is. We all know that. We should note that Dexter Jester is in charge of NASA in this movie. Yes. He runs it out of his diner. Very interesting. Oh, boy. So, this planet is terrifying, but in a way that is, again, like, unique.

That's, again, what I love about this. He finds this frightening shit in just waves up and down like that's it that's all this planet is it's just waves what i like about this movie is that all the stuff that's scary and it is scary because it is real right like he's not heightening stuff too much so it's just like oh this is just upsetting he's created like a sci-fi nightmare but in the idea of just like what if a planet was near a black hole and essentially it would just be waves. From where we actually are. No alien plants. No alien creatures. No aliens

in this movie. No animals. It's just humans and just different terrain. Avatars. And avatars. Avatar tars. Alright. So waves. Avatars.

And so, yeah, thank you. What happens at the wave planet? Big wave. TARS goes into asterisk mode to rescue Brand. Right, she's trying to get the data. Which is useless. The data just says, like, this planet is waves. Yeah, get the fuck out of here.

This place sucks. Where are the mountains? There aren't mountains. There are waves. Learn shapes, dummy. Wes Bentley dies here uh he gets drowned by the waves McConaughey is hopping mad now because they're wasting time on this planet because like every hour is seven years or something crazy like that they're wasting time they lost a Bentley we'd just gotten him back it's true he his career had just gotten right back in order

and he seemed to be doing okay and then just just right off the wagon again. That shot of him floating down there is pretty crazy when they leave. Agreed. It is

a lot. And it's just this is where he confronts Brand where he's like you fucked up. You don't know what you're doing. Like you know you didn't get that how

much of a cost there would be because they essentially by being down there for too long they uh they lose like 30 years practically so can you explain to me how and why they lose 30 years i don't i'm not smart enough about the theory of relativity to explain why it is it's just that time dilates right in in different ways the closer you are to gravitational forces. Okay. Did they know that going to that planet would cost them that much time? Yes, but they thought it was going to be seven years because they thought what would happen

would they would detach, go down, pick her up, or check out the probe, leave. But because the wave knocks the boat out, the ship out, they have to wait on the planet for an additional whatever minutes. Gotcha. Because the engines are flooded and shit. And that's just like way more time. Okay. Yeah. So when they come back to the planet, to the ship, one less person,

Romilly has been in hyper sleep, awake. He's like aged, but it's been like 30 years. This is another thing. We're talking about how they make the very weak attempt to yellow Michael Caine's hair a little so he looks younger later.

David Gassi, I would have given him a little more hair before they leave the ship. Oh, sure, sure. Right, just so he could lose some of it, but he's not been awake for all of that time. I'm aware. He has been sleeping. I'm aware. I just think because the reveal of him there and when he tells them, like, I've been here for 30 years. Yeah, right, right.

It would have been a little more affecting if he looked a little more different. Sure, I get you. Because you're looking at him and you're like, did I forget he had gray hair? You wish he was like, ooh. I don't need him to be full whatever, you know, but I just want a little bit of that shock. They come back and he is now the Six Flags guy. And Bran's like, you're so old. So, but instead of what you're talking about,

they present the emotional toll of the time lost in a video montage of all the messages they've gotten it's a lot and that's where you get the mcconaughey just breaking down as he sees his son have his whole life you also get we all know in puberty what happens to a young man is his voice raises and goes five octaves higher which is how tim yeah will do it. Yeah, it's like, hey, dad, I got a B in school. I guess I'm going to be a farmer. And then it's like, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's so, and you're totally right. The old Casey whisper. Hey, it's Coop Jr. I can't beat this thing. But he, I got to say, and it is one of those,

it's almost Malickian where you're like, oh shit, that's Casey Affleck. Like he got Casey Affleck to be on a computer screen. Yeah. Because shit, that's Casey Affleck. He got Casey Affleck to be on a computer screen. Yeah. Because all you see about Casey Affleck in First. Although, let's admit, Casey Affleck was kind of down

at this moment in his career. I'm sorry, this is coming only, what, two years after Tower Heist? I think three. I think he was riding pretty fucking high, my friend. Because he got Tower Heist. Which he rules in. Then he takes high, my friend. Because he got tower heist. Which he rules in. Then he takes a big old break.

Then he's back, baby. Ain't them bodies saints? Them saints! Ain't them bodies! And then, then, he comes out of the furnace. That's right. Ain't them bodies saints, of course, filmed in a furnace. Then he comes out of the furnace.

Do you know that that movie's about a town near where I grew up? Out of the furnace? Yeah. That's rough news, man. Yeah. My condolences. I know a lot about the people that they're based on. That's great, but I cannot give us, we can't go on and out of the furnace

but i just wanted to put that out there okay we'll go out we'll do a mailbag where we just talk about out of the furnace um so yeah i guess at this point this is five years after the oscar nom for jesse james uh longer isn't that 2007 yeah this is seven years after oh geez yeah yeah yeah this is. This is 14? This is 14. That's seven. Right. And he and Dungambe be gone in 2007,

then doesn't make a movie for three years and comes back in 2010 with The Killer Inside Me and fucking I'm Still Here. Which is why he was not acting for someone. Anyway. Yeah. So he's there. You see him. He meets a woman.

They get married they have a kid the kid dies like you're watching all this shit uh and you're just seeing it in mcconaughey's face as he like just starts crying yes it's fucking great and he's sort of alluding to the fact that coop doesn't want to talk to him i'm sorry right uh because right you also see lithko that oh that that's before where Lithgo's like, have fun in the wormhole. I tried to get her, but she's very stubborn like her dad. Yeah.

And then you hear that Lithgo died. You know, they buried him out back in the back 40. And then you think that the video's done and I don't know where he comes. Chessie, baby. Great introduction, I would say, actually. It's just like you just click to her totally white face because it's in that sort of harshly lit webcam kind of thing.

Almost like night mode kind of night vision. Exactly, and she's just like, hey, Dad, I'm as old as you now, like you said. Her best scene in the movie, no question. She kills this. And he's losing it. And then you cut back to Earth and you see now she works for NASA. Yeah. She's with Michael Caine who's in his wheelchair now being like,

oh, solve my equation soon, don't worry. And I remember everyone, there was a lot of Oscar hype for this performance going into it, I think just because of her function in the movie. And Warner Brothers had this contract where she had Most Violent Year that same year, and they said she couldn't promote Most Violent Year. We've already talked about this, right, on the podcast. Which is strange.

She's way better in this than she is in Most Violent Year. I think she's very good in both. I don't think she's good in both. I think her performance, I think she's much like McConaughey, very much working at the service of the movie. It's not a very showy performance. That's true. It's not the kind of thing that was ever going to get nominated.

I'd say other than the phone calls. We would have had to be a runaway critical success for that kind of stuff to be happening. But she is. I think about Sean Penn did this interview. Not that I usually like to push Sean Penn. But they asked him which actors he was excited by.

If he thought there were good actors coming up. And he said, Jessica Chastain, she's a fucking Stradivarius. And I think about that all the time. Anytime I see her in a movie, I'm like, yeah, she's just like, it's just like a fucking... She's a great actress. Yeah. I love her. She's a Stradivarius.

She's a Stradivarius. Yeah. So back in space, what's most important is they go there's a debate over should we go to the second planet Dr. Man

the best of all of us the king of the the leader of the Lazarus missions everyone loves him he's like the Matt Damon of astronauts let's say

exactly or do we go to Wolf Edmonds whose data was a little better but has not been broadcasting the thumbs up and also I love him

and McConaughey is basically Coop is saying to Brand like you to think about earth rather than just yourself and she has this speech love in scientific terms right where she's saying but like what if love is like this sort of definable thing that is important like in is has already been in the movie throughout because of course that's what guided him as we learn you know spoiler alert he was her ghost uh you know like the shelf ghost in the shelf you know like that like what these what we have understood about ourselves future humans have understood about past humans is that like that's what's anchoring us and helping us to survive sure

is our connections to each other yes and there's only one thing that goes through a worm a black hole gravity or is there two things gravity and love yeah netflix's love starring gillian jacobs and paul ross tars is broadcasting it on all signals when he's in the black hole people cannot get enough of love uh But they go to the second planet, which is, again, the entrance to each of these planets. Like the entrance to the water planet, where it's just like clouds, clouds, clouds, water.

And if you're in IMAX, it's suddenly like this wide screen shot. And then the second time, it's that thing where they're going through the clouds, and then, bonk, they hit a cloud, because the clouds are frozen. Pretty cool, huh? Yeah.

Frozen cloud. You don't see that every day. Cool. Try saving your files in that cloud. You're not going to upload failed. So down here. Frozen. Is Dr. Man.

They pull him out. Who is it? Matty D. Matty D. I didn't remember that he had been cast. I Dr. Man. They pull him out. Who is it? Matty D. Matty D. I didn't remember that he had been cast. I was genuinely surprised by his appearance. I knew he was in it. I was waiting to see who he was going to be,

but I thought he could just as likely be a face in a video call. I didn't think he was going to be this prominent a role. Because he could have been. I understand why they didn't want to credit him. No, no. Of course. Because it tips the hand of the movie. It's kind of like a Kevin Spacey in Seven thing.

But I also feel like he would have been the end Matt Damon. No, no, of course. Because it tips the hand of the movie. It's kind of like a Kevin Spacey in Seven thing, but I also feel like he would have been the end Matt Damon. Yeah, he would have been on the poster. The poster billing is McConaughey, Hathaway, Chastain, and Michael Caine. Which usually Nolan's rocking a lot of people. No, he doesn't let Topher in there. He doesn't let Lith go in there. He doesn't let Wes Bentley or anything in there.

Casey. Yeah, Casey. Casey at the bat. That scene where they pull him out and he's just crying is great. And the whole audience is like, Matt Damon. Matt Damon's sad. He's a good crier. Great crier.

He's a great crier. And then you cut to him in his little warm-up blanket. And now he's getting back into the Matt Damon groove and he's like, okay, steady hand. Here we go.

He's the hero scientist. That's what I love about this shit. He is, you're immediately like, okay, steady hand, here we go. He's the hero scientist. That's what I love about this shit. He is, you're immediately like, yeah, this guy, you know, he's a pro. He's a movie star,

he's a pro, we know what he's doing. He's a stable, smart man. Oh, it feels like he's the lead of his own movie that we haven't been watching, but now, okay, smooth transition.

And he's like, in my planet, it's rough, ammonia clouds, every day is 67 hours long, but we could live here. Now, even I'm thinking like, that sounds bad. You've got a lot of options.

But that is what he's got, and he blew up his robot, Kip, named after Kip Thorne. Oh, I thought it was named after Kip Pardue. Yeah, that's correct. It's named after Kip Pardue. After from Rules of Attraction. Yeah, he was in Raven. Yes, he was also in I Remember the Titans. And

the decision here, and then this is where they get the news from Chastain on Tars' body that Michael Caine has died. Yes. And we have that scene where Michael Caine confesses to her that I am dying.

I am going to die right now. He reads the poem. He recites the poem. Dying of the podcast. And he admits to her that he knows they can't It was a lie. They can't solve this gravity equation of his. They can't bring the people

Plan B, more like Plan A because that's the only plan. And that's, yeah, like that's all we got. And he dies having finally admitted it. And Matt Damon knows this too. And she's like, tell me one thing. Did my dad know? And he's like, hold on. Let me recite this poem one more time.

And then dies mid-poem. That's a great scene too though because you can see her frustration where she's like, oh, fuck, this is it. He's got the poem ready. So now she's like, double fuck my dad. Like, was he just pulling a con on me this whole time? Yep. So she's mad, and Hathaway's

mad, and McConaughey's mad, but the decision is made, okay, everyone will just stay here, this planet is habitable. McConaughey will leave. He'll go back through the wormhole back to Earth. He'll go hang out with his 50-year-old daughter. Exactly.

That's the plan. So we have this scene where they're in their spacesuits. And Matt Damon's like, all right, well, let me show you where we'll live. It's below here, even though I live up here. Definitely nothing weird about that. And, like, we'll just go down there the two of us just me and you and i love their spacesuits with the the little like jetpacky things that they can like jamaica do big jumps with uh it's also interesting that like the endurance their suits are totally white. Little, little hints of gray, but totally white. Conahe, or Damon rather, has the orange on his suit,

which is like his fucking suit in The Martian. Yeah. It's literally like a Martian colored suit. You're right. There's a little bit of orange to it. A little bit of orange he's got going on there. This scene, what are you looking up here? Well, just that, okay, I want to double confirm confirm this there is the thing that like at this point chest ain't supposed to be the same age mcconaughey is yes mcconaughey is much older than

the chest that's a good point i just looked at seven years older i thought it was 10 he's 47 she's 40 and she's 40 which is funny because he's supposed to be playing about late 30s i guess but you But, you know, whatever. Sure. But, yes, you're right. She looks that age. He looks older. He's a funny-looking guy.

He's weathered at this point. He's leathery. He's not like Russ Cole post, but he's like pre-Russ Cole. He's leathery. So. Man would make a mean beef jerky. Man, though, with two Ns. Yes. man would make a mean beef jerky man though with two ends yes has this monologue that i think every time i watch it i love it more and more i have you what do you think like essentially where he's

it seems like he's just chatting to uh coop about like the the power of the human spirit and like isn't it amazing that you're here and you're trying to help your daughter and like this is what drives humans, right? But then you realize like he's essentially describing why he's so great. Sure. It's this long bit of rationalization about like why he needs to survive and others don't. And why he has, how he has justified abhorrent behavior. What he's done, which is essentially he's been broadcasting from the planet that the planet is good when he knows it's not.

Right. Because he is lonely. He's lonely and he just was sure he would have gotten it. And he didn't. Right. And so he's led them down there to die. He should have downloaded far more podcasts before he went on the mission. He should have downloaded my check.

Like he clearly ran out. And we have over 300 hours of entertainment. Shush. I hate you you i know i love you uh love you too yeah we're the best uh two friends uh but i just i'd love that idea of like him not being evil even just like that that sort of pathetic self just not pathetic even like that yeah no it is somewhat pathetic yeah Yeah. No, like that... Like the way he has over the years thought it through to himself where it's like humans want to survive.

Yeah. And that's all I'm doing here. Yeah. He's going to get on the ranger. He's going to go up and he's going to go to the good planet. He'll do it. Right. So he kicks McConaughey.

He kicks him down a cliff to kill him. And McConaughey. He kicks him down a cliff to kill him and McConaughey fights back. He's a fighter. And he bashes his helmet and cracks it. A moment that always feels weird to me because it feels like McConaughey's trying to keep him pinned down. Right. Yes. And once he's got him in the pinned position then Damon can hit the helmet. Right. For McConaughey

to just stand up and be like okay different type of fighting. Yeah. It's true. It's true. I agree. That moment is be like, okay, different type of fighting. Yeah, it's true. It's true. I agree. That moment is a little sweaty. Because he's on top. I know. I know.

You're right. It's a little sweaty. But then McConaughey is slowly dying of suffocation. Yes. And I love, yes. And I love that man is like, I thought I could watch this, but I can't. I'm sorry.

Like, he's still justifying it to himself. He's like, this sucks. Are you seeing your family? I know you i know you will that's what happens when you die you know the part of his speech i really like is the you know i never once considered it wouldn't be the right planet right right right however he phrases it i always thought it'd be yeah this guy is such the boy scout he was like the captain america of nasa that it was like i'm gonna get the winning planet of course i am but what he

doesn't get in describing all this is that Coop will also try to survive. Like it's the thing, he's describing the way that Coop's going to beat him. And so Coop escapes or it's more like Damon escapes. He gets into the ranger and he flies up. But the robots kind of run to him

and poor Romilly dies too when Romilly tries to investigate the broken robot. Kabloom. Just like Kit Pardue's career, it is and poor Romilly dies too when Romilly tries to investigate the broken robot. Yeah. Kabloom. But yeah, just that. And then. Just like Kit Pardue's career, it is up in smoke.

And then, and then Damon's moment in the space station, in the endurance where he's still monologuing and his last line is, there is a moment. And then, because he thinks like, he's trying to dock with them.

He's done it manually. He's done it badly because they like turned off the autopilot get the fuck away from us we don't like you and he's like no no no this is important there is a moment and he's dead and he blows up half the ship yeah

god so now they're like double fucked humanity's worst enemy they're double fucked and they also each are like Makaniconaughey's like fuck i just lost like 35 years of my daughter's life and right uh and hathaway is like i just lost the chance to see the guy i was in love with right uh for this fucking homicidal mania right and also well and also there is that sort of crazy action sequence where the score is going where they're like spinning and spinning and spinning to like lock back in because

it's the only way they can stop it spinning yes which is again i feel like a cool way of like a sciencey problem yeah that's also kind of an action sequence a genuinely nauseating sequence it's awesome yeah uh but um yeah, I love where Hathaway knocks out and then her arm just suddenly goes like, because she's no longer in control of her body.

Yeah. She's just floating. But now, yeah, now they're triple fucked. Right. Yeah, I'd say triple.

I'd upgrade to triple. So the plan now is, okay, we'll just shoot Hathaway and the jizz bomb at Wolf Edmonds, the last planet, will use the gravity from the black hole

to do it. Gotta leave something behind, though. But, right, to let her go, the robots have to leave. Or what, Case. I guess TARS goes with her. Sure. Yeah, TARS goes with her. No, no, TARS goes with him. Right. Case goes with her. Case goes with her, because you see Case walking with her right at the end there yeah they're walking hand in hand

and she thinks mcconnell i think she thinks mcconnell the coop's going with her but he's not and they have the whole black hole behind the black hole scene is where they lose another 50 years practically slingshotting around it and then he goes into the black hole yes okay now this you love. I fucking love it. Now, I do feel like this loses some people. Time box? Yeah, the library Tesseract. I don't know.

Yeah. I remember just being so freaked out in the IMAX by what was going to be in the black hole. Me too. I was shitting bricks. Because there was that thing that goes black. Right. The instruments die. Yeah.

And then it's just the screen is black and then you see this like white dust. Yeah. And then it's just, the screen is black. And then you see this white dust. And you're just like, what the fuck is this? It's really alarming. And the science of it to Kip Thorne and to all these other people is like, look, we can tell you everything that we know, but we don't know what's in a black hole.

So you can really do whatever you want in there. Yeah. And inside it is a time library. I think it's so good. I was stretching his arms like P.T. Barnum showing off his latest attraction. Where he's just falling and suddenly the image of the Tesseract appears around him and the score goes wild again.

I like it a lot. It's like the entire history of this girl's bedroom like a card library where he can like start to just string through it and find the moment he wants and he's trying to get his way out of it and he's knocking stuff over and he's being a ghost right he's making impacts in the past because what has happened here is humans yes some future humans have created this thing for him to communicate with the past. Because gravity

is the only thing that goes through black holes. And if we could use gravity to communicate, i.e. by knocking books down or fucking with a watch, it is theoretically probable that you could communicate through time.

Which is cool, which is fucking great. But then the question is how gravity and love are intertwined. But then how did the future people create this? I don't know. They're the future. So they just, they're amazing.

At some point, at some point we figured out how to exist in five dimensions, you know, and like, right. But you want to exist in five. No, no, I do.

But I'm saying is, I'm saying is, is that he, he made basically our existence continue. Sure. Right. Right. But that would then say that the future people had an effect on that period of time. So how did they?

Okay. Ben, Ben, I can explain this very simply. Okay. You know, when Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Oh, hell yeah. When they don't have the keys, and then Ted's like, wait a second, we have a time machine.

Let's just remember that once we're done with this, we go back in time and place the keys here. And then they look and they have the keys suddenly. Oh, okay. And they're like, okay, let's just make sure that we come back and place the keys. And do that later. And that happens off screen after the movie's ended.

But you just have to buy that they've remembered to do it, and so it all fits together. They can use whatever technology they have to create the wormhole, to create things, like in the black hole. Which now in the future they know they have to do because it happened because he was there. What they can't do is travel through time. Right, that makes sense.

They can't just open a time portal and go to the past and be like, Matthew McConaughey should fly a shuttle. But they can use, they can harness us and our connections to each other as these like handshakes through the past to influence time. Right? And in creating the Tesseract for him, they've created this like emotional like memory palace that he'll understand yeah it's pretty tough on him though tough on him uh but that and

that they know his daughter will understand because she understands him like it's like smart that's right like that's the magic of the and the science coming together rather than the science just being like well they make a time machine and like they can move through time. He's trying to understand like, how could you make a time machine using gravitational, like relativistic physics rather than like, look, a phone booth,

which is cool. Phone booths are cool. Phone booths are cool. But is it to suggest then that fate is a thing as well? Because like he's affecting all of the different moments in the past like it's not so much fate as much as it's like i mean like we're fated to be connected to each other i don't like you know like it's not it's not like a i feel like not like a straight time loop thing where it's like that happened because you knew what would happen because you had done it in the future

or whatever but you know it's more like he it happened like her books are falling off right so it's gonna happen but it's not like he knows he has to do it right away i don't know like you know we could talk about this in circles for days you do but no but once he's there he realizes what he has to do is he has to fulfill he understands the language because he was on the other side of it. Yeah. But she, but it's more important that she understands. Well, that's what he realized. I'm not the one who was,

I'm not the one who was supposed to save the world. She is. And my job is just to communicate. All he does is communicate gravitational equations to her that she, that they can only see inside of a black hole. And the only thing that can move through a black hole is gravity. So it's the only way to communicate the equations is through gravity. He can't come out of the black hole and be like, I found a bunch of cool shit.

Or he can, but when he does, they already know. Because he comes out in the future and she's old. And Biff has taken over and now it's like, he's running a casino. He's kind of Trump adjacent. I mean, we should wrap up soon but yeah because I gotta go but

you're waiting for a train I am waiting for a train but I can you know I can go for another 10 minutes he drops out of the black hole comes out of the black hole it's the future future whoa

and he was picked up by a space station that is much like the one that brand pill I think there's supposed to be many of them now yes and this is Cooper station that is much like the one that Bran pill. I think there's supposed to be many of them now. Yes.

And- This is Cooper Station. This is Cooper Station. Named after me. No, named after your deter. Exactly. Real quick, though, I do want to say it's awesome that you figure out that it was his hand when he goes back through.

Yes, yes. Because when he goes through the black hole further, when the Tesseract closes, he goes through the wormhole and he sees them. Yeah. I love that. Now, can i throw to you excuse me can i throw to you my major complaint about this movie uh sure yeah i think this ending section is rough why do you think it's just because it's fast yes i think this is a weird example of a movie that actually needs to be a little longer hey man if this movie is three and a half hours longer i'd be pretty happy to i do think nolan is also just like we went through the black hole the audience

is so exhausted by all of that yeah that we should just wrap it up right here you know what i mean i just think there are a lot of ideas there's no patience and section i find really interesting that are really a bridge that i mean i think a lot of people had the problem especially with the scene where fucking ellen burst and put herself in hypersleep to get to the space station. And he's like, he sees her and it's an overwhelming moment when he sees her on the bed. Yes. But then he sits down and he's like,

I was your ghost. And she's like, yeah. And he's like, so what's up with you? And she's like, you should go. Right.

I don't like that. I wish there was longer, but it's hard. Uh, I think that... I think her closing monologue is great. You know, the thing she's saying when you're cutting to the images of Anne Hathaway.

I agree. I think... It's fast. I want her to die with him by her side. I just don't like that she says... You just hate Ellen Burstyn that much. You just want her to die. No, she's great. I've told you my Ellen Burstyn story, right? I don't like that she says that. You just hate Ellen Burstyn that much. You just want her to die. No, she's great.

I've told you my Ellen Burstyn story, right? I don't know. I've been in three projects with Ellen Burstyn. We've never had a scene together, but I've been in three different things with Ellen Burstyn. Which are? There was an unproduced, or rather, never went to series pilot for Showtime

directed by Tim Robbins called Possible Side Effects. That was my first real job. Oh, I never heard. I never knew you did that. Okay. Josh Lucas, Tim Blake Nelson called Possible Side Effects. That was my first real job. Oh, I never heard. I never knew you did that. Okay. Josh Lucas, Tim Blake Nelson, Alan Burson. It was a good cast. It did not go to series.

No. And then Political Animals, which I played Carla Gugino's assistant. She played the matriarch of the main family in the show, Sigourney Weaver's mother. Yeah. And so we never crossed over. We were totally different plot lines. And then she plays Kevin Costner's mother in Draft Day. That's right, she does.

She's pretty good, actually. I think she's very good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, she often gets handed these very small roles, but she's great. I was at a screening party thing, and she was there, and I went up to her, and I was like, hey, you don't know me, but I was... I've been thing, and she was there. And I went up to her, and I was like, hey, you don't know me, but I was— I've been in these things with you.

This was when I had done the first one, maybe, or the first two. And I'm a big fan of your work and this and that, and was talking to her about stuff. And I was looking for an acting teacher, and I asked her if she had any recommendations. She recommended me this woman, Elizabeth Campbell, who I've worked with for years and is incredible. And so on draft day, I was like like i should really go thank her for that and so i said hey you know you probably don't remember me but we were in uh possible side effects together and she said i've never been in something called possible side effects i said well okay you're politically animals i don't remember you and i said we weren't we didn't work together but i saw

you at a party once and you you recommended Elizabeth Kemp to me. And she went, oh, thank you. We were in the hair and makeup trailer next to each other. And I said that, and she just went, oh, thank you. And then I went back to talking to my hair and makeup guy. And I'm like chatty. I'm a chatty person. Yeah.

And so I'm talking to the hair and makeup guy. And after like two minutes, she went, Griffin? And I said, yeah. And she went, try silence. Wow. That's scary. So I got shut the fuck down by Ellen the fuck down by he did not want you talking and then there was like silence for five minutes and she was like i'm sorry i'm just trying to run

my lines i was like no it's fine i missed bursting it's fine oh my god that's amazing i can't believe that's the greatest story i can't believe it that's intense right oh my god that's that's now her best moment after alice doesn't live here anymore she beat it silence 84 year old academy award winner ellen berson told you to shut the fuck up probably one of my 10 favorite actors of all time i should say to you try silence now that'll be the new bit griffin yeah try silence try silence Try silence. Try silence. He goes off to see Anne Hathaway. Yeah. Who is on Wolf Edmonds. Wolf Edmonds is dead. But he's on his planet.

And she's settling down for the long nap. Looks good. With her jizz bomb. Looks nice. Looks sort of Marsy. I like that his old house is a museum that they let him move into. That's right. See, this is like, I want.

That scene with Tars where he revives him is fantastic. I love it. And I like him sitting on the porch with Tars. I like this whole thing of like McConaughey now not knowing

where he belongs, like being stuck between two worlds. I kind of want him to be by her side when she dies and then to have a section of the movie

for like 10 minutes of him not knowing where to go before he goes off to Bran because the idea I like is that like Bran's the only person he's ever going to goes off to Bran. Because the idea I like is that like, Bran's the only person he's ever going to be able to talk to for the rest of his life.

No one else is going to fucking get what he's going through. No, no, no. Everyone else grew up on space stations. Right. Yeah. Right. But it just feels rushed to me. I feel like it doesn't emotionally...

That's fine. I think that's a fair... I mean, I think... Yeah, that's fair. I mean, they don't even really explain the space stations, which are so cool. They are based on real theoretical things. They don't give us enough of that.

They're these centrifuges. I think the movie just needs another 10 minutes. Well, here's what I think the movie needs. What? You ready? Yeah. Sequel. Inner Stellar 2.

There is plenty of space for a sequel. Into Stellar? Into Stellar. He goes to Wolf Edmonds. There's all kinds of bullshit you can do. Life on Wolf Edmonds with Anne Hathaway. Nolan would never do it, right? No, of course not. But, I mean, and I think he really

feels like the emotional journey is completed at the end of the movie. You know, like he's told his story, but I would see Inner Teller too. I don't like that he leaves her and that he doesn't even meet the rest of her family. Like, he walks in the room and they're like here's all her family here's all her kids. I know. He just goes straight to her she's like no one should watch their child

die and he's like okay cool good point peace out and just leaves. I agree with you about the cleanness of it but I also think you already said it's like he is he's like a an alien to these people and he can't deal with that. Yeah. But anyway we have to play the box office game. And then you have to catch a train. Yeah, I'm waiting for a train.

Number one, this is November 7th, 2014. Big Hero 6. It's Big Hero 6, which opened to 56 million. Mop the floor. When Interstellar opened to 47 million

at number two. Wiped the floor with Interstellar. Big Hero 6 is a movie I saw in theaters and I had a pretty nice time with and I've never really thought much about it since.

I've never heard of, what are the, there were five others before this? No. Great joke. 50 comedy points. It won the Oscar.

It did. Oddly. Oddly. It's not a bad movie. It's sweet. It's totally fine. I'm going to stick with my same review

when I have, when it came out, Big Hero 6, more like Big Hero 2 because only two of those characters you care about. I would say like, more like Big Hero 2 because only two of those characters you care about. I would say more like Big Hero 6.5

out of 10. I'm not saying 6.5 out of 10. I know, I know, I know. I'm saying only two out of the six characters are rated. Craziest thing is Big Hero 6

grosses less worldwide than Interstellar. Interesting, but more domestically. More domestically, yes. Okay. Number three at the box office is a huge hit of the fall.

An R-rated thriller, kind of like drama thriller, that has made in six weeks $145 million and just went up from four to three. It's got a twist. So it's like really sticking around. It's got a bit of a twist to it. It's a great movie. Is it an Oscar play? twist really sticking around it is a great movie uh is an oscar play it was kind of an oscar play but it only ended up with like two nominations gone girl correct movie i love great movie we

should do fincher i know it would be as obvious as doing nolan but it would be so much fun we'll do we just gotta do a couple weird people in between but then we'll do adventure number four yeah is a horror movie that opened number one the week before that is pretty bad uh but the sequel was really great i think the sequel came out this year uh ouija ouija i still haven't seen ouija to origin of evil yeah i dug ouija too it looked so good and i just missed it it was like when i was working and i wanted 43 million it's made in three weeks. It was number one for two weeks in a row. Yeah. Number five is a movie people really have already forgotten about,

which I don't like at all. I think you liked it a little more. It's a war movie. Like a really, real dirty war movie. Oh, I don't like this movie that much. Oh, you don't? Okay, okay. I think it's kind of well-made. I think the first chunk of it's pretty okay. I think it's kind of well made. I think the first chunk of it's pretty solid. I think it totally falls apart.

Fury? Fury. The David Ayer movie. Yeah. In which World War II is twisted. Twisted. I mean, you might like it because these actors, they dirty. It's one of the dirtiest fucking movies. Okay, okay. I think David Ayer was like,

put some dirt on him. They put dirt on him. He's like,yer was like, put some dirt on him. They put dirt on him. He's like, great, now put some grease on him. Oof. All right. Grease him up. There's also that story where Shia LaBeouf was in the makeup trailer with Logan Lerman, and he's like, what? Kid, they're putting dirt on your face, huh?

Is that all you're doing? And he's like, yeah, it's makeup. And Shia LaBeouf apparently took out a knife and cut his face and was like, this is how you act. You got to live it. Well, he learned all that knife work. What a nice guy. Yeah, what a nice boy. You're right.

Thank you. Number six is St. Vincent. Not a good movie. No, you got Nightcrawler. Oh, come on. A good movie. I like St. Vincent. Okay. I find St. Vincent very interesting. John Wick is sort of hanging out on the way to its nice run. It's in the middle of its nice run.

I'm thinking he's back. Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Days beginning its Oscar run. It's platforming. That movie made $66 million. Directed by Miguel Arteta

no no it was directed by Ingmar Bergman the book of life the animated day of the dead movie yes Birdman

is platforming in there actually is platforming the worst film of 2014 it's pretty bad the judge is at number 12 oh wow

I just said the worst film of 2014 the judge is worse yeah no the judge is way. The judge is worse. Yeah, no, the judge is way worse. The judge is worse. You got The Maze Runner, Dracula Untold. Some fun ones.

Yeah. Guardians of the Galaxy is still in there. It's November. I know it came out in August, but still, that's pretty good. Yeah. Guardians of the Galaxy made $419,000 that weekend in its 15th week. That's too shabby. What a great movie. Well, Interstellar, it's David's favorite movie ever.

He wants to marry it. Yeah, I'd marry it. I would do it. So I know you have to go. Sure. I just wanted to share a final thought about this movie. Okay. So my takeaway is I think that this is Nolan's metaphor for-

It's Velcro in the background as David- Yeah, no, as David is very much leaving. Literally packs a bag. I think it's a metaphor for the artists creating art and the sacrifice that they have to make- For sure. We should mention that. Regarding their family. I would agree with that.

If you think of all these artists and geniuses over time time they have always if they have a family treated them like garbage yeah and I think that this is like a movie that really illustrates that in a really amazing way I agree that's also what the Toy Story trilogy is about that's why I like it so much I can't wait for you to treat your family like garbage to make blank check and bump

in well yes my dad he thinks I'm already doing that come on you don't see your dad Ray Tintori friend of the podcast a good friend of mine Well, yes, my dad. He thinks I'm already doing that. Come on. You don't see your dad? Ray Tentori, friend of the podcast. Good friend of mine. Last night, from when we were recording, was the Tick premiere. Yes.

And Ray went up to him and was talking about how much he likes the podcast and apparently told my father some of the things I've said about my father on the podcast. Wait, have you mentioned? I thought we cut the, oh no, we already had this. Oh, I shared this with Peter. I said, it's a little bit of my fault because I was supposed to cut it out

and I did not. Ben did say that to my father, which is how Ben met my father. And that's the premise of the new CBS sitcom in September, how Ben met your father. I had to, I had to lay it up. Great work.

Well, that has been Interstellar tune in next week for the finale of our Dunkirk yeah maybe bonus

maybe bonus we're still talking about it yeah we should talk about that off mic but Griffin's gonna go to Australia and I'm gonna go to the Hudson Valley

very similar yeah please remember to rate, review, subscribe big thanks to Andrew for running our social media accounts for Lane Montgomery for doing the theme song Pat Reynolds and Joe Bowen for the artwork check out our subreddit blankies.reddit.com

for some real nerdy shit and as always I'm just gonna go to sleep you're gonna leave and I'm gonna sleep here in the recording studio I am done. I am finished. Okay, this is going to be rough.

Gilbert Cruz suggested Rage Against the Dying of the Podcast. That was one of his. I mean, I was going to... I mean, is it too much? Yeah. Go on. What? Is it an easy layup to just do Kane again? Do you know what I'm saying?

I mean, it's an easy layup, but that doesn't mean layups are two points. Sure, sure. I've always had a hard time doing a McConaughey, and especially with my voice sounding like this today, I don't know if it'll make it easier or harder. What would be the McConaughey line? Like, it's weird. You need to look up at the sky. Yeah, I can't do it. No, dude, just do Kane. It's fine. Yeah, okay. Make it easier or harder. What would be the McConaughey line? Like, it's weird.

You used to look up at the sky. Yeah, I can't do it. No, dude, just do Kane. It's fine. Yeah, okay. Boy, this could be even worse than last time. Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave.

What the fuck am I doing? No, it's great. It's great. Okay, let me me try it again Let me try it again Do not go gentle Into that good night Old age should rave I'm fucking up the word Okay third take

I'm trying to pinpoint what it is Day night Something about the way you do it. Mic okay. Mic okay.