Blank Check with Griffin & David - Lucky Numbers with Alex Ross Perry

Episode Date: July 19, 2020

It’s an extra-sized episode featuring director Alex Ross Perry for this strange film about lotteries or something. Which Seinfeld characters are the Two Friends, Ben, and Ang? What awesome tidbits did Alex pick up from the Lucky Numbers commentary? What are the merits of the films of all the other Friends (from Friends)? The Seinfeld theme is composed by Jonathan Wolff. 

uh do you masturbate ross uh do you masturbate ross geez i you know i've been so busy lately i barely podcast my shoes there we go are you happy my podcasts i barely polished my podcast yeah i don't know uh yes you don't know i don't know okay griffin's very riled about the choice of quote for this. Well, now that I have access to the clock of the recording, I can say it took four minutes to get to that. Yeah, that's what I was riled about. Okay, what about this one?

What about this one? Here's a new quote. Ready? We're not restarting the episode, but here's a new superior quote along the same lines. Okay? Let me say the role of John Travolta's Russ Richards again. Give me a moment to find the character, and here's a new superior quote along the same lines. Okay. Let me say the role of John Travolta's Russ Richards again. Give me a moment to find the character.

And here's a new line. Yeah. Well, what about this little missy? There's enough mist in this little puppy to save 10 podcasters. Yeah, that's fine. I mean, I don't remember a single line from this movie. You could say anything right now. Say it was from this movie.

And I'd be like oh yeah i guess i guess i don't remember that well i've got to tell you there's a line i and i'm gonna have to apologize ben i'm gonna have to grab my phone at some point because when i listened to nora effron's commentary she cites the line in the script that she said when i was reading it i must make this movie and i have to be on set the day that line is said for the first time. Which line is it? Should I just do that now? Yeah. I'll keep my phone relatively far away from the recording material.

And I'm going to do a third alt reading. I think it should be, what about this little missy? There's enough mist in this podcast to save 10 masturbators. Here's the line. this podcast to save 10 masturbators. Here's the line. Lisa Kudrow in the restaurant says, fuck me, no fried clams is one of the reasons I wanted to do the movie. I want to be there the day that line is first said. Amidst all the chaos and sadness, it's possible to focus on the most trivial thing, says Nora Ephron on the commentary for the hit 2000 comedy lucky number is now celebrating its 20th anniversary this is of course a very

important episode celebrating the 20th anniversary guys you're jumping the gun the 20th anniversary of course is in october we're a few months out from the 20th anniversary. But that's good because you'll get in front of the wave of other sort of retrospective pieces. Right. We're putting the marker down. Right. Exactly. The oral history. Also, David.

I've already heard there's competing oral histories. There's going to be four. David, it's a year-long celebration. The celebration isn't that day. It's a year-long celebration. What are you talking about? We're one of a tapestry of events celebrating the 20th anniversary of Lucky Numbers because this, of course, is Blank Check.

It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have early success, massive success early on in their careers, are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want, and sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they win the lottery, but then results in several deaths. Maybe this is a main series on the films of Nora Ephron. And we've gotten to this, her second least successful film financially.

Um, this is my life made less than a million. Right. But this is right. It certainly, it made less money than this is my life made less than a million right but this is right it certainly it made less money than this is my life i'm i just feel like this may have been uh bigger this may have lost more money right because this probably cost some money and when you you may not do you know how much money this made total how many black hats did it make can i tell you what I think? I haven't looked it up. Okay. My memory is that it made like one and a half black hats.

Yeah. I don't think it even got there. It made one in a smidge black hats, basically. Like 11? What did it make? 10. Wow. That's bad.

It basically made Travolta's salary, is my guess. It made like one and a third black hats. Travolta might have gotten full quote for this. I mean, this is a big studio comedy at the peak of his stardom i i would say slightly post peak but still in the zone yeah but but here's the thing boy do i have a rundown of the travolta leading up to this to really dig in on well we did we i want to warn you we covered a lot in michael and that is why my list starts with the release of Michael. Great. Because the period between Michael and this is insane.

Yes. Can I just read this now? Yes, because then there's the point I want to make after this. Let's introduce our guest, and then we can do this. Who's chomping at the bit? I'm Griffin. I'm David. Your name?

And our guest today returned to the show for the fifth or sixth time i'm like craig kilbourne moving to cbs because i'm taking the five with me this is your this is the time you join the five timers club on the main feed i think so that's why i'm wearing my ben hat wow he's wearing a congratulations hat. He has recently been anointed the official ambassador, brand ambassador. A ambassador, I believe. A and ambassador, sure. Of the congratulations fashion line. Yes.

Director of Listen Up, Phillip. Your fifth episode. You're on Insomnia, Hollow Man, taking Woodstock. You took Woodstock. We took it. The heap. We took it and we kept it.

And now this. Yes. Yes. And so to honor this event, of course I rewarded Alex with the congratulations hat. You gave him a congratulations hat because this is a major event for Alex Ross Perry, director of Listen on Philip, Queen of Earth,

Her Smell and many more. Found another perfect film for me to come do. I was going was gonna say you like to pick the film that kind of exists the least often their lowest grossing film but a film that flopped in a way where people don't even talk about it and similar to nolan with the one movie that he does not have a writing credit on this is the same thing and it therefore yes feels perfect and i basically demanded that that would this had demanded that this had to happen.

Also, a huge, huge Efron household over here. We love her. You're a big Efron fan. And this, similar to taking Woodstock, was like the one I hadn't seen. Right. Now, we had booked someone else for this episode. Which was John Travolta, unfortunately.

John Travolta. We booked Johnny Trabs, the most bovine of all leading men, to be the guest on this episode. And then, no, we booked a non-Travolta person who we've been trying to get on the show for a long time. Well, there's John Travolta and then there's non-Travolta. Those are the two categories. We booked a non-Travolta for this episode. We've been trying to get on the show for a long time and he had not seen this movie. And I was like, hey, this is up for grabs. Do you want to cover this? And i was like hey this is up for grabs do you want to cover this and he was like sure and then you told david i would like to do lucky numbers and david said to you

we have someone for lucky numbers it's off the table i don't think there's anything we can do and then i believe i also said but you can have your pick of a zemeckis or you know like it wasn't like i was like now check back again later see ya then Then Alex texted me and was like, it's too bad. I would have loved to done Lucky Numbers, but David told me there's nothing that can be done. It's immovable. And I was like, this is obstruction. This is large government obstruction. I can untangle this.

I reached out to the other guest we had booked. I said, would you rather do first pick of any Zemeckis movie or Lucky Numbers? And he said, yeah, I'll take a fucking Zemeckis over Lucky Numbers. I made both people happier. I'm the only one that would hear that offer and say, Lucky Numbers, obviously. Yeah. Yes, right. You wanted it.

And I got it. Much like Nora wanted to be on set hearing the oh no, they're out of fried clams. Fuck me, no fried clams now can i say two controversial opinions right off the bat okay one i think lisa kudrow nails that delivery of what is a very good line in a script she's great in this she's good yeah she's she's actually just good in this movie okay now here's my second controversial take i like this movie and i was not expecting that i was not prepared to have any generous takes on this film you know you know i

like to aim to be either the bottom or second to bottom when you do your rankings so that's disappointing yes uh i mean yeah this is second to bottom this is third to bottom for me at at least all right well that's okay that's still on the losers not to call out my list in advance but they're right they're two i like less than this unquestionably while you're on the subject did did you take my suggestion for a bonus episode uh was your suggestion uh hanging up it was yes then we did take your suggestion that it was said to david in a blind rage when he was telling me that i had to take a hike we had already penciled hanging up into the schedule he stole your idea and rage you're in glory have you have you recorded it yet we haven't we have because it's interesting

that this and that are the same year both kudrow yes kudrow kudrow it's like it's like welcome to the club kudrow you're gonna be a rom-com leading lady you're gonna be in nora efron movies this is great like your movie stardom awaits well if you think that one of the things and fricking Marcy X or you brought up Darcy X, right? Marcy X and people are like, uh, go away, Lisa. Well, if you think that one of the things on my syllabus that I made is not talking about friends movies, then you are incorrect. A physical soul. Great. Okay. Because this is the context I want to get into. I feel like this is a really good episode to talk about the friends movie. Also, because I think you might never do one again. Is that possible?

When I was looking at the careers of the friends, I was wondering, will a friends cast member ever be discussed outside of like a lost in space? Oddball. I was going to say, right. I feel like that's the only one we've done. If we don't discuss,

um, Jesus, David Schwimmer in a movie, I'm i'm gonna lose my mind what would that movie be something yeah i don't know what that movie is look at his filmography major or marginal auteur that he worked with that you would ever discuss him unless you do a doug eland series into it he he worked with the auteur david schwimmer director of run fat boy run so that's right you know check yourself of course he'd be on the weirdos bracket right yes well okay look if we ever do soderbergh david schwimmer was in the laundromat oh he did fold that movie i do feel like you have repeatedly said Soderbergh is unmanageable by any measure of how to do it. Well,

who fucking knows? We have yet to solve it. Okay. If we ever do Matt Reeves, which we might, then we're going to need to kick it off with the Paul bearer. We're going to need to bear that Paul. Now that's an interesting take.

Cause we could, I could see two movies from now us doing Matt Reeves. It could happen. A hundred percent. And if we ever do Mike Nichols, I didn't realize this, but apparently David Schwimmer plays a cop in Wolf. So.

And certainly he would be the main thing to talk about while talking about Wolf. One of the most insane things that has ever happened. I'm realizing one other Schwimmer. If we ever did Ivan Reitman. Yes. We talk about Schwimmer in Six Day, Seven Nights. A hundred percent. Yes.

So you're going to cover a lot of Schwimmer. He popped up in a lot of stuff. We're going to cover so much Schwimmer. Yeah, it's like a third lead. But in terms of like what I define as the Friends movie, that's like one of the six cast members of the hit TV show Friends. Yes.

As the lead. Like Six Day, Seven Nights is Harrison Ford and Heche and then whatever Schwmer as well i'm talking like i agree with movies that were like you're famous here's your movie you're forgetting there's the very there's a very obvious one which one um peyton reed i think you know he is peyton reed is a somewhat legitimate candidate and the breakup is is a you know that's a jennifer aniston vehicle yes that that counts because jennifer aniston vehicle yes that that counts because jennifer aniston's the one who actually got vehicles i was gonna say multiple vehicles

well we have to unpack this but it is fascinating for being the one friend who actually had a legitimate movie career that kind of worked she has worked with very few people we would ever cover on this show unless you do rob reiner and cover the graduate movie unless we do but you see you don't even remember the title uh rumor has it rumor has it all right all right all right fine uh yeah who directed picture perfect oh i couldn't answer that with a gun to my head uh it was a tv director mostly glenn glenn karon yeah whatever part part of what i found interesting is that like in my mind the friends movies by 2000 are all done like this movie is like two years later than every friends movie except for two that i found which are the whole nine yards and three to tango both matthew

perry vehicles 2099 right and then weirdly marcy x is 2003 at which point no that was on a shelf for two years that was like a very delayed movie because paramount made that and then looked at it and said are we gonna get arrested if we put this in theaters it was one of those where they just kept on they should release it now yes now now is the time for hip-hop to meet shop till you drop it must which is which was the tagline for mercy x isn't that also directed by like a weirdly overqualified director well of course directed by richard benjamin you are correct sergey eisenstein directed that film yes you're right. Ricky Benjamin. Yeah, Richard Benjamin. This is what I find interesting.

Alex, I'm so glad you're ready to talk about this. This is, of course, a Macy's, but the film's of Nora Ephron. It's called You've Got Podcast. We're talking about lucky numbers, a film that I'm going to very half-heartedly defend while just explaining why this movie, I guess, ticks off my weird fetishes, because I can't actually say anything about it that makes it sound good but no not good the 90s is this weird run of because i think the phenomenon of which sitcom stars become movie stars and which ones don't is really interesting like if you look at a show like cheers which was so mammoth and the obvious thing was oh shelly long will become a movie star ted danson will become a movie star both of them made a bunch of movies and they had

hits but they never really became movie stars ted benson dance had had uh three men and a baby and a sequel shelly long had a couple like the there's the um the bet middler movie i'm forgetting the title of right that was a big hit but they never really became proper movie stars you would not have bet that woody harrelson would be the one to connect he's the one much like how janet forrest and what's the one yeah he is the one and of course we await um venom to let there be carnage, which will be the final jewel atop his film star crown. Ted Danson, at least, he has the distinction of, I think, being the best TV actor of all time. Which I think he is with very little argument. I think he's the one where he's like, I've now done everything.

I've tried every kind of American TV genre i've now done everything like i've i've tried every kind of american tv genre i've done prestige i've done multi-cam i've done it all like you know did csi just to do it you know like that's what danson finally realized he's like i should just be the most famous tv actor ever and he's incredible at it uh yes i think that's a good argument and i'm i'm not judging him for not having a better movie career because he certainly tried and he had big hits yeah he took he had good performances and shit but in the same way that it's like you wouldn't predict that devito becomes the leading man from the taxi cast like those sitcoms often the person who was the

lead doesn't have the career it's it's weirdly someone who seems like more of a character actor who ends up uh growing into something else and then friends is this example people always cite it as like the show that broke sitcoms because there always used to be in their standing of like you put pretty people on procedurals you maybe have one pretty person in a sitcom cast but like a sitcom is mostly you get people who like come from the comedy clubs you get people come from second city you get people come from musical theater weirdo people want to watch people who are funny they're weirdos they're collection of weirdos and then friends was suddenly oh everyone in this cast is hot this is a sitcom everyone's getting everyone's a hottie i must say though while you're on this while you're on the subject seeing the the talking about this era of sitcom

one thing i wanted to bring up especially seeing the, the talking about this era of sitcom, one thing I wanted to bring up, especially seeing the four of you here visually, four of you kind of remind me of the cast of Seinfeld. Hey, I don't know if that's been brought up before. What about the cast? I want to say one thing about friends before. I just feel like,

I just feel like the four of you could do a promotional photo shoot for blank check where you assume like Seinfeld. Right. Well, you're sure. Oh yeah. photo shoot for blank check where you assume like david's kramer right well yeah yeah for sure david's always coming up with crazy schemes that he's trying to invent no ben ben ben wait what i'm kramer um i just feel like the way that they they did the wizard of oz photo shoot you could the four of you could do the seinfeld photo shoot or that rolling stone where they're all in like snm gear have you ever seen that the most cursed image of all time yes i have not but seinfeld crew i feel like the four of you could you know maybe do a seinfeld photo shoot i mean david is the most has the most jerry energy imaginable right yes i am obviously the jerry

it's probably it's like probably in the constitution that I'm the Jerry. Like, you know, that's like unbreakable. Like there would need to be state action taken. You don't wait, wait a second. You don't think David is the one who is describing things he's done off

camera and you can't tell if they're real or not. No, I don't think so. And plus, I don't think he's the Kramer. If Griffin is George and your dad gets to be a wacky Frankestanza type it all lines up absolutely yes that lines up seeing the four of you and thinking about that era of sitcom did get my brain rushing into the seinfeld thing i hope this is a compliment i mean i say this is with the highest praise let me speak the other thing about the

friends cast before this exits my brain god damn it it's six people there are six hotties we can't dispute yes they're all pretty enough to be movie stars right only one of them has any comedy background correct kudrow is the only one who like took second city classes incorrect incorrect incorrect aniston auditioned for snl had a background in sketch comedy was on a short-lived fox sketch comedy show take it back i forgot i had no idea to be honest the others did not uh leblanc perry uh cox obviously just they're just actors there's theater drama school people yeah yeah right right yeah yeah they were drama school move to Hollywood people. What do we think about the double take? Are we into it? Do we like it?

The double takes are funny. Members running bit where he kept doing double takes. I love a double take. I love a spit take. I like a spit take. Double takes, they stink. What? Come on. Wait. You don't like a double take?

What? Wait a second. Wait, what? What? I like the double take with a pause in the middle where someone like looks and then they're like.

Do you like a slow double take as well where they like someone slowly turns back around? Yeah, I like it all. This is great audio content to all be doing. The second Ben says it. The cast of Friends is fascinating.

The genre of Friends movies is fascinating and I think they're mostly extinct by 97, 98 which makes this as like an above the title studio release kind of an outlier because I think by 2000 most of the cast is not doing that anymore. I think 2000 is the cutoff point. I think because it's whole nine yards and this,

I think that's really, this is the last proper year of it. But here's what I think is interesting about your theory. Aniston is the one who goes on to have a film career, but for most of the nineties, people were like, why isn't she connecting what she does in the two thousands? What she does essentially starting the next year is I'm going to play second

banana to every major,-list comedy leading man she becomes a star by just being like i'll take the thankless role in bruce almighty in along came polly how she finally becomes a movie star well yeah because they kick her off with picture perfect and things that are more just like well she must be a rom-com leading lady right and there's just that automatic resistance where it's like, no, that's a TV actor. You know, that line used to be so firm.

And so people are like not interested. But the thing about Kudrow that you got, I mean like the opposite of sex, she won critics awards for that. And she had Romy and Michelle the same year. So I think with Kudrow, people are like, this is like an intelligent comedy actress who, you know,'s a perfect fit for nora effron it makes total sense she was always

quietly the best actor on that show but her especially especially how it's aged especially watching it now she's running laps around everyone else absolutely and i'm so excited anytime she shows up in anything obviously like comeback people have come around to and recognized how much it was slept on but i think watching that's also one of those funny things where people were like everyone just agreed that the second season doesn't exist and nobody after wanting more of it for like a decade we got it and everyone was like oh there's the one perfect season that everyone likes yeah everyone was like oh yeah that's okay yeah because there was also web therapy she just she does stuff wasn't that sponsored by

like mitsubishi or something probably i'm sponsored by mitsubishi oh really no no but i want to be you are right david though that she is the one who had the most sort of traditional comedy bonafides going into a sitcom right right and and so in a way mad about you right and even though she was the weirdo character that she was the character who was sort of the most limited in her game so it was hard to track what kind of movie star she could be. Whereas someone like Aniston, you'd go, well, I know I can see her in a rom-com. It was like, who does Kudrow play? Because it was such a character actor performance. It was not a movie star, a star energy performance on Friends. But then she also seems to be kind of like i i don't have anything to prove i'm gonna do whatever i feel like and then right off the bat her appearance in this movie has that thing from this time period of like this person you know from tv is cursing yes isn't that something yes and and here's like i you i can't imagine like phoebe having sex right like that all the shit that's like pointedly out of character

for phoebe it's a little different because courtney cox had been in the scream movies which obviously have but she has the weirder career because she had that as a big franchise and did no comedies she she after french she does no romantic comedies or anything like that no yeah she really just i mean she's in the highest grossing movies because of scream and also the fewest movies of the whole cast but she was also the one who had done the most before the show uh yeah she's unusual in that sense she was the most famous i was gonna say that's what i know everyone knew her from the springsteen video right she's in the he-man movie she's ostensibly the lead of the he-man movie more than jerry's pretend wife on an episode of seinfeld yeah she was in a lot of family ties she had like

a big recurring role on that um she had done the most work yeah um matt leblanc was like what like plucked out of i guess like red shoe commercial right isn't he in like a ketchup commercial or something a handsome boy uh and obviously schwimmer was like a theater guy yeah who had been on nypd blue right and aniston was like the queen of failed pilots like that was her reputation was she booked a pilot every year never went uh and and of course of course he's gonna say leprechaun and she was in leprechaun yeah i mean you can't you can't not talk about leprechaun apparently she's dancing in the mcdonald's scene in mac and me which i didn't know hey that's exciting question about pilots like are those just sitting somewhere like all of these pilots all over the years it would be fascinating to get to watch isn't that wild it would be really cool they should release it yeah some of them leak out some of them end up

getting released for different reasons years later but it's so bizarre that so many of them are just like yes we shot this we spent a couple million dollars making this it has famous people in it people are curious about it we will never let it be seen sorry yes i'm just gonna brag for two seconds but you go ahead it's more interesting oh i was just gonna say i imagine all those pilots like in a cave on top of a mountain somewhere like left to be discovered someday that's where they all have to go a lot of stuff is stored in mountains in salt mines a lot of hollywood ephemera um stoltz future uh portrayer of ben hosley whether he knows it or not sent me um the the imagine television tommy schlamme directed noah bomback pilot that stoltz is in oh called 30 which i which is you know not trackdownable

and he sent it to me recently and uh it's it's, it's no good. They didn't pick it up because it's no good. It's a no good. It seems, it seems, I mean, it's like 2000 and it seems like they're saying like, yeah, Noah,

can you write something like friends, but it's your voice? His answer is like, I don't think I can, but I'll try. But it was weird. Just like sitting here watching like a dead air, no laugh track, 30 minute onired pilot from 20 years ago.

But is it a multi-camera just without a live studio audience? I don't think it is multi-camera. I think it's single camera. It's very location-y. But yeah, pilots are weird. There is a pilot version of Blazing Saddles that they put on most of the home video releases in which Lou Gossett Jr. plays the Cleavon Little part. And I think it's Steve Landisberg playing Gene Wilder.

And it's all shot on like a Western backlot, but they put a laugh track in all of it. And so it feels like you're watching a live action Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Like that weird thing where it's like, who is supposed to be laughing at Scooby-Ddoo right now this is animated who are these adults right who are apparently watching the animator draw these things and laughing hysterically i don't know that's my side tangent i'm sorry great um but you know i i thought that this is

like one of the later friends movies and And we'll get to Marcy X. Yeah. We'll come back to that. But I thought this was interesting to see her in this movie. When David and I were talking about this, when he refused to let me do it, he said she's one of the most cursed above the title actresses. Yeah. Yes. I agree with that.

I love her when she's, you know, I mean, I think she is so incredible in the opposite of sex yeah um and romeo and michelle love romeo and michelle so that that one kind of doesn't count because that's early but like yeah lucky numbers hanging up marcy x like it becomes this kind of like cringy thing where it's like how how can this be happening to her like yeah we know she's talented like how is it she gets the like the cruddiest projects i agree with that and i also agree with alex's sentiment that david has gone mad with power in david's defense i did see while i was waiting to do this today another bad article about the future of quibi so david obviously has a lot of he's got a lot on his mind quibi's quibi is going

from strength to strength and i mean like every day every day quibby gains subscribers and i think that statement said without any other facts or figures is just a sign of how strong quibby is doing you could reboot lucky numbers as a quibby series we we have we did it's up there we know what the lucky number is the lucky number is 10 as in under 10 minutes yeah no we did it barbara streisand and um we're throwing money around warren baity's in it it's great you have a you have a gender swapped octogenarian lucky numbers quibi reboot in which warren baity plays the lotto guy and barbara Streisand plays the weather woman. Yeah.

And all we had to do is annex Canada for Barbara Streisand. People don't understand, realize this, but we actually bought the country for her at the low, low price of $40 trillion. And it's all, it's all, it's all coming around. Look,

look, we got, we got, there was a bit of a hiccup because no one wanted to watch any of our shit or pay for the service. But now we're, we're, we're just gonna push through that that's that was that was just a hiccup well congratulations thank you thank

you for taking a break to uh talk talk about one of the sources of your revenue he's really not doing well alex it's really i've been getting really frightening text messages all hours of the day and night it's mostly just like have you downloaded yet and then a link to the app please we need a couple more people to meet our quota today if you haven't yet please download now available on nokia engages we're available on any kind of phone okay this is the thing I find very fascinating about Kudrow. 1997

is all three of the movies that really work for her. Romy and Michelle, Opposite of Sex, Clock Watchers. All three of them are in one year.

And they're all like, one's a weird studio comedy, the other two are like independent films in which she gives really good performances, works with good directors, right?

People were like, okay, she's carving out a lane for herself. She's not trying to be a rom-com star. She's trying to be like a female comedy star, like a character actor, comedy star. And then it's pretty much like analyze this two years later. There's a big hit. She's above the title. You'll cover that, of course. She's, Griffin, I want to point out, she's technically below the title.'ll cover that of course she's we'll cover this point out she's technically

below the title it's robert de niro here i'm gonna and you know what i'm actually gonna narrate the entire poster now okay please called it up robert de niro billy crystal and then you got a picture of de niro going and billy crystal he's listening you know he's got the hand to his in a harold ramis film yeah well new york's most powerful gangster is about to get in touch with his feelings okay that's tagline a analyze this now you're ready for tagline b you capitalized and underlined you try telling him his 50 minutes are up and lisa kudrow and then below the second tagline it says and lisa kudrow so she gets the idea that someone's like 95 of the way into seeing the movie reading that second tagline i'm like oh i wouldn't want to tell him his 50 minutes are up oh wait and

lisa kudrow okay all right i feel feel like this has become such a dependably enjoyable part of the show lately where David is narrating these posters that have multiple taglines. I love narrating a poster. People love it. You do it with such

brio and joy that, and every time you do it, it's a perfect example. That must have been quite an appreciation. People have been like animating them.

To get her on the poster, but they're like, she can't be with those two guys. Those guys are legendary. Right, because the image is so indelible. De Niro, you know. But no one else on the poster but they're like she can't be with the those two guys those guys are led right because the the image is so indelible de niro you know but no one else is in this like we're not going to put like jelly or whatever his name is on the poster so no one else is getting on the poster

jelly is pretty good though he could be like maybe at the window like you know kind of like we will put her name on the poster and we will give her the and on the poster, which is rare. Right. I apologize for going further afield, but I must. Do you know that in the trailer, the trailer for Analyze That,

the way they do the billing with the narrator is... For that. This or that. For that. For the second film. I'm not talking about this anymore. I'm talking about that, okay? Okay. In the trailer, the trailer for analyze that it goes like robert de niro billy crystal lisa k Michael Jr. They list the other gangsters by character

as if they were all that iconic, all the supporting actors. All your favorites are that. I mean, they were that iconic, but they weren't this iconic. They weren't this iconic, but they were that iconic. And actually, Ange, that's 100 comedy points.

Thank you very much. At least. Jelly! I'm watching the trailer now. yeah she well while david does that can i do the travolta rundown of post well this i found fascinating because he and this movie to me i'm watching this this movie called lucky numbers and if you've never just want to say the final credited mobster is called lou the wrenchrench. Of course. Monster? Monster. They also

have monsters in it. That sounds like one of the scumbags that would be sort of orbiting the caper in this movie. The lucky numbers verse. Yes. I'm watching this movie and I'm just thinking, imagine that you don't know who the lead actor in this movie is. Someone's

like, this guy is famous, but I won't tell you for what. You'll watch it and you will think, no one has ever less, has been more evidently not a movie star than this performance I am seeing in this movie. What John Travolta is doing in this movie is so repellently unlikable and uncharismatic

and unfunny and uncharming that just to watch it. You're like, I cannot believe that this is, this movie is six years after Pulp Fiction. I can't deny it. For someone who is at his peak, one of the most electrically charming actor, like,

you know, in Saturday Night Fever or Pulp Fiction, right? Like in this movie, you're like, does he know that he's playing like a person who's supposed to be charming? Like, does he know that he's playing a human being who hosts a television show?

A disastrous performance. It's unbelievable. And also it's like a performance. That's like, this is the performance he would have given if he had never made Pulp Fiction or get shorty. Like this goes straight from early nineties, jumps over his resurgence right back into the gutter.

Even seeing him against Tim Roth. I was having that thought. Yeah. I'm like, I want to hang out with Tim Roth. Like he seems like a nice guy. Roth is, Roth is good in this.

But watching this, I was thinking like, is Travolta, like he just seems like a guy who's like, he's born to lose. He's like addicted to not being great even though he had it all for a minute alex take us through his post michael this is gonna blow your session his post let me just set the stage so michael which you've covered is december 96 and it's a

hit capping off a year this is like a jim carrey 94 february 96 broken arrow july 96 phenomenon all yeah hundred million dollar movies i think or at least big hits a broken arrow i think may not have been quite a hundred million dollars phenomenon definitely was which no one remembers you'll you'll come back to that when you do my old disappointment when you do my uh my john woo and hollywood miniseries that i told you you should look i mean he broken arrow is a movie that i like i think is okay and has some good stuff and travolta's doing his fun villain thing in it and some people go to the mat for ben do you like broken arrow are like well you know i didn't see that movie because of under the best intentions.

You saw it to learn how to steal thermonuclear weapons. Yeah. Yeah. No. Is that the movie with Halle Berry? That is not, that's not, that is swordfish.

That is swordfish. You would like broken. I mean, I like broken arrow. You would like it. Yeah. It's like scum. Travolta is like a criminal who steal who steals a nuclear weapon and christian slater is broken

arrow right christian slater is the the guy who has to get it back all right yeah yeah the line is like we have a broken arrow and they're like well what does that mean and it's like well that's a nuclear weapon has been stolen they're like well it's clearly like we should why do we have a word for that i believe okay let me let me try i think i think i can get this almost spot on he goes i don't know what's worse that you haven't that's i don't know what's worse that a thermonuclear weapon has been stolen or that it happens so often you have a name for it that's a great line i think that movie also has samantha mathis in it speaking of yes she's the female right there are three slater mathis movies ben was helping me get this microphone set up which he graciously loaned me and brought to my house yes he texts me at oh 12 56 hey also am uh no no 1256. Hey, also. A.M.? No, no, this is in the afternoon.

Hey, also. I watched Bicentennial, man. Me, 1257. Absurd. Ben, can I move there? Me, probably not. I've never seen it. 212.

Ben, wait, fuck, I meant Johnny Mnemonic. I got them mixed up. They're both future people. Future man, you know? That's literally the only thing they have in common. What you just said. And also just aesthetically, no movie could almost be less Ben's vibe than Bicentennial Man.

That's why I was confused. I was like, wow, Ben's really caught up with everything during COVID. He's reached the end of Netflix. He's just watching any movie with any Android in it in hopes that it gives him something. If you actually watch everything on Netflix, you have to watch Bicentennial Man last. But then the site reloads and now Bicentennial Man is in every movie on Netflix. It's like when you beat a video game and you get to keep your weapons.

Like suddenly anything you watch by Centennial Man is just there. Or like in Super Mario World where like it all changes to autumn when you beat it. Exactly. I wish you could unlock a big head mode on Netflix

and then every movie you watched had a tiny body and a really big head. That was my favorite thing to do in video games. David, maybe if you add that to Quibi, you'll fix your money woes. Yeah, add big head mode. Oh, we did add that to Quibi, you'll fix your money woes. Yeah, add Big Head Mug. Oh, we did add it to Quibi. We did.

We did. Oh, no, whatever. I'm going to stop making Quibi jokes. John Travolta, 1997. June, Face Off. August, She's So Lovely. November, Mad City. Another hat trick year.

But, I mean, She's So Lovely and Mad City. in mad city i'm saying that that's another year where he has three yes wide release movies that are studio movies that he is like in the movie but two of them face off face off is him working with woo again and woo being like what you were doing in broken arrow let's just do more of that like let's have a bigger bigger and it's it works really well mad city is a costa gavris sure english language political thriller with dustin hoffman that uh yeah i must confess i have never seen it's like a movie with men in it from the 90s some guys who were famous in the 70s. March 98, Primary Colors. December 98, The Same Day. Thin Red Line, which is obviously not really in the movie.

Civil Action is his movie. Civil Action is a great movie. I love that movie. Those are two big movies, again, like nine months apart. He's putting them out every five to eight months here, essentially. My man's working. He's got planes to fuel. I would say from Pulp F you know 94 where he gets an oscar nomination on he is in a film that could

at least be considered for the for awards contention right like get shorty michael and phenomenon maybe not so much face off at she's a whatever like civil action primary color like he's in films that studios will position properly you know i'm sure yes he is a movie star he is a movie star of american proportions but he's doing both he's doing like blockbusters and legitimate films like he's trying to get oscars and have action movies in the same june 99 general's daughter big hit may 2000 battlefield earth right and then it's now we just drive straight off october 2000 lucky numbers and then just a little epilogue june 01 swordfish november 01 domestic disturbance and now it's over right yeah now the next time you see him he's like the bad guy in the

punisher yes well right there's basic which is sort of like it's like another epilogue but like there's been coffee filled all over it or something yes huge flop and there's ladder 49 which i guess is that's like oh three oh oh four yeah so like that's like i'm just saying like this run of his ends now like between battlefield earth and this movie it ends and also when i watched him and nora on charlie rose 30 minute interview he has the swordfish goatee just on sitting there at the table with her and she's acting like he doesn't have it on his face it's unbelievable the most offensive thing at that table weirdly yes on any other episode you would have to blur out charlie rose for. On this one, he can stay,

but Travolta's little razor-thin line is something that needs a warning now. I also think, and we've talked about this, but all the post-2000 movies, he's kind of playing elder statesman support for the new movie star. Sometimes. Even if he's first billed.

But I'm saying Swordfish is Hugh Jackman's movie, even if Travolta's first build. Ladder 49 is Joaquin Phoenix's movie, even if Travolta's first build. Punisher is certainly. When is Hairspray? Hairspray is 07.

Here's the thing. This is what's so weird about John Travolta. Everything. Battlefield Earth, Lucky Numbers, one two punch of 2000 is certainly more than enough

to consign him to like laughing stock territory, right? Yes, full body blow. And by the way, when Charlie Rose asks him about it, he just calls it Battleship. Great. Which not that we need to give him any comedy points.

He doesn't deserve anything, but it is funny to call it Battleship to Travolta's face. Charlie Rose, like beyond being an absolute fucking monster was the worst interviewer ever like his whole worst he's so terrible anytime i ever saw him he'd just be like anyway so uh like that's what his interview style was i don't understand how he was a serious journalist for so many years that being said i just want to say something about Charlie Rose very quickly. Okay.

Because I don't think I've ever talked about this on the podcast. I was cut out of yet still somehow receive very minimal residuals for the Chris rock movie. Top five. Congrats. Thank you. You were just below the five. You were,

I make, I was six. I was number six you didn't uh bottom five i make i make tens of dollars off of that movie hey um what is that movie about comedian autobiographical rock was a guy yeah what if like a comedian had a midlife thing where he talked to his friends about comedy but this is the crazy thing it's about what if chris rock became denzel washington like what if he then became the most serious but not in like a face-off way respected then you get the sauce bit off so in what is now just part of the opening montage of that movie in which a lot of stuff is happening for context to explain to you show you

how famous this chris rock character is there is little snippets of Charlie Rose conducting a New York Times talk with Chris Rock, and he's asking him questions about his career. And the entire day is just shooting that. It's just Charlie Rose, Chris Rock on stage. I was one of the kids asking some dumb fucking question in the audience. He has all of his lines on note cards in front of him

he is playing charlie rose conducting an interview off of note cards and he fucked up every single line for 12 consecutive hours and his one job is you have to make it seem like this guy is so successful that everyone remembers the name of every movie he's been in and charlie rose kept on getting the guy's name wrong he kept on addressing chris rock by the wrong he's an idiot he's a moron well yeah calling him chris rock or calling him like john edwards and he's like it's jake edmonds like it kept on being classic when I say missed when I say hello Mr. Thompson and step on your foot you say hello yes yes it was one of those what was your line my line was do you still consider yourself to be a hip-hop comedian there you go 12 bucks a month I mean did he did he he

did he did I will also say the only other tidbit from the charlie rose travolta efron interview that i watched while griffin was delaying this two hours to also watch cabin boy half an hour i delayed it half an hour to watch you guys i'll stop yelling i want to make my travolta point get this over come on the only thing he said which will potentially feed your point is he says in this interview conducted sometime in middle 2000 he him and tom hanks are the same according to him at this and he says he says every script i get has has hanks's fingerprints on it every script he gets has my fingerprints on it i couldn't do green mile he couldn't do primary colors we ended up doing a lot of roles to get offered to one or

the other and charlie rose says to nora ef. So did you know was Tom Hanks someone you ever thought could be in this or John Travolta ever be in you've got mail and she's like no and that's that's kind of the gist of it, but I don't view them as really peers or equals, but John Travolta views them not at all. He views them that way they I can see how maybe Travolta

is like while we were both on sitcoms and he was the first choice for primary colors. That's about it. That's about as far as I can see how maybe Travolta is like, well, we were both on sitcoms and he was the first choice for primary colors. That's about it. That's about as far as I can take. We were both in big movies in 1994. Right. I mean, it's like they weren't in the same lane.

Yeah. But he probably views a civil action as a Tom Hanks type, you know, movie. Sure. Whatever. Anyway, he thinks they're more than more similar than they are.

This is the thing travolta's energy is unlike anyone else's energy correct correct that's one way to put it sure who's like travolta i guess cage is this most similar in a weird sort of a way that you know totally but but like face off works because they are both actors when they are doing their thing that like their movie star thing you're like how on earth does this work they're like lines that never quite cross but they got really close at face off and then just separate it again it works because they're equally weird but i would argue they're weird in different ways yeah they're weird in very different ways but they both are sort of that thing where like if you showed someone one movie of theirs and they'd they'd be like you're telling

me this guy was like a huge successfully famous actor movie star like what yeah romantic leading man oscar contender all those things in the tooth i'm saying post battlefield earth lucky numbers which should be the death blow but the man is a cockroach like he's been dealt death blows before and he's never died right like his career has survived everything i mean speed kills but travolta doesn't yeah exactly i mean we talk about this a little in the michael episode but like so even though you have total flops like basic and you know he still just will make leading man movies like wild hogs or you know what even taking a poem one two three where it's like in taking a poem one two three that performance is unhinged everyone else is doing kind of like gritty grounded work like it's a decent movie

and then he's just in it it's like doing something and you're like why is he still in the club in a weird way you know what i mean i quoted this in our our michael episode but it's like doing something and you're like why is he still in the club in a weird way you know what i mean i quoted this in our our michael episode but it's worth saying again because it really applies for this movie that you look at the the fact that like travolta and cruise are the two most prominent scientologists and you're like tom cruise is such a good spokesperson for that horrible fucking organization because he is like, look at how high functioning he is.

Look at how well he's aged. Look at how youthful and focused he is. He's at such a high performance level. And then Travolta is like the opposite where it just seems like he has no sense of who he is. He lacks such complete self-awareness, even just down to his like styling choices.

And a film like this, where you're just like, Cruise styling choices and a film like this where you're just like cruz has never given a performance like this where he just fundamentally misunderstands how he reads on camera what movie he's in what the movie is calling for whether or not he should have made this film like like cruz in something like rock of ages you go like you gotta give him credit he went for it like the guy doesn't embarrass himself. And Cruise in a disaster movie is like Mummy, where you're like, well, you miss sometimes.

But Cruise never does this. John Travolta in this movie is bad. And this movie is bad. But it's pretty good. But we all watched it and I listened to an entire commentary about it. Did you watch it two times? No, I watched the movie with Anna the other night. I bought the DVD, which as you know, was something we were waiting for, which I still think we should give away. We should, everyone should, you know, we should all sign this and give it away somehow,

someday. And then I, I recorded the commentary onto my phone and then listened to it while i was doing yard work over the weekend wow so you you turned the commentary into a podcast essentially how did you to record it onto your phone i'm fascinated oh it's very pathetic i took my old phone that i don't use anymore that i don't even know how to work it i turned on voice memo put it in front of the TV, played commentary, recorded it, and then came back like an hour and 45 minutes later and then sent it to myself. Wow. That rules. Which was the only thing I could figure out. But I wanted, but honestly, like I wanted to listen to it because I really love Nora Ephron as a writer, as a personality, as a very funny woman.

And I really like just what she has to say about things is funny. Like I've never listened to a commentary of hers, but I have no doubt that they're all funny. She's great. One of the wittiest people alive. I thought, you know, at the very least, like a hundred minutes of her riffing

is going to be funny. And also like, this is such an outlier in everything she's done, everything she is as a writer, as a personality, the only movie she didn't write herself. This is the only time she directed someone else's script. I'm sure she'll say some funny stuff, but also there has to be some insight as to what the deal is with this.

Because if it was just the disaster that she walked away from, she wouldn't have done a commentary. And I wanted to listen to it. Sure. And it delivered on all those things. It was insightful and she had some great lines so but when she's doing the commentary does she know the movie is bombed because sometimes i feel like they do those right when the movie seems there is no discussion of response to the movie at all sure sure critical audience the

cinema score f is not mentioned i was about to say this is one of the early f cinema scores which is amazing famous jumping ahead a little bit because typically movies i think they get an f cinema score like not to spoil lucky numbers and with like the death of the main character or like something that's like very unpleasant it's there's two kinds there's there's there's the box which is like this the last time is this movie or such a confusing nightmare also i love but like or there's the like this is an anti-hero who gets killed and fuck this movie i'm giving it an f and this movie has like kind of an uplifting coda where it's like and here's how everything worked out and then people are like uh-huh uh-huh

f but that's the thing right it's usually usually like some horror movie that people were just like absolutely not i despised every minute or some movie where they're like i did not get what i was promised right solaris mother you know those sorts of where it's like you know i was walking and expecting this killing them softly right and i just did not get what i wanted now can i simplify it even further i think it is movies where audiences are so freaked out by how different it is than what they were sold right yes and with horror films it's like this took a turn that is not what i expect out of a horror movie and those other movies you're talking about are like they tried

to sell them as more conventional genre things and those films were not that's another one right right bug yeah those the wicker man speaking of nicholas this this movie is exactly what it was sold as like that's what you have to think about because an f cinema score isn't oh the focus testing was terrible these are people we plucked out from a mall who hated this movie they had no concept of it's people who went out of their way to buy a ticket and go see it in theaters opening weekend so it has to be deceptive marketing in some way and it means that every single one of them as they walked out and were asked like hey grade it out of a to f we're like f every single one was like f f exactly because that's how hard it is to get an F cinema scores. Why it happens like once a year, maybe haven't like,

isn't it like 40 movies total that have gotten less, far less, far less 20, 20 movies total have gotten. And this is one of them. Yes. And this is one of those hallowed films, which is incredible because again,

truly like, you know, the movies like that, like mother where it's just like, I don't know what this is. A baby gets torn apart. Like I'm repulsulsed this does end with the main character going like everyone who was bad got punished and as for me well i guess i'm just lucky f this is my point so funny to me if you see the trailer for this movie and go oh that looks good i want to see

that and then pay to go see this movie opening weekend i don't understand how you come out of it so irate about the quality of the movie relative to what you were i have to imagine that it's just people who felt that the nora effron of it was oversold and they were like or the travolta of it sure like a man and a woman that are famous in a nora effron movie. I have some sense of what this is. And what you get is like a sixth generation Xerox of like a nineties black comedy, which I have a huge list of that I want to read because I do want to talk

while we talk about this about the black comedy. Cause I think this is, this is one of them. And the more research I did, the more fascinated I got just trying to come up with something of a definitive list of like what were these movies and why were there so many of them the obvious answer being reservoir dogs and fargo yes it's got our dogs and sex lies in videotape it's that those are the movies and hollywood's like can we make but i really put

fargo in there as well because i think between reservoir dogs and fargo it's like, can we make, but I really put Fargo in there as well. Cause I think between Reservoir Dogs and Fargo, it's like a slow start, but Fargo, which is like a comedy and a guy gets thrown a wood chipper changes the game. And then people are, and the one, I think the most important moment that like births the black comedy is Travolta shooting Marvin in the head. Like that, that's huge. A head being blown off as a punch line combined with fargo as a wood chipper punch line to me like now this is a genre unto itself well can i can i throw a little wrench into your please and i hope you say something you're forgetting you're forgetting heathers i feel like i am not forgetting heathers it's on my list of pre pre right right right okay because i think there's another person you got to give some

credit to i have serial mom written here too i think that's big john wad john waters is a huge one yeah we talked about this a little bit in mix nuts i am i have a weirdly big soft spot for like major studio major movie star 90s and 80s black comedies like this in early 2000s black comedies because it's one of those things that almost never works. And they always go like, this script is so dark, it's so good. All these actors are attracted to it. This big director's attracted to it. And then it comes out and everyone rejects it violently.

Almost every time. The list I'm going to read is a list of movies that are failures and people don't remember fondly. Now, here's the big exception who i think makes people still try to do this although it's finally maybe dried up that devito did it twice successfully that devito had war of the roses and throw mama from the train and you're like here's a big star he's making movies with other big stars both of them are like pitch black violent really really dark comedies that were big hits and critically respected i will say that my list in its in its vague chronology has only one movie

after death to smoochie a devito joint written by the writer of lucky numbers yes yes that is true but no there's i mean beyond the devito ones you mentioned there's ruthless people and other people's money and stuff like that like that was just a whole genre for him devito as a movie star and as a director like he was able to mine this thing better than anyone else here's my list of some of these and what i'm saying i already mentioned heather's and serial mom and these are not in order very bad things death to smoochie duplex uh to die for which i think this movie owes a lot to which has not been she does not acknowledge in the commentary and adam resnick does not acknowledge and what i read

with him but i think that this movie at its best could have been a bad version of to die for which is a great movie i think the entire work of todd salons jawbreaker drop dead gorgeous cable guy gross point blank clay pigeons teaching miss tingle um and bad santa yeah see i like almost all of the movies where is addicted to love i don't understand oh david's favorite my favorite which is a huge one included on here i think it's more of a dramedy. It's like heisty. It's double crosses and like criminals who are the main characters. Like shit like that.

I just feel like this is that. This is right in the kind of right at the tail end of all that. Well Bandits is the more grounded version of it. I realize this thing

that I'm a sucker for even when it's not well done and it's bizarre that I'm a sucker for this because it's in its description it sounds unappealing but i always fall for it is like pitched like a cartoon incredibly dark comedy

about movie stars playing morally reprehensible criminals who are very stupid and fuck everything palookaville i guess could be on here palookaville, I guess, could be on here. Palookaville is a good one. And Death to Smoochie, I would put there. Didn't I read that? I have Death to Smoochie written down there. Yes, no, no, no. I'm including it. Well, I'm sure Travolta's fingerprints

were on the Lady Killer script, just as Tom Hanks' fingerprints were on this script. The Lady Killers is the only movie Tom Hanks has ever done that feels like it could have been a Travolta movie. Travolta-esque, yes. That's the only one and i do you think i have griffin i like that yeah do you think travolta would have given a

subtle performance in the lady killer if he'd gotten that role i i wish i could see travolta's performance as a murdering southern gentleman i wish i could see have somebody make you a deep battle that one yes i want someone that's oh my god yes someone please take the charlie rose challenge literally and deep fake all their movies into swap them all the thing about travolta that i don't really understand to this day this is why i'm sort of ranting about it but it's sort of like in hairspray when he is playing a character where the the command is like big big right like go as big as you can it's awful yes but then in movies where the command isn't that and he just kind of he's a big sort of you know domineering performer it works fine like it's so weird how the tonal balance needs to be just so well right like at at his best this is the difference between nicholas cage and john

travolta when he was in a sweet spot he was equally good at like scaling things down and giving a leaving las vegas and being a real human being and being giving face off and going like oh i can go to the moon with this. Right, right. Cage, at his best, and he's lost the thread, used to be very good at knowing exactly what movie he was in and giving a performance that was best suited for that movie. Travolta, you put him in something like People vs. O.J., and you go, so, you know, play a real human being. And he gives a performance that's a cartoonish,

over-the-top performance, but you're like, fuck, this should be breaking the entire show, it works right i don't know why it's a river of ham but it works then you put him in something like this and you're like john go big and it's like a war crime well john travolta in this movie plays a man named russ richards let's not russ a great fake name yeah it's like well also when i was watching this i was like so they made their you know her not last movie but you know like one at one movie ago they made a movie together yes so like they clearly get along they should know how to work together absolutely he's undoubtedly better in michael which but he's also miscast in that movie he's

not great in that but at least he's giving a performance i mean this performance feels like the kind of thing that happens and you would read like and and greg kaneer dropped out eight days before filming and yes and like greg kaneer by the way being on a suggestion of who could have maybe played a kind of character like this a little bit better he'd be good but like i couldn't like this seemed like he came into this movie with no idea no prep and then on the commentary she says he was attached when she got the script he was all about this script he was the one who was trying to get this thing made yes right but then but then weirdly in the interview in the article that i read with adam resnick on vulture where he like i guess is promoting his book a few years ago and talking about this. He claims the opposite.

He claims that she brought Travolta in. So there seems to be some confusion, but I'll take her word for it over here. Well, I have two, two things I want to say that are sort of related that I feel like we're about to lose one. I have a thing about cage and Travolta.

I feel like this is what I've decided. Cage used to have a Geiger counter and he knew his limits, right? He could point it at himself. And then I guess it broke. Cause like, and he could look around the room and go, got it.

Know how to match this with Travolta. The director needed the Geiger counter. Like, you know, it's sort of, you know, cause that's the thing. Cause like an OJ Simpson,

he's over the top, but everything else is so dark and, and so grim. And you know, everyone else is playing it pretty, you know? So like, so he's over the top but everything else is so dark and and so grim and you know everyone else is playing it pretty you know so like so he's kind of fine like he's just pushing the limits a little bit yes and everyone else is bringing it in that's okay but the other thing is you said greg kinnear solid choice he'd be good at playing a guy who gets in over his head for sure yeah 2000 like a normal man is in this movie yes bill pullman would be incredible in the late talks about some pullman swap them the commentary she talks she talks a little pullman in the commentary i can get there when we get to his part pullman is so fucking good in this

he's great now that's the only problem is that he is actually very funny in really but another like another efron player coming back yes a lot of lot of them. Richard Schiff, most famous for playing the Italian restaurant waiter. And Michael, she's bringing in all her favorites, leading men. She says on the commentary that when, that's Schiff doing the scene in the kitchen with Tim Roth, right?

Yes. She says at the end of that scene, the crew burst out into applause because it was like watching two prize fighters just like dance around each other. Brilliant. I mean, he's good. I think that's an engaging scene.

I think like Travolta's performance is so disastrous. And even if you guys don't like the rest of this movie, which I can't defend, you have to admit that most of the cast is doing a good job. But that's part of the problem. Like Kudrow, Roth, Schiff. Something that I found. Michael Moore fits.

Well, we'll get there. We will get there. We'll get to him. But something she talks about almost more than anything else in the commentary which is something that griffin i'm sure you'll you know want to run with and this being like as we've talked about you know like the end of the kind of paramount comedy era is like all she cares about is comedy her respect for the idea of a comedic performance is the only thing she talks about throughout most of the commentary she says casting comedy actors is the most important thing she says she said it better than i will but all her respect for the idea of a comedic performance is so so strong she says um it's amazing how many actors we can cross off

the list when we're casting a comedy we can go down the list and write nf and you know what that means it means not funny but like her respect for the idea of calibrating comedic performances seems to be the main driving force in all of her approach to anything obviously but even in something like this and she rehearsed meticulously i mean she would rehearse like a play for all of her films to fine tune the performance for weeks before they actually got on set. So she cares about it. So that's why the supporting cast in this. And I think kind of every movie is always like pretty solid and all really great actors doing great work. is that her work as a writer,

a humorist, a prose writer, a nonfiction writer, before moving into film, was sort of marked for its causticness, her very sort of acerbic sense of humor. And whenever she tried to put it into her movies, Alex is holding up a copy of Crazy Salad and Scribble Scabble. Whenever she tried to put it into her movies,

it didn't work. It's very... Whoa, signed! Oh my God. a copy of crazy salad and scribble scabble um whenever she tried to put it into her movies it didn't work it's very whoa signed oh my god it says to alex and anna all the best nor effort wow that rules um got a couple no it's just this too it's humble it's funny for someone yeah big brag real brag i'm not humble this was fun We went to see the read for someone who had such good skills in terms of directing actors and comedies. Is that a different, how many signed Nora Ephron books do you own? I also have this jam.

Like I said, during my extra time, I was able to walk around and pick stuff up. I have my, this is my life tape. Good movie. Yeah. Yeah. Good movie. Yeah. Yeah, good movie.

Nice, nice, nice Video Depot Mount Vernon former rental. Nice. The fact that she could make these souffle movies so well and couldn't make the dark films and then this is,

like, this and Mixed Nuts are the two darkest scripts she has where it's like... And Mixed Nuts is bad. Like, I don't know. I mean, yeah, it's not very good. But it's better than this. I like this a lot more than mixed nuts i disagree no that's crazy i disagree and now i'm

realizing yeah but mixed nuts i just remember being like oh wow there's a nora efron christmas movie that i've not seen that must be good and we were watching it one christmas and we were like so this is what christmas looks like in california this is disgusting the thing about nora effron is like the ones you haven't heard of usually it's it's like well there's a reason except for this is my life where like that should be sung from the mountain right exactly yeah right but but i think like mix nuts and uh uh lucky numbers both have the thing where if you could describe the plot to someone in a way that makes it sound like a drama like you could describe most of the events that happen in both films and it would not sound like a comedy it is like comedies that are pointedly based around let's make funny material out of things that are inherently not comedic which does seem like the

kind of thing she would want totally perfect and clearly never did and she kept trying and she never could get it right and i'll say i want to get to some of her intentions that she expresses on the commentary and this are very specifically that but it's just like it's also crazy to me that this is the movie she made after you've got Mail, which is like, that is, I mean, one of the all-time great return to form movies, whether you love it or not. Her highest grossing film. Like whether you love it or not,

that is exactly what people wanted instead of Mixed Nuts and Michael. I want to do, I know this episode's going to be 90% context, but I just want to do my very quick table setting for Adam Resnick. And then I want to do my quick, because in addition to the signing that you now know I've want to do my very quick table setting for Adam Resnick. And then I want to do my quick, because in addition to the signing that you now know I've gone to, I want to do,

because I have four fun kind of run-ins with her sort of in my life ish with Anna. And now one of them was going to the signing. There's three others that are fun to talk about because again, we love her a lot and she means a lot to us, which makes watching this movie, lucky numbers, all the more dispiriting. And then Romley's going to do a very quick kitchen corner. Because again, we love her a lot and she means a lot to us, which makes watching this movie, Lucky Numbers, all the more dispiriting.

And then Romley's going to do a very quick kitchen corner. Well, that's why I demanded it, because I was curious. David is currently bleeding out of his eyes. This is what I want to say about Resnick. What about Resnick? Resnick is a fascinating career. He's originally a Letterman guy. And he becomes Chris Elliott's main writer.

They become the main collaborators for all the elliott stuff and then he creates a co-creates um uh get a life which is like one of the great cult tv shows in the early days of fox when cult tv shows were really cult tv shows yeah they could carve out like two seasons they aired at weird times on a network that was still getting its sea legs that didn't have enough other programming to replace it so it somehow eked out two full seasons despite being hated and then if you didn't know someone who taped it it was gone right it was trading tapes or going to museum of television radio or like it was impossible to find for so long um but but a great show and then it's like this is the kind

of thing that used to happen in show business where it's like here are these two guys who are weirdo gonzo comedy elements of the weirdo gonzo late night show they use that cachet to make a network sitcom that sitcom flops then the studio said i don't know i guess you should make a movie now like they got promoted up the ranks. So then they write a script that is so esoteric. That is, what if we made a parody of Ray Harryhausen adventure films starring me, the guys who guy whose comedic angle is I play a brat. I play an entitled asshole. I'm an overgrown child.

Yes, right. They write Cabin Boy, which is an effects-driven comedy for Tim Burton to direct. Tim Burton is going to do it. Then he quits because Ed Wood comes to him. But he still stays on as producer. Disney finances Cabin Boy, releases it to theaters.

It becomes the biggest punching bag of its year. Letterman makes jokes about being in Cabin Boy for ages because he's so embarrassed by the movie made about half a black hat to be clear right it made half a black it's like a big stain on everyone's career chris elliott has to like take his licks and do one shitty season of snl post movie post get a life and then resnick is like i guess i can't have this partnership with Chris Elliott. I guess Chris Elliott's going to become

like a supporting actor and shit like Groundhog Day. I need to figure out how to make my own bones. And he writes two of the most reviled mainstream comedy scripts of the next 10 years. He does Death to Smoochie and Lucky Numbers. Like he does one season of Larry Sanders, but then he writes two scripts that both have the same reputation were equally despised big flops starring big movie

stars and he's just sort of like i don't know i guess people don't like what i do and both of them are just the same mistakes and i like them and both of them kind of posit as its main theory watching folks kill each other for money it's funny hilarious they're both that same thing it's just not the same thing it's not funny i'm the only person who finds it funny i mean i cannot figure out why gotta love giving more white men chances in hollywood to fail upwards hey they did great work though this is the thing it's not like we're talking about at least in this case they got to drag down a white woman with them that's true a famous white jewish woman was dragged down totally by this script but by the way but it's worth mentioning she does

in the commentary speak very fondly of him in this script it's not like oh i got this thing i didn't like she's like oh it's a wonderful script. He was a great writer. I loved having him around. He was rewriting it. Like once we were up and running and he saw the look, like she's very gracious about the writer on the one movie she didn't write. And I love his book. And it's like a very sort of self-aware,

self-effacing take of like, this is my career of being a guy working in show business where everyone hates everything i make like the public reacts violently and and this is the difference ang i mean yes they were allowed to fail upwards in a way that non-white men and write a book about failing but but here's the difference book one person bought it it sounds like no fair enough i i want to defend this i want to defend this no because i think there's so many guys who suck, who make crappy shit and are bad people

and continue to fail upwards. I think the Chris Elliott, Adam Resnick thing defies logic because at every opportunity, they never should have been given another chance. Nothing they did was commercial. Nothing they did was liked. And what they did was actually funny and has aged well outside of this movie.

Well, just to say, the reason they got chances was that they worked on Letterman, which was the comedy lodestar of the 80s, was the coolest comedy show of the 80s. So everyone coming out of Letterman was considered, you know, like hot shit. Like that was the coolest comedy show in the 80s. And Letterman produced Cabin Boy and he's in it. And like, you know, he produced Get a Life. He didn't produced cabin boy and he's in it and like you know he produced he didn't produce it but he's in it he produced he gave his blessing produced it produce cabin boy i don't think so i can double check that cabin boy rules i love that movie hell yeah put it on put it on the list of bench choice someday maybe i would love to do cabin boy we should the other thing is inexplicably after tim burton quits they let adam resnick direct cabin

boy aside from being an insane first movie to make with all these effects and then he's just like well people hated me and my movie i can never direct a film ever again and lucky numbers feels like something that he probably wanted to direct himself he probably should have directed both lucky numbers and yes so did yeah did everybody did did anybody else read the like vulture interview with him only about lucky numbers yes where he just like talks about how he like you know he's from harrisburg he remembers this story he wanted to write it was a true story right and he like you know he's from harrisburg he remembers this story he wanted to write it a true story right and he like grew up remembering this and wrote this you know darker script called numbers and you know just kind of watched as it became not what he wanted it to be

sure i mean because right it gets worked into somewhat of a comedy. I mean, the reason this movie is an abject failure is that it doesn't know what it is. So the scenes where people die, you literally have to rewind the movie and be like, wait, I'm sorry. Did I just watch a murder? Because it happened with the energy of someone fucking opening a door like nothing just happened and someone died like I need this to either be madcap or dark like but it's neither this movie cannot pick a lane and travolta is the you know emblematic of that i don't know who is he is he even bothered by any of this like he never even seems confused or angry like he just walks into scenes with like like he's just at a five all the time like kudrow she's

playing big she's being weird like she's being funny a five all the time. Like Kudrow, she's playing big. She's being weird. Like she's being funny. She's reacting. Yeah, exactly. But like Travolta, I just want someone to walk up to him and be like, ah, yeah, you know, you're part of a conspiracy that involves murder and theft. Like FYI, that's your character. What he's doing in the movie. He hits that when he's on air and is finding out the one scene where he's freaking out. Can I read, can I read what she says about that scene in the commentary? Yes. Obviously we're jumping way ahead here,

but that's the best in the commentary. She says, she says, this is one of the scenes that I knew if we could get it to work, it would be so funny. Now, like just knowing that that was a scene and she speaks very highly of his performance in that moment. i do want to and also i do want to set the table because her kind of introduction of like

what the deal was with how she saw this movie as i already mentioned in relation to to die for does kind of make sense and also i do want to give a tiny bit of of context for why we love nora so much and why i want to do this because i don't want this to just be like haha this is her worst movie or a bad movie it's more like she's really important and we really love her work but not all of it and that's very interesting when you love anybody um so if i may so like i said okay so i have four encounters with her or her family roughly in my life. Number one of which is that Anna and I, when I remember nothing came out, went to see her read at Barnes and Noble Union Square. It was really fun.

She read it. She was hilarious. Autograph signing. We got this old paperback signed and she said, oh my God, I haven't seen one of those in 30 years. We felt very honored. Number three, at the Lincoln Center center that was number one well and there are four okay these are in no order okay except one of them is the best that i'll save for last they're in no order but you're saying the numbers that you wrote next to each because i've gotten

off track um at the lincoln center chaplain gala of rob Reiner that we went to in like, I don't know, 2013. Our modern day Charlie Chaplin. Obviously. Because they only, yeah, you think that they give out the Chaplain Gala every year. They don't. They just get it once for Reiner. One time they waited for one person

to fill Chaplain's shoes and it was Reiner. Future blank check miniseries subject, Rob Reiner. Yeah. And Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan came out together to you know introduce some clips or something and anna lost her shit just seeing the two of them standing next to each other at a podium like she just like it was the most exciting thing she'd ever seen growing up on the west coast fetishizing the new y of When Harry Met Sally. And it was very exciting. All right, number whatever.

Number B, I'll do that like they do it in a bad comedy where you change from numbers to letters. Her son, Jacob Bernstein, who made the documentary about her that was on HBO. When Schwartzman and I did the section for the New York times, um, like a night out with, you know what the section is?

It's like in the styles where it's just like a column of like someone who has something to promote and they spend a night with them. Uh, we did it with him. So we had like dinner with him and then he like went to a bookstore with us. And then we like went uptown to try to get tickets to inherent vice. But we were like hanging out with him and picking his brain about whatever and talking about his mom because Jason had worked

with her and bewitched, uh, teeing up my special gift to you guys. Um, so it was fun to hang out with Jacob Bernstein. This was before he made the documentary, super nice guy. Although Jason and I felt like we were boring the hell out of him at our dinner because we were like, Oh, he wants to write an article. And what we're doing is like what we actually would be doing tonight, which is eating and going to a bookstore. And he knows this is not a good article. And then the final thing that was really exciting for big Nora Ephron fans like us is last year. Um, I was being given some like award with a, like a conversation at the sun Valley, Idaho film festival. And the big guest of honor was Meg Ryan.

So we were like, Oh, that's cool. And in order to get to sun Valley, you have to fly from JFK to salt Lake city and then salt Lake city to sun Valley. And they were flew on and I both business class and in the seat in front of us from JFK to sun Valley was Meg Ryan,

like the seat in front of us from JFK to Sun Valley was Meg Ryan. Like the seat in front of me. And then also on the next leg of the flight, she was in front of us again for the 40-minute flight. So you guys were Billy Crystal behind her. It really did feel, it felt like we were in a movie. But then on the TV screen on the back of the chair, one of the options was when harry met sally and anna was just like how fucking crazy is it that this movie like we

could watch this on a seat that her head is touching how cool would that be which we could smell her hair which we did not do wait a second you could i'm not saying you should i advise against it it was an option it was just an option anyway cut off a little piece of hair those are the four kind of like you know contextual senses of like just how exciting it is to sort of think about her work and her legacy and her personality and her you know the people she's worked with the iconic collaborators and her family of intellectuals and writers and her creative family it's all very interesting so i didn't want to watch lucky numbers because i thought it would be shitty i wanted to watch it because it's like the last piece of the puzzle see i had the opposite thing which i was just like i am resigned to

thinking this movie is shitty and then put it on and 30 minutes and i was like oh fuck right i'm the only person who finds movies about dumb criminals dying to be entertaining i'm the only one plenty of movies about dumb criminals dying name these types of cartoonish name one fargo that's the one you don't get that everyone gets that one pick one off of my list david do you prefer clay clay pigeons to to uh gross point blank fucking i don't know like the lavender hillbob like what i i mean colin farrell is right there david yeah colin farrell great dumb criminal what wait a second wait a second david why would you pick an eeling brother comedy no it's just eeling studios they're not brothers how would you know that god damn it i know how would you know i grew up in england and i grew up in london in fact where

ealing studios was although i grew up in north london not west london and now i'm realizing that once again i think for the fifth week in a row i have fucked up what is supposed to be after kneeling it the first time i have proceeded to fuck it up in every episode since then is the new bit that you just can't do the bit i don't know what he forgot that the bit this time is supposed to be that he knows that i grew up in london well what he doesn't know is that before i moved to london i lived in the upper west side oh that's a good one that's a good that's good that's good that's right it's a good bit and i fucked it up oh my god bit is uh zoom really does start to rot away at your brain oh that's the new bit hundred percent yes going into month four of my entire life being zoom i barely know

how to speak to people anymore boy oh boy but anyway uh yes you i think you just leapt at the fact that i said an healing comedy but i think of healing comedy so yes i you i think you just leapt at the fact that i said an healing comedy but i think of healing comedy so when i think of like you know it's a it's a dog whistle criminals yes hey should we talk about the plot yeah yes this is what i wanted to say this is what i wanted to say and this is i was gonna, it's to center everything back on, to talk about the Plowman movie, the fundamental thing, this movie asks you, to accept,

the buy-in, to the premise of the movie, is, this Travolta guy, is so fucking charming, this guy is so beloved, in his community, he's so innately charismatic,

and good at everything he does, that he's not just, the most beloved weatherman, I have ever seen, but he's been able to spin that off into multiple businesses like psa's he has his own roped off velvet booth at denny's and they have an omelet named after him and he is so off-putting from the first moment he's on screen the jokes in this movie are so bad there's some i like there's an omelet named after me here the like did i tell you about this let's just for the sake of expediency let's go with yes like this is the worst kind of writing i'm gonna pull up some jokes i like here's the way to set up lucky numbers like okay so in the commentary she talks a lot she's like

this is one of these movies this is a story about these kinds of people that i'm fascinated by these people who are like television personalities who in another era would have been like local shoe salesmen or businessmen and now they're kind of famous and what we've seen in our culture is a huge i'm not quoting for you know specifically but she's like what we've seen is a huge rise in people like this who kind of seem like they're famous but they're not but they think that they're important and they all have these weird schemes of things like owning a dealership and she was really interested in this corrosive sense of modern entertainment and media and celebrity again to die for does this perfectly five years earlier

that is what she's a good version that is what she is thinking about with this character and she really seems to find that to be incredibly compelling that's so dated like local tv celebs are more of a thing in like the 80s when this scandal happened 2000 this is 2000 there's a fucking internet. It absolutely should have been a period film. It is. It says 1988 in the beginning of the movie. Does it?

Yes. It says Harrisburg, 1988. How did I completely miss that? Everything about this movie feels like it's set in the year 2000. And a lot of what she talks about is, she's like, you know, you go to Harrisburg, it does not look like the present, but we wanted it to be very timeless.

Sure, Harrisburg, not the sexiest city in the world. No offense to it. I must say as a, you know, Pennsylvania resident by birth, seeing this kind of drab Pennsylvania eighties. I mean, the aesthetics of this movie, I love, I live in it and I love it. I actually loved all the locations, the kind of dark griminess of it took me back. It's your bicentennial man. Yes. me back your bicentennial man yes it's my bicentennial man if you will i want to live in it except unlike bicentennial man i actually

watched this this i can't get over thinking for just one second that ben wanted to live in bicentennial that's what was so confusing to me about it it's so i know i know it's just great it is now the fourth time we've discussed it on mic and off mic since the zoom started and it's so i know i know it's just great it is now the fourth time we've discussed it on mic and off mic since the zoom started and it's still funny um here's here's her here's her kind of introductory statement on the commentary i don't think of this as a movie about crime as much as i think of it as a movie about one of those human weaknesses we all have i actually think it's one of those things that's almost Shakespearean, which is a ludicrous thing to say about a movie like this,

but the temptation to do that thing, to make a huge amount of money. If you say to me, I don't understand this, then you're lying. Everybody's got it. And then later she says, I was influenced by things like fortune cookie or even double indemnity. That thing Billy Wilder would do where there isn't somebody in the movie who

isn't guilty of something or other. And she talks about double indemnity a lot in the commentary. Well, double indemnity is one of the most famous pieces of like film noir of all time. Here's an incredible, this is the last thing I have from the commentary is amazing. Nora Ephron line between the sweater and Lisa's performance.

We were going for a little teeny taste of Barbara Stanwyck and double indemnity with a woman with absolutely no remorse at all and a really great sweater.

Love it. Love it. She's got a good sweater. I love Lisa. But anyway, that seems like how she saw this movie. Can I ask,

before we go into the plot, Alex, do you think this much when you do, I assume you've done director's Alex, do you think this much when you do, I assume you've done director's commentary. Do you think this much about the like stuff you add on to your movies? And do you imagine that someday someone's going to like record in front of a TV?

It's a great question. I've only done two of my own movies and I only, um, for Philip and her smell. And I only viewed like, to me, it's only like, I love these when I was younger and I just want this to be the thing that like the 2% of people that will listen to this will be like, Oh,

that does tell me the thing I wanted to learn about how a thing gets made time. Well used. I got what I wanted. Because it's always like, I'm just going to throw this on and see what it is. And the ones that are great, you're just like, I can't stop listening to this. This is just like nuggets of gold left and right. How they did this shot, what this location was, this, the cast.

And like, that is what I- Crafty. Like all of it. Crafty. Yeah, all the important meals. And he only wants to hear about crafty. Yeah, I do try to make, I mean, but you know,

no one ever tells me they listen to them, so I don't know. I mean, I always do. I feel like we, like Blank Check is a podcast where the Venn diagram of people who listen to our show

and people who listen to commentaries is a perfect circle. Right. Like that's the exact audience of people who listen to commentaries. People who are like, I need more context. I need to understand how and why these decisions were made. Part of the thing with the commentary is that like Lucky Numbers is not on Blu-ray.

And probably will never be. If after the previous 90 minutes, you're thinking I need to get that. Don't go searching for it. It's not there. But like, it's going straight to 4K. It's just interesting to me that like there is an SD DVD of this movie that has 100 minutes of one of the most famous wits of American culture. And unless you buy this SD DVD, that content of Nora Ephron is lost. So that's why you held an old cell phone up to a TV so it could be captured for all posterity and submitted to the the national registry right

now we can distribute that yeah maybe we should just make that our bonus episode let's just drive down the patreon so no one will get mad at us it's definitely not copyright infringement who's actually gonna pursue that who's actually gonna go hey sorry that's the question maybe someone will maybe there's someone in some dusty office who's like i'm in charge of all tv commentaries 2000 to 2005 and i'm just surfing the internet waiting for one to drop so that's the ultimate scam so we've identified a patreon feed it looks like it's a special bonus drop yes griffin's announcement coming over the speaker at the fbi headquarters in quantico and there's someone down there waiting for the new patreon drop and they're like sir we've got one because i did i did speaking of copyright i asked

ben if i could play music because i wanted to play get lucky by daft punk on the episode good he said no so i just texted it to you guys. Yes, and I replied to you with the theme song from CBS's Numbers. Yes. So, the basic step of this movie is that John Travolta is this very successful, very beloved local celebrity who also is deeply in debt. Everyone thinks he's really successful, but he has somehow blown all of his money. Tim Roth calls out, it's weird.

You're not married. You don't have expensive hobbies. You don't drink. You don't do drugs. How did you lose all your money? And Travolta goes like, I don't know. It just disappears, which I expected, oh, there's going to be some late reveal of some weird reason why he lost all his money some weird habit he has or some weird mistake he made no it never comes up the guy just it's just the weather's warm he's just stupid is the he's just stupid reasoning i got he did not sell his pumpkin futures in october he didn't he's he's got a bad sense of the climate for a weatherman right i guess that's the joke right right uh lisa kudrow plays the woman who pulls out the ping pong balls uh on the the weekly lotto drawing they both work at the same station which for people who are younger

than us used to be a job used to be a job used to be a series of jobs a whole industry there was a british because we've already done the fucking bit uh game show called talking telephone numbers where two people literally hosting the show were just like we're just gonna call telephone numbers that we pick out of a lottery and uh anyone who picks up gets money like that was the whole premise of the show so how did you know that how did you like wait wait a second no no no no no alex no no this makes sense because you don't realize david grew up in england and he lived there his entire life he lived there from the time he was born until his mid-20s and then he moved to new york but that was the first time

that david had ever stepped foot in new y, of course, was in his 20s. He's just shuffling so angrily in his window there. Steam is coming out of his teeth. So, Russ needs money. Russ needs money. I was going to say, they're having an affair. I'm trying to get the plot out as quickly as possible. One thing she does do in the commentary is she says very specifically she goes for people listening to this who care about screenplays this

is the end of act one and then later she goes and for those people who still care this is the end of act two she's like very methodical about the idea of structure and writing and comedy performances well she also knew that the lucky numbers commentary was going to be used as a teaching tool um so lisa codro travolta are having an affair but also lisa codro and ed o'neill who is their boss are having an affair now ed o'neill i mean david we committed about 30 minutes to each of these supporting characters it's not gonna happen i'm sorry the oh i i i i have to put in all the ed o'neill time that's out i will okay let me just say quickly about Ed O'Neill while watching him. I was like, is Ed O'Neill dead?

How come I haven't seen him in anything in a long time? He's on Modern Family. I guess I didn't know that. Yeah. I guess I forgot that he'd been on that show for 12 years, but I thought he was one of those people. He's got like nine consecutive Emmy nominations. He's like the king of the sitcom.

He's not dead at all he's stronger than ever truly one of the most highly paid men on television over the last decade speaks very highly of him and calls him an actor of shakespearean qualities i love him i i mean he feels like he feels like he feels like a ben guy and and uh marry with children feels like a ben show yeah for sure okay let me just do a quick 20 minutes on ed o'neill so ed o'neill is born and no no absolutely not the only actor we will be doing well there's fuck there's three actors we need to do a fair amount give me some credit i'm trying to speed around the plot i'll be honest i you know i like to write down a lot of notes when i'm watching the movies for these i did not get a lot of notes on this one.

There's not a lot to write down during this movie. This plot is very quick and very dumb. And that's why I'm trying to set it up as quickly as possible for people who haven't seen it. Cause not everyone who listens to the show might take an hour and 40 minutes out of their life to watch lucky numbers. We're just to point out, we're about an hour and 40 minutes into the episode.

Well, like 10 of that at the beginning was kind of a mistake having the what at the beginning you know there was a little bit of a hiccup at the beginning right i don't know how accurate that clock is oh that's true and we should here's what i have written down jumping ahead at 24 minutes tim roth and john travolta reuniting for the first time since Pulp Fiction decide to rig the lottery. 24 minutes into the movie. That's the big thing. Right, because originally Travolta's get-rich-quick scheme is Tim Roth, his best friend who owns a strip club

and also is the chef. And is British. And he's British. And who she calls in the commentary the devil. Yes. She's trying, he's trying to teach John Travolta how to fleece his way out of debt

so he suggests that john travolta hires thugs to rob his own snowmobile dealership which he envisions fraud a little classic insurance which he envisions as a sort of craft work music video of Volvo driven efficiency of men in black leather and lasers and the whole, the whole production and his imagination is very classy and his happy ending, how he comes out of it with all this money and it's very much like a joke in Shaun of the dead, but they hire Michael Rappaport who's a loose cannon and also Travolta's employee at the dealership

has used his keys that night to get laid on the couch. But what is Michael Rapaport's character's name? It's Dale the Thug. Dale the what? Dale the Thug. His name is Dale the Thug. Dale T. Thug.

This is when Michael Rapaport is doing, I mean, this is my favorite stat and it's why I needed to bring him up. He's credited as being in eight films in the year 2000, just in the year 2008 films. The films are next Friday. He plays a mailman, the sequel to Friday, a small Woody Allen, small time crooks. He's in that because he was in, he's a small crooks. I believe he wears his digging helmet backwards in the trailer because he says it looks cooler with the light facing the other way. Right.

I mean, it's just the, the years Rappaport got playing dummies, uh, like, you know, very, you know,

anyway, uh, he's in the, the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, the six day. Oh, the six day, right.

The days weren't over yet. He's in men of honor, the, uh right that the days weren't over yet he's in men of honor the uh oscary robert downey jr kubik ending jr navy movie another auteur he worked with many times he's in bamboozled spike lee's bamboozled incredible performance yeah great he's a performance great movie he's in a john leguizamo vehicle i've never heard of called king of the jungle he's in a swedish heist comedy film called chain of fools and he is in lucky numbers that is right eight how many people are in eight movies of the year on boss what's this boston show he's on at this time boston he's on boston public next year next year he's on all but he's on all the boston shows until bill burke comes for his crown he

is on all the boston shows and playing all the boston thugs he's a new york guy but yes is is 2000 an anomalous year for him or is he in like 6 and 99 works a lot i don't think he says no his average is more like four a year and then 2000 for, for some reason, it was an avalanche. I don't know why she says on the commentary that he ad libbed all of the baseball stuff. And he came in loaded with baseball facts and ideas, just ready to spew. Yeah.

And by the way, she also says that Maria Bamford, who we skipped over Maria Bamford is the local waitress at the Denny's where we didn't skip over her. We try to outline the best line in the movie. In my opinion, the initial scene where he's at his Denny's booth. So we have gone past it.

She comes in many parts of the movie. She sandwiches the movie. Yes. But can I say, apparently also did a lot of ad-libbing and you know, to me it's like, I didn't know who she was at 2000. No,

this was, this was an early time to pick Maria Bamford to have her on your radar. As like your classic kind of dim small town waitress. Yeah. She's got like a good supporting role. She's so funny. I just want to point out of the eight movies he did in 2000, Michael Rappaport did three inept criminal comedies. Three out of the eight movies he did in 2000 michael rapaport did three inept criminal

comedies three out of eight he's a great scumbag yes he's kind of like a king of the ginger scumbags for sure but but the main sort of like gimmick to this character is he is a thug who also loves sports memorabilia and uses it's a good blender he uses his very expensive sports memorabilia to commit the acts of robbery except it's not really a blender because it kind of almost is a plot detail that that he gets himself in danger because he won't leave his bat behind it's true he does love his bat he loves his bat because it's an original this goes south game used yes and they get pinched and now he wants ten thousand dollars extra from travolta for his pain and suffering because his weird employee gets like he's trying to like mack it

his employee is someone that anafel should have been played by steve zahn absolutely uh i know this is stupid i do genuinely find funny just the larger joke of he keeps on accumulating more debt yeah that everything he does as a get rich quick scheme somehow ends with him owing someone else more that is i like that i think that's fine it's a funny running gag for someone who's not an inept criminal but an inept person who's in debt yes i like that it's kind of like how we picture nicholas cage is in real life yes like yes it's very nicholas right he agrees to do a movie to get out of debt but the movie shoots somewhere where he loses all of his money gambling right lots of things in this movie you know on paper could be funny like it's it's it's a reasonable premise like to let's adapt this real life scandal yeah you know brainless crooks there

you know lisa kudrow is kind of like all brass no no smarts i don't know you know what i mean like it all makes sense it's just that ever i don't know the tone it never hits the tone the tone that she's if you take her word and she's going for double indemnity you need like just like so like such a perfect blend of yeah like weirdly funny lines but not funny characters just in way over their heads in a way that the tone is just like tense because you know that other shoes are going to drop and it's never a movie a movie i like that falls into this sort of category is uh the ice harvest the harold ramus movie that's a good one which is a lot closer to feeling like a genuine noir he's not just saying, it's like a noir movie. That film has more atmosphere,

more tension. It's more dramatic. It's slower. It's more darkly lit. This zone of like, we're making a very dark comedy with murder and crime that also has the energy of a Looney Tunes cartoon audiences always vomit at. And she says on the charlie rose interview she's like i wanted to do stuff i've never shot before i've never shot someone throwing a body off of a bridge before which is weird because i thought i remembered that happening in sleepless in seattle but also they're right on the shot she pulls off that i really like is is the the truck flipping that is funny that shot's amazing That is the funniest joke or shot in the movie.

Chris Nolan, Nora Ephron, great truck flips. Can we call out that mixed nuts? Cinema's finest truck flippers. 50% of mixed nuts is characters

moving around a dead body. This is true. That movie is mostly body. They don't throw it off a bridge. They throw it up

into the air. They put it in a Christmas tree. They throw it downstairs. It's also worth mentioning that i wrote down that this movie is vaguely christmasy and that it starts in what they say is the lead up to the christmas season she loves christmas much like myself a jew who loves christmas so much many of her movies involve christmas but then like you lose that and i didn't have any idea. Has Christmas happened? There hasn't really been like in the commentary. She's like,

now, of course it's January by now. And I feel like the lotto drawing was the week after Christmas. And I was like, yeah, sure. Maybe could not track that outside of the one time Lisa Kudrow wears the Santa hat. But you know what else happens around this point in the movie that we do need to talk about is at minute 30,

a non-actor, a crossvocational performer here enters into the film asthmatic a little bit dim with a crush on his cousin and and a real aficionado of masturbation and that is 100 million dollar grossing documentary filmmaker academy award palm palm door winner michael moore all true this is all this is a three scene performance and his only performance correct his only acting role ever playing himself the only time he's ever acted in tv the year before he plays himself he does that's not what it says on imdb so you guys i believe he plays himself in that um he played okay all right technically he plays a talking head on a tv panel i guess he's never identified i do but i want to say watching

this all we could think was they must have just been friends like what on earth could the explanation for this be it It has to be. In the commentary, she says, you know, our casting director had this great idea where she just said, what about Michael Moore? And I knew him from New York. I loved his films and he moderates lots of Q&As and panels in New York.

And I thought he was so funny. He came in and read for four characters. He was great as all of them. And then we put him in this role. That is so bizarre, especially because this film is like well cast you have a lot of good actors in it right you have a lot of people right but then people like bamford who were like at the beginning of their career to suddenly go like of course let's pull someone who has no acting aspirations whatsoever and seemingly this one performance and the response

to it scared him off of ever even trying ever but this also like this is not that far removed i mean it's a couple years but like everyone forgets michael moore made a fiction movie as his follow-up to roger and me yeah canadian bacon like he did not lock in on being michael moore i mean until no people thought he might be a studio comedy guy. Until like... I also was wondering, because Columbine obviously really refocused his energies as a documentary filmmaker in 1999.

Yes. Kind of wonder... No, that's 2002. Columbine is right after The Matrix came out. The event of Columbine... You're talking the event. You're talking the event of Columbine. Bullying for Columbine.

No, I'm saying bullying. But I'm saying the event of Columbine clearly ref're talking the event. You're talking the event of Columbine. Bowling for Columbine. Yes. No, I'm saying bowling. But I'm saying the event of Columbine clearly refocused his perspective on how to make documentaries and think about American issues. Sure. I'm wondering if that was on his mind at this time when he was shooting

Lucky Numbers. People forget that. Right, because for most of the 90s, he was doing TV. Awful truth and things like that. He did all his, right, exactly. Right. He was doing mosh pits with alan keys or whoever

yes yeah so he's in this movie and there's something wrong with masturbating he's advising it to people all the time a little off about him uh yes they use language that i will not repeat but he seems like he's you know what people might now call on the spectrum at the time called other things and uh they call them a lot of names yeah and it's a bizarre performance and he asks john travolta um if he if he masturbates if he likes it and and his whole belief is he's a deeply religious man uh he says that if he the money he's making he would put half towards the church half to open an adult bookstore. He believes that God wants us to masturbate.

That's this character's raison d'etre, is to preach the good word of masturbation to everyone he meets within two minutes of speaking to them. And he's there because he's the stoolie that they need to buy the ticket and redeem it yes because they're going to need someone that they can't be traced to we haven't even established that the premise of the movie is they're injecting the lotto balls with paint so that they're weighed down so only the numbers they want come up so that they can win all the money and get themselves out of this which is apparently exactly how the real life thing happened but otherwise this movie is kind of made out of whole cloth. It's just based off of people who work at a local TV station

rigging the lotto in this way. All the other incidents are fictional. It's, yeah, right, right.

That's the, that's the only thing that's real. Except the one thing that she flags, I'm glad I listened to the commentary. I feel like I'm referring

to it a lot. She does say, I'm sorry, Alex, did you listen to the commentary for this? I did, yeah,

and I made a file of it on my phone. The for lucky numbers i for this movie i gotta say it was not time wasted because it's paying off a lot um the thing where the guy comes to tim roth and says all these other people connected to you hit the numbers that's how the real people got caught oh interesting is it like a pocket of people all connected to each other one because this someone had talked and given out some of the numbers and it's that thing where all the other people can be traced back to tim roth none of them got all the numbers correct so that they could still get the main bounty but he clearly leaked like yeah just put three of these numbers down to a bunch of people to get smaller payouts i guess so

anyway michael moore dies on the ground grasp gasping for breath while lisa kudrow tries to find his i hate the term puffer it's an inhaler this is like a sub hoagie thing like it's an inhaler it's not a puffer and travolta calls it an inhaler yes well there's enough mist in this little puffy to save 10 masturbators yeah so he dies on the ground while she's singing the theme song to happy days and just like a peak shitty black comedy scene it is not good i will fully concede it has a blow-up doll in it for some reason it's a huge problem scene, I think, especially because that's when the movie is, right, is turning from like madcap, silly black comedy to like, oh boy, the stakes are higher now. People are dying. Like this is getting out of control.

But the tone of the movie doesn't really feel like it acknowledges that. No, it feels like the scene is just going like, oh, look at how cruel she is. She's letting him suffer and have a hard time breathing because the way in which he dies is so casual it takes five minutes to realize that he is actually dead no i as it was happening i kept waiting for her to realize like the that her like cruel joke like went too far and it turns out she's just a cop so i like your cat's cameo there yeah good time mine all must be asleep but uh anyway it's it's kind of like disgusting and not funny at all and then she says the clams line that made nora want to make this movie for whatever reason worth it and then i am then like what's

happening at this point it's just like now it's a bunch of stuff it's now that now they just need to find someone to cash in the ticket and like right the the noose is tightening on roth and everything's getting worse it's this idea of like okay so shift which i do think that's a very good scene shift interrogates roth and then roth realizes shift is on so we have to get rid of him so then they owe more money to the thugs in addition of the body right he's right He's now coming back around to Travolta. Travolta had to pay for his bail, but now Rappaport wants additional money for taking care of the book.

Travolta has had to move at this point from his big mansion to a townhouse. Sold his Jaguar. Guys, you both just sound like madmen. You're just babbling. These are real things that happen in the movie. I'll give you one little bit of trivia trivia is that that location of his new house is in sacramento where they shot part of the movie now that is the kind of scintillating fact

that you can only learn if you listen to the dvd commentary for lucky numbers we have not talked about my favorite thread of the movie which is about halfway through when the bodies are piling up, the incidents are piling up. Travolta can't downsize his life any further. We cut to a police precinct where Bill Pullman sits in a chair. That is 59 minutes into this movie. Insane. This movie is an hour and 40 minutes long. Before then, I have one.

Before we enter Pullman. this movie is an hour and 40 minutes before then i have one before we enter pullman ben i know in this in the uh when harry met sally episode you were kind of getting excited about how good the comedy buttons are in that movie and that's correct they're perfect here's a button in lucky numbers uh the end of the scene is almost over here's the button john travolta want to have sex lisa kudrow yeah that's it that's the button that's how the scene is you remember that scene good joke i do and i thought that was a good joke because they start planning and then it's like before they actually get to the meat of the plan they're like you want to have sex yeah that was effective okay it won comedy points that i wanted to run that button by you because

to me i was just like this is this this isn't writing i don't really know i i took that button and i sewed it on my jacket proudly if i if you tried to attach anything with that button you would fail yeah sorry this that button analogy it wasn't heightened enough but it's still i thought it was an okay joke also they have no chemistry like like even they have sex in the movie and it's also supposed to be set up that like the sex she has with ed o'neill sucks but the sex she has with travolta is electric he's the good sex she seems bored in both cases and he seems bored everyone seems bored can we talk about the pullman thread as we in order to set that up

we need to mention that this is i think i haven't rewatched them as recently as you guys have the only nora effron movie that features a strip club is a primary location. So many times. It's one of the hangouts. And I believe the only Nora Ephron movie to make jokes of ping pong balls ostensibly flying out of women's bodies in that strip club. I'm sorry. That's a big, that's a big blanket statement.

Let me cross reference. Think about that. Yes. Remember that's also a sleepless in Seattle. I thought that was, I thought that was in Julia and Julia, but it's in Sleepless in Seattle? Yeah.

I mean, Julia Child definitely went to strip clubs like that all the time. I'm not sure if it made the movie. I have to check the tapes. I have to check the tapes on that one, Alex. And then delete it. All right, we'll find out, and I'll check back. 59 minutes into an hour and 40 minute movie,

Bill Pullman enters with some scheme about faking a back injury to get out of police duty. Yeah, he's a detective who doesn't want to do any detecting. I think Bill Pullman is what this movie should be, both in his performance, and I think Nora has the right handle on this character. Yes. You've also got Daryl Mitchell.

Who's a great foil. I love Daryl Mitchell, and I think this might be the last movie he was in before no he was paralyzed country bears it's the country bears oh really i know that i know that's because it's tragic how did he get paralyzed uh motorcycle i think it was an accident and and he you know i know him as mostly from galaxy quest obviously and 10 things i hate about you right he was like home fries it's such a yeah And he, you know, I know him as mostly from Galaxy Quest, obviously. And 10 Things I Hate About You, right? Like he was like. Home fries. It's such a, yeah, right.

A great, like sort of, you know, funny guy off the bench. Like, you know, do three big scenes. And like he's in sitcoms and stuff. Yeah. But then he had that whole, he's now like in a wheelchair. And he's, I mean, I think he's on NCIS New Orleans. Like for like six seasons running now. Like he's, you know.

He was on multiple seasons of Ed. He was on the Michael Strahan Fox sitcom Brothers. Like he's still one of the most offensive. Yeah, Brothers was absolutely insane. It was just Michael Strahan making fun of him for being in a wheelchair and him making fun of Michael Strahan for having a gap in his teeth. You should watch the pilot. It's one of the craziest things I've ever seen.

I have no idea how that should be in angie's mountain of pilots that are not allowed out scattered amongst the gems i do like that because this does not happen often daryl mitchell is like not a big star but he's like working in a lot of good projects he's like a good scene stealer as you said right then he gets in this really tragic accident and people started writing roles for him like most of the roles he's done since then even like brothers and his role on ed people were like here's this great actor he's now in a wheelchair let's write a role that suits his personality and like incorporates the fact that he's paraplegic i feel like very often if someone has an accident like that hollywood's just like i don't know what to do with you it's like christopher reeve being in the remake of

rear window right but but with daryl mitchell it's been done effectively and he's had a nice career so you want to talk about bill pullman as being a cop a detective who wants to not really be doing his job yes the stakes here are different with a lot of his scenes he's in a different accidentally right and i think this movie nora has a handle on which is here's a cop who doesn't want to be a cop at all he finds the job to be a real bummer he faked a back injury and his superior caught him chopping wood in his backyard so now he's forcing him to go back onto patrol, but he doesn't want to do that. So he's looking to end cases as quickly as possible. And he is the guy who keeps on being at the right place at the right time to collect the information, to bust the case wide open. And he refuses to acknowledge it because he doesn't want to have

to do the extra work. He refuses to do the extra research to check the file. And it's Daryl Mitchell is his partner who like is trying to actually do things correctly. And everything flies over Bill Pullman's head. I think Pullman plays this beautifully. It is funny. It's so funny. Much like Kudrow, he is dialed pretty into what he's doing. he is dialed pretty in to what he's doing and like just the scene this final scene where like he he shows up in the hospital room where Travolta is waking up after an accident well we'll talk

about the accident okay so I'll get there when I get there but the the Pullman stuff I just think all of that totally but basically like from you know minute 30 when michael moore is killed roughly 40 minutes into like minute 80 it's just like ed o'neill rapaport and tim roth all trying to like get the money and it's like boring and it makes no sense and every time there's like a joke it's not funny travolta gets into a position where he now owes far more money than he originally right they do a scene where he's like, Ed O'Neill wants half. Right, he wants half, he wants $20,000, he wants 10%. Like, I'm now in further debt.

So his strategy is, I need to just get level again. I'm going to sell the ticket to someone else to unburden myself of all of this drama. And he sells it to Ed O'neill for like a hundred thousand dollars or something he's selling him a six million dollar ticket for a hundred thousand dollars and also trying to unload all of his snowmobiles so he has enough cash to just get out move start from his his assistant jerry who has like a cousin in colorado who wants to buy all the snowmobiles who always speaks in these very meaningful kind of like poetic statements that end up being from a play that he wrote about evil kenevil when he was in middle school

i second just gibberish everything you're saying just gibberish david do you like this movie do you like what do you like the plot of lucky not a fan it's a gentleman's tent i did like jerry's bedroom where he has bobbleheads a kiss poster and jars i believe you're talking about larry jerry is richard schiff larry is michael how can i slamming his face on his desk to say a sentence that's all i'm trying to do oh my god what do you think of his jars of trolls? I don't remember it. You like the troll. What? Don't remember any of that. What did you think of?

Like, what did you think of? Like the actual, like sort of comedy writing, like when they're there and Tim Roth is like, you need to see what's right in front of you. And Travolta is like, all this in front of me is this placemat with the presidents that only goes up

to Van Buren. It's like, what kind of, I like that kind of jokes are these? I don't understand. And Travolta, it's a 10 point. That's a 10 point at what kind of jokes are these? I don't understand. And Travolta is so bad at this kind of delivery.

I get that Resnick can write a good, weird joke. Like, I mean, the man, you know, he made Cabin Boy. He worked on Letterman. And some of these lines, when you say them in isolation, you're like, yeah, that's clever. Like, I get that. I don't think Nora was a particularly good match for his whatever comedic point of view.

Anyway, like I, this doesn't seem like she's got whatever. There's a whole, the whole tonal thing is the whole problem with the movie. When he sells the ticket to, to, to Ed O'Neill for a hundred grand,

he is doing the thing that I do think you need to do in this, in these kinds of movies happens in uncut gems happens in a lot of movies about like people suddenly looks like he's paying attention again yeah where he's where he gets to zero like you know what i mean like because that's where he's like okay now i don't owe rap report any money yes i'm not in any immediate danger of being arrested or i'm level again yeah exactly sure i never got the fortune i was trying to get but like at least i am you know level now here's the point at the movie where i thought he would then you know catapult back under get arrested and the movie ends

the ending of this movie is very different very surprising to me did not understand it at all but we can get into that during some like x factor is the pullman endless series of nonsense of like a breaking in of rapaport like there's just like a 10 minute sequence that is gibberish it ends with rapaport being shot right at this point i'm like you don't even understand who's in whose house or like what is happening with the dynamics of the kudrow at o'neill pullman right because you have the thing the thugs are so bad that when they disposed of shift's body throwing it over a bridge in the scene that nor efron felt compelled by every fiber of her being to shoot they put a plastic bag over his head beat the shit out of him and then tie one brick to one hand so the body isn't weighed down properly and it rises to the

surface it's a funny cut they say it'll never be found it'll never be found it cuts to them finding it and then bill pullman says probably a suicide open and shut that's that's funny it's funny but it is also funny to say you know it'll never ever be found and then it cuts to the news guys going and today the body of a local gangster was found in the river. And then Travolta. And Travolta freaking out. And that's the best visual gag in the movie too. It's that and the truck spilling over are the two actually inspired visual

gags. That one is you're watching it from the perspective of the monitors in the control room at the news station. So you're watching them deliver the news while travolta is on camera but not on the air yet so you see him lose his mind and then try to recover i think that seems good it's fine she's right you do need to make that scene good and they made it good but unfortunately it's like 75 minutes into this movie yes it's very deep into this movie and it is also the first time you're like oh is he a character now like in now he's funny like he has an understanding

of his actions yeah of all the things that travolta doesn't do well in this movie the thing he does the least horribly is playing the freak outs the like i'm in over my head yeah he totally loses control yes right he's okay at that everything else is abhorrent um and then like basically him and his assistant are just going to load up the truck and he's gonna like get out of town forever and that's supposed to be it we didn't even mention that his ambition in life seems to be to not host the weather but to host a a game show. He wants to host a game show, and he has an agent who he keeps on telling people is about to book him a big job,

and he hasn't heard from the agent in nine months, and then when they call him back, they tell him that the agent's been dead for nine months. Also, a funny joke. A funny joke! He keeps on saying, like, no, he's definitely my agent. He's definitely, like, full agent.

He's about to get me a big job. But then, the thing we're talking around is that they load up the truck with snowmobiles set painfully to we are the champions and about which she says you know when we were going through at the end and you're running out of money and you're clearing songs they're always trying to cut ones and i i said if we lose this we lose the movie and i was like i don't even get the jokes of why she thought that highly of this dreadful cue they're loading up the truck we are the champions the song stops it's dead silent and then there's like a 10 second shot of the truck just driving and then like a 20 second

shot of it just slowly falling over they pull out of the dealership and it's a big wide shot of the snowy street it's like the dark knight framing and the idea is that the shot of the snowy street. It's like the Dark Knight framing. And the idea is that the road is so snowy that when they pull out from that turn... We didn't even mention that it's finally started snowing. Right, and that he's a weatherman and it never ever snows. He couldn't predict it. There's a joke that he couldn't predict it.

He also doesn't have the Class C license to drive the truck, which he says right before he pulls off. Right. The kind of thing that finally undoes someone the class C license to drive the truck, which he says right before he like pulls out, you know, right. His, the kind of thing that finally undoes someone in a movie like this. Usually. I'm sorry.

Am I correct in assuming he also chose to do weather in this one city because it's the same all the time. In Harris. Right. It's like pretty ordinary weather. Cause when people ask him to explain the weather, he can't do it. He,

he says like, like no it's different when i have the charts he's just bad yeah i would imagine you know harrisburg has four seasons i'd imagine they go through the cycles but she seems to view him as like someone who's just like he's just talentless he's just some idiot whose face is on tv and that's his thing he's he's the kind of weatherman that changes his name to stormy yes so they pull out of the dealership and it's a hard turn and because the road is so icy there's like a whiplash effect to the back of the trailer where it then spins entirely over the other way and topples over it's a good shot and it's crazy that someone gave her the time and money and space to do that in this movie. It's very funny. It is funny.

It's actually surprising. It's perfectly timed, perfectly executed, silent. Wow, right. Right. And then Travolta freaks out, steals one of the snowmobiles and tries to get away from the cops. Does anybody want to guess what she compares this to? This shot? Him on the snowmobile.

She compares to a very famous... by northwest not far off okay she says that she she she wanted it to feel like slim pickens riding the bomb at the end of dr strange love wow that's i mean i'm glad she's shooting so high she's like yeah i wanted this film to echo three or four of the best films ever made by hollywood so nora what attracted you the screenplay well i felt like it was about time for me to make canonically one of the 10 best films ever made she does always couch it as i read with the one thing the shakespearean thing she always says like which is of course absurd to say about something like this but yes she was not lacking in so he goes on like some dumb joy ride on and

there's like a bit of business where he grabs a snowmobile and the guy is like don't take that one it's bad and it's slow and he's like is this how you sell these and and when bill pullman finally catches up to him he freaks out takes a crowbar and throws it through his window not realizing he's there to help no and then gets knocked out wakes up in a hospital and the nurses are all fawning over him because he's such a big star and they think he's cute it almost feels like oh my god has he reset has somehow the guy gotten a second chance then bill pullman comes in he's like oh no you're in big trouble mister you think it's that scene that exists in this movie where the guy finally puts it together and where crime pays because of one small small mistake he made one tiny slip up undid the whole thing but the

twist is that pullman cares so little he's looking for only two three hundred dollars compensation for the broken windshield and also he needs to pay a parking ticket a traffic ticket he gives him a he gives him a ticket yes for operating a snow this is a great joke this is a great joke where he gives him the ticket yes and he looks at it he goes it's blank and he goes pullman goes yeah my pen ran out of ink and also the ticket is in two pieces and he goes you can just fix that with scotch tape it's still good all that stuff is funny that's funny that's funny and then yes the movie is that like everyone gets exactly what they wanted travolta becomes a successful uh game show of a show called lucky numbers uh i would i would dispute that crystal does not get what she wanted no she's the only one i'm sorry yes yeah

no that's that's the one of the weird things about the end of this movie where it's like anyway travolta becomes a game show host with a car. Well, he wraps it all up via a bit of voiceover. The voiceover from the beginning comes back. We didn't mention this. They get Maria Bamford to cash the ticket. She becomes the patsy.

She gives a speech that, according to the commentary, is entirely improvised where she's just like riffing on insane nonsense about how she picked these numbers. She's doing the numbers. I will say my favorite line is when she says well when i was 16 i went to a party and then moves on yeah that's funny and she and she made it up i picked 70 because 70 cents is how much the bacon cheese costs on a bacon cheeseburger right i like I like that line. Oh, that's good. You're right.

And then they wrap it up. Lisa Kudrow's the only one who's punished. She gets stuck working as a lotto themed stripper. Yes. It does very much feel like that. Like what? Like she's punished for being sexually promiscuous. Well, that and also like John Travolta in her,

I think are like equally like shitty. Everyone in this movie. Yeah. Although we must say it doesn't make any sense. in her I think are like equally like shitty scam artists. Everyone in this movie is shitty. Although we must say it doesn't make any sense. She's doomed to work as a stripper dressed in a bikini covered in lotto balls which I feel like was heavily used in the marketing. Which I was shocked to see as like a one shot joke

in the epilogue because I feel like that was like the image you saw. And then to add on top of it they label her as a Monday, Tuesday, like stripper. No, she's not even getting like prime time, weekend. It's so shitty. And then in that- But Tim Roth becomes like a multimillionaire.

He has like, he hits it big. Tim Roth, because all the epilogues, each character gets a little freeze frame send off. Tim Roth winks at the camera and hits. Yes. I love the name Gig i do too that's a good one can i say what i also like about tim roth's performance that he chooses to play this guy with zero menace whatsoever super charming like right like but but also just like there's

nothing he just everything he says is very casual but he has that inherent tim roth menace right he knows he doesn't need to lean on it at all that's a canny choice on his he's he's a smart actor this is the thing i have no objection to most of the performance in this film right so we agree it's a great jt and i don't even have an objection to a lot of the writing but on the screen you're like as you're watching it it's falling out of your head i just i can't retain any of it and this type of messy movie is my ultimate guilty product seems to say something to that effect and this pretty good article on vulture which i recommend where he says a classic case of a script stirring up a certain amount of excitement everyone

getting swept up in it because talent likes it directors like it in the package as they say comes together but no one stops to think if it's the right package no one producer is going to turn down a green light uh if blah blah blah he just you know lists all the reasons it doesn't go well that there's a sure this is not a nora effron s script so right away it was a gamble uh and he just basically says you know like this could have been a thing and then just everything went wrong even though this was big stars and a great comedy actress and a great director that everyone knew made hits. No one stopped to think like every element here tastes terrible together. That's, I feel like half of the bounces we cover on the show, that is a very eloquent

summation of what went wrong. Like sometimes a bounce is a director hubristically shoots for the stars and they just get everything wrong. And sometimes it bounces a director hubristically shoots for the stars and they just get everything wrong and sometimes it's just like every element should not be put next to the others yeah it's like uh yeah two fine tastes that go awful together like toothpaste and orange juice then there is the insane audacity of ending this movie with like, and then John Travolta was fine. He becomes a game show host. He gets everything he ever wanted. Right.

Which is, I think why people exited this movie and said F because they want him to be punished. A hundred percent. I want to be punished. What the fuck does he deserve? Anything in this? He sucks.

Well, you know, a lot of the looking at like the contemporary reviews, people seem to find a lot of problem with like what they felt was a deep sense of condescension about the characters and that like clearly the filmmakers think these people are morons, which is probably a criticism of all of these kinds of comedies. But on the Charlie Rose interview, she does refer to them as entirely unworthy human beings, which is a phrase. does refer to them as entirely unworthy human beings which is a phrase i love so if you're ever like i wonder like does it it's kind of hard to tell the director's intention because in order to make a movie for two years you do need to care about the characters and sometimes you just think they're entirely unworthy human beings yeah which makes you wonder why would you spend two years of

your life she seems to hold this kind of like glib want want to be famous, not talented person in especially low esteem. But I feel like a lot of her comedy writing, you know, prose writing and nonfiction writing before she moved to film was obviously almost all of it was from her perspective. I mean, there's sort of like personal essays and stories and this and that, but it was a lot of sort of critiquing the behavior of other people around her and other trends and things like that. And she wants to try to do that stuff in movies. But when you're living with someone visually existing on camera for over 90 minutes in which an actor has to imbue all of that like annoying behavior with some sense of a larger life behind it it becomes like very unpleasant for people to watch and that's pretty much the through line for all of her movies that weren't successful and it's interesting like this goes into bewitched which

is a fiasco to use a word david said before we were recording and it's amazing and like this was the period where i got really into her because of like just moving in with anna and like reading her books and then but she was like at a real fallow period after these two movies and like culturally i think and it was like weird how into her we were because it was like yeah i guess you know like the early movies sure but like lately and then those books i think really made her great again like i feel bad about my neck and i remember nothing i think really really turned things around and then i i think it's good that her last movie kind of like it's it's a justifiable film she went out on a hit like she went out on like even if you don't think it's her best film

she went out doing the thing that she was good at as a filmmaker. It was a success. People got Oscar nominations. It was well-liked. It was clearly a film with like subject matter that she was personally engaged with. All of which could be said about this as well. I just think it is fascinating that like, you're right.

It feels like Lucky Numbers and Bewitched should be like, she cannot recover from this, especially considering that she tragically dies too soon. Right? She died way too soon. But the fact that in the last five years of her life, she kind of completely restored her reputation. Like hit books, a well-liked play, a big hit movie.

The play was posthumous, wasn't it? Yeah, but she got it together. She wrote it, obviously. Every final, her final five or six years of living, everything she wrote ended on a high note. Her son said in that documentary

she was very aware of the fact that she was sick and she wasn't going to live that much longer and she wanted to get out as much as she could. And the fact that so much of that final burst of work did represent her at her best or near her best is a pretty insane phenomenon but it's a nice it's good it's a good ending these two movies are weird uh i should also mention we didn't even i i've sent to you guys like a 15 minute as a gift a blank check gift, a phone call with Jason Schwartzman talking about bewitched for you to do

with what you will. We will find a way to release that either within the body of bewitched or as a call him and asked him, you know, stories about her getting cast in the movie. Uh, just any little anecdote for 15 minutes. Does he know?

Does he know what? That it would be broadcast. Oh, yeah, no, I told him. I mean, I've told him about the show before. And yeah, because he was like, do you want me to just tell you and you can relay it? And I said, no, I'm going to record it and send it. And he said, okay.

Well, also ask Jason Schwartzman if he wants to talk about Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol. Having a hard time finding a guest for that one? Not a lot of nips. Not a lot of bites. Maybe he wants to swing in for that one. He could compare it unfavorably to Klaus. Anyway,

I asked him for some first-hand Nora anecdotes on behalf of you and he provided them, so hopefully that's available somehow. Look, we've had a great time talking about this. I'm excited to figure out just how poorly it did at the box office. And then it's been great hanging out with you guys.

But look, I'm feeling great. I love doing this. You guys are- When you show up, you're here trying to break the record. And I will say on behalf of others, I feel like this hasn't come up in some of the recent episodes,

but like you guys really did a great job of keeping everything on schedule during the worst of the world falling apart. And as I told Ben when he gave me this microphone, we kept everything sounding very professional. I appreciate that. It takes a lot of work. I know people in this weird time, everything feels very heightened. And so if an episode drops four hours late or something ends up being a little different than we expected that people freak out and i'm not asking for uh uh empathy but people

should know it takes a tremendous amount of work to keep the schedule in place and to keep the episodes like coming out in any form yeah but we're we're, we're going to be good moving forward. It won't happen. No, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, but I'm just saying, people need to understand that there, there will be small concessions just to the,

the nature of our horrible reality. We're back on track. But that run, like during the first couple of weeks of COVID, when it was like March Madness episodes and like a Demi bonus, there was just like, and like the Justin Tim and like a Demi bonus, there was just like, and like the Justin Timberlake Demi, like,

I feel like you were putting on an episode like every 72 hours for like three weeks. And it was really, really fun. We, we did more March madness updates than usual because we needed to use peek behind the curtain. We need to use March madness to figure out the technical aspects of how we

record the show remotely. Well, as a fan, it was appreciated. And I will also say on the subject before we do box office, I really have to publicly eat my words on Demi because that was a great run. Hey! I know that on even some of the episodes, people mentioned that I was dubious. But what I ended up doing was watching like 11 or 12 movies i'd never seen and liked and really liked most of them hells and uh the episodes were uniformly enjoyable including what

i when he won and i remember saying to you guys uh do people know they just voted for a master builder episode turns out was your best episode ever so it might have been our number one my that comes on my face but boy boy i'm better off for having watched all those movies and and kind of employed my demi knowledge now to have gotten like a recent music-y job that i wouldn't have really known how to pitch on if it not for thinking about him as long as you did that series so i was fully in the wrong someone i'm not going to call them out by name because they don't need to be shamed anymore but someone who is not a professional film critic but is public tweeted like did you see this they tweeted like oh is there any other example no no no because this is what i'm going

to say i'm not going to say what you think i'm going to say david david give me a modicum of trust yeah trust griffin like he's russ richards reading the weather i just don't want to amplify that stupid tweet well now i'm curious what it is we can always cut it no because maybe trust that i know what i'm gonna say all right okay someone said something like is there any other example of someone like jon Demme who makes one great film and then makes forgettable bullshit for the next 40 years. And he was getting clowned on in the way people get clowned on film Twitter. But when I saw the tweet and I looked at the replies, there was a very,

very large percentage of them that were blankies, not jumping down this guy's throat, but saying like you know i used to have a similar opinion on him but then i watched all of his movies because of blank check and first of all he made so many good interesting movies before silence of the lambs and second of all he only had 20 years after silence of the lambs and third of all there were a lot of undersung gems in that following 20 years i liked that the most diplomatic of the responses to that tweet were blank check people sort of saying what alex is saying now which is like

i actually think if you take the time to dig into demi there's a lot of it was very enriching for me to watch all of those movies and i was glad to i was glad to be forced to do that isn't that a positive thing for me to say david and not just clowning on somebody with the bad tape. I didn't think you were going to clown on him. I, it is nice that they were, that David's hair has turned into fire. A lot ghostwriter.

He's so hopping mad. There's a couple of things, a couple of things I want to say. One, my hair is very long right now and I can't stand it. It's the worst, the worst, most annoying thing about quarantine to be

clear it is not the worst thing about david's hair looks exactly the same i notice no difference other than the fact that it's on fire like james wood hades and hercules one of my dark you know because obviously it's been so hard for people especially like the the person who cuts my hair i has cut my hair for years and i love her and i love seeing her and chatting with her every, you know, a couple of months or whatever. And she sent me an email the other day being like, Hey, like I'm, I'm in New York. Like, but when, you know, when, whenever this is over, I'm still here. And I was so happy. I interviewed Spike Lee today. So that's also, that also took it out of me.

That took a fucking humble brag. I'm sorry. Can we, can we go back? Say the first exciting thing is that your hairdresser in town and the second exciting thing is that you talked to spike lee lee did not leave new york shout out second thing interviewed spike lee that was cool so but that probably like uh used up a little of my zoom uh fatigue or whatever um third thing let's play the box office game i don't know i can't i'm excited for that let's do it that that is crazy though that you led with you led with the most exciting thing

is my hairdresser named a walking phoenix mockumentary she said i'm still here okay let's play the box office game my god and that's why you stick around for two hours and 30 minutes if we were if we were half an hour in i guess that that one i would have been like i get it that when you said that to me it was like i was watching the words come at my face and i was just like i don't know what these are look david as opposed to my hairdresser who i don't have much of a personal relationship to who instead named for me a uh oh tourist joaquin phoenix uh vigilante drama uh they said i was never really here right okay okay let's play a box that one i got you all right so this film opened at number seven it didn't open well oh yeah fireworks in the daytime new york now baby great to shoot fireworks when you can't see them it's supposed

to piss cops off right all right well pisses me off i hate fireworks i hate loud noises no i like it keep it going and it turns out that ben is the only one shooting fireworks so david this opened when in october uh yes late october october 27th 2000 so this is very spooky 4.5 yeah it was a halloween release 4.5 million dollars on 2500 screens so not a particularly good opening uh it makes 10 million dollars total at the domestic box office i don't believe it was ever really released internationally that's how big a flop it is pointedly remember uh entertainment weekly running an article around the release of this film about how october was the worst month how there had been fewer 100 million dollar grocers in

history from october over any other month and they were saying like look at the evidence a travolta movie's bombing like look at all the movies that no one's going to see in october i feel like that's gone now right october used to be the worst month though that sure right now right now the summer starts in march and ends in october practically or whatever used to used to now the summer's canceled right now the summer starts at thanksgiving or whatever whatever the new system is going to be but anyway i just want to point out that we're not going to talk about it but opening at number six above lucky numbers is Jonathan Lipnicki's the little vampire oh we should talk about it actually for a little bit can we go on a little vampire side tangent yeah what's the deal with the movie like what's it

about he's a little vampire okay small I don't remember a lot more if you'd ask me what year was that movie i would have said what jerry mcguire is 95 i would have said that movie was 96 that movie is 2000 2000 he looks like he's the same age yes exactly he does he's just got slightly spikier hair did they shoot it in 96 he didn't age at all and then he aged a lot like he had like a seven-year window where he looked identical and now he's unrecognizable the weirdest thing is it's it's like from the director of like last exit to brooklyn and body of evidence like i don't know how he was called in to make a kid vampire movie uli uh adele and my uli's good paul good paul Adele.

Good Paul. Alright, number one in the box office. The big comedy hit of well, I guess it probably came out late September or October. Big comedy star and another actor who's doing more comedies. Famous actor.

Another famous actor who didn't originally do comedies and now is doing more of them. He's just started originally do comedies and now is doing more of them. I think I know what it is. He's just started to do comedies. Is it Meet the Parents? De Niro. It's Meet the Parents. Just for the record, I believe that was what it was.

In its fourth weekend, has dropped only 6% to stay number one for the fourth weekend in a row. Just held for ever, right? Yes. And then Meet the Fockers does $100,000 yes and then little meet the fuckers does a hundred million more than this big hit it's crazy how successful those movies were it's also crazy how many uses i get out of saying you can milk anything it's always funny it's the funniest line ever in any movie uh ben and meet the parents uh takes i don't know anyone else care about meet the parents i

remember liking it at the time it feels so cringy it's very cringy it gives me it gives me like i don't know a lot of ben stiller stuff is too much there's one incredible joke in the second one which i remember nothing about where he thinks that ben stiller has fathered a child with a hispanic woman and he said there's a young a young Hispanic man who has Ben Stiller's ears. He looks exactly like Ben Stiller. He does look exactly like Ben Stiller. And then the only thing I remember about that movie is he says, uh,

the boy's name is Jorge Villa Lobos translation, George house of wolves, which is an amazing joke. But by the way, that is a great example of comedy. More is changing between that and lucky numbers that is like new comedy guys ben stiller owen wilson just like kind of riffing that movie is sort of it's bringing back an older thing it's like we're doing farce again we're doing like

a social comedy right like it's about like snooty rich people who are weird. That destroying lucky numbers is exactly like the decline of the black dark comedy and the rise of like comedies with people that you just kind of want to hang out with who are vaguely uncomfortable and funny. Well, but, but meet the parents had that gross out tinge. Like it had the, you know, those big moments that you could put in a trailer that was sort of like american pie yeah right that's the remnant of the the fairly brothers tale which is now moving to the more character-based cringe comedy brothers right but by high stakes and it's the combination of a those slack pack guys become the big leading men and also now it's can you put someone in a comedy who usually isn't funny and that's half the

selling point like john travolta number two except except he thought he was funny okay number two is an uh absolutely unsurprising sequel but a total flop of a sequel although it actually is opening the 13 million dollars it's a horror film uh a blair witch book of shadows book of shadows that's right they opened the book everyone thought that was going to be number one and it greatly underperformed it did it's not very good but it is interesting and that it's about a group of people who have seen the blair witch project think it's real and try to recreate it and then some fucked up shit happens to them it is such a bizarre pitch like you should think it's just then some fucked up shit happens to them. It is such a bizarre pitch. Like, you should think it's just like,

some people try and find the, you know, like it's set as a sequel to the Blair Witch Project, but they're like, no, it's going to be a meta take on people being freaked out by the Blair Witch Project. And we're going to get the director of the movie about the West Memphis Three Killers. Right!

Who directed it. We're going to hire a documentary filmmaker about real murders. That's so weird. Okay, I'm sorry sorry but just to state this very cleanly that still appear in time where even though like the entire appeal of blair witch was oh look they made it for like forty thousand dollars it looks like a home video it's like a scary haunted object and it grossed this much money they still were like yeah but you can't make another movie like that. It has to look like a real movie.

So instead, they hire a documentary filmmaker to make a movie that isn't a mockumentary, which everyone rejects because they're like, this is the opposite of what we liked about Blair Witch. It's not about the fucking lore. It's about the aesthetics. Weird. Weird miscalculation.

Weird movie. Number three is an inspirational sports drama from Walt Disney. In the year 2000, it's not The Rookie. No. Is it Remember the Titans? Yes, it is. Okay. Another big hit. Sorry for stealing that, but we

were sourcing all those Disney sports movies on Disney Plus and that I just know there's three zeros after that movie. What's what's the best. Oh, we haven't watched most of them yet. We watched miracle. Um,

I think miracle would be my pitch. Miracle is my pitch. That's the best. Connor baby. Yeah. He's he, he's good at them. I like that guy.

Uh, I think that movie low key. It's very good. Great Kurtsell movie yeah um uh number four at the box office is a comedy i certainly saw in theaters i believe i saw it twice a huge bomb big comedy director two kind of middling stars of the moment who are maybe like tv stars no they're movie stars it's just like they're not quite like you know cream of the crop movie stars like they're sort of like oh it's a second tier uh it's a remake i did see it twice i have no idea why it's not very did you a remake of a foreign film or an earlier remake make of an earlier comedy? I believe a British movie. Hmm.

And, uh, do you like it still? Or did you see it two times by coincidence? I think it was kind of by coincidence. I think at the time I was very into the lead. I mean, I still love the,

the, the male star. Um, but at the time I was sort of like, he's going to be big. Like, you know, I'm going to see everything he's in. big like you know where I'm gonna see everything

he's in and I saw it once and was like this is funny and I think I saw it a second time I was like oh I guess it's just okay when is the original movie from roughly from the 60s and there's a there's a gender flip happening one of the two lead roles has been gender flipped huh huh there's a gender this is not a movie people really remember yeah but that feels like that this is what's driving me crazy it sounds like it's something that should be so squarely in the wheelhouses of both alex and myself yes we should be the only two people who remember this? Major comedy director. Bedazzled. Nailed it. I believe I also saw that two times in theaters. Harold Remus,

Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Hurley. She's the devil, and you know that because she's wearing a little red dress. Yes, and the original is Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, right? That's right. I see. So they made the devil a woman in a red dress. Yes. With the shapely fembot figure.

You're right. I was also just all in at brendan frazier at this point uh yeah i mean that's why why so i saw it 100 was like he was money in the bank for me yeah um and in my you know and he plays lots of because he keeps wishing and he keeps having different lives so he got to wear different wigs right it's funny i don't know yeah yeah uh maybe it's not funny and then comedy so these are a lot of comedy so October is like comedy month yeah I

mean they've been sort of hanging around as well I guess so you'll laugh so hard I'll scare you that was because obviously the big Halloween 2000 are Blair Witch 2 and the little vampire right too scary obviously year and then number five is a failed Oscar play are Blair Witch 2 and The Little Vampire. Right. Two scariest films of the year. And then number five is a failed Oscar play.

Big Stars. It's not Men of Honor. One of them's highly canceled. No. One of whom has been highly canceled? Mel Gibson. That could be Men of Honor. Okay.

Is it a Spacey? Is it Pay It Forward? It's a Spacey. Yes. Let's be frank. It's Pay It Forward. Let's be frank. if you would please allow me to be frank it is it is pay it forward right yes yes and uh uh much hyped at the time but uh a movie that basically people already were engraving the oscars when the release date was announced i i believe griffin walked out and said like best actor best david i didn't wait to walk out the lights had not even risen in the theater and i turned to my

father and i confidently said picture director actor actress supporting actor i thought it was going to take them all can you imagine watching that movie now uh oh it's really tough to imagine it'd be fun as a goof i i from redeeming something at some point in time ended up with pay it forward in my itunes library it was some promotion where it was like buy one warner brothers movie and we give you three extra ones for free and this quarantine pay it forward right i mean it's like a curse it's a monkey's paw yeah but this quarantine trash and then it ends up back in your living room it's the youtube album of itunes movies absolutely but the quarantine has really tested me where i just keep on looking at that file in my itunes library and go like is this the thing that will finally push me to watch a standard deaf digital copy of pay it for it's not even

HD what else is in the top what's below lucky numbers yeah okay so obviously we have the little vampire as I mentioned shout out to the little list of all vampires we've also

got the contender the drama Rod Lur deb certainly his best movie we love it um we've got the legend of drunken master oh yeah that's sort of an interesting little moment it you know we're like uh years laterbbing, re-editing of a classic film, a sequel to a classic film. That one's okay. Yeah. We've got Best in Show, which is sort of chugging along. It's made like $10 million.

Why does it end up that? It ends up at like 20. So it was sort of like a little sleeper. We just rewatched that. It's just a movie that you watch now. And it's crazy that this was like a film released in movie theaters yes yeah it's just like loose sketches and it just like looks like whatever and it's so funny and like people paid money to sit and watch it i did like a little

guest miniseries on my own re-watching them maybe earlier this year end of last year and that one held up a little bit less for me than the others just because I remember it being the funniest fucking thing I had ever seen at that point in time but then you get to the last 30 minutes with Fred Willard and that is truly there is an argument to be made that that is the best comedic performance in the history of cinema right once he shows up right like return on investment i mean seth meyers tweeted something about it but just like the amount of screen time he has versus how much he gets out of every syllable in that performance is insane one of the funniest people ever one of the best parts of that performance isn't even something he says it's when when the other guy goes, well, just like when you asked me that last year.

The way everyone responds to him, the looks he makes, like he was on set for like three hours. I think the what happened part of A Mighty Wind is his individual, probably most like electrifying scene. Yes. Yes. I think, you know, the best in show run there is is bulletproof it's like his flu game it's michael jordan's flu game it's him just showing up and somehow just like getting buckets uh yeah so you've also got the the ladies man uh one of the better snl paramount failing comedy crumbling you've got um and then you've got this is actually something the only last thing i want to say

two other f cinema score movies lost souls and dr t and the women yeah so in 2000 america is like i don't know what it is but we're sick of what you're trying to do like enough i think the F Cinema score only starts that year I was looking at the list that's right uh yes it's it's even 99 or 2000 it's like it's around there and I think we can all agree in closing that you know lucky numbers gets an A right David the last yes absolutely A plus the last thing I want to say is that David Gordon Green's David George Washington opened on five screens this week. Great movie. His first movie. The first F CinemaScore movie is 1999, Eye of the Beholder. And then 2000 is like Dr. T lost soul's lucky numbers. Then it's suddenly.

But Eye of the Beholder came out in 2000, right? I think it's like a British movie. And then it's like January 6, 2000. You're right. So four movies come out in the United States in 2000 are the first four films to get the F. Presuming that at that point they were like, here's the cinema score thing.

And by the way, guys, now this is brand new for the millennium, but you can give movies an F. People were like, oh, good. We have almost run for three hours. I have to eat something david i have a side tangent i want to go on quick really quick can i just talk about johnny mnemonic my my headphones are literally almost out of battery and then i have a merchandise spotlight

i want to do as well okay david we're joking i know you're joking you better be joking or else you're in trouble he was joking i will say now that we're done now that we're done it doesn't seem like griffin you needed to delay this 90 minutes to re-watch cabin boy but i'm glad you did 30 minutes to watch cabin boy fair points 30 you just wanted to watch cabin boy which is because I'm in an Adam Resnick thing. I watched all of Get a Life in quarantine as well. Good show. And I will say, I wanted to say more about Adam Resnick, but then all of you dunked on me. It was open season on old Griffey.

We got to save room for my Schwarzman bewitched tidbit somewhere. That's happening next episode. But you can't put it in the mail. You can do whatever you want. That's happening next episode. But you can't put it in the mail. You can do whatever you want. It's yours. Yeah, we're not going to put in a lucky numbers episode. I mean, if we could do whatever we want with it. You can do whatever you want.

Let's put it in and double it. Yeah. Let's re-edit our first episode ever, which was not good. The first Phantom Podcast episode and put it in there. In the middle but like let's not tell anyone let's just update it right just the numbers on that episode without any

pointing to it yeah and it'll be the perfect crime alex thank you for being on the show thank you for having me back number five i'm so happy we we finally inducted you into the perfect perfect film selection in a already very strong mini series that's just beginning for for the listener i mean you know you you you demanded it was it worth it you tell me happy i'm happy no you tell me or you know i'm saying was it was i mean i had a great time all you dreamed of david is miserable his head is on fire like anger from the pixar film inside it was worth it and i just because I had so much fun preparing for it and wanting to make it a real compelling episode

because I know already from listening to one and a half of these that this miniseries is taking Nora Ephron very seriously and you're elevating her as a writer and already in the half of the This Is My Life episode as a director. And this coming towards the end is going to be a real question mark for people as it was for me um who plays anger in inside out Lewis

Black of course hey there you go yeah they took the shortest walk possible on that one yeah really well he was good hey and thank all of you for listening and please remember to rate and subscribe thanks to and for co-producing the show

and running our social media Lane Montgomery for our theme song Joe Bone Pat Reynolds for our artwork tune in next week for Bewitched with Dana Schwarz and maybe the right man I'm sorry the Schwarzman drop

unless we decide to put it somewhere else funky and on our Patreon we're not going to do that we're going to put a Reitman drop in the Bewitched episode and we're going to put the Schwartzman drop somewhere funky

like in a recording of Funky Cole Medina go to blankcheck.com backslash Patreon go to patreon.com backslash blankcheck for Mission Impossible commentaries and blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit. And as always,

I don't think I have ever seen David look more defeated by an episode than he does right now. We're at three hours of episode now. Three hours. One, two, three. I know. Okay. he does right now we're at three hours of episode now three hours one two three i know okay i think this is the one i want to do um uh david yes uh can can you say geez i've been so busy lately i barely polish my shoes okay uh sure uh geez i've been so busy

lately i barely hold on hold on no hold on sorry i say the line and then you say that it's the opposite of what we usually do no i'm not doing that i don't even remember this line just well in that case i which line that's the line that's the line i Just, just do it masturbating. I, which line? That's the line. That's the line I'm trying to do. You have to respond to it. Otherwise there's no context. I can't wait for all of this to go at the end of the episode.

That's the line I'm trying to do. You're forgetting how it goes. I am. I don't remember anything about this movie. When did you watch it? It's gone. Like two days ago. It's gone.

He asks, apropos of nothing, do you masturbate, Russ? And Russ says, geez, I've been so busy lately, I barely polish my shoes. Would you rather ask me, do you masturbate, Russ? Yeah, sure. And you podcast your shoes, do you masturbate, Russ? Yeah, sure. And you podcast your shoes. There you go. That's what I'll do because David refuses. God.

Okay, so David, whenever you're ready, whenever you feel like you have your best Michael Moore down, you and your best Michael Moore say, do you masturbate, Russ? Yes.