Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Beach with Emily Yoshida

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

Mother is back, and she’s taking us all to THE BEACH! Emily Yoshida makes her long-awaited return to the pod to speak about her experience in the writer’s room of the still-unproduced TV version of Alex Garland’s titular novel. We’re asking all the big questions - when did Leonardo DiCaprio stop being “baby” and become a big boy on screen? Why is no one practicing ethical non-monogamy or doing heroin on this island? Is it cool to like Moby again after that weird Natalie Portman thing? How would starring in this movie have affected Ewan McGregor’s career? Why stay in a commune with a bunch of dirty European hippies when you could just go to a resort with real bathrooms?  Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

And me? I still believe in podcasts. But now at least I know it's not some place you can look for. Because it's not where you go. It's how you feel for a moment in your life when you're part of something. And if you find that moment, it lasts forever. Like two hours, 40 minutes, 320, something in that range. Wait, what was that last thing you said?

I made a joke about our podcast being long that's what i was trying to do he was ad-libbing i wanted i wanted to sub in podcast for paradise that felt clean but the line starts with it emily was right you do do a good leonardo dicaprio circa 2000 yeah i knew she was right it's it's it's baby leo trying to sound serious which i would argue is his entire career but we can get to that later well but when does he shift from baby to big boy because i feel like the hit on everyone the hit on gangs in new york was that he's still baby he's trying to be a big boy but he's still baby it was at the you know the aviator and the departed or those just kind of using his

babiness correctly your question is when does it take when do people finally accept it is that I think in by inception in Shutter Island it has taken and he's and he's a bit different yes I'm gonna say I'm in the extreme minority that says he's still baby like he's still baby he's still baby well I think his best performances still come from him leaning into baby I think

Departed for me is the first time I think he's I think he's great in the aviator but it works because that role is partially baby. And I think Departed is... Howard Hughes. Right. I think Departed is the time

where it kind of starts to cross over because that guy is trying so hard in the movie to prove that he's not baby. Right. That movie begins with him being summoned into an office where walberg and sheen are like so you're a baby right you're a big baby right and he's like no i'm not and they're like yeah you're a baby you're it's on this sheet yeah i got google let me give you a milk bottle i just love the for listeners cannot see right now that David's background is a moment from the beach where I would say he's especially baby.

And to me is the greatest part of his performance in this movie. So I think when he leans into baby, it works. Is it Donkey Kong Country? Is that the filter? I got a real Crash Bandicoot vibe from it. Excuse me. i believe danny boyle has said he was primarily influenced by banjo kazooie i think he has said okay i mean banjo kazooie it doesn't look like that and crash bandicoot kind of does but i won't i won't mess

with danny's vision i mean maybe danny said hey can you do like a banjo kazooie thing and the vfx guy was like what's he fucking talking about banjo i'm not looking that up yeah is that some group he saw coachella god he's high on goofballs again coachella 97 oh man banjo banjo kazooie did lay it down at coachella And they're coming back Right? Yeah, they're doing a big nostalgia tour now It's a total cash grab Their Coachella set was acoustic

Which was kind of cool of them Yeah, Banjo Kazooie unplugged It's just banjos, no Kazooie I think Kazooie's second solo record Is actually interesting I think there's like five good tracks on that Yes Kazooie's second solo record is actually interesting. I think there's like five good tracks on that. Yes.

Because Kazooie is kind of the George Harrison where no one kind of like takes him seriously as a solo artist. But if you actually stack up. Yeah, exactly. You're like, oh, there's like a lot of good songs and records there. Yeah. Banjo Kazooie. What is everybody's, and then introduce the Pagas. I just want to do this right now, like lightning round.

What is everybody's favorite Leonardo DiCaprio performance? Just say it. Just say your favorite Leonardo DiCaprio performance. Catch me if you can. Oh, that's a good answer. It's probably Romeo and Juliet because he's the most baby. And I don't like Leonardo DiCapaprio i think he's a bad actor leo if you're listening to this this is what i think of you and i'm not afraid to say it

i think he's good actor personally wow i a lot of people think that i that's a widely held opinion but i don't i don't like him i think um this movie this movie kind of works despite of and because of I think his his uh I I don't I don't know what to call this performance exactly I it's not to me an ideal performance but in a way it makes a second movie happen that is interesting to me so um but yeah I would say I would say when he's at his babiest and wettest in Romeo and Juliet, I like him. This is a huge take coming out at the beginning of the episode. David, do you have a pick for your favorite? My favorite has always been and probably always will be Shutter Island.

I think that's his best performance ever. Wow. I love that movie so much um ben do you have a favorite leo wolf of wall street yeah i mean that's that's me that's me pointing at the movie yeah yeah that is such a great performance but no shutter island is my favorite um anyway yeah i don't know just yeah okay we got the whole spectrum look we're gonna have we're gonna have a great leo debate no actually don't Look Up I take it back Oh he's so funny in that

Sorry yeah I totally forgot But I love that movie How did you forget? I don't know I'm thinking about Don't Look Up every day It's a top of mind thing In fact I'm never looking up as a result Right and anytime you do you're like

Ah fuck damn I forgot McCain you've got me again up as a result. Right. And anytime you do, you're like, ah, fuck! Damn! Shit! McCain, you've got me again! It's embarrassing, Ben, how much you forgot the extent to which you care about climate change. And thus, by proxy, how funny you find that movie. Yeah. Yep. It was a laugh right.

Says a lot. Says a lot. Telling. Look, obviously, this episode, now the gauntlet's been thrown. This episode's going to be a great Leo debate. Before we get into that, Emily, you mentioned David's background. Can you just say what my Zoom background is? Your Zoom background is of the great actor Adam Beach. The Beach.

Yeah. Slipknot himself. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want.

And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby. Were you doing that in richard voice that sounded very richardy which richard she means richard from the beach leo in the beach oh oh a little bit i guess now maybe now maybe i'm just in it maybe i'm i'm just in his famous character richard i think you're just in it now which which is cool. You should stay there. Anyway, sorry to interrupt the intro. No, no, no. Maybe I've gotten beach-pilled.

I've gone to the beach and I haven't come back yet. You're Sandy. Yeah, I'm Sandy. I'm sunburnt. I'm maybe the palest I've ever been right now. Listen, this is a miniseries on the films of Danny Boyle. Oh, Danny Boyle, the pipes, the pipes are calling. It's called Trainspot Casting.

Yep. Today we are talking about his second bounce in a row. Now you say. Yeah, but his more profound bounce. Right. Right. You're not losing. Bigger scale bounce.

Yeah, because Lifeless Ordinary, what, that costs $10 million or whatever? You can get away with that. The beach, this is serious. How many beaches did they destroy in a Lifeless Ordinary? Yes. How many beaches have been permanently ruined by a Lifeless Ordinary? Well, yeah, it's a not zero sum in this movie, so that's something.

Not only that, but this is a rare case where a filmmaker is basically handed a lottery ticket. Yes, but it's a lottery ticket that could explode. Yes. Yes, like it's sort of, yes. It's a dangerous package you're being handed here. But at this moment he must have been the envy of everyone in hollywood leo has not made a movie for two years

he has not signed on to a film since titanic came out right man in the iron mask comes out like two months after titanic he's got a cameo and celebrity that comes out the following year but he has not been on both of those things following year, but he has not been on screen. He filmed both of those things pre-Dycanic and he's not been on screen. So not only is this the star of the highest grossing film of all time, but he is in and of himself a legit cultural phenomenon, his very existence. And everyone's waiting to see what he's going to do with that. He's got a blank check himself. what he's going to do with that.

He's got a blank check himself. For a teenage girl who loves Leonardo DiCaprio, which I was not one, but I still feel like I can speak with some, you know, informed experience about that. A year with that little Leonardo DiCaprio content when you're like 16 is a long time. Yeah. Like you could really lose people.

Yeah, Right. Titanic December 97. Man in the eye mask February 98. And and then basically this is two full years later.

Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. And that was the peak of Leo mania. The peak. That was the peak of it. The peak.

And he was nowhere to be found. Crazy. No. Well you can find him you can find it yeah it's the streets he did have a posse yeah you just had to check in with the posse this is the number one thing we we have to discuss in this episode this is it there's gonna be a lot of posse talk in this episode because i think it's important to this film

i will we can do a little posse talk. You mean the insane clown posse? What are you guys talking about? Yeah, we're talking ICP. Leo was just pounding Faygo. Listen, today we're talking Da Beach. Da Beach. Da Beach. Our guests return to the show after too long of a gap.

I didn't realize how long we've been. A Leo-like hiatus, I would say. A Leo-like hiatusatus the fans maybe forgot about me the fans have grown up the fans have lived a thousand lives i guess it's been like a year and a half damn was dark star the last one dark star dark star was the last one yeah like a year and a half yeah it was babies are walking now that we're not walking maybe even boss babies wasn't walking at that time and is walking now so i'm just boss baby was not walking now that were not walking. Maybe even Boss Baby wasn't walking at that time and is walking now. Boss Baby was not walking at that time.

No, she was a lump. Adorable little lump. That's kind of rude of you to say. That she was a lump? Body shaming. Yeah. Body shame. She's still my little lump.

She's a little lumpy. And you made that body. You're almost shaming yourself. Nothing wrong with lumps. But yeah, now she's running little lump. She's a little lumpy. And you made that body. You're almost shaming yourself. Nothing wrong with lumps. But yeah, now she's running, obviously. Running around like a maniac. Emily Yoshida, mother of blankies. The epic anticipated return.

Hi, everybody. Time number? I think we're on 12 now. 12? I don't know. It's counting bonus episodes or not. I think we're at 12 now? 12? I don't know. It's counting bonus episodes or not. I think we're at the dirty dozen right now. If we're talking just main feed

and if we count Titanic as one, then this is 12. This is the dozen. And then obviously you also did a babe episode with us, which is basically a full episode. It was a full episode. In which we all cried. We all cried in that episode.

I love babe. Yeah. I think I cried now in three different blank check episodes. So I, yeah. And I'm going to, it's going to be a fourth time today, guys. Wow. Wow. What are the other ones you cried during yeah when did you cry i cried during um

i tried i cried during the castle in the sky episode wow okay uh and then that whole miniseries was a tearjerker yeah lassiter's introduction of the movie right that's when you cried when you did your dramatic reading of lassiter's dvd introduction i yeah it's like it's just from from that point on you know the waterworks start and they don't they don't turn off um no i there's got to be so did i cry during the uh did i cry during the speed racer episode it's possible well no it was the keep the keep i remember you were just really rpg moved by the RPG game. So if you aren't subscribed to the Patreon already, go subscribe and listen to me cry while playing the Keep RPG tabletop game. Out of frustration.

You know I was the one crying out of frustration. There was only one frustrated Dungeon Master there. I mean, relevant to today's topic, recently David Ehrlich, the great David Ehrlich friend of the show, hosted a little weekend get-together to play the official Titanic board game. The James Cameron's Titanic board game.

And Marie and I played that with David and some of his other friends. I described it as less fun than doing taxes. It was the most, it truly, we spent two hours trying to read through the instructions and then went like like maybe if we just start playing it'll make more sense and then it made less sense i can't believe you guys didn't

record this sounds like gold i wasn't there uh i decided to go on a date with my wife instead of doing that huge mistake by me obviously yeah um i am really good at understanding the stupid rules of complicated board games so maybe i could have helped but maybe you know some of these things are just bad this yeah this one was yeah so annoying and complicated and you know you're right emily we should have recorded it it would have made for a good episode the problem is we can't recreate it because i out of frustration went and burned every single copy of the game that exists. You put them all in a ditch somewhere. Yeah, buried them like the fucking E.T. game.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if that game was remotely good, people would know about it. If there was a good game based on that movie, people would play it. based on that movie people would play you got but if you get the emulator of the not based on the movie but the titanic computer game which i know i brought up on that episode which is like my my you know second most powerful touch point for titanic venture out of time and do like a play along with that that that would rule adventure at a time oh my god i believe i believe now just you can just buy it on steam for six dollars if you want. I don't think you even really need an emulator.

It just exists. Is it on Switch? I'm not sure anyone's made the effort to port that sucker over to the Switch. But yeah, I'm looking at it. It's a lot of dialogue, right? A lot of like, hey, I see the wireless room yeah yeah and you kind of choose your responses underneath it but it is very dependent on how you respond to people like they're real it's not linear at all so it's it's pretty it'd be fun fun to play i mean speaking of

of things that we were all doing in the year 2000 i've been playing final fantasy 8 on the switch right now which i didn't realize was on there and that's um man what what a slow game uh those games are boring shut up said it wow yes okay the beach emily the beach emily i a question i have for you so this is your second Leo movie you've covered on the podcast now sure your second movie from peak Leo mania Leo yeah you come out of the gate swinging

with the take that he is a bad actor you don't like him at all this movie is you hope he's listening yes and you hope he's listening and you and you want him to cry you said i right before we start recording you said i'm not gonna cry on this fucking episode it's time for him to cry listen it's time for him to cry right i hope he puts on headphones listens to this episode while having sex and vaping

and then sends sends the wave file to ben and he can just play it as a new track that's that's paywall that's um no i it's i yeah i was thinking of this last night while i was watching the beach i was like you know these are and i actually i i'm I'm staying in a hotel right now so I was watching whatever Showtime just watching Showtime on television as you as one does when you're around cable like which I never am anymore and I saw like the last confused do you mean Paramount plus plus Showtime yeah I had to get the Paramount plus um add-on package on top of the showtime add-on package on my apparently they don't exist independently anymore right yeah uh but yeah i i was watching the last 10 minutes of that so i got to see a little bit of yeah the the icy leo and and then leo at the very very end of that movie

which i still like you know i maintain is like one of the best endings of any movie uh the the final sequence of titanic and it's very much reliant on you being like oh i'm so happy to see leonardo dicaprio uh and then i was watching this movie which is just like i i think we can get into it i have a lot of really complicated feelings about this performance but I still think this is like a, what's the word that's not problematic that we can use now that doesn't mean problematic? It's just like a, it's a fraught movie. But, and including, and because of this Leonardo DiCaprio performance,

but it's still super compelling to me and it was a reason why I requested it. I think I had a couple Boyle movies that I was interested in, but this was definitely one of them. Well, that was going to be my question. Are there any other Boyles? Where are you on Mr. Danny Boyle?

Any other Boyles you love? Well, this is the thing for boy like I saw this in the theater I I really don't have a memory of my experience of seeing in a theater I think because it was disappointing to me I think to me it felt kind of like the epitome of somebody that I like which and this was a still new experience for me at this time kind of quote-unquote selling out um and it feeling like a kind of big american-y misfire for somebody that you know i was just like oh they're so cool and british and and ewan mcgregor and all this shit and then this movie doesn't notably doesn't have ewan mcgregor in it um was going to have ewan mcgregor in it uh we'll talk about that

we're gonna talk about all that. Don't worry. I mean, would this movie have worked better if Ewan McGregor was in it? We're going to talk about it. But what Danny Boyle movies do you like? Okay, so what I'm saying is I really, really liked Danny Boyle. I saw this because of Danny Boyle when I saw it.

Because I was a huge Ewan McGregor fan and, you know, got into those movies because of that. You went to the box office and said, I just want you to know I'm not buying a ticket for Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm buying a ticket for Danny Boyle. I want to make it very clear to you. Yeah. At the Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville, Iowa. I certainly did. I think I saw Man in thealville, Iowa. I certainly did. I think I saw Man in the Iron Mask 2

there. I don't know. I just saw everything. You know, you just see. This is the age where you're just seeing everything. But, yeah. And then since then, I think, you know, I kind of I think since then, I'm just sort of totally okay. Like, if he hits, he hits. If he

misses, I don't really care. You know, I think the last movie of his that I saw that I was really into and didn't see for a while because I was sure I was going to hate it and then really liked it a lot was Steve Jobs. And then what's the last one he did? Yesterday. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to see. What am I going to do? See yesterday?

Yeah. dirty oh yeah yeah i mean i'm not gonna see what am i gonna do see yesterday yeah it's it's so it's not he's no longer an essential viewing director for me but for you know like early early in my watching movies and being into movies he was so yeah did you like what do you have a strong life less ordinary take because that's obviously the i haven't seen that in a long time but i saw that you know like multiple times as as a horny teen um multiple times wow so you're probably at least a couple times strong yeah i think i had it on vhs i think like it was in a bargain bin for good reason at like the grocery store and and i i got it because it's that's what it that's what it yeah that's exactly what it is and it's like cool i can own uh ewan mcgregor performance on vhs that i can keep in my house absolutely let's do it like i guess be fair to be fair it is like a

very normal watchable movie like it's a real easy light just pop it in yeah yeah god yeah i would i would be interested to re-watch that again i did re-watch shallow grave before we like yesterday yeah because i hadn't watched that in god knows how long um and you know enjoyed it. That movie's fun. That movie's a lot of fun. The music is so good. That's the one consistent thing I think about Danny Boyle movies up to this point is amazing soundtracks.

I think going forward, I think he pretty much always hits it on the music, be it soundtrack or if he's avoiding a soundtrack like getting a good score like he he's at least always consistent on that until yesterday of course yeah the songs in yesterday suck they suck famously uncatchy um i don't think that there is a director that you guys have covered though that is where the soundtrack with music from other artists like not the or you know not the original score is such a big part of their identity at least at the outset because i mean there was something that i mean that was the cool that was like the the danny boyle brand was like and you get to like buy the cd that has i

mean for me at the time i was like all this this cool dance music and British shit that you've never heard of before. And it was, yeah, it felt like a kind of gateway to stuff. And yeah, who are you? We haven't covered Tarantino or Wes Anderson or Scorsese, who are like, I feel like the three other big record drop auteurs needle drop auteurs you know yeah we haven't covered the OC season one no oh but Boz I mean when you guys do Boz

that'll be Boz sure and I said when when you do Boz we do Braff I feel like Garden State that was a big soundtrack huge well you know he sent it out with the script because he thought people wouldn't understand it if they weren't listening along. I mean, we did do a commentary on a movie with a great soundtrack.

You might have heard of it. It's called Koyaanisqatsi. Pretty banging soundtrack. Yeah. Happy birthday, Philip Glass. It's his 86th birthday today, actually. Today? On the day we were recording?

Today. Yes, on the day we were recording. But I do think... I was listening to the beach soundtrack yesterday by the way having a great time yeah oh my god it rolls so hard like if there's anything you can say on unimpeachably about this this movie is that the soundtrack still fucking rips it's so good i've been listening to porcelain a lot today since i watched the movie hell yeah i love that album is moby are we are we back in on moby yeah i have been sort of seeding it i'm like can we be good again yeah is he canceled i can't remember what did he do well i mean well he was like weird about natalie portman famously like like super super super weird i think she was barely 18 but it wasn't that he was like we had

a relationship and she was like we we just did not and i don't know what that man is talking about yes it's that it's not that there was any actual behavior that was you know uncomfortable it's that he had a whole fantasy that had no relation to Rhea, which is creepy in its own way, but yeah, I think that was the main thing. He got a bunch of face tattoos as well, did he not?

I was looking him up when I was... He's got vegan for life on his neck, but he also has things... He has a cross with LRSC, which stands for Love, Reason, Service, Yeah. He's got vegan for life on his neck, but he also has like things. He has a cross with LRSC, which stands for love, reason, service and compassion. Okay. Yeah.

That also sounds like a like licensing for a therapist, like LRMC, like love angel music baby. I remember his uh crib so well remember his weird little crib oh my god wait did you see the arm tattoos yeah he's got animal on one arm and rights on the other but it's like oh no it's like helvetica font it's so bad running straight down from like bicep to fist but like you know you just don't want to have the thing where you're like this you know you have a bad thing and then another tattoo that says is wrong but then people right anyway moby uh great soundtrack on play on the beach yeah so i i what i was gonna say is that i have sort of been dipping my toe into like can we play can we play moby and polite company again uh because and and this is sort of a

sideways way to get into it so i started playing the soundtrack the soundtrack went in heavy rotation again for me a couple years ago when i was working on the still not yet made but currently still a development tv adaptation of the beach with alex garland and so we can talk about this i can mention it i'm not going to get into like what i mean obviously i'm not going to get into what we wrote i have no and i genuinely don't know anything about the status of that project. But I did spend a long time writing and thinking about the beach and playing the beach soundtrack a lot. And just, you know, and occasionally being in the car with friends being like, that was good, right? That was good. So, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I like Moby's music. uh i've been bumping it in my ears as well uh so emily you you were writing on the proposed beach tv adaptation that Alex Garland and Amy Simons were doing. That much like all of TV now seems to be in a state of flux. Much like every single series,

be it completed, have it already been released, The Sopranos might be canceled tomorrow. What kind of world are we living in? No, I mean, the nice thing about COVID was that you know for if you were lucky of course you could theoretically still have work as a as a tv writer the downside of it is that uh there's maybe a five percent chance that the things you wrote in covid would

get made because everybody was just generating scripts so that people kind of went back into production we're like well we're not going to do that. Or I think people just lose interest or blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying that any of those were the things that happened with the beach. I think it's still kind of alive in some way there. But we had like a room with it and it was sort of the second attempt at it

after the Simon's version. So that was, yeah, I mean i was uh in a room with with alex and a few other writers for like five months and uh okay so the simons version then gave way to a version that that garland was leading himself and that was the one that you were involved in yeah um so you uh had you read the book before seeing the movie slash had you read the book before getting hired to work on the show? No, I'd never read the book. I read I read I read the book for the show. I'd seen the movie and and I knew that people really liked the book, but it wasn't a part of my like, know formative reading as a t8 or 20 something which it was for so many people so you didn't and then i was like in london there you weren't part of a youth culture in a country oh my god be careful should i say it or not danger zone i read this

book i read this book like every other british teenager of course i read the beach i knew that and i was waiting for you to say it because i knew that i held the knowledge and i have nothing funny to say about it my cover i think the the the first edition cover of the novel is so good that weird kind of like clip art yeah uh you know beach with the daffy but mine was the much more boring it's like like a beach, but then it actually is, there's an eye, a guy's face is the beach. I don't know. That was my cover. But I did read the beach. We all read the beach.

I think this is clear in the dossier, Griff. I don't know if you saw this, but the book was a colossal success in Britain and a sort of minor success in America. Sort of the shallow grave of books. Oh, sure. Yeah. Exactly. What's your question, Griff? No no my neighbor across the street is fully naked this is a rare i don't think i've seen this he's going the camera around friends full naked guy in the window across from me he's standing at an angle where he can't see that i can see him but now he's moving around

uh it's like a new recurring character for our show? Well, no. I'm going to say I don't want to set up any recurring characters that only exist in Zoom records. Well, I would agree with that. Let's commit to the idea that he will never appear ever again. Love that. No, what I was going to say. God. I just remembered what I was going to say.

It was a terrible joke and it got distracted by a naked guy. And now I have nothing to reset back to. No, go to the joke. I was going to try to make some fucking joke. I wasn't even sure. I didn't even land it on how to make the joke. I was going to make some joke about it being a beach read. Sure.

Yeah. I was going to try to make some fucking joke about the book, the beach being a beach read. I don't know. This guy fucking, his pubes threw me off. Good for him. All right you know bush out yeah tell how old were you when you read this and and were you at did you did you backpack okay did i backpack i've only ever backpacked in europe i've never been to uh asia um and i've never done you know uh this sort of thing right you know uh but i've never

found a secret island where there's a sort of uh i've done that you know you can do that anywhere no i know i've never done anything like um but uh and i've never had backpacking not my vibe i don't i don't I want to be very comfortable. I love to be comfortable. You're more of a messenger bag guy. Yeah. But I did read this book in 1999 because every boy in my school read this book. Not everybody, but like lots of N word.

We would then, the word would spread of how gnarly the book was. It was like, oh, you have to read the beach. There's this scene where, you know, like, you know, it's like we were all, I guess, sort of the allure of substances and danger and weed farmers and guns and like just the darkness of the book was what we were into. And then I was actually scared to see the movie for this reason, because I thought it would be as gnarly as the book it is not nearly as gnarly as the book probably somewhat understandably just because

it would be tough but I did read The Beach at the time and I have never read Alex's other books, I never read The Tesseract or The Coma. But I did whatever. I mean, I like Alex Garland.

I mean, you know, Emily worked with him. I interviewed him once and he was the saddest sack I ever interviewed. Not in a bad way at all. But he was just so like, oh, you know, no one's going to like this. Was this for Annihilation? It was. This was for Men. No, this was for Men.

Which, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't like, I watched a very, very early cut of that as well and he was like, you know, exactly like, he was just like,

I know everybody's going to hate this, which whatever. I mean, he got to make a movie in COVID. Like, you know. Also, he was actually shooting that while we were in the room which made for a really like you know peaceful normal working process so yeah am i correct in believing that men was a situation where like that was an older script he had in his drawer and people came to him and they were like do you have anything that

is contained that you could shoot during covid no i don't think so he he pushed back very strongly against the idea that it was a covid movie uh when i mentioned when i floated that to him yeah it was an old script or whatever it was a script he'd long been working on but i think he has a lot of those right yeah a lot of sort of you know i love alex so much um he is a big old grump but i like big old grumps and and you know he was he was like a very i'm not a very very cool person to work with um a and i think you know i was trying to think back to stuff that we had talked about when we were you know because it was just sort of weird. Like we were doing this adaptation of a book that he wrote when he was in his

twenties. And so he's going back and revisiting this material with, you know, with an adult, you know, I mean, whatever, an older adult's eye.

And, and also just like the, what, what that scene is what the the tourism industry with the backpacker scene is now there is also changed a lot and and you know he shockingly he's super cynical about it um but uh yeah it was it was uh i just think that that's an interesting process to go through of like okay if you could imagine trying to like rework something that you wrote at such a different point in your life like that. a movie that's seen as a disappointment but it starts his relationship with the guy who he then makes two movies with like this is sort of an odd handoff movie between the hodge era of boyle and the garland era of boyle which then leads to garland being more of a film guy a film and tv

guy you know yeah it is so interesting that garland did not write this screenplay yeah but then takes the baton and writes well two screenplays right for for boyle right he writes 20 days later in sunshine i think that's it right yeah yeah and then i guess after that he's off to making his own movies pretty much. But yeah, it's a funny sort of... And then Hodge doesn't write for Boyle again until T2, right? But this is... I mean, it's why... Oh no, he wrote Trance.

Sorry, I always forget he wrote Trance. Well, I think he forgot he wrote Trance too. I think he forgot to write Trance is what I meant to say. Oh, no, it's just, you know, we'll we'll dig into this shortly. I'm I'm sure. But the whole McGregor of this movie he has talked about in recent years where he's like it wasn't about the beach. It's not that I was so offended by the fact that i didn't get to do the beach it's that i really thought like the four of us were in this together that it felt like it was boyle mcdonald hodge mcgregor

are gonna be a team yeah forever and it it feels I mean, those sorts of, you know, that kind of clique that you form early on with people that you, like, come up with is destined to come apart at some point or another. I think it would hurt to be, like, the only person. Like, say, a pussy posse. Like, if you in your 20s form a pussy posse with some other... Say some sort of pussy posse. Pussy aficionados.

Yeah. But, yeah, I think that obviously must have been a big bummer yeah it's just funny that like they have their falling out over not doing this movie together but then also hodge and boyle kind of like drift away they do and i wonder i mean after this movie it was clear i'm sure you it's obvious that Boyle, and we'll talk about it next time, but like perceived the need for a big reboot for himself, right? Like, you know, I can't keep doing these sort of cutting edge of cool movies about Gen Xers in their 20s, fucking, you know, like, you know, like, right? He drops the house style. He drops the sort of The thematic interests And starts moving around

In different directions No more Helvetica Tell that to Moby Look If this movie comes out Let's just put this movie And then I'll crack open the dossier Because we have to talk about all that drama

And everything else But if you put this movie in Ewan McGregor's career Just plop it in open the dossier because we have to talk about you know all that drama and everything else um but if you put this movie in ewan mcgregor's career right just plop it in and assume no other changes then it's basically just like in 99 he does star wars in 2000 he does the beach in 2001 he does mulan derision blackhawk down like it probably would just have been a net positive for him there obviously would have been a lot less hype around the movie. It would not have had the sort of massive weight of expectation on it. So, yeah, it probably wouldn't have been a problem. I think it would make him cooler.

I think it would have an effect of him getting to be cooler for longer. Obviously, he's very cool in Trainspotting. He's very cool in Velvet Goldmine very cool in velvet gold mine but like those are you know still kind of cult films at the time but if he got to be in like a film the size of the beach in that kind of sexy role i think that maybe he doesn't do down with love and then has a completely different career trajectory because i do think that like down with love well i don't know for him feels like a turning point um that's all i'll say about that yeah moulin rouge gives him down with love which sure like that he's in down with love because of moulin rouge like sure that could still happen

yeah um you know you're the you're the pretty pretty angel face. Those are both Fox movies. And I think they're both trying to capitalize on this guy being one of the leads of Star Wars. Like, it's this rare thing of not just, oh, he booked a huge movie, but it's like one of the biggest movies of all time in terms of anticipation. And one of the only roles that we know the character beforehand

you know yes like right so from the announcement it's humongous and you're also guaranteed that he's going to be one of the leads of all three movies yeah it's it's just a huge huge ass deal and little emily yoshida in iowa sees him on the cover of Premiere Magazine and is like, oh, it's my husband. I'm going to go watch Velvet Goldmine now. Hell yeah. As one does. Yeah, no, I don't want to make this a Ewan McGregor podcast when he's not even in this movie. His ghost obviously looms large over it.

But before you get into the dossier, I just wanted to pick a boat about you know um comments that that griffin may or may not have made oh boy yeah about ewan mcgregor's attractiveness marie also yelled at me about this she said she spit out her salsa that was expensive salsa okay yeah that hurts too if it comes out your nose like it does yeah i said that i thought he was not conventionally attractive he was kind of goofy handsome drag him wait are you talking about me drag my bell or griffin dragging you and both Or Griffin dragging Ewan. Both. I didn't think I was dragging him. It's a train.

It's a train. First of all, this was set in the framework of when I was young, I did not, I could not see physical attractiveness in men who didn't look like Ken dolls. Anyone who wasn't like super cartoonishly like defined features. And I do think he's got kind of like a goofy smile and a big nose and whatever. And it was me talking about in that episode how insane it is that I didn't used to understand women finding him attractive, which I now do. And I was trying to justify why through the eyes of a fucking 10 year old or 12 year old i wouldn't get that it's why i mean this is this is why we need a bunch of different perspectives on a podcast

you know it's just different lived experiences because you know well i've told you my lived experience vis-a-vis ewan mcgregor but uh yeah look it's it's his eyes are too big and dreamy and it's i understand it's goofy looking that he's that attractive it is one of the most heterosexual things i have ever said on this podcast it is disgusting uh oh now you're gonna do like a try guys apology you're gonna like look at the floor and be like it's fucked up i mean i shouldn't have done it it's fucked up yeah uh no i when i was when i started doing stand-up and the only people who liked me in the comedy scene were uh gay male stand-ups basically and they sort of like took me into their scene i was hanging out with them a lot and it felt like they were always like is he gay and he's sort of like testing this. Is he sort of like one foot in, one foot out on this?

And I remember one night being with one of these gay standups who was had sort of take me under his wing. And he was trying to get me to say, like, but like, if you if you had to fuck like one guy who was the one guy you would fuck, like what celebrity would you fuck? And my answer was Paul Rudd. And he sat back and he went, oh, wow, you are straight. That's so funny. Oh, my gosh. That is so funny. He was like, that's the straightest answer you possibly...

He was doing a Voight-Kampff test on you, and you said Paul Rudd, and he's like, yeah, that you couldn't be lying. He was like, fuck. Oh, God. So there's no chance here. I have no in. The conversation's over.

It's over. And the McGregor moment felt similar to me. We recorded that in an episode with Charles and David. And neither of them called me out in the moment. And then now every woman who has listened to the episode has attacked me. And they're right to do so. And I deserve to be dragged. And this is a moment for me to step back and listen.

Right, step back and take stock, and you'll be making a donation to the Hot Boy charity or whatever. I'll just be paying you and McGregor. The Hot Boy Access Fund. The Society for Hot Boys.

Wait a second, this doesn't sound good at all. I'll bring young Adam twice the hot boy access hotline young Adam is that's Ewan McGregor being like can I make a Danny Boyle movie please oh fuck we're not friends anymore I do feel like that's him being like can I get back there

anyway let me read you the dossier a little bit as Emily mentioned the beach novel comes out in 96. Alex Garland was only 26 years old when it came out. Dumb. And it gets in the hands of Danny Boyle, who is working on the post-production

of A Life Less Ordinary. And he is immediately like, you know, he feels the same way about it that he felt about the Trainspotting book, right? He like calls Andrew McDonald. Let's meet this guy right away uh and the book was a huge hit in britain um very quickly and uh garland which is funny like said initially he was like i don't know i kind of want like steven spielberg to make it like he admits that he was like in a complete like pipe dream world but then you know they sold it to figment which is boyle's company uh and fox uh who made a life less ordinary even though that movie

flopped is still basically like we want to be in the danny boyle business and and there there's probably a little bit of a okay danny you got that out of your system now are you ready to like play the game you know right the other interesting thing is that boyle and mcdonald had bought the rights to the beach themselves using their own salaries from a life less ordinary so they actually had more creative control than say if fox owned the book and was like we're gonna bring you aboard sure um yeah and so and then so what what is what do andrew john hodge and danny boyle decide to do they start backpacking all around to try and get into the mindset i guess and did you guys know this

that they they did this this is? No, unsurprising, but yeah, I didn't know that. When they found out Princess Diana died in 1997 was, they were backpacking. Yeah. He describes everyone getting phone calls at the same time, essentially,

which is kind of cool. The big change John Hodge made, obviously we sort of discussed this already, is that the ending, which is much darker and more bloody. How can you describe it? Are we going to talk about it? Can we spoil the... Oh, did they shoot it? I didn't...

I was reading that the dvd has the alternate ending and and and a danny boyle commentary explaining it had multiple deleted scenes i mean where was yeah there's a there's a scene where sal kills herself uh she turns the gun on herself but it's not like that's not quite what the book ending the ending of the book is basically like the the gunmen show up they throw the bodies of the dead you know tourists down and everyone's already going crazy because richard has like spiked their feast with drugs yeah because he's trying to escape and they all go fucking insane and start like tearing the bodies to pieces like it's very lord of the flies i i think that yeah i think that the escape group

is like kitty who's like uh who's like the the black guy who likes cricket patterson joseph and and uh then who else i think francoise is the other. Like, it's a trio. It's like, but it's not it's not Etienne and Francoise. It's like, yeah, it's Kitty and maybe one other person. I can't remember now. But yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. And then they that's their escape plan is that they are trying to get off the island and they just, yeah, like spike spike the feast with weed. yeah, like spike, spike the feast with weed. And yeah, then there's this total massacre and then they leave. And like the interesting, sorry about my dog, the interesting, uh, the, the, the key difference to me aside from like gory, violent frenzy part of it is that like, they don't talk to each other after it. Like that's sort of the last part of the book is him saying like, this was such an insane experience. We will never talk about it or see each other after it. Like that's sort of the last part of the book is him saying like, this was such an insane experience. We will never talk about it or see each other again. Like we just cannot acknowledge it.

And he says like, I don't know if Sal's alive or dead, but you know, I really hope, you know, I hope I never have to see her again. It's just like, and it's treated much more.

The whole thing is treated as like a huge traumatic incident rather than like, ah, that was fun until everybody died type thing. Waiting 20 minutes for a photo to load at an internet cafe that says never forget is a picture of them having the best time of their lives. The ending, the final, that is, it lands with a real thud. We can talk about it later, in my opinion, at least, in the movie. It's crazy. Yeah. The internet. Did anybody buy that at the time?

Like, would any? I don't know. My wife was laughing. She did not like that ending. She was like, wait a second. But anyway, Garland says, I love bloody bleak apocalyptic endings. You know, basically, he's like, I didn't want there to be any redemption in particular. Boyle's response is, I think our ending is superior to the book.

It's an amazing book. It's a modern parable, but it depends on this Lord of the Flies, Denouement, this terrible primitivism. But this is a sophisticated society they've built up. He just did not like the idea of them just turning into violent animals at the end of the movie. Okay. I get that that would be hard to pull off. That's a tough tonal switch. the idea of them just turning into like violent animals at the end of the movie okay i i i get

that that would be hard to pull off like you know it is funny that garland has succeeded in ending all three of the movies he directed basically that way though the equivalent for those stories right and look we'll get to it but that's everyone's complaint about sunshine for the people who have the complaints about it is that it veers into an Alex Garland sort of tonal genre shift final act. I love it though. That is bloody apocalypse. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, sunshine rules. The ending is good. Um, yeah, the whole movie is good. Five out of five masterpiece.

Agree. So now the big thing obviously is it's kind of a watergate ask who knew what when on whether or not ewan mcgregor was ever like you know offered the role like you know when did they switch and who made the switch was it an assumption or was it boil yes you know like what's the deal because obviously um they had given i think the book to ewan mcgregor maybe you know it's not like they had this never mentioned this to him um they gave him a copy of the book and boyle's recollection as he says it is that they essentially realized we're going to need a lot of money to make this movie. We're going to have to go to Thailand.

We're going to need a huge cast and crew, like $30-plus million. I think the movie ends up costing more like $50, right? Well, because someone's salary is $20 million. Right. I think that's the difference between the early number and the final number. And obviously, Ewan has not made Star Wars yet. He is not an a-list movie star and so you know that's why they make that decision is really budgetary and i really

everyone kind of talks around it even in recollection you know what i mean like no one just sort of says like we had a meeting with a fox honcho who was like you mcgregor can't be the star of this movie like but that does kind of feel like what happened right like that someone was just sort of sitting with them it was like you can't you need a movie star if you want to make something this big um yeah i mean a couple other things going on i mean you know emily and david the two of you were saying like how does it affect you and mcgregor's career if he does this movie in the middle of that run right and the problem is like life less ordinary has bombed it has made like no impact at the box

office and critics didn't like it right so there's already that thing of like, oh, fuck, are they not going to be able to translate their thing to the American studio system? This movie, as this story reveals, was never going to be able to be made on a reasonable budget, right? No matter what, it was going to end up costing $30 million, which is a big step up from the budgets he had been working with. million dollars which is a big step up from the budgets he had been working with and i think the version of it with ewan mcgregor probably makes 10 million dollars i think it for no it's a maybe 20 it's a similarly niche thing right for how off-putting this movie is the only reason it was even vaguely profitable was just because of leomania yeah and there being a dearth in the marketplace of anything where people could see him yeah and it was like a hot book but it wasn't a hot book here so it's like you'd have another thing that would

be bigger in the uk than it was here and you know and make that kind of money it's so double-edged all your success and hype comes from leo but then all the pressure yes and snarkiness comes from having him in the movie obviously it's some movie had to take this bullet some movie had to be like leo's follow-up and this is what it was and it's just like it's completely obliterated by that you know for better or worse and so i don't think there would have been obviously there wouldn't have been that same pressure on this movie if it were Ewan, but it also would have been

big enough, two flops in a row for Ewan and Boyle together. Even having Star Wars, I think people would have gone like, this guy's prospects as a leading man might be limited.

He might not do the run of Big Fish and Down With Love and Moulin Rouge if this movie bombs with him in the league whether that goes back to doing more uk indie stuff is that better or worse you know different question but the whole thing circling this is that like leo is being very tentative in committing to his post

titanic thing he's got the world by the balls but there's also this whole thing of like his dad being this his sort of mentor figure who's guiding his career and that he from a very young age is like i don't want to be a flash in the pan i want to build a career like de niro you know um and the thing he's so close to doing is american psycho which would have been fascinating as an even more extreme test of like how can you punish the young girls who are desperate to see hearthrob leo i mean i i think that movie is so much worse with him in it agreed and i like leo yes but it's interesting to think about without you know obviously what tanks that is that he wants 20 million dollars in a way this is

his i i literally thought of american psycho though as i was re-watching this last night in terms of like an unintentionally but movies where you're just introduced to a lead character and you're like this guy sucks and like this entire thing is gonna kind of feel like a satire around this guy sucking. And his sort of very willfully ignorant naivety about adventure or being a rebel or whatever is very kind of works i don't think he would be bad in american psycho but i think this is like a maybe a better use of his vibe everyone in this movie spends the whole time being like what is this guy good for exactly like right what do you bring it to the table buddy you know which is until he tells us his shark story and then everybody's like we love this this is amazing but but it is the whole thing i mean he clearly was in this place where he

desperately wanted to kill baby leo right like of course he's he's in that knowing how much he revered those 70s guys and studied their careers there someone was relaying this story the other day of him like goofing around and like you know being a party boy when they were filming this boy's life and there was a point where de niro and ellen barkin pulled him aside and said like look if you want to have a serious career and you have the talent and you have the ability but you want to have the kind of movie career that we had you want to have a serious career and you have the talent and you have the ability, but you want to have the kind of movie career that we had, you need to get serious and just start taking this as a job. And Leo's response was apparently some version of like. The kind of career we had, let me take stock quickly. OK, you have been in Raging Bull, Goodfellas,

Mean Streets, and you have been in Switch, the movie where you and Jimmy Smith's like Switch bodies, the Blake Edwards comic, it was like just slamming on Ellen Barkin, right? It was like little Mr. Hotshot where he's like, I don't want your career. I want De Niro's career. That's the one I want, you know? And like you think about Dustin Hoffman in his postgraduate phase where he's like now the kind of like glib young man, you know, face of a generation. And then he's like, cool, I'm going to do Midnight Cowboy.

I'm going to do Straw Dogs. I want to kill like cutesy Dustin Hoffman. And everything he's considering doing at this point is something that's going to blow up and sort of turn off the audience that he kind of resents, that he would like to shake off and develop a new audience for. And American Psycho, weirdly, is so much more arch and the character is so much more extreme that I think it would have done it less successfully. Even if the movie would have been worse, people would have accepted it as like, well, he's playing this character that's like so unlike him versus in the beach. There's this weird quality to watching this and being like, this feels pretty similar to the way people talk about Leo hitting the New York nightclubs in the 90s like the energy of him just coming in and like starting shit and being mr like hot shit you know yeah and you can

except like you can feel him trying to kill baby leo in the performance because richard is trying to kill baby richard and some whoever baby rich Richard was which is which is why I like this even though I find him so annoying I find him and I think it's a big problem that he is so unlikable in this but I like it he's unlikable in a movie where he I think are supposed to like I don't know if we're supposed to like him i just don't know well in the book you definitely i mean the book it's on the you know it kind of it it's you know up up for debate i think but i i feel like in the movie especially the way it ends that kind of gives it away and that we were supposed to like be running for him well look the ewan of it all again speaking you

know boyle has made three films about three very unlikable protagonists played by Ewan McGregor, and you like them every time. So, yes, he is good usually at translating that, and he probably doesn't do as good a job here. Well, also, he would be using his... Would he be using his American accent in this? Because...

Well, no, I think... No, no way. That was the big shift was to make the character american right yeah yeah yeah yeah there's yeah because in the he's he's supposed to be an analog for garland right garland said yeah yeah he's he's you know this is based on rumors he heard when he was backpacking in the philipp upshot is that ewan and danny do not speak for many years uh which is sad we will bid goodbye to you and regregor now

on this mini-series until train spotting two uh you know ewan has said it was a waste right like he he's expressed a lot of regret over it but at the same time maybe it was good for both of them especially danny boyle to just do different things i don't know you know maybe they needed to break up like it's it's tough leonardo di caprio obviously is in the middle of leomania he can't fucking go outside without people chasing him right it really was that there's that photo where he's like surrounded by a crowd and he looks like he wants to die yes do you guys know what i'm talking about no it's like a famous press photo i can probably find it, but like it just just kind of summing up like how insane the post-Titanic, you know, experience was for him. I mean, I was trying to like, you know, for for listeners of the show who are younger and did not live through this or were not old enough to have memories of this.

Pattinson was like briefly the only thing that even came close to this, right? In terms of like a guy in a movie and specifically like his performance in that movie, the ideal of what the character represents, especially Romeo and Julie and Titanic back to back, right? Just became like a rock star star level thing not just oh here's an actor that people have crushes on but that he like became like this mythical figure and then that's added to the whole thing of like you're constantly hearing stories about how he's like painting the town red right yeah and those both of those roles are like where he is i mean i think i i think i said this all that it was like what five years ago that i did the titanic

podcast with you guys 27 how long yeah 27 years yeah okay yeah uh it was probably seven years ago i mean for real that's insane. Yes. But, yeah, I mean, he is, and I was riding to this even watching his final moments dying on that door in Titanic when I caught the tail end of it on TV. He is a manic pixie dream boy in both of those movies, and he is an object to be projected upon for you know tragic teen girl fantasies and that's why it works so well and it like in a way it doesn't matter that he's painting the town red or like not being this tragic like tragic dying boy in in real life because that that mythology is so powerful and those movies were just seen by everybody so that was him um and he was so damp so damp the the disconnect between what he represented on screen and and the gossip about him in real life only like it was this weird

electric charge that each one helped boost the other even though they were so diametrically opposed but i i do think there is there's something that i i had never seen this movie before and so much of what i knew about this movie was just the the lore of the fallout between mcgregor and boyle and the like would this have been a better movie with mcgregor and for me this is kind of like um barry lyndon where it's like the better actor giving the better performance would not have necessarily made this movie any better there's something about casting the guy who is a little bit too close to this. Yeah.

Who is maybe in a bit of a self-destructive spiral. 100%. And doesn't know, has no self-awareness about his approach to this role. I think that's the thing. I don't think his image of himself matches how he should approach this role at this point in his career no but also just so fully handing himself over to a director and being like do you know how to use me what do you want for me you know the the marching in the video game sequence the banjo kazooie thing it's just like it's astonishing because you just question who he would put that amount of faith and trust into you know

and you can like talk about like what are the funniest or weirdest or oddest or most shocking things that like scorsese or tarantino have gotten him to do but there's something about like really you're this you're not more protective of your screen image at this point where you're cool with just being like part of boyle stylistic experiments and looking like a fucking goober in the process but there's something he's revealing in himself here that he could not consciously give up you know but that he's sort of like volunteering, that he's sacrificing at the altar, the idea of this movie and what he thinks Boyle can do for him. And it is like you talk about the shark story and it's so similar to you read the what is it, the New Yorker pieces, the Leo Prince of the city. But all the accounts of like, you know, they talk to club owners and they're like, yeah, he comes in, he starts fistfights and they're like, he starts fistfights and they're like, yeah, but no one's upset about it. You can

tell he's just kind of having fun. Even the people he's fistfights aren't like upset with him. And that just stops after a while because no one's actually upset about anything. Right. And there's that weird thing where you're like, why is this guy getting away with this? Yeah. Why is like everyone kind of cool with this? Not only like of his game like yeah yeah yeah i don't know there's something very um there's some i mean in general i think this is true but there's something very cruisy about like this this stage of leo i think um but in a way that is less successful that i think tom cruise is what because because it's the same thing it's like put me in your hands i've researched what director I want to work with.

And I'm committed to this. I'm going to give you 110%. But I think Tom Cruise pulls it off way more, especially in this kind of time period, than Leo does. Well, Leo also was good at a certain kind of tortured intensity thing. Yeah, Basketball Diaries. Absolutely Absolutely. Right. And Juliet, that was his whole thing. Right. Yeah. And, you know, it came out so much more in the way of water press, but how much he didn't want to do Titanic, how much he didn't even want to read for it, that he was like, I don't want to be a movie star i want to be a serious actor and that it was the challenge to cameron of like this is harder to do than the things that you think are more impressive there are fewer

people who can do this which has sort of been the central conflict of leo and everything post titanic is him running away from the thing he can do that so few people can to try to prove he's the type of serious actor that is a lot more common. You know, but I think he threaded that needle. I think he finally did. Yeah. I think he fully figured that out. But all right.

So here's what the hugest mistake, in my opinion, and it's one they're aware of because Andrew McDonald says this is Andrew McDonald, this is a movie that's clearly going to be marketed towards young men. And they are going to be scared of Leonardo DiCaprio because that is the audience that's like, well, that guy's for girls, right? Like that guy's, you know, from romance movies, essentially. And I don't think they ever figured that out. Especially in this era. They're aware of it

yeah exactly young women like something all straight men in america become violent violently opposed to it they're supposed to be scared of that um yeah i mean pattinson is like a similar thing i mean i was thinking it was like when you're talking about him as being the the only comparable thing it's like who if you're doing an snl sketch at the time who's going to be the person that you bring up as like somebody that a teenage girl is freaking out over? And it was Pattinson for a long time. We don't really have one other than like maybe Timmy Chalamet right now. It may be Harry Styles.

I was going to say it's a little Timmy, it's a little Harry, but it's like you have to combine the two of them almost. Yeah, but like both of those, both of them are going to have an interesting second phase of their career because Robert Pattinson ended up circumventing this by going underground, essentially. And Leo never did that. Leo could have actually gone quite small here and then rebuilt his reputation as whatever the serious actor he wanted to be. But he only chose high profile pictures. And I think that wasn't going to work out for him for those exact reasons. But that is how he does. He's like, okay, forget it.

I'll work with Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. Right. And then that's it. That's how he rebuilt it. Then he just did four movies in four years, three directed by Scorsese and one directed by Spielberg. That was the creation of his modern star persona. He did those movies, we we are all standing like he was dinged for gangs even for gangs of new york is still being baby like like when does he

become yeah he gets to do these big movies and work with these people that he admires that everybody admires and would consider the pinnacle of of what an actor could be involved in at that time but like is he respected on the level of a de niro then i don't think so like no like it takes a long yeah i mean well he he kind of is now i mean he got his oscar finally like i don't i don't know he got his oscar and he's he's a big major star but de niro is just kind of whatever that's sort of special right it hard, you know, there's nobody that's quite like that anymore. But this is also like, you know, if we're playing this comparison game, right?

The Pattinson comparison falls apart immediately because his Titanic is a franchise. He has to do it five times, right? Yeah, which that hurts him. He's stuck in it. Right, and then there's also this relationship. Oh, the relationship has spread off screen. That's a in it. Right. Yeah. Right. And then there's also this relationship. Oh, the relationship has spread off screen. That's a thing that people are projecting onto.

There's all the additional drama about that. And then, like, the first couple of movies he does outside of Twilight immediately don't connect. You know, it's like Water for Elephants and Remember Me. It's like you're not getting. Water for Elephants. But you're not getting the immediate, like, oh, they'll go see anything he's in you know no one's like losing their shirt on those movies but like it's not the same thing as even this where you're like you got a bunch of tween girls to see a really weird movie just because his face was

not losing his shirt on it then that there's your problem that's the problem uh but but the other thing is that like as you're saying patt Pattinson then went small, right? He, like, found his arthouse directors. He took his supporting parts. He, like, slashed his quote. The whole reason American Psycho falls apart, despite the fact that he really wants to do it, that he wants to do it with Stone, that that's a major director he wants to work with it's getting close to coming together and then leo goes it's 20 million dollars right i need to be 20 million dollars it may not just be leo i'm sure leo's team is like by the way this is leonardo dicaprio so it will be costing the leo the leo machine is now saying 20 million dollars and that's an artisan movie and they're not going to be able to pull that money and so that's the moment where fox senses like there's an opportunity here they go to boil you know and as we said the timeline of this is all confusing right right but he's just not clear who has the idea but he did basically said there was that sense of if you're going to

be working on a bigger budget you might need someone who's a little more proven and then at some point the word crosses that like leo's in play right leo's available and he would be interested in this and we would be willing to pay him 20 million dollars and if we fox pony up the money we get leo um but that's part of the thing that leo refuses to he's going to do his weird movie on a big scale and get paid massive money for it rather than frame it as a one for me so the way boyle puts it is look if he's gonna do american psycho that's burning his star in his romantic star image down completely and i think it's better to try and exploit that right this is a movie that's trying to lure you into this beautiful secret island we figured let's leverage his persona you know to sort of get the audience into it and then we can kind of mess with it um so he boyle himself is like i did not want to do

anything as extreme as american psycho where it's like oh this pretty man you know he's actually chopping off reese witherspoon's head and putting it in the fridge. Yes. And that's where Andrew McDonald's sort of self-awareness comes as well. I think once you're on the roller coaster, it's like, okay, let's do it, right? It's like, okay, we signed him up. We have the money. I guess now it's time to go to Thailand and fucking like try and make this movie and then

trying to make this movie they have a really hard time this movie was really hard to make and it seems like it was kind of a nightmare um just because of the you know shooting on location and all that stuff and uh like it's just sort of it's just funny that like you get leo to get all the money right you get leo partly to be able to make this movie but then it's fucking awful making this movie like this is danny boyle's apocalypse now except he doesn't get a masterpiece out of it uh yeah well and this movie obviously like directly calls it shot with apocalypse now i was listening to james gray's wtf and he just talked about how apocalypse now was his activation movie that was the thing that made him realize that like cinema was an art form coppola was his god it's so much of why he single-mindedly was so obsessed with doing lost city of z for so long and then basically the

second he got to the jungle he was like what the fuck am i doing here why why it's horrible here don't go to the jungle don't go to the jungle do you realize how complicated it is to get any piece of equipment here okay now that for a whole movie set like that's what we have to do we have to take it on a boat we have to it's so stupidly complicated to shoot a movie in an apartment let alone a controlled sound yeah and there's bugs it can rain for days on end and fuck you up for you fuck up your schedule right you have no control of the weather yeah like i i did that the larry fessenden movie beneath that was like jaws but with a bunch of high schoolers and a prehistoric fish in the water and we filmed that in like a reservoir in connecticut and basically they built a barge in the middle of

this reservoir with like a camera jib and the whole crew was on this barge and they had multiple boats each on a different side that was like hidden by a rope underwater at a different length so they could get shots of us at different lengths but basically we would get into that boat we'd be in that boat the whole day regardless of camera setups because they couldn't like pull us back in over and over again And it was like a four minute motorboat ride from land to the barge. And it was impossible and everything went wrong and everything sank. And that was like a far less extreme situation than that. But it was one of those things where like the adage is you don't shoot on water, never shoot on water, never work with children or animals. never shoot on water never work with children or animals and even if this movie isn't shot on water you're shooting it on an island surrounded by water where the whole point is like let's find like beautiful untouched land and then fuck with it and then bring a whole company in to make their movie on top of it yes obviously this film was tagged for the incredible amount of damage that was supposedly done to uh the locations that they shot on and all that and the many accidents that uh occurred while making the

movie now it's there's such a spotlight on this movie that's probably part of what's going on but it does just seem like it was a nightmare uh you know boyle says they have been misrepresented he thinks they behaved as well as they could have and they tried their best not to like you know fuck anything up with the acknowledgement of like movies have an effect on the environment and all that um garland says garland's quotes are so salty i just love it every single quote from alex garland he says there's something completely patronizing about painting thailand as a virginal innocent place that's about to be raped by the western beast you know the tourism exists it's not a bad thing it's

an income like anyway so garland very salty about that uh and uh the but i think the craziest thing happened obviously is this giant boat accident where they were in these two giant boats bringing. I know they were shooting. I think I think it was they were going to shoot a scene with DiCaprio and Swinton go leaving the island to go make to go get the rice and all that. And there's a giant storm kicks up and capsizes the boats and they have to abandon ship. We're talking like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tilda Swinton, Darius Kanji, Danny Boyle, like the major people involved in this movie. And they have to float around in the water waiting to get picked up by speedboats. And there's a crazy storm going on.

And Danny Boyle basically says basically says like it was really frightening uh these grown men who are like grips and gaffers who are really heavy guys were crying we were really lucky nobody died like you know and he says like leo was there he's a good swimmer he helped people who weren't a good swimmer like it was not a flippant event like it was very intense it's very interesting to read read just how sort of straightforward. Danny Boyle is so open. He really talks about all the bad stuff in every one of these dossiers.

And he really makes it sound like a nightmare. I'm kind of fascinated, and I was thinking this watching this film, but Danny Boyle seems like a distinctly unhaunted person sure yes right right so cheerful for a guy whose movies can often have this sort of nihilistic attitude yeah he he's always so sunny about everything and it doesn't feel performative. And even just the beginning of this movie feels so that the Gen X-y is all of this fucking bullshit, meaningless, you know? Yeah.

It feels the sentiment feels honest in the films. the sentiment feels honest in the films. And then even when I was watching the behind the scenes sort of like footage from Trainspotting, he's so up the whole time and he's like, you know, I mean, heroin's a lovely drug. There's a reason people do it. It's great. Yeah, I mean, well, it seems like there's something if you are able to acknowledge things like, for example, a shoot being a nightmare or like, which a lot of people would be, you know, prideful about or wantibility that you need to have as a director then like yeah i think then you are more you're more able to depict like that kind of short-sightedness and ego egomania and and and you know vice and stuff in a way like i don't know i feel like he

has clear eyes about that stuff he has has more of a perspective, yeah. He does seem pretty devoid of ego as well. I mean, when you hear him talk about his films, it really feels like this is a collaborative process. This is a creative process. I'm not some genius with some perfect vision of the thing that I'm yelling at other people to execute. Well, like, you can't. I'm yelling at other people to execute. Well, like you can't. And talking about this movie specifically,

like you can't be this guy like Richard and make this movie. It just doesn't work. And I don't think that Danny Boyle is. I don't think Alex is at all like for the book. I can't speak to John Hodge. I don't know. I don't know anything about him. But, you know, I think that juries out on Leo.

Like, Leo might be that guy. And so I think everybody needs to have a little bit of distance from that guy in order for this whole thing to work. And I think almost everybody does. Speaking to this, this is Boyle's recollection. He says, it's my least enjoyable personal experience on a film. It has nothing to do with the actors, but the lack of empathy I felt with the characters and the situation they created for themselves. I think he just, in retrospect, he's just like, I was not as connected to that material as I maybe hoped to be. Right.

You know what I mean? It's so fascinating when his first movie was about murderers and his whole pitch was, I don't think we need to make these characters sympathetic. We should own it. But that's the thing is that they don't own it in this movie. There's no real criticism. Which again, I like. Well, there's maybe no criticism, but they certainly are not self-aware,

any of the characters in this. Sure. They're very lacking in that. And the idea of a commune full of you know tourists on this island shared with a weed farm is is really taken at face value as like a cool thing and and and it kind of leaves these open you know these kind of untied up things as far as bugs and sal and their motivations because they're the kind of only people up things as far as bugs and Sal and their motivations, because they're the kind of only people who have a sort of sinister aspect to

them, but everything else is kind of like, wouldn't this be sick? And, and, and if they, if he had owned the fact that like, maybe there would be some things about it that weren't sick.

I mean, sick in a positive way, then, then i think he might have had a film he could have plugged into more and that's honestly that's the book is that that version of that film this is why this movie should have what you know the the bad ending you kind of want them all to be punished by the end of the way i mean yeah uh i i think the movie yeah it feels like the movie gets there in the sort of standoff scene right and then it that's why it feels so disappointing when it then sort of cops out of it because it yeah yeah does get sort of exciting where you go

like oh fuck this movie is now starting to reckon and sort of revisit all of its everything that's presented to us through a different lens. And the whole Christo shark thing too. I mean, in the book, that's one of the most interesting kind of sequences because it really is like how this unfortunate event is like this poison to the whole group. And like everybody's instinct is like, well, I will pretend I do not see it. And it's sort of this really the way it's written is really it really feels like this like sociological study and i i mean i think it's pulled off to pretty well and that that whole thing is pulled off pretty well in the books but

again you're you're you're talking about some pretty dark shit there as far as like group think and like you know a collective you, I don't know, like everybody's being very stubborn about this culture that they're trying to create and maintain. But then, yeah, it kind of opts out. It kind of, yeah, it kind of walks away from it. But also the fact that so much of this movie basically hinges on him wanting to steal this guy's girlfriend, right? I mean, that's like so much of the motivation of this film which is so similar to all the elizabeth berkeley stories you read from like peak leomania i mean just the fact that monogamy is a major issue on this beach at all yeah it kind of annoys me that like that it's like is this not supposed to be some sort of like free-flowing utopian semi-nude paradise and then

everyone's like but wait did you check with your girlfriend that i could you know it's like what the what are we talking about here yeah yeah i'll be fucking the boys and the girls all together it's almost the single most shocking and surprising thing in the movie when he has told us when what what is this and she's like well we're having sex it fun. You shouldn't take it seriously. By the way, never mention this to anyone on the island. Our society will collapse. Right. Yeah. And anytime you're getting into stuff where he's like hallucinating, he's like questioning reality and stuff.

And then it's like, oh, Sal told everybody that she fucked you. And then it's just like, oh, no. He's like, now I'm ruined. It's like high school shit i mean i will say like to the degree i will talk about anything that we did on the on our version of the beach that was not an issue version of the beach right you threw that you threw that rule in the garden everyone was fucking yeah so all right let's talk about the script to the story to some extent let's let's move through the plot i just want to say as a a way into this, I had not seen this before last night.

Oh, right. You had never seen it. Never seen it. And I sort of like half remembered the marketing campaign, which I remember being pretty vague. And so much of the selling of the movie was just Leo's back. This will be a hit because Leo is back. He's looking up. His face is on a poster.

I remember the trailer just being the soundtrack and the shots of the beach and being kind of vague about what happened. Maybe the trailers were more direct than than I remember. And I think between that and just sort of retroactively applying what I now know about garland and his work i had it my head this movie was more uh supernatural i i thought there was a supernatural kind of twilight zony thing going on there's like a smoke monster maybe like a beach that makes you old or something or that yeah yeah no but i was almost kind of like, I was, you know, queuing this movie up last night and I was like, oh, it's kind of cool. I've gone all these years and I still haven't had ruined for me what the twist is in the beach.

And I was ready for like the sci-fi hook. And it wasn't like I was still waiting for it at the end of the movie. But at a certain point, I went on the Wikipedia and I was just like, like oh i've just completely invented that this is what this movie is about is about this actual tangible attempt at a new type of society yeah but i mean if it's pulled off and i think it is in the book it's like the the supernatural monster that you feel like is lurking because i agree like it feels like something like that could happen in any moment it ends up just being people which is totally a garland thing but like like and that and that feels like it satisfies that that need for some you know kind of spooky

ineffable thing uh i i yeah i didn't feel disappointed by it at all but like you know to ease into the beginning of the movie itself the setup feels like it is potentially teeing up that kind of movie when you start with the sort of chaos of leo roaming the streets and especially when you get to robert carlisle like that's such a fucking treasure island like there's a map yeah i tell you and robert carl robert carlisle is like half demon in this movie anyway he does not seem like a real person and the fact that there's sort of all this lore about it uh you know it it feels so mythical what they're talking about whether or not it even exists and if it does exist is it something where there's a giant frozen tundra wheel at the center and it's only available on

certain lunar eclipse days or whatever um but yes you start you start with with leo roaming the streets looking for a good time uh yeah leo's in bangkok uh he meets a cute French couple Françoise and Etienne Françoise is played by Virgin Leodène who is so pretty in my opinion she's cute she's unbelievably pretty I would say

she's really amazing in the SAS movie Cold Water if anyone's ever seen that I would say Guillaume Canet is kind of annoyingly handsome in this yeah you know French you want to punch him

now that guy obviously he's an actor but obviously he directs as well Guillaume Canet and now he is the new Asterix which Griffin I forgot to tell you this but maybe asterix uh which griffin oh really i forgot i forgot to tell you this but uh maybe asterix should go on the patreon david i'm glad you said it because

i was going to it was part of my big pitch yeah the live action i think those movies like start start okay get really bad and then there's one that everyone likes that seems to be the sort of yeah anyway yeah but the other wild thing is this one is basically them readapting one of the stories they've already made into a movie. This is the Dark Phoenix of them. But now it's Canet, who was 10 years ago supposed to be the edgy adult director. And now he's given into franchise shit. And he's playing the guy. And he got Coutillard to play cleopatra right his wife

or partner or whatever anyway meets them meets daffy daffy's like listen there's this fucking crazy island uh this uninhabited beach that a bunch of people live on and uh then he kills himself i'm surprised you could even make all of that out david that that's what he was saying because it's a very quiet performance it's sort of hushed tones i love this performance i think robert carlyle is one of the best things in this movie like yeah i agree and and you have like even though daffy's in a very limited way like he's so important to the like mythology, mythology of why everybody's doing it. I like that he gets sprinkled back in.

I like any time Daffy pops up. Yeah. Being like Hugo Weaving in Cloud Atlas, basically. Just like, ah! Yeah, doing that. Carlisle, one of those guys for me who I think basically can't go over the top. Like, the bigger he gets, the more... Right.

Yeah, and it feels like when he goes this big, you're like, you're tapping into a genuine mania. This doesn't feel like someone eating a ham sandwich. It feels like... Yeah, you have unlocked some horrible chamber in your mind. But yes, his energy is just incredible. And this is the thing also, like, yeah, he's crazy, whatever.

He's a lunatic, but I just find him so much more likable than Leo, especially in this opening, that when like Leo does the thing where he's like, you're fucked in the head, right? I'm just like, fuck you, man. This guy's trying to tell you a story.

Like, have some respect. Yeah, by the way, it's a good fucking story. It's a better story than the dumbass shark story you're going to tell you a story. Like, have some respect. Yeah. By the way, it's a good fucking story. It's a better story than the dumbass shark story you're going to tell us. Also, coming off of Carlisle playing Begbie, the worst hang of all time, I'm like, I'm down to spend a night with Daffy. I want to see where this goes. Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's wild to see someone have stabbed themselves a bunch of times and be like, dude, I gotta go to that island.

It seems like a really good time. Yeah. I gotta go. A guy whose energy to begin with was not like chilled out. It's not like that. No. I love this island. It made me the man I am.

Island's so good, makes you stab yourself when you leave damn i gotta get that yeah yeah but again i think this is like the thing that should make the movie like a satire on this but it kind of misses being the satires that like to see that and then to have that character be like yeah exactly like i gotta see this island is funny it's funny and it should be funny and it's like and that's the kind of thing that people call the the gen x criticism like the gen x why it's a gen x classic or something is that there's something i mean i do want to kind of get into this later like why it has that reputation but that that there's this sort of this tunnel vision for this character. It has that reputation because it's like many a right before 9-11 movie

where you're like, the fuck is this guy? What's he even worried about? He's like, you don't even want to know about my mom and dad. Anyway, I had to go to Thailand and then go to the secret murder beach because it's the only way for me to experience anything because I don't understand what I'm supposed to do with myself. It's the perfect end of history thing where it's just like i don't know what there's no cold war america's won do i just buy things like or do i like seek authenticity which probably

is not available to me it's the seeking authenticity thing though and like that the whole thing is this metaphor for trying to get into the band before everybody else gets into the band 100 right yeah the beach is only good because it's secret yeah yeah and like i can't have this great thing that is like you know beautiful and amazing be seen by anybody like heaven forbid and then it just becomes this toxic self-defeating cycle so let me throw something out is the beach that good is it that good okay it doesn't actually seem that good it seems too volleyball david i didn't think you would go there because you're a big beach guy i don't i love the beach the beach

i was watching this movie and i was thinking this beach looks pretty nice. Now, was I at any point thinking I want to be there? No. But have I ever thought that about a beach? You as as a mild connoisseur of beaches, you feel like this beach isn't worth, say, the risk of murder? say the risk of murder it's fine right it's a it seems like a nice place and you know if someone could just like open a door and be like hey do you want to spend the day on this beach i'd be like that sounds incredible but like that he's there and he's like my god a whole new world we can play volleyball we eat fish that we get out of the water and then we play more volleyball and then we sit on the beach and then it's time for fish and then we play volley it's like they don't do anything they just it's fine it's it's a little boring but this is the thing about the beach it doesn't need to be good because it has the most incredible marketing campaign in the world like he could not get there and be disappointed by it because he's just like fucking like swam across a channel and dodged dudes with AKs and stuff.

The journey is part of the appeal. If you got there and you were like, you couldn't admit it. You could never admit it to yourself that you did all that for that. Weed grows on the beach. Let's not forget that. Okay. That's kind of a big thing. But you can't have the weed because I guess they get some of the weed. But, you know, they got a bit of weed.

No, what I was going to say is that you guys were talking about it from the lens of, you know, his search for authenticity. But so much of it, too, is the like this world is too fucking safe. I need to like like experience danger but it has to be danger with an escape hatch it's the amount of danger i want to take before i get on a plane and then resume my life on rails you know this is you say pre-911 movie i think also fundamentally a pre-jackass movie when when in the 2000s men finally figured out the healthy way to work through their lust for danger tape yourself to a giant rocket wear a silly costume film it put it on mtv or in theaters well importantly film it you know like a lot of this it just scratched if you can if you can share with other people the crazy shit that you did. Like I'm sure that a lot of the sort of lingering dissatisfaction that he's had with every single experience he's had thus far is like, well, but nobody knows how cool I am for having, you know, drank the snake blood or whatever.

I haven't shared it on my TikTok or whatever. I mean, but there's you know, there's there's a bit of the into the wild thing where it's like all of this is fake. All of you are lying. I want to be in touch with what's real. I want to have actual challenges. But this is coming from a much more aggro guy whose attitude is a lot more about domination in some way. But when you're that age, you don't want to go to a resort. Right? That's too tame.

You want to go and experience something that, like, not everyone else can see. So I do understand a little bit of it. I don't know, but, like, resorts have, like, bathrooms. Yeah, I love bathrooms. No, I get what you're saying, Ben. I'm just, I am the opposite. I'm just, I am, I am the opposite.

I was like, I want to go to a place that is air conditioned. Yeah. Well, there's a point when they're like hacking their way through the fucking rainforest after they've like, like before they jump off the cliff and finally get there where you're just like,

guys, are you on vacation still? Cause it doesn't look like you're on vacation anymore. It looks like you're exhausted and hungry and you're bare feet in the fucking jungle. Like, doesn't seem fun to me. But yeah. Everyone's lying about who they are or are not fucking. Yeah.

Yeah. On top of all your other problems, you have a lot of triangle look big they get to the beach it's run by tilda swinton in basically her first performance in a studio film uh so she's kind of like a casting coup at this point you know she may i say it's the coolest go ahead is this the hottest she's ever been in a movie no orlando she's very hot in orlando she's very hot in this i usually find her hot i will say um i don't it's like too tough a question in a way she's incredible in orlando um but did you knew she was in it griffin right i did did know she was in it. I thought she was going to be whatever mythical. I think I thought she was going to have a similar role to Vanilla Sky.

She would come out and maybe have like hooves or wings or something. Yeah, right, right. Or she'd be some AI. Be a mermaid. Yeah. She'd be a role in Constantine. She'd just be in the same costume. That's what I was hoping.

She doesn't do that enough. She hasn't played the fallen angel Gabriel enough. Yeah. Bring it back. Hopefully she will in Constantine 2, right? Yes. Let me write Constantine 2.

Yeah, you know what? Yes. Yes. Have they announced a fucking writer for Constantine 2? And if they have, why isn't it Emily Yoshida?

Can we announce it right here now? Like, I gotta call my shot. I'm gonna write Constantine 2. You heard it here first, folks. Constantine 2 has to be clean of the James Gunn DC stuff, right? Or is that going to get fucked up? Not my problem.

As the writer of Constantine 2, not my problem. Yeah. You know what? In fact, Emily, why don't you, as the writer of Constantine 2, formally announce now that it you know what, in fact Emily, why don't you as the writer of Constantine 2 Formally announce now that it is Clean of the James Gunniverse It's DC Elseworlds It's DC Elseworlds

It's an Elseworlds Who's, okay, alright Patterson Joseph, speaking of hotties Who plays Keedy Just rocking the most incredible body I love Patterson Joseph. This is early in his career. He's great.

Um, he's got fun energy. He loves cricket, you know, he's cheerful. Uh, you've got unhygienics, the chef,

uh, the fishmonger essentially. Uh, the thing about Keedy and this version of things is when you're like, when you, we're going to keep coming back to this shark speech because it is the crux of like what makes him obnoxious and what's supposed to be a proof of his charisma or something. But like Keity is already so charismatic and fun and like is doing church and shit and playing cricket with people and he's hot. And and like it's like why did you have to wait for this guy to come like you already have kitty here he seems like a great

hang he seems like a cool like you know mascot person to get behind as your like spiritual leader if if sal's gonna be the spooky leader you know i don't know this island isn't in need of a party dude it's very true yeah party dude's coming out the wazoo yeah he brings nothing to the island i think that works as part of the sort of quiet satire of the movie of like this is almost like a playground that's been set up for him but it's true he doesn't really do much apart from have sex with uh francoise in the ocean uh and then yes supposedly kill a shark uh plankton glowing plankton sex yes and then he kills a shark and brags about it and everyone cheers and it's this monologue and it's horrible and it just doesn't work they love it yeah i mean am i wrong did you guys like that sequence where he does that monologue? No.

What are you asking here? Do I, in the reality of this movie, like the monologue, or do I think the scene works? The latter. I know you don't like the monologue in the reality of the movie, but like, because I don't even find that, and like, hey, this is Leo. He's given great

bombastic, you know, sort of speeches in other movies. He figures that out. Yeah. But I just don't quite get his energy here. Like, he feels like a phony. Well, you're totally right. It feels like this is an audience full of plants who were told to laugh and clap for him.

It's just like, it's so funny. Paradise Sim. Yeah, yeah. They're like, it's like Truman Show. It's like everybody's like waiting. They're watching him approach and be like, Sim. Yeah, yeah. It's like Truman Show. It's like everybody's waiting. They're watching him approach and be like, okay, guys, places. We're going to make this guy feel so special. It really does feel like that, though.

That is another reason, though, why I think this movie is helped by having Leo specifically in it. You need that guy who just has that weird vibration about him at that time, you know, like the kind of just like absurdly famous charismatic person where people basically convince themselves to laugh, even if nothing funny is happening. Yes. There's just some odd energy circling this guy. Yes. There's just some odd energy circling this guy. I largely agree with that. I think that's why Leo's casting, whether or not he's giving a good performance,

there's no one like him at this moment for this movie. No. So there's just something unique about watching that. But Richard himself, i don't know i if i were like you know like if the island brought in a consultant right to be like hey can you sort of streamline some processes here i'd be like this guy get him out next boat that doesn't do anything i'm sorry here was a thought I had while watching this movie. Looks fun to be unbelievably hot. You mean in temperature or in attractiveness?

Attractiveness. I run hot. I don't have a problem in that area. I'll sweat at the drop of a hat. It's pretty good. Okay, Ben. Okay, Ben. Don't want it too hard. Don't fucking big dog the rest of us.

Hot Rod Hosley over here. Everyone in this movie is basically wearing an open Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts and Tevas, and they all look super hot. And all of their hair has been sun bleached the same color. Right, right, right.

I just like, these are my least favorite kind of people, like, in real life. So, I don't like these people. They can be super hot, but I'm still like, oof. These people are the reason I will largely avoid the beach and vacation spots. It's not that I was, like like getting horned up watching all of them there's just sort of the moment where it's like this love triangle all three of them are incredibly pretty right and then the moment when the sort of island opens up and they go inside the little hut you know their meeting space or whatever you just see that everyone looks like that i'm like oh it

is like a united colors of benton ad everyone here is just genetically has that weird glow to them. I don't specifically envy any of them visually, but I'm also like, what do you feel like to be on that fucking set when everyone looks like that? Yeah, that was probably fun. Although it seems like everyone was mostly stressed out and hungry. Trying not to die, I guess, at the end. Right. mostly stressed out and hungry trying not to die i guess at the end right um so nothing really happens except for ocean sex and uh fishing and then sal tilda swinton's character decides to go to the mainland with richard you know in a move that feels kind of like, you know, her picking her new favorite, right?

Yeah, she wants to fuck him. She wants to fuck him. I do want to just briefly call out... They're going to supply run and have sex. Yes, go ahead. A boil flourish that I think is particularly effective in this movie, the weird sort of like ghosting effect when Leo is looking at Virginie Le Dian.

Le Dian. I always get her name wrong. Le Dian. Le Dian. I always get her name wrong. Le Dian. Le Dian. But you know what I'm saying? Where she's sort of like smearing across the sky as he's looking at her on the beach at night. Hell yeah.

I do think, I don't even know how to explain why, but it does feel like a good visualization of what it feels like when you're just sort of like entranced by someone. Goo goo gaga over someone yeah yeah i do think this movie looks amazing i love darius kanji yeah like and i just like it feels just so of like it feels like so perfect for 2000 like the kind of like clubby color grading of it i

don't know you know like the sort of neon even Even that like day for night on the beach is like, it's very unreal in a way that feels perfect for it. Yeah. And, you know, all that's cool. The sex is fun. But yeah, they go back to Koh Phangan. Yes. And they run into the...

Yeah, the tourist that he slipped the map to in a moment of what would we call that uh hubris him him giving the leaving the map for them what like what do we make of this well when he does it he also he probably doesn't really totally get what he's doing right because he's kind of like he hasn't been to the beach yet no so he's sort of like he's sort of bragging real and even if it is real he has no idea it's anything like this but it's also kind of what you said about him and i think this is what is literally said in the film like it's like he kind of wants the escape hatch he wants some people to be coming after him in case it is like you get there and you're all by yourself yeah um in the book it's clearer that

daffy basically could not handle being at the beach anymore but also did not want to return to society and that like what he's doing is destructive he's like trying to spread word of the beach because he's like that will destroy it right um that's sort of less you know that's not really clear in this right yeah and instead it's more yeah it's just like sal now has something on richard she's like you told someone well I won't tell anyone but you now you're in my debt essentially right yeah I can't believe we've made it this far in the episode without calling out the fact that this

film has characters named Bugs and Daffy Bugs Daffy and Sal is supposed to be like um short for Sylvester the cat yeah yeah they're all supposed to be looney tunes yeah yeah so so our all right you know i'm not i'm going up to the limit of probably what i should say but like our our show is about

those three it's like a kind of prequel of sorts so are you are you adding any new characters like porky or tweety or barnyard dog or that i can't say the martian okay my lips are sealed so that makes sense though sal sal bugs and daffy and they are the founders one assumes of the community right like so yeah yeah that's that's a cool that's that's that's how i'd do it i guess you could do the sort of rosencrantz and guildenstern version of the movie that's just about like impoverished Thai weed farmers who are like oh there's some more fucking tourists can you get them yeah

don't say anything Emily don't spoil I won't say anything but yeah I will say like a lot more time is spent on Koh Phangan and a little bit of time on Koh Samui which are like supposed to be the two closest islands to the beach um and i i do like the rice run part of the movie just

like for where it falls in the movie because like he you have to have it's like the time when you need to have the reminder of what you're doing there because you're right it does feel kind of pointless it feels a little bit anticlimactic to show up there. And then all we do is play volleyball, like, and, and things are nice. The end.

And then to go back and be like, oh, but I'm the important thing is that I'm not like these people. Cause this sucks. Like the whole Kofing Yang scene, the party, the beach parties and all that. Like you got to remember we're better than these people.

You have to have the periodic reminder of your superiority over these people yeah and the the increase it seems increasingly hard for like to imagine like going back and just being regular again so that's part of what's trapping them don't you think aside from the fact that you know she's he's her new favorite and that she wants to fuck him and all of that, that the other reason she's bringing him back to the land is to sort of she senses in him the the restless shit stirrer, even if he's not getting tired of the beach yet. It's like you need to fucking remind this guy how much this shit sucks so that he doesn't start getting any ideas right maybe she sees a daffy replacement here but she needs to right like yeah give him that experience yeah that makes sense yeah yeah instead what happens is essentially she turns on him because he's a little weird about the sex and it turned out he

gave the map to someone else and so when they get, she's like, you are now sort of exiled. You have to send away these tourists whenever they arrive. And eventually she reveals their deep dark secret that they had sex with each other. Two grown adults. I know. I know. And Francoise is horrified yeah and they both get fired from the today show like good morning america god damn they fucked up the joke

uh so then there is a large chunk of movie probably about half an hour that is sort of richard leo going insane uh while isolated and having various kind of visions and panicked you know feverish sort of delusions that i am sure is when most of the ticket buying audience in 2000 was just like okay that's enough i'm done with this right like that that's when people were just like forget it i think i think you can hear crushes dying in real time in the theater. Like it's him being unsavory is one thing, but him being this silly, it's like, you're killing my dreams.

Yeah. Yeah. And like, yeah, doing the full Dennis Hopper type routine and the headband and everything. And he's not even on anything though. That's what's crazy. Well,

this is a big he eats a caterpillar he's high on life he's high on life and caterpillar that's bullshit at least make him trip on this is something this is an insane thing though is how drug-free this movie is aside from the weed field like my god this is not a drug-free scene like in it's like everything just off screen is yeah they should be rolling face all the time yeah they should they should be fucking eating cbd dog bones left and right also like a ton of them would just be doing heroin because it's there yeah also because like what you're on a beach you can just chill out it's a perfect space to be doing heroin right yeah you just take a nap lie there and get old on the beach doing heroin

instead instead it's like you get there and they're like here's your job and you know you get three hours of volleyball a day and you know here's your spare set of tivas but apart from that it's like regular life it should be like this orgiastic thing yeah i'm not doing shit it's like too bad you are doing shit do you know how to hunt for fish with a spear well get ready you're gonna learn i had a great idea here's my job on the island heroin tester let me test all the heroin first make sure it's safe yeah to to quote to quote boyle about all of this he says apocalypse now hovers over the book it hovers over me in my whole career we made the mistake of allowing the coen brothers to influence us too much with lifeless ordinary and we allowed the beach to be too coppola-esque. Much as you might want it to be, it's no flattery to him.

He basically is like, Apocalypse Now, he says, is the closest you're going to get to a cinematic experience of Vietnam. It might not be so appropriate to use it on a fantasy island full of annoying hippies. It's funny, though, because it's like the Boyle style is so pervasive that when he's getting influenced by these other people it doesn't feel like he's doing a poor impression of them it feels like he's struggling to match what they did well in their respective style to his own style it feels just aware of them even as he yeah tries to do his own style but the fact that it is aware of them kind of deflates it a little bit yes i mean one thing about this sequence that that i think it kind of pulls off but obviously yeah i think a lot of people are tuning out at this point is like the idea that this is sort of the next step beyond the beach oh like so the beach is

too like it's played out now there's too many people there how about just going into the jungle and being insane on your own is that the most extreme thing like and and that's sort of the and then you kind of get the sense that's where daffy went like that's that's sort of this site this that's where the terminus is if this is all you're chasing or is the thrill of being different and the most extreme person in the world and uh you know i i think there are probably multiple reasons that the sequence sequence doesn't work, but,

uh, yeah, it's well, the banjo Kazooie screen is the peak of that, but his whole like sentiment and the voiceover is like, I'm not fucking owned. I'm like, I actually like this.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I think this is actually better and it's a game now and I'm good at it. Yeah. But I mean, the banjo Kazooie, it's so like with the blur plan. I mean, what? Like, is there the like, is there a more Gen X moment?

Don't answer that. It's right up there. No, it's it's in it's in the conversation. It's a it's a semifinalist. It's also crazy. He goes to the weed growers, like, base and is, like, messing with them while they're sleeping. Yeah.

It is. In a completely purposeless way. Yeah. He's not even doing anything. He's just getting the thrill of being that close to dying, essentially. Like, okay, a little glass of water, put one of their fingers in, I'm on board. I get it. Now I'm like, okay, you're pranking him. put one of their fingers in, I'm on board. I get it.

Now I'm like, okay, you're pranking him. You're going to get one in the pee. Shaving cream on the hand, feather under the nose. Yeah, exactly. The classics. Griff, you're with me. I'm with you. Draw a penis on the cheek.

Take out a sharpie, draw a little penis. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the translation in Thai, but we could figure it out. You have to write out the word. I was just going to say you draw the, you know, just do the little Thank you. That's the universal language. That's the universal language. It's a dong

on the face. Dung and balls. We've all got them. Hey, hey! I mean, you know, not I, but like they're universally, you know, people have them everywhere, is what I mean. Thank you.

Important correction. You were going to get canceled so hard. Yes. I'm sorry. One thing that's funny, the dope field, as Boyle puts it, he's like, they actually offered to give us real dope fields to film in, but the government burns them if they discover them. So we weren't sure if we'd be able to use any field they gave us so they grew their own field of hemp uh not marijuana and uh they people then started stealing the hemp because they thought it was real drugs it's got some th or it's got some cbd in it people could you know make some tinctures

yes he said you'd have to smoke about 20 kilograms to get a hit he says so if you can just imagine the most gigantic spliff imaginable a 20 kilogram a car size whatever you say yes come on it's the 90s baby uh the other uh yeah i i i really like the video game thing even though i it doesn't really mean anything within the plot of it i just like the vibes of it i like how it looks i like the goofiness of leo's stride it's the best part of his performance in this movie it might be it's great um but there is to me there's just kind of this element of like i kind of want to see things go completely insane you know the the the farmer shooting the invading tourists is isn't it's

kind of nasty and upsetting it's not like there's nothing there but i do appreciate i do like the final showdown where the farmer shows up and is basically saying to Tilda, like, look, you've let people in. We had a deal. This is over. You got to leave. And she's like, I'm not leaving. And the farmer just reads the room and he's like, this entire place is built on vibes. Like, I just have to disrupt the vibes.

Like, this whole Jenga tower could come down with one bad vibe. Yeah. And he presents his case as like look i gotta i gotta grow this weed so i could feed my family what the fuck are you fuckers do you can't eat vibes like it's a really good mode it's yeah it's like it comes it's like a little too late you know like like if i'm not for the character obviously but like for the movie like i want that raised sooner because i think it's it's such a good part of the of the film but yeah and also just like this this isn't fucking this isn't a game for us we don't have options right yeah and the fact that both of this all of this is existing on the same island you have just

like a very functional weed farm where they're not fucking around. They will shoot you if you come toward the weed. And then, you know, a hot person beach where, you know, you're just not supposed to care about anything anymore. And you can play your Game Boy all day and get eaten by a shark. 100%. I think if the movie ended with this confrontation and tilda attempting to kill leo and failing and that being the end of that that would be fine it is bizarre to then cut to an internet cafe where francoise sends an email that's essentially like you know that feeling when you're on the beach with a photo of everyone like love you like a sister haggis we got uh i just i have no idea who thought that was a good idea like i don't know if

boyle was like well we got to have an up note here or if the studio was like you know come on guys send them out of the theater happy but it's it's uh it's silly well but emily it's it's what you invoked already in this episode it's's like the magic trick of the Titanic episode, the Titanic ending rather of like the fact that that movie has a happy ending. Yeah. Is astonishing. Yes. I love that. Right.

Right. You have to wonder if they're just like, is there any way to leave people on a good note coming out of this film? It's Leo. We're already going to have lost probably half the audience somewhere along the way. Can we leave them like a little bit up? Yeah. Cause I mean,

you know, the story of the beach and the story of the Titanic, it's just, you replace a few of the property. It's basically the same story, right? The same story. You can end on a happy note with it.

It's yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just reeks of somebody who just didn't read the book, you know, like a studio person who just didn't read the book and was like, uh, this seems dark. Yeah, I'm curious. I couldn't find the alternate shot ending online. But they said the DVD has nine deleted scenes, including an alternate opening and an alternate ending. including an alternate opening and an alternate ending. And there's commentary introduction from Boyle explaining what he was trying to do and why it didn't work in his estimation.

The worst part of the ending, truly, though, is just when you see his mouse go over to the email with the paper clip next to it and watching it you know 23 years in the future and just going like oh jesus fucking christ it's gonna take two minutes to load i'm gonna have to watch it does load one line at a time i love seeing all those imax those beautiful colorful imax those big i love seeing the imax the second he clicks email, I just like groan because I'm like, Boyle has enough integrity that he's not going to make it an immediate pop-up image. He's going to want to play it real.

And that means we're not getting out of here for another like five. Well, I think there's like a little more like, like insult to injury in this too, which is like, you know, you're in this internet cafe, got all these shiny new iMacs there and there is this moment where he's maybe probably in the two minutes while he's waiting for the image to load that he looks around at the other people in the cafe and they are

presented to us as losers they're like you know oh fuck like you're slaved to your computer you're just like staring like a zombie into the screen and like you know but remember me and my cool friends we escaped we did something cool and i it is also it's very funny that he has an email from and the sender is just listed as mom and dad right right the subject line is where are you so funny it's so funny and then it's like yeah my parents suck they don't care about me The subject line is, where are you? So funny. It's so funny. And then it's like, yeah, my parents suck. They don't care about me.

They have a joint email account. Losers. But the tone being like, we'll never forget our summer at the beach. Like, it's basically the fucking ending of Amsterdam. Where, like, Christian Bale always says, like, we'll always have Amsterdam, that beautiful place where the three of us briefly connected. It was like you were all, interpersonally, the three of you had a specifically bad time. I feel like I don't know that anybody in the world can look back on their time at Amsterdam because i don't think that's a universally shared experience uh well tell that to david o russell undefeated i i can't i can't rag on anybody who's

like a like an amsterdam stand because i'm a babylon stand so yeah yeah emily here's the difference babylon's a masterpiece yeah babylon babylon rocks and rolls it's a masterpiece. Yeah, Babylon rolls. Babylon fucking rocks and rolls. It's a killer movie. Speaking of Looney Tunes, that movie is Looney Tunes. Three hours of Looney Tunes. So fun. Yeah, you know what sucks?

What? Subtlety. Yeah, fuck that. Who fucking needs that? Get it out of here. Boring. I'm sorry, Babylon was too silly for you. I'm supposed to think about your feelings like and how they're quietly

developing over the boring poop on my face none of this matters before we play the box office game i mean you know just to talk the film's reception was poor sure um uh critics critics said no they said no to this one yeah they in fact maybe even said absolutely not yeah that's no for me i mean the thing with boyle is he was so even forget the leo part of it it's just like when you are the cool director who's new on the scene everyone's gonna be like all right buddy when are you not gonna be cool right you know when you know when does it curdle so he's got a target on his back anyway a lot of those guys are are wiping out like this is the exact period where a lot of the 90s like fresh breath a breath of fresh air exciting new uh live wire directors are like oh you can't sustain this thing or you're repeating yourself or you haven't figured out

how to stretch outside of your one gimmick or whatever the fuck it is. So I think everyone's like, just add them to the pile of all these wannabes. I mean, listening to video archives, it's so interesting.

I feel like hearing Tarantino talk with a little bit of perspective on like, it's crazy that I have kept it up. And he's not saying it like that. I keep killing it. But he's just like, I just kind of assumed like everyone else that like I they were I was gonna go out of favor at some point it was just all gonna come they were gonna come collect and take it away from me you know and then you end up being a journeyman director doing tv and whatever and look that's that's what's happening to boil here and he's like that's fine i'm gonna retreat go back underground and you know do something radical and like that's what's you know that's a smart move by him yeah um rather than like okay what's a safe hollywood project i can get myself attached to or something like that you know yeah yeah no he it's it's a an incredibly incredibly savvy move that i think in certain ways even provides a template for other directors over the next 20

years of how to sort of pull their career out of a tailspin yeah and like and like kind of relatively low budget horror being your escape hatch from like that's the thing yeah totally yeah can you can you make your limitations and aesthetic yeah yeah I want to shout out the soundtrack a little bit more just mostly pure shores obviously which is like the greatest pop song of all time by all saints uh you got underworld's eight ball is a really good uh number and uh then the moby thing the way boyle talks about it is like no one had picked up on him. We put porcelain on the soundtrack. And by the time the movie was out, like he was basically the guy in the commercials.

Like, yeah. Yeah. Um, but he also said that, but he told Pete Tong, who's a famous, uh,

UK DJ about Moby and Pete Tong returned the favor and told him about Godspeed. You black emperor, uh, which is a big, uh, big band that's for used for 28 days later uh all right all right so the movie got bad reviews it actually made money not enough maybe but it still made like 144 worldwide i don't think anyone lost money on this movie but it was not a smash hit yeah And just one of those things where it just especially because you had two years of waiting the any Leo movie was going to be seen as a disappointment, basically.

But it was also probably going to make money. Yeah. Yep. So this is Valentine's Day weekend, Griffin. This is February 11th, 2000. The beach is opening at number two it cannot crack number one do you think there were a lot of like high school valentine's day dates where the girlfriend drags the boyfriend he's like i don't want to see this stupid fucking leo movie and then

halfway through she's like furious and he's like this is kind of cool what's gonna happen with the weed farmers right i think tilda swinton is like you know ethically non-monogamous or do you think bugs doesn't know about what's going on um yeah no i'm sure it was released in february to yes to appeal to the to the youngsters uh on their dates uh and in fact what's number one at the box office is another film that's pitched at youngsters, a horror film. This opening at number two is crazy. Not only that it's opening at number two,

but number one is not even new. It came out the week before. It came out the week before. It's not Scream 2, is it? You're close. I'm close. I still know what you did last summer. No, it's Scream 2, is it? You're close. I'm close. I still know what you did. No, it's Scream 3.

Oh, fuck. That's how fast the screams came. Scream 3, a great film, I will say it. I'm a huge fan of Scream 3. Wait, so the succession of the Scream movies, what are the years of the Scream movies? 96, 97, and then this is 2000. Okay, so there's a little bit of a gap.

Okay. I just remember... Because this is when everyone's like, if I'm going to do another Scream, cuánto dinero por mí? Like, come on. Yes. But Scream 3,

people don't like Scream 3 that much. I think it is an incredible movie, and I think it is 100% Wes Craven's like burn Hollywood burn movie about like Harvey Weinstein. I think it is an incredible movie and i think it is 100 percent uh wes craven's like burn hollywood burn movie about like harvey weinstein i think it's great interesting uh still have never seen any of the scream sequels an argument to maybe do them on patreon right emily what do you think of scream 3 or do you not care i haven't seen it i'm the same i've never seen any scream other than scream it's not not my jam at the time nor new jay and silent bob are in scream 3 right yes yeah it is like three is the one that's like the hollywood

satire right i i don't really know much about her they're like making a movie yeah they're making them yeah they're making stab 2 stabbed but there's all these scenes yeah there are all these scenes that are set on the set of essentially Scream. They recreate the Scream sound stages. And then there are characters playing the act. Like Parker Posey is playing Courtney Cox's character in the movie. And Matt Kessler is playing Dewey Cox and is like, why are you so stupid? It's their original Paul T. Goldman.

Yeah, it rules. It's a great movie. People don't like it. All right. Beach is number two. Number three, Griffin, is a family film that I am sure you saw. Okay. February.

A kid's movie. 2000. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, I saw this film multiple times in theaters. Snow Day? Yes. Bam. Yeah. What is it called? Oh, oh, oh. I saw this film multiple times in theaters. Snow Day? Yes! Bam! Yeah.

What is it called? It's called Snow Day, in which a bunch of kids get revenge on Chris Elliott, who's a mean snowplow operator. Is that right? This is a very reductive telling of the story. I mean, it's sort of an altman-esque narrative. You're following four or five different threads. It all takes place on the one snow day. Chevy Chase is a disgraced

meteorologist, number two in the county, who tries to break the big story about the snow day that no one believes is coming. Pam Greer is his boss. Then Jean Smart is his wife, who's stuck at home with the youngest kid, who's the half-man from Two and a Half Men, trying to do a work conference, an early Zoom meeting. Her co-worker is Chili from TLC. And then the younger generation of kids are all trying to feed Chris Elliott, who's Snowplow Man, the man who threatens to plow all the snow in one day so that school will reopen tomorrow

it sounds like a really cynical ripoff of the ice storm oh the fucking insane thing about snow day david do you not know this i don't know you tell me i know you don't know this emily because you didn't know this movie existed until this moment snow day was written to be the pete and pete movie oh wow oh that's right snow day snow day so tonally it's very similar to that but snow day was written as the pete and pete movie and then the show got canceled and they rewrote it so the main two characters are a younger and older sibling who are the ages of big pete little p, but they turn the younger one into a girl. But at the end of the movie, they stop Snowplow Man right before he plows the final street,

and Chris Elliott says, what are you going to do? It's too late. I already plowed 95% of the neighborhood. And the one kid goes, then I guess we'll have to do some unplowing. And I have thought about that a lot, the implications of that line. Unplowing. Well, Snow Day may open to basically the same amount of money as the beach and it made 20 million dollars more than

it at the box office wow so there you have it and it won best picture to a year later which is crazy that it lingered in the conversation for that long yes um the other number four griffin is another children's film it's an animated film and it's it's uh also new this week and it also outgrosses the beach not not this weekend but in total uh is it a disney movie yes based on a tv show no no is it the ticker sort. Is it the Tigger movie? Sort of. It's the Tigger movie. Yeah.

Okay, we got there. Oh my God. I mean, there's a sort of based on a TV show in a way, right? They're kind of based on the Winnie the Pooh show. This was the run

where they started putting the direct-to-video movies in theaters and half of them were based on the TV shows. Because isn't that movie like 59 movies long? Or 59 minutes long? It's 59 movies long or 59 movies long i

think its official running time is 78 but i think it also has some pretty expansive credits yeah they include trailers in the running time i think that one that movie's trailer had semi-charmed life in as the song in it which which is really funny. Yep, absolutely. The most recent theatrical Winnie the Pooh movie, I believe, was 61 Minutes. And then they put a short in front of it. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah, yeah.

God. That movie's fucking good, though. We should have more 61-minute movies. Jesus. That's the best thing about that film. Number five at the box office is a holdover from Oscar season. Okay. 99.

American Beauty? Biopic. Oh, not The Hurricane. It is The Hurricane. Okay, well, I shouldn't have out thought myself. Well, that's the answer. Yeah. Exactly.

No, I got it. Okay. Should have believed. Other films. The Green Mile, another Oscar holdover. Next Friday, the first in the Friday sequels, right? I have seen that one. I have not seen Friday After Next.

No, that's the Christmas one. Right. Stuart Little, about a little mouse who shreds hard hell yeah shamalan oh yeah that's what i recently looked up is that that that movie was at the top of the box office uh for y2k stewart little was the top grocer that ushered us into the new millennium. He was the millennium bug. Yeah. He was literally. Can we just quickly circle back to Ben quietly saying, hell yeah, to Stuart Little? No, I thought that was good.

He was nice and fun. I just didn't know you were a fan. He's small. He's very, he's tiny, little even. But the world seems big around him. Yeah. Yeah. Something to think about something something to think about you've also got you've got galaxy quest obviously a masterpiece film yeah and uh you have the ewan mcgregor starring uh mystery thriller eye of the Beholder. Oh my God, Eye of the Beholder.

David, when I was, Marie was ripping me a new one over saying that Ewan McGregor was goofy, handsome. David said, I guess you could say beauty is in the dot, dot, dot, Eye of the Beholder. And then Marie continued ripping into me and David said, can we circle back and give me some credit for my eye of the beholder joke?

Yeah, that was pretty good. I would not be surprised if even as a strident UN defender, Marie forgot about eye of the beholder. I wouldn't hold it against her. I don't think anyone remembers eye of the beholder. Does he play the creep in that one? David L. Sims, yes, he's the creep in that one? David L. Sims.

Yes, he's the creep. He's the serial killer or something. Okay. Just back in the day when Ashley Judd had to make two of those a year, by law, by congressional mandate, she had to appear in two R-rated thrillers about serial killers or something. And everyone went to see them. They worked.

We all liked them. I mean, a lot of them did work this was not one of them this one was a flop but usually her movies made money yeah yeah um that is the beach we made it we made it to the beach we you know made it to the beach we we we this kind of feels like the end of the first the first act of your your royal series i feel like this marks the end of it like a hundred percent yeah right yeah no and then the second act is him being like let me try all kinds of different things and then almost by mistake winning best picture yes and then the final act is how do you follow up winning best picture by accident exactly like wait how do we recreate the alchemy of that

yeah um but yeah that's that is absolutely he's a three act career for sure and uh it's a long third act though well we'll see yes yes it also i mean it does feel like we have to be on the precipice of act four it does feel like when he comes back with a new movie there's going to be some shift again give given how he is i would imagine he has some self-awareness about like i need to do something new like or drastic yeah i can't just keep fucking around yeah yeah um and yeah the other thing about his third act is like he does a sorkin script and a richard curtis script you know what i mean like he does a Sorkin script and a Richard Curtis script. You know what I mean?

Like he took on these scripts by and Simon Beaufoy, like these like sort of anyway, that's neither here nor there. It will be both here. It will be later. It'll be here and there later. Yes. On this on this very feed. Emily. Such a pleasure.

Bless up, Emily. Bless up, Emily. Good to be back. Good to be back um thanks for going to the beach with me you guys no problem good to see you mama i like to think of myself as the sal of this podcast right yeah we have this yeah and i'm the i'm healthy dynamic i'm the cricket guy yeah and this podcast is the beach and nothing will ever go wrong. It'll last forever and be normal.

I saw David's tweet where he's like, if it was up to me, the beach would go down totally different. And I'm like... I did the Wahlberg tweet. If I went to the beach from the beach, it wouldn't have gone down like that. Which is also, at this point,

almost become the Ben Hosley. Yeah, right, right. The only thing is I think if I was at the beach, it would still go wrong, unfortunately. You're right. You couldn't fix this one. Yeah, I don't think you plus the beach would be a good combo. Definitely not.

But any thriller where someone takes the money and it fucks them over, you're convinced it does end with you on a beach. That's true, on an island, a private island. Yes. That I don't have to share with anyone no you wouldn't fuck it up no um emily if uh people can watch your breakout turn in poker face oh yeah my first public uh viewable work in i don't know uh four years three years uh yeah check me out on pokerer Face on Peacock. Everybody get Peacock. It rules.

Podcaster. Yeah, I'm a podcaster. It's very meta. Peacock low-key good. I think Peacock is good. I'm not even paid to say this. I think Peacock is fun. They've got good stuff on there.

But anyway, I'm on for about four seconds of screen time. But yeah, check it out. It's a good four, though. And people, I saw on for about four seconds of screen time. But yeah, check it out. It's a good four, though. And people, I saw people on the Reddit excited to see you pop up and then asking, why has it been so long? And I hope they're all happy that. Well, this is what I was working on the entire time. I was trying to memorize my lines.

Working on the Beach episode. And it was really. Oh, well, the Beach episode, too, but also my role in Poker Face. That was just really a long, long time in the making. It was a little touch and go there. For a second, I might, you know, it looked like it was going to go to Keira Knightley. But yeah, in the end, I got it.

People also don't realize you actually recorded like 50 episodes of a murder podcast in an effort to be released just to have the sort of like the muscle. It was like Ryan Gosling needed to know how to build the car and drive. You don't like this bit, David? We should wrap.

Thank you for being here, Emily. Great to see you. See you soon. See you, Sarah. Come on. Come on, obviously. Next time at Foxwoods. You know, we're going to go have a night sometime.

I would love to. At the Crab's Table. I would love nothing more. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show. Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork, Lee Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song, AJ McKee and Alex Barron for our editing, JJ Birch for our research. You can go to

blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, where we do commentaries on franchises and other bonus stuff. We're doing 28 weeks later on Patreon, which will be coming out around the same time as 28 days later episode. I should also mention, as we're trying

to remind people this year, we unlock every Patreon episode after three years. So the whole first year of Patreon, the Marvel commentaries, and the New Jersey weekend experience, all now available for free for anyone who wants to go to our Patreon page.

We're unlocking new episodes every 10 days, such as the Rise of Skywalker, or the Last Jedi episode, where I clogged your toilet. That one I think is now unlocked. Please, please, please. I gotta go. I gotta go. I gotta go.

Tune in next week for 28 Days Later. And as always, I'm not kidding. It is just the timing now. The naked guy has returned. He is once again naked and the lights are now on in his apartment. this guy's just fucking just flapping around to see and he sees you he's fully aware of you he has we have not made eye contact but but my setup is facing the window. There is a lamp in front of my face, illuminating my face.

I'm staring straight ahead. He's now walked off, but he was just fucking flipping and flopping around. He's never going to meet you. Why does he give a fuck?