Blank Check with Griffin & David - Julie & Julia with Romilly Newman

Episode Date: August 2, 2020

Alas, our Nora Ephron series has come to an end! For our last ep, we’re happy we get to end on a high note and a touch of the Tucc… with 2009’s Julie & Julia. Returning to not only offer her chef expertise but share but how this movie molded her life is noted sister, Romilly Newman! We talk Meryl Streep’s Oscar nomination, why Amy Adams’ half works just as well, and why this film encapsulates Nora’s career so perfectly. Stay tuned ‘til the end for our rankings and announcement about our next series!

what is it that you really like to do? Podcast! Just one word? Podcasting? Yeah, I thought you were going to do a little monologue. Podcast! I thought I was going to do a monologue. I want to do the opening clip when you see her doing the first time Julie watches Julia on TV, but I couldn't find it. Boo! You know, I thought you'd do something like that oh yeah but i also thought it was funny

just to say podcast because her voice is so specific you can get away with it right but look look it's almost like we need another perspective we need to set up a different opening quote in a different timeline. Oh, you mean because there's like two? I cooked artichokes with hollandaise sauce, which is melted podcast that's been whipped into a frenzy with egg yolks until it's died and gone to heaven. And let me say this. Is there anything better than podcasts? Think it over. Every time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say, what is this the answer is always going to be podcasts the day there's a meteorite heading towards the earth and we have 30 days to live i'm going to spend it eating podcasts here's my

final words on the subject you can never have too much podcast um romley you're you should talk right away i have a question for you yes i guess this movie is set in the early 2000s but like does she really need to explain what hollandaise sauce is i feel like people knew what hollandaise sauce was you would be surprised david i know it's just like because of the because of the the rise of brunch in the 21st century you know i would have figured that would have brought it back. I think most people know of Hollandaise sauce, but I don't think many people know what's in Hollandaise sauce. Okay.

All right. Well, that's true. That's true. Right. She's breaking down the ingredients. Did you know that Hollandaise was egg based? Absolutely not. They tricked me.

I would never have eaten it. Well, this is the egg thing in this movie griffin i thought of you yeah guys don't get ahead of ourselves that's gonna be a 40 minute segment uh can i say just be can i ask ben one question yes you can ask ben any question technical you can say benny thing anything uh on audacity it only goes up when i talk right that's what is supposed to happen? Yeah, that's what we want. Okay, cool.

But thank you for checking in. I just want to be careful. No, it's great. Thank you. As you can tell from what just happened, which I insist we keep in the edit. Oh, boy. We are live from virtual nice.

We are Zooming. And a box of equipment was mailed to our special guest this week it was an exciting package this is the world we live in now some of our guests have their own equipment some of them need to get sent a box of ben hey a ben box it's a bin box i had been all over it that's for sure yeah it was covered in dirt we have to bury it first that's just of course you have to bury it uh it's almost like a subscription service it could be a sponsor on our show buried box bin box buried box um but here we are virtual nice and it's blank check with griffin and david i'm great that's right i'm david a clean shaven david uh yeah it's true this just happened i'm seeing bare cheeks for the first time in what

feels like forever i can't remember the last time you shaved this much probably a couple months would be my guess something like it's all putting you look like a baby i well you know this is how i looked for the first you know i don't know 27 28 years of my life like i didn't really grow a beard much until my late 20s yeah and guess what i only slid in about 27 28 years in my my chronology i know actually it overlaps you're right because i started growing a beard after my uh after a big breakup which is right when i met right when we met yeah you made a very important friendship and you went i need to commemorate this life change with a face change but that's not what this about this podcast is not about facial hair it's a podcast about

filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby i feel like my julia is getting worse you did her did you just do her once as an ad read i feel like you've done her a couple times i did her at least once as an ad read. It was the ghost of Julia Child. And the joke was that, a very subtle joke, that she already sounds like a ghost. Right, exactly. Because she's like, ooh. Right. But yes, it's clearly diminished in time.

And that's relevant because today we've gotten to the final episode of our mini series on the films of Nora Ephron. It's called You've Got Podcast. It should have been called You've Podcast. Whatever. But the sins of the past cannot be corrected. We can only atone. History is written by the winners. Yes. And to some degree, this is a movie about that. It's called julie and julia our guest today romley newman long time sister of me third time guest of this podcast yes i believe that's right three times entering the three timers club this i will say it's nice this time because the past two times I've been wildly late and have showed up in a real frenzy. Sounds familiar.

Yeah. Wait, a member of the human family behaving this way is very strange. I don't really understand. It's almost like we're the same. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I vaguely remember that, Ram. Yes, you were sort of stressed out both times. Once I had just had a driving lesson,

which was a little bit scary. I'm a very anxious driver. You're someone in the Newman family? I know. Anxiety is just, it's something I'm just starting to experience. It's crazy. People wonder why I'm terrified of cars.

Who drives in the Newman family? Our father. And now Romilly is the second one. I have a license. I'm a terrible driver. I say I'm a very good technical driver. I'm very smooth. My turns are lovely. It's just a lovely experience, but I get a lot of road anxiety. So I will have a complete panic attack when I have to switch lanes. You're exactly like my mother. My mother's a good driver, but right, if I'm like, oh, we actually have to get over to that lane in a mile because we're going to have to exit there.

It's like I'm saying to her, like, this car is about to explode. Exactly. I was driving with our mom the other day trying to go to the grocery store and it took us I kid you not two hours to get there because I kept taking the wrong exits because I was too scared to switch lanes I was always in the right lane and I would always exit um it was a real experience. You would be a good driver in like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Like in a world where the roads are open and no one else is driving, you could handle everything well. If you worked on your own pace, you didn't have to coordinate with other people moving in fast vehicles.

I'm a great driver if there are no other cars. I will say, I remember I have one childhood memory of my mother driving. She very briefly lived in LA, but other than that, she spent most of her life either in Paris or New York where there are public transit systems. So she knew how to drive from when she lived in LA and always talked about how bad she was at it. And there was one time where for some reason she had to drive my brother and I, and my only memory is her being on train tracks trying to figure out how to back up as we heard the train starting to approach the distance truly truly like it wasn't like an

immediate threat but there was like the ding ding dinging happening and i think that is truly the last time she ever got behind the wheel of a car. Actually, I have one more recent story. I was probably about 10 years old, and I was going to a sleepover at a friend's house. I was 10 minutes away, and I begged her to drive me. Really? So it was a whole thing. I didn't know this happened. By the way, our mom is very short.

She's my height. Tiny lady. She was like, you know, barely could see above the wheel. She's a small, right, short woman. She's a petite woman. And we're like three minutes in and I'm like, wow, this is going really well. I'm sitting in the back seat. I'm like, I'm going to get to the friend's house.

It's going to be great. And all of a sudden we hear a cop car behind us. They pull her over. The guy comes out of the car and says, ma'am, I just want to tell you, driving too slow is just as dangerous as driving too fast. That's so funny. It's a fair point. I'm going to have to escort you to where you're going because there are 15 cars behind you. Oh my God.

She was driving so slowly. They were like, we cannot allow this. This is how cursed our family is with driving. And my father's the opposite. Like my father, it's like the car becomes an extension of his jittery body. Yeah.

Yeah. He'll be switching lanes back and forth with no signals like in and out. I was always my, my mom, like we said, my mom is sort of, she's a fine driver, but she is, she's anxious about changing lanes. She hates a merge. She's really afraid of merging onto highways, like things like that. You know, she gets overly anxious about these things. So I always assumed, Oh, that's what I'll be like as a driver.

And then I wasn't at all. Like I am a completely different driver from her. Well, but, but David, that's what i'll be like as a driver and then i wasn't at all like i i am a completely different driver from her well but but david that's also it it's it's such a different scenario with your mother because you lived your entire life in london she was driving on the opposite side of the road you did the bit right good job and to new york i finally fucking got it as you remember beginning of thisies, we established an inverted bit Romilly in which now my memory is flipped to thinking David only lived in London and never New York.

And after setting it up, I have fucked it up in every episode following. I finally landed it. A little bit of closure on the end of the miniseries. But yes, he is Uptown Davidson. I actually, as you said, I finally landed it a little bit of closure on the end of the miniseries but yes he is Uptown Davis right I actually as you said

grew up in London and although my early years were in New York City but I did learn to drive

what thank you taxi I did learn to drive in England so yes I learned on the other side of the road and all that and I learned on a stick because you to drive in England so yes I learned on the other side of the road

and all that and I learned on a stick because you have to in England basically have to that's my number one fear well it's not my number one fear because I wouldn't have to drive in England but I want to move to London and I just feel like

I just got my driver's license and it's this newfound freedom well not to honestly I got it six months ago And, and I just feel like I just got my driver's license and it's this newfound. Well, not, not to, I honestly, I got it six months ago, but it feels like I just got it cause I've driven twice. Yeah. Um, but having to, I could never learn how to drive on the opposite side of the road. Um, it's weird. Uh, I feel like I had to basically just forget it.

Yeah. I feel like I would immediately have to just not be a driver it's worth saying just in terms of uh how how much the entire uh world has flipped on its head uh you were explicitly trying to move to london at the beginning of this year you were trying to do a reverse sims bits aside wow it was yeah and when we were scheduling this episode originally in my mind it was like because we planned several mini series ahead very often so we knew we'd be doing this we knew roughly when the episode would record and i remember thinking like is this gonna have to be our second ever zoom record because romley will be in a different country or will we have to time

it back to like her coming back to visit or something? I remember talking to you about that. Right. Then the entire world flipped on its head and you are in fact now are like 15th consecutive zoom record. Yeah, no, I,

there are so many things I've sent so many emails, which now look ridiculous being like, Oh, sorry, I can't do that thing in August. I will be in London. Yeah. You at the beginning of this year were like trying to sort out passport stuff and like find a job to work in London. Yeah. Yeah. But I will say I've never wanted to move to London more.

It's a lovely city. Where would you want to live in London? I don't know. I mean, I'm trying to figure out now my desires are very different now than they were before. Like really? Yeah. Yeah. You feel like your perspective on the world has changed in the last four months? Just, just a little bit. I don't know about you, but five months ago I was like, I'm going to go there. I'm going to get a job. I'm going to become the next Nigella Lawson. Hopefully fingers crossed. Like I had this whole master plan. the next nigella lawson hopefully fingers crossed like i had this whole master plan i'm gonna touch everything suck up everything right right i'll casually be near people it'll be great yes and now i really just if i can go hopefully uh i would kind of just like to either

work in a restaurant or go to cooking school and just like really ride it out. Just feel it out. Your idea was kind of to do a little bit of the Julia Child thing, like to do like an intensive enroll and spend like six months at least really, really just studying food. Yeah. But now it's a little more like I'll do anything now. Yeah. I just realized France must be having such a tough time coping with corona

because of the double cheek kissing sure all that's out like we think in america about like our loss of like you can't shake hands anymore it's like france they were hugging they couldn't stop kissing each other all over the faces in england it's one kiss but in mainland europe you do you do too right and france was like hold my wine i bet they're still doing it when yeah they probably are with masks maniacs i mean i uh when i remember when i was a teenager or even younger like i get no comedy points for hold my wine i'm sorry to go back on this that was funny i'm sorry i was trying to say something it wasn't laugh out loud funny that's why i asked for a point that's when the point comes into play when it's not laugh out

loud funny but you want to respect the craft throw me a point okay you get two good ones i just remember and now this this is the reason i didn't do that because now this point is totally lost but the cheek kiss the single cheek kiss at the british greeting i would watch adults do that and be like there's some rule to this that i don't understand like there's some way that they know exactly how to do it and like someone's gonna have to teach me this because this is clearly a very grown-up thing right no every time i i see a french person they try to do that with me it uh and they're always trying to do it with me just attack they're always trying to grab you kiss you the worst thing i've

ever done not the worst thing i've ever done but i've uh accidentally kissed people right in the mouth yes i've done the exact same thing because it's like the equivalent of being in a hallway and then you like try to sync up we're like oh i'm gonna go one way you'll go the other way and then this is what i feared when i was a kid i was like i'm gonna hit it i'm gonna hit the wrong spot i'm gonna get him in the nose absolutely i have kissed so many of my mother's friends on the lips by accident because they're fucking horny as shit these french people a whole country of sims trying to smooch all the time.

I do love it. But yeah, well, Rom, I see you, you know, I see you near my old stomping grounds. I see you in like South End Green, just, you know, going to the bookstores, going to the restaurants. I can just imagine it. I love, I mean, most people say to me when I tell them that I want to move to London, they're like, oh, but there's nowhere with worse food than London. Oh, that's bullshit. It's bullshit. They're actually really, really, really good restaurants in London.

And also I love the drinking culture, obviously. They do. They do love to drink they need to drink to have any kind of human interaction and i love them for that they've already opened the pubs they need to it's a need it's a part of life it's it's that it's how they have conversations about things that aren't the weather i know this is very grossly stereotypical of me but it's true this is like mildly depressing but i've always i'm like that i guess it's because our mom like is like that as well although she doesn't drink that much but um i definitely need alcohol to loosen up um and so yeah when i go there i'm just like right on the same page and that's probably when i realized that i wanted to live there when i was like we all would meet for dinner

and be really uptight and then 30 minutes later, like laughing and having the time of our lives. It is funny how COVID has turned now that things are starting to reopen most American cities into something more closely approximating British pub culture, where it's all these like bars spilling

out into the street with people drinking and yelling loudly. Like that used to be something that did not happen and now it's every bar. Yeah. But you know,

this movie's not set in London. No, it's not. It's set in Queens and in Paris. Long Island City, this mystical land. It's a period piece about the first settlers in Paris. Long Island City, this mystical land, it's a period piece about the first settlers

in Queens. It is funny that's the character introduction. This yuppie dared cross the East River and not to Brooklyn. They're losing their minds at the idea of like,

they might as well be moving to like a mountain in the top of the Himalayas. It's just like, they're moving to Ra's al Ghul's lair in Batman Begins. If you ever watch the pilot

episode of will and grace which i believe aired in 1998 i'm sure it holds up perfectly yeah right exactly uh well the premise is partly that it may be the second it's a very early episode is that uh i think either will or grace i believe grace is gonna move man maybe it's will who who can say with those two uh is gonna move to the borough hall stop on you know in brooklyn heights insane and the other one is like i'll never see you this is a fucking outrage like you can't move there that's like the tropics like you know how will i even get there you want me to go one express stop into brooklyn where do they live? Downtown?

Where does it? No, they live on the Upper West Side. I feel like all those like, you know, mad about you. You know, I guess friends was a little different friends. They lived in the village, but mostly, you know, Seinfeld mad about you. Will and Grace are on the Upper West Side. Wait a second. How would you know that?

I got I'm uptown Davie Sims, man. I'm from Amsterdam. Stand clear of thetown Davy Sims, man. I'm from Amsterdam. Stand clear of the closing doors, please. All right, that's enough of that. This movie, Julian Julia, is about Paris and about New York, and it does feel like such a relic of a different film industry that you can tell they actually shot in both locations. There's certainly a fair amount of, of,

uh, I I'd say, um, uh, soundstage in this movie. Yeah. But now they would be like, you get one day in Paris, maybe.

Right. There's, there's a good amount of both. It gives you a lot of production value. I think it's a thing we've talked about a lot with Nora is like how much this type of comedy thrives on strong locations as much as it strives on like chemistry between actors i mean going back to harry met sally you know it's kind of a kind of crucial for all her hits this is my life sleepless you know um even the ones that don't work like have a sense of place like mixed nuts really feels like a real sense of like you know the

this sort of uh the midwest yeah yeah baron americana but i feel like she's at her best where it's a place she understands and that's why the you know the new york movies obviously work and sleepless in seattle i guess well that's a little different but i mean i guess she really knew her way around a houseboat yeah um rombly uh you you should do a little different, but I mean, I guess she really knew her way around a houseboat. Yeah. Rombly, you should do a little table setting here, because this is one of the most influential movies of your entire life. Yes. Upon rewatching it, I realized how many things I actually learned from this movie. I'd also say just hearing you talk on this podcast and I'm realizing that you have

a certain Julia Child lilt in your voice that comes out sometimes and I wonder. Yeah I have I have a very weird voice and a lot of my friends make fun of me for occasionally having a trans Atlantic accent. But sometimes you like go into this like slightly higher. And there's a video of me from when I was younger on a cooking show and it is full Julia Child. And like no one stopped me and said like, Romley, this is not how you talk. They probably thought it was adorable. They were probably like, it's like a little Julia Child. But it's your version of like the Ryan Gosling fake Brooklyn accent. Like it's just become your voice now.

Yeah. Yes. And I'm like, you put the tarragon in the queue. You do that. Yes. Yes. I do that all the time. And I don't even notice anymore, but it's definitely something that I've picked up.

This movie has been incredibly influential. And I actually, before I saw this movie, i didn't know that much about julia child and so this was kind of my introduction to julia child to blogging to that level of cooking all of it did you see it in theaters did you you saw it on release david david i assumed i just wanted to make sure that's a foolish question david because you must have been if i can do the math you were like 11 or 12 years old yeah yeah yeah she she lined up she was sleeping outside the theater like before the release of phantom menace she set up a tent she was waiting for the box office to open they assumed she was there for twilight or whatever and she was like no baby it's julian julian for me

yeah did i see this with you griffin no i saw this separate from you i want to say i think you probably saw it with our mother yeah and i was i remember i was really really hungry after and i like my brain would not stop working like i was up all night just like the wheels were turning i was hungry hungry. I was thinking about everything. I was just, it was a real turning point in my 11 year old life. Well, I have a very specific memory. You, you had already been cooking for a number of years at this point. And as you revealed to me only fairly recently, the reason you first got into food is because our mother wouldn't let you watch the Disney Channel because she thought

it was shitty. And you wanted to watch High School Musical and all the things that your friends watched so you could relate to them. And Food Network used to be one channel away from Disney Channel on the Time Warner cable box in New York. Disney Channel was 49 and Food Network was 50. So Food Network was your cover. Like Food Network was the history book you placed on the outside of Mad Magazine so that when our mom came in the room, you could switch back to Food Network and act like you were just really into Food Network now.

And then it seeped in and you ended up getting really into food. Yes. And I remember I was really, I thought it was very embarrassing that I watched the Food Network. And once I was talking to a friend and she was like, oh, you know, sometimes it's kind of weird, but I watched the Food Network. And I was like, what? You watched the Food Network? And it was

all of a sudden this girl was like my favorite person because she also watched the Food Network. But it really was something I kept secret because I thought it was like, oh, that's really boring. That's what moms watch. Like i shouldn't tell people and obviously i would like very uh diligently switch back to disney channel because i needed to like be able to quote movies to my friends of course you had to know the lyrics to uh breaking free is that the name of the song we're breaking free yeah i think so yeah flying, there's a heaven we can achieve. All right, all right, because Rick Free. I got to brush up on my high school musical. I have this very specific memory of showing you the Julie and Julia trailer when it went up online.

Because you were already so in the tank for Meryl. Obviously, your other big canonical movie, uh, uh, previous guest appearance, Devil Wears Prada had come out a couple of years earlier. That was your favorite film. Uh, and Mamma Mia had also come out. So Meryl was like your number one. You were also really into Amy Adams. Those were like two people who you were seeing all of their movies. And I was like, Oh, there's a new Meryl Streep, Amy Adams movie with a trailer. It's about food. You should watch it. And we sat there and you watch the trailer like in dead silence. And then I said, you know, it's a real story. And you went, yeah, Julia Child. I know she's a real person, like very condescendingly. And I was

like, no, but the other part's a true story too. And your eyes opened and you were like, what do you mean? And I was like, it's a true story. This woman wrote a blog. And then you were like, and then what happened? And then I was like, and then it got popular. And you were like, what do you mean? And I was like, it's a true story. This woman wrote a blog. And then you were like, and then what happened? And then I was like, and then it got popular. And you were like, and then what happened? I was like, and then it turned into a book. You were like, and then what happened? And I was like, and then they optioned the book

and they turned it into a movie and Amy Adams is playing her. And here it is, right? Oh, interesting. And you walked away and half an hour later, you walked back to the computer I was sitting at. And you went, I'm thinking I should maybe start a blog it was that direct and you started a blog like the next day before the movie had even come out is your blog still online yeah yeah it's because you took down most of the videos right yeah that's unfortunate the videos are gone the videos

were very Julia Child-esque um but the posts are still there and i actually tried to do a julie julia thing where i would cook the recipes from julia child's book and i like three posts in i'm like i just can't do this yeah and but but the posts are absolutely ridiculous rereading them i meange is absolutely going to retweet your blog. Wait, what's the blog? Now I want to look at it.

Little Girl in the Kitchen. Littlegirlinthekitchen.blogspot.com Of course. Oh man, if anyone ever found my blog spots, boy, oh boy.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's embarrassing in a way that it's only embarrassing. No, like people who read it are like, this is unbelievable. No one's like, oh God, that's embarrassing in a way that it's only embarrassing. No, like people who read it are like, this is unbelievable.

No one's like, oh God, that's embarrassing. But I was very precocious. I still am, but I was very precocious. But you had a YouTube channel too, where I used to film the videos with a flip camera in our New York City kitchen, which was literally a hallway. camera in our new york city kitchen which was literally a hallway like uh the apartment we grew up in was so poorly laid out because the building was originally a hotel so the kitchens

were like not designed for full use uh and i would i would film you in there and you would have to wear uh our mom's high heels in order to reach the kitchen to be able to cook and then when you were in high school you got self-conscious and you deleted all the videos which is a big yeah yeah i um someone was like i found your videos and like immediately that night i went and permanently deleted all of everything yeah yeah there was the the line we always used to make fun of though make fun of the line we always used to quote which was so good was the one where you were teaching risotto and you said parents don't be afraid to feed your kids risotto risotto is not scary i like risotto although i do have a pretty advanced palate wow but it was that you were always like talking to

parents about how to feed their kids better. Being like, look, these kids. I know I would always talk as if I was not a child. Right. As if you are like another like mom in the kitchen being like, you know, every day I'm trying to find something to put in front of them. I swear to God, though, Romley would do that when she came home from preschool. She'd be like, oh, my God, these kids at school are so crazy i uh risotto risotto that's how you say it in this country correct yes because that is the one word i have never been able to shake my english upbringing i say

yeah and and weird i say it involuntarily and people laugh at me. And even when I'm like, I'm going to say the word and I'm like, in America, they definitely say risotto. I still usually have to be like risotto, right? Like I have to get in your head at the last second. Someone just like with you guys, you had just said it. And I had already forgotten. Cause I'm like, that's not how you say you say Rosado. Um, and, uh, we've never,

we never talked about this at the podcast before. It's the one that I is, you know, when I was an American kid living in England, there were words that I would say that I couldn't like erase. Like usually I try to just say the, I would say aluminum and they would mock me. I would say eraser and they would mock me like instead of

rubber mostly instead of rubber yeah you mostly i would just say the english words because i didn't want to deal with the hassle of them them being amused but there were a few where i just could not get on board vitamin like they were just somewhere i'm like i i can't i can't say it and now it's the other way i have to say say Rosado. That's so weird. The hassle of them being amused. I cannot imagine someone getting that much enjoyment out of the idea that you grew up in a different place than where you currently live. You just, you cannot imagine. That feels so juvenile.

Four English school children going like, To make that into a sport. Yeah. God, I'm so sorry people treated you that way. It's also amazing how many times I said eraser in my teen years versus post-college you know what i mean like like how often do i say eraser anymore was the schwarzenegger movie called rubber in the uk uh no it was called eraser did david lynch

make rubberhead all right all. I could do this all day. So yes, this was a very influential movie for you. By the time it came out, you were already doing these things. You were doing your YouTube videos. You were doing your blog. And then you kind of went Julia Child crazy after this. But your Meryl fandom was already in full swing. Your Addams fandom was already in full swing. Your Addams fandom was already in full swing.

Yes. When I watched it originally, obviously my takeaway was all this amazing food, the blogging. And now my real takeaway is this is a movie about nice relationships. Men being nice. Yes. It's that.

But it's also a movie about like, I mean, this maybe is too hot to take, but like trying to like return to normalcy and domesticity after a terrible thing. Yep. Yes. You know,

after the war and after nine 11, like I just completely erased in my brain that this was a post nine 11 movie that opens basically with a shot of Ground Zero. Yeah. It really is a movie about husbands being supportive and loving and just all. I mean, it's like, you know, it's the opposite of Dove Wars Prada. I keep like when I was watching it last night, I kept waiting for the moment where Amy Adams' husband was going to be like maybe you should

stop this blog like pay more attention to me and it just never happens he's always lovely and supportive right and then stanley tucci is number one husband goal ever like in this movie in the entire world this is the most the third the most raw sexually magnetic performance ever given like he is so incredibly hot i mean like we've been building to this performance watching right right this whole podcast ever since ben said touch of the two every time we get a we've been building to this performance this was the one where we're like why isn't he in every single film and of course the weird irony that this was the year he got an oscar nomination it was for the wrong movie it's so wild he only

has the one nomination it is so pointedly wrong it feels like they gave it to him because everyone advanced sound said like oh that sounds like an oscar role and he was so overdue that even when people saw the movie and the whole thing was a catastrophe they still gave him nomination as you always cite there's the moment in that oscar ceremony where they play the clip from the lovely bones and when they cut back to him in the audience he winces having watched the clip he gets a far superior performance the same year he should have gotten the nomination for both this and devil wears prada like the two merrill movies he should have been his slam dunk career nominations yes And he should have gotten the nomination for spotlight.

Uh, spot. Yeah. But the thing about spotlight is you can at least say like, well, there are so many good performances in that movie. That's really tough. But you also know that I think he's the best one in that movie.

I, it's so funny that you think that, and I think that Michael Keaton is the best. I know it's given that he's your favorite actor. Yes, but yes to cheat incredible. Ram is right. This movie like those those relationships are at the core, you know of both stories like as much as the food and the sort of falling love, but also then they're like their movies about like, you know, the sort of hassle of female entrepreneurship right right? In both cases,

there's a lot of brilliant stuff going on in this movie that I just like ignored when I, when I saw it, I had the same take as everyone else, which is like the Julia child stuff is pretty great. Amy Adams with their blog, like get over it lady. And I saw this in 2009 and I feel like everyone had a lot of people had the

same reaction. I'm sure you can confirm Griff where people are like, our life's fine like what's she so stressed out about like and now you watch this movie and you're like this is a movie about what has happened to this generation basically thank you okay well we'll get to this i think that's a big part of it and i also think you need the contrast because she's making a larger point about how career arcs are different right now uh and also and how we change how a writer develops yes all that sort of stuff i think all that stuff is like much like you've got mail it seems insane that she was that prescient like considering that ahead of the curve yeah she was in her 60s uh we're like late 60s when she makes

this movie it's like it is crazy that this is a weirdly finger on pulse movie in some ways considering that yeah yeah and at the time i think people were like why is she making a movie in which this blogger is put up on the same level as julia child and that's what pissed a lot of people off but in reality it's like she's not trying to put them on the same level she's not trying to say their experiences are equal she's trying to show a study in contrast between the two things if she wanted them on the same level there would not be a scene in the movie where she is told that julia child probably thinks her blog exactly is bullshit thank you thank you and we'll get there i love that that's a master it's very important you have to include it it's but like it would have been easy for them not to but i was looking at the av club review

which gave this movie a c by and large this movie got good reviews even the people who were like the merrill stuff's much better it got like b reviews like it got you know it got a lot of like yeah it's pretty good it's a late summer charmer it's fine right right uh you know and merrill got the nomination but it wasn't really in the conversation for anything else even though it should have been arguably uh i mean i think this absolutely should have gotten adapted screenplay supporting actor uh and then you know score and costume i would argue but But anyway, the AV Club review is like really angry at the inclusion of the Amy Adams stuff. They're like they botch what could be a very good Julia Child biopic. And if Nora Ephron wanted to make a Julia Child biopic, she would have made a Julia Child biopic.

It's not like that opportunity didn't exist for her. That book had existed for so long. There were so many accounts of her life. This is very specifically the story she wants to tell. It's a very clever work of adaptation because you're taking two entirely different books and trying to make a greater point by putting them side by side.

Well, also, like, imagine the Julia Child biopic version of this movie, because this movie's two hours long. So the Julia Child part, let's say, is an hour of it. It's probably a little more. I feel like it's a little heavier on her, but let's say it's an hour. You can attack another 45 minutes.

This tells the story just fine. I guess you would tack on the sort of like, and then she was a TV star, that part of it. But David, what's the story they're telling this is another thing we cover biopics on this podcast i feel like you and i are in agreement that a good biopic isn't actually a biopic it is a movie featuring a real person as the lead character because biopics so often feel the need to go from birth to death the birth to death biopic is almost impossible to pull off. It's also just not how dramatic stories are told.

Dramatic stories are about someone going through a specific period of their life or an incident or something like that. Their life through one prism, through one theme, through one set period of time. This movie is very specifically about two women on the exact same journey, which is how do you get to writing your first book, which is such a Nora thing. It's how do you figure out what your voice is as a writer? And it's also how do you figure out your life experience and how to translate that into writing? What do you have to say that no one else can say? Or what can you say differently than anyone else can? That is so fucking Efron, you know, for someone whose career was being a writer in so many different mediums you know establishing different voices autobiographical applying her interest to other people's stories adapting other people's works writing fictional things i mean she had done so

much but you also talk about the fact that like her big breakthrough is heartburn which really propels her to the next level and i i think about this movie in much the same way i think about like prairie home companion where it's a perfect final film not because it's their best movie but it is such a great final statement on their career and their life in terms of how many of the pet themes it comments on and what kind of perspective it has on them. And if you go like Heartburn's the beginning, it's entirely autobiographical. It's Nora Ephron trying to figure out how to turn her suffering into a story,

which she then does in a book and then in a movie, right? Sure. With Meryl Streep as her avatar, who she never works with again. Silkwood was before or after? It's a good question. She never directs until this. So there's a perfect full circle thing

on that, right? That her career starts with Meryl, writing for Meryl, ends with her directing Meryl. But also that her current is all about her disastrous second marriage coming off of a bad first marriage. And for the last 20 years of her life, she was in a really good marriage. She talks about that. She finally found the peace with like a supportive husband who wasn't competitive, who had his own career and didn't feel threatened by her and like was loving.

And this is very much, as you said, Romilly, her like retort to I want to make a movie that shows that you can have a good marriage that, you know, so often female driven comedies are either romantic comedies where the romance getting to the wedding, whatever it is, is the end goal. Or it's a female career driven comedy in which the conflict usually comes from the man being threatened by how much she's focusing on her career.

Right. It's a movie about having a balanced life. Right. Right. And it's also about like, men don't have to be assholes. Men don't have to be threatened by a woman being successful. It is.

It's, it's sad how crazy it is, but it is crazy to watch a movie where husbands are like, Oh, if that's what you want to do, then you should do it. And I'll support you no matter what. And they do support them no matter what.

I mean, it's crazy that that's wild but it is movies so often have to make the husband feel threatened and emasculated and this movie is just like you know and Stanley Tucci is like totally okay with his like slight femininity I feel like you know his character has a total feminine side and like that's why it works well that's what makes him god tier and it's also why it's such smart casting to carry him over from devil wears prada both because you know he and meryl work well together but yes well there's and there's the scene where they're like are you a homosexual and he's like like like the way he

rolls his eyes where he's like that's you guys you guys just don't get it. You think I haven't heard this before? Right, yeah. But you know, like, obviously, too cheap, huge standout, important, god tier. Messina is doing such quietly stellar work. Oh, Messina is great in this movie. I mean, as you said, Ron, he is like, or whatever, his character is the good version

of the Devil Wears Prada character. Because they even look a a little like i don't know like they do have like similar vibes and just like starting this movie i forgot if he was an asshole or not obviously it might like i immediately went to oh i bet he feels threatened by her and he's just like lovely without it being overbearing he's just like consistently supportive and loving and it's just like it just seems like a very healthy relationship and their big fight is entirely reasonable yeah it's like an actual couple fight as opposed to like the insane shit that happens in rom-coms and then he comes back and it's just like it's it's good it's good yes uh i also i feel like i'm you saying

that you forgot it i feel like over the last bunch of months as we've been covering these movies and even when i was telling people we were going to cover nora affron and like you know would would share like opinions on movies with people they would always say like the thing david you were saying that most people say of just like but the julia side is so much better than the julie. And I hate all that shit with the husband being an asshole. And it's literally that like people in their minds, I think remember his character being Adrian Grenier because they can't imagine that this type of movie

wouldn't have that be the central conflict. Like people correct it into their heads to the worst version of it because it still seems progressive that 11 years ago she made a movie where that wasn't the conflict the conflict is finding your voice as a writer yeah yes it is and finding or having the confidence in yourself as a woman uh you know to that you are like whatever that you what you have to offer is of value yeah you know what i mean find your thing and get good at it and and feel proud about it yeah right um and christmas dina does not actually look like adrian

grenet i don't know what it's talking about they have similar coloring they have similar coloring and like i don't know it's just like the apartments feel similar they're kind of small and dark kind of melded them together and thought of them as one yeah character yeah they both have kind of like short king energy i actually don't know how tall adrian grenier is let's find out short though right apparently grenier is listed at 5'10", so maybe knock an inch off that. Messina is definitely short. Messina is listed at 5'9", which means he's 5'2". Messina especially

has short king energy. I also just think Messina is so good at this type of role, which is so hard to play of just nice, decent guy. We always talk about that. That's the hardest thing to play when there's nothing dramatic to hang on to. and it's clear from a lot of the pics that messina makes that he likes playing weird fucked up oddball people like live by night and like birds of prey he loves playing

like fucking scumbags but it speaks to his skill set that he also is very good at playing these types of fully normal support roles without feeling like he's mailing it in. What other movies? Okay, thank you, Ramli. Exactly, yes. Like, where is he? Because this is when he is starting to just pop up all the time. He obviously, as we Well, as we noted,

he is in You've Got Mail. Yes. He plays a salesman at Fox fox books you know oh yeah yeah yeah he's got one scene but it's nice to see him like have this quiet arc of going from a day player to you know key supporting character yeah and then you know i feel like he'd done like he'd done you know mostly like arty indie 2000s movies yeah and then like right now yes vicky christina barcelona away we go greenberg can a pool overflow yes a pool can overflow these are all his role roles i run out right he's popping up supporting actor yeah wait

yes yes yeah right because that was him like as like romantic lead for the first time and it was like a small kind of indie hit but i feel like that functioned as his audition reel for other people to start giving him bigger roles can a pool overflow that's a pool can overflow that's my favorite bit of green greenberg good movie erlich turned me on to that to that specific bit he used to say it to me all the time but yes he's he's so good and yeah he's a dude who like started acting in the 90s he's in rounders like he's of the generation of like affleck and damon it took longer for him to pop but part of that is that he is just such a good support dude celeste and jesse ever i'm looking at some of these other

things he also he got stuck on mindy project no offense i'm sure he enjoyed being on it and like you know it's nice to be on a tv show blah blah but you know what i mean like he was kind of like you know i feel like that probably took up a lot of time absolutely this type of role he's very much playing this part on the mindy project yeah he well he's a little more of a like hey well i'm a guy i got a trip on my shoulder about it you know like he's got a little more of that energy in it but definitely yes in terms of his function within the story i mean to say yes i just feel like you compare him to the ruffalo rom-com roles right when he did his run where he got stuck in sort of rom-com purgatory and ruffalo you could always tell was not super engaged being in those movies.

But he could do it, right? He could do it, but it always felt like, man, Ruffalo's not punching at full weight. Whereas when I see Messina in these roles, I feel like he's using his full intelligence as an actor, even though you can tell he prefers to do the weirder shit. And he's just very egoless. He just wants to support. He's a company player. He's so good. It's a great performance.

Now, can we talk a little Adam's context? Streep, I feel like we've covered a lot of, and this is just very much her being in her run of box office dominance. This is sandwiched in between Devil Wears Prada and It's Complicated,

both of which we've talked about. But this is when she's had... Yes, but I'm saying those two movies we've covered. She really... She does such a good job at this. It's really amazing how spot on this performance is. It's also fascinating

how much she threads the needle of... This is the first time in her career this run from like 2006 to 2016 roughly or whatever where she like becomes a box office star for the first time she makes very mainstream movies and she establishes like a Meryl Streep movie star persona which I feel like prior to that her persona was she's a chameleon she just disappears the accents and of course she's still in that but like everything you're saying is accurate i just wanted to note that when i tweeted about this movie some people were my mentions being like i mean mostly you see the people saying more like ah the amy adams parts kind of

leaden yeah but like some people were saying like meryl's over the top like that's and i'm like have you seen julia child excuse me that's the thing i think it's like just the right level absolutely because that's exactly how julia child acted julia child was over the top that was her personality and she's almost doing the sean connery thing too where it's like people came because they want to see a Sean Connery movie. Don't get too far away from Sean Connery. Let's not get too subtle Meryl. She's doing the voice but she's also like

bringing in a lot of like the Meryl comedy shit at this point. She's got a lot of her mannerisms which she's really started to hone in on for her sort of comedy leading lady career. Have you guys ever watched the Julia like shows on TV on like oh yes on pbs sure not honestly not consistently because i guess i don't know like i guess i was sort of well

whatever i was too old for them in real time and but like i've seen many of them in real time you're never too old for deletion exactly I should just do it I just remember how striking they were and how lo-fi they looked and like the tonal the warm tonal like quality of it it was mesmerizing as a kid she was so fucking weird

such a character as a kid it was very soothing when it was on right this movie like I think Julia Child, she's just such an iconic figure, but this movie makes you really think like, this is a really fucking weird woman in a great way. But like,

I mean, but it's like her whole persona is so odd. And that's what obviously. Pause, pause, pause, bad news, card full.

Give me five minutes to dump the card. And then start a new recording. It just happened, I think. Your cable TV is experiencing difficulties. Please do not panic. Resist the temptation to read or talk to loved ones. He purposefully comes downstairs to make an appearance. And then after, I was like, what was appearance and then after i was like what was

that about and he was like the people love me i read the comments the people love me i mean here's the thing he's not wrong i know that's that is the problem i need to find love him i need to find it but someone in the blank check reddit started a thread of memes of peter newman no showing up in the comments of instagram live shows i keep wanting wanting to be like they don't love you get out and it's just not the proof is in the pudding the problem is he's absolutely right they love him i know he just is a ham for the they love it he's doing the backstroke in the river of ham okay now i'm recording apologies apologies apologies okay amy adams let's talk about amy adams now here's amy adams before julie and julia okay guys obviously there's her early she's a young person

dropped at gorgeous psycho beach party cruel intentions to that one buffy episode catch me if you can i feel like one smallville episode catch me if you can was supposed to be her breakthrough and then yet still it's like when she's in junebug three years later it's still kind of like who's this you know like there's still that element but after that of you know she's in paladine for junebug yes right she should have won and and absolutely absolutely agree but the other thing that happens ischanted was like so many bigger stars in the running. And I think Disney made the binary decision of, fuck, she's good. And also the premise is so money in the bank.

We can make this movie at a much lower budget if we just hire her and let the premise be the star. Who else was in the running i forget but i remember it being surprising that she got the role like deadline because it must have been right off of junebug right it was and they were like she's like an indie actress who like got an oscar nomination for a movie no one's seen it seemed like a weird choice and people forget that patrick dempsey is above the title in that movie. Like he was the one that used to sell it. She was not.

Oh, McDreamy. You see what they did was they took the word muck. Okay. MC. And they put it in front of a word that means like handsome. This is what they dared to do in the mid 2000s. No one had ever thought that that would be possible. That someone could be muck dreamy

yes no i get it and then there was also muck steamy and of course 17 seasons later the television has never been the same um season two grace anatomy still incredible um but yes but yes it's junebug and enchanted as the real one-two punch where people are like oh fuck can she do anything? She can. Is she both like a very skilled serious actress and innately

a movie star who can apply herself to any genre? And in the middle you have like the weird things that people forget like her being

Jim's girlfriend on The Office and Taldegan Nights as you said. But post-enchanted it's just like Charlie Wilson's war. Right.

Right. Post-enchanted it's just like here she is the next year sunshine cleaning mrs predigrew lives for a day and then doubt there's her second oscar nomination yeah she really is with meryl with meryl and then 2009 night the museum julie and Julia, both movies, huge hits. Right. And then 2010 Leap Year, I feel like is, you know, this is still the last gasp era of like, whoa, well, let's put you in a rom-com. Like, geez, you're a big female star.

Yeah. Yeah. But she is good in it. She's always good. Right. Yeah. That slowed her momentum a little bit, but then that same year, the fighter in The Muppets. Right.

Yeah. No, The Muppets is a year after. Oh, you're right. Sorry. She's so good in The Fighter. Right. We all agree that she should have won for The Fighter. Yes.

She's better than Melissa Leo. That's for sure. No offense to Melissa Leo. And then in The Master, it was kind of like, man, like she is fucking special. And since since then the only movie i have liked her in is arrival and it really drives me crazy like it's not like i think she's terrible in the other movies she's been but like i have kind of struggled with her post um master career like she's made a

lot of choices that make sense on paper and kind of just didn't work out i think she's incredible in her i think that's a very slept on performance yeah uh i think she's really fucking strong in that i know you just like that movie i i think that movie's okay so good it's okay sure yeah she's fine in her but this is the thing like i think she's fine in big eyes american hustle you hate i think she's good in that's obviously a a much debated performance i mean also she she's stuck playing lois lane for three movies and i feel like she never really got to do a ton with that uh big guys i've already spoken my piece on nocturnal animals we all hate the lois lane thing as you said should have been a slam dunk there's an

altering universe in which she's not the best ever lowest bad like she's fine those are not the right movies for her uh yes and then arrival is like once again that is a movie where you're like fuck does she finally win the oscar for this doesn't even get nominated and then she gets the vice nomination which at this point you're like has she crossed over into the territory where people now resent that she's almost an automatic nomination in a way that's preventing her from ever actually winning i think people resent like oh am i gonna have to give her an oscar it's the winslet thing or whatever you know she has six nominations it's i agree i agree that she has six nominations like for my money she is perhaps my my favorite like current working actress

wow i can't say that anymore i i know i look i know i know she hasn't been on her strongest run recently but like she is one of the people who i get most excited about seeing largely because she does feel like such a classical movie star to me. She feels like someone like Barbara Stanwyck, where it's like, she can do anything. Like she can do a musical. She can do a big, broad comedy.

She can do something more subtle. She can be the lead. She can be supporting. She can do gritty. You're missing her best performance. Which is? The Muppets movie. We said that.

You did? Yeah. I mean, you mentioned it. She's cute in that I think she's very good in that but that's a perfect example of she can do anything get you an Amy Adams who can do both yeah like it is unusual for the same person who can pull off the fighter to be able to pull off the Muppets yes you got to give credit to that range you must shave it I

I love Amy Adams I think she's great in lots of movies i just feel a little kind of like like i'm look i've always wanted to know you know the the answer to the question what if there was a woman in the window but like i don't think i'm gonna like the answer from every all the buzz around that movie and then like the other thing she's got hillbilly elegy is the ron howard hillbilly hillbilly elegy movie like i want to walk into the sea that's what i want to do when i hear that question did any of us watch sharp objects i watched sharp she was very good at that she was she was i was not good it was good i mean that thing was incredibly watchable and she was obviously you know bringing her amy adams heat i was not the whole time i'm

like is this just trash like like i couldn't be sure if the thing was actually good but she was great i like how it made teens seem so creepy that was my these teens man what's her name um anyway amy adams it's interesting but right now this is a year after doubt what's her name anyway Amy Adams it's interesting but right now this is a year after doubt this is another Meryl collaboration although I guess they don't meet I guess they didn't even hang out probably

but but you kind of have to imagine maybe this is baseless that Meryl was like I like Amy I would like Amy to do this yes there's no way Meryl was like, I like Amy. I would like Amy to do this. Yes. There's no way Meryl didn't sign off. And also like Amy Adams is such a good match for Nora.

Like she feels Meg Ryan-y, right? Like, I mean, I would say she's a better actress than Meg Ryan or maybe has more range or something, but like there is that kind of like stop you incredibly lovable go ahead i love meg ryan i love amy adams and i agree with griffin she's an incredible talent and we're very

lucky to have her but i don't know if i find this character very annoying i don't know i actually i do find this character very annoying and i think am Adams does an incredibly good job of making her likable at the same time yeah I think maybe part of that is the research I've done after on the real person who does seem slightly problematic real person seems intense yeah I will say it's kind of wild to think that her sequel book to the julie julia child book came out the year this movie came out and the sequel book is like man me and my husband cheated the fuck on each other i know did we cheat on a career right the follow-up book is i wanted to learn how to be a butcher i worked in a butcher shop this This was my new food experiment. But also, this one isn't about my husband being good. This is about us fucking other people.

Right. And her saying, like, I had an affair the entire time. Yeah. And, like, I think it's like an intense affair. Right. It does. Yes. I really respect the...

I think the contrast between Julie and Julia is what makes this movie great. You need it. I'm not someone who thinks that this should just be a Julia child movie because then it's just half as interesting. Yes. But the character I do find annoying. Can I make my sort of point my take I've been I've been holding on to here. Please do. Can I make my sort of point, my take I've been holding on to here?

Please do. This is kind of a selfless performance from Adams because in order for the movie to work, she has to take the fall in terms of being the annoying character, right? In a way to make Julia Child look bigger and better. I think watching this now through the prism of how internet culture has changed, which I do think I give Nora the credit that she could see it happening. I think it's why she was attracted to making a movie about one of the first people to have sort of blog crossover success, to be able to excel out of the blog world into a different medium. It's the same reason she was so fascinated by email so early on, being able to understand sociologically the difference that was going to make in human behavior. I think the kind of stealth point that Nora is making in this movie is the value of having to live and work in sort of obscurity before you're ready to make your first statement

versus internet culture, which gives you an immediate feedback loop. Like watching this movie, the scene where it's like, she's had the blog for two weeks. She invites friends over for dinner. She won't stop talking about the blog and people in the comments and whatever. And you step back and go like perspective. She probably has 200 readers at this point and the movie is making her insufferable whereas in this point in her career when you cut to the other narrative Meryl is still like trying to get into cooking school you know yes for for Julie it like, I am learning how to cook and how to write and having an audience and letting it go to my head all at the same time. Versus the very gradual build of Julia is already in her 50s. She's lived a longer life.

She's had other careers. She moves to a different country, not like throwing a dramatic fit over. I can't believe we're moving from Brooklyn to Queens, but I can't believe we're moving to France, right? Like everything Julia is doing is so much more monumental. She deals with it with so much more grace. And then she gradually has to learn how to cook, how to prove herself, then learn how to write, then go through publishing. I think the Julia part is like purely about joy it really is it's about the joy of food it's about the joy of paris it's about the joy of her relationship her friendships her sister lights off with stanley tucci her sister ah my favorite one of my favorite parts of the movie

is like one just the casting of jane lynch so tall brilliant um but also just like griffin you're saying like how sort of funny a person julia child is like when you meet her sister and you're like oh this is just what they're like they're just screaming at the train station right like lee is on air at this point right i remember just like when when jane lynch enters in the movie the audience like bursting into applause because it was like that's such a slam dunk the work's already done smart casting right they're just like i know what she's gonna sound like of course she's tall enough to play it like it was just oh great we get to watch the two of them together for 15 minutes doing and there's

that moment where it's like why wouldn't any you know boys date us or and they go too tall like you know like they're just she's so because meryl streep not tall meryl streep is no scene aside she's a short king so she must be standing on fucking apple boxes absolutely and they cast a lot of short actors around her because jane lynch is like six feet tall she's like really really tall yeah no they built smaller sets for the jane lynch scenes i think she's on significant heels or apple boxes and for most of the other scenes they pointedly cast actors who are like 4 11 yes i remember nora talking about this in interviews right rom you're right it's all about all the joys of all these things and her learning how to like translate it yeah and then the Amy Adams part is all about obstacles right but it's also about ego it's about her desperately looking for outside validation that she exists and she says that

explicitly I want to feel like I exist yes and so in contrast it's very easy to dismiss the Amy Adams part because obviously watching Julia Child get excited about the simplest pleasures in life is exciting and enjoyable. But I think that ultimately is why the Amy Adams part is so important. I mean, it's a very different time. The inclusion of the internet all of that i mean it's just it's impossible in you know a post 9-11 i what it's like 2003 when it's two i think it's it's 2002 yeah it's impossible to just run around the street and get excited about onions and potatoes i mean so the contrast you need her to be a little bit annoying. And also the narcissistic feedback loop of just having like the internet be able to make you feel

like the most important person in the world. You know, like Julia goes through so many steps or Julie rather goes through so many steps that as you said, are based in like, what makes you happy? Find the thing. People tell you can't do this. People tell you there isn't an audience for this. It doesn't matter. She's doing the thing that makes her happy. It's not career-minded. She's living a life, and she finds a career out of it. Versus Julie, who's looking for the end result from the very beginning.

She wants Julie a child to notice. She wants people to follow her thing. She wants to feel like she matters. She wants to feel like people know her name. I mean, it's like pointed that the introduction or one of her introduction scenes is that thing where she picks up the phone and they say i'd like to speak to someone important and i think it's pointed that she gets this annoying and that the main crux of her arc in this movie is her husband being like i can't fucking deal with you you're becoming an egomaniac yeah yeah but there's also it's like in julia

julia child's era in the 50s what is expected of her really is just to be a good hostess and a lovely wife right you know and to have kids which of course is this like bear you know like there's that scene the scene that scene is so good where she learns her sister is pregnant yeah um but like you know what she can't do or you know that that's obviously an issue but like there's nothing else expected of her whereas with amy adams's care with julie it's like whoa what are you what's your thing are you a novelist like what's come on like what's your what what's your whole identity gonna be and she's got all these career girl friends, Casey Wilson generation shit.

Yeah. It's like, right. Who are like build buying parcels and like, and this is like an elegy movie for New York city as well. The Efron is doing where it's like, yeah, post nine 11.

It just like, like, did we, do we even care about like what the city is going to look like anymore? Cause there's like, she works for the LMDC, like, which is basically going to you know rebuild downtown manhattan in the name of like a revitalization with all these malls and towers and stone you know and like and and right so she's

just the jewel the blog thing is like it's like well maybe this can be my thing i need a thing i need to like identify myself i I love this scene when Julia goes to Avis's house and they're like talking about the American cookbook and it's like pot roast for housewives. And it's interesting because you, in that moment, you realize that like, I think Avis says something like this is a book for bored housewives cooking or whatever. And like Julia Child is a bored housewife who finds cooking, but her passion and her presence is what takes it to the next level. But at that moment, that's exactly what she's doing. She's just like fulfilling a housewife career. And so much of it's accidental.

It's like, what's a hobby? What's a thing I can do at home? I'm post-career. You know, my husband has me stationed here. And then it's, I want to learn how to cook for myself. Then it's like what's a hobby what's a thing i can do at home i'm i'm post-career you know my husband has me stationed here and then it's i want to learn how to cook for myself then it's meeting other people then turning it into the school then the book is just because they're like our book isn't selling we need an american perspective and at the point that the movie ends it's like how weird that anyone would want to see me on TV, you know, versus the Julie thing, which is like from post one, it's refreshing the page waiting to see are people acknowledging and validating what I'm doing as I'm on the very first step of my journey. I want people to be celebrating me.

Oh my God. Are people, do people actually care what I'm saying? It's like, why are not, why are people not caring what I'm saying? But then you have what I think is the thesis scene of the movie um that's again kind of a mirror of that where which is when julie meets julia meets avis in real life for the first time which is the

scene that made me cry on rewatch this is certainly not a movie that made me cry the first time i watched it where it's like they've had this long correspondence you know they've only been virtual people to each other right but they know each other so well and like when they meet it's like they told they're like of course like there's avis i'm julie you know like that even that kind of connection like which nor is obviously so nostalgic for, like Nora is kind of like, this is, this can't exist in the same way in Julie's world, even though she's sort of,

you know, we're playing in the same pool. Like that's obviously the same kind of idea, right? These, these virtual friends. No. And there's a lot of that,

like, right. It's, it's the version of that, that Julie is doing is always going to be more performative. You know, it's Julia represents an era when people could do things purely for pleasure, you know, for the value of the thing itself. Sure. And she lives this charm.

It is a charmed life in so many ways, of course. Like it's such a nice, you know, environments that she's in. Right. But the hints of the things you get from before that, that she was, you know, reportedly a virgin until she met her husband in her late 30s. There were always this rumors that the two of them were spies, which they kind of denied,

but the movie has the little reference to it to keep it sort of mysterious. You know, I feel like every time we've covered a filmmaker who's lighter, and it particularly happened both here and with Nancy, I see some people scoffing where it's like, these filmmakers are like frothy. They don't deserve to be discussed on the same level,

which A, I think is some ingrained sexism in our culture, especially as relating to these types of movies which are never taken as seriously, you know, as not only serious prestige movies, but also like big action movies or whatever. I feel like, you know, someone like me who has been in enough terrible fucking movies and TV shows has only grown to have more appreciation for this type of craft, which makes itself look very easy to do. And I don't mean that as any sort of backhanded compliment or light praise. You realize if it was this easy to do, then everyone would do this. Then you'd have 10 movies this good a year you know um but i also feel like nora is a filmmaker who has such consistent themes running across her entire body of work and you think about how often like her three most successful movies all have this sort of split narrative right right? Where they're about people communicating over words versus in person. And it's three different versions of it. You have You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle in this. You've Got Mail is one person is hearing the other person's words

and is trying to get in touch with them. But the other guy isn't even acknowledging her words. You mean Sleepless in Seattle. Sorry, yes. You've Got Mail is they know each other in real life, they know each other

through their words, and the two relationships are different. And this is two people in different timelines in different spaces, and it's an unrequited

love story. It's like one person trying desperately to feel like she's connected to this other person and that she exists on the same wavelength of this person and it is so pointed that efron includes the scene where julie gets the phone call telling her that julia child doesn't like the blog julia

child's rep was like oh no i don't i don't think that's very good but if you look it up julia child had a comment that was like she doesn't think that's very good but if you look it up julia child had a comment that was like she doesn't think that four-letter words belong she felt like it was kind of a narcissistic exercise like it's even more unpacked if you look into what happened in real life i uh let me look i thought it was all from the rep it was all from julia's it was all from child's editor there was no words except she was saying like uh julia didn't like what she called quote unquote the flimsies she didn't suffer fools if you know what i mean so that sort of implies i guess that julie is a flimsy whatever that means but uh but yes it is

it is great that she includes that i think because, cause like there's like stronger, a movie. I love the, the Jake Gyllenhaal. He recovers from the bombing and you know, the accident, he loses his legs. They leave out, they end up getting divorced a hundred percent.

And I get why they do, because the movie is not going to be about that. The movie is about this, you know? And like, it's fine that you wanted to just take this section of the, but like, but so I'm just saying like nora definitely could

have just like cleanly left that out and like been like look it's just two parallel tales but she doesn't want to do that point she's trying to make it's like that's the moment that makes it clear that having amy adams be this annoying is intentional you know i feel like the negative reviews at the time we're judging this movie like it's like, oh, I'm supposed to be equally charmed by these two halves. And it's a miscalculation. No, but that's the problem. The movie is not setting that up. You know, like that the whole point is that they're on completely different levels.

Right. And it's this one woman struggling to feel like she has a relationship with this other woman through words. She's reading the book. She's writing her words. She wants to believe they're the same, that they're going through the same journey and they're pointedly not. really forming these strong obsessions with women who cook on TV or write cookbooks. Cooking is such a personal and emotional thing. And when you read cookbooks, you read the foreword, you read the excerpts, you make the food, you really do feel connected to the person who wrote the recipe. And I know, like, growing up, I just, I put all of these women on such a high pedestal, thinking, like, I make her, you know, white beans, she must, you know, be the loveliest person in the world. You know, I cooked her roast chicken, you know, I feel so connected to her. And then as I grew up a little bit, I would read stories about them being difficult or, you know i feel so connected to her and then as i grew up a little bit i would read stories

about them being difficult or you know not being like super friendly whatever it may be i mean a lot of this stuff is coming out in the wash i feel like there's a reckoning in food culture much like what happened in other areas of entertainment yeah sure right stuff what happened to the shallot queen lady oh But it really is kind of heartbreaking. Let's litigate the shallot queen. I'm not talking about the shallot queen. I'm joking. But when you feel so connected to someone

based on something so small, but it feels so big to you and you just assume that they feel the same way. It just like if in real life life someone shares a recipe with you, it is such a personal and emotional thing. That when you read a cookbook and cook out of it, you kind of feel like they feel the same way about you. Okay, so that's my biggest take. My biggest take is that this movie secretly is a romantic comedy, but it's an unrequited love story. Yeah.

secretly is a romantic comedy but it's an unrequited love story right yeah it's about the relationship between julie and julia only in julie's head yes and i totally identify with that in the same way that that uh uh meg ryan is listening to tom hanks on the radio and going he would love me if we met and in then the same way that Tom Hanks, when he like is shown the letter is like, I don't fucking care about this. This is sleepless in Seattle, except without the happy ending. I love,

I love the scene when they're shopping for the plates and it's like, I think 10 plates too. And then like, Oh my God, this is my grandmother's China. We have so much in common. Yes. Right.

There's that scene late where she's like no julia is perfect you know where like her husband's like come on everyone makes mistakes like julia would have made mistakes and she's like no no julia is perfect like that's the whole fucking point don't you get it i cried at the end because i think like there's something really beautiful about the fact that she ends the movie with her saying I love you Julia

and having that like the end of the movie is incredible incredible and like the her love for her never wavered you know she kind of

I see that as her like coming to terms with the fact that Julia doesn't have to love her just because she loves Julia that's not what's important it's what she can get out of her work which is the other big nora thing it's the power of words it's the fact that you can feel that intimate a relationship with someone through their writing you know that you can have this ability if you're able to capture

your soul properly in the written word it's pointed that so many of her movies come back to the written word despite moving to film moving to a visual medium within the actual stories they so often circulate around the power of the written word and the idea that that can transcend time and space you know that amy adams in 2002 can say i love you to a person she will never meet who has said disparaging things about her through a publicist and still leave butter behind right right that's a beautiful thing yeah it is beautiful there's that concept of like sure julia may have dissed her like in the present day but when you're you know you've got that at the end that mirrory thing where you know julia comes into the kitchen after julie has left and we've're you know you've got that at the end that mirrory thing where you know julia comes

into the kitchen after julie has left and we've swept you know swapped back like she's left a legacy that can be obsessed over and celebrated and like you know loved and you know i like like there's that i think nor is fascinated with that with like what happens to a legacy like that and like you've got that monument of the kitchen the mastering the art of french cooking is like i don't know isn't it the quintessential american cookbook there are a few works that i feel like so single-handedly transformed an entire perception of an art form right so universal and like i my dad grew up cooking out of joy of cooking and julia's book and i just the two yeah it's great that there's the scene where julia meets the uh you know the joy of cooking i love that i love that she's like oh i never i didn't test all the

recipes and like in julia's, that book was the perfect book. Right. And it was a Bible. And it was kind of untouchable. And you meet this lady and she's just like, yeah, I didn't test the recipes. They took all my money.

I was bastard. But that's like the Russian nesting doll thing. That's another scene where Efron is giving you the clues as to what she's really saying, which is like, Julie keeps on talking about like,

what if I met Julia? What if she reads my blog? Do you think we'd get along? We're exactly the same. And she's thinking about, A, I want people to like me. I want my blog to be validated. But B also, I want to be friends with Julia Child. And what I think she realized at the end of it is like, you don't need to have a personal relationship with the actual person the relationship to the work they did can be just as valuable in the same way that meryl julia rather meeting the joy of cooking our author is so disappointing to her not because she's dismissive but because her perception of her own book seems so silly and frivolous to her that she's like does this deflate me that the person

who i've held up as this idol who i've only wanted to meet ends up being a disappointment it's like no the book is the thing well and it's also just fascinating like the story she tells like julie's existing post 9-11 julie is existing after the war and the joy of cooking is birthed out of the depression like you know her husband shoots himself and she's like i guess i'll just write a book of recipes like what else do i have to do with myself and like and that that was in the early 30s like the the thing you said romley about recipes like they are weirdly intimate because the whole point of entertaining and bringing out food right is like that it'll look so nice when you give it to someone, you know, when you put it on the table and you're kind of like,

you're not revealing like what went into it right on the cooking side. Like, you know, you're just, you're just like the finished product is so perfect. So if you're showing someone a recipe, you're like, yeah, this is what I'm doing. Like, am I doing it wrong? Like, you know, there's a weird kind of like nakedness to that. Yeah. And also it's a glimpse into someone's life uh and a lot of times into a different culture uh it's it they're like a very powerful thing it's a form of autobiography yeah and I think

the thing is that cookbooks um kind of have to be seen as a standalone thing. I think you have to read them and enjoy them and cook from them and not think too much about who wrote them. Because within the cookbook, you have all these personal stories. You have a full picture of who the person is, why these recipes matter to them. They are books. And I think when people try to then like dig too much into the person who wrote them, and in this case, like, you know, Amy Adams seeking the validation from real life Julia, rather than just cooking these dishes and having great successes and feeling connected to her in that way is a good example

of that. Don't you think also, I mean, watching this, I kept on thinking about the Alton Brown episode of Hot Ones, which I have watched four or five times. It is one of the better Hot Ones episodes in my estimation. He talks about how he was a director and a cinematographer for like music videos and commercials. And he decided to drop out of that, go to cooking school and learn how to cook because he felt like there is a way to make food shows better than this. I want to apply my understanding of production to the food world if I can only learn it, right we all right well i just want to talk about cooking shows well this is what i'm about to say okay go and he talked about how uh he sort of felt that in the ether he made that shift late 90s early 2000s and it timed up coincidentally

with the explosion of food culture and especially of the food network and personality-based food culture, which he attributes directly to 9-11. He said, like, I was at Food Network and I just saw the ratings explode across the entire channel in the months after 9-11. It suddenly just became the type of content that everyone wanted. It's comforting. Right. Food becomes comfort. It becomes a sense of control over the universe. I can do something. There's some sort of order. There's something to follow. But also he says that's a double-edged sword because then it becomes

this is a way to get famous and the personalities are getting famous and it creates this sort of culture of idols, you know, in a way that is different from someone like Julia Child, who lives an entire lifetime, who does the work, who toils for years and years before she accidentally becomes this kind of figure. And that's 100% what's wrong with food media right now. And why we're seeing this sort of collapse where people keep on oversharing, getting too confident. Yes. If you read Julia Child's's book and that's what i was trying to say like it's it's all there like you have a full picture of julia child you don't need to go online and read all about julia child you don't need to look at every picture of her

and now cookbooks and like these viral recipes viral cookbooks so much of it is like read this recipe but then watch this video and look at this instagram and look at these tweets instagrammy yeah which always ends up like people get hoisted by their own petard exactly and it becomes so much less about the food and more about like the vibe and the brand until they either cancel themselves or just become annoying and people start to resent them right and it's like that's not what cookbooks and cooking shows and food is supposed to be about but cooking shows as a concept that's a weird idea for tv the food you can't eat it it's like you're just like gonna watch them like a freak cook that's like going and watching someone at the laundromat like it's a person running errands technically is it like going and watching someone at the laundry you're just watching someone cook

the food network is like a brian de pal movie. It's like a perverted voyeuristic. Okay. Here's the thing about the Food Network. A lot of people just watch it to calm their nerves. Right. A lot of people don't even cook the food. Yeah. I find it wildly entertaining.

The thing about the Food Network that I think people like so much And that the reason why it becomes quite addictive is because there's something really fascinating about watching something from start to finish. Totally. It's great programming. You see like a bunch of carrots, parsley, beef, mushrooms, and then 30 minutes later, you have both bourguignon. Okay. But you're a song and dance man yes right you've come up you've learned to tap dance you're a damn entertainer and then someone tells you years from now a guy is just gonna build a house and people are gonna watch the shit out of

that that is so absurd to me i don't know i just i like I love that stuff. Ben's going after this old house now. Yeah, come on this old house. I don't think I've ever watched the Food Network or any other cooking show and been like I gotta make what I'm seeing right now. Like when I'm when I'm cooking, I'm looking online. I'm looking in my cookbooks like that's like I that's how I can experience recipes. I sort of need to like have it be very static so that I can always just sort of like refer back to the ingredients like you know Romilly's right like watching it is more about that weird it's like watching someone like you watch the Marie Kondo show and she like cleans up their house you know what I mean you're watching a transformation it's

fun to see it's the most touching charming exciting show in a while and it's because it's like it's the same thing it's like there's so many emotional connections within a house why people keep things we know where things are all of that and the same with cooking it's like it's such a personal experience and it's very intimate art um and i think people almost never cook from cooking shows it's pure entertainment yeah well because you would make a mess and you don't have a giant kitchen and you don't have amazing

ingredients and like a PA to clean up after you and also I truly never never cook as listeners of this show know and you know better than anyone Romilly but like last week you and i were texting about how both of us have been going through like a really bad two-week

anxiety spiral uh over case surging and the state of the world and what did i recommend to you uh cooking binging with babish i've just been watching this fucking youtube channel do you guys know about this i don't't, although I feel like I've heard that. I've heard binging with Babish. Someone put it on our Reddit, I think because he covered something that overlapped with our show, and I I'm way behind the

8-Ball on this. Apparently he's been huge for years, but he's a dude who has a YouTube channel where he just makes dishes from movies and TV shows. Yeah, I feel like I've seen some of these videos before, because who has a YouTube channel where he just makes dishes from movies and TV shows. Yeah. I feel like I've seen some of these videos before because I, it is so, yeah,

it is so calming. That's the thing. I'm not going to make any of these dishes ever, but also he falls into this category where he shoots and edits his own stuff and he frames it so that his head is not visible. Like it's almost like the fucking adults in Peanuts. You're just seeing his hands from the same stationary angle, time-lapse work on the different ingredients, explain the process of trying to replicate something

based off an image, figuring out the way to do it most accurately, figuring out the way that would taste better. And he just has this very, very calming, like monotone voice. And he just has this very, very calming, like, monotone voice. And he's not making it about himself. He's not even showing his face on screen. But in this way you're talking about, it ends up being very revealing and very personal. Yes. And I think, I think, I hope that food media will go back to this joy of cooking state.

Yeah. And I think, you know, old fashioned cooking shows should make a comeback. I know I've been in plenty of meetings about cooking shows where they're like, but what's your catch? What's the hook? And for a while, I feel like I was conditioned to think like,

okay, cooking is not enough. Like like, okay, cooking is not enough. Like having a personality in cooking is not enough. You have to like cook, but also go here and also surprise and like all this shit. And let's like distract people as much as possible. And I hope that we can go back to just the joy of cooking. It doesn't mean it has to be boring, but just someone who genuinely cares

and is excited to show you something. Hey, you know who's got a good show, a good take on a contemporary way of doing a food-oriented show is Dave Chang's Ugly Delicious on Netflix. Yes, Ugly Delicious. Kills it. It's so like right now,

prescient in like the conversation that's happening um he it's outstanding and in a nora effron way where he's really interested in the sociological relationship we have but he also loves food and loves cooking and is like a very like warm kind of nerdy presence in a lot of ways now now now he is yeah yeah now you mean because he used to be kind of like you know like i'm the disruptor i'm like right he was he was chefy uh he i wouldn't say he was an asshole right but he definitely was a chef he was like he fit into the oh chef mold every kitchen i've worked in the chef always yelled and threw stuff at like the people working underneath him.

But most chefs don't have that arc. And he like really took a long look at himself. And it's now like, I mean, the latest season of ugly delicious is so touching and emotional. Uh, Padma Lakshmi's new show, Taste the Nation on Hulu is incredible.

It rules. It really is amazing. That made me very hopeful. I think people should just put Padma in every show from now on. Totally. Yeah. She's so good on Ugly to Delicious too.

But that is a thing for you, Rambly, where like you've worked in restaurants, you've done like sort of like internships and apprenticeships and kitchens uh and you like came out of it going like i don't want to work in a restaurant i don't like this culture yes like there's something very abusive about like chef kitchen culture which drew you more to the personality driven thing but there's the different type of pitfall that comes with that,

which is what we're discussing. Yes, and now I'm going back in the hands-on cooking direction because I just find food media so vapid and disgusting right now. I think it's like, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I would talk to someone who is a publisher

or a book agent, and they were like, you have a great idea, you have a great voice, you have a great voice, but how many Instagram followers do you have? The Bon Appetit collapse is so fascinating to me, especially just as a point of comparison, as we're watching this movie now, which is about someone at the very beginning of online food culture versus Bon Appetit, which is this like fall of rome thing but i feel like

like the the test kitchen thing blew up because people really liked the idea that it seemed like this was genuine like this is just people who love cooking in a large kitchen just this cooperative environment that somehow because it was on youtube it wasn't as sort of manufactured and personality based as a food network you know yes but in fact we're now just revealing like it was an entire house of cards it was like this completely fucked system totally manufactured and personality based yeah right and like some people were getting talent deals other people weren't getting paid i mean there was nothing democratic or it's it's like vanderpump rules or something it was like they were adding people in under like contracts to try to stir up like interesting dynamics and fucking and and

stoking tensions and all this shit it's insane but that's that's the point it's like we keep on finding ourselves in these sorts of traps well if something seems too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. And I think that's the ultimate thing with the test kitchen. Everyone was like, they all have these amazing personalities. They can cook. They're all happy. They're all friends. Like this is amazing. And it's like, it was all right in front of us. You know, it was so masterfully crafted. And that's not to say that there aren't people who work in the test kitchen who are talented and lovely and who are friends. But as a whole, it was so, it was so false.

The actual structure of the thing was rotten. And I do feel like, I was just going to say, I think in addition to as as you said romley like how big things get and all that sort of shit it's also just like how fast it happens i think that's a a thing that nora is like latching on to here as someone who much like julia child lived an entire life before she became a filmmaker before she ended up in the career that she would, you know, do until the rest of her life. It's like the idea of being able to do that work internally away from those eyes so that by the time you do have your moment, you are fully at terms with who you are yourself. That the public relationship cannot fundamentally steer you too far astray from who

you know you are, versus if that happens in your early 20s or your late 20s, your personality starts to become merged with your public persona and your career, you know? And it's this thing we see now all the time with social media, where like someone blows up and then it's like how quickly did they become an egomaniac after six months ago going viral because they had the right take on something yeah i think going viral is the most damaging thing that can happen to a person and that's something that this movie is about no in a movie when someone goes viral it's always really exciting they They always say, have you seen the YouTube count on this? Look at the numbers.

Look, if you even are lucky enough as an actor to get a scene where you tell someone they're going viral, automatic Oscar nomination. Right? Emma Stone, she saw that in the script and she went, fuck, I cannot wait to attend that nominee luncheon. Um, but you're right.

This is about an early version of going viral. The, the, um, answering machine montage. Yes. You know, that's sort of like,

right. It's like suddenly these people are interested in her and it's like, they're interested in her because she found a new gimmick that, you know, was clever and sort of spoke to like oh like it's tough to be part of this generation and like looking for you know ways to like stick out and you know like you know like that's the thing the second her answering machine goes crazy she's no longer doing it for the joy of doing it like right from that point on there's

no going back everything she posts she has to think about she's you know it's it changes the content do we post on social media for the love of it yeah i mean i made it for the love oh i love it that's the exact. I feel like this movie is making. Yes, absolutely. Like the blog started as a way to find herself and to feel connected to Julia Child and have a passion. And then it automatically became a way to get famous. Yes.

And the fact that the big Chris Messina fight ends with him saying, and don't blog about this. And then it's followed by the scene where you see her type it out. Like she still goes through the exercise of being like, but I have to put it in there. Every part of the story is important. I need to share my entire life before she then deletes it, calls him,

apologizes and realizes she's become a monster. But also I feel like at the time, the reaction, this is 2009, it's sort of right at the start of the Great Recession, right? We're only like less than a year into all that.

People are like, oh, get over it. Like, I cannot sympathize with this person. She has such a nice life. And now I'm like, this is where everyone gets stuck. Like, this is where

this whole generation is stuck. And it's so hard to do anything like, you know, remotely, whatever, that'll stick out. Now it just feels like I said, the story of this entire generation. We're on like the third lost generation now. Exactly. Right. Yeah. All these many lost generations.

She really was like so ahead of the curve on just understanding yeah the psychology of of where cultures are going like to think about getting hung up by your mother because of something you wrote on your blog like that could only happen in 2004 right it's such it's like a weird thing that stands out yeah um but yeah it is like it is a very much an encapsulation of like what is only going to continue to be sort of our generation's legacy unfortunately that we're like lazy and always just want to be famous i've had those conversations with my parents of just like why did you say that in the podcast why did you tweet that don't post that you know i mean absolutely and i remember being like you know like 20 when i was like my entire career is based around being funny on twitter that is the key to everything my twitter really matters i have

200 followers and they were waiting on bated breath for every perfect bon mo and my mom would be like why are you tweeting that and i'd be like you don't understand don't suppress me this is my art yeah and I look back and I'm like who gives a shit yeah you know or I I would be like I have to cook something so I can post it on Instagram right rather than I cook something it's delicious I want to post it to share it I feel like that's when it turns sour and it was because it was like there was this hamster wheel where everyone was posting a recipe every day. Everyone looked a certain way. You know, I don't even have that many followers at all. But it was like this constant like, okay, I'm building something.

And then I'm going to get to a point where I have something and then I can let go. And as Griffin and I talk about all the time, that never happens. You never get what you want and you're happy with it and that's how these people like shall it lady have these very public downfalls because it's just this greed and this ego and you never feel you never never feel you never feel and then you end up hurting yourself yeah that whole thing was fascinating um the egg i just like you know we're we're wrapping up on this movie but griff the egg scene okay i know you don't like eggs yes um and then there's this sort of bizarre i'm i'm watching this movie for the first time and i'm going oh this movie gets me she's never had an egg in her life right so there's this she's like

oh well if i'm gonna have to eat eggs if i'm gonna do this project because i've you know never eaten an egg before and i was just immediately i was like what she's never eaten an egg like doesn't she like cooking like that seems so difficult and i guess normal cool she she's not counting like an egg in a cake right or as we said earlier eggs are in hollandaise sauce, right? Or she's not Jason Manzoukas. She's talking about egg as the star of the dish.

And you're similar. I would assume Griffin, you don't mind if an egg was correct, like part of the ingredients, but I'm not eating an omelet. But so how do you feel? And I know Romney, you're very frustrated by Griffin's egg thing,

but how do you feel about the scene where she like swallows the egg here's the thing sometimes because like i eat a lot of ramen right right sure yes of course and nothing better than some egg on ramen here's the thing um i hate eggs uh obviously if there's a hard-boiled egg in a hole in a ramen, I'm going to notice it. And I always try to ask for it without the egg. Some of the ramen places I go to are authentic enough that the menus do not explain what's in the dish. And it's mostly written in Japanese. And I'm ordering a little blindly.

And a couple times I've ordered a ramen, and what I thought was cheese ends up being an egg. Griffin, why do you think there's cheese in your ramen that's because i think i finally found my perfect ramen oh yeah what is more griffiny than trying to combine ramen and like french onion soup seriously oh right it's it's a it's a stupid thing that only I would view as a better option is a big lump of melted mozzarella in the middle of a ramen. But I will be eating it. I'll be enjoying it. And then at some point, I realize it's an egg. And even though much like Julie says in this movie, oh, it actually just tastes like a cheesy sauce.

It feels like a cheesy sauce going down once i realize it's an egg i can't do it anymore i get that but that's right that's mental yeah whatever it's mental it's mental stanley tucci raw sexual magnetism there's the scenes where he's shirtless i mean i want to touch the toot. Yeah, for sure. Hottest performance in the world. Yeah. He's always got those stealth guns. He's always got those stealth jacked arms. He's kind of jacked. He's a little jacked. I mean, there's the scene where he like reaches over to turn off her light because she's like not doing it quick enough. I'm like, we get it, buddy. You're going to're gonna have sex there you know what was weird reckoning with was the way that julia decided to sort of approach

marketing this book for housewives with using the terminology servantless and that just felt very like uh this is like a long time ago in a long time ago. In a lot of different ways. Yes. Yes. For sure. Absolutely. I love hearing Mario Batali being mentioned. That's really cool.

That's another sort of thing that we'd love to hear and see how it ages. Yeah. Look, but, but it's, it's a time capsule. Like that's one of the reasons I think this movie kind of works is because it's not a film about 2009. It's a film in 2009 about 2002.

And so it has enough perspective on everything that even if things change for the current day, it's like that adds more value to the movie in a way. Like, the Mario Batali references lend it an air of what we're talking about of like the arc of false idols and personality based like downfalls and food media. Yeah, it's a time piece. It's a great movie. It is a great movie. Good watch. The last scene really gets me. Yes, it's a good watch.

Yes, great time piece. It's a $40,000 Rolex. It's a $40,000 Rolex. Let's talk about the box office and then do our Nora rankings and then announce the new miniseries. This is why I wanted to sort of like start steering us into the end, Griff. Yes.

We have a fair amount of stuff. Huge hit. One of your $300 million grocers. Well, right under. 90. Oh, really? Yeah, 94. Wow. Okay. So it's's 131 we're in the 90s okay yeah yeah uh but yeah big hit gets the one awesome nomination uh and it's the meryl streep trilogy

of like yeah people uh falling in love over the written word who did meryl who beat her nine sandra bullock right bullock yeah because i remember that was like because she wins for written word. Who did Meryl? Who beat her? Nine. Sandra Bullock, right? Bullock. Yeah. Cause I remember that was like, cause she wins for the iron lady. What a couple of years later. Yeah.

And I feel like that was when it was kind of starting to be like, she should get a third, like post devil wears Prada. And then she gets a fucking iron lady. I know. It's me shaking my fist. Um, the other three.

Oh, Gabrielle Sidibe would have been my winner that year gabrielle sidibe um great performance and i don't like the other two nominations you sorry mulligan i don't like the bullock performance oh i think the bullock performance is extremely good that movie is argued over this in the awful and she is kind of like and I never liked Sandra Bullock before like I don't know like I had never been a huge Bullock fan, even though I love speed and I love some of those early like book Reno demolition man, but like I remember being like a Sandra Bullock

get out of here and like seeing that movie and I'm like she definitely is a movie star like I can't dispute that. I hate this movie, but like this is a movie star performance like and then of course that movie was just such a phenomenon so weird i start respecting so weird how much money that movie made i start really liking sandy right after that like gravity well yeah um the heat yeah she starts doing post oscar run i really like, yeah. But the other nominees were- Carey Mulligan. Carey Mulligan in Education,

which is a fantastic performance in another movie I don't really like. And Helen Mirren in The Last Station, which like, whatever. Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, okay. So, Box Office. Box Office.

This movie opened August 7th, 2009. Hmm. It opened number two to 20 million dollars okay which is i assume right around what they expected that seems that seems very right like that's like great yep we're opening in august july or august sleeper hit she rides it out but it's below a big brand name blockbuster that i feel like is probably like slightly disappointing it's opening at 54 i guess that's pretty good for this jojo rise of cobra yeah i feel like that movie had like toxic buzz in advance and people were convinced it was going to like face plant bomb. And then it opened to 50, which was like lower than they wanted based on how much money they had spent

on it, but viewed as a success based on how poorly it could have gone. Like the fact that it just barely broke even was like, Ooh, we saved that thing from a tailspin. I like that movie. It's kind of underrated. Sure.

I mean, we should do Steven Summers. Um, number three, vulgar altruism at its best is my, absolutely. That's Steven Summers. That's,

that's the argument of Steven Summers. Number three at the box office is a Disney family film, uh, with CGI animals. Hmm. We've talked about it on box office games before, and it's always kind of hard to describe this one. Do the animals talk?

Yes. Is it the movie G-Force? That's right. Yep. One of the weirder films, I say this truly, one of the weirder films to ever be made by a major studio. Does that movie exist? Yes, it does, Romilly.

It stars Zach Galifianakis and Bill Nighy, to ever be made by a major studio. Does that movie exist? Yes, it does, Romilly. It stars Zach Galifianakis and Bill Nighy, and it's about a team of covert-speaking guinea pig spies voiced by Sam Rockwell, Tracy Morgan, Nicolas Cage, and Penelope Cruz. The four. Sounds good. And it was a huge hit. It made like $150 million

and still lost money because it cost inexplicably $200 million. Well, I, you know, I mean, Sam Rockwell needed his quote, which was $100 million. That was the problem there. The great joke is

Galifianakis goes on conan to promote that movie it's the same summer that hangover comes out so he clearly did the movie as like to pay the rent and then now suddenly he's a movie star who would have turned down g force and so he does his whole conan segment just talking about other shit and then conan says you have a movie to promote right and he goes yeah it's um i play a scientist and i have a bunch of talking guinea pigs who are secret agents you know it's uh it's i mean you know the plot it's it's adapted from the off-broadway play like his joke about how dumb the premise was don't make me explain it i'm pretending it's a

story we all know and respect um number four at the box office griffin is i need to check which uh edition this is this is the sixth and best edition in a franchise uh cinematic franchise big cinematic franchise uh god um that we you know whatever is exhausting to think about right now sixth and best harry potter harry potter and the half-blood prince that's right i think it's the best most people it's your favorite and i'm all about number five is a masterpiece. It had been number one the week before Griffin. It has dropped 65%. Wow.

Audiences were like, no, thank you. David was like, yes, please. Now, is this a Michael Mann movie? No, no, that sounds like the arc of a Michael Mann movie. Big opening. It does. It's like a comedy Michael Mann movie does it's like a comedy michael man movie it's like a michael man comedy that's that's that's go ahead is it our beloved funny people

that's right yep funny people i forgot that it dropped so hard for a comedy that is outrageous so hard it was such a huge drop after a really disappointing opening weekend people forget that like this is 40 handily outgrossed funny people is that true yes i'm looking that up that's crazy yeah um anyway so those are the top five people were like the american audiences were angry at it you're right outgrossed it yeah people were really angry at funny people um good movie though great some other movies the ugly truth we've talked about it his heart it's over his penis and the poster it's where you see that one rom this is i mean a big Heigl phase for you. Did you even seep down to the level of Ugly Truth?

I don't think so. What's the plot of this movie? He is Howard Stern. He's a shock jock chauvinist radio host. And Katherine Heigl is hired to produce his radio show and make him more appealing to women. Sounds great um let me look it up david has presented the theory on this podcast that i'm increasingly agreeing with that uh gerard butler killed the rom-com yeah but butler heigl butler did it

i get weird ptsd when i see a heigl rom-com. It's just that thing where it was like, Heigl was like, this is, I'm going to be here and no one is coming in. And like, it was kind of the moment where it was like, yeah, no one's really knocking on the door.

So you can have it for a bit. And Butler just like, I need to work in these movies and kept trying it. They both just seemed like such miserable people that's the problem it was such a big hit i don't know i think you guys just can't handle the ugly truth but didn't that movie make like 97 million dollars it made 88 domestic 205 worldwide insane pretty good you know it's not bad and the weirdest thing is that he's holding it over his dick he's holding the heart over his crotch she's holding it like over her shoulder what so what like the air over

her shoulder is where a woman's heart is that doesn't make any sense hold it over your heart isn't that the idea no the movie actually is sort of a tin man narrative where she was born without a heart and she's trying to locate one she She's like, where is there one over my shoulder? Same director is legally blonde. Yup. That's right. Wow. That's right.

Um, we've also got a perfect getaway Griffin. Um, kind of a, that's not a rated movie. Yes, I would agree. We've got,

uh, one of the best movies about, uh, aliens being in one's attic, uh, the film aliens in the attic fuck i was gonna guess independence day resurrection and you have the highly underrated masterpiece orphan from the great another vulgar tour um john colette sarah i mean truly our finest vulgar tour and i don't think that's debatable he's right up there

yeah um yeah so that's that do you have an efron ranking i could do it very quickly while you have one i know what it is uh i just need to type it out so i don't fuck up in the way i always fuck this up hey real quick i had an idea i wanted to throw out. We should give fans recipes. Original recipes. Yeah, Rom, do you want to do that? No, I've got recipes. Okay. Yeah.

What kind of recipes? Buried beef? No, I've got real stuff. Although, Ben, I will say- You can do that too. There is a trend, or it was a trend, a lot of people were doing it at a time, where they would bury a beet in the ground for like a year

and then it would resemble meat. Weird. Yeah. I don't normally like beets, but I can give it a try. Like, okay, Ben's egg sandwich. Boom. I can write that recipe up. Do it. What's in Ben's egg sandwich boom i can write that recipe up i'm gonna do it what's it what's in ben's egg sandwich taylor ham an egg over medium okay pepper jack cheese on a brioche

brioche i'm glad you i'm glad the brioche came in gotta sounds good thanks okay i have my my ranking locked in okay do you want to go first griffin sure my number one favorite norah fran movie you've got mail by a hair then sleepless in seattle then this is my life wow third julie and julie up but those are those are a tight four i will say sure sure i think those are four capital g great movies that she made that's that's the canon right then i go michael the most interesting failure to me one that the half works then i go lucky numbers because i am a maniac and i deserve to be in jail okay then mix nuts and bewitched is the one i find almost no pleasure in yeah but which is uh an automatic bottom to me

as well number eight for sure my list is similar to yours with a couple swaps yes number one for me is sleepless in seattle number two is you've Got Mail. Number three is Julie and Julia, which I would not have predicted beforehand. Number four is This Is My Life, but Agree, obviously. Those are the, you know, unambiguous top four. Then I also would have Michael.

Then Mixed Nuts, Lucky Numbers, Bewitched. Yeah, look. Pretty similar. Yeah, pretty similar yeah pretty similar now should we talk next miniseries yep uh sorry yes let's talk about the next miniseries yes so uh zemeckis robert zemeckis he won march madness he made many movies he's on our schedule obviously yes so many movies that's a lot of movies i think our longest miniseries ever or if not within spitting distance i think it might be the longest or

spitting distance of demi and burton yeah i can't i'd have to count them up i gotta say i'm thankful that the witches got pushed back because it just shortens the miniseries by one. Yeah, right. We thought it would be out by the time we'd have to cover it. But we decided to slip in a little surprise, do a little four-movie miniseries, what will now be the shortest miniseries we've covered. A filmmaker who you and I love, have talked about a lot, both on and off the podcast has a new

movie coming out and it felt like a good way to sync that up in the way we often try to do so our next mini-series starting next week no palate cleanser no palate cleanser because we had to do some finagling to make this fit in the schedule and still make sure that we talk the walk in 2020 it was an absolute priority that the walk gets talked within this calendar year yes also we initially planned for palette cleansers to be things like tenant and wonder woman 1984 right look what happened to those uh hashtag uh movies are over party uh movie theaters are over party um so starting next week we're doing a mini-series on gina prince bythewood yeah love and basketball secret life of bees

beyond the lights and her new netflix film the old guard which kind of represents so hard her long overdue blank check which david has seen i have not seen yet which i'm very jealous of i'm very excited to see it i have seen it i have interviewed her and when interviewing her jealous it was even more kind of clear like she's i was you know because i'm asking her about career and she's like i have been trying to make an action movie for so goddamn long like you know and this is the reason we really wanted to do this series because it feels like such a culmination of a thing that's been in the works in her career for so long a director who's been slept on for so long yeah i agree absolutely beyond the lights is a masterpiece beyond the lights a masterpiece i mean beyond the lights a very early griffin newman david sims date as well let's not forget that's another reason is she's sort of been in our craw for a while

and i was re-watching love and basketball for the first time in a while and texting you about how good it is and you and i just went like fuck it let's do it let's let's slide it in there david's most electrifying activity rearranging the spreadsheet nothing gets him more turnt than getting to rearrange the spreadsheet and we did the math and we slotted her in there and so that's coming up next and then after that once again no palate cleanser we go straight into zemeckis with i want to hold your hand so essentially the rest of august you're going to get the gina prince movies and then september starts zemeckis uh that's right and we will be covering a disappearing acts her tv film on the patreon as well yes in august um yeah no it's very exciting i feel like uh we've

done an episode so far and it was extremely enjoyable you know for everyone crying out for a ben's choice there's one on the schedule in january 2021 that's a doozy and there's one after that we have two on the don't worry right. We have another one scheduled a little later in 2020. That's right. Yeah. I'm excited to do it. I'm so fucking excited to rewatch Beyond the Lights, the sexiest, most romantic movie ever made.

I am also excited. Beyond the Lights rules. It's going to be, we're halfway, right? We're more than halfway through this year. Not great. Bad year. Bad year. Wait, you think? Wait, we're halfway, right? We're more than halfway through this year. Not great, but for- Bad year, bad year. For- Wait, you think-

Wait, Ben, wait, come on. The layoff 2020, it's trying to spell us. Do you think there's issues? I know I can be negative sometimes. Like you call me Mr. Positive, but honestly, that's sort of sarcastic. I'm kind of negative sometimes. Well-

And this is not good. But looking at this sketch for the rest of Tuan Tuan, feeling okay about it. Good movies. And I'll say this. We tentatively have our schedule for the first half of 2021. Because we, as I said, David likes to fill out this spreadsheet. We like to sort of see how things would look.

And looking at like this year of the podcast, it feels really exciting to me in terms of the amount of different stuff we get to cover, the zigs and the zags and all of that. And I feel like as the show has gone on, sometimes I see people will marginally criticize us for being like, are they moving away from the premise? You know, are all these directors like truly conventional blank check directors? Why aren't they just covering all the most obvious people? Why are they avoiding David Fincher and stuff? And it's because as the show has grown and our platform has grown, the thing that feels the most exciting to me, and I feel like, David, you feel the same way, is being able to be like if we cover this director then we're asking people to engage with their filmography more seriously in a way that people are automatically doing with pta or fincher we're making our listeners go through them and watch their underseen movies and think about making anyone do anything you do whatever they want but it's

fun to do it's an invitation exactly and it's like the best thing was watching people much like us discover this is my life and go like holy shit this thing honks why has no one ever talked about this you know and it's also just great that my uh my word honks to describe something being good it's just just you know taking off so well and people are talking about it more and more yes it is funny someone posted i forget which movie it was but one of the recent blank check movies on uh amazon prime it might have even been like mission impossible one the algorithm of viewers also watched was six entirely disparate movies that are only linked by us also covering them like it was like viewers all watch mission impossible this is my life uh crazy mama like

it was the weirdest grouping but it's exciting we're in the we're in the code you know we're in the algorithm we're in the code we've broken the internet much like ralph we've broken the internet right anyway now all the business you have ralph we've broken the internet right anyway now all the business is ralph on the show let's get him on a buck him that would rule his people never respond um i know and it's like upsetting it's really it's really hard to send emails to a power strip that's the issue yeah you're right i think there's one final item of business we have to settle before this episode can be done and ben you almost set it up perfectly we like to call you mr positive but another thing we like to do is give you a new nickname at the end of every mini series and we

often forget to do this that's true true so i think we need to settle one. And Romley would like your opinion as well for what we can name Ben out of the Nora Ephron cannon. Do you have them loaded up? When Harry met Sally, this is my life. Sleepless in Seattle. Mix nuts. Michael,

you've got mail. No, I know a witch. Julian Julia. I haven't seen any suggestions. What are you talking about? For one, Kevin made a famous suggestion.

That was great. What? You know, Ben and women can't be friends oh fuck i forgot how do you forget about that come on that was that was amazing then maybe that's just it well it's good but here's there's there's a reddit thread okay so ben are you talking about this or do you want to hear no i just wanted to weigh in that i don't think what kevin came up with i think it was funny in the context of the episode i don't think we need to carry on that phrase yes that's why i figured asama bin hasley territory for you which i messaging do not like god we didn't do that to not accept we almost forced ben to have the nickname Osama Ben Hosley because of Zero Dark Thirty Romilly. That's a rough one, Ben.

No, it's not good. Yeah, thank you. I had to really fight them on that for whatever reason. Here are some other suggestions. Ben Hosley met Sally. Funny. That's pretty good. I like that.

Ben, would she's hosley okay this is my ben i mean i do find myself saying that a lot you've got ben uh hosburn hosing up lucky numbens uh what else wow these are good the ben around the corner oh boy i like ben hosley met sally yeah ben hosley met sally is great and it's nice to have another dot dot dot in there along with save anything yeah it's pretty good all right well then it's been decided great gavel i want us to get so many nicknames that at a certain point we have to do a patreon episode that's just you reading the nicknames and it's an hour long that's the goal people ask why right the nicknames aren't in most episodes and it's because we also have to do ads in most episodes yeah it was one or the other.

They were ending up around the same length of time. We needed 10 minutes somewhere. Yeah. Right. Three ads versus 87 nicknames. Well, Romilly, thank you so much for being on the show. And as much as it feels hypocritical, do you want to plug your social media now at the end of this episode?

You know, I actually, I, um, the only social media platform I am now on is Instagram. Killing it on the grams. I deleted my Twitter. Smart. Sure. Um, I'm trying to reduce my screen time. Um, since the pandemic has started, I'm up to 10 hours a day, which is

horrific. I'm not posting anything right now, but my Instagram is foodbyromley. I also have a website called romleynewman.com which has some recipes on it. And now would be a really good time for me

to update it. So stay tuned for that. Hey now. And let's also say that you have sort of pivoted to your Instagram being more teaching people how to cook, like we're talking about. Less taking pictures of good dishes and more really trying to share your love of dishes with people. Yes. I've tried to get back and I will continue to do so in the future to my original vibe. Just, you know, like cooking for the love of cooking and trying to teach people things that I'm excited about or I'm geeky about or whatever it may be. And so that is going to be my new path. And we here at Blank Check are trying to get back

to the love and basketball next week thank you all for listening please remember to rate, review, subscribe thanks to Andrew Guto for co-producing the show Rachel Jacobs for editing and help Lane Montgomery for our theme song

Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. And patreon.com backslash blank check for blank check special features

where we're doing Mission Impossible commentaries and as David said, an upcoming episode on Disappearing Axe, the Gina Prince Bythewood film.

And as always, producer Ben, producer Ben, the Ben Ducucer the poet laureate the meat lover the tiebreaker the fart detective our finest film critic the peeper birthday benny hello fennel not professor crispy he is not professor crispy he is the fuck master yes he's dirt bike benny he's white hot benny he's soaking wet benny he's the haas he. He's White Hot Benny. He's Soaking Wet Benny. He's the Haas. He's Mr. Positive. He's Mr. Haasitive.

He's a close personal friend of Dan Lewis. He's the Voice of Reason. He's Santa Haas. He's the Commissioner. Oh, right, the Commish. The Commish for short. And he's graduated to certain titles at the end of each miniseries. This includes Chrissy, Ben, Kenobi, Kylo, Ben, Ben Knight, Shyamalan, Ben Sate, Save Anything, dot, dot, dot,

Ailey Banz with a dollar sign, Warhaz, Purdue or Bane, Ben 19, The Fennel Maker, Robohaz, Benglish, Mr. Ben Credible, E-Drink, Ben Hazli, Beetle Vape Juice,

The Hazl Day, Public Benemies, Hossica of the Ditch, of the Jersey, and also, Stop Making Bens, Sure. And also, we never came up with a George Miller one

Boom And finally Ben Hosley met Sally dot dot dot We did it Alright thanks For all those names and many more to come