Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Cars That Ate Paris

Episode Date: March 8, 2026

Bonjour! Erm...we mean...G'day mates! Our Peter Weir series PODNIC AT HANGING CAST kicks off with Weir's 1974 feature debut The Cars That Ate Paris, a film about the guy who plays Napoleon in the Bill & Ted movies getting stranded in a quirky and murderous Australian town. We're getting into the origins of the Australian New Wave, the various "calling card" projects that Weir made in the beginning of his career, and this film's spiky car which Ben has a lot of affection for, obviously. Check out the Steve Martin Cold Open - Saturday Night Live Listen to Griff on Comedy Bang!Bang! Check out Dirty Laundry on Dropout Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

148 people live in the township of podcast, and every one of them is a murderer. Where exactly is podcast? What kind of people live there? What are they trying to hide? Why do cars mean so much to them? What are these cars? They're the cars that ate podcast. So the town's podcast, but the people are also podcasts at the end of the day.

What? In what I just said? Yeah. You're wrong. I, in fact, kept the word people. No, but you said it's the Cars the Day podcast, I guess, instead of Paris. Yeah. The only word I was subbing out was Paris. Good job.

Thank you. Damn it. All right. It was clean as hell. I, all right. And I said this. Trying to fucking logic, police be. My logic's airtight.

I said this before we started recording. I showed up very late to today's recording session. It's my check with Griffin, David, and this is Ben. That's you don't introduce the show. I just didn't. What is happening? Well, that's what I'm saying. We need to just provide some context that I was quite late and that I am shaming myself currently at this moment.

Shame. Shame on me. God, Steve McQueen must be here. Shame on you. He made a film called shame. Yes. Oh, wait a second. Knock, knock, knock, ding-dong.

Oh, no. Who could it be? It's Michael Fastbender's giant flaccid penis and he's here to shame you, Ben. Fame. Shame. Wow, I almost said fame. this is his penis I was trying to do like

you know kind of cheat flapping can I do my impression of it yeah go ahead these are such outdated jokes fast vendor dick jokes Jesus it's 2026 guys is this how we start a new miniseries

it's great so yes we're kicking off a new miniseries David noted me and I'm sorry I wasn't noting you I was trying to cuck me doing the intro Ben shames himself we all do in person's

we all do in Impressions of Fastbender's penis. Just the sound. Well, I mean, what else is there to do an impression? And this is why we're not going to video. And this is why, listen up, Venture Capital. I know you all want to see David's impression of the whale poster. You do.

And believe me. Oh, fuck. Can I take a picture fast enough? Fuck. Fuck. It's too late. Fuck. Did you get it?

No. Okay. My phone was front facing. Fuck. I got it. Why was your phone front? I don't know! Ben slept in!

Okay, well, I want to say a few things, but first, I want you to just introduce this podcast right away, Griffin. Well, that's so kind of you to suggest. You're a dear friend, and I'm sure you would never, ever try to run me off the road and take the intro. Just anxious because it's a new miniseries. Yeah, that's why we're starting off strong. We're starting off so strong. I'm wearing all of my clothes backwards. Ben has shoes on his hands and gloves on his feet.

He's got, it's quite cold outside. So he's wearing a beanie on his butt and long john's on his head. It's quite a sight to see, my friends. Yeah, my face is coming out of like the little backporthole. Yep. Yep. It's really good. And once again, this is why we're not going to video because it's theater of the mind.

What's the podcast called? The podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. Thank you. It's a very professional podcast. It is rigid. It is formal. It, of course, is, according to Time Magazine, one of the 100 greatest podcasts of all time. Do you think they'll listen to this and rescind it?

Yeah, take us off. And you know what? We're at a pretty tight ship. We do. And I'm not actually certain what a tight ship is. I'm going to say, when I look around, I say, yep. I'm going to push back. Let me tell you why.

A ship can both. both be tight and riddled with holes. We are doing today. They're two separate things. We're recording an episode that was originally, I think, scheduled sometime in, like, October or November. The first time it was bumped. It was bumped because I had had my, like, third dental surgery in 12 months. Yes.

You bumped it then. Yes. Then it was scheduled for a couple days ago. You bumped it again. Ben and I had just flown back from L.A. the night before. You agreed to the scheduling of it when you knew you were traveling. Optimistic. Here's another thing I do. I book travel and I'm like, yeah,

I'll take a 6 a.m. flight. I said this is a bad idea. You're correct? But I always think that tomorrow is the first day of me being the most high functioning man in the world. Finally, today, it's time to record this episode

that Ben's an hour late because he slept in. Yeah. So I really feel like this episode, yeah, right. I was in clapping. I was doing Fastbender's lawn. Oh, God. This has been the episode

that fell. impossible for a little while. Yeah, which is dumb because it's like a guest-free episode about a rather sort of small, short movie. But that's just the beginning of things. It's easy to just spike it over the net.

In my opinion, that's next week's problem. Yeah, well, again, this is a mindset I don't share, but okay. All right, so there's my little shame. That's my shame finger's been pointed and wagged and that's all fine. Well, can I shame you for a second? Yeah, go ahead. It's time for me to introduce the podcast. It's called 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 projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear

and sometimes they bounce, baby. We are finally kicking off our mini-series on the great Peter Weir. One of your favorite filmmakers, one of your pet projects. I would say more a pet project than a favorite filmmaker.

Obviously, he is a filmmaker. I like a lot and he's made a lot of movies I've made. But I've made a lot of movies that you have made. That I've made. But I have long just also looked at him as like a perfect blank check, perfect blank check candidate because of the variety of movies he made. Like just the kind of the genre is. You love an app sampler platter director.

I love a genre hopper. Your loyels, your onlies. I love a poo-poo platter. I feel like those are the ones you love to push. Can I ask you now, that weir is happening. Who is your next? Someone else asked me this question and I couldn't tell them the answer.

Someone asked me that. They're like, okay, you got weir over the line. That was where that was been your, and I was like, fuck, I don't know. Do you, I mean, like. I feel like I have in my head who I thought you would say. Is it Tony Scott time? Oh, that would be good.

But he's the opposite of that. He's the opposite. He is the opposite of it. He could not shake his inheritance. Right. You know, like, Which I feel like the Griff picks are usually a person who does one distinctive thing so fucking well that I love and can't get from anyone else.

Fucking puppet man. Excuse me. Sorry, uh, James Hansen. That many series would be comprised of two puppet men, one of whom eventually put the puppets down. My, but the ones I've pushed over the line up until now as well,

or like Lynn Ramsey and Buster Burton. Tim Burton, certainly, yes. Like, okay, so when we did the, uh, you know, we did our March Madness tournament a few years ago where we each got to pick eight guys, right? Yep. So the guys in my region. Yeah, let's see how many of them we've gotten.

We have since done three of them. Okay. So we've done Peter Weir. It's happening now. Jane Campion and Danny Boyle, right? Those were three guys on my list. Give me your other five. Karen Kusama, who, you know, was an eighth seed and she's making another movie I hear.

You know, we could do her someday. Yeah, she might be on the bracket this year. I can't remember. No, because she beat Peter Weir, remember? Oh, right. Weird. Weird. And by the way, we're going to make it weird, this whole mini-series.

The Archers, Powell and Press Burger. Make blank check weird again. Yep. David, you're unhappy right now, but think about how happy you're going to be when those bumper sticker sales come in. They better come in high. Keep like that. They better come in really. Are we charging $400 per bumper sales?

What's our plan here? Yeah. Premium. Do a catchphrase too many times on podcast. Create bumper sticker question mark profit. Ben and I covered in flop sweat. They're really premium. Look how shiny.

We used to hollow stickers. Powell and Pressburger. We'd love to do them someday. That's a shared dream first. Yeah, exactly. That's not quite a solo passion. Wong Car Y. Probably the closest answer I have to your question.

Steve McQueen. I'm kind of disinterested in Steve McQueen right now. I haven't loved the last couple things he made. Mike Lee, maybe my true answer, but, you know, a hefty lift, a big filmography, a guy who, you know, made challenging movies. Big-ish film art. My big takeaway from Burton is, if I'm pushing my guys up the hill, tight series. Right. Yeah, Burton really asks a lot of everybody.

Or I'm like double up the Keaton's, Lynn Ramsey's five. Okay, wait, is that the rest of you? Did you... That's it? Okay. Who is on yours? Yeah, yes, please. Yes.

Very useful question. And I said, please, like a gentleman. Thank you. That's a big thing in my house right now, so thank you. Oh, you're teaching the please and thank you. We've been trying to teach you for a very long time. It feels like there's been some backsliding. From the boss, baby?

Yes. For my daughter, yes. Well, to be fair, time is money. I know, but maybe she's on the clock. doesn't need to, as she's almost five, point at her water bottle and go, empty. Maybe she could say, please, can you get me some water or something along those lines? That's kind of funny. And I go like, what was that?

And she goes, it's empty. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I wasn't asking for meaning. I was asking for maybe a different way of different tone. That is how the boss baby would act. That's some swimming with sharks shit. Your guys. So as with, you know, some of, you know, some.

of your guys we've now done. We've now done Martin Brest. Ding! We've now done Lynn Ramsey. And we've now done Buster Keating. Your remaining guys that you had on your... It's wild that this is like an even balance of a tip. It is. This is the job we do, right? This is the job we do. People think they pay us for the podcast.

No. No. They pay us for the scheduling. You had Terence Malik. I think also a bit of a shared one for us. I'd love to do it. And one that we've come close to... We'll do it sometime. We've thrown them on the spreadsheet. Where's my Jesus movie, Terry. That's the real thing. Where's my Jesus? He's making a Jesus movie. Ben? He's been making it for 10 years. Ben, he's like, oh, principal photography wrapped

February. February? February? February? February 2020. Oh, shit. It is the last completed, unreleased film shot entirely in the before times. He's been tinkering away at it ever since. Because the guy doesn't really do reshoots. Presumably he has shot no post-COVID footage. I think he's just in the edit for finding his rhythms. But I just love that there's one movie that is still from the before times that we haven't seen. And so maybe that will be the moment for Terry. We've also got 70s Altman, of course, long a pet product few. Cassavetti's similar.

Joe Dante, who we're always in this liminal thing. I think, again, a guy we both kind of want to do, but we're just like, could he just make another movie, please? I transparently hate his most recent film, and I don't want to end on it. And then Preston Sturgis, another, I would say shared one, a fun, exciting one. Ben, by the way, of your guys, we have only done. Because Ben won this year. He did. He won this Marchmatter.

He won this Marchmatter, which was like a very, very strong contender. Yeah. That was my number one seat. When we put the bracket together, we were immediately like Carpenter probably takes this. Yeah. Ben's winning. The other picks, I don't know if they're at the top of the list. David S. Ward, I feel, is never going to happen.

We've ruled him out. We're kind of doing him piece. We'll do Major League. We'll do Major League on Patreon. Can I see if I can guess the other ones, if I can remember correct? Sure, go ahead. Okay, so David S. Ward, Carpenter. Ernest Dickerson, I remember vividly being in there.

Yes. Correct. Penelope Spiris. Yep. Yes. Harmony Corrin, I assume. Harmony Corinne. Spike. Spike Jones.

Yeah, Spike Jones. Another guy where I'm kind of like, can he make one more thing? Like, it's, you know. Yes. It would be. That's what it feels like. It would be nice. At this point, we'd probably have.

to combine Spike Jones and Charlie Kaufman. Sure, but that's kind of fun. Yeah, it's kind of fun, but Spike's just working too infrequently. Yeah. I feel like you dropped Linklater at the last second, or was he on there?

Link later was not on there. Mike Judge was? Correct. Okay. The other one I did not remember that Ben picked this guy. One more. There's one more.

Oh, Danny DeVito. How do you remember that one? I didn't remember that was a Ben guy. I remember anything, Ben, Ben has ever done. Oh, there you go. Thanks. I mean, and DeVito,

I would say, out of the whole bunch, feels like the one that would be something we could do eventually as a, like, a palette cleanser between miniseries.

It's fun. It's a nice little, like, four-movie, short little series. I would love to do it. As a shorty. As friend of my life, friend of the show,

past and future guest, Sarah Rubin said, Danie DeVito, short series for a short, man. Yeah. And then there's some good stuff in the guest region. Yeah, we've never done any of those.

We've done none of them. Oliver Stone, Jackie Chan, Joe Johnston, Kelly Reichert, Gorevinsky, of course. That's five. And then the other three would have been. I'm trying to remember who we asked. Yoshida picked. Oh, wait, did someone pick Wolfgang Peterson?

Richard Lawson did. Richard Lawson did. Yoshida picked huh tell me I'm blanking Coron who's a big Yoshita favorite and then

JD Amato picked Jacques Dati Of course Obviously dumb Haven't done any of those Dumb for me Not put those together Oh it's fine

Peter Weir is finally happening Peter Weir is finally happening And What is the title of this mini series Griffin The title of the miniseries Is Podnik at Hangcast That's so true

That is of course his guarantor, but it's a weird case where this is his first film, and yet, Podmic, excuse me, picnic at Hanging Cast, happens kind of like irrelevant of this. It does, that's true. We will discuss that on this episode. He doesn't... Hired to begin developing this picnic when he has finished the script for this movie and is prepping it based off his short film work.

That's right. And we can delve into all of that. But today on Podnick at Hanging Cast, we are, of course, course discussing his first theatrical film. And the cars that ate Paris. I'm gonna say owner of one of the best titles in the history of film. It's a good title. And it's a more

literal title than you'd think with a title like that. Here is my history with this movie. I'm a movie obsessed teenager. Can you believe it? We need some like, you know, fucking ass Woody Allen music over this, right? Yeah. Some like Drew Gershman shit. Ask Woody Allen music.

Like a clarinet played via butt. You know, I'm a child in New York. I love the movies. You know, I can't do it. The digital set-top box takes over for cable. Okay, sure. Yeah, your kind of TiVo-esque device is what you're referring to. Yes.

And there's now also the ability to like scroll through the digital. The guide. The guide. Yeah. And so what I do every day when I come home from school is I check out the next week of TCM programming. Very, very good little cinephile. Thank you, because I'm getting activated. And I'm like, what's the furthest I can go ahead in the schedule and mark to record anything that feels like a good watch?

And I'm going like, oh, paper moon, da, da, da, da, da, da, oh, this, oh that, right? And then I'm like, the cars that ate Paris. num, num, num. I see that title, I hit record. Family dinner. I go to my parents. Joe over here. I did hit record, Joseph.

I go to my family dinner table and I say to my parents, I just found like the movie with the weirdest title of all time on T-CM. You're not going to believe it. It's called The Cars That Ain Paris. I guess they're playing some weird junkie like genre movie. That must be what this is. And my parents sort of true. But then my parents were like, that's Peter Weir's.

debut film. Well, they knew. And I'm like, Peter We're the director of Master and Commander. At that point, I just think of as Tony Awardsy. Sure, you probably knew him for dead poets. Truman Show. Yes. Mastering Commander. I'm like, this is like a sophisticated grown-up director who makes like popular films

that are smart and literate. And so then I go, oh, the title must be metaphorical. Right. Right, right, right. When you say the Cars 8, Paris. Right. This isn't going to be like, Roger Corman movie. I'll watch it and it will be about like a divorce. And for whatever reason, that's the title. And then I watch it and I'm like, oh, it is actually about a town called Paris.

It's not Paris France. It's a fictional Paris in Australia. And a town where cars kind of eat up everything. So you watch this as a teenager, eh? Correct. Because I didn't. I did. I'd never seen it until Mad Max Fury Road came out, which has the spiky cars, and people were like, ah, as you might know, that is an homage to fellow Australian New Wave, you know, peer, Peter Weir in his first film, and I was like,

oh yeah, right, I guess I've heard. You know, and I, like, when I was in college, I famously did a course of New Zealand cinema, and I had dug deep into that, but I've never really dug into the Aussiegey... Play some Peter Weir-ass music. Well, except he's from Australia. I said Peter Jackson, I fucked up

the whole thing. I also should have said, ask Peter Jackson music. Also, what does Peter Jackson music sound like? Howard Shore? You're lost right now, and I'm not going to help you. Go on with your story. Well, I'm going to open the docier, actually. I was going to say.

Yeah, but so I didn't watch until then, and I think I sort of checked it off at me. Like, oh, right, I've never seen Peter Wars first. When we cover George Miller, it was a pre-J era, a much lighter, easier era for us. Right, JJR researcher. who sucks and hate. He sucks shit.

He's great. He's like the ass, Woody Allen music of men. I was going to say, look, JJ has done the podcast of great service with his research. And when we did George Miller,

we didn't have his help. Right. He just makes our lives a lot more difficult because we have the added burden of needing to fire him every day. There's a lot of paperwork. It's so, people don't understand.

Our HR department is, is like literally on fire trying to process the firing and rehiring. every other day. Well, it's just a gerbil that Ben has. That's our age art.

We just stuff the papers in there and he just shreds them. It's just, you know, great for the gerbil. He's building like a nest, but it's no good for us. Because then we have to hire an assistant to the gerbil

has to tape the papers back together and file them. In theory, we should fire the gerbil. The gerbil's kind of the bottleneck at the whole process. No, we can't fire the gerbil. Ben likes the gerbil.

An intricate system we've developed. It's a close friend of his and it's like a whole interpersonal mess. What I was going to say JJ, yes. It's the kind of context we probably would have had had JJ worked on the show

in the George Miller era. But George Miller, like, basically fully cites this movie as the thing, inspiring him to make Mad Max. Right, because when he makes Mad Max is because he was out there doing like kind of DIY ambulance work

or whatever piecing together a little bit of money making this movie over the course of months. But it's both seeing Peter Weir and being like, fuck, this guy's from Australia. He just went out and made this. Right.

I can do this too, maybe. Right. There's the sort of like kind of Richard Linklater slacker style activation that happened for a lot of young American filmmakers in the 90s but also he sees like spiky cars and he's like fuck

what he built room an entire movie out of this shit. But that's the thing because of the Mad Max connection and because of the Ozzy New Wave Ozzy exploitation you know, repute. I was like right so this is going to be like a gnarly car movie about fucking gangs and shit.

It'll be Mad Maxi. And then it's not quite that. It's an odd little sort of social comedy. I like it a lot. With a bit of car, you know,

antics, a bit. Quite a bit. I mean, it is. It's like the core of the movie. But it has way more like,

fusty Australian guys than like Mad Max does. I feel like, although they both have Bruce Pence, of course. I joke that you think of and talk about Australia,

the continent, as if it is really the world of Mad Max at all times. But in reality, I feel like this movie is what you think Australia is like. You're like, there's crazy, spiky, crashing cars sometimes. Not all the time. Sometimes. Well, and also, I think I have, we talk about this a little bit on the next episode because we just recorded that one.

I was raised in England and I, like, I think I have, like, their prejudices. You guys relax. towards Australia coded into me in a way that surprises me sometimes does that make sense? England is so derisive of all like former British colonies or like, you know, whatever, vassal states

in a way that like is a little shocking sometimes. It's the one time you activate like grandpa who fought in Vietnam mode and you're like, the fuck is this? The thing I remember was my father who was a very like tolerant and liberal man is disdain for the Welsh. I shouldn't laugh because it's not like he was like racist because of course the Welsh

it's a very tiny nation of people, you know, attached to England that are very, obviously, you know, very similar in many ways. But he had this like little kind of like, oh, they're so silly, you know, where I was just like, what did they ever do to you? You've never like had a bad experience with Welsh people. and it was clearly just from his childhood. Like, it had been like, you know, drilled into him like,

oh, well, the Welsh are very silly, you know? One of my favorite bits in Austin Power. Yes, I mean, that's what it's making fun of. There are only two things I truly hate. People are intolerant of other races and cultures and the Dutch. And the Dutch. Just that thing of just like, also it's like, you're English.

You don't get to have this opinion. You know, like you need to sit down. But that's why I'm saying this movie, feels closer to your perception of the Australians because it's like sometimes they're wearing a mayor sash and being like, we run a proper town. This is a normal town where nothing weird happens. A bunch of swastikas in it and they got ropes pulling in.

Oh, fuck. I'm going to open the dossier guys. Please do. Ben, I assume you had not seen this before. No. Did you like this? I did. Feels like a Ben. It's very weird, though.

It's weird. It's kind of weird energy. It's got like a weird hasty. haste to it that, again, doesn't suggest exploitation movie exactly, right? It's a little weird. Oh, boy, oh, boy.

Boy, oh, boy. So, Peter. Lindsay Weir. Oh, interesting. Lindsay Weir, like, from Freaks and Geeks. JJ's rehired. That's the kind of shit. We wouldn't have found out on her own.

His middle name seems to be from his father. That is cool. That his father was Lindsay Weir as well. So his father was this kind of, like, disaffected Michigan teenager and like an army jacket. That's interesting. Yeah, Lindsay Weir. Was born in 1944,

Sydney, Australia. The capital. The capital. No, Canberra is the capital. Of course. Cambra. The capital. Canberra.

I'm sorry. I apologize to all listeners. If I fuck up Australian pronunciations, I believe Canberra, which I'm sure I'm saying wrong right now, is one of those classic, like, shibboleth words for Australian accent. Shibboleth words?

You know, like, a shibboleth is like, oh, for fuck. sake. I now have to explain this. It's from the Bible. It's like a password that you would say to prove your faith. It's like, what's the inglorious bastards where he holds up? Like, if you say Canberra wrong, which I think

I am continually, it's like one of those words that you say a little different. I think it's Brown's Cthulhu. Anyway, his dad as a real estate agent, served in Australian for the Australian Army in World War II as an air raid warden.

But obviously, Weir was born in 44, so near the end of the war. Both sides of his family are from Scotland, from the United Kingdom mostly, but they were Australian through and through. They were not like backwards looking. They were fourth generation immigrants. So, you know, very, very deeply Australian.

He remembers at a certain point trying to dig through his family history just out of interest and was kind of astonished that they didn't have records on where they came from, where all this. And he feels like this. is an Australian phenomenon. He's like, I've asked lots of Australian what records they have. And it's kind of like, no, they left their past, like tabula rasa. We left where we came from.

Records are gone. We left our myths behind. He says, it helps me understand why many of our films are period films, why Australian audiences are so drawn to them because of this need for myth. We don't have lineage to be knobbish about, right? Like, it's like kind of, we're rebooting. all interesting moved around throughout his childhood mostly in the Sydney area it seems they settled

in a place called Vauk Vaklus not sure Eastern suburb of Sydney so his dad was a real estate agent again so they would keep like flipping houses

he's kind of a house flipper no television pre-tivy kind of generation so he says he grew up on the streets bouncing balls around and I don't know the gang of kids running about

and jumping on trams and exploring caves cool he sounds pretty fun splunking yeah Goonies ass childhood yeah seriously

yeah they lived at the top of a little hill there was a big suspension but she says he was always in the water he was snorkeling he was fishing that he would watch the ships go out this is so similar your upbringing Griffin

when by water of course for Griffin, it was Fifth Avenue. Yes. The wild waves of Fifth Avenue. Also, obviously, never watch TV as a child. No, yeah, you weren't. Yeah, you weren't a big TV kid. My parents owned one and I said, no, thank you.

Not for me. Here's something he might have shared with you. He loved comic books. Okay, we're back in. He loved The Phantom. Okay. Our famous, you know, the purple-clad hero of pulp adventure. He loved Scrooge McDuck.

Well, the Carl Barck's books. I guess so. I mean, it feels like he would have been too old for those, but whatever, whoever was writing Scrooge. back then. Maybe Carl Barks was. I think so, and if not, yeah. And he loved to pictures. He loved to go see the pictures. He loved to go see the talky

pictures. Westerns, the cereals, you know, all that stuff. Can we throw out our buddy, Sean Fantasy, past and future guests coming up on this very mini-series? Look, yep. Was in New York. We went to a bar with him. We got drinks

at a hollow nickel. Yeah, we did. That's right. And they had a big screen projector. Yeah, and they were doing a Pope series. We walk in, Ben. I mean, I think they didn't announce it or anything. No, but we walk in there playing Dick Tracy. Yeah. Cool. In the time that we're there nerding

out about the dorkyish shit in the world. Yeah. And my girlfriend was like, how many drinks did you guys have? And I was like, two. Two. And then we just sat at the table for an additional three hours after our second beer and we're just like, have you ever looked at the box office weekend?

It was this is true. Incomprehensible. But in the time we're there, they play. Dick Tracy, they go straight into the Rocketeer, and then into the Phantom. Yeah, well, as we were leaving, the Phantom was really just starting to pop off. But we're like, this is the fucking... I was like,

is the shadow next? Exactly. Seriously, we pitch in chronological order. I know. So, if you work at the hollow nickel and you were programming that... Well, the bartender did, when I, when I closed out, said, hey, man, love the cast. Oh, wow. And he snapped and pointed his finger at me.

Wow. And I had never heard anyone say, apostrophe C-A-S-T before. Oh, like, drop the pod, it's cleaner. He just went, Love the Cast. And I was like, does it look like my arm is broken? And I made him repeat it four times because I didn't understand what he was saying,

which then made me look like a narcissist. Sounds like a real Griffin story. David! This episode, don't act so surprised because it's a familiar friend. Oh, okay. This episode's brought to you by movie. Yon, just kidding.

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framed within the political landscape of 1993 Lagos in Nigeria. It is about a father and two young son as they journey into and around the vibrantly rendered Nigerian metropolis, reckoning with their relationship, navigating the city that's in the middle of a democratic crisis, written by real life brothers, Achanola Davis, Jr. and Wally Davis. Love it, brothers. co-wrote this groundbreaking feature debut, and you've got Sofe de Risu.

Oh, from Slow Horses. I love him. I hope I'm saying his name right. But he's a really good actor, and he's the star. It's worth seeing. It's in theaters. It's great to go to a theater. It's in theaters.

We love that Mooby puts Moobies in theaters before ultimately ending up on their wonderful platform. Dang right. I'm just looking at some of the stuff they got right now. Die my love, of course. Yeah. An important watch, a necessary watch for any blankie. LaGraza, LaGrazia, the new Palos Orantino movie, which I missed in theaters.

Good moment to catch up with it. The great, Shall We Dance? Oh, the classic? The original. Oh, my goodness. That's fun. Like a restoration? Yeah, and look, they got a collection called Heartthrob Nicholas Cage.

It's Young, Dreamy Cage. Well, still dreaming to me? Hey, you're very open-hearted. Anyway, to stream the best of cinema, you can try Mooby free for 30 days at Mooby.com slash blank check. That's Mubi.com slash Blank Check for a whole month, a great cinema for free, and then go see my father's shadow in theaters. Please, thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Thank you. Very kind. Peter Weir loved comic books. This is where you pick up the film. Oh, yeah, and he loved the pictures. He liked American movies. He liked Hammer Horror Films. He distinctly remembers seeing the comic books. great French film The Wages of Fear.

One of the greats. Did he watch a lot of Australian cinema? Not really, he says. He mentions movies like Bush Christmas and Jedda, but I think like... This is pointedly a fallow period. Yeah, there's not a ton of Australian cinema maybe for him to even touch on.

He loves Jacques-Tati. Right, and that actually suggested what his earlier interest was, which is performing. He wanted to tell stories but by performing them and then he liked to plan this sort of elaborate games

he would play like war games with his friends that he would kind of set up he was very creative he talks about how he felt like he explored enough kind of areas leading up to landing on film directing

that helped him understand different aspects of it that he worked in plays, he was doing sketch comedy, he was doing all these different things that ended up feeding into filmmaking. He went to sort of all boys boarding school where she didn't really like, he did

about a year at the University of Sydney and dropped out. You know, he was sort of into the student life, but it seems like he wasn't that into, you know, whatever. Fregan hard work. Yeah, exactly. He did have a cool experience

with some professor who was teaching about William Blake and he like took a poem apart in front of them and he was like he was basically like deconstructing the swimming blade poem and Peter We got really mad and was like I love this poem like I hate how he's

like dismembering it to like show us the techman and he's basically like that's dead poet society like I put that right into that poet society many years like dismembering it like like taking a part of structure or like gerbil style ripping it who knows I mean there's no mention of a gerbil but who knows. Call that a call that a

He leaves college. He goes into real estate, the family business, makes a little bit of money, you know, basically like 18 to 20, buys a one-way ticket to Europe, wants to go just check it out, you know, and gets on a ship. I mean, back then,

I think traveling by air from Australia was basically impossible because it was so fucking far. Right? You would have had to stop to refuel so many times. So you would travel by boat. You would get on a boat that would go for weeks to get you to, you know, wherever you're going.

My grandmother talks about this all the time. She is in her mid to late 90s. Yes. Right? Excuse me. Early 30s. She's maybe started to listen. But she is like, I don't know why you take all these expensive flights.

It's so nice to go on a boat. I went on a boat to Australia and it's great. You just go to the docks with a suitcase and you wave at a man and you give them just whatever money you have in your pocket. What? And they give you a room. And she just thinks that's a thing we could do. Unfortunately, I think that truly doesn't exist.

No, it doesn't exist. There's only one passenger liner left, which is the Queen Mary, which goes from New York to London. You know, whatever, like, not even New York. It's like South Hampton to New York or whatever. But that's the only ship that remains, the cruise ship that's like, we go from one place to another. All other cruise ships are like, you know, we go to a bunch of vacation spots and then we take you home. Right. No, I think she went on the Queen Mary once, and most of the time she'd just like waved down the king

Kong ship. She brings us up all the time. Good for her. You should do it. It's fun. I mean, it's the theory. Do you have a time machine? So he arrives in England and it's a cool time for England because it's the mid-60s,

flower power, anti-Vietnam, swing in London, you know. He meets some cool guys like Austin Powers and. Cool. No, I'm talking. Basile exposition. Yeah. Mrs. Kensington. The original.

Right. the earlier Kensington. He was quite groovy. So he has fun, but then he says at a certain point, he just runs out of money, and he decides to come back to Australia in 1966 with his wife to be. He has a fiancé, Wendy Stites,

who he's still married to. A long-running marriage. That's impressive. And basically, they sort of wrestle with it, but they decide, the way he puts it is, we decided we could just deal with the shortcomings of Australia. My guess is, it's just like Australia is a less, like, cosmopolitan place back then, again, just because, like,

it's fucking far away, and there's not jet travel as much. Well, we're also talking about a guy who's, like, the tip of the spear in the Australian new wave, which wasn't just, oh, here's like a new wave of voices in Australian cinema. It was basically, here's Australian cinema starting up, again. A little bit, I think. You know, so, like, he, there's not really a culture

supporting the thing he does yet. So he comes back, he tries to do some TV work, starts writing letters and shit, starts working for Australia's Channel 7. And does, like, sort of news stuff, I guess, for them working in it. He says he kind of, like, worked as a stage hand. Then he makes a tiny little short film,

basically gets his hand on a camera that he can use on the weekends, right? a film called Count Vim's Last Exercise. Don't know much about it. Do you? No. Neither do I. Great.

Moving on. It got him a promotion. He gets a job directing film sequences for a variety show called the Mavis Bramston show, a sketch comedy show. I'm sure it was subtle stuff. I have no idea. Then he produces a second little irreverent short film called the Life and Flight of Reverend Reverend Buckshot

which is the story of a birder turned Christian evangelist it has not been widely screened but it won him a young filmmaker award and so he leaves Channel 7 he has no idea where his career is heading he doesn't have like a grand plan

it's another job in sort of like government film unit doing documentary filmmaking does some of that I mean it's a real 10,000 hours thing of like you know he's really really really working with very little sort of money and like sort of

semi-professional stuff and just like slowly like building his craft and all that. Makes some little documentary movies. Makes a comedy television film called Man on a Green Bike. Jesus. What, David? Are you angry that he paid his dues? So

angry. No, it's just a very long dossier. Just start making features already. Get to ask to direct a segment in an anthology. Television film called Three to Go, and his segment is called Michael. I have seen this because it is on the, there is a French Blu-ray of Cars the Day, Paris, and the plumber. That is, I think, the only high-deaf disc that exists of either movie in any country.

But it has the Michael segment on there. I have not seen the full anthology, but it's like three different portraits of the young person in Australia at the time. And Michael is interesting because it's kind of about. bit of it's a little analogous to ambling because it's about a kind of of a countercultural guy. It's about

a guy who can't hang with the counterculture. Right, he's trying to be a cool 60s hippie, but isn't, is a bit of a He's a rich kid. Right. Who feels like he should be engaged with the sort of like politically and John Travolts is an angel? Yes. He chains smokes.

He's a little unconventional. This guy hasn't shaved in two. days. So this film wins an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Film. Can I finish my observation about this film quickly? Because I took the time to watch it. Of course. Amblen is like a very short kind of

poppy, funny, stylish almost music video where the reveal... This is Spielberg. That's the Spielberg short. The reveal is that this guy's like a dork and a poser, right? And it's very much like, I can't do this. Even though the girl wants to sleep with him,

he like runs off and the guitar case is empty, and it feels very telling of Spielberg being like, I'm a kid, like, playing pretend. Michael does not feel autobiographical. Michael feels, uh, uh, kind of satirical of a type of, uh, someone who does a dalliance with performative politics. Right. Okay.

It starts off kind of like docudrama style, uh, a lot of like news, real footage and sort of music, rock music and whatever. and then it goes into this guy trying to go to like meetings and protests and things like that. And he just like, it feels interestingly kind of critical of people who don't actually give a shit. For a guy who I think retains a sociopolitical interest throughout all of his films. He does. Yeah. So the film does pretty well.

And so he gets some money to make another film, which sometimes. sort of argue as his debut. It's a 50-minute film. It's called Holmesdale. Yes. This is what gets him both the juice to make Carstay at Paris, but also gets him on the radar to be offered picnic and hanging rock. So it's the real calling card.

Homesdale's 50 Minutes, as I said, it's about the staff of a hunting lodge that's kind of like torturing their guests. I think they made it for like a few thousand dollars. It was an unhappy like process. everyone was stressed out and tired and hungry and all this shit. But he says it probably kind of fed the story in a good way, like that they were all just like in this decaying estate, like at each other's throats. He says it's his closest thing to like a Hitchcock movie.

Like it's like a weird little black comedy. You can watch it on YouTube. I think it's quite good as well. It is interesting that his early work and this kind of stops at Cars Day Paris is more kind of like heightened. comedic satirical. It's not straight up comedy and it's dark and there's still some grounding, but there's a sort of stylization to these movies and tone.

Yeah. After this, he goes on another trip. He wants to visit both L.A., you know, he goes to America and London, visits like film, you know, he's trying to get more info, more skills, more whatever, exposure to big stuff. He goes to London. He works at L. Street Studios on Ken Russell's, movie, The Boyfriend, the Twiggy movie. Yes. God bless Twiggy.

We love Twiggy. He meets Alfred Hitchcock, who's making Frenzy, normal movie. And Alfred Hitchcock, normal guy. But it's like, Frenzy is an amazing, interesting movie, but it's like, Hitchcock being like, well, it's like the 70s and I can just kind of be out in the open with what a fucking

freak I am. Nothing has to be coded anymore. Right. And he makes it, and everyone's like, whoa. And he's like, oh, I guess I'll die. Code. Code. Go back to coding. It's just so funny that he was like the king of like the visual metaphor and the sly illusion. It's all over it in. Yes, right. And then he like sees Brian DePaul and he's like, oh, I can tell people what I like. This guy jerk gets off on fucking strangling ladies and people are like, relax.

Sorry. Do you know what's one of my favorite bits of all time? The great Steve Martin going to put on a show tonight. S&L opening monologue. Do you don't talk about the song? In the 90s where it's like, I've decided I'm going to care again. Yeah.

It's maybe the best S&L cold open, like non-political cold open ever. But all the cast members come out and one by one are inspired by the fact that Steve Martin gives a shit again and they're like reinvigorated and Farley does his bit of the song about how he's not going to get drunk

and everything. And then Phil Hartman comes out and he's like, week after week, I put on these wigs and these makeup. But tonight I'm going to let the Phil Hartman shine through. And Steve Barn goes, that's not a good idea, Phil. And he goes, all right.

It's funny. Pretty funny. I like it. I don't know. It makes me laugh. So he works in all these movies. Okay, look, he meets Hitchcock. I don't fucking know. You do know. In the dossier. It's right in front of you. It's a formative trip for him. It's great for him to meet people like, you know, Hitchcock, even though he's just like, but how do you do?

And he's just like, mm-hmm, you know. But nonetheless, like Peter Weir is like, this is, the cements for me, I want to make movies. To be fair, Hitchcock was attempting to answer the question, but he had a full roast turkey in his mouth. The man liked to eat food. He was a big boy. God bless him.

That's not just that he was big. The stories are that he would have like fucking four dinners in a row. That's the famous thing where you would have a big, like, multi-course dinner. And then when the waiter would come at the end, he'd go, let's do it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just run that back, baby. all the courses again. You go back to salad.

You know, maybe people should do that more. Do kind of a like, we climb the mountain, then we descend. You know, start and end with salad. I mean, our version, our contemporary version is the bang bang. Yeah, but the bang bang is just, that's just like, that's like people being like, I'm awful, but I found a word that so now it, now it's okay. I got a burger and then I got fried chicken. I'm like, well, that doesn't sound a good idea.

But he was a classic bang bang. Yeah. No, it was. But then again, I did a bang bang recently. I did too. So, you know. I did a comedy bang bang recently. Well, I haven't listened yet.

It's in the feed, though. It's, I'll say this. Reddit is calling it an episode. I had a great time. Reddit has already ruled it out as a contender for the best of. Maybe one day.

I did it, but yeah, I went to the Village Cafe, which is a place in South Brooklyn, you know, it's an Azerbaijani food, right? Got some lamb, skewers, some rice. I was like, this rocks. But I know it was so deep in Brooklyn. I was like, you know, there's this pizza place

I've been meaning to go to. And like, I'm never here. And I went and got a sluze on pizza. What are you going to do to me? What are you going to nail me to the cross? No. That's why they killed Jesus. Too many bang bangs.

Bang bangs. So while they killed Jesse Jay as well. While he's... Bang, bang. Oh, the song, right. Bang, bang. What happened to her? They killed her on the cross.

You're right. Six months in London, he says he wrote the outline for the cars that ate Paris, the treatment for the last wave, and the treatment for the plumber. These are all movies. I love these kind of life. It's like a creatively fertile moment for him.

Yeah. Yeah. It shows to him, yes, I am a director. I'm not, I don't want to perform. I don't, right? You know, I like, cements that for him. It also shifts him away from comedy. Because a lot of the early stuff he'd done was a lot more, you know,

openly nakedly comic. He never made mod nights, but he did. He did. He did. He's gonna whip this at you. I'm joking. I would never do that. I would only throw something at David Early. Which famously last time you threw a wallet. I threw it a wallet in him. I needed him to be quiet.

You still haven't gotten your credit card back from him. Wait a second. One reason he says he moves away from comedy is when he's in London, he sees Monty Python. And he's like, these guys are pretty fucking good. I'm not going to do better than that. I'm not going to do anything remotely approaching this. It's also funny to imagine seeing Monty Python and TV and being like, oh, fuck. So they did it.

They got sketch comedy on TV. Guess that's no longer an option. Sure. They're the ones who get to do that. He returns to Australia. And in fact, Graham Bond, who's an old collaborator of his, said, I'm about to do something called the anti-Jack show. I mean, truly, I'm trying not to be on. I think it sounds very good.

It was, of course, a show where men had their hands taped to their thighs and couldn't jack. off. I don't know what the anti-jack show would have been, but it's something they had done on the radio sometime. Yeah. And he's like, we got like a 13 episode order. And Peter Weir is like, I'm out, man. Like, I don't, I don't want to do that.

I don't want to do sketch comedy. I want to concentrate on film. So he turns down what sounds like a fairly guaranteed thing. He makes one more documentary for the Commonwealth Film Unit, the sort of government group he was working for, which is called whatever happened to Green Valley, which is about an area, like a working class area where people have been moved out of the city into state provided housing. So he does a little documentary. Cars that ate Paris, though. Let's get to that. The idea came while he's traveling through Europe. He's driving through France. He comes to a little section

of a road. There's a barricade. There's a heavy miss. There's two frightening-looking characters behind this barricade. They had highway jackets with like, you know, red crosses on, you know, whatever, like they look official. And they stop the car, direct us down a detour, and they go down this fucked up detour and our and then like as peter's driving he's like to his wife like why did we accept that you know like like we just kind of went along with what they told us to do but like why like they barely presented anything to credentials or anything like that you know they didn't ask for the permit they didn't tell us why we were you know not allowed to go down this road and he just starts like inventing the crazy you know conclusion of that right he's like what how that makes

If it's basically like a town is doing that for like a nefarious reason. Right. The sort of like core hook to this movie, if there is one, is a town that is somehow benefiting financially and structurally from people crashing their cars. Yes. It doesn't totally make sense. No. That is the idea. It's not a literal movie.

It's sort of like, what if, you know, you wanted to kill people? but you knew you would get in trouble if you went around shooting them with a gun because you could get caught. But what if you just basically made them all have car accidents? Then it's just like, well, they had a car accident. Not our fault. And then there are like, you know, corpses that can be experimented on.

There are junked cars that can be rebuilt. Like, basically the whole kind of societal, a structure of this town is built around the things they're able to pull from the wreckage of the car. They're scavenging. Yes, one inspiration for him as well. Exactly. But it's also not just like,

oh, they make people crash cars so they can steal their wallet. If they wanted to do that, they would make David upset. No, but yes, there's this whole complicated system of all the different things they extract from the cars and how it feeds. There's this lore that this would happen in Cornwall and the

British Coast, like, long ago, that they would have lighthouses and then they would move them or turn them off to have ships wreck on the coast and they would go to loot the ships, right? It's the same idea. It's a weird kind of scabagogy pirity thing. He writes these, like, what he calls short stories,

but they're basically treatments. They're intended to be turned into movies. He would record the scripts onto tapes, do all the voices and sound effects. Funny to think about, because, again, I do think of Peter Weir as a serious guy. I was watching, you know...

Some special features yesterday. You came into the office. Yeah, not like deadly serious, but, like, you know, he's like a... He makes these, like, prestigious movies. He seems very smart and, like, sophisticated. I got this interview up on the big screen. We look at each other and we're both like, I find him very relaxing.

He is relaxing. He's got a very calm tone. But he seems very like just kind of like straight, focused, blunt. So it's sort of hard for him to imagine him like doing bits into a type recorder, but that's apparently what he was doing. Yeah.

And so that's how he's kind of processing this story. He thinks it's going to be more of a comedy. As it develops, it's like, gets darker and darker. You feel him pivoting. within this movie, like starting it out thinking that he's primarily going to be a comedy

filmmaker and finding some other voice along the way. He takes it to Keith Gow, an old friend. They work on it together. They take it to a third writer called Pierce Davis, who'd worked on Homesdale. And they all, you know, they're the three credited writers. You know, they all kind of build the script up together. He calls it eventually a thriller with an underlying social comment on capitalist way of life and motorcars and how we place this importance

on them in our society. But above all, I want to make an entertaining story. Okay. Australian film production. It's hit a low point, Griffin, in the decades following World War II. Australian Prime Minister in 1970, John Gorton

when we look up. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? He pioneers the Australian Film Development Corporation to try and start making like homegrown movies again, government subsidized, and this is sort of the beginning

of what you call the Aussie new way. Basically slowed down to nothing. There's a real incentive to kickstart the industry back into gear. Yeah. Seems like he was kind of kind of center-right guy. Okay.

I don't know. I can't really get that. He got quite a look. He does. What was his opinion on Beef Tallow? That's the only position. I'm a single-ish vote. I think of the 70s,

everyone was pro. Yeah. Right? That goes away later. I mean, his vibe, his vibe is beef tall. He's a bulldog. He's a bulldog kind of look.

So the Australian Film Development Corporation invests about 125,000 Aussie bucks. The total budget was about 200 grand. Small budget, but you know, it's,

you know, they get to make a movie. They made a movie. They did, in fact, make a movie. And he talks about, and his producers on this talk about how they learned a lot from Hal and Jim McElroy specifically, who worked with him on the next

couple of movies, how they learned a lot from how hard it was to pitch this movie, both in getting money and in getting an audience, that it's, like, it's hard to explain. It's not really focused on a specific thing, and that, you know, in a big way, like, not you have to make a movie with the poster of mine first, but... A little bit. Like, they want something that will sell and that will matter to people. They shoot it in New South Wales,

about 250 miles from Sydney, you know, to, you know, a more sort of obscure or backwater part of the country, I guess. I don't know. You know,

they, and they make the film. It is. We're going to discuss the film now. The lead actor in it, Terry Camilleri, it is his debut film. Sure.

He's Napoleon. Damn. Sorry. I took it from you. Did you recognize this? Did you clock this, Ben? No. The lead guy in this movie

is the man who delivered what might have been the finest supporting performance in film in 1989, Napoleon Bonaparte in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Nice.

The only thing I remember is when he's Piggy-Wing. Oh, no. Bowling. Yes. And he misses and he goes like, Mav, bad,

but he's like, I remember that being really fun. I'm not exaggerating. That performance is he's very fun. Top-to-bottom fire. It is unlawful. Unbelievable.

He is... And the water slide pushing past kids to go down first? Not to, not to spoil way ahead,

but he is the guy in the bathtub in the Truman Show. Big time. Like, you know how the Truman Show has all the

viewers that we keep cutting to. He's the bathtub guy. He's got an incredibly distinctive look. He does. Weird to see him

in this movie because he's one of those guys where you're like... He's supposed to be sort of an every man in this one. But also you're like, wasn't he born

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A weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility, from $30 for two people, up to $60 for five. So no matter what day of the week, Go's got you covered. Find out more at goadransit.com slash tickets. You're, like, seeing him in, like, 30, and you're like, we're almost there. All right, so Cars Day Paris. So, yeah, how do we describe this film? It's a, it's a 90-minute movie, although apparently there's a U.S. cut that's 74 minutes.

What the hell is that? That must be just, like, trying to get all of it, you know, be as all action as possible. I think that this was an early New Line release. They retitled it, the Cars That Eat People. It was several years later. Yes. And they specifically sold it as a thriller. Right.

The fuck is going on in this town. Right. The poster has so much information. Yes. But there are many posters. David and I were just going through this that we've both become, as David put it when I walked into the office. On time, presumably. Griff was 15 minutes late.

I was on time. You're not one to raise your eyebrows today. That's all I'm going to say. I guess who can raise his eyebrows. Yeah, David's allowed to. Weird. His eyebrows just hit the ceiling? Yeah, my eyebrows are perma-raised, I would say.

David said, I've gotten your sickness. And I said, what do you mean? We both now obsessively, methodically, choose the posters for every log on letterboxed. Because letterbox gives you a default poster graphic, but very often, it's not a true poster. No, it's a poster with all the words removed and all the title billing.

It's sort of like an iTunes poster. It's not a theatrical one sheet. But then do you upload your own image? No. Other people upload them. We haven't quite gotten to the stage of uploading our own. I believe you can if you truly. You absolutely can.

And sometimes I look and I go, these options aren't great. Do I go hunting? But the posters for this movie are wildly different. Some of them are very informational. That very long tagline I read. Some of them are super graphic. The new line one, the cars that eat people is like a car eating a guy. Like, depicting things that don't happen in a movie.

But I feel like it's the spiky. The spiky car is the big thing. Yeah. Which is so fucking cool. It's very, very fucking cool. It's a car, but it's covered in spikes. Yes, that is kind of the thing it has going on. The movie opens

with like a kind of like picturesque drive, a happy couple, and then you watch them get into like a big wreck and you immediately see the way the town gets to work and extracting them and the vehicle, the wreckage.

But the town doesn't cause or sabotage. It seems like it's just a random accident. Am I wrong? It's not. Like his tire pops. What does your read on it, David? I think it's all, I mean, you're right that like it seems accidental, but like we do learn that, you know, this is their whole ploy,

Right. Right. So it does feel... I read it as... Not that there's like something supernatural going on, but that they have perhaps... You just put shit all over the roads or something.

I don't know. Twisty turns. Like, they're rigging it in a way that it's sort of like a skill course. They're closing roads, I guess, so that you have to go on the bad roads, maybe, and that's just strewning nails about... Yes.

Yeah, maybe they are. Look, this is a good movie, but it also is like a first film and feels like a first film, and it's one of those things where I wonder if you talk to Peter Weir, he'd be like, yeah, I watched the cut and realized we didn't explain that. Truly, no idea.

Don't know what his, like, you know, I mean, I think he's fond of this movie. I remember us seeing Bukku Banzi at Nighthawk, a movie we both like a lot. I like that movie a lot, but that movie is more extreme than this one in terms of like, you're like, oh, they just didn't know how to make a movie for some of this. Right, right. And a lot of times when we cover first films on this show, They're varying levels of, like, fluency. And, like, Peter Wir is absolutely someone who already at this point

knows how to put images together, uh, knows how to work with actors. But, like, you hear these stories of, like, first-time filmmakers who then watch the cut of their movie and they're like, oh, I didn't explain that at all. Now I understand storytelling, you know? Buckroom bonsai, which is a unique object, anyone can agree,

is also just, right, a specific scenario where you're like, it's like someone trying to make a movie sort of five times, more ambitious than Cars than 8 Paris in terms of the storyteller. Just in terms of like, there's aliens. There's government and, you know, government secret societies. There's musical sequences. There's the where you're just like, guys, this is a lot to put on

your plate for movie one. Complex visual patterns. Yes, right. This sort of like reveal of the true forms of the aliens. There's moments. Oh, there's just the looks. I mean, the rolled up sports jacket. Yes. The rolled up sleeps on a sports jacket. Cowboys Jeff Goldberg.

Just the whole concept Bukh Ruanzaa has of like he's a sort of intergalactic secret agent and he has the coolest band in the world. What's his band? Well, it has three saxophones. You know what I mean? He's also a surgeon. Yeah, that's like, but I love the idea of course piling it on, but then they're like, and he's got the coolest band in the world. His band has three saxophones. And you're like, that doesn't sound cool. And they're like, does this look cool? And I'm like, yes, it does. It's the

coolest should have ever seen. That is a true the 50 years ahead of its time movie where you're just like now the culture is caught up to a point where you're like here's the pitch. It's like it's the eighth movie. It's like we all know this character. We're just diving into the middle. Meet Bukhru Banzai, but you already know him.

It's funny that he's everything at the same time. I cannot imagine how insane that movie felt upon release. You know, I know like friends of ours like Hodgman have talked about it. Like being the weird kid at school and seeing it and being like, I get this. This is like a transmissible.

from a future I want. Right. Right. Yeah. Everyone else is angry. Yes. I got it. Yeah. But this has a little bit of that energy where you're like, you know, there are first films that are like the first album syndrome thing of like someone's been waiting to make a movie their whole life. They've got all their bangers. And they know like there's a very specific story they want to tell. And then their first movies that feel like a drafts folder. And a little bit like you're still in film school in the sense where you're. you're like, I got a bunch of ideas I want to try out. You know? Very interesting. And I think this movie is fairly cohesive, but it's also inscrutable at times. It's cohesive in that it has a, you know, it has a good narrative engine, which is this guy gets trapped in this town.

Right. After you see this original crash, you see this guy and his brother driving, they get in a similar crash. His brother dies. He survives. Wakes up in the hospital. And it's him basically learning the fucked up thing about this town. This town's sort of bringing him in closer. And then weighing, do I participate in the fucked up thing about this town?

It's a little. Or whatever. Right. Like, am I wrong? No, you're right. The narrative engine of it is like twilight zoni where it's like you wake up in an accident. Something weird has happened. It's a normal town that's inviting you in.

And then you start to realize how many weird things are going on beneath the surface. It's just the weird things that happen are like varying levels of abstract. But do you think he's aware all along or when did when does the character figure out? what this town is really up to. It's kind of when he starts working at the hospital. Maybe he starts to feel like, right? Like it's sort of there, right?

It's unclear. Yeah. I like Terry Calamara. He's a little bit of a dope. I was going to say, I like him a lot. I think this is a fun performance. It's another thing that you feel like you make one movie and then learn a big lesson from it, which is he's a really passive character. He's really quiet

and he kind of goes with the flow. You know? He's sort of like, in a trance with the whole thing, there's not a lot of him like getting seduced by the town, nor is there him being suspicious and like putting up his guard. So you

don't feel like he's trying to solve a mystery and you also don't feel like there's a clear sense of this guy that's getting corrupted. It does just sort of feel like he's sleepwalking through the whole situation until things get very scary at the end. It is not a movie

right that's heavy on action. until the big climax, right? No, but there are crashes throughout. Yeah. Yes, and they are excitingly constructed. You can see it's sparking Miller, not just, oh, look, someone shot a car in Australia. There's a language to the car crashes. That is very visceral.

Part of the thing he has to overcome is, like, he's now scared of driving, so he can't escape because he doesn't want to get back in a car because he was in a car crash. he reveals also that he hit someone right right he's got like trauma I think he says he hit and killed an old man so very traumatic experience

in Australia that just would happen all the time I do think this is part of what I like about this movie is it does feel like it's textually engaging with how scary cars are oh that's what you like right because you're like I don't trust them cars they've all got spikes to be right but also that he's just like I shouldn't have this amount of power in my hands

which is the reason I don't drive. It's the number one reason I don't drive. Like, my psychological anxiety about the act of driving is secondary to, I don't trust myself, to do it correctly and not cause damage. I love driving. It's so fun. Me too. It's all your worst place.

It's great. It's all yours. Because my thing with driving is, like, I don't, you know, I think cars are bad for society. I don't like the way the cities are built for cars, the way the country depends on cars. I don't like that they have eyes on the wind field. Very pro mass transit.

Very pro. We need less cars in our life. But if I'm driving a car, I'm like, beep, beep. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, here we go. Cachow. Like, I mean, I guess I don't like being in traffic, but I don't hate it that much.

I also just need to remind you guys that I grew up in New York City, the mean streets of Greenwich Village. My father was like hot committed to having a car in the city and driving. which is a terrible experience. Yeah, I mean, yeah, having a car in Manhattan that you actually want to use, this is dumb. And he was, you might be really surprised to hear this, an incredibly anxious driver.

Well, it's Myerowitz stories, right? It's the opening scene where Sandler's just belting down looking for a parking spot. Right, yeah, yeah. Since that movie came out. Yeah. But it's like the entire car became an extension of his tense body, and every part of it was,

stressful to him. Like being a traffic was stressful. Any time you've got some fucking hang-up. It's just your dad was stressed out as you're a kid all the time about the thing. But how does this relate to milk and eggs? No, you like milk? No, I don't. Yeah, right. Milk and eggs. Is your dad yelling about eggs? No, eggs I just think are gross and all of you are insane. I'm just trying to see if there's like a childhood. I told you the milk thing, right? I just did this on dirty laundry at SF Sketch Fest, the dropout show. Thank you for having me. Where you had to get people. to guess whose dirty secret was was whose. I loved the bottle.

Much like your daughter, I'd tap the table. I'd go empty. Right? Yeah. And I wouldn't drop the bottle because I was such a creature to comfort. And my parents were like, you are too old. You've got to drop this. It is a classic moment that comes.

You've got to wean. And they were doing anything to wean me. And I was just, I was, I was immovable on this issue. and one day I woke up and there was a glass of milk on the table and I was like, the fuck is this and they were like, this is milk and I was like, I'm sorry,

no worries, but you've made a mistake. Milk actually comes in a bottle. This is a cup of some shit I've never seen before in my life. Milk has a nipple at the top. And they were like, no, this is what milk is now. And I was like, oh, cool, I'm never drinking milk again.

How old were you? I was like five. You were still drinking from a bottle This is the point And my parents were like Enough is enough And I was like Yeah

I'm not drinking milk And they're like Okay, you're five Let's see how that goes And I haven't had milk In over three decades I would say by the time You're five

You certainly do not need To be drinking milk anymore It's a personal choice At that point I don't know I'm five six And my bones are made of glass Mistakes might have been made

When we were kids Timmy failure style When we were kids the predominant thinking was, pump your kids filled with milk. Yeah, every celebrity had the fucking mustache. Now you are very much told,

like, do not do that because then your kids won't eat food. Why am I tiny? Because your parents are tiny. Oh, so it all goes back to my dad, doesn't it? Your mother is the tiniest person I've ever seen. People don't understand how tiny my mom. And your dad is hardly Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

He's not a huge guy himself. Although now it's funny to imagine my dad doing Dwayne the Rock Johnson. It's funny to imagine. It is funny to imagine. What if they announced Rampage 2, but we're replacing Dwayne the Rock Johnson with Peter Newman?

I'm into it. Yeah. So what happens in the cars today, Paris? Our main character, as you say, it's Arthur, played by Terry Camilleri. The mayor is sort of taking him under his way. The mayor is named Len Kelly. He's played by John Millian,

who's like, I think, a sort of legendary at the time, like Australian character actor guy had done lots of theater, did, you know, British stuff as well. He's in Crocodile Dundee. He is in Crocodile Dundee. He is in Crocodile Dundee. But he's also, he's in Billy Budd. He's in the longest day. In fact, Crocodile Dundee, too, I think, is basically his last

performance. He's like the buddy. Wake and Fred, walkabout. Like, he's in most of the iconic Australian movies. Oh, right. He's the dad in Walkabout, which is not an important role because they die. And tremendous amount of TV. Yes. He's playing like a fucking cartoon idea of an old-timey mayor. Like top hat holding on to like his like jacket lapels, big sash that says mayor.

He's pretty funny. He's funny. Yeah. But he's got a wife and two daughters who Arthur finds out are not actually his, that they are children that they adopted from wreckages. Okay. Yes, that's right. Yeah, it's all part of the sort of weird scavening that they're doing. One of the daughters has a scar.

You can see that the mom insists she hide. That was clearly caused by an accident. Like, however they got her. And then, yeah, and then they give him the hospital job. Can we acknowledge? You can work at the hospital. It's kind of like Doc Hollywood. Yeah, it's exactly like Doc Hollywood.

You know the movie Doc Hollywood? Michael J. Fox is a big shot. plastic surgeon or what, you know, he's like a doctor. Yeah, from Hollywood. And then he's driving his hot rod, right, somewhere. And he crashes it in, it's, I mean, it's also the premise of cars. I was going to say, he crashes it in, like, a small town and he, like, wrecks some fence or a gazebo or whatever the fuck. And they're like, your sentence.

Your sentences, right? You got to work off your debt by being a local doctor. And he's like, what? I mean, I'm cool. I'm a big shot of Michael J. Fox over here. I got sunglasses. Tell me, I got to fix this fence. And then he falls in.

love with the small town. He loves this one. Instead, they're like, okay, you can work here. You can kind of get your strength back. You can, you know, wait to be ready to drive a car again. But he's in the worst town. Right. And the movie Cars Ben is about kind of a hot shot car who's a race car. He's driving too fast. He wrecks a fence in a town. He does. And the cars are like, you got to stay here. And he's like, what? I hate this. What? And then he comes to love the town. And the cars don't eat Paris, but they do eat food. Yeah, so the town, of course, is called Paris. That's why it's called that.

It's just very funny, and it's a thing we find in America as well. Of course. Where you'll, I mean, Paris, Texas. New York is littered with it, where they would just be like, well, we need names for these towns upstate, let's just name it after famous old cities. Yeah.

Paris Hilton. That's a person's name. That's true. Yeah. But she's American. One of my favorite examples of this is in Pennsylvania there's a town called Jersey Shore. That's really funny. And so you see this road sign like Jersey Shore,

50 miles or whatever. Do you feel like you've gone through a warm hole? Like that, that's crazy. Didn't we pass that? We're so far away from that. I just want to call out one of the vehicle wreckage scavengers,

kind of the main one in the film. Charlie is played by the actor Bruce Spence. And I don't know if you put this together, but he was the gyrocopter pilot in the Road Warrior. So that's one of our oldest bits because you said that to me I guess when we were talking about...

Matrix. Matrix or was it Star? No, Star Wars Episode 3. Oh, it's T-on-Me-Dun. Yeah. But then I bring it up again in Matrix Revolution. But the first time you brought it up to me, I was kind of like, okay. But then, of course, we have basically covered every iconic film

that the unusual-looking man, great actor, Bruce Spence, has been in, but for one, Griffin. We have more coming out. Well, of course, what do we have coming out? I'm not going to say it, but we have a Bruce Spence movie on the calendar again later this year. That's right. We do. We do. We do. But there's one guy, he's the voice of the mouth of Sauron in the extended edition of Return of the King. Which, when we cover Peter Jackson, we have to do the extended, right?

We do, although I think they are, it is very worthy of debate whether the extended editions are better. I think that that's like debate, but we have to do them. We do, but it's going to be an interesting bridge to cross because, like, they're different. And it's interesting to consider the differences. And Ben, you're going to have to do two cuts of every episode. I mean, I think there's an argument for something like that. I think we... The problem is that the hobbits also have extended editions and no one's really out here being like,

those are all so good. Has anyone? I've never heard anyone say they're really worthwhile. I believe they exist because they were like, we'll just do what we did with Lord of the Rings, right? Well, people love extended editions. What if Peter Jackson put out compressed editions of the Hobbit movies? I compressed into one fucking movie.

That might win people over. I know it's been said a thousand times, and I have no new observations. It is one of the craziest things that's ever happened. It's like three giant books, three movies, and it was hard to whittle the books down. And they were like, you're ready to adapt the Hobbit, and he's like, yeah, three movies.

And you're like, you know Hobbit is like a third the length of Lord of the Rings books? And he's like, it's going to have to be three movies. That it even went from two to three. That he shot two. We got smog. Smog. You mean we got him. You mean we shot him.

Yeah, we call it. But we got one of the finest performances, mocap performances, maybe of all time. It is the funniest shit of all time. I watch that. You always say this on the show. I mean, you both do. you're like, I watch that once a year, like next thing. I just, I watch the behind the scenes of Benzic.

Cumberbatch in the motion, motion cap. Yeah. Doing the mocap scenes. But my favorite thing is all the people at Wetter were like, yeah, I mean, it wasn't usable. They do say, like, we, we did our best, but it's not, it's not like the dragon's face is this. Well, it's just like, they were like, look, Ghalem is like, he's a hobbit, but he's got the basic anatomy of a human being. Right? He's like a weird, like, zombie hobbit, but he's got arms and legs and legs and a head and like eyes and nose and mouth in a right place. You can transfer those tracking dots.

And you're like, Benedict Cumberbatch gets on his tummy and you're like, well, his mouth is 15 feet long. He doesn't have arms. He's a dragon. His legs are tiny. I mean, and you know, you're like, you can't transfer that data onto the model we've already built. No, they told him. He was always a dragon. Right.

He was like, so mocha. right? And they were like, I think just like get it. And he was like, we haven't even turned it on yet.

He was apparently so enamored with the idea of what Hiddys circus had done that he was like, I've always wanted to do mocha. And they were like,

cool. And just let him do that. And we're like, uh, it was helpful to like, we could reference it. We could look at it. I mean,

they used the audio. Yeah, of course. They did. And I'm sure that the audio compared to what you could have captured if he was just standing in a quiet mood. No question. No question. And he, he, he, um, he does the necromancer as well. Like, he, he plays multiple, like, mocap parts in those Hobbit movies. Right. Much like he played Dormammu in Dr. Strange.

Remember who's a big head? Yeah. What's Dormamu up to these days? I'm sure we'll find out. I'm sure he'll pop up in Avengers Dume's Dume's day. be like, I'm still here. Dumma will return Avengers. I'm better. Dormo who rocks.

Yeah, Tomo's good. So the Cars that A Paris. What happens in this film? What are, you know, like, what do we need to fill in? Bruce Spence is rad as hell in this, and it's important because it's like George Miller sees this.

Yeah, and it's like, I want this guy, because Bruce Spence is in Mad Max's one and two, right? Yes, he plays different characters. Yes, I know. Yes. But no, but there's like a, 100% a straight line to George Miller seeing this being like, oh my God. No, he's in two and three.

I always see him. Okay. He's not in one. George Miller had to feel like he had built up his bones enough to be able to ask the great Bruce Spence. The other films Bruce Spence isn't just to shout him out. So the whole thing with him is that he's like, is he seven feet? He's not quite that, but he's really tall. He's got one of the longest his elongated head. Yes.

That like just is so interesting. He's got this sort of big mouth. and he plays like I said in the mouth of Sauron he plays the train man in the Matrix Revolutions

and he plays what's the guy in Star Wars called Tian Meda Maddon Tion Medan he's also he's in Dark City he's in

Ace Ventura and Nature Call Yes that I cannot remember he's in the good PJ Hogan Peter Pan right he was in apparently Pirates

to the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales Can't say I remember that one I haven't seen that one. Mayor Dix, Gods of Egypt. He's of course

in I, Frankenstein. Apparently, he's in the Chronicles of the Narnia, the voyage of the Don Treter which I will be watching because I'm going to watch all three in my Narnia project

this year. Yes. I'm reading all the books. Yeah. And he's the voice of Chalman finding Nemo. And he's done a zillion TV shows and stuff and he's just an interesting guy.

Yeah, he fucking rules. And you should have been excited the first time I brought him up. You've never gotten over it. It's taken you 11 years. You act like, what the fuck are you talking about? Who gives a shit? He's a legend.

He is a bit of a legend. Yeah, he is. Thank you. He's good in this. He plays one of the freak guys in the city. Yeah, guess what? Good casting. He collects Jaguar the metal statues. The ornaments. The ornaments on the car.

I love how for the gang, the young people gang, their cars are all covered in graffiti, all fucked up. They look like they're that could be in a roller derby. Sure. Does that roller derby?

Absolutely. Yes. Wait, do you mean like a destruction derby? Yeah. Although there's another word for it, which is Jim Kana. Yes. Jim Kana. Which is like an Australian motorsport.

It's the sport of driving as fast as you possibly can. And it's an evolution of them, a history of doing the same thing with horses. And it's not that it's like specifically like destruction derby. it's that you're just like, you just go as fast as you can and whatever happens, happens. And then at some point,

I think that evolves into like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if we just tried to wreck as much shit as possible and made it a little safer? It's just wild that there was a sport that's just like,

how fast can this horse go? And then they create cars and they're like, I mean, obviously, let's just push it to the limit. Really fun. But what I wanted to say is the design of the young people gang,

they all wear car, emblems that they've pulled from the various cars that have been destroyed. And what would yours be, Ben? What would my car be? Or I don't know. If you could design any hood ornament.

If I could design any hornet. Hood ornament. Hood ornament. I guess I would just do a pig. Or a big bone. Or a big bone. Or a big bone. But no, but yeah, also like if you were going to steal a hood ornament and have it be your coat.

I just want to put that right on the record. That never happened. Do you, yeah, do you want a Jaguar? Do you want a little beamer shield? I'm trying to think of like what the hood ornaments are. Yeah, I'm like a swan. I mean, they're all the logos. Mercedes reprised just because when you're kid,

you don't know anything and you're like, that's fancy. I think it is pretty fancy, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I found one of Bugs Bunny holding a shotgun. That would be mine. But I just mention it because I think it's so visually striking and feels very proto Mad Max. Yeah, I don't admittedly know enough about Australian culture in the 1970s and what this movie's coming out of to completely parse what I think we're is working through. But it does feel like there is a through line in all of his movies of this sort of like clash of cultures that is very in conversation with the weird.

short history of Australia, as you said, David, that it's like a hard reset town of people just landing there, like pushing the indigenous side and being like, this is ours now and we're going to try to like model it off of other successful colonialist societies. And so this idea of there being this town where they're just like, yes, we know how to be a town. This is a town where town things happen.

And then there's this weird shit going on. Oh! Right. Right. I was lifting my hat. It is this town that is like only in conversation with itself and hostile to the rest of the world, but also the town is at odds with itself. There was this kind of ongoing war between the older and the younger citizens of the town and the younger citizens feel more chaotic. They want to be crazy and the older citizens just want to have like a nice fancy town where they can have fancy parties, etc, etc. But everyone's doing the crazy fucked up thing.

The only disagreement is that the old people are like, let people. die, rummage their bodies and their wreckages, and then have a very nice dinner. Because it's all, the whole movie is building to this, like, party that they are doing this weird pastiche of like a fancy high society British sort of ball or whatever. And like, obviously it's all ludicrous. But yes, that's what I think that's a little bit of what was happening in Australia in the 70s at the time. And what his early film seemed to be commenting on is this idea of like, much like in America,

there is like a new wave of politically engaged, motivated, kind of like boundary pushing young people or questioning the structures around them. You know, and sometimes you push boundaries and sometimes you miss. Yeah, that's what the movie's about. This movie's really about getting fired from SNL. If you watch it really closely,

he was a sketch comedian. These young people, though, are also part of the murder. Yeah, oh, no, they're doing. They're guilty. They're very guilty. They're just, that's what I find interesting. It's more that the old people to me are pretending they're civilized. That's the commentary.

The commentary is that everyone's doing the exact same thing and they're having a philosophical disagreement about like being hedoness and owning the chaos versus like trying to put errors on top of it, which I think is like very in line with like hostily taking over. a country, pushing the indigenous people aside, and then being like, and we are a society of manners. We are now going to build nice houses and rules of like proper etiquette. And this is a moment where I think like younger Australians are sort of carving out their own identity and being like, why are we fucking doing these like impressions of like old British people from 200 years ago? What is this shit? I don't know. That's my read.

I think it's a good read. Thank you. I'm so tempted to connect it back to what's going on in America right now. Do it. It's very, I don't know, make America great again vibes. You have like the old guard people who are just like, we need to go back to when this country was racist. They're going along with it because they just have these, right, you know. And it benefited me.

And then you have like the psychotic people who are extremely online who are basically also supporting that but want to go even more extreme. This is my take. And they're black-pilled, one might call them. Yes. My take is that those people, whether they're

conscious of it or not, what seems to be driving them is a desire to go back to like caveman times. Like, everyone is just looking backwards and being like, fuck, this isn't working, right? And there's like one side that's like,

we agree, this isn't working. Can we push past this and like fix this? And the other side is just arguing about how far back they want to go. I disagree. I think all those guys just have our best interests of heart. Okay, so then everything's good.

Don't you think so? Yeah. We should actually do an ad read. Young person's blood, if you put it into you, will make you live forever. Great, read. Yeah. We're so happy to be working with our new sponsors,

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and a box of size of a mini fridge. They'll spin it right into your blood. It's a lot of blood. But my favorite part is unpacking it and the blood just all kind of like unfurls. It's an online mattress joke. Yes, that was funny. The conclusion of this film,

the big party that I was referring to. Yes. The young people show up with some swastika cars. It is a subtle indication that perhaps things are not offend. Of the most sound mind judgment of morals. Yeah.

And there's, it's called the Pioneer's Ball, which like they're dumb, you know, fancy dress party or whatever. Everyone goes insane and starts killing each other, I guess. Right. And Arthur finally, like, gets the guts to go behind the wheels of a car again.

Yeah. I mean, we're not talking about Earth there much because he just kind of walked through the movie. Well, I think they kill each other, but because there's been so much tension that's been building. Because the young people have continued to kind of fuck with the town, keep driving through, honking their horns, crashing into stuff. The inciting incident for the final, like, melee is the young guys damaging this Aboriginal statue. And that is taken as like this great disrespect and offense by the old people who also clearly do not care about the abhorical. original at all. And then that kind of leads to the all-out more. Yes.

It's exciting stuff. It's cool. It's cheap. I'm not mad about it, but like, you know, it does not have even the bravura of Mad Max where Mad Max is cheaply made, but because it's like stark, empty roads, deserts, you know, like where it's like the car action is so, like, striking. George Miller does the exact inverse of this

where he's like, that's the point. Exactly. I'm designing this entire movie around that stuff being as high impact as possible. And I'm marrying it to the simplest plot imaginable, which is guy needs revenge. Guy needs revenge because family dead. It's got one of my favorite things you find in low-budget movies. There's a part where our main character, he finally gets behind the wheel, and he's being told by the mayor to keep crashing into one of the gang members.

and it's done in this way where the gang member could just get out of the car because he keeps backing up and then like putting it, you know, it's like a manual and then crashing into him again and he's just doing that thing of like,

no, stop. Oh, please stop. You can't do this to me. It's a low budget film thing. I also think it's an inexperienced film thing. I've certainly been on productions where you're like rehearsing the scene and you go like,

And just, humor me for a second, why wouldn't I just get out of the car? And the director, we have 10 minutes. I swear to God. The director, like, looks at you with panicked eyes and smiles and goes like, I think it's,

for this shot to work, I think they just won't even, the audience isn't even going to be thinking that. And then you screen the movie and the first question everyone has is, why didn't they open the door? It's a nut, when I'm talking about these things

you recognize only after you've made one, film and then watch it back. You know, and again, you can only budget so much time. And you start to get, like, smart just you have the instincts in you from going through that process of, like, which things are an audience going to bump against and which things will they not care about. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling

in free skills training programs for in-demand fields, like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Let me see if there's anything here in the dossier about the release of the film. Okay, right, okay. A big thing about this movie is... It goes to the film festival.

It makes quite a splash. Roger Corman is interested. Cars the Day Paris, that sounds like the kind of movie I would put out. he sees it. They're sort of talking about a deal. It falls apart. And then very shortly after he hires the great Paul Bertel

and he goes, I have a title for you, Death Race 2000. Great movie. And obviously this movie does not have a ton to do with Death Race 2000, but in much the same way that it sparked Mad Max for George Miller. I think Roger Cortman saw this and is like, I could take this and try to recut it into being more the kind of movie that I put out. Or I could just make...

What if I just made a movie A hundred percent? Crazy shit the whole time. Make fucking wacky races. Right. With guns. Right. But I think this movie sparked him to be like,

oh, you could do this in live action. So, the Cars Day of Paris. You know, Weir says, I made this to be released internationally. Like, I'm trying to bust out of the Australian, you know,

bubble a little bit. Film was shot in fall of 73. It premieres at 74. Probably the Sydney Film Festival. Opens in theaters. Was not a big commercial hit, but it kind of like, you know, just starts to play. Then it gets taken to Ken.

What you just described happens if Corman gets interested, backs out of the deal at some point. New Lime Cinema releases it in America in 1976 titled The Cars That Eat People. They recut it. They add narration. I think they cut it to the bone. Weir's pretty bummed out by all of that. But Picnic is already moving.

Absolutely. Oh, my God. Right. At the bottom of this dossier, JJ has put our old employee in pal, Nick Luriano, who's now a lawyer, like, went to law school. Did like kind of a year of research for us and was like, think it's time for me to go to law school, went to law school, graduated, past the bar, is a lawyer. I mean, love you, Nick.

Blank check, an incredible stepping stuff. Seriously. What kind of lawyer is he? I'm actually not sure the kind. I mean, like, I think he's like, he graduated maybe last year, so he's still doing, you know, he's still early. Didn't you have to write him a job reference? We got like emails from the bar.

Yeah, just being like, he says he worked for blank check for the, you know, and I was like he did. Right. You know, I just had to confirm. You had to respond and be like, they were like, oh, we're just curious. We know there were some mistakes on the Elaine May series. Was he on staff at that point? No, not at all, not at all.

He was not. Love you, Nick. Love you, Masha. They're living in, they're doing great. Nick's doing great. But he did write a giant overview of the Australian sort of new wave in the film industry. and all that, but I am not going to repeat that. Wow.

That would be crazy. Very kind of you. But, no, I just think it's an interesting case where he designs this to be a calling card film, but the picnic thing has already gone into movement because of the same short film he used to get this made. He makes two different calling card movies that speak to different skills he had. No, it helps him tremendously. Right. Because this also has its own success.

feels like him, you know, pushing off of cars that ate Paris. Yes. Right? But also I've shown the range that now people trust me that I've done it twice. But then Gallipoli, the big prestigey stuff he's going to do next,

feels like it's pushing off of picnic. And then when he arrives in Hollywood to make witness, he is a full package. And he makes witness. If you made witness? I... Hang your head in shame! I am ashamed to say.

I'm ashamed to say I've not made witness even once. I'm going to play the box office game, Griffin. This film came out in America. So this is the new line cut. The cars that AP. I suppose so. On the 11th of June 1976. So, first of all, let's say happy birthday to America.

Oh, that's true. It was the bicentennial year. Fun. I'm not seeing it in the top 10 here. America is not in the top time? America's always number one at the box office, in my opinion. Number one, however, is a movie with wheels. Okay. In 1976.

Is it, uh, is, no. Wow, I just said wheels and he's guessing. Let's go. No, because I'm like smoking the band at 77. No, that's famously 77, of course. Because it's the second highest grossing film. Behind Ben, what was the highest grossing film of 1997? I thought if there was any Star Wars.

There you go. He nailed it. I was right. That's the one you would know. Star Wars was the most successful film of that year. But Smokey and the Bandit, which I recently watched for what I think is the first full-time. And Sally Field. Calm?

Hot stuff. Well, how's she gonna call her if she doesn't have your number? Okay. And my number is, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. The film, this film I'm discussing, though. It's not a bird. No. It's a car movie.

It has a vehicle in it. Oh, but it's not, you wouldn't primarily identify it as part. I've never seen this film, and I know it mostly for its sort of memorable title. It's a very interesting-sounding movie in that, like, the director is interesting. The stars are interesting. And, uh, yeah. It's not like Tulane Blacktop. No, that's an awesome movie.

Yeah. That's like a crazy, you know, exploitation movie. The stars are interesting. Yeah, well, so the first star is a comedian. Okay. And as with all comedians of yester year, nothing weird ever happened with this guy.

Oh, actually, a bunch of weird shit happened to her. Okay, so is this one of the Sydney Porteer of Bill Cosby movies? You're right on the second in that the star of this film is Bill Cosby. But no, it's not directed

by Sidney Potier. But they also, they did buddy films. I'm not talking about that, though. This is something else. Well, I was talking about it and I needed you to tell me that it wasn't one of those.

No, but Bill Cosby is the star. Can I tell you his other two stars? Yeah. Rakell Welch and Harvey Kytel. Yeah. This movie is called, Do you remember? And it's about them

running an ambulance service but like an indie ambulance service. I know the poster. Yes. It's got a very memorable title and let me tell you that Bill Cosby's character is called Mother.

And Raquel Welsh's character is called Jugs. Interesting. And what is Harvey Keitel's character called? I've given you two of the three words of the title. Nome? Speed. Wow. film is called Mother Jugs and Speed.

Oh, of course. There we go. Okay. Yes. It took me a long time to put that together. Yes. I have not seen it.

It's directed by Peter Yates, who's like, you know, a real director. And I assume it's a bunch of crazy car antics and stuff like that. But I mostly, I feel like I mostly know it because it's called Mother Jugs and Speed.

Yeah. It's a good title. What is that? Yeah. So that's number one at the box office. It's crushing. Number two of the box office is the film that will win best picture

in 1977. Rocky? No. Rocky 75? Oh, you know, wait a second. I take it back. Rocky wins Best Picture in 76. Thank you.

However, this film is nominated for Best Picture and wins other Oscars. It wins other Oscars. It does. Is it Network? Nope. Good guess, though, because I think that is one. The Rocky Year is crazy. The Rocky Year is crazy.

The five nominees are all amazing. Right. Because, uh, taxi drivers in there is? Taxi drivers in there, but that's not this movie. All the President's Ben is in there? There you go. There we go. Fifth, of course, is bound for glory.

Yes. Possibly the most forgotten, but still good movie. A movie I like tremendously. Hal Ashby. And famous for early Steadicam and all that. It's like the first Hollywood Steadicam. That camera's smooth as hell. Sure is.

Yeah. But no, this is all the President's Men. Okay. A terrific picture. Have you ever seen it, Ben? No. You're just like, why isn't every movie this? A little bit.

Adding it to the list. Yeah. All the President's Men. So that's... Do you know what it's about that? Hilariously, a summer movie. It's about what if we... It's the president's boys.

What if we couldn't trust the president of the United States of America? Oh. What if crimes were happening? Of course, journalists would be able to hold them to account we'd fix the problem. David, what's next at the box office? So that's number two, number three at the box office this week is a Western, kind of a, you know, kind of a revisionist Western. It's not a Clint.

No, it is not. No, it's two major movie stars. Oh, is it the, it's two major movie stars. Mm-hmm. Young or old? One of them's on the older end of his career, but he's had a, you know, in the 70s, he's had his big comeback. Okay. He's won an Oscar recently. Is it a Wayne? No. No. It's not a Wayne. Not John Wayne. He's had a big 70s comeback. Yeah, he's not like a Western actor. Yeah, and then the other other guy's young. Younger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I would say he got his, he became a star a little later, like he's probably in his 30s, but at this point, he's a huge star.

At this point, he's a huge star. Certainly. Certainly. It is not a film I've ever seen. 1976. I think at the time it was seen, it was like a huge flop. And like then it became. Missouri breaks.

It's the film is Arthur Penn's the Missouri Break, starring Maryssey. Marlon Brando. Jack Nicholson. And Jack Nicholson. Yeah. You've also got Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, Frederick Forrest. Yeah. Must have been a dry set.

A good... A joke about how all those people like to drink. Oh, sure. Right, right. I don't know. M. Night Shyamlan's old. I've got a second episode to record today. We do.

M. Night Shyamlet's old. If you remember, Rufus Sewell keeps asking for the title of this movie, and it's like a sign of his dementia. Oh, sure. As he's getting old on the beach. Yeah. Just thinking about that recently. No one does it like Eminem.

Missouri Breaks feels like a film I own on disc because like radiance put out a gigantic box of it. I'm not sure if that's true. But even if it isn't, it will be at some point, right? You know what I mean? Yes. I'll look it up and it'll be like, yeah, this movie is a huge bomb.

And I'm like, interesting. $60, you say. Number four of the box office. How are you doing bear? How am I doing bear? Bear. Well, great. Wait, that's the name?

No. Oh. Fourth of the box office is a film I've never heard of. I'm looking it up. It is a crime drama. Prison drama. It's got a young Tommy Lee Jones in it. I can tell you that much.

Okay. And he still, of course, looked like an old hound dog. He has looked like an old hound dog since he was born. Is it the Tomolee Jones-Divain movie? No. That's Rolling Thunder. That's the title I was looking for. No.

It's a film I've never heard of. It directed by Michael Miller, starring Yvette Mimu. the sort of ingenue of, of, it's got Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Caradine. Is it called, lock me up, why don't you? That's what it's called? It's called lock me up, why don't you? In the least surprising news of all time, it was at one point selected by Tarantino for the first Quentin Tarantino film festival. Doesn't sound like his kind of thing?

The film is called Jackson County Jail. Oh, sure. Yes. And it's just one of those movies where I'm like, does Quentin Tarantino scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Yeah, he likes this one. Okay. It's like a drive-in movie, you know. And then number five at the box office

is a film I have heard of but not seen. It is another sort of exploitation movie. It's like a rape revenge film starring Margot Hemingway, not Mariel. Oh, oh, oh, yes. Fuck. Because I think this is Mariel's first movie. I think so.

She plays Margot's sister in the film. I believe we talked about this in our Star 80 episode. normal. That's an episode. I definitely haven't erased from my memory at all. I remember every episode vividly. And part of that's obviously I relisten to all of them every night. I cue them up like that one Flaming Lips album on different players around my room.

And now I have a thousand players. This movie is, is it the character's name? No. It's something a girl might wear. Lipstick. That's right. The film is called Lipstick. And I've never seen it.

Lamont Johnson movie was also quite controversial at the time I think because it's a lurid. You've also got One Flew Over the Cuckus Ness, which won Best Picture of the Prior Year, still hanging out in June. Yep. You have a film called and I'm going to guess this film probably wasn't an Oscar contender. Poor White

Trash, Part 2, Scum of the Earth Hmm, who's got that IP? Is anyone working on that? Have no idea what the fuck that is. Wikipedia is like never heard of it. Stars Lawrence Olivia? So I see, it was initially called

Scum of the Earth and then it was re-released under the popular title, Poor White Trash Ford. Great. Anyway, it looks like it's a movie about like Beethoven or something. And then you've got New this week, the, the, um, Dario Argento film, Deep Red. Oh, yeah. Which I recently watched my disc of that. I got a new disc of that one. Congratulations. A pretty fun movie with David Hemings and those big bushy brows. I've never watched any of his films. Uh, Argento? No. They're fun. Yeah. You like, you like colors, Ben. Do you like women getting impaled? I would say I like colors. Okay. Not a big and pale guy. Okay. Well, then you're gonna be, you know, up and down on these ones. Come see, comes up. Right. You've still got The Exorcist.

Oh, sure. Already hanging out. Yeah. And then you still have got a great movie, The Bad News Bears, a baseball classic. That's what's in the box office when, but,

but I mean, it's a gnarly box office. It's a lot of fucked up 70s exploitation movies. It's a grimy test. Like, as much as you're like, okay, sure, there's also all the President's men,

one flew over the cuckoo's nest, but even those are, you know, edgier movies. And those are, those are like disillusioned movies. Totally. And then you're like, okay,

and then what was the kind of, like, you know, sort of sillier fare. And it's like, it's a bunch of like really nasty stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Good times. Right. Like movies, movies with the one-liner, what if a guy got shot?

What if a person was bad? Entirely true. What if crimes happened? What if crimes happened? Well, next week. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Pretty different vibe.

Pretty different vibe. Is approaching, right? We don't have anything in the way. We're going right to picnic. hanging rock next week. Yes. We're doing the vibe shift. We're taking a picnic. James Schoenbrun, the great filmmaker, returning to the show. That's right to talk

about picnic and hanging rock. So enjoy that. And then of course, yes, going forward, we've got Peter, we're, Peter, we're. We're going to take one little break for Mandalorian Grogu, but that's not till the end of May. So we're on the weird train. We're on the weird. Can we, should we announce our Mandalorian guest? Yeah, sure.

Barring some, you know, future scheduling problem. He's on the spreadsheet. Chris Getherd. Main feed, Star Wars movie. He's back. He's back. And I'm going to promise all of you that we will spend 40 minutes at the top talking about Spider-Man too.

We're going to stay on topic. Yes, we're bringing Gethe in for that episode. And Griff is promising to watch all of Disney's live action Star Wars TV shows to catch up. I have watched Obi-Wan Kenobi. Yeah, he watched that one and weirdly didn't feel motivated to watch a lot more. You know what's the worst feeling in the world to like watch a third Obi-Wan Kenobi episode

most boring shit I've ever seen my life and then be like, I'm still awake? Do you know what I'm saying? How am I not in my Odin's sleep? My eternal slumber! To be fighting insomnia so hard, put on the most boring shit anyone's ever made

and then still be awake at 3 o'clock in the morning. This is the mistake I made. I put on Antiques Roadshow last night when I put in sleep. Too exciting. Too exciting. Obie one has the opposite problem I'm going to do Obi-1

Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's like eaten it's like eating a turkey Alfred Hitchcock style. Genuine question, what is next for you? Which one will you tackle me?

I think it is, is it Andor season one? I'm going through in release order. Oh, you're trying to go in release order? Okay. I think that's right. Yeah, I would assume so. I think it's Andor season one,

then Mando's season three. Sorry. Wait, because like, is the idea we're doing live action only. Live action only. So you've seen Mando season one and two. Correct. And you saw the book of Boba Fett. I open the book and trust me, I closed it and put it back on the shelf.

Yes, so the next thing for you to watch is Andor Season 1. It's happening, folks. You can stop haranguing me. And then you're going to make the incredibly foolish decision of not just watching Indoor Season 2, which is what you should do. I'm going to space it now. That's a terrible idea. I'm going to watch Man.

It is Mando 3 next. Then it would be Mando 3. Then it's Asoka? Then it's Asoka Season 1. Uh-huh. As someone who did watch it, Hov & & &, Oh my God. Then the Acolyte, you have seen.

Acolyte I have seen. So you don't have to watch that. Then Skeleton Crew. Yes, and then, and or season two. And or season two carry on time. Look, I understand that I'm depriving myself of joy. I think you are. And forcing myself to crawl back through the fucking Shawshank Redemption Poop Tube.

But I think it will make it that much more sad. That's fine. The other side when I'm standing in the rain and the Thomas Newman music is blaring. My fear is you'll just give up. I'm not going to give up. He's not kidding. I never give up, never surrender. That's from Star Wars, right?

Anyway, yes. Peter Weir. We're doing it just with a little break from our friends, the Mandalorian and Gregu. There you go. Yeah. Thank you all for listening. Please remember rate review and subscribe. Tune in next week for Picnic and Hanging Rock with Jane Schoenbrung.

And as always, Cachow. David pushed his mic away and disgust. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch.

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to Blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank CheckPod.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank CheckPet. productions. Okay. God. I'm rolling. Oh, wait a second. I'm not ready.

That's okay. That's okay. Fuck you. But we're ready to go. Fuck. I don't give a shit. Fuck. This is the first in the mini.

It is. It is. Unfortunately. I'm happy to shame myself as a cold open. You know, you kind of shame. No, no, that'll be a little shame. There should be a little shame on the books.

And I, what was the, shame? It was like a channel four. like eyewitness news Oh sure Shame on you Yeah remember this The big cartoon finger graphic

I do not remember this I didn't grow up with It was like one of those classic things Where the local news has Some correspondent who like Goes to local businesses Struggling local businesses and like yells at them

Because they have like a dirty bathroom Right Or it be like an old woman would be like The pamphlets had bananas with 15 cents and I went to the store and they charged me 20 and then he goes in with like a camera

crew. What's the matter of you? He's like, you've ruined this lady's experience with getting bananas. Shame on you. And then a big cartoon finger like please the guy. Yes, that's what I want. I want you guys to to burst in

with a camera crew and shame me. Big cartoon finger. With a big cartoon thing.