Blank Check with Griffin & David - Starman with Katey Rich

Episode Date: September 26, 2021

Voyager II may be approaching the “Termination Shock” (Ben’s new favorite phrase), but we’re on earth cherishing the otherworldly romance of John Carpenter’s STARMAN! Vanity Fair’s Katey Rich returns to discuss Jeff Bridges’ impressive performance, the illustrious career of Hollywood script doctor “Dinky” Dean Reisner, and the one sandwich that’s actually supposed to have paprika on it (whatever deviled egg thing Karen Allen orders at the diner in this movie). Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

He has traveled from a galaxy far beyond our own. He is 100,000 years ahead of us. He has powers we cannot comprehend. And he is about to face the one force in the universe he has yet to conquer. Podcast! What's the real... Love. Love.

Love. Not kissing? He does conquer kissing. Can I read the other taglines for this movie? Because they're fucking good. You can. They're good. I guess there's just one other.

The other two posters have the other tagline, which is, In 1977, Voyager 2 was launched into space, inviting all life forms in the universe to visit our planet. Get ready. Company's coming. Like, that makes it sound like a much wackier movie, right? That makes, right, that makes it sound like

a weird family is en route, or whatever, like, oh, get ready for Starman, and Starwife, and Starchild, yeah. Right, well, like, so there are two posters that have that tagline.

One of them is like them holding hands and the star in their hand and the other one is sort of the classic teaser poster where it is just john carpenter starman the logo is the falling comet and then the sort of like uh i don't know the night sky the the house off in the distance with the one house with the lights on it's snazzy it's a fairly snazzy poster compelling image right they had a good they had a good little um you know like you said the comet logos that's pretty that's pretty snazzy it's good i don't know i do but it does feel like they're straining a little bit to explain what what's good what to be excited for

right right i think we're gonna talk about it the The one that I read, I think is good. I think does a good job of that. But it also looks like they took the iconography of the other poster and they just kind of like poorly photoshopped in Bridges and Alan because they needed to put some faces on the poster. Like they wanted to show the hotties.

They don't look great, although they are hotties. They're hotties. We do have to acknowledge that, and I am looking respectfully. But, you know, also, the blues, the lights, the E.T. comparison is right there. E.T. also has, you know, this movie is just, it's just struggling to be like,

well, this one's about love. It's about grown-up love. That's what I feel like they're trying to do. Trying to get out of the E.T. shadow. Yes. Whatchamacallit. The image that has been used for most home video releases of the movie, or at least modern home video releases,

like the DVD and the Blu-ray, is so aggressively bad where it's just a Jeff Bridges headshot, but then there's like red lines going through his face and it has a logo that makes it look like it's a Glenn Larson TV show. And then there's sort of a silhouette of him running out of the fire. Like it makes it look like such a junkie action movie.

It looks like the Six Million Dollar Man or whatever. Yes. Sure. Like even with the title too, it just seems like a bootleg almost like a bad translation of another movie my blu-ray has griff i don't know if you have this blu-ray that you know it's just like a sort of silhouette and he's in front of a planet right that's the shout factory one yeah which is a little better although still like a little

dorky looking but you know it's fine it's a dorky movie in that in that blu-ray one he's got this smirk on his face that like makes it look like he like set the fire that he's walking uh yes it doesn't he looks a little malevolent is what you know yes it's kind of indicative of his performance which we'll talk about we're like that is kind of a face he would make in the movie but it makes no sense in the context of this bad blu-ray poster the red makes no sense red is not really a color in this movie it's very it's like an american flag kind of vibe it's weird you say that david but you're in front of a bright red background from this that's true well that's that's true right at the end yeah no that's true

that's true but it's a lot of blue but yeah yeah you're right you're right you're right he's got that red hat he's got that hat does have that red hat he wants to make america great again he wants to make earth great again red car he does he does want to make america and earth great again for the right reasons we're talking about the star man that's what we're talking about because this is blank check with griffin david i'm griffin i'm david fast jumped in there lightning fast i i'm david i'm trying to do Jeff Bridges in this movie. And I am David. I am David. I am David.

It's like the defined David. You gotta chew on those words. And his mouth moves too much when he's speaking. It's like he's talking but his tongue isn't moving somehow. It's just his lips are moving over his teeth or whatever. It's the exact opposite of like modern Billy Coat gruff Jeff Bridges,

where every line sounds like he's chewing on a tin can. Right. You're under arrest. Yes. What a guy. He's still out there. I guess he hasn't made a movie in a few years, but he's still out there.

He's been fighting cancer, unfortunately. Yeah, I know. Yeah, David, way to bring the mood down. Way to bring the mood down. I know. sorry i know the last come in and drag jeff bridges for taking some time off from work in order to take care of his health i'm not dragging him i'm just happy he's still i mean his last uh performance was bad times of the el royale which he's great in yeah he's really good in correct and you know that was just a couple yeah yeah jeff bridges he's great in. Yeah. He's really good in. Correct. And, you know, that was just a couple of years. Yeah, yeah. Jeff Bridges.

He's just still giving us, you know. He'll come back. Anyway. I believe in him. He was also working so much. He was in four, well, no, I guess it's three movies in 2017. And then a documentary where he did the narration. He was working a lot.

He was putting in the post Iron Man. And then obviously he wins the Oscar right after, run there. The Grizzled Bridges run is like a good solid 10 years. Well, he has that amazing moment in 2010 where Jeff Bridges, in the fourth decade of movie stardom, suddenly has the number one and two movie at the box office over Christmas. He's like Mr. Blockbuster. And everyone was like, wow, Jeff Brages has got like the elder statesman role

in Tron Legacy. And then it's like, he's the thing that everyone likes in Tron Legacy. And then True Grit outgrosses Tron Legacy. Yeah, True Grit makes like $150 million.

$170 million. Crazy. It fucking cleaned up. That movie is so fucking good. So good good i've seen it five times it's better every time it's one of those movies where it's just if any other director had made it that might be one of their best movies the cohen's made it and you're like is it top five for them i'm not even sure you know like and it's it's it's it's so good but we're not here to talk do you just remember that like fucking tron legacy is like so hyped up, so expensive.

And then instead, it gets fucking suplexed at the box office by a different Bridges. Two good movies. What has two Bridges is in Tron Legacy, and then the third Bridges comes in to sweep it all under the table. There are three Bridges at the top two of the box office in December 2010. We didn't know how good we had it. Then he had a run, obviously, of R.I.P.D. and The Giver and Seventh Son and all these kind of

failed blockbuster cash-in movies. And then he fucking comes back with Hell or High Water and everyone's like, oh, right, our favorite actor. Have another Oscar nom. Have another one. Casually, another one. Six or seven? How many is he up to at this point i think he has i got it pulled up seven seven nominations and one win his third right it's his

third and it's 10 plus years into his career yeah and it's the one where he's like i finally felt like i belonged in hollywood i'm like oh nom three is where you really settled down child of of uh lloyd bridges didn't make it happen yeah he's like i was lloyd bridges's kid like i i i was in my head about that but like that's why i was a success right it was like i was a handsome kid and I was given shots because my dad put me on the TV shows and I don't really know if I'm actually good or it's just like, hey, man, I don't know. Didn't you reference like C. Hunt in his Oscar speech? Like, I remember him making the joke about being on that show a lot in that Oscar season. Yes, he definitely did.

Yes. Yes. I should mention this is a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they crash in a hollow comet baby. This is a mini series on the films of John Carpenter. We're talking Starman, John Carpenter, Starman, yet another movie that is marketed as john carpenter's blank it is crazy how early that became a thing in his career and how long it retained yeah i think we say on the escape from new york episode that that was the first time and it's the third time like right yeah halloween is the first time anyway the thing i just vividly remember is that Escape from New York has it in the opening credits. Like, that's the title card, right?

Yeah. And Starmian definitely has that, too. It does. It becomes his brand. And it's the font. Like, it's the same font as all the other ones, right? Yeah. anecdote that's interesting that our researchers JJ and Nick pulled up that they were like worried

about putting John Carpenter's before this movie because they thought it would give people the wrong idea that they would think it was too much of a horror movie or an action movie or what have you and they did market research and overwhelmingly people were like no that just makes me think it's going to be a good movie I have no specific

genre associations. It just seems like a stamp of quality. And Carpenter was like, that was the most validating thing I'd heard in my career up until that point. It's pretty cool. Because he's really, I mean, it's a good movie. It's a good movie? It is a good movie. Starman is a great movie.

It's a good movie. I think it's, I hope I'm not misattributing this but i feel like i one of the many pieces that drew mcqueen he has written about carpenter and his love carpenter's friendship with him or whatever the first time he met him and was like falling to him and carpenter said what's what's your favorite movie of mine and mcqueen he said star man and carpenter smiled and said ah a romantic and i always think about. It's such a sweet little anecdote. But this idea that Carpenter sort of like tests his fans to be like,

are you a softie? Like, do you like Starman? Right, because he probably gets a lot of the thing in Halloween and Escape New York. Right. Our guest today, a superstar, a heavyweight,

a star woman of blank check from Vanity Fair and Little Goldman, Katie Rich, back on the show. Hi, guys. To everyone so light. Hey, Katie.

What's this? Your one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven. Wow. You just had that right ready. I'm so honored. You got the,

you're at your Bridges number. You and Bridges are tied. Oscar nominations and blank check appearances. I do consider myself in a similar company with Jeff Bridges. Well, I'm just constantly in competition with Richard Lawson, who I think is always a little bit ahead of me. But, you know, we have to keep that rivalry going to keep our podcast going.

Griff, there's a blank check Wikipedia page for the Five Timers Club, which is a seven-person list. Okay, so let me just close my eyes. Imagine the burnished wood, the burgundy robes, Paul Simon serving drinks. Okay, go on.

Name the people, the members in attendance. Emily Ishida, Richard Lawson, J.D. Amato, Katie Rich, Joe Reed, David Ehrlich, and Alex Ross-Perry. What a list. But, Griffin, while not, David Ehrlich, and Alex Ross Perry. What a list. But, Griffin, while not guests on the show, two actors have appeared in five or more films covered by the podcast.

Okay, and those are the most frequent? This is what you're about to read? I mean, that's what, I'm just going by the blank check wiki. Catherine Han and Billy Crudup are in the five-time actors club for this podcast, apparently. That can't make them the most frequent, though. Look, I don't, because you think, because there's like sequels and things like that. I know. I don't understand this list because there has to be others, right? Right.

Like Johnny Depp alone and the whole Burt series. Also by the end of this. You guys are just thinking about Well Depp People were just like Oh I know

So much Depp again He's come up in other directors too But even like I'm seeing This is citing a Reddit post That was noting that Kurt up and Han had just Oh no

Here's what it is Five different mini series Okay There you go That makes sense that's that's tricky that's a good step hon she was in how do you know brooke i know because i watched the movie okay tomorrowland bird forgot she's in that one hotel transylvania 3 of course classic not a mini series but i guess you put it into the Stand alone series The Holiday Oh right

And The Visit Right And then Crudup you've got Almost Famous Big Fish Public Enemies Man Now the other two are tricky

One's a voice role One's a voice role. One's a voice role. It's a voice role. A dubbed voice role. That's a hint. Oh, he's in one of the Miyazakis. He's in Princess Mononoke. Okay.

Right. And then the other is not a, you know, it's not a director. It's a, you know, another kind of miniseries we've done. But it's main feed. Main feed. But he's not... You'll never remember that he's in's main main feed main feed but he's not never

remember that he's in this movie no one remembers no no one remembers that he's in this i mean he's like the 50th person in this movie i can't even remember it's justice league i do remember right and and he's a patreon mission impossible mi's an interesting, that's an interesting stat. Did he make this? He's in the Snyder Cut, right? He is in the Snyder Cut. He's in even more of it. I've only seen the Snyder Cut and he showed up in it and I did not know he was going to be in it.

And it took me by surprise. But he's not in Flash. He's not in the Flash movie? It's Ron Livingston is replacing him. Oh, they replaced him. Why? Because he was unavailable, they say. I mean, they do look enough alike.

I think you can get away with that. There's a similar winsome charm. Yeah. Can I tell you guys something? I'm learning from this page, though, on Wikipedia. Katie Rich is the only member of the club who has never appeared on a blank blank check special features episode. Yeah.

You don't live in New York City. I know. Come through. I got to come to you. Are you guys still doing those only in person? We're trying to do the more in person. We've been doing them in person again because we can do them. But but yeah, you know.

Yeah. The other thing is, I will say we have increasingly gone guest list on those. Like because it just you know, it. The other thing is, I will say, we have increasingly gone guestless on those. Like, because it just, you know, it felt like people like, we have guests

almost every episode on main feed. They're like, we want just classic vibes. They ask for the guestless energy. Right.

Yeah. Right. And next time I come to your apartment, David, I am just going to start monologuing about a movie

and you have to record it. I'm just going to force my way on there. Please. Well, there's also, I feel like we have internally pitched, and I feel like we must have said this to you

at some point, but the idea of doing a Charlie's Choice where we would do a commentary episode for a movie that he pitched. I thought you guys were going to road trip down here and you meet it on my couch. That was the place we were going to. One of so many things.

And there was this pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus. But Katie, if we did a commentary episode, a Charlie's Choice with Charlie, how many how long would he make it? I mean, there's a reason I'm pitching commentary rather than classic format, because I imagine we're just watching a movie. Right. Right. But like, could he could he sit through it or would he 20 minutes and get bored? He would definitely sit through it. I don't know if he would talk much because he usually sits and watches movies

and kind of like raps silence. Respectful. I was coming ready with some mind-blowing information for the longtime listeners who remember Charlie appearing on the Titanic episode. Our youngest ever guest. He started kindergarten last week, guys. He sure did.

It brings me no pleasure to report. No, it is wild. That is some wild passage of time shit. It really is. Because you were saying right before we recorded that this is your third pandemic episode, which is its own kind of scary passage of time thing. But to think about him being an infant.

In that studio. Yeah. He was younger than my daughter is now. He was only like four months old, right? Like three, four months old. Yeah, really, really tiny. No, he's got his spot reserved. I got to, I'm just going to keep you guys posted

on when I feel like he's ready for the commentary moment and get on down here. I asked David for the update every once in a while, but I want to ask you directly. If asked tomorrow, what do you think his pick would be? I mean, we just picked Coco back up like after a long time.

Like we watched like every day when he was little, like two, and then we hadn't watched it in ages and he like picked it to watch himself the other day and we watched the entire thing and like I cried at the end and I was like telling him why I like it. And so like, I feel like tomorrow

it would be Coco. Next week, it could be an episode of the octonauts i don't know if you guys accept that as a as an entry for not accepted i'm not dealing with a fucking octonaut cannot log it not gonna happen this is a conversation i've been having with david like david do you realize you're in your final stretch of not having to give a shit about like paw patrol and stuff and he's like well maybe i avoid paw patrol and Patrol. And I'm like, you avoid Paw Patrol, you get PJ Masks. It's whack-a-mole. Yeah, no, you get the Netflix ecosystem where it's dubbed French-Canadian shows that barely exist.

Some of which are not so bad. I will say, and David knows about this, that we went through a strong Detective Pikachu phase earlier this year. I bought him a Pikachu. Yeah, you did, and it's treasured. So I feel like we could pull Yeah, you did. And it's treasured. So I feel like we could pull that off if we

played our cards right. Okay, yeah. I just know he goes through he goes through obsessive phases that he'll like re-watch a movie compulsively for a month or so. Yeah, so I'm always interested

in what the movie of the month is. He went through like a big soul thing too, right? Oh yeah, we got really into soul for a long while around when that came out. I mean, Sing was huge.

I'm worried about the seismic impact Sing 2 is going to have on our lives. Does he know about Sing 2? Yeah, we watched the trailer. He knows that Bono plays a lion and he gets the hand

in the billing? Yeah, no, and that he has an original song and is probably going to go win an Oscar for it. So we're ready. We've prepared on it. Bono is waiting for that oscar

bono keeps plugging away he's gonna win two oscars this year he's gonna win supporting actor and original song wait for a supporting actor for saying he's gonna be the first voice actor to win an oscar correct he's ready i just love like they're they're like sort of like gauntlet throw of and bono where you're like whoa wait a second i didn't even realize that was part of the equation and they're singing um i still haven't found what i'm looking for in the trailer so it's like here's old bono and new bono and he's doing like a real voice he's doing like a zoo tv like he well that's the thing bono loves to do a character. He'll do a bit. Yeah. Clay Calloway is his character name. Does Sam, Katie has another son.

Does Sam, is he as movie centric as Charlie? Because I feel like Charlie, right. Charlie really likes movies. Not at all. He'll watch like two things on Netflix and then otherwise we'll like go do whatever he wants. Sam seems like a more physical, outdoorsy child. More interested in like doing whatever else.

But because of Sing, Elton John's I'm Still Standing has been in the rotation for years. And now that is Sam's favorite song, even though he's not really seen Sing. But he just knows the song. So we're on year three of I'm Still Standing, just on a loop all the time. But he has watched Rocketman, right? I've shown them the end of Rocketman. Well, he loves Taryn. Yeah, well, Taryn's a voice in in Sing That's where it all ties back together

He sings I'm Still Standing So have me on the Sing Patreon episode I think is what I'm ready for We're going to wait for Sing 3 Who made Sing? Didn't someone real make Sing? Garth Jennings Hammer and Tongs

Yeah You like wonder about like Oh, what happened to that guy? And then it's like, he's just collecting money. He is incredibly wealthy. He's hanging out with Bono. He'll get thanked in Bono's Oscars bench.

Here's another weird fact. And then I swear we'll talk about John Carpenter's Starman. But Garth Jennings is very good friends with Wes Anderson. And Wes Anderson has a voice role in Sing. Are you kidding me? No, he does.

I mean, I respect that. Do you think Wes Anderson, does he have kids? Doesn't Are you kidding me? No, it does. I mean, I respect that. Do you think Wes Anderson, does he have kids? Doesn't Wes Anderson have kids? Yes, he does. Maybe like one of his kids loves Sing. Wes Anderson plays Daniel, a giraffe who auditions with the song Ben.

Uh-huh. That sounds great. Yep, I know that giraffe. I cannot believe I never knew that. Edgar Wright plays a goat. Yeah. The amount of times I have seen Sing is incalculable, and I can't believe I didn't know that.

This is changing everything. So this is what I'm in for, Katie. Most likely, right? I gotta go rewatch it. Yeah, no, you're in for it. Today we're talking about Starman, which is certainly a big, I don't know if it's a turning point in Carpenter's career, but it's a real shift for him.

Not a permanent shift, but like, I mean, he was in an interesting spot because his movies had been sort of going up and up and up and up until the thing when he finally gets his blank check and it like implodes like the Challenger launch. People chase him out of Hollywood with pitchforks. And then Christine is kind of like a rebound movie, right? Like Christine is like, I got to do something that's going to work. And more, right. Like I'll do familiar territory. I'll do a horror movie.

Like I'll do what people want from John Carpenter. And Stephen King is kind of like a proven franchise in and of himself at that point. Especially at that point. Right. Right. Is it a one for them? Like, were they like, yeah, he'll do it. Or what did he feel?

I haven't, you got this Christine episode has not come out yet. So I don't know what you guys said about it. I don't know. I mean, I think the whole thing was like, he was the pick to make Christine. Like, yeah, they wanted him. he was the pick to make christine like yeah they wanted him he was the first pick but then classically much you know much like stephen king oh stephen king eventually sort of turned on him because stephen king just gets in he's really grumpy about these movies like these adaptations where i feel like he's often enthusiastic for a while and then he's like i

you know whatever i hate what they did he famously thought he could beat stanley kubrick in a reputation off about the shining absolutely yeah uh i think i think you know carpenter like his his ones for them have always been him picking the most strategically sound movie that he actually wants to do you know i don't think he has ever done something purely as a career calculation. Yeah. And he's good at avoiding projects that don't suit him, especially in this first half of his career. I think perhaps he might not have made that movie if the thing had been a hit. You know, he might have followed like a wilder passion project. And that was a little bit safer. But I think a thing he really wanted to do and prove that he could like deliver on budget on

time and whatever. And then that movie's a hit. It's a big hit. People like it. So Columbia is like Carpenter, baby, come on, make make yourself comfortable. You know, right. You're you're Columbia Pictures boy now. Starman is a script that has been percolating for years. The famous thing about this movie is that Columbia Pictures had two scripts,

one of them Starman, the other one called Night Skies. Both of them were about friendly aliens who land on Earth and befriend lonely people. They did extensive focus groups on the two films at the script stage to see which concepts seemed to have more broad commercial appeal. to have more broad commercial appeal. It was Starman hands down. So they let go of Night Skies and let Universal acquire it in turnaround. And that movie became E.T., the highest grossing film in history.

So Starman got tagged with this reputation of like, well, A, now we look stupid because we let E.T. go in favor of this thing that we still haven't made. B, we're now scared that this is too similar to E.T. and people will think it's a ripoff. And C, I think there was just kind of like bad juju around the whole thing for a while. Right. That's exactly bad vibes because it's right.

Like this is the you pick wrong, wrong most likely even though Starman is good and they didn't make it like they went through a bunch of different directors and all this present but like why didn't they make it before E.T. just because they couldn't decide what they wanted to do with it I think that was a part of it and the directors right yeah and also I think the script wasn't that good this is a Michael Douglas

project even though he's not credited is he credited as an executive producer? Yeah, he's credited as a producer. But not as a main producer. But this was a project he shepherded. And there's this script. The script is credited to Bruce Evans and

Raynald Gideon. And that was the script. But of course, like Dean Reisner is the actual writer of the movie we saw. Basically, like he did a massive rewrite. Then that's what brought Carpenter on board. That's the period of time where, for years, new directors are coming on board and leaving, redeveloping it, and then Columbia in between will hire new writers to try to change it, to come up with what is the right take for this movie.

But so, right. So first it's John Badham, who had done Saturday Night Fever and Dracula. So he was like, you know, he was hot shit and he does war games instead. Yeah. And I think E.T. just got there faster than when E.T. comes out and blows up. Badham quits because he's just like, I don't want to have to follow that. So then it goes to Adrian Lyon. Adrian Lyon.

Right. And Adrian Lyon wants to do the movie partly because he wants to break into hollywood and he thinks he made this piece of shit movie that no one's gonna like and then flash dance is a colossal hit and he's like fuck you i can go make whatever i want now like i'll see you later right i'm i'm going back to england i don't need this shit anymore uh and that begins the crazy ad Lyon thing where like every movie he makes after his hits is a huge flop. And then he's like, fine, fine. I guess I'll make Fatal Attraction.

And then it's a huge hit. OK, I want to make Jacob's Ladder. It's a bomb. OK, well, I'll go make I'll go make Indecent Proposal. This thing sounds like a piece of shit. It's a hit. You know, like it's over and over again. Lyon's got a wild career.

It would be so good it would be such a good filmography it would be our horniest miniseries ever we should tie it to that ben affleck movie god knows whenever that thing is getting dumped in like january or whatever oh i cannot wait to see it we were supposed to have a sexy ass press tour with those two and then they broke up and then jennifer lopez shows up and jennifer lopez is right and we buried deep water fuck it's affleck and arms it was one of those publicity romances that then seemed to kind of be real for a bit and then obviously disintegrated right yeah affleck was like guess i'll call j-lo up steal her away from a rod or whatever it is he's done it's a gift he gave us to be clear he's just

sitting on his like throne surrounded by like crushed duncan cups dragging on his vape and being like i don't know does jayla want to go out with me i just think it's incredible that like i i've read all these dumb fucking articles about how like will smith is revolutionizing hollywood and he's got this fucking company of like social media branding and he's like other stars hire him to do what he did for himself and all this shit. And I'm like Affleck is

getting no credit for being like the great American meme creator. Every fucking thing he does not only like goes viral but becomes like some sort of like spirit animal for a different type of mood. Exactly. He's like this walking avatar of America in COVID

or whatever. When he's up, when he's down, when he's happy, when he's horny, when he's angry, when he's drunk, when he's sober, it's all like all of it hits. He and Keanu Reeves are just, he's like both like either side of a coin. Like Keanu Reeves, everything you see of both like either side of a coin like we can't

erase everything you see of him it's just like what a gift what an angel from God and Affleck is like earth is hell and you're like yeah I get that too the whole thing with Affleck I mean I think I've done this dream before but like we're basically he's basically gearing up for his third comeback he's had a comeback within playing Batman yeah where he he gets the Batman role at the height of his second comeback. Nobody likes the Batman movie. Now everyone's sort of like, he was a good Batman. And I'm like, was he?

Are we sure? He should come back as Batman. I'm like, he never left. He's still Batman. But he's like Keanu in that way, too, where it's just like every seven years, it's like done, cooked over, never coming back.

Exactly. The enough from this guy. I don't want to hear about it. And he's like, I guess I'll like make a movie that is good. I'll just direct it. And like, I'll do three of those and win best picture.

Oh, uh, the incredible, incredible, incredible. Uh, what was the thing I was going to say about Affleck? I don't fucking remember.

Uh, but don't forget he's got the last duel coming at Venice, like, within a matter of days as we record this. So, like, that could ruin it all. No. It could increase it. No telling. It's gonna roll. It's gonna roll.

It is wild that those, like, the paparazzi photos came out when they were filming the movie, and it was like, these haircuts are a disaster. How's anyone gonna take this movie seriously? And then you watch the trailer, and you're like, these haircuts are a disaster. How's anyone going to take this movie seriously? And then you watch the trailer and you're like, hmm, haircut's pretty good. It is such a clear like, oh, right,

like directing and framing and lighting matters. Yeah. I can't wait for the last duel. God, what a thing. Those, those dopes,

those Boston dopes will never be rid of him. I mean, Ridley Scott's about to run circles around everybody all fall. He's 82 years old. I mean, Ridley Scott's about to run circles around everybody all fall. He's 82 years old. I mean, you guys, I know you've talked about doing

Ridley Scott a million times, but like, good Lord, that man. I do it tomorrow. I do an episode a day. He's made 45 movies. 45 masterpieces. For the rest of your life. I don't think it's 45.

He's made like 25. That's a lot. Something like that. It's also wild that unlike Soderbergh, where the joke is like, oh, he made like five movies while we were having this conversation, but they're all on an iPhone. Ridley Scott's like, no, they're like humongous $200 million productions shot in foreign countries with expansive cast.

Huge original movies for grownups coming out within like fucking days of each other. Both shot during a pandemic. Both starring Adam Driver, America's favorite giant weirdo. out within like fucking days of each other both shot during a pandemic both starring adam driver america's favorite giant weirdo like it's gonna rule it's gonna be great god i know he i know last duel is supposed to come out last year so it's not quite but still you know still but it was it was supposed to come out last year when they thought they were going to be able to complete filming that's the thing they started filming that movie like a week before everything shut down. And then it was down for 10 months.

Ridley Scott probably like got COVID five times. He doesn't care. He probably has it right now. Yeah, exactly. I think COVID got Ridley Scott. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. What if I just do Chuck Norris bits?

What about Ridley Scott Like we're doing Ridley Scott back Starman Okay so then it goes to Ironically enough segue It goes to Tony Scott Tony Scott wants to make it full Sort of genre hyper stylized

What have you And this is right before Top Gun. So it's like post The Hunger or whatever, when he's like a very stylish filmmaker. So everyone who touched this movie then made a gigantic hit or was about to make a giant hit.

Yeah, that's true. It didn't make sense. What's the secret to my success? I turned down Starman. Then it goes to Mark Rydell, who I guess left this to do on golden pond i i guess so does that match the movie that we've never seen right no on golden pond is 81 so my guess is it's right after yes and so he goes on to do the river which is that

movie with um mel gibson and sissy spacek right what if there was a river i've never seen it but it was like a, you know, like Spacek got an Oscar nom for that. Oh yeah, that was in the Starman Oscar season. It came out the same year. It was a movie.

Yeah. What if there was a fucking river? So he kind of breaks the trend a little bit. Although, it gets four Academy Awards and one honorary win. Oh,

it got like a sound or whatever. It won a special achievement in sound effects editing. Mark Rydell, I think, was when they start to skew it more towards what if we do

the more humanist, performance-based, emotional movie, not try to lean into the genre elements. And then when Rydell leaves, that's sort of the script that comes across his desk.

And it's exciting to him because he's like they're never gonna let me do a romantic comedy or drama but here is a movie that on its face looks like a sci-fi movie which they will hire me to do assume that i'll be more interested in the genre elements but really this is my sneaky way to let them let get them to let me make yeah a grown-up romance yeah yeah yeah um and and and he basically says the original draft well what carpenter says is the original draft quote ends with starman blowing up the government with his ray gun i don't really know how that works but the whole the entire u.s government The whole government with his ray gun. And he says this Dean Reisner rewrite is the total humanization, right?

You know, makes changes, makes the character less hostile. It's all the dialogue. It's the script that he signed on to. And then they assume that he would split screenplay credit because the WGA, you know, gives tremendous weight to whoever originally started a script, even if almost nothing is left. And instead, they just give full credit to the original guys. And this is an odd movie that is dedicated

to the man who wrote the screenplay, who is still alive, but couldn't get a credit on the movie otherwise. Dean Reisner, who also, I encourage everyone to look up on wikipedia because his uh picture is him as a child actor he's was a child actor named dinky dean what and so if you google dean reisner you can see a little picture of a cute four-year-old boy from the 1920s who was in like a charlie chaplin movie and then i guess as he grew up he became like a

famous rewrite guy in hollywood which he wrote a 1939 ronald reagan movie called code of the secret service his most notable role was in charlie chaplin's short film the pilgrim pretty cool dinky dean he's cute he's pretty cute he He won an Oscar for directing Bill and Coo in 1948, a feature film with a cast of real birds costumed as humans acting on the world's smallest film set. I'm sorry. I have to read this. He won an honorary Academy Award. Are you seeing what it's for, David?

I want to read it. Can I please read it? Can I please read it? I'm sorry. It's an honorary academy award for bill and coo in which quote artistry and patience blended in a novel and entertaining use of the medium of motion pictures i like the very pointed use of the word patience there because people were clear just like how do you fucking film these birds you gotta wait they're not gonna they're not gonna do anything you ask

You gotta wait for them He also married Vampira The famous 50s campy TV hostess Whose real name was Malia Nermy And I don't think They were married for that long

They divorced in the 50s Vampira Vampira Vampira? Weird And I don't think they were married for that long. They divorced in the 50s. Vampyra, by the way. Vampyra. Vampyra. What did I say? Vampyra? Weird. What's wrong with me?

Wow. Star, of course, of Play 9 for Outer Space. What a life! This is incredible. Dinky Dean! This is what I'm saying! Dinky Dean! He gets a screenplay credit on Dirty Harry,

but then most... And what's the other one? Play Missy for me. But then most of his work is uncredited rewrite work, High Plains Drifter, The Enforcer, Rich Man, Poor Man, Godfather Part 3. He's one of those famous like, uh, you don't know

Dean Reisner, that's the guy you need, you know, like he rewrites everything in the 70s and 80s, yeah. But hey, Dinky Dean. We love him. you need, you know, like he, he re rewrites everything in the seventies and eighties. Yeah. Um, but Hey, dinky Dean. Thank you. We love him.

Uh, we stand him and Carpenter very much is like, that's the script. His script is the script I felt, um, which is cool. And it's a good script. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, and, and he sort of got first crack at it. Like the rewrite was done in between directors. They bring it to him. He goes like, I love this. I'd make this right away. And so they do. Michael Douglas was the

one who originally developed this movie because he wanted to star in it and that would have been a disaster. There is no form of this movie. Obviously, it's impossible to imagine him being in this Carpenter movie with this draft but i don't even think he would work in a more action oriented version of this movie this is what a year or two before wall street or whatever it's not like this is a this is a time

in his career where he played softer characters like the guy the same year as romancing the stone right 84 the guy excelled at cad and slime ball like that was his he would just seem so hostile in this yeah he would be like get away from this guy he's hiding something he's obviously trying to blow up the earth with this ray gun he's gonna kill the government he's gonna kill the whole damn government i i will say also like michael d Michael Douglas very much seems like he is from Earth to a fault. Yeah. You know, like, I'm like, yeah, that is a human. Absolutely.

Like, like, like his paparazzi photos. He embodies all of our worst. Right. Right. I mean, we've talked about this with Douglas, but like Douglas was like the dark id of the American 80s. You know? Absolutely. Yes.

He's a surprising choice though He is Well have you guys Have you guys done bridges on this show Have we done bridges ever Have we ever crossed a bridge Have we ever driven across Hasn't he been in a Marvel movie He's in Iron Man

Oh sure We talked about that. And that's actually a great performance and we do stan it. And obviously we're going to do Barbra Streisand at some point, so we'll do The Mirror Has Two Faces. You know, we're going to do... Heaven's Gate feels inevitable. I mean, we have to.

He doesn't have a huge role in that, but that would be great. But no, I don't think we've ever really talked about one of my all-time favorite actors, the star of my mother's favorite, my mother's second favorite movie. Yeah. Which is?

Guess. I know what it is. The Big Lebowski. No. Although she, I think she kind of liked the Big Lebowski. Ben laughing at his own joke without hesitation. My mother's favorite movie is Powell and Pressburgers. I know where I'm going.

My mother's second favorite movie is The Fabulous Baker Boys. The Steve Close movie, which is a wonderful movie. And I've seen it many times because my mother loves it so much. And he is so good in it. It's funny, like, Carpenter also, I just remember,

I forget what it was, but like, walking by some, uh, uh, uh, not why I say Carpenter, Bridges, walking by some poster for a Bridges movie when I was a little kid, or maybe it was they played a trailer before, uh, whatever dumb kids movie my dad was taking me to see, and my

dad just turning me and going, he's like one of the best actors alive. He might be my favorite actor like i have this very distinct memory of of my dad just being like he's like the anointing him like pointing at that guy i'm trying to remember what the first bridge is like because he's he's a real grown-up actor like he does apart from tron he doesn't do a lot of kids movies he's in white squall which i never saw But I remember that movie being everywhere But I only remember the kids in that

Yeah that's a lot of kids It might have been something like Fucking Arlington Road Yeah I think the first movie I saw him in Was The Contender Which he is unbelievable in It's such a good performance In a mediocre movie

Have you seen The Contender Katie? In 2000 It's been a good performance in a mediocre movie. Have you seen The Contender, Katie? Griffin, I assume you've seen it. In 2000. Like, a long time ago. Right after. Like, it's been a very long time, yeah. And I remember Rod Lurie, who, you know, used to be a film critic and becomes this director and he wrote this giant diary about making The Contender that was in Empire Magazine. And I read it so many times because he just makes Jeff Bridges sound like the coolest motherfucker alive.

Yeah. There's like some moment where like Bridges is all dressed up and he's coming out of the makeup room and he's like, the dude is the president. Like and stuff like that. Like Bridges would take all these pictures on set and like, you know. Oh, he like just seems like a big maximum vintage camera guy. seems like a maximum vintage camera guy there have been like books published of all his on set photos but then also just photos of him walking around various cities and countrysides and stuff what a fucking rad anytime he's on like a you know podcast or he's doing an interview he seems so friendly so relaxed so happy to talk about what you know whatever you want to talk about right like you

know you go anywhere and i would argue one of the least pretentious actors of that stature like on screen or off or both both yeah oh that's and it's why people undervalue him to this day even though obviously he's very famous and very beloved. Right. Right? Yes. Yes, absolutely. He is one of these guys, and I think it is emblematic of dudes who grew up with dads who were just kind of working actors.

Right? Who were like never big stars. And it was like, it's a job. I'm in the studio system. I'm doing 10 pictures a week i'm doing 80 episodes of a fucking like daytime tv show like whatever it is like it's a job it's a craft right like they're taught these things like it is carpentry no pun intended i feel like like brian cranson talks about it the same way where he's like my dad was like

a marginally successful actor who was never famous and i just kind of learned discipline from him and i never viewed all the trappings of the other shit you know and uh i feel like bridges unlike a lot of guys of his class and his stature uh who will brag about the sort of extremes they went to to transform themselves for performances and all their method acting shit. You hear these stories about things that Bridges did for movies and then he kind of shrugs them off.

He's just quietly doing it. Right. This is a movie where he famously worked with dance instructors to unlearn all of his body language. Right. He was like, make me a blank slate like take everything out of my system yeah um i mean there's that story i remember when he won the oscar and uh i think michelle pfeiffer was presenting and she told the story about how fabulous baker boys he had the makeup people paint broken capillaries onto his nose to like belie the characters past as an alcoholic and she was like that doesn't read on camera and he was like yeah

but it helps me you know like was that one of the years that they had all the previous co-stars it might have been that was around when they were doing that yeah the best i fucking hated that shit that it was good i know i am the the rare Oscar super fan who hated that. I, because most Oscar super fans I know that I want an Oscar clip. That's what I want. A clip of the performance. And then at the end, Sissy Spacek goes, everything. She smashes the plate.

And you're like, what the fuck is that movie? She smashes the plate. I got to see this thing the fuck is that movie? She smashes the plate. I gotta see this thing. Yeah. That was, there's a very specific thing that I think the three of us share, which is like watching the Oscars when you're eight. And there's a movie that is like, you're never going to be allowed to watch. And also, you know, you'd probably be bored by it, but you watch the clip and you're like, huh, that's great acting.

Like, I guess that's right. Now I know. The first movie for me was the crying game when i watched the oscars when i was like six years old and there was a movie called the crying game and i'm like that sounds like the most grown-up movie of all time what the fuck does that mean yeah and then you see like you know this poster with miranda richardson's got this you know wig on and you're like what is this, this poster with Miranda Richardson's got this, you know, wig on. And you're like, what is this about? What is a crying game? Right.

That was an English patient for me. Like, it took me years into adulthood to actually be like, what is the English patient about? Because it was just like, this is a very serious movie for adults. It has an airplane in it. What if there was an English patient? There's a desert and an airplane. And it's sad. That was definitely the first Oscars I watched as well.

So I remember that sticking out. What was the thing I was going to say? The one I always think of is Fernanda Montenegro in Central Station. Central Station, sure. Where her clip was like so quiet and understated. It was like someone talking to her in close up and her listening. And everyone was like, oh, so good. Like I was at some party with my parents and their friends.

And the clip played. Everyone was like, God, what a good performance. And I was like, oh, so good. Like I was at some party with my parents and their friends and the clip played. Everyone's like, God, what a good performance. And I was like, what's going on? Like, how do you I want to be a grown up so I wasn't crying. I'm just going to nod along. But I was like, that's aspirational. Everyone's looking at a woman listen in a foreign language. And they're like, God, amazing performance.

Right. We did the 2001 Osccars on little gold men very recently and uh joe reed all of our friend had the video clip of it because you know when you watch clips of oscars on youtube they cut the movie clips because they don't have the rights and so if you get some like weird ass pirated thing with half of the barbara walters special in front of it you get to actually see sissy's basic throwing the dishes it was that year and it was one of those things where like we knew that was that year and I was just like, ah. One of those things where like, we knew that was the clip

and it was like, are they going to get like cheeky with us and do some other clip? Because, you know, she's got other good clips in that movie. And they were like,

no, no, no, no, no. We're hitting you in the face with this. And then she didn't win. Yeah. But then Halle Berry's Monsters Ball clip is her at the hospital

pounding and screaming and you're like, whoa, like this is, this is high octane. And then Nicole Kidman's from Moulin Rouge is her like trying to vamp in front of the bad guy. And it's so silly. It's so great.

Like it's a flex. We got to do Lerman too. I've been thinking about Lerman a lot because I just watched the fucking Girlboss Cinderella movie, which is rancid and is going to set women back a hundred years. And it's weird that that's the official title is the fucking Girlboss Cinderella movie that is rancid and's gonna set women back a hundred years and it's trying the official title is the fucking girl boss cinderella movie that is rancid and gonna set women back a hundred years

and it's trying to do the mulan rouge thing yeah the amazon original prime video september 3rd it's trying to do the mulan rouge thing of like oh it's like a jukebox musical where we just like picked songs we like you know where it's like you know oh the prince sings somebody to love because he wants somebody to love and it's like wow that is misunderstanding of course but you know what I'm saying Moulin Rouge is a grab exactly

and I'm like wow Moulin Rouge a lot harder to pull off than maybe you know yeah yeah well you'll do your like 15th Tom Hanks movie with his Elvis... When's that coming out? I don't know. It's the movie that gave Tom Hanks COVID.

It's, like, kind of cursed. Right, that's another one where it, like, shot for, like, five days and then COVID happened and it was shut down for, like, ten months. And then Tom Hanks got COVID. Right. The crazy one is The Card Counter

because I think The Card Counter filmed all but one day. Correct. and they had to shut down maybe two like or something like that it was the opposite yeah yeah yeah yeah and then like they they finally resumed production like five months later and they like finished whatever they needed to finish well and the story is that like of course uh uh fucking schrader was like schrader was like come on march 15th just let me go on set he's like i i don't know how much longer i got let's just finish the card counter at very least look let me on set i'm not you know i'm not i don't have a ton of time on my hands right i'll bring a loaded gun and i'll shoot covet if i have

yeah i'm matching it with a big fan just being like i keep it in a way it's fine I'll shoot COVID if I have to. Yeah, imagine him with a big fan just being like, I'm keeping it away. It's fine. Yeah, we should do Lurban's like five movies. My Paul Schrader impression is just Admiral at Bar. Well, between Paul Schrader and Ridley Scott,

the series of directors physically going to war with COVID you guys gotta keep this going who else yeah Lerman is six movies like what's doing Lerman it's so easy yeah I'm gonna if you do Lerman I gotta get Australia I'm putting that on on the record as fast as I can

I saw the movie twice in theaters and I haven't seen it since but I I'm just gonna say it holds up. This is an interesting question. I know this is a big Tangany episode, but we're talking about things that I think people will be interested by. It was supposed to come out this year when Warner Brothers made the HBO Max day and date announcement. Elvis was on the slate and then they announced it was getting pushed six months of 2022. Do you think that is? Baz Luhrmann always taking four times longer to make a movie and finish a movie than he

tells people he will? He is notorious for doing that. And or do you think he was like, this is playing in a fucking theater, you assholes. But like if Denis Villeneuve couldn't do it, are they going to let Baz Luhrmann do it? I felt like they weren't giving directors that choice. They weren't, but I can also see boz lerman being like i have to do more

reshoots and they're like oh boz like all right i also think boz always has like bizarre contracts like he just always has kind of absurd levels of autonomy and freedom within the studio um i love him. Oh, God. I don't even... You know, Moulin Rouge isn't even my favorite. Romeo and Juliet, that movie is perfect. It's one of my, like,

20 favorite movies. I fucking love that movie so much. And I love Moulin Rouge. I love Bosley. I love the girl. Yeah, watching those Oscars and watching Catherine Martin win her... She won two Oscars

for costumes and production design. It was just glorious. Like, love her her happy to see her Boz cheering for the audience also that movie is crazy and it came out in America in May and it likes to win one of the most loaded Oscar years ever and it fucking got nominations yeah and it like kind of

it kind of underperformed at the box office as a summer movie then 9-11 happens and that comes back around and people are like is this gonna win best picture amen it's crazy that the last movie Buzz Lerman made is Great Gatsby which probably like True Grit made $170 million like some insane hit for what it was.

that was in 2013. It's crazy. It takes a long time. I saw him walk in a forbidden planet once. I was super stoned. What? Sorry, you saw him walk? No, I was just going to say I saw him walk in a forbidden planet at the comic book store and buy a Wonder Woman umbrella. that's good yeah that's good right that's a good detail it's a good answer and it was a thing it's not a comic it's an umbrella i'm imagining boz lerman like it starts to rain he's on the corner of like broadway and 13th and

he's like he sees like a normal umbrella store and he sees a forbidden planet he's like you know i bet you forbidden planet has a fun david david those were the exact circumstances and he walked around the store for like 20 minutes looking at comic books like he was starman like tilting his entire head you know like not touching anything but just looking at like what is this batman hot toys rocket raccoon and you know and not touching anything but just looking at like what is define batman hot toys rocket raccoon and you know and then he just bought his wonder woman umbrella and left back into the rain what a fucking legend that we gotta do him it's in june we can do it let's do it let's sneak well maybe we should do it okay star man the film star man michael douglas michael douglas wants to be in it and he moves on michael douglas is kind of the king of getting locked in permanently as producer on movies he

ends up not starring in like he uh has a fucking producer credit on face off because he was at one point gonna do it with harrison ford and i think he still is grandfathered into credit on face off. Cause he was at one point going to do it with Harrison Ford. And I think he still is grandfathered into the new face off they're doing. Oh yeah. Good for Michael Douglas. I would have watched that face off. Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford would have seen it. But what if it was the exact same movie?

Yeah. Those two guys. I don't know. Yeah. I'm imagining like Michael Douglas. Yeah. Right. Who's imagining like Michael Douglas. Yeah. Right. Who's who?

I guess Douglas has to be. Right. Douglas has to be the villain. Right. Ford is cast. Right. Well, see, the thing with Face Off is they actually kind of play both characters. It's very confusing.

Yeah. It's confusing. I guess you cast Michael Douglas as caster Troy at the beginning. At the beginning. Right. At the beginning. Which then means you have Harrison Ford playing that for the rest of the movie, which would have been interesting. Yeah.

Okay. Let's do it. Let's watch it. It would have been compelling. It's not too late. This remains the only Academy Award nomination that any Carpenter movie has gotten. Is that true? Not even a tech nom for any of the other ones? Correct.

That is bananas bananas that's so i that's that's crazy that is crazy carpenter is obviously like uh you know ghettoized a little bit into the genre thing but like bridges is very respected uh and i think that's a lot of it this movie like underperformed a little bit but i think people just sort of thought this performance was so undeniable but it's also kind of surprising that this movie didn't get other nominations you'd think it would get a visual effects nomination or whatever that's all right like you could absolutely see this being a screenplay nom even with the mistreatment. Right, right.

I think Karen Allen absolutely should have been nominated. Right, but that's the kind of thing they ignore, because they're like, are you a suffering wife in a period drama? No. But wait, who are the visual effects nominees? Because now I've got to see what they did here. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ghostbusters in 2010.

Those are three good-looking movies. I mean, that's fine I can't really argue with that It's you know The problem with these tech nods That were like I can't believe It's like well they only did three nods You know for visual effects

For makeup So and the sound ones Don't even totally exist You know so yeah And when you look at something Getting snubbed in the 1980s And you're like how is that possible You look at the three things

That were nominated And you're like oh Three revolutionary films that are historic right cool looking movies so but yeah karen allen is so good in this movie obviously bridges has the showy performance it's a great performance i love jeff bridges but she is incredible in this but yeah it doesn't work without her like Like, and... Yeah, and what's the Karen Allen... So, like, this is two years after Raiders, but, like, what's going on for her?

Because I don't know much about her non-Indiana Jones career. The thing that Nick and JJ pulled up is that, A, she was kind of notable at the time, especially because it's like her first movie is Animal House right like her first film

is this seismic thing and then a couple years later she's in Raiders which is like the biggest fucking blockbuster and she becomes this like this character and performance that everyone tries to copy for decades but she was I think kind of

uninterested in playing the movie star game and would like at her peak go like no i'm gonna go do a play and and would just go back to theater they had to like talk her into this movie and and she obviously like thinks fondly of this movie these interviews they found where like uh you know she she likes the role she likes the challenge of the movie or whatever but she read the script and she liked the script so she decided to do it but the way she talks about it is that like

every other script she was reading she was saying no and they must have been big scripts the other thing is she said she read the script she likes Carpenter she likes Bridges she thinks the script's great and she's like I don't think I can do this. And they were like, you like it. And she was like, this is going to be really difficult to pull off. And she like had her whole logic that was sound of like, this movie is going to be really hard to execute if you just have a human actor,

not a robot or a puppet or makeup, right? A guy who looks like a guy playing an alien. It's going to be goofy. It's's gonna be hard for that performance to work. This character is this woman who's in, like, catatonic shock the entire movie. She, like, pointedly has to spend 75% of the running time having no chemistry with the only person she shares scenes with.

Like, she knew the movie was gonna be hard to pull off, and it was gonna be a hard performance to pull off. And they sort of had to talk her into, like, come on, like, take the risk take the risk right yeah good good call it's a huge risk yeah have either of you ever seen the glass menagerie that paul newman did that she's in no no but i feel like i really should yeah like i love glass menagerie and she feels like very interesting uh laura casting is it like a like a film stage play basically or is it more cinematic wasn't but i think it's a little stagey by reputation i mean it's weird because no one ever talks about it and you're like

it feels like a glass menagerie movie with jan Woodward directed by Paul Newman should be somewhat legendary unless it's a with John Malkovich. Yes. That's that's right. And it's like, so either that movie is great or it's a disaster and people are like, it's OK. Yeah. I'm learning from Karen Allen's Wikipedia page that her son won a chopped competition in 2016. She's got a handsome son who looks a lot like Karen Allen. It is a show.

Good genes. Who's her husband? Kale Brown. I see. She married Kale Brown. He was a soap opera actor, I think, primarily. Yeah. I mean, her, it's not like she stopped, ever stopped doing movies.

Hell, she's in in the bedroom in which. Yeah. Spacek famously. Throwing those dishes is everywhere we look. But I also think I think she's someone who doesn't work for the sake of working and she's pretty comfortable like taking years off. She does theater. I know she taught acting for a long time. And I'm forgetting at which college.

Bard. Maybe she taught at Bard. That sounds like something, that sounds like her vibe. Yeah. Right? Like this kind of, let's see, let's see, she knows she, hmm. Wikipedia says she taught at Bard. Yep. I mean, you think about

like a woman who like breaks out in Raiders, which is a movie that's going to be famous for Harrison Ford. Like she's like, breaks out as the woman in the movie opposite a man. Like I'm thinking about Kathleen Turner breaking out and like romancing around the time. Like she has been Kathleen Turner has a more of a star career, but like there's there's not a lot of routes to take at that time. No, I mean, yes, it's like an unfortunate reality, but it is particularly

bizarre only because everyone was like, oh, Marion Ravenwood is now the ideal. That's the archetype. Yeah. All of these movies, that's the performance that everyone's trying to emulate. That's the writing of the character that everyone's trying to emulate. I think to some degree she felt a little bit like like Raiders was overshadowing her career. I mean, there's a quote they pulled up here where she just sort of said, like, I think this role is as good as Raiders. I wish it would have as much of an impact on my career.

You know, like I mean, agreed. Right. I wish it wasn't that one role in that one character. So it's like on one hand, yes. Like, what were her opportunities? What was she being offered at this point in time? What were people going to let her do? opportunities what was she being offered at this point in time what were people going to let her do but on the other hand i bet she turned down like four obvious kind of raider ripoff roles that but

also feel like she must have turned down like comedies because she does none right uh until until scrooged and animal behavior which is right like clearly it takes her a long time like you'd think someone would want to put her in like a rom-com or something i know that starts out with animal house like she starts out with the most successful comedies ever i think she just does shit her own way like she just kind of doesn't care was there ever a time where she was going to be in another niana jones until crystal skull or was it always just like that this is a serial you're out it's weird that she's not in Last Crusade yeah

you know doing the prequel route I was thinking she was somehow for Temple of Doom you know was the choice they made and like you know there's logic to that but like it's a little weird but wasn't the prequel decision also based on him not wanting to do Nazis again or is that apocryphal

I can't remember when it is he doesn't want to do Nazis again he's gone through a couple phases of not wanting to do Nazis again? Or is that apocryphal? I can't remember when it is he doesn't want to do Nazis again. There is some point He's gone through a couple phases of not wanting to do Nazis again. Right. Because then he obviously doubles back on that with Last Crusade. Is she in the new Indiana Jones?

I guess she can't be, right? Because then you'd have to bring in fucking Mudd again. Right, but it's also They really saddled her with mud i know i know you can just ignore him where's mud i don't know it is weird that the fourth one ends with like all the pomp and circumstance of their wedding and i am dreading the new movie starting with like yeah well ever since marion passed and him like tearfully stroking the framed photo like i just

don't want to see that i don't want to see that. I don't want to see that either, but that does seem pretty plausible. Karen Allen was interested in reprising her role as Marion Ravenwood, noting that Jones and Marion were married in the previous film, so it would be difficult, I think,

to move forward without her. And they never reached out. They don't clarify, right. Yeah. Anyway, she's great in King of the Hill. People haven't seen that, the Soderbergh movie. She's great in King of the Hill people haven't seen that the Soderbergh movie she's great in The Perfect Storm

which I love The Perfect Storm is kind of you know has her and Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio yeah on like you know like sort of and Cherry Jones like it's got these these kind of flinty ladies sort of mixed in I really like that I like her when she shows up in something is what I'm saying

but this is sort of her last, I guess, Scrooge counts. But Scrooge, she's not on the poster. It's a Bill Murray movie. It's not a super exciting role, but she is the female lead in that. This is a vehicle for her

even as much as it is for Jeff Bridges. It's not more. He's got the showier part, but it's really her movie in so many ways. You know? I mean, it's certainly her story. David, you saw who nearly played this role for Carpenter, right? Wait, remind me, because I did read the...

Another actor you love who I think would have been fundamentally wrong for this, Kevin Bacon. Oh, for Starman. Sorry, I thought we were on Caranello. I did see that i think he would be great uh in this movie and i do love kevin bacon uh and i understand why they wanted him because at that point we're only a few years from like footloose and stuff carpenter wanted him for christine and he chose footloose instead and then footloose makes him a movie star so So then Carpenter wanted him for this.

And he almost did it. How old is Kevin Bacon at this point, though? Young. When the movie... Yeah, he would have been like... He's like a baby. He would have been like 28 or whatever. Not a baby, but you know.

But maybe 26. He's pretty young. But the thing... He's so beautiful. Like, especially back then. He was just this incredibly beautiful looking person. And I feel like that's part of what a carpenter is probably thinking of. It's like,

you wanted this guy to kind of look like a baby, right? Like, even though he's her husband and all that, he also is brand new. And so he should be kind of shiny and perfect looking. And bridges is a great, you know,

they, they, they came to a great actor for it because yeah he's got the angles to the face he's very very clean looking they obviously you know they style him just right but i get the bacon thing i get it but that's part of it like bacon is so much more extreme looking that i think he reads more obviously alien where there's something very gentle about bridges handsomeness in a, in a somewhat unassuming way,

you know, and you need him to look like a guy who lived in the woods of Wisconsin, you know, like he's an alien, but he's in this, this human body. Right. You need,

you know, the shoulders, you need some, some, he's got to wear that, uh, that check plaid. It's also just like,

it's, you know, Jeff Bridges, miracle shit where you're like, the most valuable part of his casting is how quickly the clips you're seeing projected from the home video footage she has of him sets up who this guy was. That you're not going to really get to spend any time with the real dude, and you need, like, sort of fly-on-the-wall photography in the background that immediately gives you a sense of the dude. With Bridges, it's just so direct, you know, and unfussy, and natural. Unpretentious.

Yes, yes. You know who I saw who also was up for this? Or at least Carpenter talked to Tom Cruise. That makes a lot of sense. But then Tom Cruise ended up doing Legend. Now, here's the thing about Tom Cruise He would have been great because he is an alien

That's just on our planet So it would have been Method acting for him if anything Tom Cruise might have been Too good It might have unbalanced the movie Once again though Tom Cruise at this point

He's still pretty young Little alien looking like you say He's being a baby cruise movie but what once again though tom cruise at this point he's still pretty young yeah little alien looking like you say he's being a baby cruise and you know like you said you know bridges again you know yeah you could see that guy saw in a log you know and i don't mean sleeping i don't mean snoring i'll shoot you was i mean what are they doing in the are they fishing in those videos like they're out like at a campsite or something. He's like playing folk songs on a fucking acoustic guitar. All of it. Like he just he sells that stuff so much.

Whereas with Tom Cruise, you'd be like, he won't be able to pull off that. Yeah. He will pull off being an alien who doesn't understand how people work. But the fact that Bridges is able to do both so economically is uh what is so effective here um you know that we it's like hard not to just repeat ourselves here but there's something about just like how fucking classical and patient carpenter's film making is you know like just the way he lets things play out and his comfort with silence and you know slow camera movements and all that shit that like really sets up this movie beautifully uh where after you have your like you

know prolonged carpenter credit rollout you just have a woman in like you know a pretty dull state of grief which we talked about in our thing episode, how like there are very few horror movies that feature that little screaming where people do not like yell in terror when scary things happen. And this similarly is a movie where like, here's a woman who is in intense levels of grief, who then goes into like a very terrifying high-stakes situation that she cannot comprehend and he does not ever reduce her to histrionics you know yeah she she goes into shock but in a very like in a very realistic way you know relatable exactly right there's something even just the fact that you know there isn't a scene 10 minutes in where she goes, so you're an alien? Like you just he

avoids all those tropes of people overreacting to things, understanding things too quickly. The whole way it all plays out for her. I mean, even just that moment where she says, I'm going to fuck up the exact line, but she goes like, you idiot, like, don't stay up watching this. Uh huh. Don't do this to yourself. Right. It's like such an actual realistic moment of a person talking to themselves, which is usually such a storytelling device in movies that reads as a device. Right. And it's like that's the way that people actually talk to themselves, especially if you're secluded in a cabin in the middle of the woods, like grieving a loss, trying to stay sane. You just go like, you fucking idiot.

Don't keep doing this, you know? But don't forget it opens with all the Voyager stuff before you get to that. I don't know if we're going in Carnal's order, but there's like some real like show off the outer space stuff before you get there, which I was curious for you guys to put me in the context of like what's Carpenter's doing at this point with effects, because like obviously the big effects come pretty soon after that but it's very like

space before you get to her people also so pumped up about Voyager 2 back then like still I feel like this is my other question is like is Voyager 2 just like the hottest shit in the planet still in 84? it's pretty cool it's got a fucking golden disc on it

I don't know if you know that but also by 19 you know by 1984 when this movie's coming out it hasn't even reached neptune yet like voyager 2 still you know shooting through the solar system it's gone past jupiter and saturn or whatever but like you know it's it's it's an active thing voyager 2 is having the best week ever. That's what you're trying to say. Wait, where is it now? Now it is, I believe it is slightly, because Voyager 1, but it's beyond the Termination Shock. You know, it's beyond our solar system.

I'm sorry, what's up? The Termination Shock. Ben looks like he just met the love of his life Except it was A term The termination shock which is the kind of term That feels like some band should be Using as a name

Is like The scientific term for when The solar wind Like is no longer Like when you're beyond Our solar system basically You know we had our longest radio silence With Voyager 2 in 30 years

In 2020 It cut off communication with Voyager 2 In March 2020 I'm not saying that it caused anything bad to happen But maybe it did Don't like it What do you up to Voyager 2 But yeah Ben it's just

it's just fucking out there shooting into nowhere basically uh and it's going to it's gonna die pretty soon i think i think it has a sad it has a few years left of power but i do think eventually you know it will because it's but yeah it's it's way out there pretty cool huh yes someone will find it maybe it's got a disc on it got a cool and that's what you know when when starman arrives he starts just reciting things from the disc he does the kurt waldheim speech and he you know like he's just he's just uh repeating our words back to us yep um this this is one of the Carpenter movies that he did not score.

You have this score that is a lot more emotional than most of his films. Yeah, it's a good score. It is. Very 80s. It's very 80s. It's a very 80s sort of synthy theme.

But I think he is so smart about when he uses it and using it pretty sparingly and not overplaying it. And this whole extended sequence of the star man transforming, you know, him scanning the apartment, all that stuff. The fact that it plays in such an eerie silence, uh, I mean, cause you have, you know, you're, you're grounding yourself in the emotionality of this character you're setting up the challenger uh the voyager 2 stuff rather not the challenger stuff then i think you go to the sort of starman pov sequence right which goes on for a while the point of view is trying to say that it's energy, right?

Yeah. It's never kind of clear, but the form is essentially just energy. Yeah, it's not like any kind of physical shape, I don't think. Because the movement is weird, too, and hard to define. He is a non-corporeal being as far as I could figure. Cool. But he carries those balls with him somehow. Yeah. Those silver magic balls. He's got seven silver

balls. Seven silver balls. And yeah, and he's a little bibby when he comes out and he's freaky looking. Yeah. And I don't like it. It's bizarre. Oh my God. It's like a bad trip. That's like too much acid right there.

Yeah. It's like a very it's like a bad trip that's like too much acid right there yeah it's it's like a very it's it's an example of the limitations of the special effects technology at the time helping the movie right like it it adds to the weird alien otherworldly factor um i my my zoom background is i will make sure that marie posts this on social media, an auction from six years ago where they auctioned off the original baby prop where all of the skin has rotted off it. It's worse for wear. It looks like a fucking Jans Fankmeyer nightmare. It is so bizarre. Yeah, well, David, we've talked about Annette a bunch and baby Annette in that and how horrifying it is.

There were some real baby Annette vibes in that transformation sequence. Baby Annette, who we stan, obviously. Baby Annette. Great musician. Yes, that's the first movie I saw coming back from paternity leave. First day back at work, I went to see

Annette at a screening. It really unsettled me. This did not unsettle me as much because you see the baby for a second and I really it really unsettled me this did not settle me as much because um you see the baby for a second and i'm like and then you know then it's a face that's sort of going like the weirdness of the way the baby turns its head and like makes direct eye contact with her and they give the baby these like intense piercing eyes uh it's upsetting yes and then right then it then it turns into like blobby right uh yes and then it's like a boy oh there's that shot yes which is very like american werewolf in london where the the body is stretching out yeah right you know to sort of to sort of you you know uh continue get

the effect it's i remember noticing in the credits Like it was like three big names credited for the visual effects It's and I don't remember Which ones they were Yeah Stan Winston, Rick Baker And Dick Smith Three big boys It's like yeah it's like the three like Wise men of visual effects of the 80s

It right and it's Carpenter Being like look Columbia is giving me 20 million dollars like i'm gonna hire the best people right but you also have to imagine like here's a guy who's like made himself you know one of the premier sort of visual effects directors of his generation and then now he's making this alien movie those three names are attached to it and in the first like 10 minutes you have uh the voyager 2 uh you know these shots of space at the beginning of the film and then this wild transformation and the rest of the movie is like so terrestrial by and large you know yeah like the visual effects are much more sparing i mean there's you know there's stuff he uses his glowing

balls and you know of course well he's like he's gonna he's he's gonna make the creature and he's gonna film a monument valley and then that's the budget like anything else is crazy apart from that it's a road trip movie there's a whole like 20 minutes at a diner you know like that was his whole thing was he was like i want to make like two for the road i want to make it happens one night that's the thing that's appealing to me in this script is that's two people in a car getting to know each other yeah it's got the it happened one night thing where like the people he meets a lot they meet along the way like there are characters there are there are lives that they are interacting with and like i was thinking about it happened when i was thinking about some jonathan demme something wild a while ago yeah about something yeah just like that like there's a world like the guy who

um jeff bridges hitches a ride with you like yeah i'm a dog's going to college cost an arm and a leg like there's a whole world within that one conversation that really takes the time for it I think you also with no disrespect to them all the people we listed have made movies that I like but I think you go through that list of the other directors who considered making this movie and I think

a lot of them would have turned a lot of the people they meet along the way into more kind of like comedic archetypes yeah or villain straight villainous or whatever right would have been right exactly there there is kind of a a quiet humanity that everyone is given in this film you know and even the the fucking venison guy who tries to beat up jeff bridges is not played as like a buffoon. Yeah, I mean, that guy has some legitimate concerns. Sure.

Such as, where did my deer go? And Jeff Bridges is like, what over there? He shot that deer fair square and now it's gone. Even the tar heels causing a ruckus at the motel. Right. Like, you know, they won the game. Right. You get it.

And I think that helps the movie a lot because you're sort of seeing everyone they meet through the star man's eyes where he's just so fascinated by all human behavior, you know? And what I like about him is, of course, he's childlike in that he doesn't know anything and he's learning. Right. But like he's not innocent or he's not like completely benevolent and he doesn't think well of everyone yeah he's just sort of neutral he's just kind of interested to see what everyone's going to do next like and there is a slight edge to him where you're like maybe he is gonna pull a trigger when he ever when he has the gun you know what i mean like you don't entirely he's not like this like sweet entirely sweet childlike figure which is no but that's that's a balance inherent

in Bridges that I think with like cruiser bacon, it could have swayed too much in one direction or the other. And I also think those guys being like 10 years younger than Bridges, the fact that Bridges is more of an adult man acting like a baby gives the movie a lot of power. I just want to say just fucking Bridges like, there's something about his lack of vanity and how comfortable he is with the goofiness required in this role without playing it for laughs. It's like what Karen Allen said, where it's like, how is any actor going to pull this off? It's going to make them look so fucking silly. And Bridges is just sort of so unselfconscious in like all of the weirdness of this guy you know

moving like a baby but also like a robot you know and enough that he becomes sexy at a point in the movie where like the fact that there's a sex scene is like there's definitely a part of me that's like is this the right thing to do like is this a good idea for anybody involved but also like it's jeff bridges he's hot enough that it works. Corky made a face at me during the sex scene being like, you know, basically I was like, really? And I'm like, it's her husband. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. She wants to be with him. Like, you know, beyond the connection she's formed with this new being and all that, like, it's her fucking husband is living and breathing. Like, it's sort of there's a temptation there. is living and breathing like it's sort of there's a temptation there i will say i think it's maybe a mild failing of the movie that i don't think they the way the sex scene plays out feels a little more standard off the rack a little 80s and it also makes it feel like especially the the build-up to it happening of just like oh we're on this train we're too close to each other we're looking at each other all this sort of shit it feels like you lose the star man in it a little bit i i kind of feel like

her obviously you keep the emotional context in mind of this is her husband it's one last chance this and that but it does feel like that scene is a little divorced from that emotional uh pitch i don't know it's pretty clinical yeah and it's sort of like you know what isn't the terminator the terminator is this year that's a movie where it's like when the sex scene kicks off you're like am i watching the same movie you know this is just kind of like straight out of skin and max or whatever you know it's just kind of like a bog standard yeah right it's it's not as bad as that but this feels like it's from a different film and there is a version of this in which the sex scene is the most emotionally devastating scene in the movie right yeah because there's a right it's a loaded thing that's going on there's a lot of potency there, and it just sort of feels like,

well, how do you shoot a love scene with two pretty people? Fucking in a bale of hay in a train car. Like some hobos. Yeah, empty train car except for conveniently placed bale of hay. But it happened one night, bale of hay scene in the middle of the movie, so maybe it's an homage. Sure. I'm sure that was a conscious homage, yeah.

That's like the 12-foot club or something. Right? And Ben. Put on a pail of hay or something there's something there there's something there ben you have tried to talk about having sex on a train on this podcast multiple times you tried to you tried to get yeah to to coin the mile high club essentially version you won't drop this yeah yeah you won't drop it refuse straw style yeah so it's the 12 it's the 12 foot club straw style 12 foot club straw style almost sounds like a waffle house order it's like yeah exactly house order it's like peppers and ham anyway um starman starman the the transformation sequence i know we're jumping all around but the transformation sequence is so indebted to

uh american werewolf in so many ways which is obviously this breakthrough and like oh you're not cutting around you're showing these things that people thought you could never show on screen before through like clever editing and different practical devices and all this sort of shit. And there's an interview that Bridges did where he said like,

this scene is going to blow people's minds. You watch a baby turn into like an adult me and it's all in one unbroken shot. And I don't know if he misunderstood or that was their plan and it could not be executed. But I do think it is smart that they keep on cutting back

to like the back of the head, her reactions, grounding it, not having anything too absurd happen, letting it play out fairly slowly, you know? And silently, like she is completely silent right the silent sort of shock that

she's in this whole movie yeah and I right especially for like the first 40 minutes of this movie when she's really right like it would be if he just gracefully you know turned into like a beam of light and then just sort of took form right

or whatever you know like you can imagine much more of light and then just sort of took form. Right. Or whatever, you know, like you can imagine much more sort of sanitary versions of this transformation. The whole movie doesn't make sense anymore. Like it needs to be a little freaky and a little kind of like, not like, not like he's stealing the body, but like, you know, it just needs to be kind of physical and gross. Yes. It's like an invasion of kind of physical and gross. Yes. It's like an invasion of privacy in so many ways.

Yeah. He's not like an astral projection. He is like a like DNA flesh and blood. It's kind of crucial. It feels like a carpenter thing, although maybe it was in the script. I don't know. But yeah. But also just the fact that it's like, OK, here's this woman in this catatonic state of grief.

Then suddenly she walks into her living room and there's a baby with adult eyes staring into her soul, right? What the fuck is this? Then she watches it grow and transform, which is already going to be the freakiest shit she's ever witnessed in her life. And then it turns into her dead husband like just sort of like the absolute insanity of what she is witnessing you know then it talks in an alien language which i really think is great and subtle too but like yeah how how are you gonna react like you're in a total shock you must just be in total fucking shock right and she and she's in like the the shock uh phase of her grief as well like she's just like you you have to imagine

to some degree she questions whether she's having a mental breakdown or something oh yeah yeah i mean she wakes up from uh initially and it's like, that was the weirdest dream. I mean, classic, classic, classic reaction. But I, I, I understand it. I want to point out something that interests me that I was in the dossier. This movie is shot by John,

Donald Morgan, who shot Christine. It is not shot by Dean Cundey. I do think this movie would be, would be better if it was shot by Dean Cundey. Just because I think Dean Cundey. Absolutely fucking rip this thing off. I mean, like, he would just... This is the same year that Cundey does Romancing the Stone.

This is now he's in bed with Zemeckis and that's going to take him through the better part of it. Right. He's going to come back to do Big Trouble in Little China. Oh, I forgot. Okay. He does do that. But this is a very interesting little tidbit, a salty little quote from John Carpenter,

who, by and large, all of the quotes JJ and Nick found, him talking about this movie, he's very, very pleasant about it. He seems to have really enjoyed making it. He seems very proud of it. They ask him, why no Dean Cundey?

And he says, we've had a parting of the ways. It may only be temporary, but we've had a few problems. However, work is excellent there's no doubt about that we make a good team the look of my pictures from halloween through the thing is beautiful he did a terrific job shooting romancing the stone last year but before we could ever work together again we would have to clear up some attitude problems yeah you know fucking john carpenter the angry nun rapping dean cundy on the rule the neat the knuckles with the ruler uh i don't know so clearly a little salty yeah yeah i don't know i wonder i

wonder yeah that's just it's just because this movie looks great it's a good looking movie like but i just it's so dean cundy it's so ready for him you know that sort of sentimentality and like all the lights and the blues and the you know it would be great but cundy also just looks so cuddly you you imagine him being such a uh sweetheart and then carpenter's like this squiggly guy he's like smoking and he's like he's got attitude problems but i did i mean i will say i you know i don't want to speak at a school but i did hear there were similar problems uh sort of attitude issues between him and garfield which is why he didn't come back for tale of two kitties he shot the first garfield movie is that yeah i guess that's only funny if you have that as

you know the top of your noggin, which speaks to the way my brain works, where I'm like, yeah, everyone knows that Dean Cundey shot Garfield, the movie, but not the sequel. It's taught in film school. It is taught in film school. The Griff film school. So they go on a road trip. I love road trips, guys. I love a road trip movie.

I love, you know, the sort of uh damp american you know midwest like i love just like the the atmosphere yeah oh man i've never been to a truck stop that had like booths and pies and i got i part of me feels like they don't exist and part of me feels like i'm just taking the wrong road trips. Oh, no, they exist. I've been to some truck stops in my day. They got casinos, Katie. They got fucking everything, man. Oh, I've seen some video poker.

I know my way around those. The ones with the showers and everything, but that Dutch apple pie. They have video games there where you can drive a truck. Just what you want to do while you're taking a break. Or you can watch Iceos ice road trucker you could do either of those things while at the truck stop it's pretty cool just karen allen crushes that diner

order what does she get him she gets herself a burger and and they you know she gets two malted milkshakes or whatever she gets two slices of apple pie. Forget what she gets him now. Deviled egg sandwich. Deviled egg sandwich. What the hell is that? I have no idea. That sounds great. But it sounds good. I mean, it's deviled egg smushed on a sandwich or like egg salad but with mustard in it

and paprika. I'm into whatever. I'm into it. I know Griff is not into it. What amount of paprika on the sandwich? It should have a little. I know Griff is not into it. What amount of paprika on the sandwich? It should have a little. I would say a little. David, that is a sandwich that has paprika on it.

Yeah, that was the joke I was making. Yeah! Have you realized that? Yes, I realized it. That's why I said it. Ben swinging in ten seconds later. And then he asked why you can't eat the apple pie first and he's right her right explaining that he can't eat the pie first and

then you're like well you know he let him eat the pie yeah well i just love he says why and she goes i i don't know that's just the way things are done like i love that kind of thing right but it's like i'm i'm sure katie you've experienced this thing. Right, but it's like, I'm sure, Katie, you've experienced this a thousand times now, but I feel like I had that conversation with my parents all the time where I'd be like, why? And they'd be like, I don't know, just do it that way. Yeah, no, there are so many

raising small children things in this, and it's not like he's childlike, it's just kind of like stating the plain question, where you're just like, I didn't really think about it that way. I guess that's how this works, and then they both eat the pie. It looks like, it's terrific. And you're just like, I didn't really think about it that way. I guess that's how this works. And then they both eat the pie. It looks like it's terrific. I just want to read this Karen Allen quote.

I was talking before about her hesitation signing on to the movie, but she said, I thought Starman was also extremely risky, professionally and creatively. The idea of it being a human being as opposed to a Muppet or a mechanical creature playing an alien,

trying to do it realistically, as opposed to one of those science fiction a mechanical creature playing an alien trying to do it realistically as opposed to one of those science fiction spoofs where it's just a monster walking around or you've got a man working some strange puppet to keep that reality going for the both of us to be able to play that all the way through a four month shoot and to do it well and believably was quite a challenge, which when you think about it, it does make you realize how much of a challenge that is for her as well to constantly play all of those scenes where he's behaving so oddly and almost everyone else they experience has a clear role to play which is just be like oh you sir are a weird fella and she has to be like

playing on four different levels at the same time you know because you settle into like if you're on a road trip like that, like, she's going to get bored of his shtick. Like, she's going to have to fall asleep, and eventually she's just going to treat him like he's part of her background, even though it's a crazy-ass situation that she's in, and she plays that. So there's that, but then there's also

this emotionally charged situation of he looks like my dead husband, this is putting me through a bunch of shit, right? This isn't him. It's reminding me of all these things. And then third level is is my life at stake i'm being kidnapped and held hostage at gunpoint and then the guy sitting next to you is going like it's like a very challenging two-hander you know and she said like i didn't really feel like i was acting with him in a lot of ways because like i'm not looking at him for the whole first half of the movie, you know?

There's, like, a lack of chemistry by design, you know? You're not really engaging. He was so in his thing. It was, uh, I didn't really feel like his personality was coming through. And they must have filmed it to some extent in order because it's a road trip like they have to get from location to location i don't know how much they did though i read that um uh bridges like went through the script and came up with levels of modulation and had like his script was like noted to death in the margin so that he could go back to a scene and be able to chart exactly where he would be in his development oh yeah right

he he had to keep track of it because they didn't shoot in sequence unsurprisingly because it's all over the fucking place, this movie. That's the kind of shit Jeff Bridges does because he's got a crazy heart. He'll never fall in the door or the floor.

I really was really, really struggling there. David, I don't remember why this came up in some recent episode, but we talked about the fact that none of us could remember what the song was called in Crazy Heart for how big a deal it was and it winning the Oscar and everything. We did that like two episodes ago, and I already can't remember what that fucking song is called. It's The Weary Kind.

Right. The Weary Kind. Even when he's the weary kind, he shows up to set ready to work. Yes. And, you know, I like when he's the weary kind in this. He looks tired at a certain point. And that's the first time you clock like, oh, he is not an alien. He is.

He must obey human rules like he's fucking tired. But like the fact that he's not playing it by like like hunched over coughing like he i just think he avoids every obvious trap of this and sometimes he goes smaller than you expect and sometimes he goes bigger than you expect like he takes really big risks in this performance i also just like lines like um i have a great emptiness or this body has a great emptiness to describe hunger yeah you know what i'm realizing it's funny that jeff bridges is in k-packs of course you know one of the 10 most influential movies ever made and not something that doesn't exist in which he plays

a guy trying to get inside of the head of a guy who's like i'm an alien like you're not an alien man that's all just weird that's you know that's another thing about bridges talking like versus bacon or douglas or um uh cruise or whatever we're like bridges has that voice that almost sounds like it's modulated like his voice was so deep especially from a young age well Well, now it's like absurd. It's crazy. Right. But like even you watch Last Picture Show and you're like, that's like an odd voice to be coming out of a 16 year old, you know? And then he's got that like sort of folksy drawl on top of it.

But it does it, you know, it lends a quiet eeriness, especially in the first chunk when he's saying so little. Yeah. especially in the first chunk when he's saying so little. Yeah. And then when he's like, you know, turning into more of a human, you get why people would like go on a car ride with him. Be like, yeah, OK, that's a person. I believe that.

I mean, he's also just so fucking handsome. So handsome. Well, yeah, David, you were you were you were telling me that after I was texting you about watching Witness for the first time about Harrison Ford, you were like, hey, he likes hunks from the 80s, and we'll talk about how hot Jeff Bridges is, so I feel Yeah, we should dig into that. That's very weird and unique, Katie, that you like the best-looking men ever to be

in movies. Katie's got this curious taste. Harrison Ford? Jeff Bridges? In the 80s? I'm making fun of David for texting you as if that's like, huh, interesting. No, there's something about having been born in the 80s. I was born in 84.

The year this comes out where you grow up with like the dude. You grow up with Harrison Ford in Air Force One, who's like still a very good looking man. There's something about going back and seeing these people you have grown up with as like grown people and being like, oh, my God, that's what you look like in the mid 80s. Like you rediscover them, I think, as you get older. Bridges has had five distinct eras of hot. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Break it down. Babyface Bridges in the 70s. You know what I mean? Last picture show, Fat City, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Babyface Bridges. Great. A very cute guy. Right. So there are two baby face nominations both of which he's this hot shot sort of like shit-eating grin young kid okay and honestly

that last picture show nomination is surprising you'd think i guess the bottoms might have campaigned as a lead or something but like he has a lot more weight you know in that movie and like jeff bridges is playing the dopey guy you know he's so good that is the kind of oscar nomination that used to happen where hollywood would just be like well this person's undeniably a movie star this is the guy right it's not like an oscary role or performance other than that this guy is on fucking fire i mean he also talks about like that was pre-oscar campaign so he just woke up in the morning and was like, what happened? Hey, you're one of the five. He knew that that movie was designed to win Ben Johnson an Oscar.

And he was just like, no one had even thrown out the possibility that I would get nominated for this fucking thing. Then you got 80s Bridges, you know, so Cutter's Way, which is, he's so hot. This, Jagged Edge. Against All Odds. Right, like, you know, those movies. Which is he's so hot This jagged edge Against all odds You know

Let's you know those movies Tron is sort of he's still kind of baby facing Tron But you know Tron I guess But you know so the just grown up Handsome man Then we've got 90s Bridges This is like dad handsome Right

Starting with Baker Boys And then you got like Fisher King Blown away right Fearless White Squall where his hair is longer Yeah right Maybe he's got a little beard Or something Playing a couple scumbums in this era

Sometimes plays a more Conflicted character Very intense Takes a lot of intense roles Then 2000s we've got you know he's good for baski lebowski is kind of the entry to the next phase right where it's like you know he's sort of an elder statesman by like by this this is the weird thing about lebowski is like lebowski comes out no one gives a shit about it it's a weird one-off performance for him

it was the it was the coen brothers follow up to fargo and everyone was like what the fuck is this he goes back to like the previous bridges mode like k-pax arlington road fucking contender sea biscuit those all sort of fall into what you're talking about and then around like 2005 everyone's like oh lebowski's the best shit ever we should have him play that all the time so now everyone starts asking him to do that right and the other thing is people realize that he is the dude kind of like the coen brothers are like yeah we cast him because that's like what he's like like do you guys not know that about jeff bridges and so then you have... Right, like, door on the floor is, like, sad, dude. Right?

Then Tideland is, like, way too much, dude. Yes, right, right. And then, I mean, is Crazy Heart the beginning of the next phase? I guess it is. Crazy Heart is beginning a Marble Mouth phase. Iron Man is the end of the last phase. Like, Iron Man and...

And he's playing, like, Baker Aiden Carter in the same year as Iron Man, which is like an interesting combo. But yeah, Crazy Heart, then like it all like coalesces. Finally, he made a father son road trip movie with Justin Timberlake. What's it called? The Open Road. Oh, the same year as Crazy Heart. Get on me.

I remember this poster Geez Timberlake, one of his worst looks Yeah Jesus Yeah, it's bad It's like a really in-between phase They're both playing baseball players?

What is this fucking movie? I don't know It got released like Labor Day weekend 2009 So like two months before Crazy Heart And like, I feel like with Crazy Heart It's not like anyone had ever given up on jeff bridges right but it had been a few years since he'd had a successful film excluding iron man which you know was not a bridges but i mean tease it up right like iron man you're like hey there was that thing with crazy heart where it was like clear that's it

he's winning you know he's saying that it was like that movie was like completely off the radar. It plays at Toronto and it doesn't have distribution. And then Fox buys it. And they're like, we're putting this in theaters tomorrow. He's going to win the Oscar because like he's up against Clooney and up in the air. Now, Clooney is probably not going to win again. But that's a big performance from a big love actor. Firth and a single man who usually would be walking away with it because that's the kind of

shit they love right Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela which felt like the biggest slam dunk of all time right and then Jeremy Renner in the Hurt Locker which is like sort of like it's like well if we're going to give this best picture how do we not give this guy best actor like he's so much of the movie and they're like no

shut up I don't want to hear it we've we've whiffed on bridges six times already or whatever like we're not whiffing again and then he goes he's like fine but what if i did two more performances that would make sense as my oscar my like legacy oscar the the other thing is that like crazy heart uh what is i mean true great's only a year after crazy heart i just remember, like, when he's on the Crazy Heart

Oscar trail, being like, he's doing True Grit with the Coen brothers next. Don't you think we should wait a year? Does anyone doubt that's going to be

a better performance? Give it to Firth this year, and then instead, Firth wins in 2010 for King's Speech. Like, they should have swapped Oscar years.

Well, right, but also, like, you know, Jesse Eisenberg should probably be winning that year. But hey, look, there's Speech. Like, they should have swapped Oscar years. Well, right, but also, like, you know, Jesse Eisenberg should probably be winning that year. But look, there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on. Well, the other thing is, though, he's playing a role that had won another guy a legacy Oscar.

Right. In True Grit. So it's like, surely we're not going to do that again, right? But they could have done it. Yeah, but Crazy Heart is also... Could have been like Joker. Crazy Heart is like him? Yeah,oker the only you want to win an oscar play either joker or rooster cog right no it's i mean what it's it's joker and elizabeth the second i think are the only two characters that different actors have won oscars for playing am i wrong about that

you know i think you might i mean i don't know off the top i was gonna say video corleone but of course no yes video corleone those are the three those are the three um what was i gonna say about bridges oh crazy hurts also kind of just him doing tender mercies though yeah it is and it's a worse version and i don't really like that movie although he's good obviously like yeah he's undeniably good in that movie is just i really like that movie, although he's good, obviously. Yeah, he's undeniably good in that movie. I just remember that movie being kind of annoying. It's just one of those movies where you're looking at your watch like, when's he going to fuck up? When's it going to happen?

When's the turn coming where he's going to, oh, he's the sweetheart and he's going to do something stupid. I just was like, I don't want to fucking watch this. Forgotten thing about that Oscar race that I feel like was too obvious to say at the time but now you don't remember the guy who uh wrote the song the weird kind ryan bingham who's like in the movie as a musician that is the name of george clooney's character and up in the air it's so weird it's just a bizarre coincidence and no uh he he called Mr. Air. So I don't know what you're talking about. Who is up in Mr. Air?

Is it Vera Farmiga? The title actually refers to her. Yeah, she was all up in his air. Here's the titular role. Did you have Oscar facts? Katie, didn't you say you had Oscar facts? You're holding a big Oscar book. Yeah, I'm holding a big Oscar book.

Wait, are we done talking about Starman? So are we going to jump back to this? No, but let's just, we don't want to forget. Yeah, I don't know. Never, never forget. So this is the Amadeus year. This is the year where there were three different movies about women in Dust Bowl who all got nominated.

Sally Field, Who Went to Places in the Heart. And then I'm going to like look through this book and fail to remember. I think Jessica Lange was one of them and Sissy Spacek for The River. And Sissy Spacek. It doesn't say much about Jeff Bridges at all. I kind of see the vibe from this book.

The book I'm holding is called Inside Oscar, The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards by Mason Wiley and Damian Bono, which is really great for just remembering all of the buzz stuff that is completely easy to forget. So it doesn't talk about Jeff Bridges much. It seems like it was just like, there's four people, and then Jeff Bridges showed up and hey, everybody likes him. It feels like a little bit of a surprise nomination, though, just because it is a genre thing. It wasn't a huge hit.

And then you also look and he like didn't win critics awards. He won the Saturn Award. He got a Golden Globe nomination and then got the Oscar. Well, and the person whose spot he took, and Griffin, you might be able to guess this, there was like a widely expected person who was going to get in for Best Actor who won New York Film Critics Circle

but didn't get nominated. Uh, 1984. 1984. It's definitely one of your guys. It's a comic performance. It's maybe this guy's best movie performance. And Rex Reed famously dissed him after the New York Film Critics Circle.

Weird. I'm getting caught up on, I know in 88, New York Film Critics gives best actor to Keaton for Beetlejuice and Clean and Sober, which is one of my favorite things ever. Pretty cool. So I'm trying to think like.

Who's another comedian, comedic actor that you love? Uh, it's, is it a Steve Martin performance? Steve Martin performance. Uh, is,

is it, uh, I'm getting my years wrong here. It's not Roxanne, is it? Nope. No. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels?

Nope. What's his performance? like a movie where he's really getting a performance the comic but like it's like kind of a big performance all of me all of me all of me cool yeah it's pretty cool right and he got the globe nom so he was definitely you know in there yeah interesting i don't love that movie but that's sort of like an undeniable skill piece right yeah that's the thing it's just he's acting like you know you know you know but the nominees are the two amadeus guys abraham right right right albert finney and under the volcano which is that we're at this point with a great performance and at this point it's like every time they're passing on a legend,

right? Right. You know, and they pass again. Yeah, and then he passed away. He did. It's true.

I mean, many years later. And Sam Waterston in The Killing Fields, which is actually like not a particularly good performance, but it's fine, and I guess

it was just sort of like, he was so big, and everyone thought he was going to be like the next serious leading man. He had such like fucking public theater bona fides. Right, exactly. And so it's sort of like, you know. He was so big and everyone thought he was going to be like the next serious leading man. He had such like fucking public theater bona fides. Right, exactly. And so it's sort of a, you know.

And so, yeah, it does feel like Bridges kind of snuck in there. Even though when you look at these five actors, the only guy who's more of a Titan than Bridges is Finney. Like, no offense to F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulsey. Offense taken. Sam Waters, who I love. Oh, I love them all. To go back to Steve Martin for a second. So at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, he comes up and accepts his award.

He says, so Rex Reed had written his column. I'm still in shock over that one about Steve Martin winning. And so then Steve Martin shows up at the awards. He says, it is a great honor to have been given this award by so many distinguished critics and Rex Reed. Hell yeah. Cool. Take that, Rex. Way harsh. it is a great honor to have been given this award by so many distinguished critics and rex reed hell yeah cool take that rex way harsh yeah um so at these oscars themselves uh the big scandal that i was kind of astonished by is that amy irving was going to present and she is pregnant uh and has been is with steven spielberg but they are not married and there's a bunch of

discussion backstage or whether or not an unwed uh pregnant woman should be allowed to present at the Oscars. Wow. Fuck that. That was in 1985. In 1985. This is also the Oscars where Prince shows up at the red carpet with 20 uniformed escorts on motorcycles around his purple limousine that the paint was still wet on. And he wore

a purple sequined hood and cape. And then... Best picture. Best song and yeah i think he won both yeah um and then the no he didn't win best song he lost but he wasn't even nominated for best song weird anyway carry on uh the last thing i was gonna say that the after party is that jeff bridge's mother made her way over to one of her son's former co-star sam watterson to tell him we rooted for jeff but we rooted for you too i thought that was nice he brought he brought his parents to the oscars

yeah that is nice um yeah this seemed like a wild oscars honestly it's it's just funny because when you look it's one of those things where you look at the golden globes and they nominated all five their their actor in a drama nomination is the same as the oscar but then in comedy you have martin in all of me you have bill murray and ghostbusters you have eddie murphy and beverly hills cop you have these like titanic comic performances that are all deserving of oscar attention you've also got robin williams and moscow on the hudson which is you know a broad performance playing y'all come smearing off i mean y'all come smearing off as like shit on that performance for years being like he stole my bit and then they all lost to fucking dudley moore in some blake edwards piece

of shit called mickey and maude are you kidding me which like isn't that insane like the globes where you're like oh the globes kind of got it right, and they're like, no, no, no, shut up, shut up, Dudley Moore, to the stage. Not only that, it's like he's- Time to win your sixth Globe. I know Dudley Moore had a real hot run there, but you're like talking about arguably the four biggest male comedy stars of the last 25 years, right?

It's like, yeah, yeah. yeah i mean certainly of the 80s like it that is no mart martin williams murphy and and murray and murray fucking murray in ghostbusters he busted ghosts it's also that count for nothing nothing he wasn't afraid of them it's also just absurd that like beverly hills cop gets a best screenplay oscar nomination and it's like eddie murphy wrote that whole movie yeah like you should give him a best actor nomination if you like that film he just made it up it's just it's just funny to look back um but uh star man star man are there star man scenes we want the diner scene is so big so in the the cops who were chasing uh them down from the motel did you guys uh recognize who we're

looking at no so uh dirk blocker who plays uh hitchcock on oh nine nine uh looks exactly the same just exactly the same in this movie as he does i recognize the other guy it's mc it's mc gainey yeah it's mr beard from lost i mean he's in lots of things obviously um uh you famously see his penis in sideways classic moment uh that was not what i was thinking of but that um that's what i was thinking and then i i finally found the notes i was talking about before we started recording. And I'm not trying to diss this or anybody else by saying this, but there's like a proto-Forrest Gump vibe in this performance. In the hat and in the check shirt and in the strange speaking and in the man who is not quite a person.

There's some link between those two there. Yes, yes. I mean, look, it is a very fine line he's walking, right? Yeah. Because it can very easily read as like cognitively impaired. And you also don't want scenes of everyone treating him like he's a child. It's why it's crucial, right, right that again he is not exactly an innocent like because if he was then again it would be like oh he has the mind and the spirit of a of a child yeah we

must look at earth through a child's eyes right or whatever you know what i mean it's not quite that i mean look he's curious about like what a good actor he is and what a sort of hard-working actor he is and all the things he contributes to this performance. But when you talk about just like, you know, fundamental qualities that help a performance like casting, you know, things that you can't sort of manufacture, it does help that he's got an old man's eyes. an old man's eyes. Hmm. Like, even when you watch Last Picture Show, there is that weird thing

where even at his, like, most youthful and, as you said, sort of, like, baby face, he's got, like, somewhat weary eyes. He's the weary kind. He's the weary kind.

Katie beat me to it. He ain't no place for the weary kind. I don't remember the lyrics to that song. What else? He, there's, I do like, I do like him walking out of the fire with the weird force field yeah that shot this on the

dvd cover there's some really great dad jokes like there's you know some dad energy in this movie and the one i love is the gas station where zz top one of band members, shows up in a cameo and he says something about her character being in the women's restroom and he goes, gas. And he goes, yeah, I get it. That's ZZ Top? That's someone in ZZ Top? Mm-hmm. Wow.

I did not know that. And I love ZZ Top. It's Billy Gibbons or whatever It's Billy Gibbons? Wow it's incredible We love Billy Gibbons We love ZZ Top Ben once made fun of me for liking ZZ Top but he's wrong

Okay we'll leave it at that The yellow light joke Where he almost The hay truck flips over And he's like I was paying very close attention to you red is stop green is go yellow is drive faster yep like some great

fucking stuff man there's no good really yeah quiet like because like if it's too jokey like you guys were saying you would get you would really lose like you know the emotional attachment you're building with the character but that stuff plays really well a lot of hay in this movie a lot of hay now i'm realizing the two different a sequences yeah i also think this movie threads the needle really well in terms of the

logic of uh obviously like he's an advanced being he He can learn very quickly, right? But filling in the gaps of what he understands and what he doesn't understand, where it's like they don't speed things up too much where it becomes unnatural, but it's also not just frustrating where you're 45 minutes in and it's like, you still don't understand prepositions? Come on, you know?

But they always find even the smoking kind of comes later in the movie yeah where he smokes a cig and just like like i mean you were expecting it to happen again like it kind of plays like just like a quiet funny moment where he just has like a coughing fit afterwards such a good coughing fit he plays that beautifully yeah Like generally surprised. Like what is happening to my body? I don't mean this as like a full criticism and I hope it doesn't come out as such. But I want I want to throw a topic out on the table for discussion. I don't know if it's the performance or the writing of the character, but the Charles Martin Smith role is always hits me a little strange. I always feel like I can't totally figure out what they're going for with this.

This is the scientist who decides that he wants to help him in the end. He's the main. Yes. Yes. He's the more benevolent of the chasers, essentially. You know, and I like Charles Martin Smith.

I do too. I do too. American graffiti, obviously we, we, we enjoy, you know, the untouchables. Yes. And I like Charles Martin Smith. I do too. I do too. American Graffiti, obviously. We enjoy, you know, The Untouchables. Yes. He was the most touchable of The Untouchables. And then becomes like America's preeminent animal director.

He does Air Bud and the Dolphin Tale movies. Wow. This is almost as good a transition as Dinky. Oh my God. Dinky Dave? Dinky. Dinky. Oh, my God. Dinky Dave? Dinky. Dinky Dean. Dinky Dean.

Yeah. This also, this is the stuff that you remember that movie Midnight Special, which like what? Yeah. What's up with Jeff Nichols? What's he doing now? Is he making like a Quiet Place movie or something? But like and everyone was like, oh, this movie is so Spielberg. And I'm really I'm like, God, this movie is so Spielberg-y. And I'm really, I'm like, God, this movie is so Starman.

Yes. And the Adam Driver role is sort of the, right, like the sort of benevolent government agent role. Works a lot better in that movie. Yes. Because I think with Driver, A, you're playing that tension of, is this guy a menace or is he on the right side? You know, there's that, I don't know, there's that juice to it. And I think you buy both sides of it from him. And with Charles Martin Smith, it feels like they can't pick which type of guy he is.

Because it's sort of like, oh, he's like earnest dork, but then he's also kind of an asshole. There's the cigar thing, which is bizarre. Like, sometimes he's big-dogging people, and other times he's, like, very, like, come on, it's science! You know? And I like him a lot, and I always feel like I like the

role this character plays in the movie. I've seen this movie, I guess this was maybe my third time, and I always think, like, oh, I'm gonna get his performance this time. I'm gonna figure it out and I just kind of can't get my head around this guy the movie kind of just sort of slows down

on those scenes like I really just kind of want to be with them like I don't I just don't care as much about that stuff so yeah but as you said in relation when Midnight Special cuts to Adam Driver you're on the edge of your seat you're like what the fuck's going on here? Well, Adam Driver is America's favorite

pig weirdo. So, you know, that's a good point. The scene he has with them though in that like round like Navajo diner, I guess basically, is really good though. Like when he finally gets to them, it's like it was worth the time to spend with him sort of to have like

the sheer wonder in his eyes when Jeff Bridges starts talking. Yeah, I just kind of, I guess, wish he had picked Elaine earlier than that. It's worth it. But I just feel like the character feels a little unfocused to me. I also just want to fill in because I was trying to remember, of course, the other thing that Jeff Nichols has been working on recently, David. Five episodes of the scripted children's podcast, Hank the Cow Dog. Of course, starring Matthew McConaughey as Hank the Cow Dog. I'm subscribing right now.

Hank the Cow Dog. We love him. Kirsten Dunst as Sally Mae. Jesse Plemons as Drover. Joel Edgerton as Rip. Michael Shannon as Sinister. What? Cynthia Erivo as Madam Moonshine.

Leslie Jordan as Pete the Barn Cat. What is this?rivo as Madam Moonshine. Leslie Jordan as Pete the Barn Cat. What is this? Is this like a fucking, you know, some kind of weird shell thing? Like, it's like they're moving money through this podcast. Check out the link in the episode notes. Absolutely.

Like, subscribe. Yeah. Hank the Cow Dog, the self-declared head of ranch security, finds himself smack dab in the middle of a host of tangled mysteries and capers that span the universe of the texas panhandle cattle ranch that hank calls home well i'm sold well you might be interested in hearing that hank is joined on these tail wagging tons i'm sorry i'm sorry no i have dav David I won't read the whole thing but I have to get this one sentence out Hank is joined on these tail wagging

tongue slobbering adventures by a motley assemblage of characters not leech of which is the less than trusty sidekick Drover a small but uncourageous mutt you know how we were talking

about new Zoom features before? I wish there was a Zoom feature where prison bars just came down on Griffin's screen. And it was like, locked in. I've subscribed. I have pulled it up. I've subscribed. I'm going to report back. Okay, find out what Jeff's been up to I hope Charlie

Next week is doing a The cow dog recap podcast We're gonna make millions on this The only big thing We haven't talked about Is just that yeah That he gives her a baby and then he leaves Well the ending

We gotta talk about the ending. It's incredible. The Berenger crater is so cool. Obviously. He's got this great line. I think right before they get to the crater. That I wrote down just in terms of like talking about his language. Where he just says I will miss the cooks and the singing.

And the dancing and the eating. Which is such a good like. That's planet earth right there right. And then she like looks at him and he says like and the other things yeah like she gives him the look of like remember we we fucking joined the the 10 inch high club or whatever the fuck ben called it 12 inch ben ben 12 foot sorry uh um the way i yeah just his whole thing like you know there's again the easier way of doing the aliens like you know you are a primitive species but you know you only you

understand love he doesn't ever say anything like that right but i do like the way he talks about his civilization where he's like look we've nailed it obviously we live in this like utopian civilization we're very smart and every you know but like we are kind of missing something i do kind of like the you know the danger of this place yeah that's the dutch apple pie yeah then just the whole like the like red lighting that david you have as your zoom background and like the intensity of that ending and how he disappears and it's just her face that gives you the special effect

of seeing whatever it's like when he goes up. It's really beautiful. What a freckle face. What a face. What a freckle face. She's kind of one of the ultimate freckle faces in cinema history. Oh, for sure.

Yes. Yeah. Love Karen Allen. I think she's my winner this year. Let me see. I think she's my winner this year Interesting Well weren't you guys talking on Something else in the Carpenter series

By ending on a face Because this one definitely does I felt like it jogged memory Yeah I already forget it But I think that is The case She's my winner It's a fucking uh

incredible performance uh do you folks know about the uh starman tv show yeah okay so we have to talk about it for a second for a second just for a second just because the concept of it is the concept is insane it's here's the thing yeah here's the thing the concept is logical of course because this movie does end with him giving her one of his little silver balls and being like, my son will know what to do with it. I gave you a baby, man. So, okay. But this show, which aired in 1986,

just two years later, is set 15 years in the future because it's about his son. We don't want it to be about a toddler. It's set 15 years in the future. Starman comes back to Earth. Karen Allen is missing. He and his son have to go on the run

to find the missing mom. It's like the Incredible Hulk. Like every episode, they're in some new town and Starman is going to be weird and the son's going to be like, Dad, you have to figure it out. And then they'll do some magic shit. Robert Hayes of Airplane plays Starman. man is going to be weird and the sun's going to be like dad you have to figure it out and then

they'll do some magic shit robert hayes of airplane plays star man and i'm forgetting the actor's name now but the actor who plays star boy is christopher daniel barnes who is prince eric is prince eric and also is uh greg brady in the brady punch move wow that's right he is right we talked about Brady Bunch movie. Wow. That's right. He is right. We talked about him on the Little Mermaid episode. And so he's not pretending to be Jeff Bridges' character. He's like come back. Starman has come back in a different human body is the idea.

No, he's the same. No, no, he's the same guy. Oh, he's supposed to be the same guy. He's the same guy? You know, back then they didn't fucking give a shit. They were just like, he's Jeff Bridges. Whatever. Who cares?

It is wild. Because I feel like now- I know that in the season finale they find the mom they find jenny and then i think whatever abc was like enough of this and they canceled it i don't know where it was gonna go right like how much more could there be it just played on the fucking sci-fi channel for a decade uh like oh fuck i was hoping it would be a star trek rerun and it's star man lame that sucked ass it's it's it's just like yes okay he does sort of set up a future there at the end of the movie this is not a movie that screams tv spin-off no no but but it

is bizarre like because now you know every time there's some new deadline headline about like some overqualified person is going to adapt some movie as a prestige streaming show or whatever and you're like come the fuck on and then you look at tv in the 80s and 70s and the amount of tv tv shows that were based off of middle middle successful movies right okay yeah a couple years ago right and and it's just and then network tv is like okay but how can it be like about a mystery of the week or whatever right like how can it be like the most procedural shit possible right but then also like the amount of like beloved movies that became like real boilerplate sitcoms. It's just bizarre. You know? Guys, remember John from Cincinnati.

Yeah, of course. Hey, owes a lot to this. How so? He comes and visits and he's mysterious and he's weird and he solves everybody's problems. Okay, okay. Also, anything that's said to him, he just replies. I don't know Dickie instead.

The first episode, all he says is, I don't know Dickie instead. There's the first episode, all he says is, I don't know Dickie instead, because that's what someone said to him. I love John from Cincinnati. Wow. Because, you know, John from Cincinnati, the first six episodes, he's just parroting dialogue

that everyone else has around him. And then this incredible sixth episode, he brings all the characters together and mirrors all this dialogue at them and helps them realize all these emotional truths and you're like this show is fucking incredible and then it kind of just keeps going and you're sort of like I don't know I think they might

have they should have just kind of ended it there like they kind of just had something there and then it's like what it's still about weird surfers and like a levitating alien guy you know like it doesn't have anything anywhere more to go it missed the limited series boom such a cool thing yes absolutely do you remember when we threatened that that was gonna be like our third mini series that we were like we're gonna do shamalan the wachowskis and then just do episode by episode

john from cincinnati i it was my because it is such a blank check that david milch was like hbo fucks me around too much on deadwood i'm gonna cancel deadwood and do this surfer alien show it's gonna air out of the sopranos finale that just like shattered america they're gonna be like uh anyway and now here's john from cincinnati like you know that's that was its first episode it is such a blank check thing it's so cool cast that show is so fucking wild too it's it's loaded out of control yeah oh it's so good good show uh i learned from wikipedia that in 2016 sean levy was planning to uh direct and produce a remake of starman correct michael douglas was on board kind of amazing no one has remade Starman actually yeah it is kind of just

sitting there Levy seems like the exact guy who would want to jump on that and I hope it never happens it's been five years and doesn't seem to be another word on it so I'm not too worried I'm checking to see if it's on his IMDB still well America has free guy fever I mean he's never going to make a movie that doesn't have Ryan Reynolds in

it again I mean America loves Free Guy. Let's play, speaking of Free Guy fever, the box office game for Starman Griffin. This film came out December 14th, 1984. Yeah. It opened number six. It's not in the top five. No.

I found some quotes from a piece about the holiday season box office in 84 projecting what they thought the big hits of the season would be and there was a quote that was just stunning that was like columbia's hoping for at least a five million opening for starman which would bode well for the movie's chances to join the hundred million dollar club isn club. It was a different world back then, right? Right, you're just like, if a movie can open with $5 million in December on like a thousand screens, then you might

leg it out to $100 million 11 months later. But they thought this was going to be a huge huge hit, and it did okay. It did okay, it made $29 million, it but it very much yeah like you know did okay were they right to think it was going to be a huge hit like movies were different in the 80s but this like this doesn't scream next et to me i this is the

thing i think when you describe the basic premise of this movie and we were joking about like how bizarre all the poster tagline and images are but there is like a very clean pitch for this movie that sounds like such a fucking emotionally potent thing where it's just like uh an alien lands on earth and takes the body of a woman's dead husband right you're just like fuck i could see that movie being emotionally devastating in like a very accessible way. And it's like fantasy and it's romance and it's sci-fi, it's adventure and like all this sort of shit. And I think, you know, one of the reasons this film has, you know, lasted well, and I think all of Carpenter's canon in his age particularly well is that he is an aggressively unsentimental filmmaker who is not caught up in the trends of the time and i think he didn't make the version of this movie that would have been a colossal sort of like officer and a gentleman

style like romance hit you know but he he gets his justice hurts decades later when people still love his movies. Yeah. I think he made a movie with, that's a lot more interested in the sort of bottled emotions and that lack of like huge catharsis probably cost it tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. This movie doesn't have like these sort of holy shit sequences. Maybe his,

his birth, you know, aside that would have audiences whatever like buzzing and wanting more I don't know it's such a good movie though so yeah rules like you said Carpenter gets to eat out but this is number six okay number one Griffin

it's a huge hit we just mentioned it it's a comedy it's helping to launch a superstar Beverly Hills Cop Beverly Hills Cop I'd say this a comedy. It's helping to launch a superstar. I guess he's pretty launched at this point. Beverly Hills Cop. I'd say this is the superstar moment. This is when he's gone from being a star to a superstar.

Yeah. He is so good in that good movie. The highest grossing film of that year? I think Ghostbusters is the highest grossing. I always forget which was one and which was two because they were the tops. I do think it's Ghostbusters. But maybe forget which was one and which was two because they were the tops. It's Ghostbusters.

I do think it's Ghostbusters, but maybe it's Beverly Hills Cop. Beverly Hills Cop is seven, according to Box Office Mojo. Oh, no, sorry. No, it's Count... It's doing that thing where it's like... Box Office Mojo is terrible.

Yeah, it is terrible. Sorry. Beverly Hills Cop is number one. Defund Box Office Mojo. It cannot be reformed at this point. Beverly Hills Cop was down the list because it opened in December, which is a bullshit metric. Yes, sorry. I fixed it. It was number one. It was number one. They're very close, those two.

Ghostbusters is still in the box office in its 28th week. Wild. eighth week um wild number two number two is a massive famous failure famous blank check has nothing to do with a massive sci-fi movie that's coming out this year um pretty much you know doom it's david lynch's doom opening at number two to six million dollars a huge disappointment yeah they thought it was gonna be the star wars they were ready they like opening at number two to $6 million, a huge disappointment. Yeah. They thought it was going to be the Star Wars. They were ready. Like Lynch was writing the sequel.

Like they were ready to keep going. And they had fucking coloring books on shelves and all the shit. Like they were just, they were all ready. Yep. Dune number two. So could not dethrone Beverly has cop. Number three is a buddy cop movie okay i'm sorry buddy crime movie these guys are crimeys okay or one of them is i don't know um two huge actors

i guess by the 80s they're but they're huge is this the clint burt reynolds movie it is uh what this thing is fucking called i always get this confused with the fortune by richard benjamin they're huge. Is this the Clint Burt Reynolds movie? It is. Uh, what's it called? What's it called? What's it fucking called? I always get this confused with the fortune. Richard Benjamin. It's,

it's right. That's a fair confusion. Cause the fortune, cause they're both like period pieces. The fortune is, is Mike Nichols though, right?

Yeah. Right. And that's Nicholson and Beatty? Yeah. Okay. And this is, fuck,

uh, uh, is it, uh, what's it called? It's called City Heat. Oh, yeah. I don't know.

Like, this poster looks pretty good. They're in raincoats. They got guns. They were old friends. How did it do it? It's nice that they finally did a movie together. I've never seen it. It was not a huge hit by any means.

You folks know the incredible story of Eastwood and Reynolds going in for the general meeting or the screen test at the studio, right? No. They're buddies and they came up together and their careers were very parallel for a while until they

went off in obviously very different directions. They go in for a meeting with some studio executive or screen test or whatever in that era where they're just like if you're a man and your shoulders are broad enough and you're handsome enough we'll just give you a 10 picture deal we'll figure out where to put you later right and the two of them walk in and this guy just like rips them both to shreds and he's just like i mean you're miserable there's nothing here reynolds you can't act you have no charisma charisma. You cannot deliver lines. You have no integrity or intelligence on screen.

You're like a limp fish. Eastwood, you're like the weirdest looking guy I've ever seen. Like you can't open your eyes and you have this horrible Adam's apple and like all this shit. Can't talk above a whisper, all this stuff. And they walk out and like Reynolds has this big shit eating grin on his face. And Eastwood's like, why are you laughing? That guy just like ripped both of us to shreds.

And Reynolds is like, yeah, but I can learn how to act. What are you going to do about that fucking Adam's apple? I did not know that story. It's a great story. He's like, that's fine. I'll go to some classes or something someone teaches acting around here yeah

i'm handsome number four at the box office is another sequel why am i saying another sequel it's a sequel it's a sequel one of the strangest sequels to ever exist it is a sequel to a canonical masterpiece Yes

It is coming 16 years later Is it The Sting 2? No Canonical masterpiece Oh, oh, oh One of the five best films ever made If you'd like fucking did a family feud Of film critics or whatever

Why am I not thinking It's not The Two Jakes No Is it a sequel that does not retain the stars of the first movie? feud of film critics or whatever. Why am I not thinking? It's not the two Jakes. No. Is it a sequel that does not retain the stars of the first movie? It sure doesn't. Although I believe one of the stars does a little

cameo. No. Different director, different stars. It's a space movie. It's a 2010? 2010. The year we make contact directed by Peter Hyams how many years later did you say 16 years later

I heard 6 that's why I wasn't guessing it oh well 16 yeah 2010 bizarre movie they were like you know what let's do a sequel to that movie that definitely is not setting up a sequel. Right. And also, I don't think we need to bring Kubrick back.

Right. He wasn't the key to success on that one. Yeah. What did he really have to offer? Not a bad movie. I've seen it. It's fun. Peter Himes.

Peter Himes. Another person who almost directed Starman. Yeah. Yeah. Number five at the box office. This is a box office of flops. Like, you got Beverly Hills Cop on top. Yeah.

But then all these weird fucking movies. This is a huge epic movie from one of the most famous directors alive. It's a massive blank check for him. It's a giant bomb. Is it a once upon a time in America? It's a vintage crime drama. No. No. bomb. Is it a vintage crime drama? No, no.

It's one of those movies that this director is still kicking around. He actually had some news about him today and he, you know, Cotton Club? Has re-edited it. Yes, it's the Cotton Club. It played New York Film Festival like two years ago, right? The encore. The big re-edit.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. God, fucking that megalopolis news. The big re-edit. Yeah. God. Fucking that megalopolis news. I'm all for it. It's the long game. He's like, yeah, you thought I sold out selling wine 20 years ago.

It was all to make my movie. It's unbelievable. I'm catching in. I'm selling the vineyards. Look, I built this fucking vineyard. It's worth $100 million. I'm going to die. I'll just sell it and make my fucking utopia movie and hope the vineyards. Look, I built this fucking vineyard. It's worth a hundred million dollars. I'm going to die. I'll just sell it and make my fucking utopia movie and hope the kids listen. I'm all for it. But Francis, do it right now.

You're not a young man. Time is of the essence. You gotta go. Is it a blank check if it's your own money? Does that count? Yes. Okay. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, and to to be clear his quote was like i'm hoping i'll get the financing together if i can't get all the money together i'll match it and put up half of the money if no one gives me any money i'll just pay for the whole fucking thing i don't give a shit i'm just gonna do it that's terrible negotiation exactly don't say that in public i heard you could just do it on wine alone why am i giving you any money oh boy i'm so amped it's like the best news i've heard in so long it really is it really is it

really is and it makes him going back and re-editing like everything over the last 10 years make more sense where it's just like'm going to put all of that to bed. I'm going to make my final fucking movie and then like drop a wine bottle on the floor and peace out. Say Rosebud and that's it. It's true. Oh boy. Starman. We're done.

We're done. We got it. We're done. We're done. We're done. We're done. There's one person that we forgot to shout out. Okay. Okay. The original Starman

So Ben He changed his background to David Bowie I've had that song stuck in my head He's a starman waiting in the sky Yeah Ever since you guys asked me to do this I've had that song stuck in my head I know me too It's which that song is what

It's like the early 70s that song's been around yeah i guess they're still do you think they had to talk to david bowie before they called this movie star man i don't know david bowie would have been a good star man he seems like an alien well he'd already done yeah manta fell to earth yeah yeah oh fuck have you seen that movie ben very ben movie very ben i don't know i don't know i don't know no you probably haven't seen it yeah you would remember if you've seen it yeah it's pretty memorable it's good you'd like it yeah all right putting it on the list putting it on the list part of me was waiting for it to like the starman song to be in the credits i guess it's

not really that kind of movie But it's just right there It would be funny though if it's just like this emotional ending And it's like alright Crank the guitar There's a Starman Waiting in the sky Isn't it in The Martian though?

That's where it shows up eventually I think it is Yes The Martian had all the What was it abba or it had like right he's always listening to disco or something what was your question katie yeah i feel like the martian uses um um i feel like it uses two david bowie songs it uses starman and like another one or like uses can't use rocket ground control yeah that Tom. I'm only seeing Starman listed here, but it says the soundtrack includes

and it's not. I don't know. Look, I don't know. I don't know. I can't figure this out right now. Is the end credit song for The Martian I Will Survive? It should be.

Could be. What a great movie. It has some joke, like, needle drop over the end credits that i'm forgetting and i think that's what it is uh this article says i will survive is on the soundtrack as is abba's waterloo as is starman donna summer's hot stuff so yeah more disco than i was remembering it's because the whole point is that he remember it's like that one of the people liked disco right and it's all he can listen to

And he's like ah damn it Sebastian Stan you love disco Or whatever person One of the characters Remembering Sebastian Stan was in the Martian That's a great pull Yeah Sebastian Stan he's in that movie It's Jessica Chastain's character

Who loves disco apparently Great movie great comedy as ben pointed out winner of the golden globe for best comedy funny uh yep so funny it is funny movie it's a good movie it's directed by ridley scott who's a nice man and i like the jokes and the comedy in it ridley scott who in this in in his wikipedia picture uh looks like someone like an angry person that like grover is waiting on in sesame street and i I'm going to send a picture. Look at this. Just look at this.

David, click on the link. I put it in the chat. David, that joke was such fucking griff bait. It was, it was a real good, but look at him.

He's such a grouch. That's the face of a man who is not getting COVID. He's going to say, fuck you, moving on. Not going to do it. Not going to do it. Katie, you're the best. It's always a pleasure. What a delight, you guys. Katie, thanks for listening to me for the last year as I

became a father and was very anxious about it. It's been so fun. I mean, I feel like as I speak for everyone who knows you, which is that this has been long in the works and you as a father is, is perfect. Oh yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah.

You can't use that kind of language around your daughter. She's not going to repeat you yet, but she'll start. All right. Uh, listen to a little gold man. Read. Oh yeah.

Oh wait, no. And, every time David Ehrlich's on the show, he doesn't mention Fighting in the War Room, the podcast I do with him. And I give him shit about it. So Fighting in the War Room, subscribe to that too.

We've been around for like, this is our 10th year, which is bananas. So if you think, if people like Blank Check for its longevity, come find us. We've been around even longer. If they like Blank Check,

but wish I'd been going on for three years more then Fighting in the War Room gets my highest recommendation. God, talk about time warps. The fact that seven years of Blank Shack, is that what you're telling me? Coming up. Six years coming up, right? This is our sixth year.

This is our sixth year. March will be seven. It flips me out. It does our sixth year. March will be seven. It flips me out. It does flip me out. It's a great month to have like an anniversary. Good things happen in March. Yeah, I love March. He loves March. Is there a joke I'm not getting here

or do you just love March? COVID started. Okay, enough. Enough. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate review and subscribe thanks to marie bardi for her social media and hopefully posting the picture of the cursed star man baby prop thank you to joe bowen and pat reynolds for our artwork lane montgomery the great american novel for our theme song you should check out their new album. Yes, absolutely. Their new album. Our good friends. Thank you

to JJ Burch and Nick Loriano for our research. I am losing my place in the chronology, but next week we have Big Trouble in Little China. That's right. Big movie. Big movie. Big episode.

Great guests. Great guests. We won't announce them yet, but great guests. Guests. Great guests. We won't announce them yet, but great guests. Guests. Plural. And go to patreon.com slash blank check for some mummy commentaries. Get wrapped up in the mummy.

Frazier. Stan Frazier. That's what the kids like these days, right? Everyone loves Brandon Frazier. Stan a legend. And then blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. That's what I have to say. Okay? And as always,

listen in as Hank the Cow Dog always claims to know the answer, is the last to realize he doesn't, but is the first to run headlong into tales of courage, loyalty, and friendship. David, did you realize that there's a sandwich in this movie that has paprika on it? Fuck you. Fuck you.

Take a look at me now. I'm Jeff Bridges. I'm hot.