Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Color Purple with Kenice Mobley

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

After inventing the Hollywood blockbuster with Jaws, creating the world’s most loveable alien with E.T., and resurrecting the classic adventure serial with the Indiana Jones franchise, of course the next logical step in Steven Spielberg’s career was to…adapt Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the survival and strength of queer black women in the American south? Duh! Obviously! Comedian Kenice Mobley joins us to talk about 1985’s truly baffling and seismically important The Color Purple in our latest episode. We want to thank Quincy Jones for discovering Oprah and producing this movie. We want to yell at Quincy Jones for his awful, treacly score. 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

Blackjack with Griffin and David Blackjack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blackjack It's about life. It's about love. It's about love. It's about podcasts. Now this movie has a very thorough quotes page on IMDB and I looked through every one of them. You didn't think you could really nail any of those? I failed to identify one that I could do without getting arrested.

Cool. I did a really thorough scan and I thought about it from a bunch of angles and I went, I don't think I should try one of these. I think the tagline for The Color Purple, which you just did from the, in my opinion, wonderful poster. It's a very iconic poster. Very iconic poster.

It's about life, it's about love, it's about us. Is such a fucking terrible, stereotypical 80s movie tagline where you're just like, what does that mean? And then you're like, oh, so what's the movie about? And they're like, well, and you're and then if someone described what the color purple was about to you, they'll be like, what do you mean? It's about life. It's about love. It's about I mean, sure.

But that's not really setting me up for the color purple. That's all I like this movie. But the other reason I thought it was I'm going to go with the tagline here is that being the tagline for this movie on this poster with all the other elements of what is being communicated in the poster is the whole movie in a nutshell. This movie's weird cultural object status of just like, here's the seismic book,

it wins all the awards, how are we going to make this into the movie? Just get the best people in Hollywood and then try to sell this as like big tent entertainment, and decades of people being like, was that the right way to do this? Is like the goal to make it the biggest production you can? Well, it worked. This movie was a colossal hit. That's the thing. And I do think-

And was it sort of, yeah, big seismic, everybody went to see it kind of movie, I feel like. And it's, I had never seen it before. This was the first time I watched it for me. This was one of my only Spielberg blind spots. And I don't think I'd been avoiding it to any degree but I feel like it has a very weird status in his career and I just kept last night watching and going it's so bizarre that Steven Spielberg made this That is true. And what's weird about it is in every single solitary second,

it both so feels like a Steven Spielberg movie and doesn't at all. Wow, I just, I'm looking at the art. You want to see it, Kennease? Yes. For the mini-series. This is the mini-series. This is just, I'm just seeing this now for the first time.

Yeah, it's good. Yeah. I look fucking hot as Indiana Jones. Well, you know a lot of people look hot with that hat on, but yeah. You know what? And I want to commend Pat Reynolds for also not photoshopping any of us onto the cast of The Color Purple. Another great decision. And what's going to be a very appropriate episode. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers such as making Jaws ET Two Indiana Jones movies and then are given a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion products They want and sometimes they decide to adapt Alice Walker's Potemic novel the color purple who's our guest me sirs on the films of Steven Spielberg. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. It's called pod rassic cast That's true. That's not new information. And today we're talking about The Color Purple.

Our guest is the great Canadian... Great comedian. I started combining your name and comedian. Please don't. Kenise Mobley. Hi. The Tonight Show. Yes.

The founder of Netflix. I am the founder of Netflix. Yes. I made it. I have money, so much money. You did, your Tonight Show appearance was in the pandemic, right? It was.

It was the rooftop. It was the rooftop. It was 28 degrees outside. Have you seen any of these, David or Ben? Canis, perform, Stan. Canis is one of my favorite comedians. Wow, oh my God. And we've known each other for a little while.

We kind of overlap in circles. We'll run into each other. We do. Wow. Oh my God. And we've known each other for a little while. We kind of overlap in circles. We'll run into each other. And it kept coming up. Every time I would cross paths with you, you're like, can I argue a point of something that you and David said on the podcast that drove me crazy? I start increasingly finding out that you are a listener through your objections to it. How did we drive you crazy?

Right. This is what I remember. I can't remember. It's happened multiple times. But I still think... You always try and go, like, good episode. But then sometimes you'll come in and be like, I have an axe to grind. What the fuck are you guys talking about? Uh, so I was not a listener of your podcast. And then I dated three people in a row. This is the thing you said when we met.

You said, I need you to know I have a problem. I keep dating listeners of your podcast. Someone just told me that her friend confessed to her recently that she and her boyfriend put our podcast on the TV. What? Like, I guess through YouTube or something like that, Spotify. And they're like, sit and listen to it. That's chilling.

Chilling? And I was like, are they chilling? Do they like knit or cook or something And I was like, are they doing... Do they like knit or cook or something? She's like, yeah, I assume they must do stuff. I can't imagine just sitting there. That's horrible. It's so... It was so strange,

because I didn't... I wasn't aware of this podcast, but then so many people kept... It would come up on dates, and I'm like, what is this? And so I started listening first for like the bit and then I became a fan. So I'm a fan of you guys. Well, a fan of yours.

During 2020, you got to do Stand Up on the Tonight Show, which is one of like the thing. It's the thing I had been working for my entire comedic career. Did Carson invite you over to the couch? Well, the dead Carson invited me. Yes, it was complicated. Couple interesting wrinkles in Kinesis circumstances. One, Carson long dead. Secondly, no one was allowed to be indoors.

What would Carson have made of all that? I don't know. Kinesis had this great show outside? Weird stuff. Can you set this great fucking tonight show set, the dream that happened on a rooftop in the winter? Yes. I was crying, because if it's cold,

I start to cry, my eyes water. Your eyes water, right, yeah. And so I had to constantly figure out ways to wipe tears away from my face while still telling my jokes and being filmed. It was an experience that I'll never forget. But my memory is that it's like Fallon at home, right?

Like in his cabin and he's like- Fallon's in studio. So some people were allowed to be in studio. The Roots and Fallon are in studio. Okay, so it was when he was back to in studio but there was no audience. Yes. Yes, and half the are in studio. Okay, so it was when he was back to in studio, but there was no audience. Yes. Yes, and half the guests were Zoom.

Yes. And he's in studio and he goes like, and now, Kenes Mobley, except instead of gesturing to his left, he gestures towards the roof. And then it just cuts to the roof of 30 Rock. Again, the winter. The winter. The winter.

Yon winter. Yes, it was fascinating. With Carson, it would have been, Carson was in winter. Yon winter. Yes. It was fascinating. With Carson, it would have been... Carson was in LA. So a rooftop with him probably would have been... But me even in February or whatever. Why'd that guy have to go and die and make your life more difficult? Well, first he retired and lived... It was about me. Yes.

I won't be there when she's performed. No. I'm retiring and dying. I mean, a few people did it outside, but somebody did it from a drive-in in Texas, and that was warm, and he looked like he was happy. And then Mark Normand, I think, did it from the Staten Island Ferry, and it was very strange.

That seems like maybe too much business. But also, under those circumstances, maybe you do wanna just be like, look, this is never going to be normal. Yes. So why not try to do the weirdest version of it? Sure. That's why I got married in my backyard.

I was like, I don't know when things are going to- You have a backyard? Thanks for the invite, by the way. Well, it was COVID. Are you kidding me? The efficient was on- You owned land? No, it was my parents-in-law's backyard.

OK. I was like, what? You have access to grass and sky simultaneously? I didn't at the time. I lived in a fucking railroad. I had a roof. We had a roof, but it was one of those building roofs. He lived on the rails, just to be clear. David, his wife, a bindle. Carson retired...

92. Died in 2005. Oh, wow. I thought he was dead way earlier. Just lazy. What is this? 13 years just fucking cool in his heels? This is my favorite thing to talk about. Carson? Used to retire in this country.

Oh, yeah. It's so true. Especially people in jobs that need turnover. Yeah, but you know... That need a bit of freshening up. So, like, that's a huge part of it, right? Just in general, that doesn't happen. This generation won't fucking let go of their positions. No, that's why Harrison Ford at 80 is Red Hulk or whatever. This is the huge part of it right just in general that doesn't happen this generation won't fucking let go of their positions That's why Harrison Ford at 80 is Red Hulk or whatever

You know who used to retire the hardest? It's still so funny that he's Red Hulk Do you know who used to retire the hardest? Who used to retire the hardest? The most famous people in the world Sure, right, oh yeah, they would be like I'm done. Goodbye Right, you're like, yeah, right Audrey Hepburn, you know, I guess No, well, no.

Hepburn? Are you talking about Audrey Hepburn right now? Because we're about to do Always, the last film. That's her final movie. She died shortly after then. So she did not, like, you know, get to go click off. I guess she's not as good an example. Did she do an Al Pacino phase where it was just like, anything that paid her she was there?

None of those people fucking did that. No, I think that you know it was less of... There weren't movies like that as much I guess back then either right? You couldn't just be like, hey put me in any Bulgarian action movie that like is being made this year right? Okay there are relevant threads within this right? Like this is me, series on the early films of Steven Spielberg covering the first half of his career. His first big official professional directing job

was the episode of The Night Gallery with Joan Crawford. And that was the example of like, that's like an old movie star who won't retire, right? And perhaps like, didn't manage their finances enough to be able to retire slash needs the attention. But it's like- Yeah, or they're just bored in there. But you'd end up there.

You'd end up like, you're a very special guest star on television. That would be nice. Right. Or you like, have a sort of like poignant cameo in a thing, or you show up in a horror movie for five minutes to be like, lend it some credibility, whatever, right? Uh, there wasn't the sort of like, cash out of Red Hulk. Yes.

But there's also the thing of... Is he doing like five movies right now? The Red Hulk thing is particularly... galling. We have maybe brought up Red Hulk in every episode of this miniseries. Red Hulk has definitely come up before. We can't get past it. Because it just keeps being so funny to me

that they're like, there's a new Captain America movie, and I'm like, oh, what's it about? And they're like, there's a black Captain... Sam Wilson is Captain America. I'm like, what's it about? What does he do? And they're like, I don't know. Harrison Ford will be Red Hulk. Right. I'm like, what's it about? What does he do? And they're like, I don't know. Harrison Ford will be Red Hulk.

Right. I'm like, what does Captain America do in the movie? And they're like, who? And I'm like, he's the title character. He's battling something, he's investigating something. I don't know, he has wings. Anyway, the President is Harrison Ford. Did you watch the Falcon and the Winter Soldier?

I watched every episode of it, yes. That was early COVID too, where you were just like. It was early COVID, we were watching everything. I'll throw it on. You know what I'm watching right now? Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power, yes. That was early COVID too, where you were just like... It was early COVID, we were watching everything. I'll throw it on. You know what I'm watching right now? Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power, season two. Yikes. Because I have this kind of seven to 10 o'clock period

where I'm not, I can't sleep, but my twin babies are trying to sleep, but that's when they're gonna be the most rocky. They'll pop up, they'll, you know, you know how they go do. The most rock steady, bebop and rock steady. Their names the most rocky. They'll pop up, they'll, you know, you know, do a deal. They're not Rocksteady, Bebop and Rocksteady. Their names are Bebop and Rocksteady. Okay, thank you. I was like, Rocksteady like Gwen Stefani?

Or Rocksteady like the other, okay, cool, cool, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm hip. So it's good to have a show that I don't... I don't mind too much if it's gotta pause it or whatever. And Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power is that show. It's very plausible. Have you seen? Yes, I watched all the first season. And then I watched the first episode of the second season.

And you were like, I'm finally, I'm beyond, I'm healthy. When we're following like black gunk, just rolling down a hill. That does happen. I think I was a little out on that. That does happen. That's a young Sauron. You are, Ben, correct. Wow, how young Sauron? You are panicked, correct?

Wow, how did you get that? Jesus Christ. You were doing a joke, but that's what that is. That's 100% it. So they're like, Sauron died, and then he was gunk for a while. Let's follow the gunk. Like millennia. Millennia of gunk.

We're following the gunk? Yes, up a hill. Did Ben write this joke? Possibly. No, there's just whole episodes where they're like, should we make more rings? And they're like, I don't know. And I'm like, I know you're going to. You're going to make rings.

Answer other questions. No other questions answered. They sit and they think about making rings. And that's the story. They have this like proto Gandalf where he's like, should I be Gandalf? And they're like, I don't know man, seems like a good idea. He's like, I don't know how to do it.

And they're like, well, you'll probably figure it out in episode seven or eight. Is he literally Gandalf or is he a Gandalf? He is literally Gandalf. He has visions of a staff or something. Oh my God. Someday. It's truly.

My hand feels so empty. What if I had something? Wow, did you write it? You're not off. It's just one of those things where people are like, oh, they're going to do a prequel or a Ring Show. But like, you know, I know that there's a lot of Tolkien stuff that you can work with, but don't people kind of know, you know, I know that there's a lot of Tolkien stuff that you can work with,

but don't people kind of know, you know, the backstory enough to... How could that be interesting? Like, no, we'll make it interesting. And like, 18 hours in, I can tell you, they didn't pull it off. They give him a really straight hat, and there's a scene where he decides to bend it, so it troops. Whoop. I think that would be like the season finale of season three.

But nonetheless, I watch it. Sure. I will give it that. It's like so much money on that. It's an expensive, fairly handsome show. You know, and, you know, anyway, whatever. I can't even remember how we got on this topic. People don't retire. Harrison Ford is Red Bull.

Don't you think it's funny that they're like, Captain America, what's it about Red Hulk? I had a whole long argument with my grandmother, who's a woman of an advanced age, and gets very touchy when I get into conversations about like, people need to retire, right? And I'm talking about from a sociological aspect, and she interprets it as you're saying that over a certain

age, people don't have value anymore. Got it. Which I constantly try to delineate, you know, but we had versions of this argument with Joe Biden running for president, a thing that worked out really well for everybody. So well. We're excited about the future. Totally. But I was saying this about Harrison Ford, and she's like, who are you to say he can't work anymore?

He can work. And he still has value. And I'm like, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying maybe he shouldn't make movies for nine-year-olds anymore. Yeah. I'm like, I want him to do whatever makes him happy, but I'm like a little depressed that we can't let go of him playing Indiana Jones. Right?

I was having this conversation when the last one was coming out. And I'm like, that movie's trying to reckon with it, but it is just like, he seems very fulfilled by being on Shrinking. I'm not gonna tell him he shouldn't play Red Hulk, but there is a larger aspect just like, he seems very fulfilled by being on Shrinking. I'm not gonna tell him you shouldn't play Red Hulk, but there is a larger aspect of like, let's step back.

Like Red Hulk feels like this inflection point of like, we need to examine 10 different cultural phenomena that have led to this moment. Have led to Harrison, do you wanna step, you know what I was about to say, like it's beneath him to sort of step into a role, right? It's like, this was William Hurt and William Hurt died, but he stepped into Jack Ryan.

He's like, you know what? He's just a guy who's just like, look, I was a carpenter and I just, I do the work. I show up, they tell me I'm Hulk, I go, rawr, and then I go home. I wanna see him more in like, what lies beneath sized movies. That would be great.

That would be great. What if you married Harrison Ford right now? I might be freaking, might be weird. I feel like we've talked about it a bit in doing this series, but you're just like, wouldn't it be so cool to see him and Spielberg work together in any other context? You know? Like rather than just Indiana Jones, they never worked together in any other context. It's just wild that they never did.

That's a true fact. And they remained like close friends and they speak very lovingly of each other. And there was always like the rumor that he was, that he wanted him to play... I want you to direct Six Days, Seven Nights. Sorry, I don't know. All right, just doing a bit. There were conflicting rumors about him and Lincoln.

Him and Lincoln, I remember the rumors of him and Lincoln. I feel like both at some point, maybe being the Tommy Lee Jones part, but also maybe being Grant in a smaller role. And then there's been some like like, kind of questioning of, you know, the story of David Lynch ending up in the Fablemen's that was suggested by Mark Harris, but Spielberg said he had a different actor in mind.

People have been like, would that have been Harrison Ford for one scene? Like, all of those are interesting possibilities. Obviously, we got two great performances from other people in that situation. And we're about to get a great performance from him in Captain America something-something as Red Hulk, President Hulk. I just think it's funny that he's the president. I think every part of it's funny.

It's eight hats on hats. Yeah. They're like, we've cast Harrison Ford, I'm like, that's okay, that's an upgrade I guess, or that's crazy, he'll be Red Hulk too, he's gonna be Red Hulk too, okay, and he's the president as well. Here's the funnier part.

They elected him. We're gonna talk about the color purple. There's a lot to talk about. First we have to talk about the color red. There, William Hurt, Academy Award winning actor, plays General Thunderbolt Ross like five times, six times over like 10, 12 years, right? A lot of times.

And is basically always at most the 10th most important character in the movie. And you're like, yeah, he's fine in these. He's like sturdy. They get a little dramatic use out of helping, having him set up larger government stakes or whatever, but he's not that important. And then William Hurt dies.

And then they're like, here's the pitch for Captain America 4. Maybe the biggest living historic movie star now plays him, shaves his mustache and turns into a monster. And the whole movie's about him. Yeah, they were like, okay, we're just thinking, maybe we'll make a Marvel movie that's not Black Panther, but about a Black Captain America. No. It is about the President. Be real.

It's about the President. It's about Harrison Ford. Please come to this movie. What if the President was a monster and he shaved his mustache? Just the sort of, like, taking your whole dick out, too, right? Of like, Harrison Ford's in it. I'm like, okay. He's Just the sort of, like, taking your whole dick out, too, right? Of like, Harrison Ford's in it. I'm like, okay. He's Red Hulk! I'm like, are there any surprises left for me?

None. None. No. You just saw my whole dick. That's my whole dick. Like, that's all of it. They tried to be cagey about it for so long, and now the trailer is... Just the tip and they're like, ah, okay, we'll just...

He might get a little angry, and I'm like, oh, will he? They're like, ah, he's Red Hulk! Look at. He might get a little angry. And they're like, oh, will he? And they're like, hey, look at him! Ah! He looks, his face looks like Harrison Ford. We made it look like Harrison Ford. We made it look like Harrison Ford. Oh, boy. Anyway, why are we talking about this?

I don't know. The color purple. Retiring. Retiring. It is, uh, I don't, how do I frame this? There were times I was watching this movie, I felt this sense of sorrow of like, oh, this was a point in time where if a movie,

if a book won the Pulitzer Prize. Sure, big best-selling book, right. Studios would be like, well, obviously, we have to turn this into a big serious movie. There is a cultural obligation and the public is demanding it. There is interest in this. Right, this book came out three years before the movie. Like, it was, you know, the book comes out in 82, by 83,

it is an award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling book. By 85, the film has been released, directed by one of the big filmmakers of the era. Like, you know, bang, bang, boom. What won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last year? I don't know. I should know. I don't read as much as I should. I feel very guilty. Something called Night Watch, a historical fiction

during the American Civil War by Jane Anne Phillips. Someone turned this into a movie. White Gardener called it sludgy. Sludgy? I just I just finally saw Nickel Boys, which will be have been out for a while by the time this episode comes out, but just came out here pretty recently. Well that which won the Pulitzer in 2020.

This is my point. In fact, that is the last Pulitzer winner for fiction that has been turned into a film. Okay, so that film is phenomenal. Yeah, thank you. The book's great. I haven't watched the movie. Terrific film, book too.

Movie's terrific, but I was just like, having seen that in theaters in the same week that I watched Color Purple for the first time... Oh, man, you're real deep in Black pain. Hey, look, I'm not looking for a round of applause. Oh, I'm not giving it to you, but... Thank you. Okay, we can agree on that.

I don't deserve it. Don't give it. But yeah, you're real... Black people be suffering. A little bit, a little bit, and it's just, you know, a bit timing chance, whatever. But it was like interesting to see these two movies like 40 years apart, right. In the same week and be like, here's this book that is like seismic and that like Amazon and MGM are just like, you know what? We're going to give like a twenty five million dollar budget to someone

who's never made a feature length scripted film before casting largely unknown actors with like a very daring formal like conceit. I've heard about this conceit and I'm like wow I'm excited. Which is incredible but that speaks to in that moment them almost having the awareness of like there is no big tent version of this. If we try to make the version of this that appeals to like multiplex mall audiences everywhere, like, it's not going to accomplish anything, right? It's like the help, bro. Totally.

That's when it's like, hey, we need to make this a four-cognite thing. Okay, we got to get the black people out the center of it. Okay, we get it. Get rid of that. But even the help is like, that's more of like an emotional be-treat, you know? It wasn't like this is this like humongous, immediately historic piece of literature that needs to be treated with respect. That also in the history of Hollywood was like, we have to serve two things at the same time. One, like treat the material, but also two, we have an obligation to like win best picture

and make $100 million. And Nickel Boys is just clearly like, why would we even attempt to do that? Just do an artistic film, yes. Right. And I think that everything that's interesting about Color Purple is it like existing intention between those two things, you know?

And like being both better and worse than it should be, and could be, at the same time. The really annoying thing is, when I'm looking at this Pulitzer list, all the light we cannot see, the sympathizer and the Underground Railroad, all turned into television. Right, that's now what more often happens. The Goldfinch was turned into a movie. Did anyone hear?

But a bad one. I saw it. I suffered through every second of that piece of shit. But that's the other one I was thinking of in doing this sort of math in my head where I pin that in my mind and I'm like, I feel like that was the last time that a book comes out, is a sensation, wins all the awards, and there's like this feeding frenzy of like, which recent best picture director are we gonna get

with 20 name actors? Before that, it's The Road. Yeah. And we're taking, like, eight-year leaps. The Road also was, like, ten years in development. Yeah, this is the thing. There's a lot of these sort of bestsellers that became classics. Cavalier and Clay, Middlesex.

That, like... Middlesex was made into something? No, no. I like that book. What I'm saying is people keep saying, like we're going to turn that into like an HBO series or we're going to make a movie of that and then it just kind of gets lost in development. All of those started this way where it's like it wins the award and it's immediately like X, Y and Z have all signed on to adapt this here are the casting lists here are the this

and it keeps getting redeveloped and it never happens. Okay. Because they're like not. I feel like that's why they make Night Bitch, that's why they make Crazy Rich Agents. Like, hey, there are books that they're making and it's like gonna make us more money, why would we do this? Yes. Yes. Yes. There's like, there's less of this pressure to take a book that is important and try to figure out how to make it more functional as a broad movie.

There's a lot of movies. Whereas I think they're now like, if a book feels like a movie, make it into a movie. And if a book feels difficult to adapt, then maybe let's like slow our horses and like rethink this. David, it's February, which means it is my birthday month. And all I ask for as a present this year is a robust slate of new theatrical motion picture releases. And that our listeners perhaps use our sponsor Regal and their Regal Unlimited program to see such releases.

Yeah, what do we got? The Monkey, actually called The Monkey, new film from Oz Perkins, whose long legs I loved last year, starring another one of our friends, past and future guest Tatiana Mazzolani. That's right. And looks very, very funny and cool and scary. Also very intrigued by this Martin Campbell action

or cleaner with Daisy Ridley. Starring Daisy Ridley, someone I have always had very, very calm opinions about on this podcast. I'm very excited for it feels like she's kind of ramping up her movie career again. Here's the thing. Oh, and then there's the day the earth blew up. I was gonna say, if that weren't enough,

February ending with the first original feature length animated Looney Tunes movie ever that I have heard is excellent. And here's the thing. The day the earth blew up in a Looney Tunes movie. that I have heard is excellent. And here's the thing. The day the earth blew up in a Looney Tunes movie. What's awesome about all this is that there's lots of interesting different kinds of movies in theaters that you can go see.

And with Regal Unlimited, the whole point is you sign up and seeing three, four, five, six of those movies is easy and affordable. I find that once you have the Regal Unlimited, right, you know, sort of the option of basically like, let me pop over my theater. I have three free hours. You do it more.

That's what's nice about it. You do it more. You do it more. Go see the movies. Go see the movies. Sign up now in the Regal app. Yes. Or the link in the description in our show notes

and use code blank check to get 20% off your three months subscription and then you're gonna be in the Crown Club. You're gonna get rewards You're gonna build a point get free popcorns and sodas and upgrades candy on Tuesdays 50% off popcorn Discounted ticket to the regal Crown Club website. And as I said, it's a little deep. It's a little buried in here There is a section where you can redeem your points for old promotional movie memorabilia like Red 1 socks. Follow the link in the show notes, go to the Regal app, click on the unlimited banner, and then follow the instructions to sign up and enter promo code blank check when prompted to receive your discount.

And look, I'm just going to say it again, David, signing up for Regal Unlimited or maybe gifting a membership to a moviegoer in your life. Sure. Great way to support the show. This is a dream advertiser, a dream partner for us. We want to keep this going. We think it could benefit everybody, especially the movies.

Anyway, The Color Purple is the movie we're here to discuss today. So Griffin had never seen it. Ben, had you ever seen it? No. I'd seen it. Had you ever seen it? Okay. Oh my goodness. Let's just slowly finish.

Okay. So I am a black woman from the South. It was, I was raised in the black church, went to a black school. I was certain that I had grown up with this film, that I had seen it so many times. There are cultural touch points. It's in like rap music, like it's everywhere. So I was like, when you were like, hey, color purple. I was like, yeah, I got that.

I watched the movie. I've never seen that movie in my life. Wild. I had not seen it and I had to be like, oh, fuck. Had you seen like the musical or the musical movie? I've never seen that movie in my life. Wild. I had not seen it, and I had to be like, oh, fuck. Had you seen like the musical or the musical movie or any of that, like any of the later Color Purple stuff? Had you read the book?

I read the book yesterday. I'm the only... Oh, so now I read the book. I read the book long ago. Oh, you're cooler than me? Uh, pretty cool of me to have read a famous bestseller, The Color Purple, which I'm pretty sure I got on

Kintle Unlimited in COVID when I was just like, I gotta read something. But yes, I have read The Color Purple. Okay, so you'd never seen it. You had never seen The Color Purple. Congratulations on watching it. What'd you think? I am so worried about my street cred right now.

Only the coolest people, you know. It's like my black Street cred, okay? Like, I could get, like, cards could be revoked. You don't understand. It's like a whole thing. And so, like, yes, this movie important. Yes, it has some of the people who have defined blackness on camera for the last 50 years. I think it is important.

Quincy Jones did the music for it and everything. Super important. And produced it. And was Biola Counts the one who really got Spielberg to sign on? Yeah, we'll talk about it. I hate the music for this so much. The music is so bad. And I was like, what the fuck is this?

Like, why are you shooting child rape? Like it's a day in the park. Well, this is what we're going to talk about. This is the weird tonal thing with this movie. Absolutely. Yeah. We'll talk about it. Thank you. I just I feel like part of me has to say that I love this movie.

You don't have to say anything. OK, thank you. You definitely don't have to say anything. Okay, thank you. You definitely don't have to say anything. But I definitely felt like the book had more interesting things to say about the black community, our relationship with God, parents and women specifically, and they took a lot of those edges off

and then had this ending of coming to Jesus or something. And I was like, please don't do no, no. I as an adaptation of the book, it's, it's a, it's a huge misfire. I think, I think all adaptations of the book are actually, uh, I think the musical and the later musical movie also are bad adaptations of the book. Or those are kind of, they're kind of just like adaptations of this movie in a weird way. Like it's like, because the book is very hard to deal with. The weird like cultural reputation of the movie

as an idea, which is sort of so different than what the thing is. I watched it and I was like, oh yeah, cause like this is an important thing. The first time, like a lot of like, oh wow, it's about black women. We never get to do anything. And then, oh, so we just getting beat down and assault.

Okay. Well, look, the whole thing with the color purple though, the movie is what you're saying of like, why was it made by Steven Spielberg and like why? Great question. Yeah. Why, you know, why was- Well, who else would have they gotten to do it at the time?

That's what we have to talk about is right. It's like, right, who was the project sort of, and I think Quincy Jones started out, Steven Spielberg and this sort of like, that gives it the biggest seal of approval. He's the biggest director there is. Isn't Oprah though kind of also very involved? No, she's a no-but.

She's a fucking nobody for this one. She's like a local TV host. Oprah becomes like one of the main creative forces on both productions of the musical on Broadway and the musical movie. And Oprah, like she becomes Oprah. Right. Sure. But she was an Oprah at this moment.

I mean, she was a local TV host. Like she was the start of Oprah, but she was not a mogul. With zero acting credits, right? I think, yeah. I mean, and that's, the cast of this movie, you have like, is a lot of people, that are like, well, these are famous people who are not really well known at the time. Like Danny Glover was like a theater actor.

You know, like these are not. It's just like this maybe having lightning in a bottle. Danny Glover will be Goldberg, Oprah basically not existing prior to this moment gives it a power that is kind of like never going to disappear. So this is it. You know, it's an important movie. It's important that a movie like this was a blockbuster kind of like never gonna disappear? So this is, you know, it's an important movie. It's important that a movie like this was a blockbuster,

launched careers, you know, sort of displayed an experience that wasn't in movies much, but it feels kind of like first steps, you know, on a lot of this stuff. Very first steps. It's very tentative. I think- Being present is a step. I think Spielberg himself would admit, like,

he was somewhat cowardly in how he made the movie and, like, sanded out the edges. Right into the deep end of this. Because this is the thing I really, like, go back and forth on with this film, that I think is interesting, okay? Uh, I don't say interesting in a good way. I'm like, part of what makes it a fascinating,

like, a piece of work to dig into is it feels like just, you know, we'll dig into this more, but like there is almost the chess move, it feels like, where when you read Alice Walker be like, do I wanna like sell these rights to anyone? Do I trust anyone to make a movie of the color purple? Right, could Hollywood make a good movie of this? Right, and then she's sort of like convinced by people in her inner circle

of like there's a responsibility to put this on a bigger platform. There's like an opportunity here to make a movie of this size starring women of color which doesn't really exist in the studio system. Like there are all the values of this. And Quincy Jones comes in. Quincy Jones is this figure for decades who is like deeply invested in like Black Hollywood and opportunities and like trying to create industries and this like that.

And it feels like he made this sort of strategic chess move of like, A, if I get Spielberg to direct this, that gives it the biggest stamp of approval. But B, does that also kind of protect it? Like he is the one guy with enough cachet where if he says he wants to do it this way, they won't push back on him, which is interesting as a strategic move, right?

Then the flip side of that is all the stuff that you're saying that Steven Spielberg doesn't represent well in this movie feels like, to David's point, kind of cowardice of him being like, I know I don't have a handle on that. I can't hold that off. Fair. So there's this weird thing of being like, you want to give him the credit for knowing that he would have fucked that up, but yet, if you are the one adapting this material and you're not willing to touch that, then maybe you shouldn't be directing this movie. Yes.

Has he ever directed anything with even a hint of gay in it? This is a theory that David and I have stood on for a long time. I threw out years and years ago And that I feel it comes up a lot on the podcast But when Steven Spielberg was the head of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival He gave the palm door to blue is the warm But yeah, he was the head of the head of the day to French lesbian drama blue is the warmest color directed by a really chill guy

A little bit of a similar situation At the time a very big like queer French like graphic novel by a man who maybe has a weird relationship to women Yeah, they don't know But my guess is it's right is what? Griffin is saying is Spielberg is watching this movie that is wall-to-wall sex scenes and lesbian sex scenes. It's just like, I could never do that. This has always been my thing. I'm so impressed by it.

Is that when filmmakers are the heads of juries of major festivals, and you see what they give the awards to, versus when it's actors or other people, specifically when it's directors, and some of those choices are really odd, I think usually you can pathologize it as this is the movie they can least imagine themselves being able to pull off. That they are in awe that there is something on screen that they're just like I don't know how you get there. And Spielberg like gives it to this movie and is like and by the way the award is split between the director and the two actresses because this couldn't be possible without the level of whatever. There's years of litigation of, like, did he abuse the actresses?

Yeah. Psychologically, torturous set, whatever. But there's something there in Spielberg, like, 30 years later, being like, I wouldn't even know where to begin. He chose one lady putting her hand on the other lady's shoulder, and that's a stand-in for all lesbianism. You also have to remember, it's the 80s. This just isn't in movies.

Like you think of a movie called like Desert Hearts, right? Which is, I think the same year, 85. Have you ever seen Desert Hearts? Has anyone ever seen Desert Hearts? So a totemic early indie lesbian drama. It's awesome. I think Criterion released it eventually or whatever. You can go watch it everybody.

But like that's like an indie indie indie ass movie that like you probably could have only seen in two theaters, like in America. That's that's where like gay, you know, romance basically exists in the American cinema in the mid eighties, right? Sure. Or, you know, it's, it's like dog day afternoon or it's like, Wow, sure. Right.

You know, but that's not, dog day afternoon, or it's like... Wow, sure. But that's not what that movie is fundamentally. That's an element of the movie, and that's a sort of sensationalist element of that movie, that that movie handles very well. But yes, it is kind of, there's that degree of it, and Spielberg talks about in interviews being like, look, I felt the movie had to be PG-13. There's a responsibility to make the biggest version of this movie. People I wanted to be communicated.

That was a strategic decision. But the other part of that is just like so crazy. Really, how does the movie begin? It's like, well, you know, it's about this this this girl who's being abused by her father and he, you know, father fires two children on her and gives the children away. And you're like, that's the start of the movie. Start of the movie. Like, yeah. Her on a bed gives the children away. And you're like, that's the start of the movie. That's the start of the movie.

They're like, yeah. Her on a bed in the snow, pushing a baby out. And you're like, what's the plot of the movie? And you're like a procession of suffering across multiple characters until they get a little bit of respite at the end. Which also those types of narratives, which often make huge, incredible, important books,

are really hard to adapt into not even three-act structures, but sort of fixed-time audiovisual narratives where it's just watching characters go through the worst of it over and over again. This is why I wanna open the dossier, but I do wanna say this is, I think, the argument for why this movie is kind of good in a way. That's still- Good in a way

is exactly how I would put it. I mean, to be clear, all right, to be clear, I think that this is a very watchable, affecting movie. Like, if you just sit down and watch this movie, as many Americans did, it is hard not to be moved by it. It's incredibly, incredibly well acted. He cannot make an uncompelling movie. I think there's a few performances where I could have adjusted some stuff. But Whoopi's incredible and like...

Yeah, Whoopi! Wow, wow. You know, it's a, it's... And Spielberg's a good filmmaker. And like, you know, you're in the hands of a good filmmaker. And you watch this movie and you're like, yeah, wow, I mean, like, what a tough time and what a somewhat note of grace at the end and blah, blah, blah. As an adaptation, you can quibble.

As like a white Jewish filmmaker who doesn't really know shit about, like, the South or women's experiences, you know, like, you can quibble. But I was also sad as a child. Yeah! I don't think he's coming in there being like, I understand the experience of black women at the start of the century. You give him credit for not having the arrogance of that,

but it's the weird, yeah. But the fact that Spielberg is too shy or maybe just too sentimental to really depict things arrogance of that, but it's the weird, yeah. But the fact that Spielberg is too shy or maybe just too sentimental to really depict things with like, utter brutality kind of makes the movie, you know, it's like, there's a lot of movies that just lean into the misery and the brutality, like you're saying, and they're not really good.

Like, that's often a mistake. They can become kind of numbing. It's kind of relentless and numbing. And you're so, you know, it's really good. Like, that's often a mistake. They can become kind of numbing. It's kind of relentless and numbing. It's really hard balance to strike how to depict, and then at a certain point, I think in our culture, people sort of started being like, can we just have less movies about this? Like, and have movies about other experiences? Why are we even trying? But this was a bestseller, this was Alice in Wonderland, this was a story, yada yada.

Anyway, so that's sort of the argument for, like, what was helpful about the color purple. I mean, I'm, like, layering this in caveats. But that, right, like, if you're gonna... But then, you know, you read shit like, you know, Margaret Avery is, like, incredible in this movie, right? She gets an Academy Award combination. Who's Margaret Avery in this? She plays Shug.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I like her. And then her, like, career completely kind of stalls out, and you read interviews with her. Isn't there a name, like, Margaret Avery plays Shug. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I like her. And then her career completely kind of stalls out and you read it. Like Margaret Avery Shug Avery. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Her and the character both have the same last name. Cool, cool, cool. She was just like, this movie comes out again, Oscar nomination. And people are like, well, she's not big enough for movies and she's probably too big for TV.

Was just sort of like all of us. So you get nothing. Right, they were just kind of like, and I'm not even going to have a window of opportunity unless there's like another Black star who needs a wife in a movie, you know? And she was like, and meanwhile, I watched the next year Danny Glover does like Lethal Weapon. Like it's an immediate launching pad, right?

And obviously Whoopi Goldberg launches into like an insane film career off of this. A very nice one. A really nice one, but it's also sort of bizarre to be like weird, like theatrical comedian, never in a movie, gets her breakthrough in a like purely dramatic role in a Spielberg film, gets an Oscar nomination for her debut performance, and then immediately is like,

great, now I make comedy vehicles. Yeah. Like it's funny that she didn't get slotted into drama and that she was able to go back and forth. And she was a comedian. Totally. But it's like... But Whoopi's career is a one of one.

Like, it's a very unusual and awesome career. Yes. But like, that's a weird example of like... And then, you know, Oprah like doesn't really act again for like over a decade. We've now covered like half of Oprah's movie career on this podcast. We covered Beloved and... And we covered Princess and the Frog.

Oh, sure. If you remove times in which she played Oprah Winfrey in a movie, it's like eight roles, and I think we've covered four of them. Uh, yeah, we'll probably do Selma one day and Wrinkle in Time. I mean, if we do Selma, we're doing a Wrinkle in Time. Uh, same director. But you're like, this thing where it sort of like launches people and also like some people get totally stuck.

Yeah. Margaret Avery should have won the Oscar and Whoopi should have won the Oscar in my opinion. If you guys want to talk about it now, or we can talk about it later. If you want to talk about the 1985 Oscars, which are kind of a travesty. Like almost every winner is wrong.

Build up to that. Okay, fine. So the color purple, 1980s, Steven Spielberg, Peter Pan himself. He'll never grow up. He makes movies about space aliens and Harrison Ford with his whip, temples of doom. Sharks and stuff. Sharks. Right. He's quickly becoming- Oh, he wants to make a grown-up movie and it turns out to be Poltergeist. It's just another silly movie.

Or children, really. You're getting the narratives of like, is this guy holding back culture? Oh, he wants to make another thing. What's it? Oh, he's doing a movie based on his favorite TV show, Twilight Zone. Well, I'm sure nothing bad will happen there. Oh, he's part of the production company, Amblin. What's he going to make with that? Gremlins and the Goonies.

I'm serious. Like, this is the narrative. It's like this person is infantilizing culture with his childish genre obsessions and like now Amblin is spawning like more Spielbergs like that will only, you know, do more. Right, right. He basically, right, they poured water on Steven Spielberg and now many Spielbergs are coming out of his back

and wrecking crap. But like, at this point he has made four of the highest grossing films of all time, if not five? Oh, sure. I don't know. Indiana Jones, Jaws, and E.T. for sure. Close Encounters was up there. Whatever.

He's made like four of the highest grossing films of all time. Here's the other weird thing that we've been covering, Kamise. Sugarland Express, no Oscar nominations, right? Second movie, Jaws. Big Oscar film, nominated for Best Picture, not nominated for Best Director. Seen as a snub. For a film that was so culturally like Seismic.

Then Close Encounters, nominated for Best Director, not nominated for Best Picture. 1941's a flop. Rayars of the Lost Ark, nominated for Picture and Director. Oh. Indiana Jones is the first time that they're like, fuck, fine. Yeah. We'll give you both.

But it's felt like they've been a little like not... I did not know that that was nominated for best picture. Which is also crazy. Yeah. Do you like Steven Spielberg? We didn't even ask. I think so. I think I like Steven Spielberg in the way that I like Coca-Cola or Beyonce or football in America.

I don't, you know, just like that. Craft mac and cheese. Yeah. Actually, I don't like craft. I'm from the South. That's like offensive to me. Sorry, sorry. Wait, I'm so sorry. Are you Velveeta then? What's your name? What on earth are you talking about? She's saying that like she doesn't need to make mac and cheese out of a bottle. What, what, what?

What on earth is Velveeta? I'm sorry, it went over my head. I thought it was just, you had another brand allegiance. No, brand, what? What are you talking about? Any family? I'm, I, I, I don't, I mean I- I'm so sorry, I'm now with you, yes.

I, I, I genuinely was confused. When you, when the word Velveeta came out of your mouth, I was like, what is happening here? You gave me a disdainful look. And I understand it, she's once, it was weird. I didn't know that Velveeta made mac and cheese because Velveeta isn't even, can we legally call Velveeta cheese?

It's cheese bread, it's the goo, right? Yeah. It's vegan. Macaroni and goo. It's vegan? I think it is, I don't know. Holy thing. It's like the orange version of the Sauron goo.

That's what Melvita looks like to me. No, it's not vegan, I'm sorry, I take it back. Yeah, the vegans are gonna come after you. One of my exes who listens to this podcast and is a vegan, he's gonna come after us. Shout out to Kenise's vegan ex. You know who you are. Hope you're listening.

He should be. Fucking should be. Sit down and listen on the TV. Yeah, how about that? No, I'm kidding. Turn it on. You're a perfectly nice person. We weren't right together.

E.T. the Extra Terrestrial becomes the highest grossing film of all time. Immediately one of the most beloved films in history. I think it's basically presumed to be the Oscar front runner and it's seen as a bit of a shock that Gandhi beats it for picture and director. And it's this element of like, they would rather give it to the very sort of like, handsome middle brow classical biopic than the movie that like made the entire world cry

because it does feel like there's a bit of a like, we can't fucking give Spielberg everything. We can't give him too much power, right? Off of ET? He can be the box office king, but that doesn't mean he gets Oscars automatically. And it is foolish, because indeed, he probably should have just won his Oscars for ET. Because that's where it's kind of like, look, man, this is the whole package. You made a huge hit. It's a personal film.

It sort of appeals to everyone. It's really fucking good. But no, Gandhi, I think Gandhi was the front runner. We'll talk about on that episode, but Gandhi was this, the whole thing with Gandhi was like, they had 10,000 people in this seat, where it was just like, how the fuck did they do this? I don't know. They got this guy who looks like Gandhi, where'd they find this guy? He's like, I don't know. Anyway.

He rolled straight from that into basically a contractually obligated second Indiana Jones movie, which people have a divisive reaction to. And it's in that moment, that inflection point, that it does feel like we have this run of years that Spielberg being like, you want me to grow up? Fine. Like a slightly kind of like vindictive, like I can do this. So, well, as Spielberg puts it,

for a long time I'd wanted to become something involved with something I had more to do with character development. I wanted to do something that was not stereotypically a Spielberg puts it, for a long time, I'd wanted to become involved with something that had more to do with character development. I wanted to do something that was not stereotypically a Spielberg movie. Try a different set of muscles, right? Sidney Lumet, Sidney Pollock, a couple of Sidneys out here, right? Who he admires.

Who are more, the guys who kind of do a lot of stuff. You know, like, right? Like those are not filmmakers where you're like, yeah, they're gonna make the same sort of movie every time. They make all kinds of dramas and a grown-up movie. And also, like, you know, Spielberg growing up, like, coveting people like Hawks and Ford, who made, like, six studio movies a year,

and they'd finish one, and the studio head would be like, here's a book, adapt this, you know? And it's just like, this is the assignment you're handed. Like, those kinds of assignment directors who were able to elevate the material but would just kind of serve it and be like, here's another one off the factory line. And some of them hit.

He's always had such a like, he covets those people and those types of careers and the flexibility and the range of what they were able to make. Color purple. You could see him going like, this is my chance to do that kind of thing. It's an epistolary novel, as we know,

as readers of the book. These two haven't read it. I guess they don't want to experience literature. Alice Walker was a... So, letters. It's a bunch of letters. Which of course is in the movie, that discovery of letters and stuff becomes important.

Alice Walker, she was an editor at Ms. Magazine, and had written this big essay about Nora Zeilhurstin that helped revive Zora Neale Hurston. Okay, I was like, who is that? JJ, you are legitimately fired for writing Laura Zeele Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston. Double fired. And I guess, like, the book becoming a bestseller is somewhat of a surprise.

It's a tough book to read. It's written in, like, a vernacular. The violence is very intense. It's very dark. It has lesbian themes, which are, you know, maybe less controversial literature, but still, you know, it's like a little out there, I guess, for 1983, but it is a gigantic bestseller.

And Quincy Jones loves the book and gets Peter Goober. Right, this is the other part. It's a Quincy Jones. His last name is Goober. His name's Goober. We're just accepting it. I assume that's how you say it. But Quincy Jones gets Goober and Allen? Goober and Peters, John Peters, to option the book. Because he wants to do the... Quincy Jones is like,

I must do the music for this coming... No! Quincy, no! Quincy, no. But this is like the guys, he hires the producing team who four years later are shepherding Batman and Warner Brothers, are just kind of like the big swingin' dick Hollywood producers at the time, you know? But I don't know if swingin' dicks were right for this project. Probably not. No, but it speaks to, it's just like, let's just get all the heavyweights.

And so people want to be a part of it. Kathleen Kennedy, legendary producer, also reads it and gives it to Spielberg. And Spielberg says he falls very much in love with Sealy and is sort of obsessed with the book and can't stop thinking about it. Kennedy wasn't like, you have to make this or anything. But she was like, you know, thinking of it as a potential thing for him. And he said, look, I'm scared to do it, but I kind of love that.

And Quincy Jones agrees. They had worked, he and Spielberg had worked on some sort of unrealized musical together. I don't know what it is. Not the Peter Pan thing. Okay. a personalized musical together. I don't know what it is. Not the Peter Pan thing. Oh. Okay. And Spielberg is saying to Quincy Jones,

like, shouldn't a black person direct this? Shouldn't a woman direct this? This is all reasonable questions. Quincy asks, and this is a good line by Quincy Jones. You didn't have to come from Mars to do ET, did you? Pretty good line. It's a good line, but. It's a good line.

So ET's not from Mars. It's from the Green Planet. It's a good line, but line so he's not from Mars From the Green Planet, which is which one's that that's what it's called. Okay, I believe that's his proper name that the Green Planet Okay, yeah Isn't Quincy Jones? The one He did the interview with vulture a couple years ago where he says Marlon Brando would fuck anything he'd fuck a mailbox. Yes.

And he fucked James Baldwin, he fucked Richard Pryor, and the guy's like, wait, how do you know that? He slept with those people? He says, come on, man. He didn't give a fuck. Do you like Brazilian music? That's lovely. It is the greatest interviewer. The greatest non-dequaner. He's just like, do you like Brazilian music?

He's like, what? Yeah, sure. Anyway, I just like to think about, you know, be like, ET, you're not from Mars and you made ET. Do you like Brazilian music? But the most important person Spielberg has to sway close to Jones's onboard is Alice Walker. And so he meets with her and her daughter and her publishing partner and a literary critic named Barbara Christian

and filmmaker Belle Vee Rooks and the activist Daphne Muse. And this entire group apparently is like, we do not want Steven Spielberg to make this movie. Would be hilarious if the names I just read to you, we were all just like, Steven Spielberg seems like a perfect choice. Would you sign our ET posters? And especially the Spielberg we're talking about.

Like, it's like later, the guy who made like the sort of more complex, like, you know, 2000s movies that he made, like, you might kind of be like, oh, well, he's grown up and he's made a lot of different kinds of movies. We're talking about the guy who just made Raiders of the Lost Ark and Alien movies and shit. Like, it's a huge leap. Look, it is not a one-to-one, but in the 2000s, in this sort of similar quarter to what we're talking about, Spielberg for years came very close to wanting to direct

Memoirs of a Geisha himself, right? And developed it and then ended up still producing it when Rob Marshall took over. Okay. I don't think that- He gave it to an Asian woman, Rob Marshall. Yes! I was like, Rob Marshall.

That's how we pronounce that, right? I don't think that movie would have turned out well, but I'm also like, if there had been a Steven Spielberg memoirs of a Geisha in 2006, it would not have been as strange as there being a Steven Spielberg color purple in 1985. Where at that point, he's like branched out and tried a bunch of different shit and some of it works and some of it doesn't. Whereas at this point, you're like, Steven Spielberg's thing is figured out. And he's taking like the hardest pivot where and this is the other thing about him being like, I want to be like Sidney Pollock and Sidney Lumet and all these guys. Those guys, like, do not have a dominant personality and worldview

that seeps into every single corner of their film. They're both like, right, my job is to figure out how to tell the story the best you can, right? And like Quincy Jones is the person who I think kind of like, convinces Sidney Lumet to direct The Wiz in the 70s in a similar way of like, this needs to be made by a major filmmaker. I'll produce this.

I'll separate it. You didn't have to be a dog to make Dog Day Afternoon. Quincy, it's not about a dog. Do you like Brazilian music? Yes, but like every Spielberg movie is just like, we understand this guy's brain, his stylistic quirks, what he likes out of his collaborators. Do you like Brazilian music?

Like the Steven Spielberg thing is so like codified at this point for better and worse that for him to then just be like, I'm just going to try to put it on something totally different as far away from myself as possible is so strange. So Alice Walker's take in concert with this sort of group of like intellectuals and collaborators. What our experience had been with Hollywood and with what white people do to black work, all you have to do is go to an average movie

where you have one black person surrounded by a million white people and you see how artificial the black character becomes and I just didn't want that. So she's anti Spielberg. But she likes Quincy Jones, probably because he's a fun hang. And he's like, nah, just meet with him.

And then she sits down with Steven Spielberg and she really likes him. Now Steven Spielberg's a likable guy, I think, right? And sits down, starts talking about the book, in her opinion, incredibly intelligently, clearly actually read the book and cares about it, I guess. And she's very taken with him and has confidence that he's the one and she

watches ET and she's like, this fucking rocks. Not joking. Like she's like of all characters being produced in Hollywood at the time, ET was the one I felt closest to. So I look and I also get there is like a level of like emotional intimacy and sincerity to ET that for how much people are like Spielberg, the manipulative, the big sweeping emotions, like there is like a smallness in ET and him kind of preserving the like emotional integrity of this like very delicate relationship in this big movie that to her I'm sure she's just like look there

is a feeling being conveyed here that this guy knows how to create and perhaps you could transmute this onto a wildly different story. I don't know if I want to feel good when I'm watching a child be assaulted. But I think that balance of just like, oh, ET is able to go into places of darkness. Never as dark as the color purple, you know? But like, it has this range. He's not just dealing in like mid-tones. It's a very different set of circumstances with this material.

She does say that at one point Steven Spielberg later referred to Gone with the Wind as the greatest movie ever made and said he loved the Butterfly McQueen character, and she said she slept poorly for a week after that. And, uh... Right, because that has to be... She thought she was going to have to relay to him, uh, quote, to make him understand what a nightmare Gone with the Wind was to me. Yeah.

Um, so, right, not like, she's not like he's perfect by any means. She is, however, allowed to write the first script. Like she is given the first shot at turning into screenplay. She turns in after three months, a draft that gets rid of the epistolary structure, has more sugar ivory in the narrative. Spielberg likes the script, but you know, it doesn't want to make it.

I don't know. She submitted with an alternate title, Watch for Me in the Sunset. Spielberg's like, this is interesting, but then like brings in Melissa Matheson, who he's worked with before. Rodie T. Yes, Walker.

And was married to Red Hulk. Was married to Red Hulk himself. Walker rejects her. Spielberg brings in Menom and Mahez. How do you say his last name? I think. Mahez? in Menom and Mahez. How do you say his last name? Mahez? Yes.

A rookie screenwriter. He had like a spec script called Lionheart, which eventually gets turned into a Gabriel Byrne movie. But was kind of like a cast in situation of like Spielberg finding this guy and throwing him on projects and having him do passes on stuff. Yeah.

Walker likes him because he's Dutch and is from like a part of Holland with folk speech that is looked down on by the rest of the Dutch. And she said that he really understood like sort of like folk speech and like felt like that this was some common ground for them. And so they work on the movie together but he has soul screenwriting credit.

It is so weird again that, that you're like, the Color Purple, directed by Steven Spielberg, written by a random Dutch guy who'd never written a movie before. Like, okay. And so they have this script, and... Yeah, you know, Spielberg's... Ah... It's so exasperating.

It's a little exasperating because he's saying things like, I wanted to bring Sealy's story to a wider audience than the one reading the book. You know, the audience reading the book is more female. Like, you know, I want... We gotta change that. I get what he's saying. Like, it's the only way he can defend it in a way of like,

yeah, I have a launchpad to bring a lot of attention to this, right? Sure. Why does he get a lot of the same sex intimacy in Walker's novel? I wasn't comfortable going beyond that, he says. Well, okay, so- Marty Scorsese could do it, not me, he says.

What? Really? What? Okay. That's an interesting take. Yeah. You saying, is there any Spielberg movie that has even like a hint of queer stuff in it, right?

There's that conversation, and there's the bigger kind of tied conversation of like Sexuality in Spielberg is a very limited spectrum period There's a reason why the Munich sex scene comes up all the fucking time That's weird as like the weirdest sexy made by someone who's never even like heard a description of sex Oh, no, and you watch that you're like like... Did he look at a diagram and was like, okay, that's how we're gonna show this.

But also that he like, you're like, is that the first time you actually see two people fucking any Spielberg movie? Like maybe? In Munich? And it's like 35 years into his career. And even like, you know, Marion and Indiana Jones have a more sexual relationship than exists in most Spielberg movies up until that point.

And even then it's very like dot, dot, dot. And then she accidentally knocks him out and he wakes up with birds swimming around his head or whatever. Like, it's just not a thing that really gets touched on. You could argue some of this has to do with like these sort of original sin of Spielberg capturing footage of Seth Rogen holding his mom's hand

and thus having a very weird relationship to intimacy depicted on camera. I do think there's something there not to psychoanalyze, but it is just a thing. He doesn't seem to ever have any facility communicating. And here is a movie where you're starting with a source material that's like the greatest source of trauma in this is the repeated sexual violence perpetuated by the men

and the greatest source of like comfort and joy and solace and belonging is the sexual intimacy and like, requited love provided by the other women. Yeah, there's this huge scene in the book where Suga holds up a mirror to Seelie's vagina and shows it to her and helps her understand her own body and whatever, and that should be in the movie. The moment where she goes, -"Oh, my God, you're still a virgin." -"Right." It's such a profound piece of right.

And that's the scene that Spielberg claims that only Marty's crazy. Yeah, what? Why? I assume he kind of means, like, Martin's Chris Stacey makes, like, R-rated movies, and I don't. I guess that's the only name. R-rated for what? Movies with mirror guess that's a no. R-rated for what? He makes movies with mirror scenes.

That's shit. Yeah, he's like expertise with mirrors. He loves mirrors. That's how it is. He knows how to make, you don't see the camera. And he's got a great relationship with vagina? Yeah. Oh, God, absolutely.

Marty, that guy. Yeah, super, super, yeah. Yeah. But this, the sort of, I have responsibility to make this movie translate to a bigger audience. There is this like, and as he morphs, as he stretches out, some of this gets knocked out of his system. At this point in his career, Spielberg is still like entertainer first and foremost. Even when he is trying to make a more serious considered adult movie, there are like what

you're saying, like some of the most traumatic sequences in this movie, he kind of shoots and edits like they're set pieces. Because it's just how he thinks. And he's so good at just being like, okay, what's the emotion you need to feel here? So then if the camera moves like this, and I cut like this and whatever,

then that gets that across. Did he have any say with the music? Because truly the music was killing me during this movie. It's also so strange because, What do you say with the music? Because truly the music was killing me during this movie. It's also so strange because, I mean, there, am I wrong in thinking the only two scores that John Williams didn't do for him are this and Bridge of Spies? Correct. Right.

And Bridge of Spies was like, he's getting older, he's doing the Star Wars movies, he just didn't have the time. Right? And this was like, well, obviously Quincy wanted that he opts to have to be... It's like in the contract Wars movies, he just didn't have the time. Right. And this was like, well, obviously, Quincy wanted that he up. It's like in the contract. Yeah. Speaking to him, he has something to say. And you hear it in the score. And I love Quincy Jones. Yes.

Feels like Quincy Jones doing a bad John Williams. Yes, exactly. It's a horrendous score. And it like it has these weird themes where you're like, that almost sounds like E.T. That almost sounds like Indiana Jones. Like he's trying to match the Spielberg version of the movie, which doesn't help anything. Not in this story, no? Right.

But then, like, Spielberg needing to be like, well, look, the, like, root of all this movie is the sexual violence, so I have to find ways to depict this. And maybe it's not gonna be graphic, but it's gonna be visceral. And it's gonna be painful. But the way he knows how to make his camera expressive also is, like like very pop art. Yeah.

And then all the sort of like intimacy and romance, he's just like, can I reduce that to like one scene with a kiss? And I think that kiss scene is very well done on its own. I think that scene... If we took it outside of the context of what it is supposed to represent entirely, yes. I think it's like beautifully acted and staged and conceived. And if that were the first scene that leads to the start of the thread of their relationship, whether or not that is depicted in an incredibly visual graphic way,

but at least it's textually like pointed. Something, yes. I'd be like, man, he handled this well. I'm watching the scene, I'm like, this is a kind of intimacy I don't see in his early films that we've been watching. And then it's like, and that's enough of that. I did it. No more. Aren't you happy?

It's like, isn't that like the main way she gets any type of joy in her sad, sad life? And then we're just like, nah, nah, don't include it. David. What? This episode's brought to you by Mubi. Hello Mubi! Once again, here we are in March 2025 and we are so happy that Mubi continues to sponsor the show.

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Uup dot com slash check free your mouth today and save 20% site wide plus a free travel case and countertop standard get quip Qip dot com slash check get quip Qip dot com slash check get quip q u i p dot com slash check i'll behave whoopi goldberg loved the book and had written to alice walker saying if it's ever turned into movie i want to be a part of it even if i just play avanishanian blind. Good line. So Quincy and, so Walker suggests Goldberg to Spielberg. And so Spielberg goes to see, he doesn't know her, he goes to see a stand-up performance. Along with Walker, Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson,

and Lionel Richie. -♪ PAULA LAUGHS. -♪ Cool. Just a regular show, yeah. Just hanging. Was this, was she on Broadway at this point, or was this prior? I don't know.

I think she did this for them. I think it's, I don't think they like went to see, like she was like, hey, do a set for us. Oh, okay. I was genuinely, I was like at like the stand, just like her kidding up. Comedy, tip your bartenders. Yeah.

Well, she's such a weird, I mean. And he loves her, it works, even though she apparently did a joke about E.T. getting hooked on Dope in an Oakland jail. Spielberg is very charmed. And despite the rumor that Diana Ross was the first choice for this, which is insane to think about, he's like, I want you to do it.

Whoopi is like, I don't know if I'm up to that. What if I played Sophia, you know, a supporting character, Oprah, you know, Oprah's character. And then eventually she's like, wait, Steven Spielberg's trying to cast me as the lead in this movie. Like, what does he mean by that? I should just do what he said. It's like, I'll say yes, absolutely. Right, and I mean, Whoopi is astonishing in this movie.

It is like one of the great debut performances in the history of film, I would argue. And then launch is like, as you were saying, and we'll unpack, one of the most unique careers in entertainment history. Like there is no parallel to her really when you like step back and go like she has done everything at least twice. You know, like it just covers all of it. But it is such an interesting, I don't know, I feel like this is what I was trying to get at earlier, but here's this woman who's basically synthesizing a new form of comedy at the time, where when you're saying,

she's referred to as a comedian, but she was more doing character stuff, but would also do monologues. She can recite jokes, but was very quickly doing longer form form kind of theater pieces and then becomes like a sensation has like this one woman off Broadway show that keeps growing and growing. But I think there was like you read the reviews of time people go like, how could you translate this? Like whoopi Goldberg is so her own universe. She is so complete

just leaving her alone on stage for two hours she can create like, you know, an entire reality. What is like the proper vehicle for her? You don't put her on a fucking sitcom, you know? Like what's the movie you make for her? To then do this big swing to put her in this dramatic role that is so quiet and so reactive and is like 90% just her face. Yeah. And is so underplayed. Looking at stuff.

Right. And have her just like knock it out of the fucking park and now be like great And now I'm whoopi Goldberg and I have the cache No one can tell me what to do I'm gonna do exactly what the fuck I want to do with my career She's gonna do what theodore rex right? Yeah, I'm just gonna like follow all my own Is that what happens in theater? I think yeah, yeah What be very intimidated on set doesn't says she really didn't know what the hell she was doing. Said Spielberg and her had a bond over like movie nerdery. So he would be like, hey, do Boo Radley when he gets caught

into Kill a Mockingbird. And she knew what that was. Or like, do Indiana Jones finding the girl at the end? Like what he would like reference things for her and she would recognize that. He was as encyclopedic as he was of watching every single movie that would, like, air on television. Right. Do Gaslight. Like, when Danny Glover's being insane to her, do Gaslight. And she apparently would, like, be like, yep, I know what you're talking about.

What's crazy about it to me is that, like, on paper is, like, this is how you shouldn't direct something, right? Yes. Right. Hey, imitate other acting. Right. And I think it is, like, to Spielberg's credit that he is flexible enough to be like, what do I need to help this person? Here's someone who is like undeniably as powerful a performer as anyone on the planet, but also has not had to act within this context and this structure has not had to play a role like this before has not been on a shoot like this before.

And he's just like, Oh, you know what? If I point to a scene and go like, you know the face that Cary Grant makes in that moment? Can you do that? She actually is able to replicate that in a way that isn't hollow. Can access the real emotion from the surface level... request of what I want? That's fantastic.

Like, I know Whoopi Goldberg just as someone who's watched the movies and has seen The View. So to hear this stuff, I'm like, yes, she's cool. I always compared to her. I went to film school. I was the only black girl in my class. I had locks and they were just like, you're Whoopi Goldberg. So they just called me Whoopi Goldberg all the time. What the fuck?

You must have loved that. Oh, it was definitely interesting. And they also, because I lived in a decent apartment based on a scholarship thing, they were like, oh, the only reason you would have money is that your dad is Sam Jackson. So I would think... They jumped to Sam Eaple?

They jumped to Sam Jackson as a black person they know that would have a daughter that looks like me. Whose last name is Mowgli. Yeah, his last name is definitely Mowgli. Right. They don't like to talk about it very much. It's all a thing. Sure, yeah.

So, to hear that she's like cool as hell, there is a bit of, I don't know, like reclamation of that where I'm like, I don't know, she is pretty cool. Okay, they could have called me Whoopi. But if they had known that, not just because I had locks in this black. What I find so interesting about Whoopi is that like, there are all these stories of like when she wanted to do Star Trek, right? Like Next Gen is happening and she goes to her agent and she's like, I want to be on Star Trek.

And he's like, you're Whoopi Goldberg. You can't be on Star Trek. You're not going to be a guest star on Star Trek. No, I want to be on Star Trek though. And she's like, Star Trek was important to me. Like I want, you know, her was important to me. Like I want to be on the new Star Trek. Right. And they were like, that will like damage your legacy.

That devalues you. You're a movie star now. You have Academy Award nominations. Carina. Carina. It's you and Leota, baby. Right. Because it wasn't even like, I want to be a guest star on one episode. She's like, can I have like a recurring part? Like, we're not tying you down to a fucking contract on Star Trek.

I know. Sounds pretty cool. Let's do it. But she just totally was like, you know what I want to do? Shit, I want to do. Yeah. And I feel like she'll do was like, you know what I want to do? Shit I want to do. And I feel like she'll do these interviews now, much like Quincy Jones, one of the best interviewers, will just say wild shit and now has a TV show where she just says wild shit every day. And in some ways that does sometimes abstract her of like, what's Whoopi's deal? She's just like some kind of woman who just says crazy shit

and then like pops up and does stuff. But you're like, no, she's done everything. And like part of what is held against her is that she was not protective of her like prestige in that way. I think that she was just like, I don't give a shit. I'm going to like host the Oscars. I'm going to do this. I like cartoons.

I like whatever. And you're like, she like broke 8 million doors, but in a way that just kind of makes it feel like, oh yeah. And like Whoopi Goldberg is like the American flag. She's just like an object that we look at. Yeah, it's always there. That's always doing something. Like I feel like our buddy Alex Ross Perry and I always talk about how when we

were children, we were like, there are 10 famous people. There are 10. She was one of them. Right. It's like Whoopi Goldberg, Danny DeVito, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like who are the people who could exist in both the Academy Awards and the Kids' Choice Awards? Those are the 10 people where you're like, and a lot of them, part of it is just like

they don't look like anyone else. They have an interesting name. Yes. They appear in all kinds of things, you know, they'll be in commercials and also like cartoons and whatever. Whoopi E got it. Whoopi E got it. Oh yeah, early.

An early E got it. Is she in E got it. Oh yeah, early. An early E got it. Is she in an episode of 30 Rock talking to... She is the one. Yes, yes. She is the one he consults. That's the roger. The roger.

Yeah. But I feel like that's kind of, I don't want to say taken away from her, but people are like, oh yeah, I guess like Whoopie Alberg. Yeah, but they don't put her on the pedestal that she deserves to be on. Yes. And now she's just on The View and I feel like she says something out of pocket every day, and everyone's just like, -"Ah, Whoopi's crazy, who cares?" -"Yeah!"

She just cashes checks, takes a limo, I guess, to and from, and yeah, lives her life. Is it the greatest stage name of all time? Whoopi? It is an incredible... What's her real name, sorry? Elaine Johnson? Karen Elaine Johnson.

What? Yeah. Karen Elaine Johnson? Yeah, I mean, Whoopi Goldberg is an incredible name. How'd Yeah. Karen Elaine Johnson? Yeah. I mean, Whoopi Goldberg is an incredible... How'd she get the Goldberg? I think it's part of her family. There's some forebear, although then she did the Henry Louis Gates Jr. show and he was like, we didn't find any Goldbergs.

But she claimed that it was. Okay. We can all claim stuff. Let's do it. Yeah. She got Whoopi from Whoopi Cushions. Like genuinely. Yeah. What? Yeah. That's lovely.

Love Whoopi. Danny Glover casts largely, he's in Places in the Heart. Pieces in the Heart. That's a weird movie. Places in the Heart. Spielberg loved that performance casting without an audition. Glover says, Glover grew up in San Francisco, not in the South, but he was the first generation in his family to do so. His family's from Georgia. He would spend every summer going back to Georgia, working on the farm. So he, like, was like,

I very much understood, like, this environment, you know, this kind of childhood. Uh, Quincy Jones. I just want to say, 84 places in the heart. In 1985, witness Silverado and the color purple. Wow. He's the villain in witness. But he basically like 1979 inmate and escape from Alcatraz.

You know, like three or four tells you've never heard of. And then it's like he's in one movie that like gets on the Oscar radar. The next year he's in three big movies. Two years after that lethal weapon. It's like it was this incredible. He's 39 in this. Sure, yeah. Like he'd been around. Mostly a stage actor.

Mostly a stage actor, and then it's just sort of immediately identified as like, yeah, movie star. I guess so. He's a very interesting movie star in a way. I love Danny Glover. He's one of my favorite actors. So wait, when he was too old for this shit, he was only like 43? He's not that old. He's young. He's like 41. Oh, God. But he looks too old for this shit. He was only like 43. He's not that old. He's young. Yeah.

He's like 41. Oh God. But he looks too old for this shit. You believe it. You do. Great acting. The last 30 minutes of this movie when they like shave his hairline back, you just see that execs were like, oh my God, we could make this guy retirement age. This guy could be too old for some shit.

Right. We'll have to figure out what it is. Yeah. Be young enough to actually do the action scenes, but play that he's too old. Well, also when they age him up in this movie, you're just like, this looks like Danny Glover from 2000. That's exactly what I'm saying. I was like, Royal Tan Bombs, Danny Glover right there.

Right. He's so fucking funny in the Royal Tan Bombs. Yes. But like there's the famous. When he calls him Coltrane, I've seen all his movies, he laughs so much. He's so good. He's really funny in the movies.

The Max von Sido thing, where the makeup was so good in the exorcist that he was like, it fucked up my career because people thought I was 80. He was like, he's so good. He's really funny. The Max von Sido thing, where the makeup was so good and the exorcist that he was like, it fucked up my career because people thought I was 80. He was like, he's so old. Right. He was 80 for a long time to me. Yes, right. Totally. And he was like, and then when he caught up to looking as old as he looked in the exorcist...

He was like, let's get you back in the movie. He started working all day. Danny Glover weirdly had the opposite thing, where they like age him up in this and people were like, wait, do you want to play older all the time? That's the dream. Quincy Jones, at one point, is catching a red eye for some... He's in Chicago, okay? He turns on the TV,

he sees a show called AM Chicago, has an exciting young new host, Oprah Winfrey. Calls Steven Spielberg. Quincy Jones really was kind of wild for this one, because like all of his choices make sense. You're like, yeah, Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, these are great choices. But imagine being Steven Spielberg being like,

how do I get my handle on this black lesbian drama set in the South? And Quincy Jones is like, I'm watching this local Chicago TV fucking daytime host. She's perfect for Sophia. We're going to cast her. Spielberg's just like, okay. She'd never been in a movie. She found being in a movie really difficult.

Like it's not like Oprah Winfrey was like a natural actor. Like, you know, and she talks about like how tough it was. Hey, your role is like being insulted, being hit. And then being like catatonic. Yeah. Like, you know, being hit... And then being like catatonic, like, you know, all fucked up. Oh, the makeup in this movie is the way, like, they make the son of Danny Glover... Harpo. Harpo, yes. Oh, Harpo, yeah, yeah. Oprah's production company.

Yes, yes, he ran with that. His makeup, when he's supposed to be old, made me laugh out loud at the movie. And I'm like, that is not what I'm supposed to be getting from this scene, but they put a bald cap on him where you can see the seam of it. They just like kind of put wrinkles around their eyes to be like, look, they're old now.

And I'm like, but they're old, okay. He looks insane. He looks truly, I'm like, who put this wig on this man? Did they hire people that knew how to do wigs? You're like, what? And like the Oprah makeup looks very like, lanchain-y. Like it looks very like, you know, I understand we're trying to like show

the lasting physical scars of this woman's like experience and the indignity she's suffered, but it is like stylized in a way that looks universal monsters. Like the substance, that's what I got from her eye prosthetics in that movie. But she does this, she does noble son and then doesn't do a movie until beloved, sorry, native son and then.

I mean, she becomes Oprah. Right, becomes Oprah, but also it's just like movies are tough, I don't need to do that again. So she chose to do beloved where it's also black pain? That's what's, I find it interesting, right? Beloved is her doing the Quincy Jones thing. It's her making kind of the same decision of like, I think I can get this-

This book is so important. Tough book made into a movie. I can protect someone else from fucking up. Right, my choice is this incredibly talented white director who's not like, again, connected to the South or like, you know, this sort of heritage or anything. But he's got empathy in space but he's a good director the result again is a movie we're like this is well made it's not

bad no but why would anyone rewatch yeah I guess you could it's a really interesting theaters I like my my... This is important. Right. We're gonna go see these. And so it was like, Jesus, do you hate me? What? And it is... I mean, you must have been like 12 years old. Yeah. I know. That's why I'm like, is my mom mad at me? Do the directors hate me?

Does society dislike black women, which is a different thing? But Jesus Christ, this is a lot. It is a fascinating counterpoint to this movie where it's sort of like what you were saying, David, of like, that's a movie that is like, okay, we're not going to do like magical uplift and instead it is just like punishing and like very difficult to watch and thus like has no cultural permanence whatsoever. Like did not translate, but then she like she like is so burned out by that experience that she's like, I'm not gonna do a movie again.

It's just fascinating to me that it's like Oprah just so quietly gets an Academy Award nomination for her first performance ever, then becomes the most like important woman in media. Right, becomes I think like the first black billionaire, period, and then like over 10 years later is like, it is my responsibility to try to do this again. And then was like, this sucks, I hate this.

Yeah, why are we doing this? I don't want to do the same one. Good for her. And it was like, oh, it's weird, Oprah was in like two movies. And then the last decade, she's just like quietly like done a handful of films. Yeah, she started acting again. She's really good. She's really good.

She's always good. It's probably a bit easier though. I think so. You mean smaller roles? Yeah. Well, hey, Wrinkle in Time is a really big role. She's like a giant. Have you seen that movie?

No. Can you... Tallest Oprah you'll ever see in your life. The tallest Oprah? Okay. The tallest Oprah you'll ever see in your life. How tall are we talking? I don't know, like 800 feet?

800 feet? She's like a giant. Yeah, like a true giant. So... Taller than a skyscraper? Um, Spielberg and Jones want Tina Turner to play Sugar Avery. That's the only person, like, top choice that they don't get. Fascinating.

Tina Turner is like, I fucking lived that shit, bro. I fucking was married to Ike Turner. I do not want to make that movie. I'm gonna go make Mad Max The Off Thunderdome. Literally. You know what I haven't lived? I've been to a Thunderdome, literally. That is what she does. You know what I haven't lived? I meant to say Thunderdome, yeah. That's a new experience for me.

Spielberg apparently, Spielberg had worked with Margaret Avery, she's in Something Evil, and apparently didn't even remember, and no one was even that excited about her, but I mean, it's an incredible performance. It's mostly a TV theater actor at this point. Yeah, it's incredible. Movie cost about $15 million.

Spielberg accepted only a minimum salary. Yay. So noble of him. Yes. It was shot in North Carolina, where you grew up. It was set in Georgia, of course. It's a colorful set in Georgia, but as Kenny's told me, it was shot in North Carolina, and she's right.

And it was heavily storyboarded, just like all Spielberg movies. Alan Davio, who shot E.T., shot it. His first instinct was to shoot in black and white. Then he was like, I'm being a coward. That's me sugarcoating it more. Like, he fearing the violence even more, trying to distance it even more. So he doesn't do that.

So here's an interesting thing. He talks a lot about on Schindler's List, which is the movie where he succeeds finally in like making the transition that he's trying to make on this film and on Empire of the Sun, right? Where he's like, how do I make the movie that is actually like staring reality in the face that isn't caught up in like Spielberg's candy coating.

Yes, and he's dealing with serious issues and pain and what have you. Not entertainment first and foremost. And that movie he talks about that he was like, I had to let go of storyboards. I didn't want to be like mathematical about it. I would like show up and I would feel it out. And it was improvisatory. And I think part of that for him was that he was just like,

I need to like be connected to the actual emotions of this thing. Which is not a thing he lived through himself, but a thing that happened to his people. That he perhaps has a greater psychic connection to, and he's filming in similar spaces and all of this, right? It's exactly what you're saying of like, Spielberg sitting down with the script and being like, okay, so how do we shoot the father raping?

Yeah. And like storyboarding it might be like the beginning of the problem where even if he's kind of making good choices, thinking about it that clinically. Yes. Which isn't to say he shouldn't have like planned out shots. Yes, but where it's like this will match this exactly versus what is the feeling?

How do we best portray what is happening in front of the camera? Totally, because Spielberg's problem at this point in his time is that he is too entertaining and he is too good of a communicator, right? It is what makes people go like, is this all just like manipulative bullshit when people are starting to tire of the Spielberg thing of like, you know, he's got to pull out the heartstrings every fucking time. He's got to have the moments of awe and wonder and all this sort of shit.

That like, he... It is so hard for him to not turn something into a moment of like grandestatic movie magic. That he does need to like figure out how to... I don't know, like tie his arms behind his back to some degree. Yeah. And be more of an interpreter.

Let's talk about the movie. Versus an orchestrator, yeah. I mean, it just, it comes up right from the beginning because you're like thrown into the deep end of like some of the most extreme shit in the movie. Like to me, the thing that stuck with me most is this cheesy, sappy score plus the voiceover narration, which I'm like, I don't know, do they have to make her sound

like that? Whatever. Okay. But that over blood, baby being taken, a dad saying, don't tell your mom, like that, it just... You have so much so quickly. There is a real, like, you know, this character lives in hell. And we're, like, speed running through it. Yes. And even to a degree, you know that it's like,

this movie stars Whoopi Goldberg. We're still on the young version of her. It takes 30 minutes, I think, I want to say, before you get to Whoopi. Yeah. And so you're just like, man, there's, like, a lot to get through. That little girl goes through a lot of pain.

A ton before the movie's really gonna kind of begin in earnest. And it's, yes, it's the kind of thing that in a book you can take longer to sort of live with and this movie needs to like... Get through it real quick. ...barrel through, which it just is overwhelming. But yes, you set up this woman, her abusive father has fathered two children with her, has taken them away. And then is basically sold off into marriage

to Danny Glover, who is interested in her sister, not in her. Who's like 12? Yes. And her abusive father is like, take the older one. Yeah. She's separated from her sister, who's her closest tie in life.

Her only friend. Yes. Her, her, her, like kind of her entire life, like her entire grounding force. The guy who plays her father Leonard Jackson is very like indelible to me. And I think it's because he's in like Sesame Street a lot and like Shining Time Station, he was a lot of like, he watched as a little kid. Because I was watching it being like, who is this guy? His face is so familiar.

Like I really know this guy and that's what I think I know him best from. Anyway, carry on. They're split up. There's this sort of like, we'll communicate through letters. That's how I'll let you know that I'm still alive. The device of the book. But that's basically the 30 minute mark. Not to say we're past all of that, right?

But like at 30 minutes you get to like, here's Whoopi, now she's grown up, she's stuck in a fucking horrible situation, she hasn't spoken to her sister in 10 years. She doesn't seem to do much of like, she doesn't have anyone she can relate to at all. It seems like, yeah. No, she's just, it is what she plays incredibly well, I think, is someone who basically, as a survival mechanism,

has just kind of, it's interesting. There's like the two sides of like, you know, Oprah plays Sophia as this sort of like zombie-like despondence, right? Like as much as she is trying to like turn herself off to insulate herself from the pain of her reality, where she gets to ultimately in the movie, there is this feeling of like, great sorrow within her that she carries, that she's trying to like, I don't, muzzle so it doesn't overtake her. Right.

Whereas Whoopi, it's almost just sort of like, how do I put it? She's just trying to like disengage, right? She's shut herself off entirely. She's like completely closed down because it is only pain outside of that. It's very sad. It's my insight into that situation.

But there is this Spielbergian nostalgia for the childhood nonetheless. The hand clapping, the singing, and the stuff like that, you know. Visually, it reminds me a lot of, what is it, Daughters of the Dust? Oh, yeah. An incredible movie. Yeah, which is visually striking,

and it comes later, but there's visual similarities, and it's just interesting to watch Daughters of the Dust and be like, oh, look how this is evocative of a whole thing. And there it's like, I don't know if this is like right for child rape, I don't. Yeah. Daughters of the Dust is an interesting movie to talk about because that's Julie Dash.

That's like one of the first movies directed by a black woman in America. Like that's theatrical because I think the first movie directed by a black woman is a dry white season, but that's using policy who's French or whatever. But that's how unusual it was for a black woman to make a movie. Like, period. Dars It Us is amazing.

But it's... You know, it's an art film. It's kind of light on plot. It's very experiential. It's in this sort of Gullah dialect, so it's like, you know, it's like not a commercial film. It's like a memory piece. Julie Dash never gets to make another, like, you know, movie like that again, really, you know? All that. She should be making it. Like, or whatever.

Like, you know, they should be finding Julie Dash's or using, whatever. Like, and... Yeah, instead, like, when there's the hand clapping, this motif that Spielberg put to the beginning and the end of the movie, I'm like, that's powerful, that's getting me right here. But I'm also kind of like, is that kind of bullshit? Like, I don't know.

That it's kind of working to me a little too easy. I don't know. There was, I sent it to the group text, but there was an interview from when Hook was coming, or it just come out on 60 Minutes. That's sort of a like checking in on Steven Spielberg, the King of Hollywood. And the interview's trying to like,

not trying to soften it a little bit, but they're like, Hook doesn't seem to be like totally working, right? It's like, here's this guy kind of on like a semi-victory lap, but this is the last movie he makes before he goes on to his Jurassic Schindler year where it's like undeniable Spielberg you did it you won everything right? And it's him at this inflection point and they're kind of grilling the like permanent adolescence

Part of it and asking him about his like obsession with childhood and all these things And he's showing this big office that Universal built for him where he has like fucking 80 arcade cabinets and whatever, things I can't relate to, surrounding yourself with childhood ephemera. I don't see that at all. At all, not in this very sober spare office. Yeah. But the interviewer asked him some question

about his childhood and like why did he want to recapture. And he's like, I don't have any fondness for my childhood. And he's like, you don't? And he's like, I just have no good memories. And he's not being like, you don't understand how difficult it was, but he's just kind of very soberly saying, like, when I think back on it, there's just like not a single happy thought.

I just wasn't happy. You know? It's kind of fascinating. It's kind of fascinating because it feels like, if anything, that is the connection point he has into this movie. Yeah. It's just like some feeling of like deep,

existential sadness as a child. That was not circumstantial in the way it is for this character. Yeah, yeah. Right? Hopefully, yeah. But like in that first 30 minutes, I feel him sort of connecting to something, if not in one-to-one experience, which is probably the thing where she's like, if you could translate the Elliot feeling in ET to this, you know,

is there like some parallel here? But then it also makes it kind of odd when the movie is all about like the power those like brief moments of connection and grace have in her childhood amidst all of this and trying to recapture that where it's like, is there any analog for that in his life? No, he ran off and he joined the circus and he like looked back and was like, and now I make fun. Yeah. I make fun in magic.

So you're saying that's why these Steven Spongers are perfect choice to make the color purple? Yeah, perfect choice. I nailed it 10 out of 10. The only one who was making art that black people would like are you. He hadn't done anything about abuse. Again, it's not like,

that almost sounds silly of me to say, because it's not like, oh, we need an abuse director for this movie. We need someone to really use his way around abuse. Who would you count as an abuse director? If that's what I'm saying. But like... I just had on like five jokes I could have made. I want to hear three of them. I want to hear three of them.

I was in Polanski. I was a food rider. I was going to go to that kind of like territory. Uh-huh. Yeah, John Landis. I mean, that's a different... That's going back to Twilight Zone, the movie. Yeah, okay. But E.T. has trauma in it. Close Encounters has this kind of darkness to it.

Part of Spielberg's thing is like, being able to make these things a little allegorical, or being able to make them sort of like elliptical, where it's like, here is something like the one scene of the kiss that represents a sort of like notion of a thread that you fill in the blanks and I don't have to depict it. Right. You know, one of the movies I struggle with the most

that we've covered on this show is Lolita, which is like another very bizarre book to adapt into a movie and try to make into a commercial studio film at that time, right? And part of what I find so bizarre about that film is that they're like, we are adapting Lolita. Also, because of codes and regulations, we can never once directly acknowledge

what is going on in this movie. And it feels like this sci-fi movie where everyone is like talking around what's going on. Yeah. And it's like, why bother making this if you can't depict this? And there's this self-censorship in Spielberg where he's just like, well, the romance I'm going to take out, but the abuse I have to put on.

Yeah, you have to keep the pain in. That's why people are coming to it. And I'm going to try to do the PG-13 version of it that isn't like inflicting suffering upon the audience in like a cruel or malicious way. Yeah. But then it's also like, then then what are you doing? What do you saying? Like the book is saying something interesting about humanity and pain and recovering from that.

And there's like, the end has this recovery and this understanding of what God is in a really cool way and they get rid of it. Well, especially if you don't have anyone who's kind of like pulling her out and forcing her to connect, other than in very brief moments, you know, and it's the movie...

He is so deliberate as a storyteller that he is not creating a world where you can imply what is happening in between the scenes and fill in the gaps. It feels like he's saying like, no, in my version of the movie, they don't have sex. They net... Nope.

Right? This just... A shoulder touch is the love that she's getting. That is truly the end of it. And it is gonna be, it's sort of old school Hollywood stuff. It'll all be in eyes and gestures and right, feeling and emotion and you can read things into it. He nails and the shit though, like Whoopi nails. And Whoopi's really, really, really good.

You get to the dinner table scene and Spielberg said that he like encouraged Whoopi and Oprah to improvise a lot. You know, that's the big scene because obviously Whoopi doesn't, like, talk that much otherwise than the movie. You're talking about quite late in the movie. Yeah, yeah. But he knows this as someone who has that ability. And I think also to his credit, perhaps, he's just like,

hey, you know what? If we cast this movie well, and these people are in this environment on the day, they might find the language to say things that me and my fucking Dutch writer couldn't identify at a desk, right? Maybe let them feel it out and see if anything comes up. Was that shot, do you know if that was shot later in the filming process? That's interesting, I wonder, yeah, I don't know. Like when they got the time to like jive and gel as a community.

I don't know, the thing I just know is that it was like a repeated thing that she has said that he was constantly encouraging her to improvise and go, OK, if anything feels right, say it. And same thing to Oprah. And that scene in particular is like the most ecstatic version of it. I think in a lot of ways is the best scene in the movie. A lot of it's just that like whoopies coming in like so fucking hot and it is so cathartic when we've had to watch the theater.

We've been waiting. Yes. She's got a knife in her hand, she's yelling and we're like, yes, these people deserve it. And I love, love, love, and this happens in the book too, that she's like, I hate you and your kids are shitty. Yeah. That was like, I, cause we, as an adult with no children, oftentimes it's like,

hey, you can't comment on children. But I love... You don't want to bring that, yeah, the further burn of like, you know what, actually, your kids suck. Your kids suck, dude. I don't like their vibes. Yeah, I love that. We've been watching this movie for two hours,

and we're like, these kids do say it. Yeah, they do. Someone would say it. Everyone in this movie is unbearable. And she just like, it is, I think, this movie would not have worked at all. Its success in its time, I think hinges entirely on that scene

delivering so hard of the emotional release of like, yes. And now she's gonna be able to fucking take her life into her own hands and we end the movie with a little bit of uplift, right? A smidgen. A smidgen. Yeah. Right, a hope of better days ahead

and at least being liberated from the worst of it and all that. It's not like it's like, yeah, and then everything was fantastic. Yeah. I don't know. You at least have an opportunity to try to make a better life for yourself at the end of the movie, right? She is finally given a little space

and a set of circumstances where there is a possibility to rebuild a life in the way she wants. And her sister's back and we don't really get into that. Right. But I think it is to Goldberg's credit that she nails that scene so fucking hard. As is Oprah, as is everyone at the table, right? The whole scene is kind of like perfect.

But it is such a wild switch flip when you just have this character barely be able to string together six words above a whisper for the two hours leading up to that. And you have these small moments of connection, but they don't really feel like she has ever been given any space to be herself. Which, as an idiot who hasn't read the book, I'm like,

I understand the dramatic function of having this romance with Shug in her life that, like, excesses this part of herself. Yeah. That helps her discover herself. That, like, builds a path for this kind of catharsis. I really like that. And in the movie, they do maintain where, so they're all having dinner, which seems to be like a normal thing. And then Shug is like, hey, I'm about to leave.

BG dubs. Seeley's coming with me. And that is the thing that seems to open the floodgates and allows her like this. That Shug was like, hey, we are doing something that is not the norm. And now Seeley's like, okay, I I'm gonna curse all y'all out. I'm gonna tell these children that they're stupid, that these people suck, your daddy sucks. I hope you die.

I hope everything you touch turns to ash. I hope you have pain, till you do right by me. Nothing, nothing's gonna go right for you. And I love that. I love it too, and I love that it sort of works, right? The implication is like, she has kind of messed him up in some way, but it's also not like, and then he fell off a cliff, like a Disney villain,

and he was dealt with. It's like, now he's still there, and all this shit is still there, and it's not like there's some triumphant downfall of the bad guys in this movie and this story, right? I don't know. No, but you have the suppression of the letters, right? Yes. The big violation, right. Right, right. The thing that finally breaks her

above all else of all the indignities in her life. Yeah, it's like, he did a lot. Like, he beat this woman, but it's the letter keeping. It's the letter keeping. That's the thing. And also that the letters, once she finally gets one, are like, hey, by the way, you won't believe the incredible shit that's been going on over here.

I live in Africa. I'm doing stuff. Oh, I'm with your kids, BTWs, they are totally live. Right, what a miracle. I'm with them. They got great parents. Everything's awesome. You know life and how it could be nice? I've been having that. Good luck with your terrible existence. Right, which like, basically she gets this letter

that's like, we've been living in a Steven Spielberg movie that rules. I'm so sorry I haven't been able to get hold of you. I'm worried that things are probably pretty bad, but I thought you might like to know that we're like kind of killing it over here. There is something in, rather than, it gives her this sense of, like, internal strength to,

for the first time, consider that there is an alternate way her life could go, after you imagine assuming the worst, which is, she's been dead for decades. Yeah. Right? And now to get this letter that's like, and then you won't believe what happened next, I found your children. Like, all this stuff, right? Um, that that, like, the betrayal combined with the sort of first, like, revealing of a window

to another viewpoint. Yes. But all of that is internal. Like, all of that is just kind of like, and Whoopi sells it, but like, an arc the movie has not really built outside of like, an ecstatic 10-minute sequence of Spielberg lovingly, like, shooting Africa, and Quincy going hard,

and like, Whoopi just really playing the shit out of reading a letter. And there's one moment, and in the book, I feel like it doesn't go like this, but in the movie where she feel like it doesn't go like this, but in the movie where she's being asked to shave Mr. And you can tell she's about to slit his throat open. She's like, maybe I kill him right here.

Yeah. And honestly, maybe this says something about the way I was raised in the South and like the plays that I saw, but it was like, hey, if a man beats you, you gotta kill him. Right. You, you're right. You just. You got to, Earl had to die him and that's just like how it's gonna go.

So, I was like, I don't know, man, just kill. Like, if the law isn't involved in you guys' life every day like that, I feel like we should just slit his throat. Are you referencing the Dixie Jax telling good-bye to Earl? That you weren't raised like that? You weren't raised with Earl had to die. We as a, like that is a thing that will get friends together. Like you want to really submit your female relationships,

kill a man. My favorite version of that is the Miranda Lambert song, Gunpowder and Lead, which I think is underrated. One of her best songs, which is also about, she's like, I'm going to shoot this person who hit me. So fucking good. His fist is big, but my gun's bigger. He'll find out when I pull the trigger is the, is the bridge.

It's really, really good. That's very real country. Western Sims over here. I am people. People make fun of me. Right. Like Alex likes to do hip hop Sims. Country Western Sims rarely comes out, but he's there.

I love country music. Ben and Ben and Griff exchanging a little look. Yeah. It's just a decade of dreams. Be hot. Giddy up. Decade of dreams. New Lord. I love country music.

Maria Lambert, one of the great songstresses of our lifetime. The shaving sequences are so insanely well done. Shaving is crazy. Shaving is... Why do men... Why would you have someone else do that? I know. 100%.

I don't trust people to do my nails half the time, Shaving is... Why do men... Why would you have someone else do that? I know. 100%. I don't trust people to do my nails half the time, but you're saying you're gonna hold my important veins and arteries are? No one should have ever shaved until they invented a big razor. A little razor. When it was like, all right, here we go, slice it. I was like, no. A whole, truly a weapon for murder.

And then you're just like, yes, I trust often a stranger to just scrape that against my delicate neck. That's wild. But it's a kind of a perfect Spielberg setup, right? To have this guy be like, here, I'm handing you a murder instrument. And by the way, if you cut me, I'm going to murder you, right? But I could murder you first so quickly! That's what's interesting about it for me is like,

and I think these sequences work well because they are less verbal and he's able to just do kind of like Spielberg like imagery and moments and looks and whatever, but the weird like dynamic of like you are holding the weapon and yet psychologically he is still convincing you that if you try to kill him you'll end up dead first. And it's like, yeah right, the first time she's sort of aware of the power, but wouldn't even consider it and is actually just afraid of the harm of accidentally nicking him. And the second time she comes so close to doing it. But like the way he just constructs those sequences and the tension of it, it does, it feels very visceral and it makes you in the way that Spielberg can go, like it is insane that we just hold blades up to our neck.

Well, it's just like, there's a lot of, you know, like obviously, Sarah, Sophia, sorry, the Oprah character, the foremost example of like, what Celie is absorbing around her, it's like, yeah, that's a woman who speaks up and is like, you know, destroyed for it. Yes. You know, like she has one moment

of sort of outspoken behavior that's justified and literally her life is ruined. Like, and which is one of the craziest things in the color purple that it's just like, we're just gonna cut ahead to eight years later, she's out of jail and she's ruined. And like that's, you know, two minutes in the, right? Like the leap just sort of happens in the movie.

It's really, I had to rewind it just to make sure I have... To be like, right, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we're not gonna have sequences of Sophie in prison maybe to understand what's going on. It's like, no. No, just like... Eight years gone. Yeah.

And then they say like, and eight years later, the final indignity, they made her go work for Judith Ivy. Right. Which is, the Christmas sequence is also... Dana, Dana. Dana, I love that sequence. I love that sequence. The Christmas sequence is incredible.

There are like, There are sequences in this that are so undeniably effective. He's able to, in this kind of odd Spielberg way, identify where the humor is in it, find the stakes, find the real emotion, be this kind of five-tool player filmmaker who's giving you a full feast, and is giving you this kind of like old school, like Hollywood weepy. I just, I think that scene is so beautifully played out

because you're already kind of unmoored by the jump in time. Yes, it's eight years, she's been like, oh. You'd be like, holy shit, and we're just here now and it's over? And now like here's this woman who is unrecognizable is wearing Quasimodo makeup. Yes. Has a very different physicality, right?

And then this moment of, like, bringing her back to her family, you know, I mean, the driving sequence is fun, and you're like, right. But then the realization of, oh, she's going to get this taken away from her. And Dana Ivy saying, like, I don't know her either. Yeah, you're like, oh, lady, lady, lady, come on. Love Dana Ivy saying, like, I don't know her either. Yeah, you're like, uh, lady, lady, lady, come on. Love Dana Ivy.

I, she's in, uh, Sabrina, which... The remake of Sabrina, yes. With Red Hull, yeah. Yeah, with Red Hull. And I hate that I love that movie. Do you? Everyone... Sydney Pogpoo.

So many people have told me how bad that film is, and so intellectually, I know it is bad, but. I will have a crush on Red Hulk until I die. I'm not taking it back. I mean it. Yeah. Harrison Ford is a cutie patootie. And is it Julie Ormond? Yeah. She I'm like, go for it.

Sleep with a billionaire who you work for. Do whatever you want, man. I got to watch that movie. I've never seen it. I've never have either, yeah. Because it was not, like, regarded. If no one likes it, I'm the only person who likes it. And I watched the John Williams documentary the other day that was on Disney Plus that you guys have referenced,

I think, on prior episodes, which briefly references that score. Oh, sure. I guess, because it's like one of his forgotten sort of sweeping 90 scores. And I was like, huh, do I need to watch Sydney Pollock? No. Kinda, yeah.

Just on a Saturday afternoon, just give it a shot. Fine. But the whole Christmas sequence, I think he like, there is such a masterful control of like, silence and body language, and like him actually letting the performances sell it and letting it being a little bit unspoken. Just like the shoulders falling when it's like,

well, it was nice seeing you once, children, and gone forever. Yes, yes, yes. It's what's weird about this movie is like, yeah, that he will over deliver and under deliver at the same time. And you're like, there is like no ill intent in this movie. Right. This is not a maliciously made film or whatever. Yeah, no, no. No, and there's also like no incompetence.

Yeah, these people know what they're doing. Yes. Mostly they know physically, technically what they're doing, yes. Right. But like you saying the, technically what they're doing, yes. Right. But, like, you saying the thing of, like, the dynamic of the shaving, right? Yes. Like, obviously that's the tension of the scene, but it feels like Spielberg has only

internalized it to a, like, movie thriller degree, right? Which he's able to express well, but I don't think if he totally understands where that character is at that moment. For that to be like, because it's Shug's running to stop her from killing him because she can tell from quite far off that this lady's gonna do this thing. It felt contrived in a way that I didn't like, similarly to when Shook is singing as she's walking,

like, towards the church at the end. And there's a sort of like, oh, but God, but God. It's a black movie. We're gonna put God in it, right? Right. Right. Which, yes, that's... It does feel like that. It does feel like Spielberg being like, -"And this is important." Right? Right? Right? I'm correct in that that's important?

Yeah. I don't think Spielberg has a particularly spiritual side at this really ever. Honestly, even when... But he talks about that it's... spiritual side of this, really ever. Honestly, even when... But he talks about that it's... Schindler's List, he talks about sort of getting back and talking to this Jewishness.

And he's like, her going through conversion later in life made me relive it, and then I sort of became a better Jew in my 40s. But I don't think of him as a spiritual film. I don't either, that's the thing. Like an artist, whether or not he's had personal... It feels spiritual filmmaker. I don't either. That's a thing. Like an artist. When he talks about it, it feels very cultural. It's about traditions.

It's about lineage. And he's someone who understands the power and the scariness of like family. And this is a movie about what a betrayal family can be, right? Like, you know, all of, so much of Celie's family is, you know, hostile and abusive and against her and like turns out to be not her family. Or, you know, right? There's is, you know, hostile and abusive and against her and like, turns out to be not her family or, you know, right? There's like, you know, revelations. The Indiana Jones movies are the most explicitly theological movies he's made, right? And they're all about like fighting this idea of it.

I think a lot of his movies kind of take place in a godless world. I think a lot of his movies are about like these kind of like inexplicable, incomprehensibly huge acts and events that in a universe that refuses to sort of give you answers. I when I say that it's like, oh, we were throwing God in it. I don't necessarily mean there's any sort of theologic ideology behind it. I do think it is like, black people church. Throw some black church in this movie. I agree. Does that make sense? Is that what being in sense... I agree with you, and I'm saying I think that's the exact thing

that Spielberg kind of can't relate to, which is the sort of like turning to God for some sense of comfort or answers, right? Like to him, and I think it speaks to his like, sad, worried child thing. He's just like, when I grew up, nothing? Like to him, and I think it speaks to his like, sad, worried child thing. He's just like, when I grew up, nothing made sense to me. And I felt like alienated and alone. And what made sense to me were movies and TV shows.

And so I made them and now I'm good at recreating feelings to make other people feel things, right? And the way that there are these sort of like huge acts in his film, the divine interventions, whether they're like a shark or ET coming to the grave, if it's the worst thing or the best thing, right? Part of it feels like, and we don't really know what to make of this. It's kind of the world is bigger than you can understand, right?

They're inexplicably good and bad things. But there's no sort of like guiding light. We struggle to find answers and anyone who tries to like pursue them is maybe like, that's not what it's about. It's about the internal journey of how you respond to this thing. Where then the movie being like, and then we found Church, feels really insincere coming from him. And like maybe I'm way out of line in my pathologizing of this, but like we spent a lot of time thinking about this guy.

And you look at like, you know, I feel like when people mock, like, the end of, um... uh, War of the Worlds. It's a similar thing. How do those kids live? How did they? It feels sort of insincere where you're just like, that's not where these movies go. That's not really his language of, like,

and then you make it and the brownstone's in perfect shape. Yeah. Sorry, I watched that movie also in theaters. Also was like, that girl had been dead so fast. What are we doing? Justin Chatwin rubbing, running like into a tank. And then later he's just like, hey, dad. Yeah, what's up? That's what we've talked about. Sorry. Sorry. But I feel like most, yes, most Spielberg movies kind of end with this note of like,

and people have to live with shit. For the degree that it's like, here's like the king of like wonder and uplift. Most of his movies, he's good at finding a good ending point to leave you feeling kind of good. But if you actually dig into where his movies resolve himself, they're messy as hell in a way that's interesting and I think makes them stick. You know, it's like you're putting the fuck arc of the covenant in a way that's interesting and I think makes them stick, you know? It's like you're putting the fuck an Ark of the Covenant in a crate and being like, so what now? What are you talking about?

And the guys swim up to shore at the end of Jaws and you're like, they just survived a shark attack. And they're like, their friend was murdered, you know? And like... Acquaintance. Okay. They're not friends of Quint. I like this distinction. It's like their emotions shouldn't be that...

I said Quint! It was just an acquaintance. It doesn't matter that much, right? I do it I like this distinction. It's like, their emotions shouldn't be that... I said Quint! It was just an acquaintance. It doesn't matter that much, right? Right. But like, this is his first movie that is really kind of... I'm running in my head if I can back this up. I think I can. I think this is like his first movie that is really trying to contend

with like human evils. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah, it's not a thing coming from the sky or the sea. It's not supernatural, but it's also not like bureaucratic. It's not institutional. It's not an abstract idea of like the law chasing the like honeymoon lovers in Sugarland Express, which is also like a low level, you know, like all this sort of stuff.

It's like, what if there is like an unfathomable level of like human suffering and it is like not abstracted. It is like looked at directly in the eye, is perpetuated by people, is perpetuated out of basically their own smallness. I mean, that's what this movie really comes to, right? What is so cathartic in the dinner table scene is like also the Adolf Caesar character need to be like, you're right, I raised him poorly.

I'm bad and I fucked him up. Yeah, this is like a bad lineage of bad people You don't know how I raised a bad son whose kids are shit We're all bad and you look around this table and the collateral damage of all of this and it's just like men Will literally do the color purple to avoid going to therapy right like it to a certain degree I'm doing a little clap into the microphone that was loves a avoid going to therapy, right? Like, to a certain degree. I'm doing a little clap into the microphone. That was great. Loves to avoid going to therapy. It's a great joke, structure. But I think that places him in a story that he has no idea how to actually end. Yeah, because the end of the book is very much so like her and Mr. kind of like,

develop a, not a friendship exactly, but like, uh... comfort with each other in a certain way. And Shug and all these other people, where it is like, hey, these people kind of rehabilitate and acknowledge the fact that the, the harm that they've caused each other and God and they, they smoke pot and I'm like, good for them. Yeah. Um, but they don't, of course, they didn't do that in the movie in the 80s

where they come to God or whatever. But I really like that development that can happen in the book that Spielberg does not seem to have a handle on. Well, that's the internal life stuff, which he just is the stuff that, like, of course, he doesn't know what to do with. Yeah. Right. But I also think I think the ideas of what this movie's like grappling with are things that he just like doesn't know

how to work through because you can't blow up the shark. Yeah. Right? Right, this is what I'm saying, you can't have a Danny Glover gets pushed off a cliff like Gaston. Right, and even the sort of moment of- I would like to see it, but yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right.

The moment of kind of grace of him like receiving the letter and sending the sort of moment of... I would like to see it, but yeah, you're right, you're right. The moment of kind of grace of him, like, receiving the letter and sending the money and being like, I should do one good thing. The one. Right. Still doesn't, like, resolve anything. It doesn't heal any wounds. It's done in sort of, like, private, right? It's basically just this one quiet, silent moment of his own reckoning

of like, I can do one good thing in my life. I will never have the ability to say I'm sorry, or like own up to any of this. But then it's like he's trying to push the movie's equivalent of the brownstone at the end of Where the World's Where. It's like, well, what if they have the house and the church and they're all together and they're happy and the kids had a good education, then they'd just be happy for the rest of the time, right? Everything's fine. Right.

They got there. Yeah. They got to like, I don't know, they got to fucking Emerald City. Like there's a degree of that, right? Yes. I feel like, yes, I feel like we, I'm trying to think of what we have. We haven't talked about Sugar Avery enough, in my opinion. That's sort of the, you know, plot line

we've sort of talked around. Cause like those sequences of her singing and of the club are very, very cool. And I don't know. I just want to know everyone's opinion on them. Well, I think, we're saying there's sort of, you know, the three, Sh think, uh, you're saying there's sort of, you know, the three-shock, uh, um, Sophia, uh, SETI thing, right?

Sealy? Sealy, excuse me, triangle of the three of them. And like understanding Sealy's pathology through seeing the examples of how the women who try to step out of line are treated in society, right? Right. Sophia is beaten down and imprisoned for saying hell no to somebody, essentially. Right. Right. So he is beaten down and imprisoned for saying hell no to somebody essentially. Right.

Like one time. And the musical obviously is a big song. It's a great number. In the movie it's just one time. So are you saying I should or shouldn't see the musical? Some people like the movie. Did you ever see it? I never saw it, no.

I found the way- There's no Fantasia's in it. I mean, the performers are pretty good in it. It's not, I found the way it was made a little hermetic feeling like a lot of movie musicals where I just kind of like, this doesn't feel like it's set anywhere. But it's kind of... I mean, it's pretty watchable.

I think it's a strange musical fundamentally, like in a way, much as this is kind of a strange... It's a tough thing to adapt into a, you know, progressive, you know, Hollywood-y structure. But that felt like that was Oprah really getting behind it and being like, we need a new way to get the story back out to people. Which I understand, again, it's watchable.

I don't know. It's okay. It's okay. Do you like musicals? Okay, well then, I don't think you should. I like some musicals, but I have to realize like, oh, you like these three musicals that you grew up on and you're not really interested in any others. So, oh, my God, West Side Story is one that we watched in music class in elementary school. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but I watched that one all the time. It's like, when Best Picture, it was OK.

I was like somebody you you should know. You should be able to answer these questions immediately. I saw West Side Story, The Sound of Music and Oliver. Oh, I mean, these are classic 60s, you know, big Hollywood, colorful musical movies. I feel like all three movies I saw for the first time on VHS in school, broken up into classes. Yes, yes, yes. Kind of fun classics on.

I mean, I... Oliver also won Best Picture, and that's the one where you're like, this one's Best Picture. Yeah. But it is fun. But it's not as... I mean, come on, please. No. God in City is...

I thought you were gonna break it into the full song. Anyway, but, okay, so Shug Avery, right? So Sophia's beaten down. Shug Avery is this independent and impressive figure in a way, but she is also somewhat, you know, marginalized and like a little tragic and like... Right, there is a more sort of quiet suppression around her, right?

Like Sophia is like really pushing lines and being like pushed back. Whereas Shug, there's just this kind of like, she's not a serious woman. Right, yeah, a little bit. Um, but, uh, it's, but like, she is this gateway to Sealy considering whatever, independence and sexual independence.

Yeah, like I like, um, when Shug is singing Sister, which is a song I grew up with, and this is part of the reason why I thought, I was like, I've seen this movie a zillion times. Uh, because that, sister, that one, um, people, I heard that throughout my childhood, but in that moment, in the movie, uh, it is clear that Celie is experiencing something and is being seen as a human

with thoughts and emotions and like potential in a way that she hasn't before. And I really like this. Yeah, none of them have. I also kinda like, I mean, it's very, very silly, but the way that Spielberg shoots, oh, Sophie's about to fight this girl. I like that.

Yeah. Yes. No, I think it's what makes Margaret Avery's performance so good is she enters the movie late and you're just like, this is the first person who actually like sees her and listens to her. Right? Right. When this character, we've been seeing this movie mostly from this

character's viewpoint, who is the one who silently looks and listens. Yes. Um, and I also think she successfully comes in and you're like, this is the only person in the movie who has a bulletproof sense of self. Right? Just comes in like completely self-possessed, does not care what anyone thinks, for how much Sofia is like brash and pushy and like won't take shit from anybody or whatever. You see the hesitation in her. I think Oprah plays that well. It is someone who is trying to fight against a system

but understands what she's up against, where Shug to some degree is just sort of like, I'm me. I'm me. I really like that in the book because she continues to I'm me her way throughout. I feel like in the movie, and this was a little bit frustrating, they do have her interacting with the preacher character. And at that moment, it doesn't feel as much like I am

me, I'm standing here, I am powerful, I am completely accepting of who I am and think that I have worth. It seems like she's going to the church to talk to the preacher guy. And she's like asking for worth in a certain way. And then they reiterate that when she's like walking to the church at the end of the movie singing and being like, I'm a person. And then like she hugs the, and that's like her big moment when she hugs the pastor. Am I making any sense at all?

Yeah, yes. The movie loses side to her. I can't say yes. I think the other part of it is that she kind of, her gift is that she doesn't consider that she should be feeling limited in any way, if that makes any sense? You know? Like that... let me word this better. The scene... the kiss scene, right? Yeah, that one.

Where they're having the conversation about sex and suddenly the entire act of sex is being discussed for the first time in a Spielberg movie ever. But where she's sort of radicalized by like, what do you mean you don't get enjoyment out of it? Yes. Right? That it's not that she's naive enough to think that all sex is positive, but that she kind of can't consider a world

in which it's only negative and you've never experienced any light, versus like Sophia being someone who is like making moves that have statements behind them of her trying to purposefully like push back against the idea of what she's told. Shug seems a little bit like unencumbered by that line of thinking,

which then reduces other people to be like, well, she's a floozy, she's a singer. You know what showbiz women are like. She's not a real person, right? And you see this the see this with like, oh, no, she's able to actually connect to other people. She has an internal life. She's not just some like, whatever, but it does take a little bit away from her to have her need to consult someone else. Yes. Which also then ties back into this, like, what is this movie's, like, relationship to organized

religion, I don't say in a conspiratorial way, but almost looking to it as an easy solve. Right? Like, well, isn't just, like, the ultimate salve for all of this if you just, like, know that God loves you? And you can find love and acceptance here, and, like, you find your way to the other side of the rainbow. Yeah. I mean, an important detail, though, is the pastor is her father. Yes. Which I think we should mention, because that, I, is the pastor is her father. Yes. Which I think we should mention,

because that, I think she's looking for acceptance. Yes. Yeah, and you read about when this film came out, and there was controversy, and a lot of it was over like, this movie, every single man in this movie is the most like horrific monster that has ever existed.

Yes, that is also, I remember learning about that. We're like, hey, all the black men are mad. This movie shows them as bad people and we don't like that. And I was like, I don't know, these men are bad. But then you get into this conversation where you're like, if there is like one studio film starring a black cast every three years, then it's hard to not have it also feel like it's representing something larger because there's no counter argument. True.

Yeah. I was like, is there a good man in the movie? Well, I'd say it's kind of that character, but in such a small way. Yeah. I mean, Harpo is not so bad. He's terrible. I know. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

He's kind of just an idiot. He brings that sweet girl around. Yeah. So the best we can do whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's kind of just an idiot. He brings that sweet girl around. Yeah. Like, so the best we can say about man is that some of them are idiots and therefore harmless. He's a sillier evil. Yes. A sillier evil.

He's a bit more buffoonery or whatever. But, no, I mean, look, it's in the book. Like, the book is incredibly skeptical of these power dynamics, like, between the genders at this time. There's one good guy in the book that I like. Remind me. It is the one that takes Nettie to Africa. Right, sure. Well...

He's good. Good job by him. Yeah, he's the one. The one good guy, and then they don't go into that. There's one good guy in this movie. Steven Spielberg, who accepted DGA minimum. No, I don't know. Like, it's just like, this movie was a hit.

It got nominated for 10 Oscars. Obviously it didn't win any, which was a bit of a rebuke. At the time, it held the record for the most nominations without a single win and notably did not get Spielberg a nomination. He won the DGA, which I think was the first time that someone won the DGA without being nominated for an Oscar. Like, it was a weird thing. And in that Hook interview I mentioned earlier, where the guy's like, which I think was the first time that someone won the DGA without being nominated for an Oscar. Like it was a weird thing.

And in that hook interview I mentioned earlier, where the guy's like, so was Steven Spielberg bitter about not having won the Oscar yet? Do you sit there going, why not me? When will it be my time? And Spielberg's like, you know, like he actually was pretty reasonable about it

and was just like, look, I'm not gonna like complain. I have my success. I don't feel like they're saying not you. They're saying not yet. It gives me something to prove, you know? Like it makes me work harder. And then he's like, the one that hurt me was Color Purple. Color Purple, it felt personal

that it was like the most nominated movie and I was the one thing left out, but it does speak to the sort of weirdness of being like, okay, Steven, good job, like, rolling this into existence. Also again, who nudged him out? Do you know? In 1985.

We'll talk Oscars in a second. Yeah, like, where the other four director nominees directed the other four best picture nominees. Sidney Pollack, Hector Babenko, John Huston, Peter Weir. Hector Babenko, what was his name? Kiss of the Spider Woman. Okay, thanks. Yeah. No problem.

Which, talking about, like, that's... Another queer movie. I was trying to remember when and timeline, but like, what exists in queer cinema at that point, that was like a revolutionary movie, but was also like made independent, wildly outside of the studio system. Right. Who nudged him out? Akira Kurosawa.

Okay. For Ran, the, you know, Japanese master in his sort of final years. It's not like it's like, oh yeah, they nudged him out for, you know, Mr. Bullshit directing like, you know, Stupid. But it's the same thing. It's the same thing with the Jaws year. I'm sorry, I'm just visualizing a poster. Mr. Bullshit directing Stupid. I think that movie's underrated.

Of course you do. I do, I think... No, you're right. Mr. Bullshit made a couple good movies. He's not a great director, but he's made some great films. For Jaws, he was nudged out by Fellini. Here he's nudged out by Kurosawa, these are. But as, you know, highly esteemed.

Now, if I'm Spielberg, maybe in the back of my mind, I'm like, John Huston for Pristie's Honor, that movie's a snooze. That's what I would say. Like, in all these cases, the person who snubs him is someone who is, like, humongous, rightous right and legendary and the kind of person Spielberg reveres But then it's like it's interesting that Hector Rubenco makes the cut and he doesn't Considering how big his status was but it was all this yeah Hector Rubenco

I'm sure it was the kind of that thing of like hey man Steven Spielberg gets to make what he wants good for him that he wanted to make something a little different than an alien movie or Whatever Hector Rubenco like fought and scratch to make this little indie movie about... And here's a movie without concession that's... Right. About a gay man and a leftist revolutionary in prison chatting about Brazilian politics. It's like, fuck, okay, yeah, that's hard to get across the line. Good job.

Maybe that's what it was or maybe it's just because I just feel like if this movie was... And I think, again, I do think like if this movie was and I think again, I do think this movie is generally good and watchable. But if this movie was great, like if this was like a really amazing movie, it would be a seismic film that was that won all the Oscars and like was remembered like totemically to write. You know what I mean? Where it's like this could have been one of the biggest movies of the 80s I kind of was a big movie that I don't know It could have been like his Schindler's List. It's probably just not a Spielberg movie. That's the thing

You're like what are you gonna say? No, I just the way that you're describing is almost like oh my gosh We have this dish it has everything that you like but it's missing one spice that would make it really come together and be a memorable meal. And I'm wondering what do you think that spice would be? Salt. Salt, it's missing salt.

No, that's like the joke is it's like, fuck, we forgot to put salt. You know, it's like, it's like, sure, everything about all the elements here are great, except the director you've picked is a little off for it. And it's like, well, the director of the movie kind of needs to be on for it. But the answer, I think, is just point of view. Yeah, because it is a well-directed movie in terms of, like, how it looks and what it evokes.

You know, it's not like a badly directed movie. No one looks in the camera. It's... It's always my joke. Spielberg forgot to tell what he goes, stop looking in the camera! Look over there! I forgot one thing. Hehehehe.

The Spring Clean David? Yes? It's March. Uh huh. March Madness. True. But it's also time for Spring Clean. You gotta Spring Clean. As the weather improves. You gotta clean your springs. You declutter your home.

And there's no other metaphorical cleaning you could do, is there? Well, you could clean your gut. Your body! That's what you could do. And the pre slash probiotics and AG1 help to support digestion. This is obviously one of my favorite products.

One of my favorite response foods. Your daily user. 90% AG1 at this point. I feel like your body is just a fine green powder. Yeah. It's like GN5 AG95. Yeah. GN, of course, being Griffin Newman.

So what's AG1? It's a supplement. You take it every day, Griffin. I pour, I just pour it in water. That's why I just do it. It's a little green powder, right? In cold water About 10 ounces and it goes down easy people people like to do it different ways some people mix it into smoothies their recipes There's a whole community online. What does it taste like? Oh

Hold on. Oh, there's a door what we're doing the door. What do you mean? Yes? There's a door in our office You can't be surprised by the existence of the door, did it? Who's at the door? Let me check. Step, step, step. Creak. Rrrumf, rrumf, rrumf. What's up?

Rrrumf! You seem pretty hostile. Who are you? What's another word you'd use? Uh, grumpy. Mmm, we're getting close. I don't know. Do I seem happy?

Sad? Mmm, close. Angry? Close! I... Oh, it's the... I don't know. Do I seem happy? Sad? Close. Angry? Close. Oh, it's the... are you red? No. Hulk? No. I'll give you a hint. What's that? If you haven't noticed already I'm an anthropomorphized walking stomach Okay. I'm upset! Oh no. Harumph, harumph, harumph. Kick dirt. Okay.

Oh, no. Harumph, harumph, harumph, kick dirt. Okay. Are you sort of like a Mr. Man, but like off-brand? Mmm, I feel like I'm unique and proprietary and it will hold up in court, but sure, if that gives you a handle. Harumph! I don't know what's going on. I'm an upset stomach! Okay!

You're an upset stomach. Well, it's nice to meet you, upset stomach. I wish someone could improve my mood if there was only a product that helped upset stomachs. Ding dong! What the... What's going on? Let me go to the door. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not participating.

I'll walk quickly. Step, step, step, step, step. Creak! Hi. Hello. Hi. Hey, what's up? Hi. Look me in the eyes. You can trust me, OK? Uh-huh. You can trust me. Are you like Tom Cruise?

I'm kind of Tom Cruise-coded, but I'm a gut. You're what? I'm a gut. You're a gut. I'm a gut. OK. You gotta trust me. Are you like Tom Cruise? I'm kind of Tom Cruise coated, but I'm a gut. You're what? I'm a gut. You're a gut. I'm a gut. Okay. You gotta trust your gut.

Oh sure, that's true. They always say that. Right. So I feel like, do you mind if I just silo over here with upset stomach? I know you were having a good conversation. I'm gonna just, yeah, I'm just gonna like snack over here. Stomach? Trust me, you gotta use HE-1.

Oh, I don't know. What could it do for me? David, you gotta use HE1. Oh, I don't know. What could it do for me? David, you're back in this. No, what's up? Oh, okay. I have to read some copies. Yeah, you know, look, otherwise, unlike other supplements that come and go, AG1, it's a habit that actually sticks because you can feel the difference.

Griff, I know it's helped you support your digestion, your energy levels. Humongously. Skin health? Yeah, sometimes I walk in the office, you have grifts looking good. Yeah, you are looking good. That's the only reason why I would say. Hold on one second. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Anyway, go on. When it comes to my health, I want something I can trust. That's why I choose AG1.

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Okay, wait, Tommy has poured himself a glass. Hold on one second. Oh wow! He's happy now. There was kind of a complete arc there. There was a time my wife made a cake without sugar. Like she forgot to put sugar in the cake. How did that cake taste?

It tasted, it was like a pumpkin cake or a sweet potato, you know, something like that. And it was one of those things where like one bite in, I was like, this is the strangest sensation, because this is what it's supposed to be. It has the texture and it tastes like pumpkin or whatever, but what is wrong? I feel crazy right now that you realize,

like, oh, right, it's not sweet. It's supposed to be sweet. Anyway. Sure, but like, here's the alternative to that metaphor. It's like Spielberg's reading the recipe, right? Which is the book The Color Purple. And he's like... Very well. Wallace Walker was impressed by how well he read it.

Right. And he's like looking and he's like, am I reading this right? Four tablespoons of oregano in a birthday cake? And the book is like, this cake has oregano. And he's like, you know what? I don't feel comfortable enough with oregano. That's a really good point. I'm gonna leave the oregano out.

I'm just gonna make a regular cake. I will put salt and pepper on it. I'm just not gonna, I don't know what that is. Right, and everyone's like, the oregano is the dicey part of it. But also if you're not putting it in there, maybe the different recipes. Yeah,y part of it. Yeah. But also if you're not putting it in there, maybe the different recipes. Yeah.

I like that. Thank you. Um, it is interesting. I kept watching it. I'm just like this movie continually heaps landing just barely on the side of, I think this is good with like humongous qualifiers and you saying like, well, if it had been perfect, then it would be one of the most seismic American movies of all time. And yet, this movie like, has a humongous legacy.

Yes. And even though that legacy continues to be like, re-litigating it in a lot of ways, to the extent that you felt like you had seen it, and I felt like I had seen it too. And I grew up in fucking West Village of New York. Like, it was not like, passed on to me culturally in the same way, but I have this very distinct memory of like the school I went to. There was a bookstore that was like a block away that we passed by every day when my parents were dropping me off and picking me up from school that had a

giant poster of the color purple facing towards the window. And I would just see this thing every day for like 10 years that was like, okay, Steven Spielberg, color purple, Hewlett's surprise. This is a thing. This is a big thing. This is important. Right. I was just like, this is 10 years after this movie came out, and I understand you're telling me these names 10 years ago before I was born made something that still deserves to hang in like a bookstore window.

And then I asked my parents, I'm like, is that one of the best movies ever made? And they're like, it's okay. It is. It kind of works. I'll shout out when Celie leaves and. Danny Glover's characters left to his own devices. The house is fucked up. I mean, it was fucked up when she got there, and then it goes back to being fucked up.

Like farm animals. Yeah. Like it's like such an extreme version of, this has become a bachelor pad. That is a level of dirt. It's hard for my brain to wrap around. I keep a very clean home. I don't like mess at all,

that you would have, like I don't even let people wear shoes into my home. Or should you? That you would have animals that poop, I mean we all poop, but like they poop and then they don't wipe, it's just- Can you tell me about a rule I have? I wanna hear it.

No like outside pants in the bed. Yes, yes! Like like, outside pants in the bed. Yes, yes! Like, you can't sit in the bed... Don't on your outside clothes, generally! ...if you're wearing, like, take... No, pants for some reason or the... Because your butt! You know, yeah.

And you're rubbing against where everyone else's butt was, and butt sweat, and it's like a combination of things that means that you are bringing that into your home, and yet, like, where you sleep, where you spend potentially eight hours a day, you wanna be rubbing against that? Don't do that. Okay, can I run a couple simulations by you

and ask what you would do in these circulation? I'm putting on my VR goggles. I wanna, yes, please. Okay, you're like, oh, exhausting day, right? I want you to just imagine a scenario in which you, David Sims, feel overwhelmed by life. I'm tired. Are sleep deprived. My balls hurt. Possibly have multiple plates you, David Sims, feel overwhelmed by life. From time to time. Are sleep deprived.

My balls hurt. Possibly have multiple plates spinning, David got snipped. I think he's locked in. He's locked in. Yeah, I'm locked all the way in. And you're like, okay, I have like 10 minutes before I have to turn around and like leave the house and go somewhere else, right? This is like a quick pit stop.

And you're sort of like, I just want to like lie down for five minutes. Do you in that situation go, I need to change into sweatpants for five minutes to be able to lie on the bed? Or the fact that I don't have enough time to change into sweatpants and out means I shouldn't be lying down. The pants come off. And then you put them back on? Later, yeah. The pants can come off and on, but you are acting as though the only surface in your home where you are able to lay down is your bed. I was going to say the next option I was going to say. Couch!

But you will allow outside pants on the couch. Yeah. Okay. Outside pants are allowed on the couch. So the bed just has a level of sanctity. I agree. I mean that was, that's my proposal. Keith, where are you from in North Carolina? Charlotte, North Carolina. The great city in Charlotte. So the great the city the Hornets Yes We weren't for a while. We were 50 on yes We are the hornets again that is the team that I was very attached to as a child Oh, like did you have a starter jacket? I didn't have a starter jacket, but I had like a lot of big t-shirts

I don't know why but like kids in my middle and elementary school wore like big t-shirts and umbrose shorts And we were like we look fucking good probably did yeah, and that was you like big t-shirts and umbrous shorts and we were like, we look fucking good. Probably did. Yeah, sounds pretty cool. And that was, you know, the teal and purple. Yes. Very cool. Yes. And oh, they would come to like events.

Like we had a, I'm like so cool, but in sixth grade we had a trip to dendrology camp and like a bunch of schools sent kids to a park and we learned about leaves and stuff. And then the hornet came out and did a little dance. Can you say that word again? Oh, like, the mascot, the hornet. Yeah.

Cool, awesome. What kind of camp? Dendrology. I had to look it up. It is the study, the science and study of wooded plants. Yes. Wow. You guys didn't go to dendrology camp?

You know, I meant to and I fucking forgot. You had to make up songs about different types of leaf structures? You guys didn't have to do that? Can you look at like bark and be like, oh, this is this kind of tree. Do you still have it in the back of your hand? I... oh my god. Mostly no, just like a few types of leaves and somebody did a song to the thong song, but it was like, ooh, that chunk's so scandalous.

And I will remember that until the day that I die. Sounds like a good way to make learning fun. Yeah, yeah. You are from exactly where they shot the movie. Essentially, they shot it right outside of Florida. Yes, and my family is from rural South Carolina, so between North Carolina and Georgia, obviously. And we went to black churches growing up,

and then I would visit my hyper-religious relatives in Maryland, where I thought Maryland was the North, but a lot of Maryland is the South and they have some backward ass churches. No, yeah. Maryland is, you know, was, didn't secede, but was a slave state. And yeah, you know. That's where I learned about white Jesus on the wall of a black church. I thought that was very fascinating. And then, did you get...

It was like a black church that was like, but we... We prayed about white Jesus. Yeah, and I'm like, what? That seems weird. And then, Chick Tracks, have you heard of these? I do. I do. Because they became like an internet phenomenon, even though they were from a long time ago. But the internet discovered them when I was a teenager.

They're very strange. They are very strange, and I would're from a long time ago, but the Internet discovered them when I was a teenager. They're very strange. They are very strange. And I would take them because it was like, hey, I'm bored. Well, they're comic books. Yeah. I'm like, if I'm bored at church, I need something to read. So they had like a little container where there were different chit tracks in each of these little slots. And I would take the new ones because I needed something to read during church. Chit tracks. What are, yeah, I was gonna say.

They're like little comic books that are sort of evangelical, but like very, very hardcore, whatever, Orthodox or right wing or whatever. I mean, it's what taught me that even some, some evangelical Christians don't just hate, you know, Jews and homosexuals. They hate Catholics. Like, you know, they hate fucking everybody.

There was a whole book I'm like, no, you guys are worshiping Mary. It's actually the devil. Catholics are bad. Yeah, where it's like, oh, but because he was a Catholic, straight to hell. Yeah, forever. No way out. And he's just like, what? The cartoons would be like, and so then he went to hell. And it's just like him roasting in hell.

And there's a little cartoon of him, like, yeah, in hell. And they're like, he's not getting out. Uh, whoo. Chick tracks. Yeah, they always just have a pretty. There's not's not getting out. Chick tracks. Yeah, they always just have a pretty, there's not usually a way out. Like chick tracks aren't usually like, but you know, a couple simple things. I think there was one about a Muslim character

and he's like, what? I'm not worshiping God? Oh, I'll just worship God then. If you make the switch, the chick tracks are on board with you. Yeah, very important to my upbringing. Yeah, but growing up in the switch, the Shug tracks are on board with you. Yeah, very important to my upbringing. Yeah. But growing up in the South, like, yeah, this was such a big part of it, the songs and my church did have really good music.

In fact, when I watch other movies about church and they don't have good music, I'm like, this doesn't make sense to me. This does not reflect the experience. Why are you going there if there's not good music? This movie has terrible music. I mean, Quincy Jones. But I mean, like I do think that hurts. Like when Shug is singing on her way to church, she's singing.

And I'm like, yes, this seems more like what people sang in church. Just to kind of like go back full circle. I mean, it's the other part of this movie that's just like the fact that it successfully introduces Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, and Whoopi Goldberg to a wider audience all at once, and then the three of them are so impactful, not just in the work they do, but also just as like cultural leaders in a lot of ways. Like Danny Glover is maybe the most like

overtly political movie star of all time, arguably. Sure, okay. And like, Oprah is someone who like at points in time could arguably win presidential elections That's so they said the Joe Rogan of her moment if you will Joe Rogan we'd say like Lawful evil like on the microphone lawful neutral or For looking at that grid. Wait, what did you say? I just when he said Joe Rogan. I just got upset Then how you doing Ben's it looks like Ben is rolling a cigarette We're looking at that grid. Wait, what did you say? I just when he said Joe Rogan, I just got upset.

And how you doing? Ben's it looks like Ben is rolling a cigarette. I think he's just playing with a post. OK, OK. Something I just do. No, it's not. I do have a collection of rolled up pieces of paper over there. Or he's showing us several pieces of paper that are 3D triangle. Ben origami. Yeah.

I feel like this is a movie that Spielberg does not point back to that often when discussing his own legacy, which he is not loathe to do, right? It doesn't really come up in those sort of retrospective films about him or anything like that. And he doesn't talk about it with shame. He doesn't talk about it with pride. He's just sort of like, that's another one.

I think I did some things right. I did some things wrong. He's usually pretty unsentimental when he looks back on his work in that kind of way. But there is something to like Glover, Winfrey, and Goldberg all point back to this movie all the time because it changed their lives. You know? And so it kind of has always remained in the conversation. Which is then also furthered by Oprah being like, I'm gonna get this on Broadway. I'm gonna do... I don't know, it's, I don't know. It's an odd thing where it's not just like,

you know, there's certain, I feel like we've all had this experience, right? Where it's like, you're reading like a huge, like, American book in school. And they're like, we're gonna show you the movie. The movie's not great. But it is what it is, and it might help you guys understand the book

if you watch the movie. Right, they gotta fill a week here, so you're gonna watch the movie. Right. That was the Scarlet Letter when I was growing up. Wait, the Demi Moore one? The sexy one with Demi Moore? Yeah, we watched that.

You're allowed to watch that in school? Also, uh... It's got boobs! The... The Crucible? Yeah. Oh, yes. That makes more sense, because that's not an amazing movie, but at least that's it.

There you go. That's the exact kind of thing. There was a big poster, and this is... Daniel Day-Lewis going, RRRRRRRRRRRRR in my class, girls, where girls were under 18, were girls. So we sat on... There were some adult women for some reason. No, there were. There were.

All the girls sat on one side of the class so we could stare at the Daniel Day-Lewis poster because... He looked good in that movie. He looked real good. He looks very intense too. Yes. We're like, oh, that's what men are like. That's nice.

That might be kind of like peak, unvarnished handsome from him. Yeah, it's that mid-90s big beardy kind of face for him. Yeah. No, my point was just, I feel like this movie is constantly talked about in that sort of context of like the good versus the bad and like what it got right and what we know today and what we, yadda, yadda, yadda. But yet I don't think it's presented in that way of like, look, it's not a great adaptation, but it is what it is.

Like the movie kind of has its own reputation as its own work, not just as, this was the time they tried and didn't really succeed in cracking the color purple, which is part of what's interesting about it versus maybe like, I don't know, a more successful literal adaptation. Although as you said, like maybe this is a work that

doesn't really translate to that form. It's tough. Again, the book is nothing really like this. Yeah, and because of the epistolary thing and because of the fact that it's all in the vernacular. When I started reading it, I was very thrown by that because I think I had the Spielberg movie in my head of like, this isn't just like kind of a like,

let me take you back to this time with like an omniscient narrator, like, okay, it's the deep South, it's the early 1900. It's not like that at all. Instead you're like right with Celie and like her trying to describe her situation. And it, you know, begins in a similar way, obviously. Her situation is bad.

Yes. It's a lot of dear God and then dear Nettie. And then, so she thinks something happens to Nettie. But I like that it is letters. And I listen to the audiobook because... Oh, interesting. Are we all like, are we pro anti... I'm not anti-audiobook. I have never...

I shouldn't say this because God knows they'll sponsor the podcast. I've never really been an audiobook person. Me either. But I'm a podcast person. I think I just read book. I read book on phone and Kindle and stuff. You read book on phone? But who narrated the audiobook? Alice Walker.

Oh, that's it. And I... So, meh. I had a stroke. It has affected my brain. It is harder for me to read books. But I love books, so I listen to a lot of audio books now. This is why it's good. And- I would ban audio books,

but now that I've heard your story. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thanks. This is why it's good there's audio. I like audio. You changed David's way of thinking. Okay, cool. But the thing that is tough about it is when you're talking to somebody,

it's like, it feels weird to be like, I listen to a book. Yes, exactly, where I'm like, I wanna say, like, oh yeah, I read that. But I need to technically read it, and then I feel guilt about it, and it's like a thing I'm holding inside, so. Put it out. But yeah, I read the audiobook. I think Alice Walker does a good job,

and it is much easier for me to understand Southern vernacular English when it is spoken than having to read it, so. Yeah, yes. 100%. I think that my experience was probably a little bit easier. Well, I read it. This this movie was a big box office success. Yeah, well, do box office game is I do want to acknowledge the Oscars.

It's really a terrible, terrible Oscars because no offense to this movie. Well, some offense. It's the out of Africa Oscars. Right. And it does feel like it's like they can't settle on something like color purple because whatever they've you know like it's like they can't settle on something like Color Purple because whatever they've, you know, it's not hitting quite big enough. And instead they settle for an even sort of duller, you know, literary epic, like in my opinion. But we're sort of like, right, this feels the most like an Oscar movie.

Out of Africa was a big hit. I'm not. Have you seen Out of Africa? I have not seen Out of Africa. Who's that? I've never seen it. Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. We like both of those people. We do, and it's a very, very handsome movie.

You've never seen it, I'm assuming. No, because like- They're in Africa, I presume? Unfortunately, yes. And they're, I'm guessing, sabs in the dark. Are there wild animals of some sort? Yeah, there's some wild animals and stuff. Okay. It's a whole... Do we have a large sun going down?

Big games, safaris. Vistas, etc.? Isn't like the poster literally what Kinesis is describing, but with like a tiger? Pretty much. It's just the sun though, like vibrantly orange. This is the movie. Look, I watched every Best Picture winner. Okay.

It was something I eventually decided. I was like, there's only like 15 or 20 at this point. I'm going to watch them. I'll just go back and I'll clear off. And when I got to Out of Africa, I was truly like, this should only be watched if you want to watch every Best Picture. It's like the most homework ass. You're just like...

But that's sort of... Some's what a lot of us. Some people like it, I shouldn't, you know. Like this year, 2025 Oscars, where people are like, it doesn't feel like there's a front runner. You're like, something has to win by default. Yes. Something will be anointed the best picture of 2025. The other nominees for best picture,

Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pritzy's Honor, which is a movie I watched recently. Have you ever seen Pritzy's Honor? No, I know you love it. With John Huston film? No. Oh really, you think it Pritzzee's Honor? No, I know you love it. No. Oh, really? You think it's dog-train? I put it on thinking I was going to love it. I was like, John Huston, Jack Nicholson,

Angelica Huston, Kathleen Turner, mob comedy. How is this going to be bad? It starts up and you're like, this is like, I think I'm expecting like Moonstruck with the mob, right? Like, I'm like, a big 80s Italian movie where everyone's like, you know, giving a big performance. Or even married to The Mob. Even married to The Mob.

Even married to The Mob. And it is so, like, leaden and dull, and you watch it and you're like, what the fuck was everyone smoking that this was considered good? Like, and again, all the people involved are good, although Nicholson is sort of trying to do, like, a Brooklyn accent.

Oh, great. And like, so Angelica Huston went supporting actress that year. And it was kind of this, I think the narrative for her was like, one, we love Angelica Huston, great actor, but it was like, she got her way into John Huston's movie, he didn't want to put her in it, and she fought to be in the movie anyway, because he's her father.

But also, the other narrative was that it was this sort of like, what was her first movie again? Her, Angelica Hleason's first movie. Uh, a walk with love and death. I think she was so thoroughly trashed in that movie. And people were like, ultimate Neppo baby, he cast his daughter, he's so enamored with her, she sucks in this, fuck you, go away.

Where like, she kind of won the Oscar in like a kind of clap back of like, look, she fought her way into another movie. She's fine in the movie. Like, she's good even, I guess. She's very glamorous and like, I love Angelica Houston. But again, I was watching her being like, and now she's about, there's gonna be some big scene where I'm like, I get it.

And then you watch fucking The Color Purple and you're like, both Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery have like, scenes where you're like, holy shit. You know, like, you know, how did this not win an Oscar? Didn't win an Oscar. The answer is probably if one or the other had been nominated, they probably would have won. Maybe.

Right? Maybe. Maybe. Obviously both deserved nominations. Yes. Whoopi Goldberg loses to Geraldine Page for the trip to Bountiful. What? Which is kind of seen as a shock.

Whoopi won the Golden Globe. I mean, like you read Ebert's review and he's like, Whoopi Goldberg is going to win the Oscar. Like everyone was sort of like, this is an undeniable. Which she should have. Yes. Who is this other person and what is this other movie? Geraldine Page is like this legendary old American actress, and it was like a late career movie.

And so kind of like, you know, she's like, I've never seen it. So I don't want to make fun of it. But it's like, I feel like you don't want to make fun of it. But it's like... I feel like it's a weird... You don't wanna make fun of it, but that's how you would describe the movie, of course. The poster just looks like, you know... An old fucking lady's got a... A grandad does... Okay, and that's the one that won best actress.

Got you. The 80s were not great for the Academy Awards, but I feel like this was in particular a real recurrence, which was like, what wins best actress or best supporting actress? And it's like a legendary beloved, like sort of like legend of the stage who had a movie career, but was never fully a movie star and was always a little bit like take it for granted, but everyone in the industry loved. And then they like show up with a carpet bag in a movie at 85 and people are like, fine, here you go.

To take it. Because F. Marie Abraham gives her the Oscar, right? That would make sense. This is the moment I remember. I've never seen Trip to the Bountiful. To Bountiful. Weirdly, Anne Bancroft also nominated that year, like sarcastically goes like Geraldine Page when she's in that, like she knew it was going to happen,

which is funny. Anyway, Karen. What was Anne Bancroft nominated for? Agnes of God. Oh, sure. The Norman Jewess and Noir funny. Anyway, Karen. What was Ann Bancroft nominated for? Agnes of God. Oh, sure. The Norman Jewis and Noir movie. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Never seen it. Anyway.

I think Whoopi was sort of seen as the front runner. Sure, yeah. And F. Murray Abraham is presenting his last year's winner and he opens the envelope and he catches his breath and he says something reclaimed to the effect of like, it is my great honor to be able to bestow this act this Academy Award to in my opinion, the greatest actor alive, Geraldine Page.

There is like this sense of like we are finally giving this one respect for a movie that will never be watched ever. Right. She was a big actor who'd been nominated for a bunch of Oscars. And she's a great actor. Like I got no beef with Geraldine Page, just that the picture of her bountiful kind of looks like a movie

where ladies go, -"Meh, meh, meh." That's all. That's all I'm saying. I don't know if it's true or not. For all I know, it's actually about Geraldine Page is like a badass action hero who's got to get to bountiful, the Villains' Lair. I mean, Whoopi wins for Ghost five years later. And that's obviously like a dynamite-supporting performance

that she might have won for anyway, but there is, I think, an element of, like, overdue. But the five years in between, she makes a lot of, like, comedy vehicles, becomes, like, a successful bankable movie star in the sort of, like, Whoopi Goldberg persona that she has crafted for herself, and then talks about how hard she had to fight to get cast in Ghost because they were like, well, you're not a serious had to fight to get cast in Ghost because they were like,

well, you're not a serious actress now. Like, within five years, they were like, Whoopi Goldberg's gonna make this feel like a comedy. And it's like, she was in the color purple. Yeah, come on. It's just, yeah. The Trip to Bountiful is actually a revenge war movie. What?

That's it? They killed her squad. Now she's gonna get them all. This is for the lieutenant. No, wait, what is, I don't know what the trip to Bountiful is about. It's a road drama film. I'm gonna watch Sydney Pollock's remake of Sabrina.

I'm gonna watch the trip to Bountiful. I'm gonna do the work. Truly don't, like, if you don't like it, I don't want you to be like, Kenise doesn't know. Kenise, you're gonna have to give me your phone number and I will text you. I'll give you my phone number. All right.

You know what, I think you're cool. Let's be friends. I think you're cool too. We're friends. Okay, yeah, let's all be friends. But I hope that we... We had a good chat before. Yeah, yeah, totally.

I'm gonna say this to you in all honesty, Kinesh. Sabrina is one of those movies that, much like you're saying, I just hear everyone go like, and obviously that sucks. It's just stated as like, well, it's a given, of course. We all know that was terrible. Yes. And every time I see like a clip from it,

I'm like, I think I would like this. She's a teenage witch. What's not to love? I am not. There's a quiz master, she's got two ends, the cat talked. The cat talked. Yeah. Her boyfriend's name quiz master, she's got two ends, the cat talked, the cat talked! Her boyfriend's name is Harvey, that's because that was the name of the comic imprint.

No, I have always thought, like, I bet I would like this if I saw this. And I've been worried to watch it because people are so dismissive of it. Let yourself like it. Yeah. You ever think about how in Sabrina, she's got the friend with the red hair in season one, and then they recast the actor, or they, instead of new character, in season two she just gets a new friend.

Are you talking about Melissa Joan Hart's Sabrina the Teenage Witch? Because there was another one with that chick who was in Mad Men. Oh, that's true. There was the Netflix one that was like, Sabrina the Dark Witch of gothicness. No, I'm talking about the sitcom from the 90s.

Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. There is an amazing, like, TikTok that I found once of, like, you know, out-of-pocket moments from sitcoms that no one noticed at the time, where, like, you know, there's the ants, Hilda and Zelda, right? And Carol and Ray and the other one. And Hilda's like,

Oh, man, we haven't fought this much since we picked opposite sides of the Civil War. And it's just... It's like, what is that? How did that slip through the fucking... So, wait, which one were you? Which side did you choose? Marie was working on the checkbook,

the BlinkCheck newsletter on Substack. Subscribe if you haven't already. And was talking about, in relation to our Twin Peaks episode eight conversation, what are the most insane things broadcast on television, right? And I was like, everyone was throwing out like obvious examples. And I was like, that night where TGIF traveled through time, and everyone else in the thread was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

I don't remember this. You remember that historic night where the entire TGIF lineup ended up time traveling? And I had to unpack this and be like, let me make sure I'm not getting this wrong. There was an... I think Sabrina was the first. And Salem... And Sabrina is a sorceress. Salem cast like a bad spell and an orb created a time travel effect.

He eats a magic time ball. Okay, he eats a magic time ball and the Sabrina... Yes, the Sabrina episode that night was set in the 60s with Sabrina leading second wave feminism. Good for her. And has like bra burning jokes. And then all the, like Boy Meets World was about like Cory shipping out for the Vietnam War.

Am I wrong about this? Or the Korean War? I can tell you that the episode was called No Guts, No Cory. Every episode started with Salem walking onto the set of a different show and then it going, doodledoo, doodledoo. And then they ended up in a different time period. This sounds going, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do- number eight, $1.7 million on 192 screens. It made $98 million domestic.

It was a big hit considering it's 94 million, but yes. I mean, how much did the musical remake make? Well, you know what? It was one of the weirdest box office performances ever, that musical remake, because it made like $20 million on day one and then fell off really fast. And it was one of those things where lots of church groups and community groups had bought tickets on mass

for Christmas or whenever it was. They released on Christmas Day. They planned out really well. It's one of the weirdest disproportionate, 45% of its entire gross happened in 24 hours. $18 million on Christmas Day. And it ends up at 45? It ended up at 60.

Okay. Okay. Okay. But still not as much as it's pretty 30 years and if you like adjust for inflation color purple like perform like fucking American sniper. Yeah. Yeah did like transformers I like that. That's the first one. It was the highest grossing PG-13 movie of that year PG-13 being a new rating number One at the box office is a sequel. It's been out for a month. It is still number one at the box office. Think it might've been the highest grossing in this series.

It's not Star Trek IV, is it? After the first one, nope. No. It's the highest grossing after the first, oh, it's Rocky IV. Rocky IV. It is the highest grossing. Is it the highest grossing even including Rocky?

Unadjusted, unadjusted, yes. Maybe unadjusted, sure. Unadjusted is the highest grossing. including Rocky? Just unadjusted. Yes, maybe on adjust unadjusted is the highest curve. Have you seen Rocky for no Yes, sure, and then I've seen Creed. Yeah. Well, not the most recent lunch Well, okay, so I had a question Jonathan majors for a very long time and then I it turns out he's bad So I didn't like do I even want to engage with? Pre cancel like I know he's bad, but my pussy doesn't and so So I didn't watch it. Right, so now you're like, do I even want to engage with like pre-cancellation films? Yeah. Because like, I know he's bad, but my pussy doesn't. And so...

You're allowed to say that. He's not allowed to say that. He does not know he's bad. Okay. Oh, Mike Jack. I mean, like, people can yell at you, but we'll stop them. David and I have talked about a lot how fascinating it is that that movie came out, was a really big hit, was well liked.

People were like, Michael B. Jordan's a good director. He pulled it off. And like Jonathan Majors, here's finally... They've been hyping him up for years. This is the performance that makes him kind of undeniable. And then, like, all the shit goes down, like, within three weeks, after the movie had already made $150 million.

It was a huge success. And it was basically agreed upon that we were never going to acknowledge the movie ever again. Like, the movie is talking about quantumania and tanks as, like, a problem, but it's not forgotten. And Creed 3 feels like it's been memory-holed. Majors is good in that movie. He's very good in it.

But like that movie was great outside of him. Will Michael B. Jordan ever get to direct again? Oh yeah. He's doing a Thomas Cratterfaire remake. Oh! Which is the thing he's been attached to do for over a decade and he's finally fucking doing it, which is exciting. What? They're making do for over a decade. He's finally fucking doing it. What? Exciting.

They're making another Thomas Crowne affair? Yeah. So I think one of the times I wrote you the most enthusiastically was when you covered the Thomas Crowne affair. And I was like, I posted that I was like, truly one of the best days of my life. I love this so much. It's my interest converging in a way that causes me deep joy and happiness. And then you had someone from Rear Versaun, who was in that.

Amanda Dobbins. Amanda Dobbins, oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Denise and I were chatting before you guys got here and you said something about that movie that was really encouraging,

which is it instilled to be excited about becoming 40. Yes. Oh yeah, cause it's a right, it's a 40 something romance. It's a 40 something romance. Since Rene Russo kids out looking great. I saw that as a young teenager it's a right, it's a 40 something romance. It's a 40 something romance. Since Rene Russo tits out looking great. I saw that as a young teenager and I was like, that's the age. I got something to look forward to.

I've always wanted to like, I brought, truly, in that she wears two outfits that stuck with me to the point where I bought a powder blue pantsuit and wore it with a white turtleneck folded down. And she also, this is the scene when she interrogates Thomas Crown. Oh my God, this is, I'm sorry. So there's still time for me to become a master thief?

There is still time for you to become a master thief. In fact, that was his like first time as master thief. I think he like played a few things, practicing, but then he did this art heist at the Met and it was his first time. So it could be your first time. Popped his chair. I like you. He popped his art thief cherry. Oh, I like you too.

You're a cool guy. You've given me like 18 compliments as a guy. I don't like it. Do nice to me. Why? Yeah, well, if we start talking about Shyamalan, then she'll flip in the opposite direction. Those are when I get the angry messages from you where you're like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? Yeah, you guys sound insane right now.

And also, because originally you wrote me and you were like, hey, do you wanna do, who was the last one that you guys released? David Lynch? Yes, you were like, is there a David Lynch film that you wanna do? And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry, I absolutely hate David Lynch.

I couldn't possibly, I love you guys' podcasts. I feel like a kid with cancer who's been given a make-a-wish or something, just being here. No, no, no, but then you were like, oh, but it has to be with David Lynch. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to give that make a wish back. I absolutely couldn't even if I tried. We plan so far in advance that often when it's like we are overdue, we need to get you on, can I show you what we have right now? And if there's nothing here, I promise I'll circle back in like five months. But it does mean that there's often a long gap.

And then even if it's like five months later, it's like, great, the one you picked is five months from now. Hell yeah. But I always prefer to like wait for what feels like... I really appreciate that. Yes, I was never gonna... Yes. What else is in the top five, David? Oh, back to the box office game.

Number two, the box office is a sequel, a terrible sequel to a film we have covered. We have not covered the sequel nor ever shall we. We never shall. I don't think so. We never shall. We covered a maid feed. Yeah, covered the original.

We covered the original. Is it a Jaws sequel? Nope. Hmm. Cause I could see us doing a Jaws, Patreon. I mean, that's- Could we? That's a little-

Deep, I feel like for us, but you know, you never know. We'll never get, how, this is number two? Two of two. Two like, for us, but you never know. We'll never get... This is number two? Two of two. Two of two. Yeah, the series ends here. The series ends here definitively. Same stars? Uh, yeah.

Not the same director, though, obviously. No. And can you give me a genre? Adventure, romance. Oh, this is... The fucking... It keeps coming up. It sucks. It's... It does. Lewis. It sucks. It's...

It does. Louis Teague film. Jewel of the Nile. The Jewel of the Nile, the sequel to Robert Zemeckis' Romancing the Stone. I remember Romancing the Stone. Does it still have Kathleen Turner? It's both of them. And To veto. To veto's back?

It's so bad. It is so bad. What happened to her after like Serial Mom? What... Serial Mom is a good shout as like a great later performance for her. Like, I feel like that is kind of the end. She had already kind of run out of thread by that point.

I feel like Serial Mom is John Waters being like, Kathleen Turner rocks. Like, why isn't she in that more shit? She has very severe arthritis. She does, but that's... I feel like that came on later. Like, I feel like she's already kind of lost some movie star juice by the 90s. I think a lot of that is, unfortunately, despite everything that Renee Russo tried to teach us, Hollywood's well-established prejudice against women over the age of 40, there's shit also like the, what's it called, V.I.

Wachowski, where she adapted that book series that was a long-running book series, and it was like, this is going gonna be her sort of like Dirty Harry series. And that one didn't perform and it was a like, oh, people don't want women in action movies kind of like, but then early 2000s she did The Graduate on Broadway and I felt like that...

First it was on the West End and she got naked and everyone was like WHAAAAAAAT Like it was truly one of those things where like the British press was like she fucking is naked in this thing it's off stage. The Brits love nudity. The Brits love nudity. I'm not sure anymore because this finally got done away with, but in the old red tabloids, the red top tabloids, on page three, there was a nude woman whose breasts were revealed.

The page three girls. The page three girls. Literally, it was like, you sick fucks can only make it one... You refused to turn eight pages. You promised if you get past the cover... Yeah, then you get tits. At least in your peripheral vision. Jeez! And you were like... And I'm like... People were like, ah! As a little boy, I'm like, what is it? the cover yeah then you get tips at least in your peripheral vision and you

were like and yet at the same time right if you like say tits British people like crazy right now it's just the weird kind of there's okay but they were upset that she had her they weren't, they were so funny about that. But they were upset that she had her... They weren't upset, they were just like, ah! Oh, they were thrilled, they were like, we gotta buy tickets! She did it on Broadway and then she did... Did she also get it on Broadway? I believe so. She did Virginia Woolf as well, right?

Sure, yes, she did I think. I feel like she had a 2000s, like, you know what? Hollywood's turned their back on me, I'm gonna like take on great roles on stage, and I believe won a Tony for something at some point. At least was nominated for it. Yes. I just like her voice so much. She was supposed to do George Lucas talk show recently.

Oh, really? I said she's just going to reschedule and do it again soon, but I was very... What was the connection? Like, what's the... Is there a George Lucas project she wants to discuss? Well, what Connor loves to talk about is that George Lucas produced Body Heap,

but took his name off of it because he thought people wouldn't think a movie was sexy if George Lucas's name was involved. BOTH LAUGH It was sort of the Mel Brooks thing. Aww. All right, so number three, The Box Office Griffin. Now, this might have been a Porch Classic. Ben, I've got a Porch Classic alert on this one.

Never actually checked in. Not a director we already bad-mouthed on this episode, but he's made comedy hits. John Landis? Yes. Spies Like Us? Spies Like Us! Yeah.

Chevy and Dan Aykroyd? No, I've never seen it. Yeah. I've heard of it. Yeah, it's not a good movie. Yeah, I've never seen it. Great poster. Great poster.

They're wearing, like, furry hats? Yes. In the snow. Yeah, in the snow. Yeah, I feel like, kind of a, like, for everyone involved, involved like them sort of looking for better days, right? Like Dlandis, Chevy, Akroyd. Yes. I don't know. Yeah. Spies like us. Number four at the box office It's the best picture winner already. Out of Africa. New this week. Mm-hmm. Number five at the box office I think we discussed this film before

So we must have done a we must have done something in this timeframe recently, because a couple of these are very familiar. It's a Christmas film. Mm-hmm. And it's like about like one of the main Christmas guys. Is it Santa Claus the Movie? Correct. What is Santa Claus the Movie?

Because I feel like we recently talked about this. Someone was like, no one's ever actually just done a movie about Santa Claus. The weird producers of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies were like, we just had the greatest idea of all time. Santa Claus the movie. And you're like, what makes it the movie?

And they're like, us saying it is. Us putting a title in the poster that implies. Us acting like we got the right now. It's a Santa Claus. For the first time ever, official Santa Claus. OK, what type of Santa Claus is this? It's not like a the Santa Claus. It's a Dudley Moore, right?

But Dudley Moore plays an elf. Oh, okay. And like John Lithgow plays a businessman who hates Christmas or some shit. I'm sure he had to reach really hard. I forget who plays Santa. Like a third of the budget was paid for by Coca-Cola and McDonald's, I think.

Okay. It's like a notorious disaster. Yeah, I don't think it made a lot of money. I just remember when I was a kid, some other kid telling me, like, you've never seen Santa Claus, the movie, it's like the movie about Santa Claus. And I was like, well, what are you talking about? David Huffington plays Santa Claus. So, you know, very Santa like me.

Yeah. I saw a pitch recently, a Patreon series called Christmas Cole. Worst depictions of Santa. Who else is? My pitch for the four. Okay. I'm not going in chronological order here. Santa Claus, the movie, Fred Claus.

Santa Claus conquers the Martians. What? Yeah, I've never heard that name. Legendary Bean movie, one of the most insane movies ever made. I sampled it in one of my slow Christmas albums. There we go. And I watched a little bit of it.

It's very absurd. And of course the reason for the season, the movie I walked out of and said, attention must be paid, I must break this movie down, is Red One, the worst film ever made. The worst film ever made. It's not- That was the inspiration, right, Red One.

I think it represents an idea for culture. I'm excited. I don't think it's the worst movie ever made, but I think in a lot of ways, it is the greatest distillation of everything that has gone wrong. Griffin's been making a lot of pronouncements recently. I'm just gonna say that. Is it like, some movies are, I know they're not going to be good,

but I like to take like half of an edible and get the big tub. I love that experience of watching a bad movie while eating caramel popcorn while a little bit high. Would this be good for that, or would I even from that experience walk away like upset? I think it would upset you. Yeah, I think it would upset you. I think there's things in it that would genuinely upset you Especially in a modified state like that. Okay. Yeah. All right Six to ten we've got white nights the Taylor Hackford

ballet movie, huh with Heinz and Baryshnikov the big two of ballet movie with Heinz and Baryshnikov, the big two. We've got a Disney re-release of 101 Dalmatians. One of your daughter's favorite movies? She had a huge phase with that movie. She has not watched it in a while, but she loved Cruella. She was very, I mean, not to be clear, not- Like her actions. Not Craig Gillespie's film Cruella.

She liked Cruella in the movie. She called her the grumpy queen. Well, she should see Cruella then. We'll get to it. Right now it's... Doesn't your daughter have a bunch of questions about why did Cruella pretend to hate dogs? Yeah.

No. Where she came from, why her hair died like that, where she got the coat. Yeah, she wants to know the origins of, did a dog knock her mom off a cliff or whatever happens in that movie. My daughter right now, unfortunately, it's all Frozen. They watch it at school.

Just one or Frozen one and two? This is what I wanna tell you. So both, she likes both, but she distinguishes them by there's the regular Frozen, as she refers to, which is Frozen one, and then Frozen with the pants. Because she, one point told me that princesses wear dresses and I was like princesses don't have to wear dresses, they can wear pants. And she was that princesses wear dresses and I was like princesses don't have to wear dresses, they can wear pants.

And she was like princesses wear dresses and I was like Elsa wears pants in Frozen 2, remember? When she runs into the water, she's wearing pants and she was like, show me that right now. And I like, I like queued it up and I showed it to her and she watched and she was like, she is wearing pants, I agree with you. And so now she will specifically be like,

I want Frozen with the pants. And I'll be like, but you want it from the beginning, right? Cause she's not going to wear pants until an hour into this thing. And she's like, mm-hmm. Right now, like Disney, Disney animation headquarters, they're playing this back and they're like, okay, fuck. Pants. We never thought of this. What are we doing for part three?

Cause my daughter likes to sometimes put a dress on, any dress. It just has to be, and then just dance around to music. And then we, we clap and she bows. Oh, nice. Which is very great. Very cute. My daughter likes to sometimes put a dress on, any dress, it just has to be, and then just dance around to music and then we clap and she bows. Oh, nice. Which is very great, very cute, but still. Trying to just get her away from the thought of girls wear dresses and princesses.

They just need to make a big bottom wear choice for Frozen 3, if they fuck this up, the whole thing is gonna crumple. It's frozen, but tropical, It's like a whole thing. And then they got, they have shorts on. Yeah. And so, uh, I, uh, a hundred, but she does love a hundred one donations, number eight, color purple, number nine, enemy mine.

A movie I've been thinking about a lot because Andy Samberg on the podcast keeps talking about her. You would try to work it into sketch. It's like, I know. And they eventually got it in. It's this... A Wolfgang Peterson movie about, like, a human and an alien get stranded on a planet together.

Dennis Quaid and Louis Costa Jr. And Louis Costa Jr. is in, like, alien makeup. But Louis Costa Jr. is, like, coming off an Oscar. Yeah, it's like his... I definitely had mentally switched that around. Okay, so he's here. No, he's the alien, like, bearded Quaid, and Lou, like, yeah, collecting his, collecting his post-Oscar,

like, and the crux of the movie is like these two different species stranded on a planet together, sort of surviving, and then I think I can say this, because it's what the cultural reputation of the movie is. The sort of twist is that it turns out that he is able to become pregnant. The alien. Fuck, I need to see it.

I need to see Enemy Mine. And he gets pregnant? They have a child, I believe. So they fuck. This is what I'm trying to remember. We don't see that though. I don't think so. You don't think so.

I gotta watch it. All right, so Sabrina, Enemy Mine, what was the other thing I'm watching? Oh, Tripped to Bounce, I gotta watch it. All right, so Sabrina Enemy mine. What was the other thing? I'm watching. Oh trip to bounce. I gotta check it out Yeah, red one Red one. I am gonna watch it at number 10 is a chorus line Which I feel like was not the hit they wanted it to be that's Richard Attenborough post Gandhi being like I'm gonna adapt the biggest hit on Broadway ever and It like did okay, you know? I had to pee so badly. Okay, yeah, well we've been talking for way too long.

Yeah, but, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because we had a great guest. Because we had a great guest. Not way too long. That's very nice, and kind of you. I do want to say before we wrap things up, no, I don't, I didn't drink enough water, too. So I intentionally dehydrated myself

so that I wouldn't have to. So you're gonna faint. Yeah, because you guys, I listened to the pod. I know you guys go so long. So I was like, do not fill up on water. You're gonna have to pee. The person who plays Nettie as a child does some of the weirdest acting I've ever seen in my life. And I'm sorry, it caught me so off guard

that I felt irresponsible not mentioning it. Yeah, I just needed to know, like I needed to say when she screams, ah, and waves her hands in the air, and that's supposed to be a big pivotal moment of Emotionality from these two characters. I said I must mention this on the podcast and that's it It's worth calling out especially because he is historically very good with children Yeah, yeah, yes, it might it might speak to the fundamental. He might not just totally have a grasp on the character. Yeah. Yes Okay, so that's no I think I want you to be I want you to

Have the ability to go pee. Uh, can you thank you so much? Thank you so much for having me you guys are this is This is a dream come true. Thanks guys. You're the best. It's a it took far too long. Anything anything specific you want to plug? Follow me on The websites that we all follow each other on obviously if we've dated I'm sorry The websites that we all follow each other on obviously if we've dated. I'm sorry I'm not sorry. I was a nice lady to date. Okay, you use this platform to say Yeah, I was a nice lady today. I'm a good cook. I do stuff. I'm like a Reasonable person and you guys were fine. We were not compatible. There we go. I want to hear all

And maybe even a you're welcome. Maybe let's throw your you're welcome out there. If you're listening to this show, and you did it, Kenise, you're welcome. Yeah. And don't write me about this on Instagram. Don't do that. Okay, you can, but we're not going to get back together. That's just not going to happen. You're doing a hot guy draft?

Oh, I love- We already did it. Okay, so this is my birthday thing, and I love it so much, and you guys are all invited. Well, not the listeners I'm talking to the people in the sure. Okay So every year we do a Hawkeye draft and I put polls up online and people vote to say who? The Hawkeyes are and what they should be ranked on a scale of one to five

Then we take those people we divide them into three tiers some people get like green silver or gold stickers they represent them into three tiers. Some people get like green, silver or gold stickers. They represent one, three or five points and you have to make a team of 15 points. It's very, very silly. People who work in sports media do come and they are the commissioners for this draft. Wow. Love it. And it's really fun and we decide who is the hottest. We make teams, we yell at each other. We have like very,'s it's super silly

It's my favorite thing in the world who won last year. So this year for my birthday or it was last year Okay, so 2024 it was a team of Denzel Washington. Yeah, I got Abdul Mateen Simulou shawte and a fifth person that I can't okay But that was the winning team of hotness. The lesbian team was really mad that every... Are you okay? I'm fine. It was a team of lesbians and they made a team and nobody else liked who they said was hot.

It was like they were on an island by themselves. What a fascinating social experiment. Yes. You're doing the work, Kennease. I majored in psychology. This is my experiments with human behavior and thought, and I love it so much. Everyone, look out for that.

I'll certainly be following very closely this year. Thank you for being here. Thank you all for listening. Tune in next week for Empire of the Sun. Yeah. Kind of an odd double down from Spielberg. Yeah, it is. A slightly better movie, but also, yeah, not perfect in my opinion.

Him striving for the kind of serious movie he will eventually make better. I don't know. Have you seen it? Yes, I have. Okay. Yeah. Excited to see it again. I've only seen it once.

Over on the Patreon coming up in a few days, we have a bonus Spielberg episode we're doing about Twilight Zone the movie. Wow. Just his part. Just his part. His segment. But his part's really bad. Yep.

Okay. And Amazing Stories. Which are better. Yeah, his more Amazing Stories segments. And doing Star Trek Next Gen? Are we still on that? Yeah, we are in the middle of that. Star Trek Insurrection is next.

The one where they're on the planet where people don't age and Picard gets a crush. What if Skipper was drinking? F.M.A.A.A. F.M.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A. cool person where she likes Star Trek and she's on bowling and pool leagues and so I like want to be cool to my mom I guess. That's not automatically cool to all people. Oh no. But to your mom. Yeah yeah yeah so like sometimes I like try to pick up on things that are going on in the Star Trek world so I can like be cool to my mom. Yeah that's like how I'll say to my dad like I heard someone hit a

ball yesterday, huh? Another hoop? Did you know, can you say it's a twin? I did know this, yes. She just revealed that to me. Anyway. Where and when? What do you mean? You weren't here yet. You weren't here yet.

You really need to pee so bad. Yeah, we were chatting. It's all fake. Goodbye. Thank you so much. We love you. And as always, we've talked a lot about the color purple for nearly three hours, but I would just like to take this final opportunity on Mike to recenter the real focus, the color red. Red one? Red Hulk.

Oh yeah, of course. Hail to the chief. Hail to the chief. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Simms. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Bardy Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J. Burch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Olly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick. 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, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.