Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Last Wave with BenDavid Grabinski

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

Peter Weir's follow up to Picnic at Hanging Rock - 1978's The Last Wave - deals with similar themes, with colonialism butting against the wild mysticism of Australia's land and people. However, this time...it's WET AS HELL. BenDavid Grabinski - the filmmaker behind the upcoming Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice - joins us to talk about this beguiling film, apocalyptic thinking, Richard Chamberlain's status as the king of TV miniseries, and Tom Shadyac's Dragonfly, weirdly enough. Watch BenDavid's new movie Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice If you're in New York, be sure to go to Sunken Harbor Club or Nitehawk Trivia Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've lost our podcasts. Then they come back and we don't even know what they mean. Now, it's hard to, I'm good at neither a South African nor an Australian accent. Okay. It is hard to impersonate South African in a movie where everyone's speaking Australian and not just fuck up both. Where are you getting South African? Richard Chamberlain's character. Is he South African?

They say that in the movie. Wait, I missed that. He says he said, I caught that. Thank you. But I thought it was South American. I think he says he is of South African origin. I heard something like that. Like when he talks about his background,

that there's some discussion of like family. I thought it was him though. It's him. Being born. Yeah. Elsewhere. It's when he said diplomatic community. Did I nail it?

Did I, by melding the two accents together, did I nail it? Hmm. Kind of go with no. Did I nail it? I'm seeing zero nail. Really? You got a metal detector. You're sweeping around like, hmm.

It's quiet as a mouse. Right now it feels like a Home Depot, fully stock. So, Griffin, walls of nails. On one end of the spectrum is your Arnold. And then on the other end of the spectrum is your Sandler in Hotel Transylvania. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's sort of in between.

Okay. You're saying you think Sandler, Transylvania is the best one I have? It sounds like the guy. Joseph Gordon Levitt's my best. Go ahead. You can do it again. Or don't. Excuse me, one moment.

What are you doing? In? He's got the die. Oh, man. This is the first time I wish it was a video podcast. I don't, but only in this exact moment. Just for that. Just for that.

This is my totem. My totem is a loaded die. Only I know the exact weight and balance of this die. You know, that film is 16 years old. Happy birthday. Which is crazy. Yes. Because, you know, feels like just yesterday, I heard him say that for the first time.

And it's not like he's had a bad career. No. But when you watch that movie, you were like, right, this is it. He's about to be, you know, a big A-lister. He's popping so hard in this. The issue is, if you actually look at the landscape of theatrical movies, there's not a lot that have, like, rotating sets where you're like a couple layers into a dream, which is his skill set.

Which is apparently what his best does. Yeah, they go around. They're like, you know, I'm just looking for a movie about dreams on a rotating set. Are you, now, you know, there is a stick. in Australia called South Australia. Are you sure he was not talking about being from South Australia? Well, how can... I googled. There's nothing came up. But I mean,

that's not that surprising because this is a less well-known... Well, can we just look at the future Reddit column about this episode? Yeah, let's see that. You got it wrong? Can we use the hell? of being able to see the future Reddit posts, but not being able to stop them. That was the original. It's the

worst. That's a reboot of early addition. CBS's early edition. Every morning we get a notification. of a Reddit post roasting us, but you can't see what the subject heading of the Reddit post is. And you're just like, how do I anticipate these criticisms? I'm really glad we never reached a point where someone could say Philip K. Dick is too online

because that would be the short story or book he wrote. We're like, okay, man, I don't know if we needed that one. That is a great point. That a lot of... Thank God he died before Twitter was invented. No, that a lot of writers would have gotten dinged for being too online for writing the exact thing they wrote pre-internet. Like if you wrote fucking minority report in 2026, they'd be like, this is some fucking Twitter-brained bullshit.

You're so afraid of getting canceled. You wrote minority report. What if the precogs went canceled when they came out of the little milk bath, right? That's actually a deleted thing. Well, when Matt Damon was in that movie, that is what it was going to be about. But then when it switched to Colin Farrell, they got rid of all the canceled stuff. Colin's so good in that. Colin is good in that.

I just love that that's another classic Colin Farrell. I have zero memories of being on that set. Drunk as hell, mate. Spielberg mad at me and Cruz, everyone mad at me. And also a thing we called out in that episode that I always think about just how different Hollywood was,

what, 24 years ago? Done. Yeah. He was paid $2.5 million for that movie. That's called having a good age. Truly. But it was just like, if we've decided you're the guy and you get one of the top five parts in a giant movie,

we're giving you 2.5 no matter what. And then like 10 years later, Andrew Garfield was signed to play Spider-Man, and they're like, we're going to start you at 250K. You got a three-movie contract, and by the end of it, you end up at one, if you make three of them.

Well, there's all these movies in like the 80s and 90s, and you'll see, oh, this person got 3.5 million, and the budget was like 3.6. And you're like, how did they pay for the rest? And then they also shot it in Los Angeles for nine months. And the person getting paid $3.5 million

was George Kennedy. That if George Kennedy was available for 10 days, they were like, it's worth him being 92% of our budget. Can you do George Kennedy saying murder

in Minority Airport? Murder! Drebbing? I'm trying to drebbing. Another wet movie. And today we are here to take a back. Oh, Minority Report.

I think you're saying naked gun. I'm like really... It does have some splashing. I'm genuinely upset that none of you commented on my renaming of our group chat. I loved it.

I was in a rush, but I was very into it. Okay, because I thought it was a pretty good joke. I thought it was like our wet bandits is the group chat talking about this movie. Ben, Ben texted and just mid-watch was, is it fair to say,

producer Ben Hosley, a gentleman of many shades, of many sides, sometimes you're a dry guy. That is true. I've had my moments. You've had your, Try eras.

You have, but you've been known. This weekend you were a drop guy. We watched Drop Zone on VHS. Sure. Well, that's kind of more of an air guy. You had a bad boy weekend. And not a bad boy records weekend. I just feel like your weekend had your weekend hang seemed to have a whiff of being bad boys.

It was a throwback. It was a throwback. Ben David and I got Korean barbecue and then we head back to his. And then we drank tea and then we watched Drop Zone on VHS. No, we drank tea. We drank some dang beers and had maybe a couple of Jamos. What? You silly guys.

Maybe. Maybe. Unconfirmed. Right, right. Reports are surfaced. But I was going to say that you have been known to value what you would dub a slick flick. Absolutely. A wet motion picture.

A splishy, a splashy. Sometimes you go Bobby Darren mode when you're sitting down at the cinema. There's only so many movies where it rains inside. You know, this is the thing. There's lots of movies where it's like, oh, you're on the ocean. oh, you know, there's a big storm, but it rains inside in this movie many times. Water's the villain.

Water's the villain. It's kind of just, it's sort of just the theme. Beyond that, it's just kind of, this is about water. And colonialism, I'd say, are the two big bad. Yeah, there's a little of that too. But I mean, like, you're like the last wave and you're like, oh, okay, so is this like a metaphorical wave? And they're like, well, no, actually, if you think about it. This is what I love.

I love, I have this thought like 10 minutes into the movie. I love a title that is both metaphorical and not. at all. I love when there's a title where you're like, last wave, is it maybe just about like cultural tides changing?

And you're like, something's changing, exactly. It is, but also. But also, right at the end, we are going to show you a big fucking way. The last shot's one of the biggest waves you've ever seen.

But also, almost every movie that has the word last and the title is great. But then there's like two or three that are terrible. But that's the thing I've been thinking about. Okay, let's make this list.

Oh, I started making a list on the train here and then stop because I kept seeing last stand. It was like going through them. Just watch that. But there was like a list. There's like 20 really good movies. Well, X-Man Last in the title. That's one of the best.

Oh, so good. I mean, we should definitely relitigate Last Jedi, which I think is a masterpiece. So I can alienate everyone who doesn't like it. We all agree. This is safe space. By safe space, I mean a room full of people who are smart and correct. Yeah, I know. But I was like going over it and I was like, there are so many good movies.

Yeah, the last movie title. Yeah, the last X is a pretty strong start. Let me see. As you're looking at it. up. I just want to say. But there is one movie I saw only one time and really did not like. And maybe it's really great, but the last kiss.

I think the last duel is so underrated. The last kiss is one of the worst fucking movies I ever saw in a theater. Yes. Yeah. It is so goddamn bad. And that's a gold one picture. This would have been such a bonding thing between you and me because I had like weeks of being mad about last kiss.

But it's like, it's crazy that I'm mad about. I saw it in college. Like you think I could have gotten over it. It's probably like a hundred minutes long. Like, you know, it didn't end the world. when it came out, but I walked out being like, that was bullshit. It's 100 minutes long,

and of those 100 minutes, 80 minutes are Casey Affleck with a beer being like, you know, marriage is tough. He is in it. But I was. 104 minutes. So I was in college. Goldwyn.

Come on, you got to win a lad down. I have to admit that I was like a severe garden state guy. We're like I saw it. How old are you been, David? And we shouldn't introduce the podcast. I'm 42. I also set up a thread that I still need to pay off.

I will be 43 when this comes out. Okay. Well, I'm just going to. I'm going to call you out. I'm going to be 30. I think it's still short of it? No, no, it's still 39. Few.

But as someone who's a little older than me, I think that's a little embarrassing. But it's fine. So it came out and I was like, I don't know, 20 and I saw it and it made me cry. And then all the faucets turned off. Because he can't cry, but they can't. This cute girl came over and we got really stone and listened to the soundtrack on a repeat for hours talking about the movie on CD. I mean, it was a simpler, time.

felt really important at the time. I'm like, the symmetrical framing. It just captures what it's like to be 20. If there's one thing that movie has to offer you, it is quite a lot of framing. So I'm not seen it since then, so I will, because I'm sure,

I'm sure that I will have some more complicated feelings. The last of the Mohicans, good. The last samurai, not so good. We're setting too many threads simultaneously. Last of the Mohicans is a masterpiece.

I also love Garden State from the state in Jersey. When's the last time you watched it? It's been a while. Yeah. But yeah, similarly, it was like we were like in the pocket age wise. You ever yell at a dump? A hole.

They yell into a big hole. They yell on top of a dumpster into a little. Have you ever gone to New Jersey with Griffin and then got stranded there and we had to take a cat? That's a whole other conversation. I'm pretty sure that all of you were part of that misadventure. That was a real classic. David's getting texts from multiple people about what's going down. Read Ben's text.

Yeah, of course. The last castle kind of, meh. 11.43 a.m. Y'all this movie wet as hell. I just needed to get that out. I've been trying to say that for 10 minutes. So sorry. Y'all this movie wet as hell.

Transformers the last night, are we counting that one? Not one of the better ones. It's interesting how much. Sort of solidly in the middle, but that's by Transformers range. I swing between that and age of extinction of like which one is more engagingly deranged. Well, the last night. I think that one's more engaging. Mark Wahlberg being revealed as the last night of the roundtable.

And also Anthony Hopkins dying and a robot saying, of all the men I've ever served, you were the coolest. First of all, spoiler. Secondly, that's not just a robot. That is Cogman. Anthony Hopkins' human-sized robot, Butler that does not transform. Played by Jim Carter. And is a self-identified sociopath.

Yes, who also sings opera. Which he says before he takes living fish and beats them on the ground, on the fucking like grid of a submarine into submission so he can eat them. Okay, last night. Sort of forgot about that part. Good guy. That no human being alive, including Michael Bay or anyone who worked on it, can tell me where it takes place. There's a scene where they like take a ship up into the sky, but then crash land in the sky in what looks like Iceland.

Oh, I can tell you where that takes place in my wildest dreams. Well, it's wonderful. In my best imagination. They like crash land in the sky on Earth and then get up to race away from it to come back down to Earth. And I can't figure it out. Ben's showing Griffin something important.

Fuck, it's South America. I was trying to queue it up on the Criterion app and Ben got it before I did. He was born there. I see. Bridget Chamberlain is born in South America. Do we delete 49 minutes of us discussing it?

No, it's all in. I feel so much better because I'm like, I've seen this movie. a lot and I don't remember. You are the most like views of this movie of my letterbox friends.

Very few people have seen this movie total. You've seen it like four times. And I told you we're finally doing weird, knew you had a new movie coming out. It was a time to get you back on and I feel like this was immediately. You said I would do anything. I basically would be happy to do any weird episode.

But your passion for this one punched through really quickly. Especially since it's less requested. There's two weirs. In pop culture, that really, really matter to me. Obviously, Peter Weir. Lindsey Weir. Lindsay We've certainly.

We've made a couple Lindsay weird jokes. I probably love all the weirs equally. Actually, maybe the dad the most. Sam? You're not a Sam guy? I mean, for life. But the dad, I mean, comedy legacy. Yes.

What's it? It was the worst $15 I ever spent whatever he says about losing his virginity. It's just so fucking funny. My favorite is the episode where he's trying to get them. invested in the idea of family game night because the weirs need to spend more time together and he keeps on trying to convince them that the card game pits really exciting. And at the end, Becky Ann Baker convinces him to like loosen his grip and let them live their own lives.

And then she's like, okay, well, let's finish the game. And he goes, I don't want to play this. It's a terrible game. Joe Flaherty is, I mean, I mean, he died pretty recently. Yeah. Money in the goddamn bank. So he's being angry about anything. So in October, I was doing this thing.

where I would like watch these YouTube blocks of like horror programming. And they would, there's a bunch of these where they find like all these anthology shows, sort of like tales from the crypt that you've never heard of. And they have an episode and they'd be like written by Andrew Kevin Walker and crazy. And I'd sent you one where it was this horror show hosted by Joe Flaherty. And then it was an episode all about Catherine O'Hara being a nun who if she fell in love with someone, they would like blow up. And I'm not forgetting the details of it.

He had a character called Count Floyd on. SCTV. He's iconic. That's why he dresses up as a vampire and freaks of his local. Exactly.

And then on the Ed Grimley cartoon show, which listeners might be astonished to hear. I'm sorry, Griff,

there are no more listeners on this episode. They all the call just left. They rode the wave out of here 10 minutes.

I'm hearing a flat line distance. A thing that young Griffin Newman hyper fixated on. The graph is just

a top of Griffin, is it possible that I had a lunchbox of the Grimley cartoon. Did that exist? Or is that just some weird memory I have? No, no, probably. There was merch.

There's talking Ed Grimley dolls that are in the animation style. But Count Floyd would appear in live action segments. They would cut to Count Floyd on Ed Grimley's TV. So, Count Floyd was very important at my childhood. I mean, that's just the kind of statement that only Griffin Newman would make these days. I completely believe it.

Well, because free speech is illegal. You're not allowed to talk about SCTV anymore because of tariffs. I didn't know that there was a live action Grimley. I had known the cartoon. That was my introduction as well. Yeah. And I got very confused between animated Ed Grimley and live action Pee Wee Herman because they both had

cowlicks. Okay, well what about the Ace Ventures? Thank you so much. With Griffin and David, that's a whole other conversation about how in 1994 Jim Carrey had $300 million domestic grocers and by 1996 all three were converted into Saturday morning cartoons on rival

networks. You've actually just set up a perfect transition to a thing I have to admit. Yeah, I still haven't introduced the pod, by the way. So last time I was on the show, uh, we all agreed that I would not come back until you're doing a Tom Shadyak series. And I was going to do Dragonfly. I had originally promised that if we,

the podcast made it to 10 years, we would cover Tom Shadiac. And this, of course, is the 11th year of the podcast. And I want to promise that we will do it on year 20. Well, I wasn't sure what we were doing today. Uh, and I texted you for clarity and you didn't respond. So I watched both of these to be prepared. You also watch Dragonfly.

I watched Dragonfly yesterday, and I prepared a bunch of talking points in case we want to get into both of them. Isn't Dragonfly one of those movies that's very hard to, like, it doesn't exist? Universal. There was a, I rented it on iTunes yesterday and watched it and took notes. Universal has been doing a thing I really appreciate on their like home entertainment channel. Once a month, they do a grid post that is new to digital. And it is, here are 20 movies that have been out of circulation that we're proud to tell you are now rentable on digital platforms. Oh, good.

And mostly it's like 30s, 40s program or stuff. But they finally got Dragonfly in the grid. You just, you know how much. That was a movie that was impossible to watch. Timing helped you with this bit. Because three weeks ago, this bit would have been impossible. I have something to say about Dragonfly. Or is it frequency?

Fuck, I can't remember. It's probably frequency. What I have to say about Dragonfly. So it's about Dr. Joe Darrow. He's just covered. Played by Kevin Costner. And his wife dies because she's on a bus filled with school kids that drives off a cliff into a lake and they all drown. Okay.

And he can communicate with them? Where was Superman? Well, this is the problem. He told Superman this. Okay. I'm just going to make my point, and then we're going to introduce our guest. I just rewatched the Michael Hanukki film, The Piano Teacher. Okay.

Because I'm watching all of my discs that I bought, and I bought that umbrella set. You bought the umbrella, not the Curzon. Correct. Interesting. What happened. Okay. And I bought it a while. Very, very good.

Very well done. I've been struggling to figure out which is the one to buy. They both seem good to me. I don't know. Hate to get it wrong. There's a scene in the piano teacher where Isabella Ubel is sitting at a cafe or whatever, and there is a poster for the movie Frequency Behind Her. And I was like, that's so weird in this, like, dour fucking movie about this woman who's like kind of sadomasochistic relationship.

It's like, oh, yeah, frequency. But frequency is not Dragonfly, but they are both about, like, communicating across sort of a mystical barrier, you know. Right. Similar ideas. Frequency is like CB radio field of dreams. It's Jim Cavizel. Talk to your dead dad. Right.

It's Cavizel and Craig. It's time travel. Right. Yes. Dragonfly is near death experiences, the doctor. Yeah. So he doesn't believe in the afterlife. And they bring this person who OD'd in a way to try to kill themselves into the emergency

room after his wife dies. And he says, I'm only interested in saving people who want to live. So this person gets sent to another doctor. He talks to her. And she gets really upset saying, why'd you bring me back? And he said, because there's no heaven and there's no afterlife. This is it. So you shouldn't kill yourself.

And then he ends up believing in the afterlife. That's the big spoiler. Fuck you, Kastner. And also, I'm very sorry for interrupting you, David, from now on. I'm like Michael Douglas at the end of traffic. I'm here to listen. Is that what he says in traffic? I consider and concede for the first time that maybe drugs are bad.

What is he listening to? It's because his daughter's like, hey, Well, it's because Harrison Ford was interested, and they added a bunch of scenes to that character, and then Harrison Ford decided not to do that. But he's like a really aggressive. It was not the kind of movie that his viewers wanted to see. Is he the D.E.A.? He's the drug czar. Right.

The idea in traffic is that he has been appointed drugs are and the war on drugs, and then it turns out his daughter is a heroin addict. So is he like listening to the flight of addiction? No, he's at her drug thing. He comes to her like her AA or whatever it is. Okay. Right. He's, under. understanding the human struggle

within a thing that he is viewed as I recently read Edswick's memoir. Congrats. Yeah. And obviously one of the more interesting things about Edzwick is the two Oscar nominations he got were for producing movies that other people directed. So it's Shakespeare

and Love and Traffic, right? Yeah. I mean, he may have got another, I think those are only two nights. I think so. And he won. He has an Oscar. He sure does, and he talks about that for Shakespeare in Love. Yeah. But, but So he asked to devote chapters to those movies that he did not make. And he's, you know, it's interesting.

Anyway, he talks about traffic. And apparently Ford at a certain point just sent a message being like, my fans don't want me in a movie like this right now. That's just that thing. Get off that heroin. That's Harrison Ford telling someone to kick their habit. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I am Griffin.

I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, and sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce. Baby, sometimes they hate you, like a giant fucking wave. Splush! Splush, indeed.

This is a miniseries on the films of Peter Weir. I regret to inform you. The miniseries is titled Podnik at Hanging Cast because I was overruled on... Every week you can play. Podster and cast mander the pod side of the cast. Has one guest agreed with you so far? This guest doesn't. Yeah.

Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Today, joining us, returning to the show, a dear friend to talk about the last wave. He is the writer and director of the new, just about to be released, recently released. That's actually the funniest thing about this is by the time this comes out. It will have already been at South by, and it'll have reviews, and it'll be about to come out. And I don't know how that's going to go.

I bet it goes so good. But I, the last movie I made was supposed to premiere at Tribeca 2020. Yes. And some interesting things happen. Yeah. So I am like psychologically incapable of counting on anything happening between now and when this drops. But let's just assume it all worked out and it was great. Ben, David, you have nothing to worry about because everything at this present moment, the first week of February, 2026 has been normal, coming off a normal January.

And I can't see any scenario in which things would get crazier. The news is great. Nothing bad is happening right now at all. I love just watching the news and relaxing and unwinding at the end of a long day. But if you're looking to get amped up and have a good time, you can watch Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice on Hulu. And Disney Plus. And Disney Plus. The main thing that matters is someday we're going to find out what Sims thinks of all the Gilmore Girls references in it.

You've yet seen the picture. I have not yet seen it. I want it. Hasley and I have seen it twice. It has a tremendous amount of Gilmore girls content. That's a spoiler. Thematically interwoven. As I think Ben David knows,

I'm a very, very deeply devoted fan of the television show Gilmore Girls. I've written about it quite floridly. Once on a date, a girl that I was on a date with realized that I was the David Simovs of the AV Club, not a celebrity, to be clear. She was like, oh, right. And then she was like, wait, did you write that Gilmore Girls thing? And I was like, huh? And then she called it up and started like reading it to me being like,

I can't believe a boy wrote. this. Not in a bad way. She was sort of, she was positive, but she was also like, this is crazy. That's like the when Harry Met Sally scene. Back then. Harry Fisher quotes Bruno Kirby to him. Yes. And he's like, I wrote that. New York Magazine. Yeah, I mean, this is pretty

sexy. She said, I never quote articles. It's a good scene. Yeah. Didn't work out. But great, great, great moment for me. Back then Gilmore Girls, you know, people lived in the shadows. Our guest today. Considering it great art. Is Ben David Grabensky, a joke we somehow didn't call out in your previous episode,

Ben David Griffinsky? Your name already contains two out of the three of us, and it requires very few letters to make it all three. If I remember correctly, it was a different time because I lived in Los Angeles then, and I live in New York now. So it feels like lifetimes ago. I think it was hours into it when someone said, wait, your name's Ben David, and we keep saying Ben and David,

this might be confusing. Yes, yes. When I cite you on the podcast, it sometimes gets a little... Are you named for multiple people? Is that the... Great question. ...hardtinolegy. Hard-hitting question.

I think, like in the same way that you guys said that, we had a... We had a discussion about John Travolta on the podcast that ended up happening in a whole other podcast where it was almost like verbatim, and I was like, I feel like I've heard this conversation somewhere. I realized like we had had it. I bet you this was asked last time. It may have been. I'm sorry. But if it wasn't, I was...

Yeah. I was named Ben David. I was born on Lincoln's birthday and Lincoln, Nebraska, and my parents were going to name me Abe. And when they were sleep deprived, someone thought, that's kind of weird, so we're going to name a Ben David.

And there was never any reasoning given beyond that. No justification. My 42 years on the plan. Let's pivot off of Abe. Let's find something normal. And they kind of crashed two normal names. There's been no explanation ever. That was just an impulsive thing someone thought of.

So your birthday is in a week or so. if you were born in Abraham Lincoln's birthday, which is, of course, February 12. Excuse me. Ben David and I, our birthdays are exactly one week apart, and we're very close. It's like when Marie sits at that desk, it is the desk that is closest to me

and reserved for the person whose birthday is closest to my... All right, so last year, Griffin and I had a joint birthday party. We did. And then the bartender made a very special, elaborate drink for the birthday boy. The great Tom Wolfen,

who's a loyal, long-time blankie. The guy was amazing. Sunken Harbor Club in New York City, one of our favorite bars, if not our number one favorite bar. One of the great teaky bars in New York City. It's incredible. It's a wonderful place. And it's a,

it's a tiki bar minus all problematic elements. Yes. It is a thing I want to actually communicate to people. It's really more of a like nautical bar. It is, right. Like, it's like an undersea bar. It is teaky style drinks in basically what feels like 20,000 leagues under the sea. It's like old British crusty man.

It's closer to a master and commander bar. Now, listeners might be. be surprised to learn that part of the deal with some of the drinks is there's a little performance. There's some performance. There's sugar. There's lights. There's music. The place feels like a high-end kind of Disney attraction where there's... It feels like a theme part. You feel like you're underwater and that you hear the waves rustling. Shocking that Griffin Newman would gravitate to her place like this. We share many common interests. I should mention Ben David's other major credits, of course. Scott Pilgrim takes off the film happily and most importantly, founding member.

of the historic group text, the 40x club, which despite Sims' jokes is not a sausage party. And in fact, we are the comfortable male identifying minority in the group text. The 40x club is a matriarchy. Wait, is 40% of the 40x group men? I think that's true. Correct. All right. Anyway, we got to get to the punchline of this drink.

I don't think I've ever accused 40X of being too male. I called out the 40x club and you went, oh, bet there was a lot of women in that group. You're a great gag by me. This group text has binders full of women. Three. Three binders. Sunken Harbour Club. Tom Wolfson sets us up, a gentleman and a scholar.

I will let you now deliver the punchline. So at some point, they're like, well, here's the birthday boy. He calls me over. And there's birthday boys, plural. But they behave as if there's only one, and you can explain what happened. He hands me an envelope with, like, a. a red light keychain to locate a hidden message

that I then say out loud to the bartender and then I believe they start playing the Lalo Schifrin music do an entire act out of being suspicious and trying to sneak around the bar and then like construct something

and light it on fire and hand it to me with like a lot of pompant circumstance and I go like did you just fucking see that? How fucking cool is that? We get like a mission impossible drink for our birthday. You should go up in a lot of

order it and I hand you the envelope and I'm like here's the password and then what happens and the guy's like oh we only plan one because it's his birthday. We have exactly one amount of money and I have an IMF tattoo. I ran a mission impossible to website in high school and I didn't get the mission impossible drink. So I think the great thing about New York is it's just humbling. You know ever since I moved here every single situation just you know they're like you don't get a mission impossible drink and I'm like well that's good. It's also funny that the left side of your tattoo is part one and the right side of your tattoo is something different. This is the final tattoo.

It just is like, nope, nobody was always supposed to be this design. I think we should. Wait, I have one more thing about Tiki bars. So, you know, is it Trader Sam's at Disneyland?

Correct. I was watching for the first time recently the Eddie Murphy Haunted Mansion. Oh, yeah, not a good film. They shoot a scene in trading Sam's. Yes. It had just opened. It's kind of overlit.

It is. That whole movie, I would say, is overlaid for a haunted house comedy. Well, Rob Minkov, you know, he was a cartoon director. So, yeah, had a big light on the cartoons as you drew him maybe, and he never learned his lesson. Sims, that's an incredible insight.

You're right. I say that in, like, an academic setting. It's like, fire this. You can't draw in the dark. So animators don't know how to shoot live action other than to just... Hey, it's me, David Sims. I'm here to teach film 101. Why is the haunted mansion overlit?

I don't know. Cartoonists need big lights to see all the cartoons they draw. I mink off on set with a big bullhorn. I need 80 more desk lamps. Can't see everything. Pointing desk lamps that Eddie Murphy's had. That movie ends with a Nelly song that samples the theme from People's Court. Yes.

Sounds pretty good. Yeah. Who else is in the haunted mansion with Eddie Murphy? Well, there's one slam dunk piece of casting, which is Terrence stamp as a creepy butler, like as a ghost butler. Okay. And then Wallace Sean is like a creepy horseman. Wallace Sean.

Carriageman. Wallace Sean is indeed, it seems maybe third build, which I love the guy. Yeah. Maybe you're in trouble if he's that high up on the call sheet. But he's, Evers and Evers Realty, he's trying to sell the haunted mansion, and his family have to stay there for a night. So most of it is his wife and his two children. Marsha Thompson, is that maybe the name of the actress?

So you want a great transition. Please. Marsha Thomason. There we go. From Lost, which clearly was inspired by Fearless by Peter Weir. Weir. We're making it weird today. Today we're talking about the last wave.

Peter Weir's third film. What is interesting about Peter Weir's career versus many other directors we've covered is like these three films kind of come out as like one movement of expression. Right? Like he's sort of just like... Yeah, they sort of all...

Right. It's not like it happened simultaneously, but he right. He set several balls rolling. And so it's not like he did the last... We'll talk about it, but he did the last wave based off of his success of Picnic and Hanging Rock.

It was already well in motion by the time Picnic was in post-production or whatever. Right. The success of Picnic got him a little extra money for this, but yeah, these three films just sort of like started rolling at the same time and then come out in very short secession. Certainly true. And I guess it's sort of the breadth of, I mean, Gallipoli is probably the big thing for him, but like, and you're living dangerously, but like the breadth of like genres, moods, tones that he's showing here. If I'm in Hollywood, I'm kind of like, this guy feels like you could do a lot of stuff.

A lot of... A lot of... Our favorite types of directors to cover, talk about, like, early in your career, you start to strategize, how do I not get pigeonholed into being one thing? How do I prove that I can make all different types of movies? A lot of careers go astray when someone is like,

I want to prove that I can make this kind of thing. And then their second film abandons everything their first film does well and their career stumbles. But Peter Weir kind of has the perfect version of it where the first three movies, he's like, here's a fucking tapestry. Let me work.

Yeah. When did you see the last way for the first time? Ben David Gravansky. Because for me, it's a couple nights ago. Yeah. You hadn't seen it before? No. I mean, I respect that.

You said that very dismissively. No, no, no. I simply had not. I don't have to tell you. So, like, we're is one of my guys. And based on actually what you just talked about, it was like a real accidental thing, right? Like three movies as a kid that meant everything to me,

but I didn't know, like, what directors were besides, like, Everyone knew who Tim Burton was, and like Spielberg. But I'd seen Dead Poets Society, which I fucking loved. In school, they showed me Gallipoli, which traumatized me. And I just watched it two days ago, and it made me cry so hard, I almost vomited. Things didn't go great in Gallipoli. But Gallipoli has, I think, it is maybe the saddest movie ever. I got so upset.

I was like an adult, and I cried so hard. I almost puked. Ben David knows me well enough that he tells me. texted the other night. I advise you to not watch Gallipoli right before recording because I think the ending will leave you in a bad mood.

I was like, oh, good, night before. It ends with someone just staring into the camera being like, fuck Griffin Newman, by the way. That guy sucks. What the fuck is that?

Bad at podcasting. Anyway, roll the credit. Who the fuck wrote this? The end of the movie. Carl Chandler's character from early edition? They got posts from our Reddit? The end of the movie is

Mel Gibson looking at the camera and saying, Griffin Newman's Arnold impression is terrible. Yeah, and I'm like, I'm not going to fight you on that. I wasn't arguing it was. It feels like a weird use of your platform. But the other movie was Witness, which I saw on TV with commercials on like KUTP 45. And as a kid, like, Raiders and Hans Solo, like, that was your shit.

And I watched Witness, and I'm like, this is the greatest thing ever. Correct reaction. But also just that I'd never seen anything like it because it's like you think you're watching like a cop movie, but you're also watching this unbelievable sad love story and this introduction of the world of the Amish. And I'm like, this is like the greatest movie ever. So like these three movies that I really like, and I have no idea like they're the same guy

until I'm, you know, like in my late teens or whatever. And then the, I say Truman, I was obsessed with Truman Show. Like I had the score on CD and I would like listen to it all the time. But what happened, the reason I got into this movie is very dumb and weird. but like Garden State, but in a different way. My freshman year of college, I saw Donnie Darko,

and I was so into it. And the thing I couldn't put a finger on was like, the vibe of like the world is ending, and this is melancholy. But it's also not devastating. It's sort of like this slow crawl where like a lead character is sort of feeling like the world around him is like reaching the end.

But also the world around him is like, revealing itself. It's explaining what he maybe had always kind of felt and couldn't put his finger on. And I did this thing back then. It was like very formative for me, which is if I really liked a movie, I tried to figure out what inspired the director, which is how I ended up becoming such a huge demi fan was because like PT wouldn't stop talking about him. And there was an interview with Richard Kelly where he mentioned the last wave. And I'm like, what the fuck is the last wave? So I got it from Netflix, DVD mailed me. And I watched it and it like fucked me up. And I hadn't seen Twin Peaks yet.

I think I watched Twin Peaks for the first time, like actually right after that. And I hadn't seen a ton of Lynch. And there was a mood to it that felt very singular. And now I've realized that there's a few like masters of it. But that thing of just the mounting dread, the reality and the things you're imagining or your dreams kind of bleeding into each other.

And it just really clicked for me. And I think I realized later my love of both of those movies at the time and now is actually partially, is it's weird, is connected to like growing up super Christian. Like I was, I went to like a Christian school from like age five to like 12 and went to way too much church and like Baptist church. And they made you feel 24-7 like the world was going to end at any moment. And if you're not saved, you're fucked. So it's like you need to like become a Christian before the rapture.

and the end times are real and all this stuff. And I think I grew up really genuinely thinking that the world was going to end because of that omnipresent feeling. It is wild that that's a thing. Yeah. It's like where I would have like nightmares thinking that I was going to wake up

and all my friends would be gone and I was like alone. Instead you should just tell your kids like, I don't know, be nice to each other. Right. But that like almost all forms of Christianity have some underpinning of like, and if the apocalypse happens tomorrow

would actually be good news. I would disagree with that. I would say most forms of Christianity do Not. I would say it's the more, well, the more kind of like we really read the book and everything and it is true types that are like, no, no, no, no, no. The world's got to end for shit to be really good. Well, the bland or Christianity is more in the realm of like, be nice to each other. Yeah. And that's the stuff I like. Right. You know. Not to defend Christianity, which is bad. No, no, you love it. Sure, I love it. Well, I would say I think that there's something very escapist for me

about movies about the end of the world. They're not like, you know, Judeo-Christian where it's about like this separate thing where you can enjoy it and then it's not like a callback to some kind of weird childhood trauma about that stuff. I also think this movie is kind of about the like peeling back

of a Judeo-Christian societal structure that was imposed upon a stolen land, you know? Like part of it is this white guy. South American in origin I guess so who's kind of like... He was at least born there

maybe he's the son of a diplomat or something right? It's not contested now that we know he certainly was born there. I've never been wrong on this podcast once. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Never. Certainly not.

And I want to make this clear anytime I've been wrong, I am reading verbatim from the dossiers of JJ Burke. Right, it's all his fall. Who will never be fired, but will always take the fall. No, but that that it's sort of him, like, recognizing that there has been a suppression of the rules of the land and the world and life that this Judeo-Christian movement placed themselves on top of and have been, like, smothering.

Right? It's like him peeling back the layers to, like, what the fuck is actually going on here? It's definitely a, right, it's a little bit about whatever's up with his bland ass as well as the wider, you know, implications of colonialism. and the arrival of white people in this country that is not their own totally chill arrival, right? With no issues. And then possibly, yes. I mean, I think Peter Weir just loves the idea of like, what if this like really prosaic, really fucking by the numbers guy

had to believe in kind of magic? You know, like, you know, had to confront the supernatural. As he put it, the whole hook for him on this movie was like, what if a pragmatist experiences a premonition? Like that was the core animating idea. And who's supposed to kind of think like start thinking like is that, was that real? That wasn't just a weird dream? But I think there's something to what you're saying of like, you know, white people showing up,

not just wanting to like reap the riches of the land and massacre the people and claim everything for their own, but also be like, and by the way, we come from our country where we cracked society. We understand how everything works. Here's the system. everyone conform to us now and the indigenous people of whatever country they have taken over hostily

are sort of forced to figure out how they exist in relation to that being the dominant societal structure. It's very similar to the movie Dragonfly. It's very similar to the movie Dragonfly, which is now available digitally from our friends at Universal Home Entertainment. Thank you.

U.H.E. Big planet? We love that big planet. Because that's the logo. The globe. We love that globe. Big Earth. David.

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Succo. I'm surprised you had never seen this before, David. Because you love Weir, although I recently said Weir's one of your main guys and you went, it's less than one of my main guys and more that he's made some movies that are amongst my favorites and that he feels. feels like a perfect encapsulation of the type of director I like to cover on this podcast. Exactly that. But I do love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, a handful of the movies he's made.

And then I tend to pretty much like the rest of them. Is that for Dead Poets Society? Which we will talk about. Not a movie I hate, but a movie I'm very mixed on. Sims was the negative Nelly on that episode. No offense to your wife, Ben. Well, she's positive, Nellie. Of course.

I just don't want anyone to get a mixed up. That is always how I. describe them, there's negative Nelly and positive Nelly and one is Sims. Maybe it's no problem Nelly? Maybe that's the way, just so it's... Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the cleaner version is. Positive works. Sure. I just... I've never seen the way

back is the other one. I haven't seen green card in the way back, but the rest I've seen a lot. A movie I adore. The way back, it's just kind of crazy that I haven't seen it because, like, Colin Farrell's in it. It's wild that you didn't see it because Colin Farrell's in it.

And it was the follow-up to master and commander. Like, yes. But of course, when it came out, everyone was like, snooze,

and I was like, oh, I guess I won't bother. It got a makeup nomination. It sure did. It was like enough at the periphery of the Oscar conversation that I'm even surprised I didn't watch it that year, because that feels like peak obsessive. What if I watch literally every single nominee?

But it got those classic snoozy reviews where everyone was just like, oh, it's fine, I suppose. You know, like there was just no enthusiasm for it. I've heard a couple of whispers of people being like, you know,

movies underrated over the years, but very little. I also think it's interesting that Weir was kind of a perfect example of a director who was beloved within the industry. It felt like, you know, he had a handful of director and picture nominations. A-list movie stars clearly loved him, flocked to him with their passion projects. But he was not really a household name. When you look at his like 90s films, they're sold as from the director of Blank and Blank, but Peter Weir was not kind of like known to the public as an o'etor as much.

And it feels like outside of Australia where I think the first four or five films are so impactful, and he's such an important figure in the Australian New Wave that there was a real kind of hometown hero, immediate kind of like claiming of him. But I feel like when the way back comes out, the master and commander, Hive, had not fully... I was there, but... You were there. But it still was a little bit of an outside opinion. Yeah.

Then it was like the best movie ever made, yes. But if like two years ago they were like, Peter Weir has returned to the cinema. People would be more. With a Serbian refugee drama called The Way Back, people would be hoot and hollering. I'm not saying to make $100 million. But there would be a sort of.

Right. But he has long been a director who is taken seriously, who, you know, makes big movies, blah, blah, blah. But people do not stand in the way of, you know, some big otter. No, I do think Master and Commander growing made certain people revisit and do what you're saying, Ben David,

at being like, oh, fuck, he directed all five of those movies I love. And there's been a little bit more of a retrospective otorist swing on him. Now, why did you, Ben David, vibe with this movie specifically? Well, you said already, basically. But I would say that...

Did you catch it on DVD? Like, what was your first thing? Yeah, Netflix, got in the mail. There's a... Proto Quickster. The funny thing about there's, like, stuff that, like, you gravitate towards, that also is not at all, like, it's not your sensibility, like the stuff you're making. But a thing to me that I think is magic, if you can do

it, is the movies that make it, where you blurring the lines between what's actually happening and what's not, and making you feel like you're in the same headspace as a person. My favorite of all time, or that is perfect blue. Yes. The Cone movies are my favorite execution of that, which is also one of my favorite things. It's like if someone can make me feel like I'm losing my grip on reality alongside the lead character, I think that's just like a real, there's almost like a sense, there's like a magic to it, like between editing and sound design and music. And this movie to me is one of the most effective. Like, he's taking stuff that's in Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I think is a better

movie. I'd say, I think it's one of the best movies ever made. But this movie leans really hard into the feeling you get in the first third of that, like when they're on that trip, that thing where, like, nature and, you know, this cosmic, almost like a cosmic horror kind of thing, it's like a very, very sophisticated prestige version of that. It's also, I will say, not an easy movie to sell someone or describe in any way.

We'll get into it in the dossier, but a fascinating thing is that the success, and at least like the critical sort of notoriety of Picnic at Hanging Rock translated to United Artists putting up a good chunk of the budget for this movie because they felt like is we're someone who's about to translate over

to the States? Which was true. And when they watched the final film, they were like, yeah, you can sell it to someone else to release it. We don't want to put this out. They had put the money into it. It's a weird one. And production was done and they were like, feel free to shock around. I'm not shocked because I think they saw it and they were probably like, this is very Australian. Like, this is not

something that's going to translate. And my wife was like, what's, you know, she like comes in as I want. She's like, what's it about? And I'm like, well, um, and I really struggled to lay out the setup of the movie. There is like a two sentence you could give on this movie that would not represent it well, but would actually be conveying the major movements of it, if that makes sense.

I guess so. Yeah, it's like there's a white guy in a sort of town, kind of in the outback, who gets drawn into a crime. or an alleged crime and discovers that there's maybe like a sort of supernatural thing going on or a sort of, you know, ancient religious, you know, kind of thing going on. And then maybe he's sort of involved with it, like, supernaturally. As to represent Aboriginal murder in digging deeper understands that perhaps there was a supernatural phenomenon coming on that also. points towards the end of days.

It's a bit, right. It's a bit hard to just kind of lay out to somebody. That's not wrong, but I just said. But also, if you said that to someone, they would not picture the movie that exists. I think, well, I mean, I didn't watch it because, like, I'd read the premise and the premise sounded amazing.

I watched it because I was, you know, being an idiot going down a rabbit hole of like, oh, like, you know, Richard Kelly said he liked it and blah, blah, blah. There's another thing about it that it has that I love, which is kind of the foundation of, like, Jallo movies, which is, like, a detective story where it's not a detective.

and they're solving something that is kind of bigger than the thing. We're like, I love when it's like a lawyer or a journalist or like a saxophone player or something where like someone who's from the out, who doesn't traditionally everyday wake up and try to solve some gigantic unsolvable thing. Like a movie about getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. Like a movie about like a white man jazz saxophonist who starts to realize there's a weird pattern relating to the number 23 and needs to get to the bottom of it. You're saying that's your ideal kind of movie. I've never seen it. I thought you were starting to say the movie Deep Red. There are actually so many movies about, like, jazz players who get involved in a big, scary mystery.

And no bigger mystery than 23. I've yet to hear a bigger number cause that much damage. I haven't seen it because I didn't, I fucked up and I didn't watch it when I was 23, and now I got to wait till I'm 46. Someone very earnestly recently, I hope he doesn't hear this and think I'm mocking him. I was talking to me and said, have you ever noticed how the number 23 is everywhere? and I was like, is this a bit, do you know about the movie number 23? And he wasn't aware that anyone else had ever said that before. He was just noticing it.

Oh, he hadn't seen the picture. No, yeah, he just was like, he thought he was the first guy to notice that the number 23 was everywhere. It is funny movies like number 23 and pay it forward that are just like immediately met with derision and bomb. But also, even before their release, they're like, we're just going to pluck this and put it into the vernacular. No one has seen the movie. Everyone's seen the trailer. We all want to make number 23 jokes for the rest of our lives. That's me being Jim Carrey in that movie.

So prove me wrong. I think you were like 17 notes short. And for the listeners at home, Dave is doing incredible sex work. Oh, the finger work is so specific and precise. So the didgeridoo, I think, is the second best instrument after the alto sax just because I played that. You played also? You played did. No, I'm just saying, like, I wish I did.

I think that it is anything that is both a instrument and also sounds like sound design, to me, that's sick, in my opinion. I'm opening the dossier. Crack at this film. Yep. Peter Weir's second film was Picnic a Hanging Rock. It came on in 1975. It was a huge success in the country of Australia. And then it was a global success, but it took years.

So it really only gets to America in 1979, which is two years after the last wave comes out. So that's how, you know, slowly things are going. Now, Stanley Kubrick was a huge fan of picnic and hanging rock. He had very good taste. Also, I can't remember if we called this out in the episode. He, wait, at some point before he died, wrote a list of his 100 favorite movies of all time. People often obsess over said list. Cars that ate Paris is on that list.

There you go. He was specifically, like, locked in on that from release. I'm pretty sure we've called it out. Okay, well, who knows? It's possible to say. He recommended to Warner Brothers that they hire him to do the Salem, slot TV, the sort of legendary TV adaptation of Salem's Lot, which of course

was instead directed by Nick Garris? Is that right? Did Mick Garris do Salem's Lot? Larry Cohen did the second one. I think it's Mick Garris. Unless he did one of the other... Toby Hooper. I knew it wasn't Mick Gers. That was really embarrassing.

With the famous, with the boy at the window, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, JJ wrote that down. When I interviewed Rencoguer for sinners, he brought up Salem's Lot, the book, which is an incredible book, as like a book about like you don't realize that everyone's

fucking turning into a Dracula until like you know it's almost over blah blah right and I was like yeah and then the TV thing and he was like I've honestly actually never seen the TV thing and I was like right but and then at the same time we were like the boy at the wind

I was like everyone's seen that everyone knows that one scene yeah anyway he gets recommended for that we're passes he's kind of skeptical of making the Hollywood jump at that point in time. Yeah, he's kind of like, perhaps wisely, like, I don't

think I can handle, like, jumping from this quiet, indie, you know, off-the-grid Australian nascent film scene to, like, the horrors of harsh Hollywood, right? Makes sense. He's like, I like to write my own material. I know I'll probably film abroad one day, but,

you know, I think I need to build up some more confidence. I mean, good for him. So, obviously, Australia is pretty still tough to make a movie. You gotta really scrape your money together, right? You know, it's like a little bit of government money, a little bit of like, you know, random little companies and stuff like that. But the Australia New Wave is also basically developing in like perfect tandem parallel with his career. Like he said as, as he made each success of film in his career, the industry around him had leveled up. And the amount of money that people were willing to invest into movies and the government grants and all of that. kept leveling up at the exact same pace that his ambitions were growing. He, in 1971,

made a little trip to Tunisia. Cool. Saw some Roman ruins and was very, like, sort of seized by it and was, like, digging up stone, thinking, like, I'm going to find, like, a head. He felt a premonition. Right. And then he says he finds, like,

a chunk of stone that was first attached to a head. Must have been part of a cupid, he says. he smuggled it out of Tunisia, which is kind of a, you know, a sort of a soft crime. I know you feel like anything in the dossier is homework, classic Ben Cryptonite, but in fact, this anecdote is about Peter Weir stealing ruins. So cool.

He got it dated at the University of Sydney and it confirmed right. He still has it, or at least at the time, he, you know, it was like on his desk or whatever. So he's like, huh, I'm a pretty pragmatic guy. And yet I felt like I had like a weird, premonition. And that's why I did that insane thing. So what if that's like the origin of an idea for a movie?

What an odd guy. That's a weird way to describe. Do you know what's a weird thing we've uncovered Ben David in doing these first couple of episodes? Do you know that Peter Weir was like very involved in sketch comedy? Oh. That he like performed, wrote and directed sketch comedy when he was young. I think like started in college but extended outside of it. And it was his early work and filmed arts. So he's the original Jordan Peel? Kind of.

And then his filmmaking is like, oh, this is like an interesting medium that can combine all these different things I've done. Like, you know, I've done photography. I've done. I've worked with actors. I've performed. But it's funny because

even the movies he has made that are comedic do not feel like they come from someone with a background in sketch comedy. In a way, I would argue, like, Craigor and Peel have kind of like sketch comedy machinery built into their storytelling motors. But there's not comic timing built into the editing, even in a droll way of weird stuff.

Like, you know, Truman's show is almost anti-comedy in a way where it's undercutting any possible laughs you could get it. Correct. That's fascinating. You see like Craiger and Peel construct horror set pieces with a kind of sketch comedy brain for structure and timing. When he's making TV, Luke's Kingdom, which I don't think was sketch comedy, but one of his early TV things, he met.

I don't want to get it. I'm not totally sure how to say his name, but David Gold Pillow. I mean, Gold Pillow is how it sort of looks. That's the name of his next picture. Who had been in Walkabout. Obviously, that's like his, you know,

breakout role, which is an incredible movie, the Nicholas Rogue movie, about. But so he meets him there. And initially, we have been conceiving of this sort of mystical project of his as being about, like, Incan ruins or whatever, and he starts talking to him about, like, you know,

Aboriginal people and their, you know, their culture and their religion and, like, whatever. And he's like, I've never really fucking, you know, delved into this, despite being Australian. Like, I don't know much about this. The movie feels like him forcing himself to do the work that the character is doing. Right. Yes. Like the process of making the movie is like a self-imposed.

Like, I need to think more deeply about the land I'm standing on. He, he, this is, I'm quoting weird here, but he gets drunk with a guy. And he says, uh, gopill married a detribalized woman, moved her to the city, became an actor. He broke his tribal laws in the course of our conversation. He said something like this. Last week, my wife was very upset with me because of the great space. Because the great space had left me and there I stood. And that was because the moon was there.

I thought maybe I'd had too much to drink and I asked him to repeat that and he repeated the same thing and then he's repeated a third time. It turned out the premonitions were very ordinary for him and I became very excited and I was confronted by a basic error that made in my assessment of

tribal aboriginals that they perceived life the way I did. So he's very suddenly drawn to collaborating with him and like writing it about people in Australia. The country he lives in. And all the Aboriginal actors he cast in this film were very involved in the script from the moment they were hired.

He basically was like, tell me what I don't know. That actor was also on the leftovers, which was heavily inspired by a bunch of weird movies. He's such, I mean, he's in Rabbit Proof. He's in Crocodile Dundee. Yes. He's in Australia and Far Way Downs. He's in Australia, I think, by law. I think everyone in the cast of that movie, right, they were like, and all the Australian actors. I thought Australia was a mini-series on Hulu.

Well, that's far way down. It has a different title. Oh, does it? Yes, it does. He made a movie called Charlie's Country, like about 10 years ago that he won like every Australian acting prize for a movie that I think did not really cross over, but was a big deal in Australia. It was kind of a, like, the Australian film industry being like, we recognize your, the wealth

of your career and all this. It was kind of his fucking color of money. True grit. Yeah, you know, whatever. He died fairly recently? Yeah. He died in 2021. Richard Chamberlain died like in the last year at 90.

Yeah, I killed. I did it. David, David, this is actually, I took him down. This is the single worst place to confess that. Being recorded. No, he died, never married and had no children. Richard Chamberlain?

Yeah. He came out late in life. But he was a kind of don't ask, don't tell Hollywood, a barely closeted man who did in his memoirs, I think, in the early 2000. He finally was sort of like, by the way, this is a thing. So, anyway, he starts to crack this story. He brings on Tony Morfit, who'd worked on Luke's Kingdom to write it with him.

And then Petru Papascu, who had worked with Weir before, was brought in to make the script more appealing to potential investors, make it more commercial, I think, basically. Like, maybe their script is too weird, and he kind of cleans it up, although I think it's still a little weird. Yeah, he's got the McElroyd brothers. who produced the first two movies on board with this. Sure.

In between podcasting and tabletop campaigns. Indeed. And so they all get to work on it. He says, he admits, we're admits, he could never really figure out the ending of this movie. Well, I could kind of craft it by just ending with a big ass wave. He said, I didn't really find a solution

to the problem of how to end it. There is no ending. I was kind of painted into, a corner. And you try to be clever. I tried a couple other endings that stopped short of a wave. They were too neat. And so he decided to end with a big old wait.

I think the ending works. I wonder for him, I mean, I just sort of like, I didn't have the resources to show more of an apocalypse. I think it's the kind of ending that is going to send a bunch of your audience out going like, oh. Right? Not going up being like, you got to see this movie I just saw. Like, you know, like, it's definitely a head scratcher.

But it's an ending that definitively answers something is happening, which is kind of all the movie needs to make good on in my mind to conclude properly. I think the part of the ending that I struggle with is I don't really think they like set up and pay off the cyclical nature of like opening with someone stealing. these relics and then him trying to steal him and then killing the guy in the process. Like, it feels very kind of out of nowhere that he's so determined to bring those things out with him or like his intention behind doing it. I don't, doesn't really track. I like the idea of that kind of biblical comeuppance where he gets trapped and the more

he gets trapped, he keeps dropping the things until he has nothing left. Like that feels like a good idea. I don't love that stuff. But what I do love is the titular last wave. I like that. I agree with that. I think that's a good point. I also would say my criticism of the ending would be knowing that they specifically brought extra writers in to try to help this movie appeal to American audiences with a kind of Hollywood viewpoint.

Big must missed opportunity to not have Stitch hanging 10 on that wave. He's one of our biggest stars. The man's consistent box office gold. I struggle with this joke. You end with the Stitch came here. the thing just, the audience walks out cheering. It's not even a joke. It's a great point. The audience is cheering. He does not.

It's king of the fucking box office. Sure. He doesn't. Look at 2025. The numbers don't lie. But then Peter Weir would have story credit on Lilo and Stitch because he created Stitch. That's the way time works. Good. That is the way time works. The last wave. Weird does not see it as like an end of the world movie. It's more just like a catastrophe is what he's seeing.

Right. It's not a total lightoff. Right. Right. It's not like total apocry. he also doesn't think it's an occult movie. He's like, I don't want to sound pretentious, but it's spiritual. Like, you know, it's a spiritual movie. It's ambiguous. Like, and here's on what he's going for, mood he's going for. I was frightened by a noise heard outside my window last night, a rasping inhuman sound,

which seemed to come from nowhere. That's a fear we've all experienced at one time or another. Some choose to forget such fears. I choose to remember them and use them in my work. I kind of know what he's going for there. And like the creepiest dream in this movie, the one where you're kind of going up the stairs, the noise is kind of like a noise like that, that like weird noise you're hearing. Very cool. Not like terrifying, but a little unsettling.

Yeah. This movie, right, one of the key things, pillars of this movie is the idea that dreams are method of communication. That they are not abstract processing, but they are an attempt for. the universe, for spirits, for souls, for what have you, to be able to communicate something to you in a non-literal way, kind of like how frequency there's a radio that allows you to talk to dead people. So did frequency inventing podcasting? Or did I just do a real Bill Simmons bit?

No, no, frequency invented podcasting, Peter, we're invented Stitch. Oh, but they use the CB radio from the past to connect to the future to find out whose Stitch was to put Stitch in the finale. See, I thought the joke you were going to make is they should play the song, wipeout at the end. Yeah, I'll make that joke too. They should play a song, wipeout at the end. Wipeout, right in the...

Audience would have left cheering. So, I don't know. Stand by it. I think we're making good points all around. Maybe it's a mash-up and it's like, the final wipeout. So they get a bunch of money. I'm just steamrolling all this. They get some money, Janus Films, Southern Australia.

It doesn't matter. Come on, Jesus. It doesn't matter. This is too much. Richard Chamberlain. Best known, I would say, is Dr. Kildare on NBC. They called him the king of the miniseries. Well, that's true.

They did. I do feel like that is, because he's in the original show gun, right? That was a huge show. He does the yard birds after this, which I think comes out of him enjoying his time in Australia. I think you mean the Thorn Brits. The Yardbirds is like the band. I'm going to correct JJ's typo here. Hold on one second.

Stop blaming J.J. Another TV miniseries. It is called Centennial, not one I know. but that was like a big show in the 70s or. But look, I have never seen Dr. Kildare, but that was like a show in the sixth, right? Like, that was like a popular doctor show in the earlier days of television, right?

Does everyone agree with me? Correct, but also the, this is, you know, the miniseries, which has now basically just become the prestige TV show, was a very powerful thing in the 70s, and he was kind of the go-to leading man. Right. He's a good-looking guy. He's a classically,

handsome, broad-shouldered, steady-voiced man. Right. Yes. You don't see him and go like, holy shit, this is the best fucking actor I ever saw. No, but I think he's quite good in this, and it's smart casting because there is something unnerving about watching this guy who just feels like really kind of on top of it,

just get a little frazzled and thrown off that. He said I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry? No, what does he play? He plays... He's pretty buried at it. Counselman Banks. He's not buried in it. He thrives in it.

Does he? I imagine he must be presiding over the court. There's definitely some wedding. I think he gives like a speech like where he's like, you too have done great things. Thank you for solving the thing. Marriage. Because that is a movie that at the end they're like, and you guys are heroes too for doing this. Yeah, people applaud them.

You're not gay, but you are heroes. You know, because the heroes is Alexander Payne. And Jim Taylor. for getting writing credit on that. Yeah. So Richard Chamberlain, you know, he's an American actor, but the Australian sort of press was a little grumpy of think about the fact that this movie didn't star an Australian.

And like, Weir is just kind of like, I don't know, like, he's a famous guy and he was good in the movie. Like, he does not, he's no hangups about casting Richard Chamberlain. Yeah. He's not the right look. Yeah. He does. It also does sound like he, in,

not wanting to try to make the jump over to Hollywood movies, he was trying to figure out the way to make his movies play more in the States. Like, it felt like that was a defensive chess move of, if my movies can have some North American box office pull, then perhaps I can stay in Australia for even longer. Right. I mean, which cool. Right.

Richard Chamberlain's like the cheapest version of a leading man you can get because he's not as much a movie guy while feeling very comfortable to American audiences. Yes. I think he's quite good in this. I think he knew that someday he was going to be in Twin Peaks, and that was a good reason to put him in there. Yes. That's also, yes.

Well, Stitch told him. So more important, I think, is that we are, like, meets with the sort of Aboriginal cultural foundation in Darwin, Australia. And basically, like, the vibe he's like, he's like, you can't just, like, show up and be like, anyway, I'm making a movie. Can you, like, show me some guys? Like, can you introduce me to the right people?

Like, you've got to be like, here's the story I want to tell. does this palatable, is this interesting to people? You know, like you want to be very sensitive and respectful. And so he's introduced to people.

He attends a sort of dance group. And, you know, he kind of just like keeps quiet and observes and talks and reads more. Look, there's a lot of things in this dossier. I'm just not going to.

going to get it. It's just too much, JJ. Just a lot of factual errors. It's just, I mean, look, he did a lot of work finding the right actors, okay? I'm sorry, it's flooded with information. There we go. And obviously, he already knew

David Goldpillil, because he'd worked with him before. They shot the movie. Russell Boyd shoots it. You know, his go-to cinematographer. Russell Boyd or John Seale. Right. John Seal is sort of initially, I think, Boyd's number two.

That's how they meet. And then, of course, becomes a legendary cinematographer in his own right. Boyd, a relationship that runs through to Master and Commander. Yeah, he wins the Oscar. It's the only tech Oscar that Lord of the Rings the Return of the King was not nominated for. Yes. No, I remember. Which was crazy.

Because it won every single category. And Andrew Lesney is an Australian cinematographer. He is. And he has won, obviously, for fellowship. And I think he was like, I don't know. It's so weird that he wasn't nominated for it doesn't matter. But I remember that night

watching the Oscars. The Lord rings 11 out of 11. But cinematography having this weird tension to it where you're like, this is the only category we can't predict because it's the one you can't put Return of the King down for. Yeah, exactly. And he deservedly won an Oscar there.

Obviously, with last wave, he goes blue. He was working quite blue in that film. They're going for real blue look. That's actually something Peter Weir talks about his interviews of the movie is that he wanted Picnic to have golden light. and for this one to have blue and light. I think...

Nailed it on the assignment nailed. Yeah. The raining frogs, they wanted to try and initially film like black rain. Mm-hmm. Like the phenomenon of black rain could not afford how to... Like, they were like, we don't know how we would do that, and it's too expensive. Yeah, they tried chubby rain, but it just felt like it threw off the mood, the tone of the movie. It was too funny.

Here's how they filmed the raining frogs. Someone got in a ladder and threw some fox frogs on the fucking ground, and they filmed it. Some fucking magic of movies. I can't believe they ripped off Magnolia. How many ladders were used? I know there's no film set without a couple ladders, but do you feel like you had any ladder-aided gags in your new movie? I add...

So the thing when I watch is what I think of... Well, two things. One, I grew up in Phoenix, which had like severe monsoon seasons, and I was driving to see American Beauty at a press screening because I was a 16-year-old film critic. for the Arizona Republic for a little bit. You were saying this, that you had a radio show as a teenager, and you lost your slot when your voice broke, and they no longer thought.

When my voice changed, I got fired because I no longer sounded like a kid, and then I never got hired for work like that again. Did you have a catchy name like Lights, Cameron Jackson? No, I had a catchy name, Ben David Grubinsky. It is pretty catchy. It launches in the memory. You know, you sort of, unless you get to the end of a pod and realize there's Ben and David already. But it wasn't like Ben David Grubenskill versus...

green. Well, I was seeing American Beauty and I was driving and you couldn't see two inches in front of the windshield because the way the monsoon rain would be then is it feels like the rain scenes in this movie where like it's completely obstructing your vision. I have driven in those kinds of conditions. I had to pull off the road and wait for to stop raining. But the other thing I think of is that I had a rain machine on a project, which I will not name. And they said we couldn't afford it because we over budget and I said, well, how much is my trailer? And my trailer was more than a rain machine. So they said, fine, we can have a rain machine.

After I gave up my trailer, I found out that we were under budget by half a million. God fucking damn it. So that's what I think of whenever I see rain in a movie is me being petty about someone lying to me about the budget. And then the problem is during lunch, you have to take naps on top of a rain machine. Now, I actually did. When you don't have a trailer, what do you do? Where do you go?

I just answered he takes naps on top of the brain machine. Well, I'm going to answer. He said he did. So I'm just going to. He said he did. I don't know how to tell you. I'm going to just, you know,

sit and hang out. You just have no place to nap. You always have a place to go. There's always chairs. Yeah. I've never napped because I just, if I, if I napped,

then it would just be over. Like I... Not a good napper. When I'm directing, I have to, like, at lunch, like, if I'm, especially if I'm writing it to,

like, go over the pages and, like, work out stuff at a place where, like, no one will find me. But on that thing, I was a showrunner, and it was live action, so I've already given away what it was.

But I didn't need the trailer, and no one really does. But in that case, it was just like, the, finding out, that's like the weird thing. It's like,

oh, a ray machine cost like $36,000 for a day or something. And so this movie, I think they had infinity dollars for their rain budget. The rain budget's insane. I,

you brought up Coogler, Sims, weirdly. for unrelated reasons. Sure. I was thinking a lot, not having seen this movie before, the way water is depicted

feels very similar to me to what Coogler does in Wakanda Forever. A movie I like a lot. A movie that is all over the place but has stuff in it that I think about a lot. And the main thing is the way he uses the device of like when Namor and people are coming,

that water just starts like pooling in areas. I love all of that shit in Wakanda forever. That shit's incredible. And this movie has the like, when the water is pulling out of the car radio, just the eeriness of like water flooding through in places it shouldn't, with a looming dread. Did that remind you guys of the opening of eight and a half,

like those car stuff? For some reason, it reminds me. That's a movie I've not seen in a long time. Well, it's funny because eight and a half is a movie that I only really strongly remember two things, is the opening, like, when he's in a car and he's like the way that it's lit and shot where he's, like, surrounded by other cars

and you sort of feel trapped. and then the dancing scene that I think they also did in Brother's I remember when he's a balloon Yeah, circus at the end. And that one he floats away and then someone like has to pull him down. But the way that the car stuff in the opening of eight and a half is shot reminds me of those scenes like when he's in his car and you feel like the world is so oppressive, you know.

It's just funny that that's kind of like an early art film that a lot of people are shown because it's so famous. And so I was probably like 16 or something where 15 when I saw it. Probably the same. Yeah. I'm like, oh yeah, I really relate to this. story of like kind of a middle-aged Italian director being like, maybe I've made too many movies.

The art movie. That is tough making your 20th picture after you've been heralded a genius for DECD. And every woman alive from birth to death wants to fuck you. Fuck, that does suck. It's relatable. People keep trying to like smother me in their giant pendulous breasts. I'd say the two art movies that everyone sees as a teen,

eight and a half and Clifford. Yeah. Yeah. Thought you were going to say seven samurai. But yeah, Clifford, you're right. Which are both kind of depictions of the burden of genius. Yeah. And success.

I mean, they're both movies about a stinker. They are. Clifford is a burden. We cannot deny this. I don't even... He's talented. He's very talented. He's an artist.

He's an artist in his own way. Dinosaurs land? That's right. Both movies have a dinosaur theme park in them. Thank God Clifford never came across a pair of giant pendulous Italian breasts. I don't even want to know what he would have done. That was the sequel, the entire. premise.

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It takes quite... A bit before the story starts in earnest. There's a lot of just kind of... Yes. immersing you in the various scenes. This is where we are. We're in this town. We're not in, like, Sydney.

We're not in, like, you know, sort of more built-up Australia. and weird shit is happening and everyone's, it's not like deadly, but everyone is a little like thrown. There's a weird amount of water. Yes. Shit's getting wet. Y'all ever been in like true like golf ball hail?

Yes. London gets it a lot. It's really weird. There was a moment in between us traveling for shows that Conoratlett Patrick Kotner and I were in a car together going from when George Lucas Talks show to another. where like it went from zero to a hundred. It was dry and then suddenly the rain started coming down like last wave hard.

And I cite it as the closest I've come in my life to feeling like I was about to die. There was a moment where all three of us tensed up. Who was driving? Patrick Kotner. Oh dear. Well, if I was driving, we would have already been dead. Well, yes. It wasn't saying you should be driving.

No. Patrick was driving and the rain started coming down really hard, really furious. The windshield wipers could not combat it. and we were on a freeway and every car you could see was panicking at the same time and it just felt like any one of us could kind of like lose control and then start like a 20 car pilot

and then like we just in silence all tensed up five minutes later it just stopped cold out of nowhere and we all breathed and were like oh I was ready to die I thought it was about it You said you were gay I did

It was also an almost famous moment. You have to respect the wind, like Van Halen said, in the song from Twister. That was the problem. That was the problem. I wasn't. Right. And I hadn't seen Twisters yet, so I hadn't considered that you could ride it. Had you seen Lilo and Stitch?

I had that little alien. They say he's all bad, but actually I think there's some good in him. So, weird shit is happening. Heavy rainfall, frogs, other. anomalies, local Aboriginal people in this town seem spooked. And during one of these rainstorms, there's a fight and somebody dies. But it's all pretty mysterious. And by town we're talking, Sydney.

Well, the first, like, sequence is not in Sydney. This is the schoolhouse. The town, the bar fight, I think, is in Sydney, right? Yeah, I know the tunnels are in Sydney, like the underground stuff. And I know that Sydney is where they shot Mission Impossible, too. sure. They shot this mostly... In Adelaide.

Is that right? But it seems like it was mostly a weather issue when they were planning on shooting and sitting. I don't know much about Adelaide, but I'll admit, I don't know much about a lot of places in Australia. Let's see where it is. Wasn't that a Blake lively Harrison Ford movie?

I don't know much about Adelaide. Right, so Adelaide is in South Australia, right? It's all... It's on the sort of middle of the country on the southern side. I don't know what I should have. Looks nice. Every Australian city always just looks so sunny and pretty.

I believe they had an issue where there was actually too much rain in Sydney, so they went to Adelaide so that they could control the fake rain more. Right, right, right, right. I mean, makes sense. You actually do need to be able to control it. What's it with Australian directors having production problems because of rain? I think probably the through line there is that Australia is crazy. It rains a lot.

is the spiky car from the cars that ate Paris did that inspire the car in Fury Road? Did you guys figure that out? It's a direct homage. Oh, that is so sick. Inspired all of Mad Max. George Miller sees it and is like, oh, what if you built a whole fucking movie out of this?

Miller seeing it is inspired to make the first Mad Max, which is why in Fury Road, he's like, I want to pay homage to the goat. When that spiky car showed up, I was like, wow. Those guys rock. You know what's also crazy fact that we forgot to bring up? Do you know that the dof war? was a PA on the cars that ate Paris. That was his first credit before he realized what he wanted to do.

He was just interested in films. Ben has thrown his headphones down. Ben's out. He is handed in his two weeks notice. Ben Hosley is out. We'll miss you, Ben. He is serving me with papers. So the character of David Burton, played by Richard Chamberlain, is a lawyer, but the end and sort of essentially is like assigned right to this murder case to defend one of the men.

maybe all of the men, definitely to defend Chris. Yeah, all five of them, because they say if one of them doesn't show up, then the trial's over or something. There's something extremely sort of obscure and bureaucratic about Australian law that, like, he is a tax lawyer, not a criminal defense lawyer, but because of the divide between, like, indigenous people and European settlers, settlers, settlers, colonizers, you know, like, he gets assigned the case. This is discussed in the movie. It was a little over my head. Same. It's, yes, it's the quirk of the Australian legal aid system. I mean, this is sort of what I was getting at earlier.

It's essentially just that's why he's an outsider, like, especially an outsider. But these, like, weird circumstances in which colonialists come in and pose their view of how a society should be structured onto a land that is not theirs. And then, like, a century later. They're bringing Western law to a dispute. I mean, for one, all the accused just like do not want to talk about what happened. But then like centuries later, these countries start to go like, oh, fuck, do we got to like own up to what our ancestors did? And then they start to carve out rules of like, well, this doesn't apply to you because we've been disrespectful to your customs and your tradition. So everything is sort of, yes, there's some weird quirk of the system where through the legal aid system in Australia, now a tax lawyer has to represent a murder case.

Do we know why John Grisham never did cosmic horror? Incredibly good question. And besides the Christmas movie with the cranks, the book was called surviving Christmas, I think. Yes, but also in the book, they're not the cranks, they're the Cthulos. So David's having, I'm steamrolling this. So David's having weird dreams on top of this case. And he is seeing Chris, the Gopulah character, in his dreams.

So sees him prior to first meeting him. Correct. Yes. And it is spooky. And that is the vibe of the movie until the end. I'm not saying other things don't happen. Other things do happen. But what I just described is kind of what the movie's about.

It's David being like, something feels weird and I'm having weird dreams. What's going on? And these people largely are sort of like, we don't want to talk about it. And it's kind of none of your business. And he's like, I know, but I'm having these weird dreams. and they're like, well, that is weird and that is interesting, but I don't know, Matt.

Like, it's like a lot of that. It is kind of fascinatingly a, like, anti-white saviour movie or, like, inverted white saviour movie in a way where it's like, oh, here's like a noble, square-draud, very conventional white lawyer who is assigned to a case to prove the innocence of aboriginal men. And the worst version of this movie is seen 20 times as he's like, I've learned that you are a person. And he gives some 20-minute monologue arguing that they have feelings and thoughts. And he teaches people how to end racism. And Linda Cardellini is the heart of the movie, right? Well, the only thing I want to bring up that I'm sure is already in the dossier is when Charlie comes over for dinner, somebody says that law is like the most important thing in their culture.

And the guy who played Charlie, whose name is Nandjwara Magula. Yes. When he, because he was not an actor, and when he agreed to be in the movie, his only stipulation was that they represent that within the movie because that was something very important to him to convey within the movie is that in his culture, the law of their tradition superseded everything, which I thought was interesting because that moment does feel very authentic to something when they convey that. I was going to say the moment where he meets the clients, and especially, Chris, he basically goes like, what the fuck is going on here? I'm not crazy that like none of this makes sense, right? Like, he just owns up to, I fucking don't know what movie I'm in.

And they're sort of like, you're not ready for this shit. Right. The dinner scene that Ben David is referencing, according to Peter Weir, was sort of constructed by Goldfiel and Anjwara. And he put in all the lines about the law and all that stuff. And Weir was just kind of like, I kind of let them do it.

and they're kind of just talking to Richard Chamberlain and I kind of just let him talk and then called cut. You know what I mean? Rather than like, let's do the script. It was like, you guys just, you know, you guys just tell him. Try to explain this to him. I say this from the perspective of a white man

who knows nothing of what this movie is about in real life. You disgust me. Thank you. I'll take the hit. But this does feel like a good example of a know what you don't know endeavor. Yeah, right, right. Right. Like, it feels like everything you read, and it is entirely possible.

There are huge missteps in this movie that I am oblivious to. I think no. I think they sort of were taken away from making missteps by the actors. And certainly when you read about the process, it felt like he was very open in that of, I can write the white man part of the movie. I do not want to impose something on here. You tell me what this should be and let them sort of take a lot of authorship over their scenes. Like, Weir says at one point,

point there. We're like, hey, so what are some, like, tribal symbols we can use for all the, like, tribal symbol shit? And Nantiora was like, you absolutely are forbidden from using any real tribal symbols. We can make some up. Yeah. You know, like, we won't be using anything real. That dinner scene in that subplot is something I always love in a movie, like, and God told me to, or Devil's Advocate or something, when, like, the lead character thinks that there's nothing about them besides just being kind of the guy. And someone's, like, starts to say things about, like, their past.

like where they came from and they're starting to be like, wait, hold on, hold on. What? Like, I always love feeling like the ground beneath the league characters start to get unsettled where they feel like they understand everything about themselves and then they start to realize they don't. In Devils, I don't know what you're talking about. The guy gets the job of the law firm. Boss seems normal to me.

Very successful. Yeah, he learns something about himself in his heritage or something. Big personality, I guess. What's his name in that again? John Milton. Right. Which I really love. Right.

Because Angel Heart is Lucifer. Yeah, that one was maybe a little on the nose. One of my favorite things about that movie is they shot in Trump's apartment, and they picked it because it was so ugly and terrible. And when he was there, Satan himself would want to live here. And I guess Trump was like, I'm so glad you want to show the place. And Tony Giroi's like, I don't know how to tell him we did it because it's like so fucking ugly.

I mean, it's the great, like, fucking Malaney bit of Donald Trump feeling like the way a, like, rail riding hobo in a 30s movie would describe a, rich person. Imagining a rich person. Everything in his house is gold and his hair is made of yarn. Yes. Or made of cotton candy. Fine gold silk.

Fine gold silk. I've listened to that bit too many times. So they make the movie and it's good. Let's talk more about the movie. So, Ben David, can you talk more about the movie, please? I feel like I've talked way too much.

Already. I can't tell if you're being facetious or not. I don't know. Ben keeps looking at it. me, like, mouthing shut the fuck up. That's actually looking at his phone right now. I think he's watching, you know, another movie or maybe he's... No, I'm watching the...

The last wave. The last wave. Again? Well, because I'm just scrubbing through the plot. Okay. Trying to, you know, be a good producer. Yeah, well, we haven't gotten anything wrong yet, so... No. Look, I mean, essentially, again, look.

I... The rest of the movies is a much of cascading dreams that you... And real life stuff and then a wave comes. So there's this... You know, the first... The first thing I ever, like many, I think a, you know, non-Australian Western, especially, the first thing I ever fucking learned about aboriginal people was the book or movie Walkabout. I read the book when I was like 12 and then I saw the movie.

And, you know, the whole thing in that movie and book is that the boy, the Aboriginal boy who finds these, it's about these British kids who crash land in the Outback and like their parent dies and they meet an Aboriginal and they like sort of survive. Have you seen Walkabout? I've seen Walkabout. Yeah. obviously there's this crazy sexual undercurrent going on and like... Very good director. Right.

That like... The major plot point is that she kind of looks at the guy wrong and he's just like you've essentially sort of marked me and he just goes to die. And like that is sort of what Richard Chamberlain is putting together in this movie, right? Of like, are you... Did somebody die because someone pointed like a bone at him essentially? you know, like, is this a sort of like ritual, you know, mystical death that's rooted in, like, a culture I do not understand. And everyone's basically like, we don't talk about it with you.

Right. Rather than like, yes, yes, let's tell us the secrets. They're like, it's not for you to know. Stop putting us into your system. There's, he's sensing that there seems to be some kind of unified code to their silence. Yes. And their refusal to really even engage in conversation. Just get stitches.

I mean, come on. Well, the offender, we see steal some kind of stones and give them to some unidentified person. There's some kind of arrangement. And then he ends up at a bar. And this is where they have the confrontation. And then he has the bone pointed at him and ends up dying. Right. In a sort of, I mean, they say he drowned, but like it's very mysterious.

Because he drowned in like a puddle. He broke the laws of their world, which supersede our stupid laws for the guy in the wig. Well, also, their whole attitude is just sort of like, throw whatever the fuck you want us. This isn't what's real, you know? They seem a little kind of like, they refuse to accept the Western rules of law that are being imposed on them. Yeah. So who's a worst lawyer? this guy or the lawyer in JFK.

This guy. He's really bad. The lawyer in JFK is just crazy. God bless him. Jim Garrison. The worst lawyer is the lawyer and the judge. I don't know. Troy McClure. I think you're confusing Troy McClure and... The judge is about a lawyer? Ben, that's...

Hold on. I'm sorry, Ben, David. Just sidebar for one second. I'm so embarrassed. Ben, that's like rough because that's the first incorrect thing that's been said on this episode and you don't have JJ to take the fall for this. All right. I'll put on my dunce cap. No, I just think whatever we got to do in the edit, we can cover this up. We can all agree to just never speak of this ever again.

I'm watching this movie and I do start to think like, okay, this is going to end up being a sort of a legal drama where this, you know, world that Richard Chamberlain's character does not understand kind of gets dragged into the courtroom and it's sort of like a lot of things get like sifted through in the courtroom. That is not what happens. Instead, he loses his court case. Like, you see there's a scene in the courtroom where he's trying essentially to kind of make that happen, and it doesn't really work. Like, and then the rest of the movie is him, like, increasingly being like, I am having weird visions that something weird is going to happen. I feel like we landed on this in Picnic and Hang Rock of saying, like, this movie feels so unique in his filmography. It's not really the vibe of the rest of his films. And then we realized he basically has four different versions of a reality collapse movie in his career.

It's these two back to back. It's fearless, I would argue. Sure. And Truman Show is obviously one of the most extreme versions and now has become like a shorthand for a psychological phenomenon of this is fake. You live in a simulation. But this movie feels like in its own quiet way, very similar to Truman Show where like meeting these guys basically causes the light to fall out of the sky for him.

And then he's just hyper fixated on like, tell me what the fuck's going on. Because I've been kind of feeling this. We won't, but you do seem to be a, they use the word, a mulchral, right? Like, it's sort of like, you seem to be somehow descended from, you know, a shaman or someone who's connected to the dreaming, the parallel world, like the, whatever, like the sort of like our more deeper understanding of reality. And he still wants to find a way to get them acquitted,

but it does feel like it is a secondary concern in the movie to how do I get them to explain what's going on to me. Well, he thinks he's helping, which is that classic failed thing where he's like, they tell me they don't want me to do this defense. Everyone tells me not to do this, but I know better and no good comes from it. Don't you also think it's sort of a lie he's telling himself or he's saying, look, you need to tell me so I can help you be absolved of this crime. But in reality, he's just like, I need fucking answers.

I do think he means well because he makes that guy drop off who wanted them to plead guilty. But again, that could just be ego too of like that that's like a failure. The reason I notice the South American thing so much is there's the dinner table scene where his wife says, I'm a fourth generation Australian. I've never met an aborigining, right? Which is such a like telling statement. For someone to identify as a fourth generation Australian and being like, okay, you're like...

I think in 1977, you're basically saying like, I mean, fourth is probably about as far back as you go if you're a white person in Australia. Right, and you're just sort of like, I'm a fourth generation Australian, considering the idea that Australia starts when my first relative landed

here, and that reality before that doesn't exist, and I have never engaged with the indigenous population of the country, the continent that my family has lived in for now over a century. And he is from a different place but with a very similar energy. Even if he moved here very early and he does have like a nationalized identity and an Australian accent that I nailed in the introduction,

that it's not his home fundamentally in the same sense that she's taking pride in the idea of being a fourth generation Australian as if that gives her some cultural weight. And that it feels like he is never totally settled in this place ever. it's why I thought South African because I was like that's kind of an interesting analog. But I was wrong about it and JJ will apologize publicly.

You guys into folk horror? JJ did a lot and he did the fucking Troy McClure thing. Yeah, we're just going to fucking fix it in the edit. Does this count as folk horror? It's close. Yeah, I mean, it's if you call this movie horror. I don't know what else.

I think that this is too fancy to be like horror per se, but I think it's incredibly effective horror filmmaking. Are you arguing... It calls it a mystery drama, which is, I mean, is also a fair attempt. It's a bit of a tough one to nail down genre-wise. It's not really a thriller.

Two-Fa-threats. It's almost like an elevated horror. But this is an example, I always say, of like, I wish every fancy director made a horror movie, and Peter Weir has a bunch of movies that almost qualifies existential horror. There's just something about someone

who's just very good at their job tackling. that or not feeling like they're above those things. It's similar to me to Synecdochee, New York coming out of Amy Pascal saying to Spike Jones and Charlie Kaufman, it'd be interesting to see you guys try to make a horror movie together. And then like two years

later, he hands in that script and she's like, I don't know what the fuck this is, but good luck. And this feels like you say, Peter, we're like, try writing your own horror movie. And he's like, here's what upsets me. That's the thing. He's kind of like, I, right, I am troubled by this idea. Is anyone else? Right. This is a

The movie comes out of people are like, kind of. Whereas Picnic and Hanging Rock is sort of the same vibe in a way. It's not his personal because it's based on a book and it's based on someone else's weird feeling. That one comes out and everyone's like, ooh, this is spooky in a way that's never been like put on movies in film before. Wait, can I tell you guys a horrific thing that happened to me last night? Please. So I saw the movie Iron Lung. How is that?

Well, let me tell you. When it was over, something really cosmic and insane happened. And so I left, I saw with my friend Taylor, a fan of the show. Hi, Taylor. The great Taylor. I was leaving the theater. And I reached into my pocket, the Village 7 AMC. Absolutely.

On the fifth floor. A mildly haunted theater, I would say. I left the theater. I'm a couple blocks away. I reached in my pocket to take out these wireless soundproof Sony headphones. And in my pocket were two of that. We're not getting paid for that. There were two sets of headphones.

The exact same headphones, same brand. Noise can't call. These are multiple colors. And I reach in my pocket and there's two pairs. And I like, my brain almost explodes. There's an actual photo of me reacting in real time because I'm like, this seems made up. And the movie is very kind of a, the last 20 minutes of a movie, a very mind-fuck thing. And there's double headphones on my pocket.

I don't own another pair. There's no one in my household has another pair. And I have two. And I'm like, what the fuck happens? So like, I'm like, what do I do now? So I check and one of them is paired to my phone and one's not. and I'm like, these must be from the theater, but I don't know how. So we walk all the way back to the theater and find some young, like 20-something girl in the lobby

freaking out because she can't find her headphones. Wow. So what had happened was she walked by and dropped her headphones onto my coat that was on the seat next to me. And then you assume. And then when I got up to pick up my coat, my headphones were there and I put them in my pocket. And then if I hadn't, I could have gotten all the way home with those and been haunted for the rest of my life about why. there was two of the exact same model of headphones in my pocket. So I'm just saying I feel a lot like a character.

I felt like a character in one of these existential movies. That would also spook me. I still want to know how the movie is. I also want to know. I'm seeing it tomorrow. I want to know if Amy Pascal asked you to write and direct a horror movie, is that what you'd pitch. Okay.

So what I would say about Iron Long is Iron Long has like a really, really dense kind of lore to it that felt very like, oh, well, this is from the video game. Sure. It's basically. And it's the storytelling of it is very kind of like outsider art and the way it like tries to explain the exposition. And that's a nice way of saying I didn't understand 70% of the exposition. So afterwards I was like, well, this must be just directly from the game. So I want to go watch a playthrough. And a playthrough of the whole game is 70 minutes and the movie's more than two hours long.

And so Taylor watched the 70 minute playthrough. And he said, oh, there's no lore in the game. It's just you're in a submarine and you're just like trying to get a fish and sometimes the fish bites you. That is how I've got. It is like the whole thing is like a huge, very, very complicated future, like Lovecraftian style thing that I didn't understand at all. And I'm like, well, if I'll play the game and I'll get it and it was not from the game. Okay. So this sounds like a mildly negative review.

I thought it was very interesting. It was like 70 minutes too long. It's quite long. It is the one thing I'm seeing it tomorrow out of total interest in just like. I'm really glad it's a success story and all that. But like I do see one 25 minutes. and I'm like, now hang on a second. Like, wait.

Your YouTube horror movie should be 85 minutes long. That should be a law. I just want to say, if it's about being in a submarine and trying not to get bitten by fish, they should have sent fucking Cogman down there because shit wouldn't have gunned down like that. You were going to do another stitch joke.

No, why would I do that? This was a natural Tia for Cogman. The stitch joke only happens when it's super organic, clean, and is met with gales of laughter. Is there ever a natural Tia up for Cogman? Yeah, it just happened. You know what's going to happen? He goes inside a submarine, he beats fish.

someone's going to watch my movie now and be like, he thinks he's better than the last kiss and Iron Lung, and I'm like, you're right, I'm sorry. Although if Goldwyn comes for you, I don't know what to tell you. They're also going to be like... That would be a scandal. They're also going to watch your movie and be like, this is on Hulu, why didn't he put stitch in it?

He's like in the family. Well, I do open with a song from Oliver & Company. You do. Dodger kind of the stitch of his day. Can you tell David about your current movie watching project for 2026? Oh, I'm so interested in whatever this is. Exactly.

I love it. Like, comment. Wait, which one is it? You're theatrical. I'm seeing every horror movie that is released

at my local AMC in 2026. And so far, love that. It has been a choice. January and February are heavy- There was like, I've seen like six movies

already this month. So I'm like an A-list. So you're going to see Whistle. Oh, yeah, I'm definitely going to see that. So I just watched the first two strangers chapter one and chapter two so I can see three

and how to make sense. I'm sure it wouldn't have to make sense. Two has a part where a boar chases her around for a while and almost eats her. And then you cut to a flashback of a kid with a baby boar and said, someday I will teach this bore to do amazing things. Is it the same bore from Send Help? It actually is. Good reps.

It's crazy how they figured out how to do that between two different studios. I hope Strangers Chapter 3 ends with one of them saying, nice to meet you. Like as a full circle, oh, fuck, they're not strangers. FAP for one has the exact same opening as Cobra, where there's like, there's 57 deaths every 30 seconds. There's 12 rapes. Like, it lists like the exact amount of time and how often crimes happen. I love Rennie.

It's great. Sims, Ben David and I saw Mercy, aka chair of the movie, 40X. Are we counting that as horror or was this separate from that? It is a horrifying experience. I saw your letterbox. It is one of the most insidious things I've ever seen, even more so than the entire insidious franchise. Right. The opening line of that film, as I quoted, my letterbox review is millions had been affected by crime.

Oh, no. I hope a guy in a chair can solve this problem. But this is like replacing the dent act for me. We're going to outlaw crime. The opening is just voiceover, random guy, never again. Millions had been affected by crime. So I saw, I've seen Night Patrol, we bury the lead, primate, return to Silent Hill, iron lungs, send help, 28 years. Sure, Bone Temple.

What was the first two? Night Patrol and bury the lead? Night Patrol where Justin Long plays a dirty cop vampire. We bury the dead with Daisy Ridley. Oh, that one I heard. That one I heard was okay. It's like a zombie movie. It was interesting.

Yeah. How is the Justin Long? It's interesting. It's like, I'm glad I saw it. But return to Silent Hill, I just got to talk about. Okay. In Return to Silent Hill. Since I's been talking about it.

So I love Silent Hill very much. The game. I do too. And Silent Hill too, which I know this is specific. an adaptation of the game Silent Hill, too. Which is the best of the games. Would we agree? Yes.

Yeah. I love Christoph Gans' this film, Silent Hill. I think it is the best video game movie ever made. I think that if you make one change, it is a 10 out of 10 movie. The second Silent Hill film, I believe, is called Revelation. Is very poopy and bad.

Did not see it? It's no good. Adelaide Klamans. If you say so. Yep. So then Christoph Gans is announced just making this return to Silent Hill. No, I haven't heard.

Yeah. I haven't heard much from Christoph recently. This is the first film in quite a lot. But I'm still like, hey, he understood the franchise in a way. Like, I'm excited. The movie comes out. My letterbox starts flashing half stars. Like, I'm seeing a lot of...

You're getting like Amber alerts on your phone. I've seen a couple of people push against this trend. Where do you fall on this? I haven't seen it yet. I just have two things to say about it. I'm really glad I saw it. I think that there's some really cool craft and stuff in it. I just have two issues in it.

Someone goes by a marquee that has Jacob's ladder on it. And I think fundamentally, it'd be like if you were at McDonald's and they had like an advertisement for the world's best burger on the wall while you're eating a bit mac. Because I mean, Silent Hill is very inspired by the people. It's like an asshole move to be like. Remember that other movie? Yeah, but don't remind me of a movie. Yeah.

Oh, terrible idea. That I just have to think of like, oh, God, I wish I want to see that. Yeah. And then the other one was the whole time I'm like, who is this lead? guy and I didn't realize he was the war horse. Jeremy Irvine. And that was, that's always like an interesting thing for me when you're like, oh, me neither. Let's correct.

He was the war boy. Owner of the war horse. I thought it was very interesting. The first one, the issue is they keep cutting outside a Silent Hill to Shambine. They do. And that was literally a studio note of there are no men in this movie. Which is one of the funniest thing I've ever heard. Like in Wizard of Oz, you can't cut to Kansas

because then that makes it feel like these things exist simultaneously. David, I agree with you that that's a flaw with that movie. I just feel like that movie captures the atmosphere of a video game. No, I'm saying if it didn't have that, I would defend everything in the movie. I would defend everything. We all have our flaws except for one guy. The Brotherhood of the Wolf, though, I think is perfect. That's a cool movie.

I mean, I haven't seen it since I was a teenager. I haven't seen Barry the Dead, but I really liked that Daisy Ridley horror movie from last year. The one where I read the news story that she was secretly married. That was good. I got to tell you. That was good. That zagged. That buried the Stitch joke.

And I'm feeling great. Am I back? Is Griffin funny again? Christopher Hitchens has to rise from the grave to write a new op-ed piece. Griffin is funny. Question mark. David. Yes.

Ah, who's that? No. David, in fact, I see why you were confused. It sounded like a doorbell or perhaps even. in the ringing of a phone to introduce an ad read character, but in fact, it's on ad read character. It's an exciting new ad read prop. My hand chimes.

Okay. What? Oh. Then why are you ringing those? Well, I'm ringing my ceremonial chimes to announce our new sponsor on the podcast, Chime. Chime. Listen, chime is changing the way people bank. Not like this old school banks that charge you in your overdraft, charge you with monthly

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back on eligible chime card purchases. There are strings attached to the chimes. It's just the structure of how chimes work. When you get qualifying direct deposits. Okay? My younger self would have benefited from this. I needed something like this back when I was overdrafted once in a while. Lil David. With those fees.

The adventures of Lil David is overdraft. You could say I was a little bit odd in those days. You were a little bit. little odd. A little odd. Okay. I was O-Dying.

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after meeting with the shaman of Lee's tribe and learning more about Aboriginal practices and the concept of dream time is a parallel world of existence. Burton comes to believe that his dreams of strange heavy rain bode the signs of a coming apocalypse. He sends his danger. He makes his wife and kids leave town. There's a crazy flood.

And then he goes into subterranean tunnels under the city, which lead to a sacred ritual site. And he sees a lot of paintings that basically confirm the dreams he've been having. then he leaves and sees a big wave. You're forgetting also, first of all, beautiful reading. You're forgetting that he also, in a moment that very much feels like the weird inciting incident story he shares about having the premonition of the head and then stealing it from the cave, he finds a mask that looks exactly like his own face. Yeah, which, you know, would throw anyone off a little bit.

Would throw me quite off my game. They keep calling him the Mokuro. Yes. which is a race, separate race, or an ancestry that comes from a different race. It's hard, again, it's very vague, hard to define. I think they're purposely not descriptive. There's like priests on the wall who warned about the wave last time.

So they're basically implying he's like one of those priests who did it on the last cycle. Sure. Yes. It's a descendant of these people in some way. An interpreter of premonitions. a warner, not a warner brother, one who can warn. But yes, I mean, that scene I think is incredible where there's sort of the stare-down interrogation of who are you, who are you?

And it uses Richard Chamberlain's kind of like very studied stillness to great effect because it's like a Meisner exercise. They just keep asking him, who are you, who are you, until he kind of breaks down. And then they ask, like, are you, Mukuru? and he nods. And he's saying yes to something he doesn't even understand. But he understands that he is

something beyond his own awareness of existence. That there's something else happening through him. Absolutely more. Yes. David, how upset were you that there was no subway when they got in the tunnels?

Great question. You know, I actually was not thinking about that because I actually, a good gag, and I love the subway, and we can talk about it for a second if you want, because I know you love my love of the subway. It's my favorite thing about the pocket. 80% of the phone exchanges we have, like text or DM or whatever, are about the subway.

Also, like, you know, a new son of New York City. Right. You're in the early days of your love affair of the subway. It's the 40x and the subway. That's what made me. Very similar. Very similar. This is what I haven't been able to convey to David.

Very similar. You're usually surrounded by people who feel a little dangerous. I really. At the very least unhinged. I really love the tunnel stuff in this movie. I found it so cool and evocative. I loved how it looked. I loved how spooky and, like, you know, interesting it was.

There's so many different steps to get down into that tune. Right. I loved how implausible it was, right? Where you were like, there's this much? Like, but I didn't care at all. And then it like emerges out of a drain pipe and you're like back in like seeing the wave. But yeah, it would have been cool to see a subway. We skipped my favorite part.

It's right. Hey, we're skipping around. Yeah, it's all good. So the thing that I love so much when it happens in a movie, is like when at the end of the second act, someone who's known you your whole life says like two sentences that they've never told you before that suddenly reframes everything

where he's like, well, don't you remember how when you were a kid, you had a bunch of nightmares, and they ended up being exactly how your mom died? That you were afraid of the cab driver coming to take you away, that you always talked about the cab driver. It's one of those things where it always works to me when like a character or someone just shows up

like, but don't you remember this thing? And they go, oh my God, and then suddenly the entire movie makes sense. It's like, you could have told him before, but it's perfect that you told him now for dramatic purposes. People telling David Dunn about his drowning. Yes, that's exactly right. There is a little bit of a David Dunn thing in this movie of like, oh, maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe it was just puddle drowning.

Oh, I was going to make the same fucking joke. Well done. I was going to say it's all about puddle drowning. We forgot to go see Unbreakable last night. And Breakable was playing last night. It was at the Nighthawk there. Excuse me. Unbreakable.

Thank you. I saw Die Hard with Avengers. at the Nighthawk, and I took the same train. We did. I was there. Hey. Wait. Oh, no, we saw Die Hard.

Two. No, diehard. We saw the first Die Hard. I saw Die Hard with a vengeance of the mouth. Fucking JJ. That's insane. I took the train that the bomb is on to go see it at Nighthound. That was like a religious experience where I realized I'm like, that's the train I was on.

Which train is it? I think it's the two or the three. It's the two or the three. That is the greatest New York movie of all time. I think we can all agree. You know what I call the three train. First round draft pick. What?

The Red Rocket. I love that. Yep. And like, anytime I'm going home on the three, I text my wife, like, I'm on the Red Rocket, and she knows what I mean.

Do you have nicknames for other trains? Yes, some. Not all. The Lonely F, of course. I call the F the Lonely F, because it's so often separated from its trackmates. I call for the Queen of the IRT

because she is the Queen of the IRT. I can think of others. Those are the big ones. This feels like David, like sharing diary entries. Like, this is, I feel like the most personal, have ever gotten on the podcast.

Can I tell you something else? Unrelated? I was just looking at what's coming up on Nighthawk. You reminded me. Showed my daughter the trailer for goat, the Steph Curry

a goat basketball player movie. As I've said many times, my little cousin George's most anticipated movie of 2026. He's been asking about it for six months. When is goat coming out? She was pretty intrigued.

She was like, I might want to see more of this goat. We were texting. Our mutual friend, Sean Fantasy, was having a panic about how to schedule programming for the February

on a big picture because of the lack of big releases outside of Wethering Heights. And we were just like, yeah, it feels like nothing's really gonna hit between like Wuthering Heights and Mario and Project Hail Mary. And I was like, look out for fucking goat.

Goat might just sink an easy 35 mil. Because Zootopia's hanging in there so hard because nothing's really giving it a run for its money. Zootopia's still fucking like number three at the box office at the time we're recording this? Maybe four. Sean's not going to do an episode

about Strangers Chapter 3. Well, he is going to break off and do an entire new podcast just about the Stranger Saga. Well, he's going to record a stranger's episode, but he has to do it by breaking into someone's house that he's never been there before. Do you know what, Ben David, actually? You're joking, but they had an open slot where they haven't been able to decide what to do, and they let people vote on the four ideas. And one of the four ideas was Amanda Sean movie swap. Sean has to watch Mamma Mia for the first time.

Amanda had to watch the original strangers for the first time. There is a chance that episode will have. have come out by the time people are listening to this. Goat might be about to shatter the backboard. We love it. The last wave, guys. What else happens? The thing about taking a train to see a movie where you just get off the train and walk right in a theater and you don't have to park your car, that was probably the biggest reason why I was like, I might stay here for a bit.

Oh, yeah. Courtroom scene. What silly friggin wigs? What's going on? Ben asked if we had remembered to bring our barrister wigs and embarrassingly all four of us left on. at home. Yes. Do you, yeah,

the barristers in the UK. I think recently actually maybe are now not required to wear wigs anymore. I think that's like an actually real.

Do they still have to go hrump-hrump? Here's my interpretation of the ending and I cannot get into deeply but just sort of in larger strokes how I took

the ending on a narrative level. The whole movie is the original's warning him not to go deeper into this, right? And just being like, this is not for you, you cannot understand exist in your world. And they all feel somewhat encumbered by the tension between the natural wavelength that they feel like they engage with reality and this sort of like Western colonial structure placed on top of them that they have to conform to some degree,

or at least live in conscious, like parallel with, right? And the end of the movie is him literally just like going down the fucking rabbit hole, going so deep down the tunnel, which presents it only with a series of new questions that make no sense to him. And then he walks out and he sees a fucking wave. And you don't know if it is

in fact... A dream. Something that's happening. Is this a premonition? Right. Is this the thing the premonitions were hinting at? But it speaks more to like, he has now gone through the tunnel and on the other side and he cannot return to the other world. And if he does, he has fully now exited the, the

acceptance of that reality. He will become like a stranger in the land that he used to live in. Again, I know very little about this sort of Australian Aboriginal mythology of the dreaming or dream time, but I believe if you read more and more about it, I really don't want to try and like some things like this up on this podcast. But I think that sort of barrier between what is real, what is imagined or what is real, what is being dreamed is sort of sifted through in an interesting way in that mythology. That's all. I don't really know much.

The question is, do they all know that the wave is coming and they just don't want him to have to deal with that stark reality? Because, like, possibly, I mean, it's like, what are you going to do? And he also is a figure where, because of his ancestral

connection, that people like him show up ahead of an apocalyptic event. Right. They're sort of... They're like, yeah, you being here means it's happening. It's a sign. Yes.

So like Stitch. Quite like Stitch. If Stitch shows up, you know the box office is about to be rocked. Yeah, I just, what else do people want to say about this? I can tell you that when the film came out, let me tell you that, the reception and so on and so forth. It came out sort of Christmas time in 77 in Australia. It was like a hit and it did okay on the Australian Art House, the American Art House circuit. but like nothing like picnic and hanging rock where like huge attention and a fair amount of money.

I think more just like a modest hit. We're basically in retrospect is like, I haven't checked in on that movie. Like he's like, I don't feel bad about it. He's like, yeah, it did pretty good. I haven't looked at it in a long time. In 2012, he sort of was, yeah, he similarly kind of reflective about it. like he calls it a graduation film, you know, it's kind of like him getting closer to

the next stage of his career. But yeah, he doesn't reflect on this movie as a failure or is like a special gem. But it does speak to sort of how weirdly and like out of order and almost in one lump sum these movies are seen by Hollywood and America that this is the one that doesn't really function as any sort of stepping stone in his career in a clear way.

He also said that, like, when he was trying to get money from, like, the Australian film funds, that everyone was really against the idea of him trying to do a contemporary, serious film. It was, like, contemporary comedy, period drama. Yeah. But when you get to the end of picnic at Hanging Rock, which I just watched the other day, because I was trying to watch, he was in order, you feel like this guy is a god of doing period. And Gallipoli, I feel the same way where it's, like, it's funny. that he's very contemporary

and very, very effective at it and also very effective at doing movies that feel like your time traveling. But I never, right, he never picked Elaine there. He would sort of switch between him. I've yet to watch Gallipoli. I'm excited to watch it the night before I record, so I have proper time to process it saturday.

But that feels like a more obvious kind of, okay, I'm ready to make my version of some size of epic now. And also he, like, for the first time, an A-List leading man at the center of his movie. I think Witness

feels a little bit like a combo of the two in a weird way because the fish out of water thing functionally feels like Yeah, no, witness has some last week in it. It's like very, very modern when he's doing the cop stuff, and when he's there, it almost feels like one of

his period movies just by virtue of Amish culture. But witness is interesting because it's about someone sort of falling in love with a culture that's not his own learning about it, somewhat getting accepted. This is not that. This is about him trying to understand a culture, but it's not about them being like, you know what?

You get it. At the end, he kills the shaman. Well, the shaman is being quite scary. I mean, but he's also... But he's also trying to steal stuff. Yeah, he's the one who's in the wrong. I would say that he's made a few mistakes, yes. But this is a thing in talk about these movies,

and we've recorded quite a few of the ones to come after this. They're all sort of about the friction between cultures and realities placed very close to get in one way or another. That's like really a through line through his work. Yeah, which is very, very interesting. And it's a very interesting evocative movie. I have a disc. What disc do I have it on? I got the last, the umbrella last wave.

The 4K, is that what you got? There's a criterion. I think that's exactly right. But they haven't put it out since DVD. Yes, right. I did not buy the criterion DVD. Wait, there's an umbrella. 4K and I didn't know it.

My friend. I'm going to go walk into traffic. The fine folks at umbrella entertainment. They're good guys, which is Australian company, right? Correct. Yes. Our buddy Alex Ross Perry was the first to visit the umbrella closet. He went to their, right.

He has become the inaugural attendee of the umbrella closet, which basically they did not think of even presenting. as a mecca. They did the Super Mario Brothers' gigantic set, which is movie heaven. Do you have that box, David? Which box? The Super Mario umbrella set?

It looks as big as like an encyclopedia. No. It's like the signs of a car. I think I have this. I think Arrow put out a Super Mario disc, maybe. Well, this one is like this big, and it comes with, it's like 90 discs. The shooting script, but also an original draft.

It has like a book of art. Yes. got so much stuff. It sounds a little much, as much as I enjoy, of course. My review was it was not enough. It includes the King James Bible. And then there's a posted on the Bible saying

Mario is better than this. Yeah. It also comes with a chicken dinner. Sounds good. Yeah. The only time I've gone back. A Yoshi dinner since moving here. God, Yoshi's going to fucking rule the box office this year. He's so lucky that Stitch is sitting this one out. What? Who's voicing him? I don't think they've announced anybody.

I saw a joke post that I thought was real for about two minutes, where they said it was Kendrick Lamar. But it's nothing. Or will he just like say Yoshi? I feel in the trailer he just says like, yeah. But Benny, that's what it'll do? The Safty voice casting is still one of the wildest choices ever. I think that really, I was watching a trailer.

I was yawning a little bit. And I was like, I wonder who's playing Baby Bowser. What do I care? And then when they said Benny Safty, I was like, you mildly got me with that one. It was the Nintendo Direct thing, right? Yeah, right, right. And I'm watching it, and they play the,

trailer first and I hear the voice and I turn to my girlfriend and I go, God fucking damn it, Adam Devine. They cast Adam Divine in another animated movie because he's like, I'm Bowser Jr. I'm going to get you plumbers. And I was like, it's fucking Adam Divine. Adam Devine gets another one off the fucking

backboard. And then it cuts back to like Mimodo. And he's like, we are proud to announce that of course Bowser Jr. will be played by Benny Safty. And they just flash Benny Safty's headshot. And I truly was doubled over. Lafti. It was so funny.

Yeah. Of course. Of course. The only choice. Who else but the director of the smashing machine? No one else could bring Bowser Jr. to life. We've all been waiting for it. It's obvious.

It's like fucking John Goodman playing Fred Flintstone. The culture has waited for this moment. When I went, I went back to L.A. After being gone for a very long time, and I was trying to see a bunch of friends at the same time because I was there for a short amount of time. So I invited everybody to go see Super Mario Brothers at New Bev because they're playing it for like a kid's matinee.

And, uh, Hoskins not press. Oh, I mean, yes, Hoskins. And so it was one of those things if someone's like, okay, how much do I really want to see this guy? And somehow so like 20 people went. I don't know if they, I think that I'd say 80%

didn't enjoy it as much as I did. It's a fascinating movie. I really like the look of that movie. I cannot, you know, defend every single story decision that it makes, but I just love how it looks. Our buddy Patrick won't... It was a big movie for me.

A really good video of the contrast of the Illumination movie, which is so obsessed with being faithful to the games. It's the way our culture has been. And has not. Nothing else going on is literally just pointing at things from the games. And then the Mario Brothers Hoskins movie is like, what if we took a different fucking script we wrote? I mean, and map the character names onto it.

And you're like... I miss it. I miss that era. It's true. It's not like we're going to make a real fucking Mario Brothers movie embarrassing. That would suck. Let's shit on it with this insane thing anyway. Can Hollywood come back around to having complete contempt for all IP?

I agree. Rather than being like, and now you will meet the blue. I'm like, no, you should be humiliated that I have to meet Blue Ranger. The horseshoe has come all the way around. I'm tired of Hollywood being like, do you like this? We made this just for you? Do you like it? I want them to be like, fuck you, you piece of shit.

Here's your fucking trial. The wave that's coming of video game movies, that they're all just going to be like Easter egg movies. Yeah. Ugh. Ugh. Yeah. I do miss the era of something like,

this fucking sucks. Can you come up with something? and usually it was stuff that was actually really cool but you end up with something very interesting when someone has total contempt and as a kid I was still like they made a Mario movie I'm happy I was thrilled

he's got a little red hat on like that's all I needed four things happen in this movie that vaguely resemble things from the game what complaint could anyone have Miamoto is like that brought great shame to our company like he was definitely not like oh it was interesting but like there's like a fucking street musician busker

who's a human dude with a harmonica around his neck and a guitar named Toad and I like do the fucking Leo point to my brother and I'm like, it's Toad. They got Toad on screen. And I'm like, that's not fucking Toad. That's a dude. Then they turn him into a dinosaur

headed motherfucker. I was like, they got Toad. He's the best part in the movie. I've had that thorn. He's stuck in my head forever. But I've been trying to make a bad dude's movie for like 15 years. So I hope someday a trend goes in that direction is all I care about. So I'm going to play the box office game now.

Is there anything else you want to say about the last wave or your general weird thoughts, Ben David? I genuinely feel like I've said way too much. You're crazy. You have not talked enough. You should be humiliated by how little you've talked. This film... Oh, wait. I just have one final thing I want to say.

Sure. Q sounds of rain, splashing, waves, water generally. Cool. And also place it in like 20 times up until this point, like any time after. joke of mine fell flat, put the waves in, so it sounds like... A toilet flushing? No, like a triumphant way.

I have something to say about that, which is that I have a noise machine that plays rain sounds. I play it when I go to sleep. And I've had many days where I forgot to turn it off. So now like the sound of rain becomes this thing that my brain kind of cancels out

as if it's part of just the sound mix of my life. And that's only been something that's happened like in a recent year or so. And this is the first time I've revisited the movie since then. Was it, were you? There was a very odd kind of disconnect where it felt like I was watching a movie

and had left my rain sleep machine thing on. So I'm really glad I shared that. Yeah, no, it was really good. Thank you. This film came out in America. It says in New York City, so in some small way, in basically Christmas time, December 19th of 1978. Okay. So still leave it.

before picnic. So, exactly. So what would have been at the box office on this random weekend? Okay, December 1978. Number one is a

gigantic smash hit movie that we have covered on our Patreon. Lilo and Stitch. That is incorrect. Fuck. Good guess, though. We've covered it on our

Patreon. We sure. It's a gigantic smash hit. It's sure. Is it a re-release of Star Wars? No, it is not.

No. 78, 78. It's not. If it wasn't the biggest movie of 78, it was one of the biggest. Uh, biggest movie 78. It's not, oh, it's Superman the movie.

Superman! Superman! Richard Donner, Superman. The movie. You a fan of that one, Ben David? I haven't seen it. What is that one? Is it?

It's about a man who is super. He sure is? They sent him to Earth to teach us that boys can be big and strong and proud and shouldn't be ashamed. I actually watch the movies while you guys were covering him on Patreon. and I think they're pretty great. The one movie that I should never revisit, I think, is two, because two I thought was literally the best movie ever made when I was a kid. It's a good movie when you're a kid.

It is great. It is great. It's kid crack. I wish I could just live in that kid memory. Or like every part of it felt like the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Well, you and everyone in our generation, apparently. Like, you know, I'm saying a lot of people just wish they were 12 forever. Number two at the box office.

Can't wait for the supermarket. a reality. Is, it's an interesting one. It's a sequel to a gigantic film. It's a sequel to a gigantic film, but this film is less gigantic. Oh, yes.

And it is, I would say, pretty forgotten. It's almost forgotten that this movie exists at all. Is it the Sting 2? No, but that is the vibe. That's the vibe. It is the sequel to, like, a box office sensation that won, it was nominated for Best Picture. It was like a big cultural movie.

Shoot your guess. Is it Bush Sundance and Cassie the early years? No, it is not. Again, you're, you know, but it's a two and done. This fucking ends the thing forever. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, like, there was no sequel to be made of the first movie. It was a bad idea.

This is happening eight years later. Oh, is it the love story sequel? Correct. And what is that called? Ryan's story? You're close. Ryan O'Neill's the acting. The character's name is...

That's a different movie. David? Yes. No, I was guessing. The character's name is Oliver. Oliver's story. And the film is called Oliver's story. He falls in love with Buckets Bergen.

Right? He falls in love with Candace Bergen. And of course, the tagline was, it takes someone very special to help you forget someone very special. Like, who's like, yeah. No, yeah. Who'd he fuck later? You know, like, who watches Love Story and then comes out being like,

I sure want to know who he later marries. Like fucking successful date nights across America, couples walk out wiping away their tears and they're like, I just wish I could see him get over her. He was so young. I'm like, I'm sure he will. The fucking's talking about. But what's more difficult?

What's more difficult? Doing a story to love story or following up the tagline to the original? I know. The tagline writer was like, all right, we want to be very respectful to the dearly departed Al McGrath. Right. I recently watched Love Story. You've watched this for the first time. Which I had never seen, obviously, that is a movie that was a colossal phenomenon that, I would say, close to forgotten.

It is the kind of movie you and I bring up where we're like these movies that were so big in their day that no one. talks about anymore and feel like such a product of their time and you and I will be like, is that secretly awesome? If we throw that on tomorrow. Threw it on. Let me tell you. No. Shnoos.

Really, really actually quite bad. The first 20 minutes, which is the two of them just going at each other being so mean. It should be the good part. Where he's like, you're such a stuck up bitch. And she's like, you're a Ryan O'Neill. Your reputation precedes you. And they're kind of, and then they're like, anyway, after 20 minutes of going each other, so we're fucking in love with each other.

And she's like, oh, yeah, absolutely. And she's like, I'm so sorry I forgot that I'm dying. And then you're just like, it's so boring. But love means you never have to say you're sorry. That is a line in the movie. But that is the tagline of the original. And that's, they say part of the reason it was such a big hit

was that people would hear that and go, what? Holy fuck. And then later when you think about it, you're like, what does that mean? And it's like, doesn't mean anything. It feels like a sign film fit. Total tautology. Does it mean never having sense?

You're saying like how does the second movie? His asshole dad is like, the way, I'm sorry your wife died. And he's like, love never means never having to say you're sorry. He says it to his dad? Yeah, well, he's repeating it. She had already said it to him. Oh, okay.

And, you know, the dad's like, oh, okay. And the dad should be like, fucking what? Like, you should just be like, huh? Parts that out for me, buddy. If they were trying to top the tagline of the first movie, Oliver's story's tagline should have been, sorry to that dead lady, but Oliver's got to get some. Look, time heals all wounds.

All right? Oliver's got to meet someone new. He's ready to say apologies to her memory. to her memory as he fucked on top of her grape. Okay, guys, the tagline for Dragonfly was, when someone you love dies, are they gone forever? It's a good question. It's pretty good.

I will say, Michael Eisner, who was the head of Paramount at the time, the film, the studio that released Love Story and Oliver's story, his quote on the movie was, let me find it exactly, one way or another, we're doing a sequel to Love Story. It doesn't fucking matter. Anyway, the movie came out, nobody liked it, and it was not a hit at all.

I think, you know, again, I'm making fun of the original movie, but I think it was a bit of a disgrace to the memory of a movie people like. I imagine people were just like, no. We're offended. Yes. All right. So, that's number two. Number three is a film I've not heard of. So let me look this up.

It is a... Is this first weekend of Superman or second? It's the... Well, I don't know about that. Okay. I'm just wondering if we did this exact weekend on the Superman episode. Either way. I feel like we would have done these riffs.

Yeah. Oliver store sounds a little familiar. It does. Go on. You're right. It does seem like it. It's kind of the first weekend of Superman. Anyway, yeah, because this is sort of familiar.

And Iranian-American adventure drama directed by James Fargo, starring Anthony Quinn. Look, it's called Caravans. Okay, yeah. And the number four is the movie about being in a Turkish prison. It's called... It's called... The thing you don't want to be in for 20 years.

We all know this film is called Oh, Heavenly Dog, and it stars Benji and Chevy Chase. It's Midnight Express. You know, that might be the only movie where I know the score so well. And I've listened to it 100 times. Yeah. I've not seen the movie. That's another one where you're like,

you watch fucking sitcoms from the 80s as I do, day and night. We have done this riff before. It's like chariots of fire. We're just fucking syndicating ourselves now. Yeah, seriously. We are. But like, yes, where like in sitcoms, super like Turkish person,

bad. For 15 years, it's used as shorthand for worst thing you can possibly imagine. I've seen Midnight Express. And now you're just like, no one has watched that movie fresh in 15 years? It's not a movie that's much discussed. See, I thought the bit was knowing music without having

seen the movie, so that's why I said, It's a fire. Oh, sure. I just didn't want to, I want to explain my my thing I said. It was good. It was good. It was really good.

You're talking. Keep talking. Shut the fuck. You're not talking. Griffin, number five, is a very important comedy film of the year. The jerk?

No. That's a better movie. That's 79. But this is a good movie. It's a good movie. It's not a Brooks. It's important. Yeah, it's like a big

influential comedy movie, a giant hit. It's not a prior wilder. No. Is it star-driven or is it like director-during? No, it's a big ensemble, but it features a big star who's, it's sort of, you know, he's already famous from TV and it's his big movie moment. Huh. It's this big movie moment.

It's an ensemble. It's on Alan Alda. No. TV famous, big ensemble. It's not Kimball Rand. No. It's like good. It's like a good movie.

Good. It's good. We like it? Sure. Sure. Kind of. It's never been a big movie for me, but I mean, it's very influential and important. Who's the distributor of this picture? Oh, my God. I'm asking you a very basic question. It's a fair boy.

Thank you. That's all I wanted. The film was, of course, released by Universal. The Fine Folks at Universal. It's Animal House? Yeah. Yeah. There was a little lampoons. Yeah. Animal House. Yeah, very, very impactful.

But like, a movie where it's like... by the time I'm seeing that, I'm sort of being shown it as a bit of a relic, but like a good one, where they're like, you can see the seeds of the comedy you enjoy today here, and I'm like, yeah, but this is also funny.

And I'm like, yeah. The difference for me... So I didn't watch it a million times. Is that despite having very overprotective parents who greatly monitored what I watched and wouldn't let me watch Rugrats, my father probably showed me in Will House when I was six and was like, this is important.

This is, like, more important than the Talmud in my eyes. In terms of you understanding where you came from. So, yes, it was like, I almost learned what funny was by asking my dad, why is that funny? There you go. That's how I turned out normal.

Anyway, what else is in the box office? The natural lampoons did lead to everything. They led to everything. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Halloween.

Junk Arbenter's Halloween. Wow, wow, wow. Ralph Baxhese, the Lord of the Rings, which is very cool. The Anthony Hopkins film Magic recently discussed, of course, on our Sam Ramey episodes. Hoping and Ramey goes through

with every man. A film we very recently discussed in our Patreon The Whiz. The Whiz! Bombing. By the way, that movie is so good, and I watched it for the first time last week, and anyone who hates it is a loser, and maybe right, I don't know. It just blew me away.

Wrong. Gorgeous 4K. Fucking the best. And then... It's very short. It's short. Ben might be interesting to hear that number 10 is Chee Ching up and spoke. Which is kind of the good one.

Oh, yeah. Every year Ben resubmits the idea of Cheech and Chong for Patreon and David's like, how's that going to feel on the seventh episode? Right. I'm like, look, we're all going to be. It's, I mean, it's like. Oh, I did think of a new one. Oh, sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. How many is that? Well, what are we include? You got to do the cartoon. No.

Well, that's already been designated as part of stand-up animation. Right. Oh, I voted for that when that happened. Yeah. It was kind of the Kamala heirs of last. here. Oh, yeah? A huge disappointment? Yeah. I got a migra. I got too many holes on it.

It didn't have... I guess you would do. Well, like, do you do catty shack? No, right? I think... Yeah. No, no. I think you want to do... Rodney Dangerfield is the only guy on the poster. Back to school. Easy money. First is easy money. Okay. Which, here's the poster. It's his face going like this. And then back to school. Which is his face going like this.

And in both of these cases... American audiences are standing to the side of the poster saluting him, right? Showing him the utmost respect. So, number three is ladybugs. Uh-huh. Where he's going like this. Yeah, a bunch of kids. Pointing into soccer balls.

Saluting him. Number four. Ooh. Meet Wally Sparks? Like, does it kind of shut to the 90s? It's meet Wally Sparks where he's going like this. Yeah, it's holding a drink. And he's asking you to meet him.

And I think that's kind of it. Like, for like, true Rodney vehicles. I mean, and there is. the cartoon. I got to say, I don't know those too late ones. Imagine there. You don't know me, Wally Sparks? You've never heard of Ladybugs? I've heard a Lady Bugs. I've never seen it. You don't know Lady Bugs was a big deal. It's like, what if Rodney

was the coach of a girl sucker? Yeah, it's Little Giant. I'm on board. Right, yeah. All right, but that made me think, you should do a series of movies with prominent Billy Joel songs, because you have easy money. Sure, Oliver and Company. And then you could do Mike, I'm just kidding, but, but, uh, oh, the one joke I do want to say about that was I cleared a lot of my music and prep. And at one point, a very stern person walked into my office and said, are you aware that the song you have chosen is from an animated dog picture? As if this was news to you. Yeah. Can you imagine if I like,

Oliver and company? Yeah, it said, why should I worry in a movie? And I'm like, it's from a what? Yes. Do you succeed in being only the second film in history to use, why should I worry? That could be Quite possibly? True. Yes. I'm the second movie to have Cool as Ice,

the theme from Cool as Ice in my movie. I will also say that Rodney Dangerfield did apparently make his last basic movie is a movie called the Fourth Tenor. This is the poster. I remember this. I do think we'd have to track this point out,

which may be illegal in some states. Rodney does opera. I love it. The glass he's holding in that poster might be hard for you to tell this because it was a little grainy. is breaking because he's singing. And he's got a bad voice.

Dangerfield gets no respect when at 80 years of age. Manages to get a laugh or two in this low-budget comedy. Found DVD and video guide. It's the only review listed on the Wikipedia page. Do you remember? Demand it, folks. A laugh or two is so mean. You're like, I can't remember if there was a second laugh.

Dangerfield gets a laugh or two when he, like, is unconscious on fucking Carson. Like, that's not good news. But in 90 minutes, he rustled up a laugh or... That's his lowest laugh average. Do you know or do you remember that when Dangerfield died, which must have been close to, if not over 20 years ago now? It was 04. Over 20 years ago.

His widow when she was like doing the Larry King Browns and such to like eulogize him was like, well, don't worry. Rodney's coming back. We cloned him. Okay. Okay. Rodney will be back soon. So she is that, what's the status of that? My point is, I don't think we heard a peep.

since then. Well, if you, if not to go with this literally, but if you had literally cloned him, that would mean that there currently is a 24, 25 year old guy. Which sounds pretty funny. I know, but I'm like, Rodney only got famous and it's like 50. It's like a long way. Right. There's currently a Ronnie

Daniel Phil clone who's selling aluminum siding. Right. And it's just like, years before he decides to focus on stand-up. Because like 25 years from now, we're definitely going to be able to just make like a Rodney hologram. You know, like, and the clone will be like, I'm ready and it's like, you are getting no respect. We just, I'm like, we have missed.

It's not a bit. We don't care. I was waiting to make that respect joke. And I should have known, like, that it was going to happen anyway. With a sharp comic mind like David Sims on the ones and twos. I don't know, man. You've got, you made me laugh a lot less than this podcast. But not the subway stuff. I take that very serious.

That's fair. Seriously. That's dramatic. Do you have any subway questions I can answer on here before we wrap off the show? What's your favorite movie that has a subway in it? Great question. Besides Jason takes Manhattan. Take him.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's the only correct answer. It's the gold standard. And, you know, the original, but I also have a huge soft spot for the Tony Scott. He's a god to me. But the streaming version of it is 16 by 9 instead of scope, which is really... What's the fuck out of here?

Several Tony Scott movies. I think when we do Tony Scott, I mean, not that we love to watch a disc on this. Yeah. We're really going to have to go to the discs. It's only. They've been fucking with his legacy. I can't do that series because there's like eight movies I'd want to do. And if I didn't get them, I would be too upset.

So just automatically ban me from it. Only getting one would upset you. You'd be like, what about the other seven? No, I'm saying all of them. It's like I feel like I really want to talk about it. You're doing the fan. I would bring his filmography to a desert island before Ridley's. And Ridley's made some of my favorite movies.

I'd agree with that. I think it's a better survival tactic. Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice. Okay. I'm going to, I'm very briefly, because, you know, no one listens to the show for promo. But I have to mention, I have a movie coming out in the future, which I think is right after this. It's coming out, I believe, five days after this episode drops.

Yes, on the huge. It's uncanny timing given that we didn't really plan it, though. Sometimes. Yeah. Get Hulu without commercials. Invite your friends over. Turn off the lights. Turn it loud.

Eat some pizza. Mm-hmm. You watch it and try to have fun watching it. Buddy action comedy, gangster, time travel, rom-com. Emily Hampshire, is she cool? She is the greatest. I love her. Good friends.

Humbled right. Huge fan of Emily Hampshire. She plays a dirty cop in it. you have not seen the picture you got David but can I spoil something for you here's the fucking headline Keith David is in the movie owning bones

not surprised to hear it Ben David wrote some fucking meaty monologues for Keith David who you might be astonished to hear he gives a big monologue about my dead cat so there you go so that comes out

and I'm very proud of it and it's cool and then also Scott that my new Scott Pilgrim game will have just come out when this comes out. And then I think this comes out as the Blu-ray of Scott Pilgrim takes off starring Griffin Newman. Well, hey, I... Then that is also on

Netflix, if people want to watch it. Yes, but physical media has audio commentaries from me and Brian. I'm just saying, you know, that's what's available. I played a handful of characters on the show that you very kindly invited me in to do, including Wallace's straight stunt

double, straight Wallace, one of the most cursed characters in modern media. who is not included in the game, but I believe there is any Blankies getting ready to play Scott Pugram X. Might notice a thing,

a conscious nod? There is a nod to... Me as a person. And to porch movies. Yes. That is also true. Brian Leo Malley, friend of the show. We love Brian. He's a huge hero of mine. I also just not to

not to fucking tee you up, like Cogman on this, but partially some of the inspiration for Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice comes from us covering Mikey and Nicky on the podcast, correct? Partially, yes. I mean, that it like jostled your brain. Yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's a, Olivia Craig had the great Olivia Craig. We love her. Yeah, the premise of the movie is a gangster goes back in time to try and, um, but you can skip ahead of this if you don't want to spoil But a guy goes back in time to try to fix a mistake he had made kind of betraying his friend. And I had sort of had this idea when there's a lot of these like nihilistic gangster movies,

like these relationship things. And I always wonder, you know, you get to the end and you have that pitch black thing. It's like, what if that person could redo it? You know, that that's kind of the kernel of it. And then the other thing was just the, I like the buddy comedy thing of like the redeemed guy and the unredeemed guy budding heads. So it's like Scrooge at the end with Scrooge from the beginning. Right. What if it's two of the same guy at different points in this journey?

Also a bunch of Gilmore Girls references. It's an excellent movie. Tremendously fun. Strongly encourage everyone to watch it. What was, I'm sorry. Are you a just guy, a guy or a logan guy? Important. There is a very long discussion about who the best boyfriend is.

And I'll just say anything that James Marsden says in the movie about Gilmore Girls is my opinion. I think that you always give the correct opinion to, you know, the handsome James Marsden guy. Absolutely. So in Q&As I've already had people say Oh, so what is your take? Because there's a lot of different opinions You just saw the take Anything Marzen says?

Yeah, that's that's me Yeah, I gave the take To the best pair of cheekbones You remember when Dean gets married And then his wife tries to make him a roast? So Dean's the worst boyfriend On the show objectively But who was the best?

I'm a Jessica. See, I like Jessa But are you saying who's the best boyfriend to worry? Who's the best for her? There's only one answer. Oh boy I don't know if I agree that there's only one answer I think that Jess in his more mature form

is probably the best boyfriend for Rory I think that if you take the actions of the characters on the show probably Logan I guess but Logan's kind of a dweeb I don't know it's complicated Well someone's gonna have to get on Hulu to find out my take I'm very excited to listen

Thank you all for listening Yes Jess really fumbles the bag with Rory though We all agree. I mean, season three just completely fumbles the back, right? So here's the thing. Swan song.

Last wave, I want them to release it in 40X and I want to drown in the theater. Oh, yes. That was your response to... They should just fill the theater with water and you're slowly drowning while you're watching it. That's my big hot tip, my big hot wet tick.

I mean, Ben, you have definitely proposed a theater that is you are underwater the entire time. Yes, and you proposed underwater theory proposed upside-down theater. Yeah, that one was... What if you watch Deep Rising? in a theater that's filled with water. Great idea.

I would watch Deep Rising on my phone right now. While you're on a jet ski in a theater filled with water. You would watch it in a tree. You would watch it. Yes, absolutely. My brain is puttering out. I'm excited for you and I

to fucking dominate a trivia, Ben, David. Oh, you guys doing trivia today? Big time. We are about to get trivia. I really hope someone's going to have a round that's all about the with or and actor credits. I got so mad at that.

David had a difficult. My basketball chat heard about the trivia round. Yeah. And so they were like, come on now, do it to us. Come on.

We all work in Hollywood. You know, because it's mostly like LA guys. And I didn't. And they got mad at me too. They were like, it's too fucking hard.

I'm like, I know, I know I missed up. We kind of accidentally went Christian Gray on that trivia. Griffin and I have a trivia team that we do. And the worst we've ever done in a round

is maybe getting like seven out of ten. On Sims round, I think I got two out of 14. Yeah. It was tough. It was tough. The ones that I thought were layups. I look back and I'm like,

well, But those are, you basically have to guess that maybe you get it. We were running all our questions by each other. And I was like, yeah, good round, fair. All these are getable. This is the kind of shit we just talk about all the time. I did an action figure around and I was sending all the pictures to Marie and she got all of them immediately. And I was like, good.

So all of these are apparent. Everyone knows what all these characters dressed like, especially if their faces are poorly sculpted. Ben's round was great. Ben's round was really. Ben nailed it. Ben did a video round on holes. Yes, he did. Anyway, thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate review and subscribe. tune in next week for Gallipoli. That's right. And as always, Ohana means family. No. I'm looking for the ratings bump. That guy's the king of the fucking box office.

I blame JJ. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American novel,

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

subscribe to our weekly newsletter Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions. I'm rolling. And hey, depending on your quote, selection,

yeah. Could throw a little bit storm sounds and post. I think you want to be throwing some splish splashes in here throughout the episode at your discretion. I think there should be like soothing rain sounds

under the whole episode. I think you do what works. Well, I didn't prep anything, but... But I think in the final product, at least. The final product. Okay. Can we license that song Splash? I was taking a bath.

Bobby Darren. Can Bobby Darren sponsor this episode? I'll reference if a storm moment feels right. Okay. But yeah, I didn't... I'm happy to... It's fine to just be a post thing. I think...

I think this should be in the episode. This is a good discussion. This is after... This is the post-credit cookie. So people can see how this... Sausages made. Okay, ready?