Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Heartbreak Kid with Avery Edison

Episode Date: April 11, 2021

Writer and comedian Avery Edison joins this week to discuss 1972’s The Heartbreak Kid! Topics include: how May’s directing elevated the Neil Simon screenplay, the performances from Cybill Shepherd, Jeannie Berlin, Charles Grodin, the delightful cringe of the comedy, and more! Check out Avery's scripted podcast Swings And Roundabouts! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

Uh, pardon me, sir. I'm afraid we're a little late with the podcast. Chef tells me we ran out about 10 minutes ago. Wait a minute. Are you joking? No podcast? No podcast. The main reason we came here was for the podcast. No, no, no, no. It's not all right. They should have said that to us at the door. They should have warned us that there was a danger of running out of podcasts. Well, I mean, we drove all the way from New York. No, no, you know what? Listen, take, take, take, take the, take the, take the podcast.

I don't want to share it. I promised my wife the podcast. I want you, I want you to bring the podcast for my wife. I promise. Just bring me some coffee. No blueberry pie. What do I want blueberry pie for? That really bugs me.

Are you out? I'm out'm out yeah you nailed it that was great i had to dig to find a transcript of the script that was very poorly formatted and then cut out all the intermediate dialogue from everyone else that's my favorite moment in the movie it's a good moment and especially like hearing hearing you say it like the whole time I was watching the film, I thought Griffin would kill this part. If they remake it again, again, I mean, yeah, honestly, you know, my number one choice for the role. Should it be like A Star is Born? Like, we just have a heartbreak kid every 30-ish years? Every generation deserves its heartbreak kid, yeah. The problem is they nailed it so hard the last time it really feels like

this is this is a genuine thought i had okay uh i don't say this in any sort of uh self-pitying way this is i say this uh soberly uh coming off of uh uh 10 months of uh forced reflection upon every element of my life in quarantine, right? I increasingly have just been in this state of just like, what do I actually want to do with myself? Questioning whether I still want to be like on-camera acting, be very happy with the voiceover work I'm doing. I was getting very tired of the racket of on-camera stuff and the burn of it, whatever.

And I'm so scared to get back on set right now that it just feels like by the time i'm vaccinated it'll have been so long i wonder if i'll you have the driver whatever and when you still got it if you and it's safe being on set is safe so safe so safe so safe i mean batman got covid but other than that it's safe there's not constant breakouts because using tests isn't a good way to determine whether or not people can be in contact. But no, no, it's fine. We didn't almost kill young Sheldon. Young Sheldon in trouble?

I didn't know about that. No, there was a shutdown. There was a flare up, but he's fine now. I'm going tangent on a tangent on a tangent, but I was speaking to one of my best friends the other day. tangent on a tangent but i was speaking to one of my best friends the other day and she was like it's kind of incredible how quickly uh everyone adopted the same bad uh attitude that exists with uh stds onto covid we're just like well if i trust somebody i'm not gonna get it right i had a test like six months ago i'm probably good i'm clean right if i trust someone or if they're rich enough right if they're fancy i fancy, I'm not going to get it.

If it's in a nice hotel, I'm not going to get it. This is what I was going to say. When I think about all this stuff with acting stuff, I think more than anything, like, I don't have any desire to be like the guy anymore. Right. Like any ambitions I had when I was younger to be like a star and a leading man in my own weird way. I'm just like, I don't need that work. I so much prefer coming and getting out. And then I watched this movie and I was like,

if I was ever, ever going to be a movie star, this is exactly who I want to be. You want to be Grodin. I want to be Charles Grodin. Yeah. And it's because I think he just did this balancing act and we'll talk about his career, but he somehow became a very odd leading man

without ever, ever devoting an ounce of energy towards audience sympathy never and never and we'll talk right the arc of his career where he's like yeah i'll be the lead and then i'll you know and then i won't be who cares like i don't have to be the lead all the time right you know i'll be a weirdo and then he comes back in family movies as the grump he's like fine whatever but also he. But also he's like, I don't know. I'll write for, you know, a show as well. You know, I can do that. Like, I'll do whatever I want.

I'm trying to sort of have a Gurdon cadence right now, even if I'm not doing an impression. Come on. All right. I don't care. I just I feel like, you know, it's not that like, oh, I only want to play assholes. feel like uh you know it's not that like oh i only want to play assholes but i just like especially from my experience to the tick of just like how much added stress there is if people are like you got to be likable people need to be rooting for you you know and it's just like like you just want to act you just want to act and hope that what you're doing is compelling enough that people

watch i don't really care about people liking me you know but i mean i i guess the problem is that it's it's how do you get a movie with the protagonist unlikable in this specific way how do you get that made today doesn't happen like you don't get you don't get a movie of this size and type made today but also even if you did it would have to have a likable yeah you just couldn't do it yeah and you look at as a counter point ben stiller's career and you look at, as a counterpoint, Ben Stiller's career, and you look at, as a counterpoint, the Heartbreak Kid remake and the interesting changes that are made there.

But let's say what we're talking about. We're not talking about 2007's Heartbreak Kid. No, not yet. Maybe one day. No, because look, we're not talking about the Farrelly brothers. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

I'm David. And this is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce, baby. And this is a mini-series on the films of Elaine May.

April showers bring May flowers this year. All true. Because April is May. We're knocking out the shortest filmography we've ever done. And it is an injustice that the filmography is this short. It's disgusting. Yep. But this is her second film.

In certain ways, I feel like it's her her most beloved even though it's been so out of circulation for so it's her most definable hit i would say right you know and and probably yes the movie that the most people have heard of at the time like you know in the 70s 80s people knew this movie i right now it's like you said it so how did you how did you i mean it's on youtube did you see that? She is not just a great friend of the show, but I feel like internally, and I believe I've said this to you as well, I consider this guest to be our first real fan of the show. Like the first real Blankie, right? Even before Blankie existed as a term. Yes. recording as a fan ready to embarrass myself um make myself a a specter of everything that can go wrong when someone comes on to a podcast someone that the other fans can be furious at and also

take apart pick apart the the genuine problems with my appearance i'm really excited to do a bad job god great great great no i'm i'm such a i'm such a fan of the show i i think early on i did get a shout out during one of the the star wars apps and it was the highlight of my of my year that year um obviously that must have been a bad year because everything has been just on the up since then currently the best year of my life. That was the last bad year of your life. Yeah, 2015. I gotta say, I just listened to, I think the most recent ep that came out

at the time of this record is the- Marwen, right? Marwen. And I think you mentioned- A loopy ep. At the end of that, the idea of the Star Wars eps being interminable or something like that.

And I'm sorry, I don't think there's been a better 30-episode run of a podcast. I'm sorry to ruin an episode about another film by gushing over the very podcast that I'm on, but the level of incisive film analysis and the stuff you can learn about not just Star Wars films, but filmmaking and media in general by listening to those podcasts. I'm just so I'm so happy to be on this show and especially to discuss this film, which is a masterpiece. Yes. Well, let me say our guest guest today is Avery Edison, our dear friend, a brilliant writer, comedian in her own right.

But I remember vividly, because when we started the show, David had his circle of people who followed him from the AV Club and who he knew personally. A few chumps. His friends, right? And I had the small circle of people, mostly from the Gethard Show community and having done the Gethard Show podcast and then my friends.

And when we started doing the Phantom podcast, it felt like, oh, we know every single person who's listening. We can chart directly every single person who's listening to the show. That's absolutely right. Right. And then I remember it was early on. I want to say it was in that Phantom run. The first 10 episodes, David went, Avery Edison wrote about us. And I said, what? In Today in Tabs, right? Right. Yeah, I did. Yeah. You did. You did your Today in Tabs recommendation. And he said, this is like a big deal. Right. Like Avery is cool. She's got good opinions. And she actually somehow listens to our show and recommend it to other people who don't know us. I mean. Well, I mean, I'm tapping out on the episode now. That's me done. I've gushed and gotten some gush in return.

It is a Chris Morris jam style endless gush. Endless gush. endless gush oh endless gush uh my favorite ever line from jam is when do you remember the the one it's the the doctor who does the sex line while he's being a doctor but he does the sex line in the same calm manner as as his doctor and he just picks up the phone he's like sorry one second yes yes i've come on my knee yes and he hangs up the phone i think about that all the time i'm sorry what are the two of you talking about we're talking about a sketch show a british it's um i'm actually not sure how david knows about this it was a yeah i i lived in canada for a short time in my 20s but my basically my whole life I've lived in the country of my birth, Great Britain, Scotland at first, then England.

You're coming to us from Britain right now. Yeah, I've lived in London, currently in Liverpool. Grew up in Dorset, lovely place to look at, not to experience. I mean, look, these are all locations that make sense for you to have that reference point. And even spending time in Canada, they obviously export a lot of British comedy to Canada. I wonder if Jam made it to Canada. Any Canadians, let me know if Jam made it all the way to Canada because I doubt it. But yes, you're right.

You're right. But as you have seemed to have forgotten, I grew up in Britain as well, Griffin. Oh, David. You know, but from the ages of 9 to 22 i lived there for 13 years so we were probably we were probably in england at the same time yeah that's crazy i would imagine so i mean that is just even you know the kind of bizarre coincidence it makes you think, is God real? Yeah. Maybe, you know, maybe when I was at the Virgin Megastore and fricking Tottenham Court Road or whatever.

No, I was strictly HMV. No, I was strictly. You were exclusively HMV. Wow. Yeah. Now, can you make the argument for HMV over Virgin? My mother's weird class prejudices that somehow decided Virgin was good and HMV was bad.

Turns out growing up and living on my own has been a process of learning that the weird preferences I have come from my mother's inscrutable obsession with not looking as poor as we were and somehow Virgin versus HMV played into that. Is HMV still going? There's inscrutable obsession with not looking as poor as we were. And somehow Virgin versus HMV played into that. Is HMV still going?

Is it still a thing? I don't think so, no. No? I don't think Virgin is either. I believe HMV still exists in Canada. Am I wrong about that? And I think there might be one store in London over here. Yeah, it looks like they've been bought out by some you know yeah no you know what it even closed in canada closed in 2017 in canada the

the hmv in hampstead like uh i just spent hours there and then the thing where you know you were going and you had like you know 10 pounds like that was that was all you had you know wow look at mr money bags oh boy yeah money monster over here i could buy one one thing you know that thing where you just sort of like go around you're like i think it's gonna be this but then you're walking around for ages being like is there anything that's gonna knock this out of my hand i i grew up i grew up in incredibly poor so i yeah i i truly would not have 10 pounds on my hands. I would just go in there, stare at the thing I wanted.

And that thing of maybe if I stare long enough and sadly enough, someone behind the counter will see my desperation and take pity on me and somehow give it to me for free. And then when I finally got a job in my teen years, I spent probably my first paycheck on the series one to three box set of Family Guy. And was the happiest I've ever been. You had to. I also owned that box set. It was good, but the good seasons.

The good seasons. Yes. And it was like, oh, yeah, is this weird show? Is this? Yeah. This silly American show that got canceled kind of fast. Jet Suck, Yankee Suck, Krypton Sucks. One of the hardest times I've ever laughed in my life wow this is even crazier than that time avery

bought seasons one through three at hmv no it's not crazier than that peter it is that oh oh sorry anyway how do we get on this how do we get on jam i don't know i'm trying to remember gushing yes the praise the praise. Yes, the praise. The praise. No, but it was truly, that's the moment that Dave and I turned to each other and said, oh, we might actually be making something

that people in town... Someone listens to. Right, yes. I mean, not to... And we should... Not to suggest that the show is some colossal globe's conquering force now, but I do remember, Griffinin at the end of that

first year when we did the live show at uh union hall which is a capacity what do you think griffin like 50 60 people or what are you right like however yeah i think you can standing room 75 maybe yeah pre-covid i was like yes yes yeah right now it's post-COVID too. Now it's really too. That space is too. Yeah. I just remember saying to you like Griff, Griff, like, is anyone going to show up to this? We were terrified that just no one would show up. Yeah. And you were like, it's OK. We have enough friends and stuff that the people will be there. Right. But I was really thinking, like, are we going to walk out to an empty crowd? will be there right but i was really thinking like are we gonna walk out to an empty crowd no and i had that exact same fear and there was also the the question of like how many of our

friends are coming to this out of pity who don't even listen to the show and don't like star wars and i'm not gonna be receptive to what we're doing i was like oh oh no right it'll be people who are like jesus they're watching the fucking revenge of the i don't want to do this i have to watch this right like your mom came and your mom had not seen revenge of the sith before and had never listened to the podcast and you were like i feel bad that she's gonna sit here my mother had never seen a star wars movie okay i was about to say that and i wasn't sure if that was correct which really is like my dad saw star wars like seven times in theaters it's not like it wasn't in the family i watched it obviously my mom had just been like yeah not for me and had

just successfully dodged for decades astounding that is still the only context in which she has seen any star wars film no because she saw The Force Awakens. That was the second movie. If you remember, everybody saw that movie. It was that kind of a thing. Yeah, I mean, people forget that movie made very close

to a billion dollars domestically alone and everyone went to see it. And my parents and my sister saw it and that was the last Star Wars movie they'll ever see.

Same with my mom. They hadn't seen a Star Wars movie in fucking 15 years. They won't see another one, but it was just like, I guess, I don don't know i gotta get my license renewed go see the star wars reboot she was like i'd like to see it and we watched it and we came out and i was like what did you think and she was like harrison ford was just great like he was so good i just loved

seeing harrison ford turning it on you know and i was like yeah anything else and she's like that's it those are my thoughts like i whatever she she assumed kylo ren was just darth vader she didn't like want to think about it too hard wow that's great for kylo ren he's gonna be thrilled yeah i know he was like yes got someone nailed it i nailed it yeah uh i've shared this anecdote too many times my mom went to the bathroom during the scene where kylo kills han Solo and then came back. And her question after the end of the movie was, why is he just not in the last 30 minutes at all? It's weird that they just kind of drop Han Solo as a character. Oh, boy. But yes, Avery, your support of the show has always been so deeply meaningful because you are such a smart person,

funny person with good taste. Long overdue to have you on the show. Opened up now because of COVID, forcing us to do episodes with people in different places in the world. And by forcing us, I mean gifting us with the opportunity. I mean, yeah, when quarantine first,

when first locked down uh i did see people saying oh this is great all my favorite podcasts can now maybe get some long distance guests and someone i think even even like mentioned me and said maybe if we hadn't could be on blank check and i like remember faving it and being like and now now to wait. And it's, you know, I kept thinking as the lockdowns would ease, like, oh, I've missed the shot. But luckily for me, COVID has kept going. And in that sense, COVID is a victory for me.

And in that sense, Avery, I ask, can you please stop COVID? Because I understand that you stretched this out for a while because you wanted to make sure you'd gotten some of the podcasts. I was, I was behind, I was behind the UK variants.

Yep. I, I, I, these new strains just, they really reek of Avery. I could, I could see your fingerprints all over them.

Um, Avery, you said that this film is in your opinion, a masterpiece. Yes. Uh, what is your relationship with this movie and with Elaine May overall? My relationship with Elaine May is that when I was in Canada at comedy school, I performed several of her sketches at various shows.

had no relationship until recently when uh yeah just entering lockdown and being like okay it's time to catch up on some some filmmakers let's let's go through some filmographies maybe find someone who has massive success with a film and then gets a series of blank checks i don't know where the idea came from for that but it's something that really just hit me and resonated um and yeah just i i watched this with my uh with my girlfriend and her sister and we were losing our minds and i've watched it a couple more times uh since then especially i've seen the run-ups to this podcast i've watched um all of the three other films she's on letterboxd right you were you were logging them oh yeah i was uh i was cramming essentially for this record um uh and yeah it's it's it's criminal that uh according to imdb like obviously

you'll get to this on the episode but i guess ishtar created the term movie jail or at least that's what the trivia section there says yes Yes, yes. It is one of the canonical modern bounces. Yeah. In no part to any structural gendered forces. Look, we'll certainly get to all this stuff when we talk about Ishtar. But it is fascinating. I saw her. There was the thing where Ishtar had been out of circulation for so long.

Along with this movie. I mean, this is another issue is that like, we've long mulled her because Ishtar is like a top 10 famous bounce of all time, right? Ishtar. And,

and with that has critical reappraisal and has, yeah, right. I love it. Yeah. But, but that, you know,

her films have, have largely been harder to see for a long time. Yeah. You know, Ishtar and Mikey and Nikki are thankfully more readily available now, New Leaf as well. Uh, but a lot of them were sort of off home video and streaming legal avenues for a long time. This one still is. Um, and, and the perception was always that like, oh, Ishtar was like such an atomic bomb and the press whirlwind around it was so horrible that no one ever let her make a movie again. And I saw when there was – they had remastered Ishtar. They were going to release it on Blu-ray. They did like a 92nd Street Y screening with her doing a Q&A afterwards, which was just like, oh, my god. I went to go see it as like a curio because I just assumed like, oh, this movie's bad, right? I just want to see this out of completism.

And I'll say other things she said when we get to our Ishtar episode, but they asked her about it, like the feeling of being in movie jail, whoever was moderating. And she said like, it wasn't that. I mean, I could have made other movies. I just like was over it at that point.

Right, because it was a horrible experience she was so pissed off by the experience of ishtar compounded with the experience of mikey and nikki which is always very also very difficult that i think like look people should have been tripping over themselves to continue to give her opportunities she should not have have gotten the reputation that she did but still she very much speaks as if it was an empowered decision of like i'm not going to play this fucking game anymore i don't want to grovel at these people's shoes for the chance to direct like a talking horse movie so i can get myself back in the good graces of the people who think ishtar is bad you know well you mentioned mikey and nikki being troubled but i and again this is just going

off of like imdb and old reviews so maybe it's wrong but it it seems like even the production processes processes for a new leaf and heartbreak it like it seems like yes she's always wrestling for control and i don't know if i don't know if that's part of her uh temperament or the choices she makes um obviously mikey nicky she shot like a million and a half feet of film and i i think for a new leaf she shot like a hundred hours of it yeah it was and she presented a three-hour cut and the studio took it away from her yeah no it's true and she never had a relaxed uh creative process where she was totally in control and was not being second guest at some point yeah uh this is probably the chillest and this she still has to deal with neil simon being like don't touch my

words and you know like you know like even this uh was not a smooth sailing. No. And it's such a bizarre kind of setup because it's like this is kind of her only for higher work. Right. I mean, like Beatty is the one who comes to her with the idea for Ishtar, but she develops it. Right. Yeah. And that's also Beatty being like, I am the magnanimous, wonderful Warren Beatty, and I want to get back into movies. And then when she starts making the movie, he's like, I've got a lot of ideas.

I am famous control freak Warren Beatty. It was me all along. Right. But that having been said, all four of these movies, it feels like are exactly what she wanted to make, that she stands behind them with complete pride and complete ownership. But it was an absolutely torturous process to get there. They're all so good. I think A New Leaf might be the one where that's not true,

but the others, yeah. Okay, fair enough. They're all so good, and they're all so thematically linked and clearly hers. They all have this running theme of what will you put up with to be with another person? They're all about weird relationships but the first two movies are about very toxic ill-begotten male female relationships and the latter two are about

weird codependent intimate male relationships right yeah yeah it's true right but they are just about yes these uneasy couplings of people you know who end up one way or another having to coexist with each other whether or not it's actually the healthiest thing for them it also like you know she constantly was like well the movie should be three hours long and like would then fight with studios or producers or whoever who'd be like well i can't be three hours long the lane like it's a comedy right you know like so but like but you but you see you see the takes in in heartbreak kid where it's you know it's a neil simon script he writes this thing expecting it to be rat-a-tat-tat and the joy of this movie

is the slowness of it yeah and the way The way this back and forth dialogue just crawls along and the way it – I don't think you would have such a humanizing portrayal of basically every character without the fact that she insists on slowing it down so much. on slowing it down so much and so you can see why yeah she finds she finds the the the joy in these long moments of course she's going to want to create long films yeah it's crazy that neil simon wrote this not in terms of the setup but just in terms of like it doesn't sound like a neil simon as you're saying yeah that's the weird thing. It's like, A, this is the only movie she directs that isn't her own script, right? She obviously collaborates with other people on her project. She incubates and develops them. But this is a movie where Neil Simon writes the script and says, I want Elaine May to direct this. I want her to be hired to direct this film.

And then she gets very involved with it, right? But also, this is the only thing that neil simon ever wrote it's it's the only screenplay he ever wrote that was an adaptation of his own play or his own original script is that right yeah i mean he has so many scripts that yeah right jesus right but it was always a play for but he never adapted someone else's work right um yeah no right he's right you're you're But he never adapted someone else's work. Right. Yeah. No, right. He's right. You're right.

He's adapting someone else's work. So you have two major kind of American comedic forces of the 20th century, both doing things that they never did before and never did again. Right. And you have Bruce J. Freeman. And you look at the poster for this movie. Great poster. The main poster is like a cartoon drawing of a heart that looks like it was drawn

by a three-year-old like a sort of like lumpy misshapen heart a kid if you will yes and it just says the heartbreak kid and big red letters but in between each of those words it says elaine may directed it neil simon wrote it bruce j fried conceived it. That is a wild way to sell a movie that are just like, here are three high class humorists. We're not telling you who's in it. We're not telling you what the premise of the movie is. Here is a doodle. And we're telling you that these three very witty urbane people had their fingers on this. But then you get into the movie and it says, like, right at the start, and Elaine May film.

Yeah. Yeah, it's not afraid to, you know, ditch those two and make it very clear, like, yeah, this is just her. And it also says Neil Simon's the heartbreak kid because Neil Simon didn't want to give Bruce J. Friedman the story by credit in the opening. So he gets it in the end credits, but they don't credit either writer at

the beginning i think they just do that possessive like the right the neil simons branding was so prevalent yeah yeah yeah there's a i mean you're talking about the weird slowness of this movie there's a great piece that i'll probably keep referencing too much that i read uh uh it's a bright wall dark room piece from like a year ago that Ethan Warren wrote called Still Heartbroken After All These Years. And he compares this movie, the 2007 remake, but more importantly says like,

let's look at like the Arthur Hiller, Neil Simon movies that come out the couple of years before this, right? Like look at the difference in adaptation and performance and editing and rhythms between, uh, you know,

like out of towners or, uh, Plaza suite. Odd couple. Right. Um, yeah, all that,

all that stuff. I mean, funnily, I mean like she, Elaine may is in California suite a few years later, like, which is a pretty bad movie. Although she kind of rules in it.

She and math hour kind of they're fun but like which is another just where it's like yeah you know well we're doing neil simon this will be done in an hour like let's just let's you know it's like a play like just do your dialogue hit your marks neil simon already did all the work for you right like that's you know yeah i mean i'll just i'll just read this quick graph. But, Avery, what you're saying about Neil Simon, immediately you're associated with this rat-a-tat-tat thing, right?

And even, like, Mike Nichols, who comes from the exact same place as Elaine May, you know, their sensibilities are formed by each other, is a very distinctive filmmaker. When he makes a Neil Simon movie, it is very much Mike Nichols doing a Neil Simon movie, as opposed to Mike Nichols turning a Neil Simon play into a Mike Nichols movie. It's always going to be Neil Simons first and foremost.

So this quote here, the screenplay eschews much of this melancholy in favor of a distinctly Simon-esque cavalcade of gaffes, quips, and barbs. It's not hard to imagine putting the script up on a Broadway stage with lines like, I don't hand out my daughter to newlyweds, bellowed at the cheap seats to thunderous laughter. No, it's not hard at all to imagine, perfectly fine, perfectly serviceable, heartbreak kid, perhaps one directed by Arthur Hiller, with all the rapid fire line readings and indifferent camera work of the out-of-towners. And the whole point he's kind of making is like she forces you to actually live in the circumstances of this movie it is a movie where she is forcing you to not just get out with the cheap laughs of like oh what a funny setup that you really just have to live with this guy and and there's such a big shift between this one

and the remake in terms of you know and and neil simon always said like he complained that she cast genie berlin there's this awful story where he did not know genie berlin was elaine may's daughter and went and complained to elaine may that quote the actress she hired wasn't sexy enough neil right which is also sort of the point of the character in a way yes like i mean i think she looks like an absolute dime when she arrives at the pool in that bikini but yeah the whole point is that like you you put her next to sybil shepherd and she's she's gonna look like yesterday's leftover dinner you know next to a prime rib. Right.

And yeah, that is a funny, a weird thing for him to complain about. But, you know, men will complain about weird things. Yes. Welcome to Blank Check with Griffin and David. He really pushed for Diane Keaton to play that character, which would have been so fundamentally ruinous. That'd be a disaster. Because you'd be like, I mean, maybe dying keith would deliver this incredible performance and you're like yeah no but like i it would make no sense carry on but that's but that's the point i mean the problem is the problem

is she would turn it into a performance right a it would be like well let's get someone who's more conventionally sexy at the beginning of the movie. So the guys in the audience understand why he married her in the first place. Right. So it's like, well, how could he resist? And then let's have Diane Keaton give this very, very masterfully crafted comedic performance of a nightmare person so that everyone in the audience understands why he doesn't want to be with her anymore. And there's something just to the casting, aside from the fact that Jean Berlin is so good. There's something just to the casting, aside from the fact that Jeannie Berlin is so good, there's something just to the fact that in the role of the undesirable woman, the director hires her daughter, right? You're immediately putting so much more empathy into that character than the structure of the story demands it and groden that the story about uh uh simon complaining that genie berlin wasn't sexy enough comes from groden's memoir and he also said that uh for years neil simon tried to do a good heartbreak kid uh musical and he hired baccarat to do the songs he went through like so

many different teams to try to do it and he could never crack it because he said he couldn't figure out the interiority of that character and it's so telling in terms of like what elaine may contributes here not just in what she puts into that character lila right yeah um but but also just the general i'm not gonna let this movie get away with being surfacy i'm not gonna let it get away with being like well of course i would do the same guy thing in this guy's shoes you know it's really trying to drill down into the most uncomfortable aspects of what this situation represents you know culturally and everything yeah for people who don't who like maybe only know of the remake and you know know that there was an older one and know the premise and all that it might be shocking to know to hear that the eddie albert and um genie boleyn got oscar

nominations for this right and and it it really is like yeah that level of empathy that she puts into these characters like even the the line you said I don't hand my daughter out to newlyweds. It's a funny line. And also, like, when he says it, like, yeah, you can see the rage mixed with confusion. And it's not just a tossed-off line. No. He really means it. He delivers it like it's a Dirty Harry line. Like, that's what's incredible about it.

And you're like, that line would work on broadway i could see a funny actor i could see richard kind delivering that and killing you know getting an applause break the befuddled dad who's just like what's this whirlwind romance that's blowing through my boring life instead eddie albert's just like who's this fucking punk who won't leave me alone and is essentially harassing my daughter like that's how he plays it just absolute rage and genie berlin plays that character as a real human being and you know aside for the fact this is not the type of movie that you think of getting two acting nominations you know especially in a modern context it's also like the two performances

that got nominated are the dilemmas in the movie like they're the characters that are like the conflicts to the main character but it speaks to how fully rounded those characters are and how insightful those performances are not just that but this is a you know crackerjack oscar year where like eddie albert is nominated alongside three actors from the godfather and joel gray and cabaret like wow you know like i mean pacino is its category fraud that pacino was supporting actor but like that that's that's like one of the most insane best supporting actor lineups ever yeah him right and then you know supporting actress you've only got the uh i guess they didn't even nominate talia shire that's rude she got nominated for part two she's so good in one though and she's yeah she's you know i love that griffin calls it calls it two as opposed to party i just finished

watching all the sopranos and that's a that's a surprise they call it two, not part two. What do you prefer, one or two? No, yeah, they call it two. But just a huge year, a huge Oscar-y movie year. It's not like these guys snuck in or whatever. These were exceptional performances that are kind of burned into your brain even after the character is, genie berlin's case like gone you i mean you talk about them being the the like the the complications or the thing that's you know trying to stop the the the main guy from having his fun right but i i you could almost look at the film and i i imagine we'll talk about this more and obviously you two will talk about it more less than me.

But it's it's a film so much about Jewish identity, especially compared with white American identity or more traditional white American identity. And Grodin is, his character is trying to constantly with his like fast paced lies and like he's trying to do that type of movie. He's trying to turn it into just a screwball thing so he can get away with his caper. And the humanity of Albert and Berlin is resisting that and turning it into that slower movie like if everyone was on groden's level it would be like a level in terms of of speed of delivery and with the um the heaviness that the character is treating the circumstance it would be just back and forth but that's that's so much of it is just that this movie is resisting groden right like in every sense it is resisting becoming the movie that groden's character is trying to turn it into even even the way he says when he says i'm a newlywed as if and just that intonation of

it's one of those situations where you know how it happens you're in nulu and he falls over i made the big mistake about five days ago and it's just like the way he's tossing it off like i know we've all had has this ever happened to you what are you gonna do you got married you fell in love with someone else immediately i'm sorry like he truly just just wants to blow right past it and both the movie and the director will not let that lie like no you can't just forget your wife and that's maybe the most masterful scene in the movie just in terms of like it feels like something out of funny games like you've just trapped this guy in this like four shot around the table watching himself dig himself deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and you see on his face that you think

he's pulling it off and you see on the other three faces that whenever he stops talking he's gonna get ripped but that makes it so funny sybil shepherd in the background just not knowing what to do embarrassed also slightly hoping he pulls it off yes mom being so sweet and just trying to do that sort of appeasement make everything make everything nice like right sort of brush over everything yes i mean we don't have to talk about um the remake much obviously but it is telling that in the fairly brothers remake the lila character is just a pure evil monster right i was gonna say she's violent she's like a drug addict she's mean she and it's just like he's got to get rid of this person like this this is just awful like she's a she's a liability and it's also just that like she goes from being like overly

idealized dream woman romantic comedy to being like oh she's like a convict and she's a liar she's violent and all this sort of there's a maliciousness to her like she's doing it on purpose but even the pitch of the performance is just she's the ex from you know from hell right there's no attempt to to uh make her uh have any recognizable human behaviors once they get to the resort right i mean it's just like i mean this scene where they sleep together for the first time is one of the big like fairly brother gross out comedic set pieces of the movie and it's framed around she's so crazy in bed it hurts him right which is just such a bizarre framing of a thing i mean look we will do the farrelly brothers one day yes probably we must open the book um but it is and we should stop talking about the remake because it's it's

just sort of the remake is just this interesting text in that it is like oh this is such a fundamental misunderstanding like that it's just sort of crazy that they put it out there and obviously they put it out there and everyone was like no and it made no money and that was that uh that's not actually true it actually made some money but um it was it was it underperformed it was not yes yes um but like yeah like just for them to think like, let's pay homage to this sort of iconic comedy and these two iconic comedy figures in Neil Simon and Elaine May with just like, what if the Heartbreak Kid except it was like the Jeannie Berlin character was a gross out comedy? Like, it's just it's just anyway, we don't have to talk about it. Well, and they think they're doing this. No, I want to say two things about it very quickly they think they're doing this progressive thing circa 2007

where it's like but look his wife is more of the shishka yes that's that's the thing they think is clever that it's like he and michelle moynihan is like sort of this tomboy earthy brunette lady sure she's the fact neither of them are jewish but we cannot deny right right that's the one thing they think they're doing so they're like i don't know but the one he's with at the beginning looks more like a maxim magazine bombshell so it's not that thing the other thing is i think it runs into the exact same problem that neil simon ran into trying to do this material again which is in both cases the the Farrelly brothers and Neil Simon are like, it doesn't need to be as caustic as what Elaine May did. I want this guy to be likable.

And what Elaine May recognized to some degree is this guy is not likable. The entire comedic premise of this movie is bad. It looks bad for him. So either you can make a movie about the fact that he's bad or you can fail making a movie about a guy you want the audience to like. He's never going to be low status, you know? He does one almost noble thing in the movie, which is when he, you know, drops the bomb and breaks up with her, he agrees to give her this great, enormous settlement. And then almost immediately when he meets with the lawyer and the lawyer says, I could got you a better deal he says no no no don't do that i mean if you want to talk to her if she's willing to talk see what you could do like there's this one moment where you think well at least at least he did that and no he's he's willing this is my mistake

and i need to pay for it and you're like wow that's surprisingly mature from this guy and then he's like do i need to pay for it right do i need to pay for it that much oh my god yes i i mean i love it to be clear that scene just i mean that every time she pulls off that little like knife twist which she does many times in this movie it just it makes me like cackle like i i know that's what she wants me to do but it is also like that's sort of the perverse joy of the of an elaine may comedy but it's such a key elaine may thing is i just think she has an equal amount of adoration and absolute disdain for every human being right i i feel like elaine may fundamentally her whole kind of comedic view of the world is she is just a violently unsentimental person. Right. She's able to sort of recognize the best and worst qualities of people and be charmed by who people are in their totality without ever feeling like she's endorsing them or condemning them.

Right. And I think this movie was very revolutionary. think this movie was very revolutionary i think her whole career is but this movie in particular i think is somewhat of a turning point in the sensibility of american comedies in that kind of way of letting behavior get messier and also how you shoot and edit performances and you know not needing to be rat-a-tat-tat tight tight tight tight tight um you know clean uh audience allegiance sort of you know clearly defined lines kind of way um but it is that thing of just like it wouldn't work if she fully hated the guy but it also wouldn't work if she thought he was charming you know right and i mean i'm sure you'll get to this maybe more in the mikey and episode, but that was inspired by she supposedly grew up around mob connected people and saw some pretty like horrible people in formative years of her life. So, like, yeah, she must have had to, you know, if they were close relatives or, you know, part of the family in some way, you have to learn to see the humanity in some horrible people. Yeah.

I also think she just is one of those people who is just finds human behavior very fascinating. Like, it is very fascinating that this person can also do this, that they can have these two contradictory traits you know i mean she's right to like the she's not judgmental in the way a hollywood comedy is would normally be but in that a hollywood comedy usually needs to make a judgment about a character fairly quickly so that the audience is like okay i get it this is the scold this is the weirdo this is the oddball you know like i get where you're putting this person in the comic like environment and like and then i laughs will follow and she's just like letting the behavior speak for itself and it's it's there's nothing like

this movie and her other movie there's really this it's inimitable like i i'm trying to think like because like the what what is like this now griffin it's like the safty brothers or whatever it's this thing where it's again it's sort of like the the sort of painful like you kind of feel for the person but you're also kind of churning and you feel kind of insane you just sort of feel like you know like am i watching something that isn't real the safties have cited her as a as an influence right right i mean it makes a long dialogue and the you know right yeah yeah but but i also just think like yes yes in comedy no one really has the guts to go this hard right i mean to keep you in these pressure cooker situations like this, to really funnel into the best and worst qualities

of every character. I think she is kind of a one-off. People took a lot of elements of what she did, but no one really has the courage to go full tilt and present it as a straight comedy, you know? Yes. Not a thriller with comedic elements or something like that it's it's

as you said it's like there are movies like you know uh uh uncut gems or goodfellas or you know any of these filmmakers like scorsese the safties who use a lot of comedy in their films but are not thought of as comedic directors i think these are all people who cite her movies a lot but still they're like i'm putting those sensibilities into a crime movie or an action movie or a horror film or whatever it is to present it as like, here's a romantic comedy and then have unbroken you're citing is saying, like, 99 people would just be like, he has to do it. They would be selling you on, like, he's so in love. You're going to be so in love. It's a whirlwind. It's crazy.

But, like, he just has to do this. And you understand. And this, when I'm watching this, I'm like, he doesn't have to do this. Like, and I have, like, my hands over my he doesn't have to do this. No, no. Like, can I have like my hands over my mouth? And that's 10 times funnier. Yes. Yeah. No.

And I mean, with talking about how much this film I think has to do with the Jewish identity in the seventies. I mean, I was, I watched last night, um, the American masters that Elaine made directed,

uh, on Mike Nichols, which I think was a year or two after he passed. And people were asking if we were going to do that as a bonus episode. It's not bonus episode material.

It would be weird. It's weird. It's all about Mike Nichols. Like, it would just sort of be odd to try and, like, delve in. Anyway, go on, go on. It's also, like, 80% all clips from one interview that

Mike Nichols did like one long form interview it's really letting him in his own words tell a story I think maybe the most most interesting thing about about that documentary is is the idea and the fact that yeah she finally got let out of you know movie jail

to whatever extent that she was in it by choice or you know because of the you know, movie jail to whatever extent that she was in it by choice or, you know, because of the industry. And the reason was to do, you know, a loving obituary of of the male partner. Right. Like that's that's basically what we need to talk about with that, I think. really interesting about to me as well is the section where he's talking about his relationship with her and their breakup and how they didn't really speak for 10 years and all that sort of stuff it's very fascinating to think of the choices she's making in terms of which clips to include and to not sort of let herself off the hook on that here's an interview that he conducted with

someone else years earlier now she's in an editing booth deciding which words to pass along as sort of like his obituary um but he talks about the fact that you know they go from being compass players to uh you know becoming national tv stars doing all these commercials going on broadway and they do this broadway run uh that's just a blockbuster i mean they, they, Mike Nichols says like, it is the only time in my life I have ever been part of anything that everybody liked. It was bizarre and it was

eerie. We never got a bad review. We never got a bad comment. It was everyone agreed that what we were doing was funny and we didn't understand why people were so impressed with it. That they very much had this attitude of these are the dumb skits that we were doing in a bar for five people for years. I don't understand why people like them now.

We find them somewhat charming, but why is everyone reacting this strongly? And Nichols' attitude to that was, this is amazing. I have it made. I have to work two hours a night. I do these things with my best friend that I've done for years.

I'm famous. Girls like night. I do these things with my best friend that I've done for years. I'm famous. Girls like me. I'm rich. And Elaine May was like, I hate this. I want out. And like she was right. Right. Like because she was right.

Instead of instead of them being the comedy double act that toured for years. And, you know, that was their thing. And eventually they got a little, you know, like new comedy emerged that they could not keep up with or what you know they went out of fashion they went out on top yeah kings as you say basically no bad reviews they basically invented an art form and then he was like oh god i feel like a piece of me is lost i guess i'll be an acclaimed filmmaker who works for generations and she's like you know obviously does not have his like soaring like chain but also like they just go off and do incredible things separately and then late in life they get back

together they do a couple great movies yeah it's just funny to me because, I mean, she's so much more press shy than he is. Right. And she's sort of so unsentimental that even something like this is her Q&A, which is one of her rare times doing a public appearance and talk about her work. She gave so many monosyllabic answers. Right. Like she's not nostalgic. She doesn't want to look back at her accomplishments and this sort of stuff. And Nichols is, you know, more conventional for someone with his level of success of being open to talk about all of his accomplishments and failures and what have you. But he really talks about it as you were joking, David, like him saying, what am I going to do? I'll become an acclaimed director. But he really was like, I was out for six years. Like, I was a mess. It was like the worst breakup of my life. Right. It fucked him up. She couldn't explain to me why she was ending this thing. I resentedented it i didn't know what to do in my career i only stumbled upon the directing thing a couple years later and it was a godsend and she didn't really have a reason she was

breaking it up other than i'm tired of doing something i know we can do yeah that's the thing it's like we've done this what more is we've done this right yeah it makes sense right she married a guy he felt very betrayed they ended their relationship and she just kind of went on the We've done this. What more is there? We've done this. Right. Right. It makes sense. Right. She married a guy. He felt very betrayed. They ended their relationship and she just kind of went on the down low for a while. And he, you know, starts building up his reputation as this big director. But very much it feels like New Leaf was kind of people saying like, Elaine May, shouldn't you make a movie by now?

You know, I mean, she had a lot of free reign, even if they ended up pushing back more in the cut. But it was very much a thing where people are like, you should be a filmmaker, right? you know i mean she had a lot of free reign even if they ended up pushing back more in the cut but it was very much a thing where people are like you should be a filmmaker right you're like this defining comedic voice it's not just that it's like she's like i guess okay all right i'll make a movie who should be in it though and they're like you should be in it you maniac like well you're the star right she was like i don't want to be in it they're like we won't make it unless you're in it you're a. That's the whole fucking idea.

Right. So then you get to this movie and it's like Neil Simon, who's one of like the most successful humorists in America, is like, Elaine May should direct my script. Right. She should be the one to do this. And she comes on and says like, well, but I know you're so particular and you put in your contracts that you can't change a word. as like, well, but I know you're so particular and you put in your contracts that you can't change a word. My whole background is improv. I have a different sensibility. I want to do it my way. Can I shoot every scene two ways? Can I shoot every scene word perfect as you wrote?

And then once we have a good take of that, we'll do a run of it where I get to have the cast improv as they like. Basically, basically inventing the Judd Apatow method of filmmaking yes right and she essentially said i'll do two complete cuts of the movie we'll screen both of them and we'll see which one's better and what happened was he agreed to that she started doing it that way and then when he stopped showing up to set she just stopped shooting the boring one the california sweet version essentially right yeah yes uh what a legend and but then but he did he was he was The California Suite version, essentially. Right. Yes. What a legend.

But he did. He was picky and fussy about lines being changed. I feel like I was reading about that, that he was doing his usual sort of persnickety, like, I'm Neil Simon. He talked about this movie less than any other adaptation in his entire career. Because it's not his. It's an Elaine May film.

Right. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's funny because it's a good script. You know, if it, if it's a script,

which I think a lot of it is, and it has very funny, Neil Simon is like one of the most, uh, he has aged worse than almost any generational figure right like yeah because we're talking about a generational figure it's not just that he was successful yes right no but like a name brand onto himself right and it was i mean it was almost a neil simon above a title was like marvel studios i mean it was just like right this is home-based i know the

types of actors who are in this the types of directors this is comfort food it's gonna be sean georgia if it's not a big parking lot the action is gonna be wrote okay but everything else uh no i mean they always have second unit do those scenes right yeah but um if you but he was he was like a franchise right if it's not in movie theaters which it usually was every year go to broadway he's got something on broadway maybe he has a tv show going maybe you know like he's got a new book out like and it's always this anytime i watch a neil simon thing or you know you're kind of like oh you know like it's that kind of a reaction usually yeah you know like uh like there is a cost it's it's

how much do you dial into the causticness like the out-of-towners which i guess is one of the most iconic neil simon movies have you seen the out-of-towners griffin i'm assuming yes it it's to me like it's only really funny if you're like oh this movie hates these people i'm watching a movie punish people and like i'm not sure that's what that movie thinks like you know and that's sort of the weird balance with him like i'm like does he just hate these people or is this just like a gentle comedy of manners well look this is the other thing right neil simon falls into that tradition of the the jew who wants to be accepted by the goys, right? There is a packaging of the Jewish mentality and the Jewish humor into a mode that is understandable to outside audiences is like, oh, that the Jew thing, you know, but in a very, very cute way. I mean, if you look at the 60s and 70s are when like the Jewish sensibilities in comedy really start to come to the forefront. And you don't just have Jewish comedians who

change their names and then work the borscht bell and now just do sort of like wrote sort of routines. You really have movies that are about the Jewish identity, right, and our place in American culture at large and all that sort of stuff but you know the the woody allen of it all is both like more caustic and more please love me this is about me this isn't about jews this is about me sure and right yes right and the neil the neil simon thing is just like look we're pretty wacky like it's like this like you know whether whether it's the whole things about a family whether it's about just the one character who's the odd duck out it's like what can you say we're smart alex to the extent maybe that if if this what if it wasn't a jewish creative team every step of the

way behind this film the the charles gordon character would possibly be a horrible anti-semitic caricature yes yes absolutely he's like a wife thief who's trying to pick off this blonde college student i mean that's the thing you could present it as this like what can he do the the winds of love blow him in this direction or you could write you could be like this is a movie about a creepy predator who won't leave a woman alone well that's a lane maze big takeaway is no this is a movie about a guy making a series of choices i am not gonna act like it's like what can he do he's stuck it's like this is a man who made a series of choices

yes i mean should we go through the plot griffin like i mean or just scenes that we like or like you know however you want to i mean i think we should go through it but but you're right avery this film is unique to have like all the key collaborators are jewish right i mean to say like groden is actually jewish it's not a waspy actor playing jew in a way that would have been horribly offensive right it's It's like a Jewish director adapting a Jewish script that's adapted from a Jewish short story. Even the music is like Burt Bacharach, like a Jew doing pop, right? Doing easy listening. There's something to the authenticity of this, of not packaging the sort of the waspy perception of of jewishness for comedy and really kind of funneling

into the the you know the fundamental thing which is just a people raised in a culture of grief and misery and worry right i mean at the time like you read the the reviews of like people were like is this movie anti-semitic because of the genie berlin character but it's that classic thing of like where they're like i don't get it this is too searing like surely this is just a caricature and i should be offended because they're like you know what she's the kvetchy jew and he ends up with the the shiksa you know like like isn't there something terrible going on here shouldn't I be outraged about this and like

it's that sort of surface reading of it that is I would say off the mark but there's that key line for me it's in one of the scenes where he just said like my entire life I thought someday I was gonna end up in a place like this with a girl like you you know and what he's

saying is i thought someday i'd be able to jump out of my like class sphere i'd be able to be accepted by the goys i can be one of the rich beautiful shiny people i was i was reading a review on letterboxd of a new leaf where i think it was maybe brat pitt's review that this, that A New Leaf is as close as America can get to doing a British style class comedy. That's a good take. And it's, there's a similar thing with, with this movie. Like, yeah, it's about, it's about, and again, I say this as a non-Jewish person, but I, you know, obviously I have absorbed a lot of American culture uh and that is

there's a lot of Jewishness in there and I also lived uh one of my uh partners that I was with for a long time was Jewish and I lived with her family for a number of years um uh and I had blonde hair at the time so I was I was her shiksa um was honored to be um But a transgender shiksa, so, you know. Yeah. I played with the form. But, yeah, the whole movie is, yeah, this Jewish guy who even, like, his last name versus Lila's last name, like, he's Cantro

and she's, I think, like, Kaladni, something like that. Like, even his name is slightly closer to right but lila kaladni is is genie berlin and it's like her name is sort of like oh right oh boy ellis island didn't want to work on that one the the whole the whole movie he's striving towards this non-jewish version of of whiteness in america and especially i mean especially the scenes in minnesota where you see him like paired up against these like viking people but like if you watch the two weddings that first traditional jewish wedding is so joyous like both the event himself itself and even him he's happy in in the moments

when he's traveling with lila in the car and at the hotel stuff when he's not getting annoyed by her and taking himself out of the moment he's he's he's happy with her and which is not to say that i think jews should stay in their place and not strike. You know, I don't think the movie is saying that. I think that it's saying in this specific instance, his particular striving out of that class and out of that cultural background is so is is bad for him as well as bad for the people around him. And I do think that's part of the the Neil Simon more bottle bottle pitch of it is like what would the moral of the story be you know he's he ends up at a dinner party where he's surrounded by wasps who are like chatting about the weather and he's in hell like i think that is neil simon's big joke right or it's like yeah yeah yeah you know you want the nice midwestern blonde lady yeah well okay now, okay. Now you married her. Now what?

You're going to sell, like, you know, insurance? They're wasps and they're particularly evil. Like, one of them sells insurance, but then one of them appears to be a tear gas manufacturer, which is one of my favorite lines. Just Charles Gardner. Well, you know, there's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of money in tear gas. Another guy makes food to feed veal calves like it's just this sort of like banal evil that he's entered himself into but but as you said it's like you you see his moments of

frustration but also his moments of pure happiness until his face just look at it until the moment that civil shepherd steps in front of him and then he's ruined. And it is just from that moment on, he becomes fixated on the idea of could I pull it off? Right. Essentially, he becomes fixated on could I pass? Could I assimilate into that culture? Could I have that type of wife, that type of family, go to those types of parties? Could I fit in and wear it comfortably

and also my wife is 21 this girl is 20 she's got to be so much newer and fresher I know the reveal of Jeannie Berlin only being 22 is so huge because you're just like she's not even 22 yet

she's going to be 22 in 12 weeks I'm like this fucker's trying to shave three years off the model but the but that's he he only gets married as far as far as i'm interpreting these early scenes because he wants to have sex because it's 1972 yeah right right she's like we should wait right you know like so that's why he gets married it's also an absolute masterstroke on may's part that just there's almost no dialogue they're married in like three minutes of the movie it's like a look across a bar it cuts them spending a little time together under music then they're in bed and she goes

not until i'm married and they're at the wedding in a way it's so much better than doing the fucking fairly brothers thing where you show someone who's really nice and then who's suddenly like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde becomes a monster. You're just only seeing his sort of horniness driving his perception of her jumping so fast in time until they're at the wedding that he's not even really noticing who this person is. It's not that she revealed herself to be someone different. It's like he wasn't even paying attention. Things happen so fast. And the audience doesn't get the chance to really see who either of them are. There is when they're doing that, that quick courtship, there's like a vignette of them at dinner and she's like laughing too hard.

And there's a second in which it annoys him. And then he almost like shakes it off and then joins in laughing with her and it's like you could i guess you could read it either as him shaking off like don't be don't be annoyed let's just be like a normal person and find joy or it's him kidding himself and being like no you like this person you're having fun because he wants to have sex with her yeah yeah and it's also the just like i guess if that's the one thing yeah and he's but he's resigned to his lot as you're saying griffin where it's just like yeah fine right you know this is what you do you go to and you go on honeymoon in miami okay you sell baseball bats yeah and then when sybil shepherd razzes him essentially does like a little flirt

as you're in my spot he's just immediately like his whole like there's just a a you know a crack in the foundation of his you know and he's just like well wait a second like i can get out of here like is that wait a second am i am i allowed to be in a neil simon play like can i be the lead of barefoot in the park i mean she she appears in front of the sun like it's like a halo around her he can't see her because of obviously she's just silhouetted and she looks like an angel right yes this is her second movie i mean she's only been in the last picture show which she's you know she was this like beautiful ingenue like that she's still right in that zone but bogdanovich discovers her on a magazine cover in a supermarket she's never acted before he puts her in the movie and

eventually of course leaves his wife and key collaborator for her so there's also this like i guess has has that become public at the time that this movie comes out i mean there's just an interesting mirroring of sybil shepherd also being a real life shiska who pulled a jewish director who always tried to model himself as more of a wasp away from his wife wow i'm trying to see when it was official that i don't know though i'd have to i mean and obviously there's there's much that's been written on Peter McDonavich. Yes. You must remember, this just had the whole miniseries about it and all that. My point is just... Yes, go ahead.

It is fascinating that Cybill Shepherd holds a similar role in culture in the 70s as she does in this movie. in culture in the 70s as she does in this movie. I mean, she's... Our culture, like, acknowledged that she's hot enough and gorgeous enough and that smile is dazzling enough that you'll try to assassinate a political

figure for her. You'll leave your wife for her. And if you're Bruce Willis, you'll wear a toupee for her. You'll do crazy things if you're a man and Sybil Shepard smiles at you. Should I go on a Sybil run? Maybe. Should I watch Moonlighting and re-watch Sybil?

I've just started watching her sitcom. It's the best. I mean, I loved it when I was a kid. It's free on Vudu. It's weird that it's not on CBS All Access. And I wonder if that's... She said recently that the show was cancelled because Les Moonves made moves towards her

and she shut him down. And so they cancelled the show, even though it was successful. And I wonder if even with him gone, there's some lingering stuff at play. I don't know i i will say this though avery i look i'm always willing to chalk anything up to les moonves being a piece of shit but i will additionally say as someone who's been in a big sitcom hole for like the last two years the cps sitcoms are weirdly the ones that are the hardest to track down by and large

i think there's just some weird complicated rights things with a lot of those shows because a lot of them are just like they should be on somewhere the least of which should be cbs all access well you can watch it on voodoo free with ads i think cbs did not make it maybe the chuck you know that's a chuck laurie show and he does have his own sort of mini empire onto himself look how is how is it, Avery? How does it hold up? Because when I was a kid, I watched Sybil and loved it. I was like, I love these, you know, 40 something ladies who like drink cocktails. And I had the biggest crush on Alicia Witt.

Just like staggering crush. Of course. Just the mean, sarcastic, like what was she a piano genius who never wants to have sex or whatever like the coolest character in the universe i mean yeah there's some stuff there's some stuff that's tricky like uh in in the first episode alicia witt says if her mother doesn't stop interfering in her sex life she'll become a lesbian and it's like it's a threat um chuck laurie baby yeah obviously this is stuff that's not great but yeah it's fantastic you've got kareen

christine baranski amazing doing amazing work uh i'm surprised i'm surprised to use the term lesbian because obviously in the chuck laurie universe he also uh the lesbian is synonymous with a half man remember in the end of Two and a Half Men, when the kid left, the little boy left, and they went, how do we fill this gap? There's a half man in the title. And so they added Amber Tamblyn as a lesbian. I swear to God, I swear to you, that's what they did.

I believe you. Season 11 here. Remember when Two and a Half Men just kept going? They just threw in Kutcher. He was just like a guy. the premise of the show was uptight dude and his son have their life crashed by reckless playboy brother and by the 11th season it was uptight guy whose son has abandoned him to become a missionary and whose brother has been killed by a falling piano lives with an over sex tech billionaire who bought his house but let the guy move back in because he feels bad for him

and then his brother's long lost estranged lesbian daughter who he never met before yes yes yes and then in this in the last season, they adopted a boy. Did you know that? No. They adopted a six-year-old. I think because maybe CBS is just like... So now it's three full men? Right. Like, we need some juice.

This show needs a kid again. They could just have a kid again, right? And they're like, yeah, sure, fine. He adopts a kid. I don't know. I didn't realize that Audra Lindy was sybil's mom on the sybil sitcom who is her mother and this as well which is cool uh look i'm gonna re-watch sybil okay yeah i'm gonna fucking do it it's four seasons it ends on a cliffhanger um so be wary of that

she's gonna get with ira I remember Ira no it's can I can I spoil it? Ira is her ex right? that's who Ira is yes right no the cliffhanger is she and Christine Baranski

get arrested for murdering Christine Baranski's ex-husband what? sounds good they gotta bring Christine Baranski's star

has never been more powerful why doesn't she just be like we're doing it guys we're bringing sybil back i'm it'll be on cbs all access why not that was also the other rumor about sybil always was that it was like such a big like you know concerted effort to relaunch sybil shepherd's career right and then baranski just was the breakout is the one who wins the emmys became

the breakout star and that there was a lot of infighting on the show. I mean, Sybil has always been tagged as difficult. And of course, we always should take that at face value and ask no more questions. But she's a fascinating, like, beyond just, like, the stuff she's in. She's just a fascinating figure as you're saying griffin like you know what she's represented to different eras and like and this is her earliest which is just like bombshell you'll your brain will explode like you were saying every you'll you'll fucking assassinate the president you'll you'll shave your head into a mohawk i guess and

like last picture shows about like these boys punching each other in the face for two hours because they all want to fuck her. Well, she's very charming. And the director was like, hmm, this is a good idea. I mean, honestly, watching this movie, I wanted to leave my girlfriend for Sybil Shepard. You know, if I could hop in a time machine and give it a shot, I would. It's also just such a like, I think it's interesting that she chose this. And I don't say that in any sort of loaded way, but like Last Picture Show was such a sensation. She was such a breakout that I was having a hard time finding specific examples, but she apparently turned down a lot in order to do this.

That this was very deliberately, no, this is what my follow up is going to be. that this was very deliberately, no, this is what my follow-up is going to be. And it's a movie that's all framed around her, but it's also sort of framed around the mythical idea of what she represents, you know? She does get to do a lot for such a seemingly shallow character. Right.

In the first half, not so much, but then... Not so much, yeah. But once you get to Minnesota... I was reminded of, you know, the Garfunkel and Oates IFC show? They had an episode where they twigged that guys don't really listen to you. And I wonder how far into a relationship or a date with a dude you could get and not say anything and see if they would notice and what they would project on you and that there's a similar sort of vibe in the in the miami scenes with with kelly she's not giving him anything except for a couple little flirts right at the start she's pretty much made

the same joke twice you're on my stool you're in my spot right right because yeah she's she's 20 she's not actually like funny or interesting she's not lived enough life no to have anything to offer a 38 year old man to get to you know she's got to go to school she's yeah she's got english lit as well she's got english lit i mean and groden is 36 when he comes out he's 38 yeah you're right jesus yes i did my math wrong he's 38 right groden is is is famously old i know that's the thing with it you always underestimate how old he's always older than you think he is yes because he's now like 85 like he was born in the 30s he's 85 uh he plays the doctor in rosemary's baby and i remember seeing that going like that mathematically doesn't make sense right this man was in beethoven and i swear he was a grown-up then too like that's the whole thing

right but you're also used to dads in movies like beethoven being 38 that's what i'm saying like it's crazy that he's the yes he's the ob and uh rosemary's baby so you can say i mean he's playing he's probably supposed to read it a little longer younger than he actually is in this movie but still he's supposed to be firmly a man in his 30s he has a career not a job right pats and balls he's got some bats and balls yeah uh it's it's the same thing that ishtar does in its own weird way where it's just like she's really good in just establishing a lot very quickly through a lot of shorthand you know so you don't have to spend the 30 minutes waiting to get to the actual movie uh you know you can just dive into the characters through a lot of um just kind of keenly observed behavior but yes i mean

the point with shibble shepherd is it comes under 15 minutes into the movie right 22 22 okay i wrote it i wrote it down i took notes i was so excited to be on this podcast so you essentially have like 10 minutes of like you know set up 10 minutes of her starting to annoy him right and then and then the shishka comes it shiksa it's incredible i know i have no i've i've just been um i've been really enjoying you've said it in different ways and it's really fun your restraint i appreciate your restraint i i didn't i didn't want to jump in and correct because i i didn't feel it was my place. I mostly just kind of let it ride, but I mean, it's fun. Um, what I,

Jeannie Berlin, she's just emotionally immature, right? Like that's really the big diagnosis there. It's not like she's not a monster. She doesn't want to, you know, pee on him as Malin Ackerman does in the, uh,

heartbreak kid. Like she doesn't want to break his dick off during sex or whatever. She's just like, she needs constant affirmation. She's just kind of annoying. That's her worst flaw. But also, she's immature,

but also she can sense that he's not into it, and she's trying her best with the tools she has available to make the relationship fun again right she's drawing the circles on his chest he says i really don't like that and she goes okay i'll do squares instead it's a good line right as opposed to it being revealed that like the wife is actually a secret like recovering meth addict who like performed highway robbery or whatever like It's just so much more

interesting this way. I mean, her calling it pee-pee, I need to go pee-pee. It's all these little things. I think to some degree it almost works metaphorically for as an adult when you have to reckon with after you've slept with someone and now there's a certain level of mystique

that is gone, right? There's always that thing where this person exists as this like, oh my god, oh my god. And then you get to the other end of mystique that is gone, right? There's always that thing where, like, this person exists as this, like, oh, my God, oh, my God. And then you get to the other end of it and you're like, the most vulnerable thing in the world has just happened. The most revealing thing in the world has just happened. And suddenly you're an actual human being, you know? I mean, that mystique thing, like, there's a scene where they're getting ready to go out to the pool. And she's teasing her hair, trying to get it to look right. And he's just looking at her like,

what are you doing? This is insane. And it's like, yeah, when you're married to a person, you see all the things that they have to do to maintain the image that you were attracted to. And it can ruin it, sure. Yeah, and being an adult is learning to, like, appreciate that person as a full, real person.

But he's a guy who is just constantly obsessed with the idea of what if I could have this kind of life, this kind of person, this kind of this. And so, yeah, when she meets him, it's done for, right? She comes back, says, who are you talking to? He says, nobody, right? These scenes are so tough. They are. That's what I was thinking of, like, the Safdies.

Like, the slightly, you know, every time he's essentially finding ways to keep her quarantined while he explains why he has to go out or why the dinner reservation is at nine. The best thing I could do for you is leave you alone. Just crawling in my skin. That's what I was going to say. It's like another wild thing about this movie is like, I feel like anytime we talk about like studio comedies, I talk about my frustration with movies where just like characters don't solve

things quick enough, where dilemmas go on for too long, where lies are maintained for too long. And it's because they don't want to resolve enough, where dilemmas go on for too long, where lies are maintained for too long, and it's because they don't want to resolve the conflict of the movie. But instead, you get into this thing where you're just like, this strains credibility.

How can they still be caught up on this? And it's like, okay, so the suntan thing happens, right? He's telling her to put on the sunscreen. She has to stay in for a day, yes. Right, right. So I was going like, is this movie really gonna

have it be like eight days of her being so sunburned and instead it's just like no he realizes the sunburn pass is fading so he starts making just such on there was no need for his lies to be this big right yeah and his instinct at every turn in this movie when confronted with a problem is to lie he he triples down and always with a very big lie he right he never is like tries to sort of dodge or he just like runs straight at it which is why the eddie albert scenes are so incredible because eddie albert's like i hate you and won't stand to talk to you I see what you want right but they're just these colossal unsustainable lies you know I just love that the movie doesn't give him the out of like he comes up with a little fib and then he gets caught it's like no he somehow

keeps getting away with it but how well because I mean there's there's the moment where he's saying you know I was in this horrible car wreck. And Jean just looks at him and says, were you really in a car wreck, Lenny? Yeah. This is the scene that murders me. Right. It is, to borrow from the title, it's heartbreaking. Because to even, if you love someone, to even get to a place where you have to ask that of

them, either you think they're lying to you or you suspect they're lying to you. And you think you're about to do a horrible insult to them to ask them that she's, she's dealing with so much and you can see it all in her face and the line reading and the, the time that's taken on that. And then,

yeah, immediately he quadruples down and says, call the patrolman that pulled me out of the car. He picks up the phone. The way he uses his military service as a guard any time he can. But it's also like he does. It's one of those moments where he takes a classic charles groden pause and you look at him when she says did you really get in a car crash he looks at her for a little while before he starts going

are you questioning me and you see in his eyes that he's like i could be honest at this moment or i could triple down again yeah you see him doing the math god he's he's so good he's so good he's the fucking king i love him so much he he never i guess all right okay can we talk about him for a second let's do a little garden career corner because he's barely been in anything before this he's in he has a small role in catch 22 which is a mike nichols movie maybe that is how elaine may notice this you know no idea you know as you say he has a small role in rosemary's baby after this he writes a movie called 11 harrowhouse that he's in never seen which i think is like a sort of like funny thriller it's like uh they're all in a house full of traps and it's got candace bergen and

james mason honestly it sounds pretty fucking good uh yeah that sounds rad as hell yeah and then he's in the king kong remake he's like the second lead of that he's he's kind of the jack black right the yes exactly yes um he's the mogul yeah right and then i mean i guess he you know he's in that marlo thomas movie thieves he's in uh something called just me and you with louise laster but i feel like guess he you know he's in that marlo thomas movie thieves he's in uh something called just me and you with louise laster but i feel like then he's just like once he's in heaven can wait which elaine may writes obviously for warren patey which he's hysterical and like that's just a top drawer comedy supporting performance that's when he's just like oh yeah this is what i should do i'll just do this like real life i mean oh god he's so funny

in real life ishtar he's he's got that small role oh ishtar is incredible and yeah he's so good nishtar uh but but i think to some degree that was not uh by choice i mean i i remember a couple stories about charles groen that are seared my head. There's a few sort of basically bombs in a row here. Right. I know he was like an acting school classmate of Gene Wilder. And there's the story that Gene Wilder always tells where they would sit around and talk about their dreams for their careers, wanting to be leading men. And Charles Grodin just said to him in his very Grodin way, like you imagine it was with the tone of one of his Letterman performances where he's like, Gene, come on, you're not going to be a movie star. Right. And he was like, what? And he was like, look, I mean, come on, you're a great actor, but look at you. I mean, you can't hide the Jew on your face. Look at that hair. Your name's Gene Wilder. It's not going to happen, Gene. I mean, I could pass. You know, I'm a Jew, but I could pass. Right. Which is so much of his persona to begin with. But he very much was like, I think I'm passing enough to be able to work as a mainstream comedy leading man. I'm conventionally handsome enough, all that sort of stuff. tagged with that guy doesn't have the box office juice he's a little too caustic he's not charming he's never going to cross over but what happens is a lot of people like warren baity are like that guy's the funniest guy in the world but and and he's funny as a stiff like this i can make i can

cast this guy as an uptight square and it's going to murder like it's going to be so good so the people who have good taste like albert brooks and war, you know, the Muppets, they all go like, right, please, please, Grodin, come in here. Play the heavy, play the asshole, play the deadpan best friend, come in and be the fourth or fifth lead. Just give us your funny. a while of just like his standing is so good with so many of the most important people in Hollywood that he's never lacking for work. But it feels like he has a little bit of resentment of the fact that he never became the guy. Right. And he's like, oh, he's playing the part in the Steve Martin movie. He's playing the part in the Gene Wilder movie. Right. I mean, it's always sort of like incredible shrinking. Well, it's all these people like we're like yeah right keeping him in rotation and then

midnight run happens and midnight run is like you hear all these stories about just they wanted anyone but him it was uh de niro was the one who suggested it to breast and was like that's the funniest guy in the world this would be funniest with groden and breast agreed and they just fought for it so hard they wanted robin williams they wanted share i mean if you read the 20 people they wanted for that part instead and they just kept doubling down doubling down doubling down until finally they were just like fuck it cast charles gordon see if we give a shit these things go down they go down that's my favorite line reading i the best yes i he's the best I want to watch that movie right now.

I'd watch it two times a year. Yeah. But then it's right. Like, that happens in 1988, right? Then in the years in between that, he does Cranium Command, which is a Disney World ride. He does Taking Care of Business, which is a fucking Belushi, a James Belushi vehicle. Second build to Jim Belushi. No offense, but ye and then and then he does

beethoven and now it's like for the first time he's like the single name above the title it's a big hit he has cachet and he's like i guess this is who i am i'm a fucking dog movie guy and he cashes out on that for a couple years for not that long and then then he's like fuck it i'm out and then fucking is just like right i'm gonna get really into like law and hosting a late night news show do you remember that he had like a cnn show no it was on the cnbc and he was like man he was like tagging in on 60 minutes too which was like the the like side series to 60 minutes where they put the stuff that couldn't make the main show or whatever he was like movies are bullshit i'm gonna be all about prison reform and then like he just kind of like came back recently and it's like oh he's still great he's still so funny

yeah um even though i mean like some of the stuff like in the comedian he plays like chevy chase have you seen the the great film the comedian no uh like he's like the preening uh asshole comedian who's a big star and like wants everyone to kiss the ring that movie stinks he's really good in it he's always good he's so good while we're young while we're young he's incredible in that where he's like essentially playing wise men right yeah he's sort of playing like or one of the brothers right like an old documentary you know yeah honcho legend yes but but he just didn't act for 12 years and was like i don't care i mean he just has this attitude but he also talks about it in a way where it feels like he does wish he had gotten to do 10

movies like this you know he's just always good he's always always fun and if you go through his career you're like oh i forgot he's there's always something where you're like ah fuck i forgot he's in this he's incredible and he's so balanced he's uncredited and we thank thank you charles i don't think he's uncredited he has that amazing line where he's looking at the books. And he says, like, if I did my taxes this way, you'd put me in jail. He's very funny, very deadpan. That scene is kind of the best scene in Dave, in its whole sort of fantasy. I love Charles Grodin.

I love him in this movie. This movie does not work without him can i say his his performance in this movie there are there are so many moments where i saw a lot of jim carrey in him if that makes sense or i mean the other way around like the way yeah he juts his lower jaw out at times and like they're gesticulating with his arms and like yeah that's scrambling to maintain a lie or something and i think that there's a certain smarmy arrogance you know it's it's not like the so often these types of characters are played with by guys who are just so unabashedly charming and cute in their personality that you go like, ah, but I can't hate him.

And I feel like Carrie also, like people, when Carrie started making movies, people were like, you can't do this. You can't make a character like Ace Ventura for the entire movie who never resembles a normal human being. There's no such thing as a pet detective. Right. But also just like he was so committed to like i'm just playing an asshole or an idiot you know there was no concern for being likable he has no vulnerability in terms of that he's right he's happy to lay it out and that's why scenes like him you know rushing to pick up

the phone to say like call the patrolman like work because yeah he's he he can be a monster in that moment. And that's why scenes like the one that is my background, where he goes to the magic show to try and impress the family, which is just this mind-bogglingly awkward scene, are just hysterically funny, even as they're so crazily awkward. It's funny, too. Eddie Albert, entirely deserved academy award nomination

essentially has two big dialogue scenes right a lot of the movie he's just kind of sitting there in silence stewing and glaring he's looking grumpy yeah right yes it's absolutely so fucking good though in those two scenes where he finally uncorks the bottle and is like, let me give you a whiff of this. You really think that there's like water in here and there's sulfuric acid. You're not picking up what I'm putting down, buddy. But he's also, I mean, you know, the mother is kind of just like clueless, charmed by everything, right?

She falls for the sort of performative bullshit that Grodin's putting on. I think Sybil Shepard just kind of enjoys him like a toy. I mean, it's such a good reveal when he shows up at her college and she's just like,

I care more about class than you. What are you doing here? You were like an activity on a vacation. Yeah, you're like a bit I did. Yeah. Right, but Albert is just staring him down

every single moment. And just, you know know he's getting dragged along to all these things you're wondering why he's tolerating this guy being let into every activity the family goes on i mean he he he loves his his daughter so much and like to i mean i think i think too much either in the in the final argument between between him and he becomes the sort of protective dad in a kind of annoying creepy way right yeah he says like Grodin says I just want Kelly and the dad says so do I and you know the fact that it cuts to the wedding right after and you wonder what happened in between that I like in that moment i sort of think like is he realizing like

oh i'm too attached to her yes you know i'm not gonna like anyone she gets with it might as well be this guy i mean like she wants to marry him it's like how much can you like you can't lock her in chains i guess is what the but yeah i don't know i think the thing with the eddie albert character too is she's as much of a status symbol for him as she is for grogan right she fits into the dynamic of look at me i have the perfect house i have the perfect daughter you know at the wedding there's there's this old guy that comes up to grogan and says you're you're the luckiest man alive there's even when she's on college campus like random men walking past her like hey kelly like it makes sense because sybil shepherd is so luminous in this movie but like yeah she must

that there must just be dozens of men hundreds of men in her life who all want her and yeah that reflects on the dad right right he he wants people to be turning their heads when his daughter walks by he just doesn't want to welcome those people into his family yeah he doesn't want those people to have more domain than he does you know he's just one of those stars that is incredible like like do you know eddie alberts like because like when he's in this he's weirdly at a career high because he's just he's coming off of green acres which was like a you know a hugely popular sitcom and i get because because when i think of eddie albert apart from this i think of roman holiday right which like and like in like oklahoma like he used to be i

think of him as fun and like kind of goofy and this sort of high energy actor and then i get but and so i was trying to figure out like how does he get cast here as this like stone man like this just absolute bastard but i forgot that in green acres he's kind of this i've never i've never really seen green acres i just know it's about like big city people who live on a farm right it bizarrely was romley's favorite show growing up so i've seen a lot of my sister was all in on green did i make that no there is a pig but the pig doesn't talk you're conflating it with mr ed that's okay right but like but in green acres is he kind of he's kind of the stiff in that right

because he's like he doesn't like it right yeah he's the stiff because she's like silly but she's more charmed by everything going on around her even if she she's like, I could never. He's more, like, grump. Yeah. It's fucking six seasons of them just not wanting to run a farm. That's the premise. I know.

Can you just imagine Romilly just sitting glued to the television putting on, like, disc after disc of Green Acres? Because it wasn't even on rotation anywhere.

We had to buy her all the DVD sets. Wait, that's on Nick at Night? No one's gonna, like, watch that in the 90s, right? This is in the mid-2000s. She's born in 1998. This is in the early to mid-2000s.

She's watching Green Acres all day. And my mom, I just remember once us walking into the living room, she's sitting there an inch away from the television watching her 10th episode in a row. And my mom just goes, why was it this show? It has a pig. It has a pig. It has a pig.

She liked that Eva Gabor was fancy, I think. My favorite thing about Eddie Albert is that Albert is his middle name. His last name was Heimberger. And he changed his name from Heimberger because everyone called him Eddie Hamburger. He also used to be a trapeze performer, a nightclub singer. He co-hosted a radio show. He served in the war as a military intelligence officer who photographed U-boats. One of these things where you would read an obituary of a guy who was born in 1902.

And it would just be the most staggering series because he lived through modern history. And like this guy fucking rules. I love him. He died at the age of 99 too. Wow. He was the voice of the vulture on the Spider-Man cartoon show. He's the warden in the longest yard. Like he's just in everything.

He's in the Witch Mountain movies. Like you just talk about a guy who like he's at Concord, the Concord Airport, 78. These are just his post-Heartbreak Kid credits, which is essentially the beginning of the last chapter of his career, which lasts for another 25 years. I mean, respect. Full respect to Eddie Albert.

Should have won? No, I guess not. But whatever. Great Oscar nomination here, late in life. As much as he's the stickler in this, he does get this great physical performance moment when Grodin has been invited to the boat the next day by Kelly

and Albert sees him approaching and runs to get the rope and push the boat off before Grodin can get onto it. I think that's a very, it's a very fun, silly moment. Yes. The speed of which Grodin runs to the boat while also pulling his shirt off

so he can land on the boat and be in, I belong here mode, you know, but, but here's another thing that I just forgot that this movie does so well where which is tell sybil so early on it's like their third scene together it's not a secret yes no they're in the water right and then she walks away and he says i have to tell you i'm married and i went is this going to be some dumb thing where because of the wave she doesn't hear him and instead she comes

back and she's like oh interesting she says what what else is new right because she's trying to play this weird blithe kind of like oh yeah you know i'm having fun on vacation yeah right so it becomes oh he has to convince the parents and he has to figure out what to do about his wife but i just love that like that's halfway through the movie and it's like so now he has to be a prunt with her because he really wants to end this and he has to win over the parents. It's not going to be 90 minutes of him coming up with new excuses to keep her in the room and lying to Sybil Shepard, you know? the premises can be the only premise for all of the running time you do whatever the conflict is until you've run out of juice or it's strained credibility and then you move on to the next thing that would happen and then that becomes the next conflict right you know and and the scene just the fucking pecan pie scene him trying to break the news to her all his wind up all his like buffering before he gets to it, which she thinks is him.

He's dying. Right. Right. And there's that beautiful shot where like she's consoling him, his head's down. He feels relieved. He's finally gotten through to her. She says, I can't believe you never told me you were sick and dying. And he just slowly looks up and barely avoids making eye contact with the camera directly.

And he just cannot even hold his contempt for her and just says like, I'm leaving you. It's over. Yeah. The marriage is over. There's a moment where you're like, oh, is the movie going to be him faking his death? And then he's like, no, I'm too, right,

essentially arrogant to let that happen. It just avoids all the things you you worry it's gonna get stuck doing and then that scene where elaine may is like by the way we're not leaving this like yeah you know he's not saying i'm leaving you and then we're gonna cut away to him packing his bags nope five more minutes guys put him on the clock genie berlin doesn't like this news fyi now remind me does does the the eddie albert scene happen before or after that where he comes clean to them before right because he says i'm gonna tell them at drinks and then i'm gonna take her out to dinner there there's that great moment too where he like comes back from having spent the whole day

with the tan changes into the shirt and tie immediately is leaving again. Yes, and he's like, oh, I'm taking you to dinner, 9 o'clock. Right, right. She's like, how did you get that tan? And he's like, I've been sent on the lousy courthouse steps. How fast do you think the law moves in Florida after he's previously told her that courts in Florida open at 7 a.m.? And he's got to go there the morning after a car crash.

And just the insincerity of every time acting like, I'm doing you a favor. You don't want to be. You have no idea what these courthouses are like. You don't want to hang out with this army guy, the language that's going to be. I wouldn't go to this neighborhood if I could avoid it. You know, just everything is always like,

I love you so much. I can't make it do this but then yeah the the fucking the eddie albert thing of just what's his immediate line he says uh in response i'm looking here um well whatever it is it's the end of that scene where you know he says his his fucking stay away from her i don't hand out my daughter to newlyweds. He goes on his whole speech. And then Lenny says, so you don't approve. And he says, not if they tied me to a horse and pulled me 40 miles by my tongue.

And Charles Grodin's response is, I respect your frankness. It's so goddamn good. It's so funny. Here's a weird runner that I noticed just off that scene. One of his responses to the new Luet thing is, he's a nut. And it was just said perfectly. But also, earlier on, Sybil eats nuts at him with the bar and says, thanks for the nut. And then earlier on in the movie uh lila when she's eating

the egg salad she uh she goes i'm an egg salad nut and it's just i don't know nuts keep popping up in this movie if someone wants to do a tv tropes like deep dive cinema sins on his trailers what does the nut mean in terms of of heartbreak kid i'm i'm here for it because I wrote it down and I circled it on the page. They're a bunch of nuts. I don't know. This movie's chock full of nuts. You remind me, Avery, of the other just kind of like amazing directorial

trick of this movie is just how good Elaine May is at the comedic reveal through edit where how long she stays on Charles G groden's face before cutting and showing us the uh the cottage cheese around her mouth uh not cottage cheese what what is it what egg salad egg salad and uh the same thing with the suntan you know like in all those scenes you understand that she's done something that she looks horrible and she holds off on cutting to genie berlin for

as long as she possibly can so it just builds in your mind until you get to the reveal um but yeah i just love that like you know he he has these two horrible disastrous conversations right with the father and then with his wife and then just cuts to him in new york signing the papers trying to own up to his mistakes right this is my mistake i made i have to own it and then he just like a lunatic just flies to the midwest doesn't even get any cold weather clothes which new york gets cold he yeah should have access to to something but he's constantly walking around Minnesota with just his sport coat pulled up around his neck and his flat cap just freezing.

But the joy that like, oh, this movie isn't going to give us 30 more minutes of comedy of misunderstanding and him trying to keep the lie spinning. The movie is now, this guy has done another incredibly reckless thing, has gone all in. He's pot committed to this relationship.

And now the rest of the movie is 30 minutes of him trying to convince everyone to let him into the door, through the door, you know? And it's funny. Very, very funny. I mean, almost funnier, or at least it's a thing where like she, it's a perfect pivot. Like, I don't know. Or at least it's a thing where it's a perfect pivot. I don't know. I enjoy this section, but I also just enjoy it as this weird fresh fish out of water nightmare thing that's happening. Yeah.

And he's so guileless about it. He's just like, I'm ready. I'll wait. I'm fine. I'm going to do this. I said I'd do it, so I did it. Right. Right.

Stalking her on campus. That moment where he's hiding behind a tree and then pops out at her. Yeah. It also just underlines how much you're just like, you're like an entirely different generation than her. You know? Absolutely. Like, now you're seeing her amongst her own people. You know? Like, the boy she should be dating, and you're a creepy old guy hiding behind structures.

He's almost twice her age yeah like the the of course the dad's gonna be albert's gonna be upset enough even without the newlywed stuff and and and he's who is he he has no money because he gave it all to the woman he just divorced uh he sells athletic goods everything everything about him gets across that you know he talks about himself as a determined young man and he is in the sense that he's determined to do to get out of things like yeah he did three years in the army didn't go overseas because of a minor back injury like he's what he works incredibly hard at getting out of his commitments yes he's he's bullheaded just right entirely uselessly but just the beauty of like

he finally kind of wears sybil shepherd down they have that scene that is one of the a griff pick for top 10 sexiest scenes in the history of cinema yes elaine made distilling exactly what i find sexy also crazy like the last picture show has an iconic undressing scene right there on the on the um driving board she goes to the yes the nudist part right yes and then and then one year later i mean like what what does sybil shepherd do after this because i do i can't i have to imagine she was like i have to stop being a fucking ingenue but i guess no because the next movie is daisy miller which is like the ultimate ingenue right then she becomes uh yeah exactly uh bogdanovich's mule uh mule jesus christ i wish he became i wish peter bogdanovich would make the mule to wow oh wait wait but it's like but it's bogdanovich

and he's a dandy he's got like uh no no bogdanovich directing sybil is the mule i mean bogdanovich also plays the drug king that would be fun too i just like the idea that bogdanovich is a drug mule and he he um you know his cover story is that he's always driving to the next dvd special feature that he has to tape 10 minutes for right and that's why he has the cravat and he's like officer i'm so sorry i just i have to go i need to you know give my perspective on you know the magnificent ambersons like i just have to go i remember orson said to me it's such a good title, you shouldn't even make the picture. That's his Paper Moon story he always tells.

He said, Orson, I don't know what it's about yet, but I have an idea of a title for a picture. What do you think about a picture called Paper Moon? And Orson said, it's such a good title, you shouldn't even bother making the picture

i just imagine them both in like smoking jackets on like a clear table just covered in cocaine one of those glass tables so i'm i'm flipping the pitch it's sybil shepherd directs peter bogdanovich wow that sounds great right and bob sounds good yeah peter's the mule um uh i i just think the mule should turn into one of those like wait there are eight jarhead movies direct-to-video franchises where each time it's a different octogenarian free alaska actor right but increasingly it becomes people like peter bogdanovich where it's like well he can't be the lead of a studio movie we can but yeah right you know the mule four he could yeah we can film in bulgaria and pretend it's set in a rodeo drive

you know mule day of the soldado i want mule day of the soldado oh god yes uh guys this is great we're gonna be billionaires yeah yeah we'll put it on the slate blank check pictures our first franchise but uh but yes this the scene the dinner scene right you have this incredibly sexy scene where unlike the last picture show scene it is cloaked in absolute darkness you see less than nothing right and it's just about this promise of they're not gonna touch they're gonna get as close to each other as possible without touching and they do so and it is uh so thrilling and then she brings him over for dinner and he does his fucking thing i'll just

quote the part of it uh uh because this was my backup if i couldn't find the full long uh back up if I couldn't find the full long intro I wanted to do originally. He says, this is honest food. There's no lying in that beef. There's no insincerity in these potatoes. There's no deceit in the cauliflower. This is a totally honest meal. And he's framing it as like my entire life I've wanted an honest meal. I finally found honest food.

And then it's almost a hard cut to them walking into the office, closing the door behind him. And Eddie Alpert saying, during dinner tonight, I was listening. I find that I can tell more about a man by listening to his dinner table conversation than by reading all the books in the world. I heard everything you said about honest food. And Charles Grodin is like nodding excitedly like he's nailed it. He's like, i fucking landed this and then just the delivery on i have never heard such a crock of horseshit in my life there's no deceit in the cauliflower i mean the fact that he's he's praising the honesty and integrity of these food we've spent the whole movie watching him lie yeah he loves

deceit this is a good point it's really the only tool he has that's really the the entire swiss army knife yes yeah even even like when he's trying he's getting rid of the the boyfriend at the at the college sybil's boyfriend and he, well, obviously I'll pretend to be a federal narcotics agent. And like somehow has a fake badge that we have no explanation for. It's a great question. Like there's probably a whole prequel to this movie about like what, how he sells his athletic goods and probably deploys all kinds of underhanded tactics. As a veteran,

I want you to purchase this wiffle ball bat set. Yeah, I guess maybe the badge is left over from the army somehow. Right, right, right. Oh my god. But yeah, but he pulls it off. Like you said, we have

that hard cut to him whatever. He convinces him. Or he breaks down the wall, I guess. And then he's trapped in his time enough at last, Twilight Zone ending of like, I gotta be around wasps for the rest of my life. I gotta have these fucking conversations. What are people walking out of the theater to that?

Because this movie was a comparable hit compared to everything else she made. But you compare this. I mean, this movie movie was a comparable hit compared to everything else she made. But you compare this. I mean, this movie is such an interesting parallel to The Graduate, right? Like it's the second Nichols film. It's the second May film. It's a breakthrough for both of them. But then their directing careers obviously go in very different directions.

And Graduate was not just a hit. It was like a cultural phenomenon and like an oscar darling and this was more of like a a hit you know uh and nothing crazy right right uh and i do think it's like as much as people talk about like holy shit the ending of the graduate when you see him looking off there and realizing there's something kind of easily digestible about it right i saw a quote i don't know if it was in the bright wall dark uh room piece i i've been citing or another one i read but saying that like you know as opposed to neil simon who makes comedies that go down easy elaine may makes movies that get stuck in your throat you know and there is just such a difference to the tone

of this ending of oh and now this is the first day of the rest of his life versus that exact same type of ending in The Graduate, which is underscored with, you know, Simon and Garfunkel and feels kind of like sweet and self-pitying rather than an existential nightmare. It's kind of a who knows what next? Like, you know, are they scared? Are they like regretting? Are they, you know, yeah, like, you know are they scared are they like regretting are they you know yeah like you know it's much more ambiguous this is he's in hell he's trapped in a glass case like and he can never escape until i guess he tries again and he's thinking of lila like he's humming yes he's humming why do birds or whatever one of their tunes yes and like yeah this is a man who we know once he gets himself cemented into a situation immediately wants out of it and is it's you know

is thinking of the greener grass on the other side and yeah he's got to be thinking oh i i messed up i gotta i gotta get back with lila somehow yeah it's funny i mean this movie just rules it's fucking perfect and then it's yeah good movie good movie it it feels like she could have had an easy career path trying to do this kind of thing again right be one of america's foremost wit directors witty director like do the do some neil simons do right get a best-selling paperback you know yeah you know the mood just movies for the sort of hoi polloi the you know the chattering classes it feels like the same way she was just like i've done that i don't really want to do that again you know cassavetes loves this movie he's the one who preaches out to her and is like i want to do

something together and so that's the thing that excites her more, is doing something entirely different. Whereas Grodin, I think, really wants to keep doing this and can't find as good of a match, at least for him as a leading man. Artistically. No, who let him, right. Right. He had to wait until he met this curious St. Bernard.

I mean, that was the... He finally found the right collaborator again. Finally. So I saw people tweeting about this a couple months ago when we knew that we were going to

do this episode. And I still can't get the exact straight answer. But as to why this film is so out of circulation, there was a DVD that was already out of print by the mid-2000s like i remember yeah that's

the dvd i bought on ebay it's an anchor bay dvd and it sucks the transfer is awful it's from like 2000 even it was only in print for like a year like even i when i my one semester of film school before i dropped out charles groden style of anything that gave me too much pressure. I remember a student organized screening of this movie on a projector from a DVD and it was a big deal because they were like, we got a copy. No one can see this movie. Like this movie is so hard to find the DVDs go for so much money now. And then that was now, you know, whatever, 15 years ago, almost. And it's only become more difficult it never was re-released it was never on blu-ray it i think was on netflix for like a weird period of like two months in like you know 2010 and then now it'll pop up on youtube it'll get pulled you know

but it's mostly sort of traded. And by all accounts, it is that it was produced by Palomar Pictures. And I don't understand why this movie ended up in a more complicated fate than the other Palomar movies, but Palomar was a subsidiary of ABC. Sure. And then before Disney bought ABC,

Bristol Myers acquired a majority stake, the pharmaceutical company. OK. And they just. Every time, apparently anyone has tried to re-release this movie, you know, I'm sure Criterion's tried. Everyone's fucking tried. The asking price they throw out is just absurd because they're just like, this is how much money we make selling pills. We're not a movie studio. We have ended up with these rights. You know, there are other Palomar movies like they shoot horses, don't they? The birthday party, take the money and run. Sleuth that I know are like, you know, but but taking Pell 1, 2, 3, the original Stepford Wives. I mean, these movies are out there. Somehow this movie got fucked. And whatever this company is called, not Meyer Briggs, Bristol Myers has like the final say over anything that happens. And apparently they just always go, we would rather make no money than license it out for $ thousand dollars you know or even two hundred thousand dollars we want ten million dollars you know the whole thing like i have to assume criterion did

the big um mikey and nicky like you know that the whenever i talk to them they're like it can take years like just the process of essentially doing what you're coaxing the rights from someone or coaxing a filmmaker out you know to be like hey do you want to like help us restore your movie or whatever but like so maybe hopefully one day they or someone like them can do a proper you know remaster of this movie which it needs desperately it just feels like one of those things where this company won't even pick up the fucking phone. Yeah, well, fuck them. They gotta figure it out.

It's just one of these things, not to spiral out too much, but that scares me about fucking companies like AT&T buying Warner Brothers because they start looking at it and go like, why would we make A Star Is Born? That's nothing. That's $200 million.

That's nothing to us. The whole thing that happens, because as much as it's freaking out, it's always been true. It's always been true. Studios get bought by these companies. And then Coca-Cola owned one of the companies. Warner Brothers. I can't remember who.

Columbia, maybe. They owned Columbia when she was making Ishtar. That's one of the things that fucked over Ishtar. And then 10 years in, they're like, why are we doing this? We keep having problems with the movies they make. Like, sell this. Like, fucking flip Columbia

to whoever wants it. We don't want it anymore. Anyway, hopefully. Is there anything left? Just that, I mean, fingers crossed with this Dakota Johnson movie supposedly happening.

Like, maybe Elaine May gets enough buzz and clout that enough people want this yeah to get a proper release we were originally gonna do elaine may last year last april and then that story came out of like oh dakota johnson says she's making a movie with elaine may and then we realized we were gonna do our razzies versus oscars bracket and she was the only female director who would fit into either quadrant unfortunately so we were going to do our Razzies vs. Oscars bracket and she was the only female director who would fit into either quadrant, unfortunately. So we were like, we have to hold on. But then with

COVID and everything, we're just like, I don't know. Is this movie going to happen? She's 88 years old now. Production is in such a weird state, you know? And it always felt like the movie was just kind of at early formative stages. Who knows? But I want nothing more than to see her make another movie

yeah nothing more i would die for it it would be really like a lovely argument for generational hollywood stardom like as much as i detest seeing like these legacy actors like if decode johnson is using her love her like family connection to Hollywood and I guess love of old film to be like yeah Elaine May needs to be out there that might redeem that nepotistic system for me for for a moment but not only that Avery I'm sorry Ellen that's not the truth is maybe the best Elaine May movie that Elaine May never directed. It's great. The Dakota Johnson, Ellen DeGeneres birthday party interview. It's this. It's what we're talking about.

Chef's kiss. That alone makes me go like, oh, Dakota Johnson would be a good Elaine May protagonist. Yeah. Right. Box office game. And sorry, can I talk about the remake for a second? Yeah. If we're going to do that box office.

We talked about two options because we can't find the box office for this. So we're saying we'll either do the top 10 of 1972. Okay, we'll do them both quickly and we'll do the top 10, the top five when the remake came out. The remake came out when I was trying university for the second time. I have tried three times and never completed.

Very Charles Grodin-esque. Hell yeah. But yeah, the second time was at university at the Cineworld Cinema near me. A franchise people from England or who have spent time in England might know of. They had a sort of precursor to MoviePass called Cineworld Un where you pay you know 11 pounds a month and you can go see as many movies as you like and i signed up for this knowing that i would be skipping classes and going to see films so i should get the best bang for my buck not knowing that cine world or at least the one near me had just trash movies right it was like the runoff theater

trash movies right it was like the runoff theater yeah so i i saw uh and you know i had to get the value out of my unlimited card so i saw the heartbreak kid remake twice in theaters i saw dan in real life twice in theaters you put it on your tab good luck chuck twice in theaters i now pronounce you chuck and larry it was a chuck heavy year for movies a lot of chucks how many chucks could have could have industry chuck too many so that's that's my experience with heartbreak kids seeing it for free twice hating it obviously well fuck it let's let's do it right now okay yeah like right now all right october 5th 2007 look maybe we'll do the farrelly's one day maybe we'll do this farrelly's one day maybe we'll do this again but i didn't see this in theaters the one thing i remember vividly is

this movie underperforms it comes out in a dead period where it should have had an easy big number one it underperforms and the studio's spin on it was that the movie had come out the same weekend that halo 3 came out and it was the first time that the movie studios said like we scheduled ourselves against a video game too big we fucked up right the kids are all home with their xboxes that's hilarious what do you want the world of warcraft expansion just released what do you expect what do you expect okay that is so funny because it's absolutely right it came out like days after halo 3 came out october 5th 2007 it opened at number two 14 million dollars nothing to be ashamed of these

days for a comedy but yes for a ben stiller vehicle even if it was an r-rated one this is him reteaming with something about merry people this is like six months after night at the museum especially when you hear what number one is it's a holdover it was number one the last week it is a disney family comedy the game plan the last buena vista film yes the game plan uh starring the rock and uh he's a football player uh and he's got a kid who wants to do ballet or something I have never seen the game plan

David, that kid was not part of the game plan for him The kid was not part of the game plan I remember there's a dog, he's like holding a dog It's like one of those things where he's like I'm a football player Here's this kid who's in a tutu and I'm holding a dog He looks flummoxed It's everything right now he's flummoxed as hell

it is fascinating and i feel like under discussed that there was that six-year period where the rock was like i am only a kid star yeah like it was like witch mountain game plan tooth fairy like he was like i just do family movies where when he came back to doing action and fast five, people were like, oh, all right. Oh, yeah. You're you were a famous athlete. You're holding a gun. Oh, I enjoy this. Mr. Game plan. You are covered in muscles.

I forgot about that. That's the other thing. He slimmed down. He lost a bunch of weight in the family movie because he was like, I want to be less scary. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Okay, so the game plan's number one. That's embarrassing. Number two.

It is embarrassing. Is Heartbreak Kid. Correct. Number three is the movie that I covered the red carpet for in London and one of the stars of it drove his Hummer down the red carpet and into the lobby of the Odeon Leicester Square. The Kingdom? The Kingdom. Jamie Foxx. The two red carpets, if you bring that up

I know it's either going to be the Kingdom or Lions for Lambs. I covered many red carpets but those were the two that always come up. I guess were the funniest things happened. He came out, he popped and locked into several poses for the photographers. said the kingdom go see it he got back in the hummer it reversed up he did not even pretend to go into the theater

to watch the movie and then jennifer garner told me she would never let her kid act and i wrote that up for people and got like a bajillion hits she rolls so my boss was like great job on the kingdom red carpet yeah jennifer garner great mom um i've never seen the kingdom i i'd mean either i just love jamie foxx turning to a bunch of people on the red carpet and saying go see it it feels like a slap in the face we're not invited we'd be there if they gave us a ticket we're out here behind railings barricaded in like animals i just remember i remember being really hyped for that movie because peter berg seemed like this really exciting because he'd just done friday night lights which was like oh this movie's kind

of like tender and interesting and like he's got jamie foxx coming off an oscar win i think reese you know ray is what when's ray 2005 it's right after yeah yeah i mean this was that was one of the first things he shot entirely after the oscar you know you've got garner and you've got jason bateman in a dramatic role and like arrested development is still you know this cool thing that just you know is still on and you're like oh that's interesting and then like everyone was just like meh and i never saw it and so i've never seen the kingdom i had the same excitement and never saw it uh avery have you seen the kingdom i have not even heard of the kingdom it's set in the kingdom of saudi arabia oh okay One of my favorite kingdoms. It's like a gritty, modern, contemporary war movie, I guess. But maybe they're FBI agents or something.

I don't know. But it is. I'm just looking at this now, and it's like you say that, and I get bored. But then I just go, but it's starring Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman. That has to be a little bit interesting, right? And I've never heard anyone say anything more enthusiastic than it's fine.

Right. Oh, yeah, you know, whatever. Okay, number four. It's a series we'll do on the Patreon one day. It is entry number three, I want to say. Is it Saw 3 or Saw 4? Not Saw. That's not a Saw. Oh, because, right, it wouldn't have a number.

You don't know. It's the third. It's Resident Evil Apocalypse? Nope, that's the second, but good, correct answer. You know, correct franchise. Oh, Extinction. Extinction. It's the one where it finally was like, oh, this is cooking with gas.

Yeah. I will say. Because the first one is a fun throwback thing. The second one, in my opinion, is not very good good the third one is where you're like okay okay you know i've only seen first and last a good argument for doing them all we gotta do it great movies um number five oh boy this is sort of why i wanted to do this i do remember this by name uh it is a fantasy uh film um it is an adaptation i believe of a popular young adult series and my guess is they wanted to do more of them but obviously no one saw it the secret of the dark is rising i mean like that's pretty fast for you to get the

secret the dark is rising you know why opening at number five to three million dollars, I might point out. The Dark is not rising. A, it's one of the worst openings of all time. It still charts pretty high up there in terms of low opening for that many screens. That it had such big franchise ambitions. And also, when you said, I remember the title, I knew it was this. Because it's just one of the most apocalyptically bad titles ever. It's up there with Ballistic X versus Sever where it's like you're saying so much and yet not anything at all.

Can I ask, do you guys know this is one of my most hated pet peeves in like film and media, games, TV, whatever. What is the obsession with things rising i don't know they're always rising it just calls it like if people can't think of a title for their thing they'll be like well does anyone rise in it and then can we i have to say also it just like i think without fail dawn always gets me more excited than rise right i don't i don't love dawn either i don't love it but it it hits more for me i don't i don't think rise has ever gotten a rise out of me it's funny since planet of the apes did both i know and then dawn and arguably did them in the wrong order it absolutely did them in the wrong order it made no sense when

they announced that it was dawn i was like the fucking sun already rose it can't be gone now it's in the sky in your metaphor and then they went to war for three i'm like this has nothing to do with the weather but it's also like you look at like i'm sure if you look at the synopsis on the back of the dvd it says like in in dawn of the planet of the apes the apes rise to power you know rise the planet they have said the Planet of the Apes, the apes rise to power. You know, rise the planet of the apes, say the dawn of a new species. The most recent example is like this game just came out, Immortals Phoenix Rising. And I just hate that they think I'm meant to look at it. I go, oh, Phoenix is rising in this one.

It's like, I don't know. I don't know who that is. It's the whole thing. The Seeker. I don't know who's the Seeker. i don't know i don't know who that is it's the whole thing that the seeker uh i don't know who's the seeker i don't care all right all right all right don't worry about it the dark is rising and i'm like all right 10 tickets please like you know like what is oh god anyway that's the top five yes can i just say okay very quick side tangent uh but uh talk about titles with this many words it just fucking what are you saying i zone out right the power of a good one word title i was looking earlier through uh you know careers of the actors in this movie and trying to chart them all and

jeannie berlin who's so great in this gets an oscar nomination essentially does like three more movies and then doesn't act for like 15 years writes a movie that her and her mother in doesn't act for another 11 years until margaret and now has come back and has become like a fucking awesome she's older character she's on succession hunters right she just rules she rules in everything now right she's so good i feel like she's finally getting appreciated in the way she when she was in margaret though it was mind-blowing it was like genie berlin yeah what the fuck yeah given just like a hall of fame performance so i was looking at the movie she did right after this and this this same year she makes a movie directed by larry cohen you know sort of great trash filmmaker bone david do you know about Bone?

I only know that it's a Larry Cohen movie with Yafit Kado. I've never seen it. I don't know much about it. So this is all I want to tell you, and then we can move on. This is all I want to tell you, okay? This is the IMDb synopsis. When a criminal breaks into the Beverly Hills home

of a wealthy couple having marital problems, he unwillingly provides the spouses with an unlikely resolution to their conflicts, as well as a solution to his own secret problem starring yafet koto and the poster is black and white white background full body shot of yafet with a hand on a hip smiling and then in just black stark letters it says love bone before he loves you why did no one tell me that bone is the great american movie i don't know i don't know griffin i guess i gotta watch bone love bone before he loves you nothing could get me into the fast the theater faster is his solution to their marital problems like have sex with your wife or I will?

I hope it's Fuck Bone. I hope this movie is about everyone fucking bone. Everyone should fuck bone. I don't know. Everyone should fucking bone watches. I don't know what's going to happen. I got to check it out. Is Bone on Prime Video?

Oh, I'm watching it tonight. All right. 1972 in film. Let's do this quickly. This is, well, I only wanted to do this because it's just like, this is where you are. Like, oh, it is another world. You know, like you look at an 80s box office. You're like, come on.

There's a lot of sequels. There's a lot of action movies. All right. So number one, obviously, what's the number one movie in 1972? Griffith is the Godfather. It's the Godfather. One of the most successful films ever made at the time to this day if you adjust for inflation it's the godfather now number two is a prototype blockbuster um a disaster film a famous disaster film is it poseidon it's the

poseidon adventure that's right that's and like you know made half as much as the godfather but that is the movie where you're like, oh, right. Like the seeds are planted here, right, for the sort of modern blockbuster. Even if this is the Poseidon Adventure sort of like weird half character, you know, movie, half disaster epic, right? I don't know. Do you like the Poseidon Adventure, Griffin? I've never seen it. I've never seen it.

Oh, okay. You know, it's fun. an adventure griffin i've never seen it i've never seen it oh okay yeah you know it's fun i just those feel like movies that just never it never feels like there's any argument to revisit the 70s erwin allen disaster movies as much as i find the idea of them not really they're right i've just never heard anyone present them in a way where it's like that movie is still of intrigue to watch today you know they're yeah they're watchable that's for you but you're right yes they're not great art and they're they're they're prototypes in a lot of ways now number three though that griffin we were talking about him a lot he's a hot director this year he last year he made

a incredible debut film that got all kinds of Oscar attention. It launched big stars. Who is it, Griffin? We've been talking about him in this episode, 1971. He launches two big stars. It's obviously not Mike Nichols. Multiple big stars. Not Mike Nichols, no. It launches multiple big stars.

It might be two. It might be two. Okay, but a comedy director? This is a comedy. The 1971 film is a drama. Huh. We were talking about, who did we talk about so much in this episode?

I just keep thinking about Nichols. You did a bit about Bogdanovich. Peter Bogdanovich. So this is Paper Moon? Nope. Which was also a hit, but nope. What's the number three movie of 1972? What's Up, Doc?

What's Up, Doc? What's Up, Doc? Last Picture Show, Doc? What's Up, Doc? Last Picture Show was not a debut. I forgot he made Targets before. But early, obviously, his breakthrough film. But yes, What's Up? Isn't that crazy? What's Up, Doc?

The third most successful film of the year. Great movie. Yeah, rules. You should watch it. It's so much fun. One of Ben's best Letterboxd reviews. He watched What's Up, Doc? over the summer and he just wrote maybe old movies are good broke my heart that ben couldn't do this

episode by the way i know absolutely that's it i was the heartbreak kid in in that sense um number four griffin a best picture nominee an iconic film uh you know with famous scenes that are remembered to this day with a big star still pretty crazy that it's number four most successful of the year huh like a harrowing r-rated thriller with a big star yeah a big star i mean you know his stardom is on the rise but yeah it's a is it straw dogs not straw dogs but you're in the right zone in the right zone so like that kind of star it's like a sort of shocking transgressive film dear hunter not dear hunter it's not marathon man not marathon man these are all good 70s films that were shocking. Fuck.

It's not Conversation because that's after Godfather. Fuck, fuck. But a big shot. There's a scene that's still kind of iconic. Well, yes. I mean, there's multiple scenes that are iconic in this film, but there's one that's iconic in a fun way. It's a musical scene in a film that is otherwise not musical.

Do you know what it is, Avery? Is it Deliverance? It's Deliverance. John Borman's Deliverance with Burt Reynolds and John Boyd and Nate Beatty. Why am I killing 1972 more than 2000? I don't know. I'm thrashing it.

Absolutely. Deliverance. Number four, griffin number four and number five is a less well-remembered film except as a gif it's an iconic gif jeremiah johnson jif if yes jeremiah johnson robert redford is jeremiah johnson yeah wild a good movie i've never seen a movie i i was so astonished by the recent realization that people think that gif is galifianakis yes i can't see it as red i cannot really yeah you've been galifianakis pilled i i get that it surprises people that it's redford because he's like very full-faced in it it It's not like the classic Redford profile. He looks like he has this sort of big

chin, but it's just the beard, I think. It's just... Here, I'm going to make it my background now. It's a great game. Honestly, The Revenant is just Jeremiah Johnson. Interesting. But good? Well, that's what I'm saying.

I'm more gritty. God, it's so good. He looks so good. Avery, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. Thank you for crushing the box office game. Oh, my God. Avery, thank you for staying up through all that.

Geez. Oh, yeah, no. Thank you for being a good friend. Yeah, you're recording this in your time zone, which is pretty wild. But David was like, I don't know if it might be tough to record with Avery. And I was like,

I think Avery and I have similar sleep schedules, which means I think we'll be able to record the episode around our usual time. Yeah. That was my guess. Yeah, it's four in the morning here, so I'll be going to bed in five hours. Yep.

Perfect. Yep, that's how I the morning here, so I'll be going to bed in five hours. Yep, perfect. Yep, that's how I live. It's great. I essentially have bartender hours now because I just, everything I do starts at 8 or 9 p.m. I never leave my home, and I spend my whole day ramping up so my energy peaks at like 8.15. Respect. Respect to all of you guys. It's great.

It's great. It's great. I'm so happy. I feel really well adjusted. Avery Respect to all of you guys. It's great. It's great. It's great. I'm so happy. I feel really well adjusted. Avery, people should follow you on Twitter. Yes. You have maybe the best Patreon of anybody where you offer absolutely nothing. Nothing.

You get nothing. You get nothing. It's $2 and you make it very clear that you're not promising people anything in return nothing because i'm just i've not been capable of making things for a long time if if you're if you're a fan of podcasts which you might be if you are listening to this right now then i made four maybe five i can't remember episodes of podcasts called swings and roundabouts a few years. It was a great show. We plugged it on Blind Check back in the day.

I remember. A great listen. It's a scripted thing. I do a lot of voices and have other people voice and the sound effects. And I think it's interesting. It's like stories from my past but with like twists and there's also fun little segments

with like game shows that I made up and stuff because it's hard to do a sketch that isn't a game show when you watch too much SNL a few years ago I found out. Yeah, so please, it's still up at swingsandroundaboutspodcast.com,

so check that out. And let's make it clear, you've posted daily podcasts on your Patreon. You're just not promising that to people. They shouldn't get used to that. Yeah, I might do it. If you feel like it. Yeah, but I wish I could charge $1.

Patreon recommends you charge $2 because of the way their fees are structured. So I'm like, okay. And yeah, you get nothing. But my Twitter is pretty good. And you can buy naked pictures of me on there if you like. You know, there are some famous directors who have done so who I will not name because I provide excellent customer service. Hell yeah.

Thanks again. I look forward to getting a Pizza Express at some point in 10 years in the future when we can travel again. Avery and I had like Pizza Express hangouts in London.

It was so much fun. Yeah. Doughballs forever. Doughballs forever. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and

subscribe. Thank you to the Great American Novel for our theme song. Thank you to our editing team, Alex Barron and A.J. McKeon. Thank you to Marie Barty for our theme song. Thank you to our editing team, Alex Barron and AJ McKeon. Thank you to Marie Barty

for our social media. Thank you to Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. Check out our Shopify page for some real nerdy shirts and other types of merch. Patreon, we're trekking along. Right? We're still trekking at this point

absolutely tune in next week for mikey and nicky and as always i just want to point out i sent in the chat of our zoom the poster for bone and now that i'm seeing it full size it is clear that in the poster, Yafat Kodo, playing the character of Bone, is holding a rat. He's holding a rat, possibly dead. I think that might be the solution to their marital problems? I don't know. I don't know.

We can't go any further here. We don't know. There's too many questions. I like Bone. We love Bone. Well, I many questions. I like Bone. You love Bone. Well, I got it before he loves me.