Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Moon Is…the Sun's Dream / Trio

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

It’s a brand new era for Blank Check - Griffin is in his “arriving early to work” era. Ben is in his “Bad Boy 2.0” era. And we’re all in our WORLD CINEMA era as we kick off our series on South Korean master (and March Madness champion!) Park Chan-Wook. Join us as we offer a brief overview of the evolution of Korean cinema - from 1960’s landmark THE HOUSEMAID up through decades of government censorship - and introduce the career of one of our finest filmmakers. However - we’re gonna be real with you all. Park’s first two movies are NOT GOOD. He has actively tried to erase them from the cultural consciousness. So - do things get really silly as we dance around talking about how bad these movies are? YES. Do we use this episode as an excuse to catch up with several series worth of Ben Nicknames? ABSOLUTELY. This episode is sponsored by:  Nuts.com (Nuts.com/check) Zocdoc (zocdoc.com/check)  Double Fine PsychOdyssey (doublefine.com/check) Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

The moon is The podcast dream? I mean, sorry. Yeah! That was good. That was good. The sun's podcast? Uh, yeah!

Uh, David, today we're talking about two films. Neither of which have a single quote on their R&B page. No, no, they do not. Nor a single tagline to work off of. They don't have taglines. I don't think they really have posters. There's like clip art. There's like MS Paint style.

Trio has more of a poster. Yeah, it has a poster. You're right. But this must be a tagline here. Nothing. Yeah, okay. Right. There me A tagline here Nothing Right There's a tagline written Both of them have taglines written in Korean

That are not translated for me in IMDb Okay well you know what I started the podcast perfectly You started it so well But here the moon is the sun's dream Tagline No I'm just gonna I'm just gonna load the movie

it's just on YouTube FYI for our listeners by the way they're a fully subtitled version of the movie on YouTube in relatively good quality let's just see what a piece of dialogue is let's see oh you're just gonna pick a line

it's available to me so here what's some great dialogue I'm gonna do the same thing with Trio I mean, it's available to me. Sure. So here, what's some great dialogue? I'm going to do the same thing with Trio. You can tell already. As soon as you know right off the bat, you got a corker of an episode. Yeah.

You're plugged into something. Sure. So this is the guy saying, I'll engrave 4.11 p.m. Always think of me around this time. So you could say, I'll engrave 4.11 p.m. Always podcast around this time.

Would that be good? Yeah, I pulled up Trio and I was like, let me just pick a random moment and I'll just take whatever the line is on screen at this moment. It was a line that included the R word. So that was a failed attempt. Here's one. How can you trust anyone that sits down to podcast? Great. So there's a lot of options. Piss, I'm replacing the word piss. Yes.

And that's okay. And that's okay. And that's okay. David, what is it? Who are we? What are we doing here? Wait, I'm introducing the show? No, I am. It's Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers.

What? You're doing a Lightsaber Jackson voice. No, not if I was doing a Lightsaber Jackson voice. It's a little more like this. You gotta get that back to you, DVD Boxer. All right, all right, all right. Go on. Yeah, go on.

Go on. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers. They're given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion project they want. Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a miniseries on the films of Park Chan-wook, and today we are talking about his first two films. The Moon is the Sun's Dream. Well, you didn't take a long enough beat there.

The Moon is the Sun's Dream. David, what's't take a long enough beat there. The moon is the sun's dream. David, what's the name of this miniseries? We don't know. We don't know. And here's the thing. Despite there being two movies, there's not a lot for us to talk about. So we just decided,

let's save everything for the mic. So you have texted the great Marie Barty? I have. Telling her to make a poll. Because we don't know the name of this miniseries. Sorry, drink some water. This is this thing that everyone loves that we do where we create on mic in episode

narrative tension around a thing that will be completely resolved by the time you listen. She's posted the poll. Now here's... Here are the three options. At the time you're listening to this, you'll know which one it is, but this is like watching the Succession Election Night episode. Yeah.

In that it's not about something real. No. It's very fake. There are actually multiple options here for this miniseries we're doing. Sometimes we'll do a director where you can really vary... It's a real struggle to fit

the word podcast into any of their films. And sometimes there's one option that is so clearly head and shoulders above the others really very it's real struggle to fit correct word podcast into any of their films and sometimes there's one option that is so clearly head and shoulders above the others that it's settled or david and i each have our one pick and we fight for them this time there's three options we went they're all equally good they're all pretty funny yeah and so uh we have posted sympathy for mr podcast funny i'm a, but that's okay. I think funniest, but you're right that it's the least known of the three. The most niche film.

Yeah. Or Decision to Podcast. All good. I mean, look. Which is just kind of like, pow. We're not reinventing the wheel. They're direct here. None of these really worked well to split up pod and cast into different words.

I'm kind of proud of you for that. Normally, they can be sweaty at times. Huge. These are dry. I'm like a fucking desert of miniseries nicknames. And it's good. Oh, no. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are the votes swinging wildly?

Yeah. Wow. Is Mencken going to be president? Sympathy for Mr. Podcast jumped out to an early lead. Decision of Podcast has now come very close to it. Those two are very evenly tied. I'm a podcast, but that's okay, is living in the trash. Well, I'll say this.

I immediately regret saying throw this to a vote and running them over on mic. I realize that one's my favorite, and now it's going to lose. I'm a podcast, but that's okay. Yep. That will be the one I say I wish had been the title for 10 episodes. David,

you love that bit. No, I don't like it at all. I like it. You'd like it more every time we do it. Uh, of course, Pac-Tran work one hour March madness tournament,

the world Cup. He was a bit of a surprise winner. Yeah, we had an international tournament. Yes. And so... March, 32 directors battle it out. Yeah, exactly. 32 candidates for the show.

And Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director, was a fourth seed. Yeah. And I think I considered him a fairly strong middle seed. I did too. But I did not consider him one of the sort of five or six juggernauts on this list. I was pleasantly surprised.

I think, you know, what's always the most fun is when March Madness reveals a passion for us that we maybe would not have anticipated. Know that he is a very loved filmmaker and had recently had a movie that was really great. There's that sort of like he was fresh in people's minds. But I think especially after Stanley Kubrick won the year before, part of us wondered, like, will it just be one of the four guys in the bracket who have won Best Director? Will it be the four guys who are the biggest and the most well-known duking it out in the final four? And he was just kind of like a buzzsaw the entire time. Well, was he a buzzsaw?

Was he a buzzsaw? Let's see. Let's check in with the results Because I don't remember them that well Park Chenwook His first matchup was Against Steve McQueen Of Great Britain And he beat him fairly handily

68-32 Buzzsaw Round two he goes up against Peter Jackson He beat him fairly handily. 68-32. Buzzer. Round two. He goes up against Peter Jackson. Okay. And that was quite close. 54-46.

But once again, Jackson's a guy I thought was fucking suplex. Jackson was the top seed. Buzzer stopped for a moment. Okay. Well, in the third round, in the quarterfinals, he edged Peter Weir my favorite who we should be doing no I'm joking I'm excited to do this and we'll do Peter Weir sometime

beat him by like 200 votes very very close less than 1% and then in the semifinals he beat Guillermo del Toro by also quite a close vote by about 300 votes and then yeah He beat Guillermo del Toro By also quite a close vote By about 300 votes

And then He wasn't a buzzsaw at all Because of course in the final he won by literally One vote Okay So maybe do like the sound of a little ice pick A nail file He beat

Bong Joon Ho his Korean compatriot, by one vote in a ridiculous final matchup that saw a lot of fans in the Reddit saying, if we can make them tie, they'll do both. Yeah. To which I reminded them, we have a tiebreaker. We do. In fact, it is one of his many titles. That's right. Oh, that's another thing to do in this episode, by the way.

Add it to the minutes. Visit the nicknames. Great. Okay, we're just filling up anything we can use to call. To be clear, guys, we're very excited to talk about this director. Love him. Yes. And the movies he has coming up are all interesting.

Like, literally literally there is no filler. No, correct. Except from here on out. Right here at the start, which are these two movies which Parks and Rec himself has actively disowned. I wish people hadn't seen them. Right. He wishes they did not exist and were not accessible to anyone in any way. Yes. And they are barely

accessible. So... Here we are. What an exciting journey we have ahead of us did you know that marie did a poll for who should sing the blank chuck blank check world cup theme song and hip-hop sims beat pip the chipmunk and lynn manuel miranda that's actually incredibly just just some brand new news it's actually incredibly rude Hip Hop Sims I believe The only one of that three that isn't The main artist on a Walt Disney Records

Release Also doesn't exist Doesn't exist Last I checked Andalasia track one Disenchanted soundtrack So yeah that was our March Madness This is our March Madness winner. And that's all very exciting.

And let me just check the poll again. Should I check the poll again? Yeah, absolutely. Look, we've covered a menagerie of different types of first films. Looks like Sympathy for Mr. Podcast is going to take it. Well, I regret leaving it up to the people. Is that your least favorite of the three? It's not, but you know that thing where like

you need to do the mental exercise where you're like, I can't make a decision, and then you like run the simulation in your head of like, what would actually make me upset if it turned out this way or if I didn't do this or whatever it is? I didn't go through that mental exercise and now I've grown really attached. I'm a podcast

for that. It's okay. It's fine. It'm a podcast for that It's fine, it's dead It's dead and also I might put my thumb on the scale You'd have to put a big thumb on the scale You'd have to put one of the thumbs From Spy Kids on the scale What if I email Lin and ask him to I don't think that would work

Maybe him, he's got a lot of followers He's got a lot of followers Because He's got a lot of followers. Because it's so far behind. It's going to need an insane bump. Yeah. You're going to need Elon to hack the poll. So you better start tweeting about whatever, some dank memes for him. Yeah.

You know, better start tweeting like, I don't even want to make jokes about Elon Musk, who's a bad person. That's an arc. I spend this episode trying to become the kind of account that Elon would like. Buy Twitter blue. Start tweeting about the Babylon Bee. I don't know. What does he do all day? Yeah, shit like that.

I don't know. So we are talking Park Town work today on a podcast that's almost certainly called Sympathy for Mr. Podcast. Yes, it is. Now, first order of business. I say as we've already maybe tackled five orders of business. David, Ben walks into the studio today. I don't want to make a point of it.

You were five minutes early, but that made you the third one to arrive. Yeah, you guys were already here. Because I'm starting a new era. Yeah, you really are. Early Griff. I literally, literally support it. I would love that.

Early Griff. I'm just saying early Griff, okay? Yeah. They call me Coltrane Ler in the late 90s. I literally support it. I would love that. I'm just saying early Griff, okay? They call me Coltrane Ler in the late 90s because I'm an early addition. Ben walks in. He walks up to me. He goes, do you notice anything different

going on with me? I go, no. He goes around this area and he gestures to his skull. Okay. And he's been sort of voguing now. Yeah, he is, but he's got a baseball hat on. You come in, you say, what's the goss?

What's the goss? And Ben goes, I've had a really exciting life development, but I'm going to save it for the mic. Okay, what's your exciting life development? And once I noticed, I said, Ben, I have a lot of questions, but I'm going to wait to ask all of them on Mike. David?

What? It's like an eye spy. It's like a, Ben! Ben? Ben's got a little daddy earring. He's got a little stud. Earpiece.

That's right. Cool guy stud. That's right, listeners. I am officially entering my bad boy era 2.0 okay now can we unpack this please uh how why went uh saturday okay claire's accessories yes yes i went to the mall of america video for me ahead of of time to just make me feel comfortable.

Okay, Saturday. Saturday. It was called Studs. Wait, with a Z? No, just a regular S. Too bad. Like Studs Terkel? Yes.

Yeah, cool. Exactly. It was me and mostly really cool Gen Z women and folks. So I really felt a little bit like I stuck out as a 37-year-old man. Now, I must ask, how premeditated was this?

This was truly a bit we don't have bits on this podcast yes at least of all for me Steve Harvey Family Feud X he just hit a big whammy band on this show

where I did the thing of like I get my ear pierced I don't care I'll do it and then who are you talking to do you say this like don't care. I'll do it. And then. Wait, I'm sorry. Who are you talking to? Yeah. Also, do you say this like 15 minutes before you go and do it? Kind of. Yeah.

Okay. No, I sang it to yourself. My friend May is in town. And now is this the person you went and got the steak with? It is indeed. Yes. I forget who we talked about. Well, whatever.

We talked about it. It would have been last week. It was the cameraman. It's my marriage episode. Okay. All right. So she's in town. So she's been pushing you out of your comfort zone. A little bit, yeah. I guess you could say that.

But there was a plan to get a piercing done. She was already planning on that for herself. And I said, I'm going to go too and get my ear pierced. There's nothing cooler than a 37 year old guy who gets his ears pierced for the first time. Honestly, the main reason I've never

considered it. I've just always thought, well, I look like a cry for help. Yeah, but also, David, will it look pathetic? Will it look sad? I could be cool. You're not 37 yet. I am 37. You're not 37. How dare he tell

me my age? I am 37. I just turned 37. You are not 37. I age I am 37 I just turned 37 you are not 37 I 100% am 37 years old I have been 37 for a month now we're usually a year apart but my birthday hasn't happened yet so we're in that gray zone so you could do it David

you could do it look he set the pattern clearly I could always follow it and I encourage all older men out there in their late 30s. You never got your ear pierced. Now you're thinking, uh-oh, it's all over for me. No, it's not. I'm sorry.

You could be cool. So you went to Studs. Studs. It fucking hurt. Well, you know what? They punched a hole in your body. It's going to hurt a little bit. It was nuts.

They used the gun or a needle? A needle. Yeah, yeah, right. The gun is real mall territory. She was like, breath in and then take a deep breath. Ah, and it just went right through my ear. Now you just have the one ear. I just have the one.

Well, no, I have two ears. I'm sorry. You've only pierced. You have the one piercing. The one piercing. One, your left ear. Correct'm sorry. You have the one piercing. The one piercing. One, your left ear. Correct. The lobe.

The bottom. I just have a little gold round stud. And you're going to keep it in there? I have to do it for four months. Like you're committed. I mean, yeah. Absolutely. What if you... Wait a second.

Actually, this isn't... Like, what if you didn't? What if you got your ear pierced and immediately was like, I don't want to do it. I don't want an earring. This is a bad idea. If you just left it alone, would it just close up quickly? Is that

what would happen? I have no idea. I would assume so. It would be funny to actually get your ear pierced and then have the crisis. Rather than have the crisis on seeing the needle here afterwards. No, I don't like it. I don't like it. I hate this.

I hate the hole. I'm anti-hole. Have you thought already, do you have to keep this specific one in for the next four months or can you? Okay. Yes. To maintain. Yeah. Well, to maintain the hole.

Right. Not allow it to close up and make sure it's clean. Yes. the hole, not allow it to close up and make sure it's clean. But I'm saying you need to wait four months before you can really explore the fertile bit territory of what else can you put in there, right? That's correct. Okay. And I'm thinking next, I'm going to do a hoop.

Sure. A big-ass hoop? Maybe. Maybe a big-ass hoop. I'm surprised you never did it before. Honestly, you have a lot of tattoos. Yeah, that's true. Maybe. Maybe a big-ass hoop. I'm surprised you never did it before, honestly. You have a lot of tattoos. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And I always kind of wanted to do it, and I just was scared.

And then I decided, you know what? At this point in my life, I am who I am. It's the only confounding part of this, in fact, is realizing, huh, he didn't have his ears pierced already. That's the surprising part. I guess, you know i i thought that i assumed or thought you had but it would have made sense for sure i had tons of friends who had piercings uh septum is it maybe now maybe now i'm a piercing guy maybe i'll get the septum done too just be a guy in his late 30s walking around. Look, the nose ring.

People can do what they want. Yeah. But I don't think you should do that. Okay. Okay. Today we're talking about two movies that are deep with... Maybe we should just, on the Twitter, be very clear. Like, our park series starts next week.

Yeah. And this week is technically attached to it, but, you know, not really. Right. Oftentimes we'll do, like, a palate cleanser. No, we will do context on the man himself. Like, here's the... We've covered some of these, like, you know, not really. Right. Oftentimes we'll do like a power clash. No, we do context on the man himself. Look, we've covered some of these, like, you know, The Loveless, Praying with Anger, I guess we combined with Wide Awake. You know, there are other, like, sort of, they haven't quite figured out their thing yet movies that we've talked about on this show. But I watched these two films and I really was like, I have no idea what I'm going to say about these.

show, but I watched these two films and I really was like, I have no idea what I'm going to say about these. You know, and it's not that they're necessarily worse than other movies we've covered on the podcast. No. But I think especially I think they're pretty bad. I think they're not great. I kind of like Trio, although I wouldn't say it's

good. I found it entertaining. I did not. No. Bold stance? Yeah. From you? No. no not bold for me no joy in your life david no you found no happiness from trio there's three of them oh yeah some movies only give you one character this one gives you right this film right at the center no it felt well whatever we'll talk about it we'll talk about it but no it held my attention for about 10-15 minutes and then I was like immediately

just like I'm losing track of why you know why I should be invested in this yeah it's got vibes both of them got vibes yes that is true let's dig into general Park

sort of table setting context Park Chenwook who we are going to talk about uh but also our first korean director first uh discussion of korean cinema on this podcast right obviously we covered ang lee who is from taiwan uh you know we covered um Hayao Miyazaki you know um who's from Japan and but like you know those are sort of you know Ang Lee ends up in Hollywood fairly quickly Miyazaki is kind of an industry and a genre to himself in a way like you know they're they're not quite the same like this is like a guy who is very much part of like a wave of Korean cinema right like you know we're talking about when there's a lot of context around that okay do you want to hear a very abbreviated history this is from our

dossier yes jj did a very good job of knowing that knowing that the movies don't matter that much right right you know i think specifically just sort of like very clean table setting for like understanding uh the climate of k Korean cinema that he enters into. Because you're dealing with a country that had less of a sense of its own cinematic identity for a long time than most. So, Korean cinema. First film shown in Korea is released in 1903. First film produced in Korea. Not made until around 1919 uh korea

was occupied by japan uh for much of the early 20th century uh and so those movies were being made i mean obviously this is also just the dawn of cinema in general right obviously um but uh so those movies are being made like under um japanese rule Japan, yeah, basically from 1910 to like the end of the Second World War. And so lots of heavy censorship in that early time. By the 30s, the Korean film industry was basically just a wartime propaganda machine because Japan is at war with China, you know, much earlier than the world war two begins. Um, all that stuff,

you know, this is all, that's all, that's all 20th century history guys. This is not a history podcast really. Um, but you know, 1945,

but if we were, maybe we'd go to the top of the charts. Yes. Uh, post world war two. Yeah, we would. Right.

David and Griffin's history pod. Yeah, that'll be good. And the artwork is us looking like kind of shocked and stroking our chins. You know how there's always those YouTube thumbnails that just kind of like, Huh? Battle of the Bulge? What?

Killed how many people? What? I think of it as Wofface. What? What is it? It's called soy facing or whatever. Or is that something else? That's called soy facing? I don't know. I can never remember what all these things mean. What? What is it? It's called soy facing or whatever. Or is that something else? That's called soy facing?

I don't know. I can never remember what all these things mean. What? What? Head tilts. So after World War II, Korea, you know, is then plunged into the Korean War

and things like that. And so like really, it's 1953, the Korean War ends, country is partitioned or, honestly, divided. I don't know what language is actually preferred for all that, but, you know, there's North Korea and South Korea.

And that is when the cinematic golden age of Korean cinema, the first sort of golden age of Korean cinema begins in the late 50s. A lot of melodramas, a lot of action films i'm gonna say now i'm going to do my best as is griffin to pronounce these names as best we can but obviously with the caveat that like i am not korean and i don't speak korean and so I'm going to be romanizing the names a little bit, like probably just,

you know, as a matter of just, that's how I speak. I am also not Korean. And on top of that, I don't speak English. Well, I've been keeping track. Great with the pronunciations anyway.

I believe I've said piercing wrong five times in this episode. How did you say it? Piercing? Are you a little baby? I don't know. I just, I don't say words right. Yes are you a little baby i don't know i'm just i don't say words right um yes you don't and that's fine um so kang daejin uh made a film called the coachman okay uh that's an early classic i've actually seen that film um it won uh the it won a prize at the berlin film festival Like that was sort of an early breakthrough, you know, internationally for the industry.

Some other, you know, Lee Man-hee, Kim Ki-young, who I think is a big influence on Park. You know, there's some of these early names. I have not seen much early Korean filmmaking, but I have seen Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid. Have you seen The Housemaid? I have not. That, I feel like, is fairly well-known. And it

got somewhat revived. It's a huge influence on Park, but it's also a huge influence on Bong Joon-ho, and it's an obvious influence on Parasite, and it's sort of this classic Hitchcockian thriller of an upper-middle-class family takes this new housemaiden and she's

this sort of femme fatale and all kinds of drama ensues it's been remade a couple times a woman of fire he he remade his own movie in the 70s it's called woman of fire we're going to talk about that in a second but uh if people want to check that one out i feel like that one is probably pretty available that's probably on criterion or something like that that one has become quite celebrated and has been restored and all i i do think it's interesting though that you're dealing with a country that hasn't had uh the chance to really form its own cinematic identity until the 50s so the 50s at which point there have been several different uh, iterations of... Of other cinema you could be watching. Storytelling in each country.

And, you know, Japanese cinema is largely being blocked out because of the political history. But outside of that, this is a culture that's much more tied into movies being exported from other countries than their own. I don't know to what extent at this time you could see foreign films and all that. The other thing that happens is in 1961, Korea is taken over by a military

government and is under military dictatorship until 1972. And so that brings back intense censorship. Histories of South Korean cinema Called the 70s 60s 70s like very low point

Sort of late 60s early 70s And Park Chan-wook Who was born in 1963 Says that like he grew up watching Other countries movies On TV or whatever Like you know he was not steeped in Korean cinema As a young boy

He was in the classic Hollywood stars. He unsurprisingly watched a lot of Hitchcock, which sounds like it was his mother's favorite. Right. Well, he's... It's going to come up on this show a lot. Park Chan-wook

really likes Alfred Hitchcock. Yes. That is going to be a big deal on this show going forward. Big Al. It's hiscock. Yes. That is going to be a big deal on this show going forward. Big Al. It's his hugest influence. He is an intense scholar of Hitchcock. And I know people who have interviewed him and if you basically just say like

Alfred Hitchcock to him, he will give you a two-hour answer, you know, before you can ask another question. Like he's very, very steeped in Hitchcock. But okay. At the end of the dictatorship, restoration of democracy in Korea, which happens over the seventies and eighties, censorship for laws start to start to relax.

And on more foreign films, I think sort of flood into the market. And in fact, by the nineties, I think like Korean multiplexes or whatever, Korean cinemas themselves are mostly dominated by foreign films, non-Korean films. And so there's a movie called Marriage Story, not directed by... Noah Baumbach.

Noah Baumbach. Directed by, let me see this kim we suck i'm sorry i definitely mispronounced that um that is like a rom-com just seems fun okay seems like a you know middle-class couple they get married then they break up then they get back together again don't know much else but it was the biggest hit of the early 90s in k. And that is credited for kind of rejuvenating the industry to some extent. Companies like Samsung start to fund movies, give movies bigger budgets. Right. That's the big thing is that the second they're sort of like homegrown hits, you have these major companies that exist.

Yeah, the Korean revival has happened. Right. Industrial, you know, explosion is happening in the country. There's money. Yeah, the Korean revival has happened. Like, industrial, you know, explosion is happening in the country. There's money. They see the future. They want a piece of it.

Suddenly, a bunch of money is flooded into the idea of a film industry. And, like, I am not an expert on Korean culture in any way, but I do feel like Korean culture is so massively important

right now in all of Asia. It's very important around the world. There's, you know, music, movies, like, you know, it has become a country that has a gigantic sort of like, you know, footprint everywhere. Cultural influence.

And this is probably all starting in the early 90s. Yes. Take a breath. Jeez, it's a little, just, you know, doing my best. No, it's shocking. I have an earring now. Take a breath. This is true.

If we're feeling on edge today, it's because you guys have to understand our entire sense of the world we live in has altered so radically. My co-worker Maya and I were talking about getting tattoos, which I talk about all the time I was like I want a tattoo

You have no tattoos And she was like David And I was like but I never know what I would get You know the old refrain And she's like no no David I don't have one either We just have to go get any tattoo You just have to go get something This is the Ben approach Ben's pointing

Yeah you know like fucking put something on your ankle Or your upper arm or whatever The first tattoo I got a skull. Well, I do like skulls. Can't go wrong. I mean, the problem is what, what do you have that you're never going to regret? Right. In my life.

Yeah. I don't know. You're saying like your friend, Maya, her approach is like, just get something. Yeah. She's like like you just gotta get something not put importance on it yeah yeah she's like if you put importance on it then you will probably think it's stupid later I was 15 I would have gotten a fucking full

chest tattoo that says John Lasseter creates a comfortable workplace like anything I thought and you tried I tried tattoo artists were like you're too young for this and your parents won't approve it and honestly i think it's a really weird thing to put on your body picture of him giving a thumbs up style like in case you get short-term memory loss you can at least look in the mirror and be like well john lassiter does create a comfortable

work environment everyone feels totally normal on a day to day basis Yeah alright so Okay Park Chan-wook born 63 in Seoul Sort of in a comfortable middle class family His dad was a university professor of architecture Who specialized in color Sure Park thinks that is very important to him

Like he says you can see how color Matters in my movies His mom taught You know you know his mom taught you know you got a mom taught political science and was a poet uh devoutly catholic family park himself and identifies as an atheist but he was raised catholic uh and i would say you have that sense of sort of like judgment and sin and like, you know, can we... Atonement. Yeah, all that stuff.

All that Catholic stuff. Redemption. Yeah. That's in there. His adolescence and his college years, he said, you know, you're living in a totalitarian nation. An individual's life is intertwined with a sense of guilt that comes from violence and being unable to resist, you know, what's happening, you know, because the dictatorship's in control. Violence is pain. And when people use violence, they destroy themselves from the inside.

Violence is a power that moves the world. It's not desirable, but it is important. Art and mass media, they don't really cover violence. Not action movie pretend violence, but violence itself. So I wanted to show how violence makes people behave in a certain way, how it hurts people. That's Park thinking about his sort of thematic obsessions. But also he's growing up in this family with visual sensibilities. His dad's an architect.

His brother apparently is a painter. He would go to art galleries with his dad all the time. He wanted to be a painter and then he very quickly realized, I'm nowhere near as good as my brother. He had a comparison point right next to him. So what did he decide? He said, I'll be an art critic, maybe. Can't do.

Criticize. Yes. So, movies also very important. In the household, they would watch movies together. They didn't really go see movies in theaters, but there was also less of a culture. That was what was playing on TV. It was a strict curfew.

You could barely go out at all, I think. Yes. Yeah. So they'd watch lots of old French films, classic Hollywood movies, Rebecca, North by Northwest. Yeah. Speaking of Hitchcock.

But he said because Japanese media was being blocked, he was totally closed off to Kurosawa and Ozu and all these filmmakers until he got older. And he's like, I do think my life would have been very different if I had been exposed to those guys at an early age. Yeah, versus being exposed to Hollywood. Right, this mishmash of... Robert Aldrich.

Yes. The towering Inferno, you know. Fucking Kiss Me Deadly Longest Yard A lot of B-movies, a lot of noir films A lot of Golden Age Hollywood stuff But then he had There's the t-shirt he credits as being the one

Who he came into school And he was like less of a movie fanatic kid And more of was sort of just like obsessed with Stars And was ranting to his this is it I know I'll get to it I'm going down

well then you know what yeah you know jump ahead I'm sorry he's got a fucking earring I don't even know my bearings are all all right

listen Koreans it's a little stud you barely notice it at first but it makes a big difference bad boy era 2.0 so he sees woman of fire which is the remake of the house made

also made by kim ki-young says that's a huge influence on him okay uh that film that film griffin features the film debut of uh yu nyung the the lady who won from the oscar from minari yeah um just an interesting little factoid for you there. He says that movie kind of changed his life. He says the original housemaid gives him shocks even when he sees it now.

He thinks that guy is sort of a huge whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good shit. As you say, couldn't really see Japanese films. I just wanted to confirm it is available on the Criterion channel. Okay. Is it part of the

that's Scorsese box? Is that what it is? One of the world cinema but no, I think they just restored it. It's a fairly major work. Maybe I don't know. It just is looking like it's part of their regular collection. Okay. Go on, David.

As you said, he wants... Oh, shit. No. He's right. Sorry. Guys. What? Guys.

Right. Guys. Okay. All right. I was right. All right. He's thinking of becoming an art critic. He's studying philosophy.

Yeah. Studying philosophy. Third time's the charm. At Sogang University in Seoul. Wants to be an art critic. The university had few classes on aesthetics. So instead he starts hanging out with the cine club he founds,

alternately referred to as the film gang. That's where he sees Vertigo, an Alfred Hitchcock film you might have heard of with a little guy called Jimmy Stewart. And he's seen that? He's seen it. That's the thing. He's not reflecting his work at all. called Jimmy Stewart. And he's seen that? He's seen it. That's the thing. He's not reflecting his work at all.

No, no. And he saw this movie. And according to him, that was the one. That's the Thunderbolt movie that makes him want to be a filmmaker. Have you seen Vertigo? Have I? Yeah. You seen that one?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Pretty good. Pretty good. Have you seen Vertigo, Ben? I've seen it and I've had it. Me too. I hear you.

He sees Vertigo and he says, whatever it takes, I have to be a film director after seeing Vertigo. The scene where the man is driving through the streets of San Francisco following the woman, it really felt like being sucked into a daydream. The moment where the woman is sitting in the museum

and we notice the resemblance of how she tied her hair to the woman's in the portrait, that element of visual motif when you figure out the connection between irrelevant objects, you know, it blew his mind. By the way, you skipped over the thing I was going to say. Which is? When you said, wait, I'm getting to it. What? In middle school, he watches The Towering

Inferno on TV. Oh, yeah, I skipped that. I didn't notice about The Towering Inferno. And you said, I'm getting to it. I thought you were talking about a college professor. No. Oh, yeah, I skipped that. I didn't notice about the Towering Inferno. And you said, I'm getting to it. I thought you were talking about a college professor. No. Oh, yeah, the teacher. And he goes to the teacher and he says, like, Towering Inferno, I saw this movie, it's so great.

And she went like, that's whatever, right? Right, right, right. I think the quote he says, she said, was, well, it's just another Hollywood movie, but there are a lot of directors in Europe with profound visions and individuality. And that was the moment I learned about people called directors. You know, it's actually an interesting question.

That's what loves us in the European cinema. When do you learn about directors? You know, I'm seeing movies when I'm a kid. Yes. Aladdin, for example. That guy, you know, he has a friend called the Genie and Abu. We love it. We've seen it covered. But I'm not like walking out of there being like guy you know he has a friend called the genie and abu we love it we've seen it but i'm not like walking out of there being like you know musker and clements really knocked out like when when when as a kid am i am i learning about directors yeah look i've talked about in

this show that tim burton was really my like training wheels director where i'm like i understand there's a person behind all of these and he looks like a cartoon character but but i also remember there being a second kind of like there is no santa claus moment where i my parents revealed to me that he had not written most of any of his films none of them really very few he gets any sort of credit on and i was like then what the fuck does this guy do what is he right well that's sure that's the second question and what what is it that they like around nine or ten i'd sort of taken for granted the director thing is just like well that's the person who makes the whole movie you know but i thought a lot of it was mostly you see like your impressions of directors on cartoon shows or someone sits in a chair and they have a

megaphone but i was like if they're not writing the thing then what is that job i guess it must have right now i'm thinking it must have been like Lucas and Spielberg. I guess those are the first directors you're hearing about when you're a little kid. Anyway, interesting to think about. Anyway, I wasn't like him. I didn't see the towering Inferno and go A plus and have someone go like, that's a C minus. What you need is directors.

Well, look, it sounds like a bit of a snot, but it does. No, no, no, no. It's very interesting. It's very interesting. Yeah, to have that thing where you're like, right, because he's growing up in a culture where there is not a lot of film culture. And you're seeing big American movies

and they just feel like so exciting. This must be the biggest thing, the best thing you can do with this medium. She opens up this idea. I just think her even saying like, there are people with visions and passions and individuality. He's like, oh, you can like say things. But he doesn't even connect the dots until he sees Vertigo.

There we go. And do you know what else happens when he sees Vertigo, Griffin? He falls down a flight of stairs. That would suck for him. And that might have injured him. No. He meets a female student from another university that same day. His wife.

The woman he marries. His first love. He calls her his first love, which is very, very, very sweet. Yes. So, while he's at the university, he starts writing some film reviews to make some money.

He's apparently been banned from tutoring. I don't know what he did. He just says he was banned the towering inferno sucks cycled repeated and then he would make stories based on the scripts of Hollywood

movies before they're released in Korea with subtitles so it sort of sounds like he was writing like bootleg novelizations of Hollywood movies in Korean I read this a couple times To get like ahead of him Very confused by it because there was obviously like the whole Cottage industry of like movie novelizations

That was so big in the 70s and 80s And 90s but it sounds like this was Not quite that good I want to read look I can't read Korean so I'm probably never Going to experience this joy but To think that as he says he wrote a korean sort of story version of the film stakeout with richard and then he like sees them based on the script alone yes and then he sees the movie later and he's like oh wow this is like nothing like what I wrote about. I want to read his take.

When there were like Hollywood novelizations, even if they weren't getting to see the final film, they were working hand in hand. They knew, you know, those are usually it's like you're like, oh, it's like 80% of the movie. And then there's some extra stuff that's kind of weird or whatever. Right. Stuff that got left on the cutting room floor was early part of development this sounds like he was largely engaging in speculative fiction writing like guidebooks that would summarize movies before they came out to get people excited about them but he hadn't seen the films

no he just read the scripts and he says in his way he considers this a training ground for making films which I could sort of see sure he has to like read a script and kind of transmute it. There's no film schools in Korea in 1980, he says.

So, you know, instead he's basically just like studying quote unquote art, I think in general. And this is during a time of national turmoil. The whole pro-democracy movement. There's lots and lots of revolution happening. And he says he did not really participate

in the pro-democracy movement himself. It doesn't go with my personality, but I have a lot of friends who were involved. Witnessed lots of conflict with the police. Felt respect for the heroic actions of students who tied themselves to buildings and risked their lives. Again, this is an important part of Korean history. We may touch on it in this series.

Probably not. I'm trying to sort of think through his filmography. I don't think he really gets to that. Like, The Handmaiden is set, you know, during Japanese occupation. Usually he... Anyway. But you can read all about this sort of stuff. But the way he puts it is

I felt this complex mix of emotions throughout college as did everyone who grew up in my generation just about the police and authority and you know how to resist it and all this stuff his graduation is delayed he takes a gap year he completes his military service

then he starts working as like a PA in Korean movies and then as a first assistant director he worked on quack jae young's film watercolor painting on a rainy day good title yeah someone nab that title please that's a great chris pratt in watercolor painting on a rainy day definitely sounds like a pratt vehicle that's the first thing that came to mind david you hit the nail on the head with that one just love the name of it

you know and then while he's working as below the line guy he's writing screenplays of his own he marries his wife Kimmy and he who he remains with to this day he runs all of his scripts past her it's nice he says I rely on one person's judgment I would

discuss every detail with my wife from the beginning of a screenplay to the music I use after the film's finished shooting. She comes up with some very interesting ideas and insights. And he's still writing criticism during all of this? Yes. As far as I know. I don't know.

He really kind of catches on as a critic in the early 90s when people really start engaging with his work seriously. He lies to his mother-in-law that he wants to pursue a career Which is on as a critic in the early 90s when people really start engaging with his work seriously. Yes. Right, yeah. He lies to his mother-in-law that he wants to pursue a career in academia, starts to look for more film industry work, works at a production company that's getting foreign films into Korea, which is a booming business, after 1988 when the restrictions get lifted. So he would select films, he would design posters. Apparently, Vincent and Theo Theo the Robert Altman film

he said that was the best film he worked on at that time yeah never seen you've never seen that really? no I have not seen it it's really good it's about Vincent Van Gogh

yes Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Who was his art dealer And it's Tim Tim Sorry, I just had to make that joke Yes I've never seen it

I've seen the Kirk Douglas one where he's like My paintings This is what he's like I gotta pull my damn hair off too busy painting anyway uh what about vince edithio uh no i there was a big altman retrospective at moma a couple years ago and i went to see that but that's one of those movies that was, I believe, a British miniseries that was then cut down for American

theatrical release. So I think I saw the theatrical version, which is 220, but the miniseries basically adds an hour onto that. Goddamn. I don't know if that's in circulation. I've always kind of wanted to watch the longer version, but it's incredibly good.

I mean, that's that weird era of Altman's career where he's trying to rebuild and figure out who he is in between Popeye and the player you know where he does a lot of play adaptations but Vincent Théo is really good I don't know we'll do Altman at some point

it'll take five years we'll do him one day maybe who knows a lot of movies you want to do him one day. Maybe. Who knows? It's a lot of movies. You want to do him. I know. We split up in a couple sections. Okay.

One reason he starts working at this production company. They promised to eventually finance his feature directorial debut. Right. That was the main reason he was working there

was basically if I'm here long enough they'll let me make something eventually they're like okay the time has come but they suggest that he makes sort of a Zucker Brothers parody of something incredibly

bizarre and he says I can't do that partly because there's no script partly because I just don't do that. Partly because there's no script. Partly because I just don't want that to be my debut. And he talks to another friend who works at a different film company. And he says, look, once you've made a movie, they're going to treat you differently. You just got to make a movie.

Right. Even if your first movie is bad or whatever. Right. There's a difference of conversation if you come to them as someone who has been a feature film director has one under your belt so and he says okay fine i'll work on a movie of my own i'll work on a screenplay uh his first idea is about a union buster getting murdered uh they shoot that down they're like that sounds too political we don't want to touch that. Sure. So then instead they rush something.

Him and his colleague, Kim Jong-tae, write, the moon is dot, dot, dot, the sun's dream. Now look. Now look. Now look. I don't know. Maybe that title has, I could not find any, I don't know why this is called that. They say it at the very end of the movie. But like, I don't know if that is some sort they say it at the very end of the movie but like like I don't know if that is even when they say it I'm aphorism why are you saying this but like if I'm

like I really want to break into movie making I'm trying to find something that'll click I don't know if I'm gonna bust out the moon is the sun's dream no as as my sort of hooky title no no it's also not it's like, unlike

a watercolor painting on a rainy day or what's that, what's the title of the upcoming Chris Pratt movie we have in development? Oh, yeah, sorry, fuck, water watercolor painting on a rainy day. Yeah. You hear that and you're like,

what am I thinking about here? What is the sum's dream? You're like, what the fuck? Go home. You're drunk. What are you like what the fuck go home you're drunk what are you talking about you're drunk go home you're drunk yeah well look he busts out this sort of nori parody movie uh he's obviously inspired by sort of you know hollywood b movies right right stuff like that which is a lot of pulpy stuff a lot of his uh career as a critic he was like uh he really tried to position himself primarily from the position of uh advocacy like he was like i only want to write about things i like there's no need for me to take stuff down you know not that he was a fucking poptimist who argues let people enjoy things but it's like i'm

gonna use my platform to write about movies that I think should be taken seriously rather than attacking things. And it was a combination of sort of a tourist stuff, but also a lot of B-movie stuff. Alien 3 was a movie he fought for really hard. He liked Alien 3. He would stick up for that. I think he was sort of an early proponent, especially in South Korea, of trying to force people to recognize the artistry in B-movies, pulp movies, genre movies. It makes sense that he would start from this kind of place.

What is surprising about this movie is sort of the combination of it is like so broad and self-serious at the same time. Right. You know? Yes, I do know. It sort of has pretension without having depth.

You hear about where he was coming from when he made this movie and it would make more sense if it was just like a really trashy noir film. Right. No, but this movie is too like experimental and up its own ass to actually be fun. Yes. If that makes sense. It would be much better

if it was just like you know, fucking, yeah, it's two guns and a girl and a, you know, a bag of money or whatever. Just like a very simple version of this. Whereas like I kept on finding this movie so confusing and then when i sort of made sense of it i was like oh the plot is actually very straightforward it's just

the movie is poorly constructed well let me tell you park jeon wook's uh take there which is he says my position was that i had to write a new script in a short period of time and i decided to shoot this conventional story in an experimental style. I had a childish attitude that I would put out a new kind of movie, the likes of which had never been seen in previous Korean films. And I had the idea of trying to twist the structure and conventions of genre film,

but I wasn't satisfied with the results. So he's kind of like, yeah, sure, it seems simple, but I'll fuck it up. Right. You know, by doing all this cool, interesting, like storytelling stuff. And it says like, no, you just made your movie unwatchable. Basically, and there's no—

We're not all Tarantino. I know Tarantino is contemporary of his, essentially. But still, like, you know, it's hard to pull all that shit off. There's not, like, a clear rhyme or reason to the way he fucks up, too. It's just, like, trying a bunch of shit. I mean, that's the prism through which this movie is kind of interesting. And Trio, I think, has different shit going on. the prism through which this movie is kind of interesting and and and trio i think has a different shit going on but just you know a lot of like especially for someone who is has been

writing about film who has been thinking about film from a pretty academic perspective yeah the difference between the way you think about movies and interpret them versus the actual act of making one on the ground, let alone, uh, turning your ideas into something that is understandable to audiences. This movie is him just throwing a lot of shit at the wall. It doesn't have, um,

I, I don't know, even the clarity or, or the excitement of someone experimenting and just having fun. Right. You know, it feels a little too self-serious to be even interesting as like a demo reel. Yeah.

If that makes sense. You know what I'm saying? But it's got flair. It's got like some flair. It's got some flair. I don't know if this is like horribly reductive. The thing I was like, what is this reminding me of and so much of the time it was like

the weird narrative videos that will sometimes play behind karaoke tracks sure you don't talk about where you're like someone like filmed this and there's like some story here there's like zooms and handheld shots and there's people in darkness

and this is not a music video for this song. This was made specifically for karaoke systems. I'm not a karaoke guy. I'm a big karaoke guy. Yeah, I know you are. But the other part of it is like the way this movie uses songs in montages felt very much like

that. It does feel like a series of melodramatic music videos. You know what karaoke means, though? What? In Japanese? What? Empty orchestra. And that's a name for a movie. That's a cool name. Yeah. So, yeah, alright.

So anything else I don't see about this movie? Well, according to Park, it's really fortunate that not many of you have seen my first film, for you and for me. I made it when I was in my 20s and I had blind ambition to make a's really fortunate that not many of you have seen my first film for you and for me I made it when I was in my 20s and I had blind ambition to make a film so that's how I got to make that film and it's very low budget and sentimental and it's very dot dot dot

you know dot dot dot awful yeah what's the basic plot of this movie there's a gangster yes Moo Hoon who is played by Lee Sung Chul Who is like a huge Korean singer This was the big thing

He was a huge Korean Like pop star And then he got busted for marijuana What? They found wacky tobacco on him Smoking that jazz cigarette And the government Tsk tsked him, banned him

from television. Damn. Because it's the early 90s, right? Couldn't be, yeah. Right. So there was this business calculation of, if we put him in our film, he is banned from TV right now. Yeah. He still has adoring fans. Right. They'll actually

just come see it because it'll be the only outlet. Outlet, yes. And they screen the movie the first time because it'll be the only outlet yes and they screen the movie the first time and it sells out and there's like fucking mob outside and park's like here we go i gotta hit on my hands rubbing it together you know and then night two no one shows up and he was like oh they just came because he was there and they wanted his fucking autograph no one cares about this the gambit did not work right they they will come to see him in person look i don't even think he's good or bad in this movie but park seems to think he was bad because he's not an actor took a lot of credit for uh or not credit he took a lot of responsibility

for i did not know how to work with actors at that point he does talk about that re both these movies i treat them like cattle he was sort of so obsessed with the hitchcock thing and the way that hitchcock talked about actors as props and set dressing right and just like you're not a human being you're a piece of equipment for me to manipulate yeah but hitchcock was also just like a salty little bitch he understood movie stars he just liked to be mean about correct well it was a mind game thing yeah exactly i think the way he talked about movie stars publicly was very different than the way he actually thought of them. That's my impression of Hitchcock. Yes. Bleh. Yeah.

It's like all that shit you read about John Ford where you're like, why was he such an asshole? And everyone was like, he was the most sensitive man in the world. Right. And it was all this defensive armor against a horrible industry that he knew preyed on insecurity. But there's a gangster. He's in Busan, which the film was set in Busan,

which is the sort of Korea's second city after Seoul. A very big city. And then he has a half-brother who's a photographer and is a bit of a, you know, nebbish, I would say. Sure, sure. Sort of a glasses guy. And don't you hate that? We do.

Sort of a glasses guy. And don't you hate that? We do. And Mahoon is caught having an affair with his boss's mistress. And so they run off with some money and then they're caught and she is sold into prostitution. Yes. I believe. And scarred. Right.

Constitution? Yes, and scarred. I believe, and scarred. Right. And then he later, like a year later or something, finds a photo of her that his brother took and tries to rescue her. And they get, you know, they're on the run from the mob, right? Like that is sort of the plot of the movie.

You wouldn't really pick that up from watching this movie, in my opinion. It's sort of like, right like a couple different men who are all in love with the same woman who is scarred by... Yeah, the photographer is a part of all of this. Right. But he mostly

is just kind of like, ah, you know. The way you just recounted it is not out of order. Exactly. And so, like, it begins with her getting scarred. There's this odd element of everyone... And there's this scene where she's getting her photo taken. Right. You know, like, and all that.

Everyone in the reality of the movie kind of acts like she is unrecognizable but for the scar. Right. Like, if you don't notice her scar, she looks like anyone in the world. She's like Olivia Cooke in Ready Player One. Right. She's the birthmark But it's like when her hair is down People are like who is this

And then they see the scar and they're like my god Right But that's sort of how they are able to Re-identify her Because the photographer brother takes the pictures of her And the mistake is that the scar is showing And that sort of puts her back It gets very convoluted

Yeah And really hard to follow is showing. Yes. And that sort of puts her back. It gets very convoluted. Yeah. And really hard to follow. Yeah. There's a part where they watch a Charlie Chaplin movie. That part's fun. Part's kind of fun. Yeah. I mean this is a little bit of the Fast X problem, right? You're like, what's the best scene in this movie? I honestly did not think you were going to

compare this film to Fast X. What's the best scene? You mean the best scenes in Fast X are where they're showing you clips from Fast 5? Yeah. The opening of Fast X is like six minutes from Fast 5 and you're like, this fucking rips. And then when it cuts to the actual movie itself, you're like, well, now this feels twice as bad.

The best part of The Moon is the Sun's Dream is just watching like six minutes of Charlie Chaplin in the middle. I don't know. I was taking a lot of notes with some of these fits. Okay. People look pretty good in this one. Oh, my God.

Everyone looks great. Yeah. The leather jacket in particular. Sure. Any other fits? I mean, this is... The photographer has also got his own sort of more fancy looks. Long trench coat, sort of cuts fancy looks. Sure. Long trench coat,

sort of cuts of the time, boxier, sort of straight leg. But everyone looks great. The gangsters look great. You know, this film is frustrating to watch because he becomes so good at this later. Like, Decision to Leave is a movie that is aggressively confusing,

but is able to hold your attention while knowing that it's not showing its full hand to you, right? Sure. I don't find Decision to Leave that confusing. It's a jumbled movie. It's meant to disorient. We'll talk about it on,

uh, that's not true. We're never talking about that movie on this podcast. I keep looking down. September 3rd. Okay, there we go. Sorry.

Um, as you say, they did have this gambit of maybe we'll get this pop stars fans to show up. They didn't really. They didn't give a shit. As legend goes, this is hard to verify, JJ says, because he does not read Korean.

The film's release was so unsuccessful that no one reviewed it, so Park himself wrote a review in a university newspaper under a pseudonym. Slammed it. He probably, yeah. He does not say whether he was positive. I don't think he was.

Yeah. So, whatever. Let's leave The Moon is the Sunstream now. Right? How long have we been going? An hour. Perfect. Moon is the Sunstream fails.

Park's got to make money for his family. He has a kid, a daughter, in 1994. He's not going to make movies, it seems Doesn't seem like that's going to work out for him So this is when he starts writing more film criticism And I think this is when This is when he really catches on Yeah, when he

Well, let's see He's writing reviews for magazines, of course He has a book Called The Discrete Charm of film watching which is a pretty cute title yeah i like it yeah uh which became a bestseller in korea um he would talk about hitchcock and nicholas ray but also like sam raimi or alien 3 uh he loves the sam peckinpah film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia He's writing

seriously but not exactly academically I think it was a little more approachable Positively, like I don't think this isn't Pauline Kael where she's like sound of music more like the sound of a flushing toilet Yeah, that was maybe the most brutal thing she ever wrote

You know, not exhaustive, not covering everything, covering what he likes or what he thinks is interesting or worth analysis. There's that shift in his status with the first movie. He is such a marginal figure. By the time Trio comes out, not to jump ahead, people

are like, oh, this is the movie from that guy. It's the critic guy. Right. It's Jay Sherman. Let's see if he can put his money where his mouth is. So, Ryu Seung-won, again, I apologize. Ryu Seung-won, who is

eventually going to make the film Escape from Mogadishu and other Korean films himself, but he is so fond of Park's criticism that he seeks him out, reads one of his articles and thinks, I should work for this man,

goes and meets him, and becomes his first assistant director on Trio. A quote from this guy, though, unfortunately, this film is considered the worst in his filmography. I do like that they all just happily shit on these movies. Park is even more critical of this one than was some dream.

I think because this is, well, I think he's like, what? I didn't fucking learn anything from the last one. Like another, another, you know,

crap one for me. See, I think other turd, I think this is a major step up on a relative scale, but I also think to him, this is so much closer to being a real movie. The things that fucks up probably are more frustrating to him than The Moon is the Sun's Dream, which is

just like, well, this is just amateurish. I don't know what I'm getting at yet. Like, this movie, more than anything, I think it has some good ideas in its basic setup. And then tonally, it's got, like, no idea how to say them or what it's even trying to say. It's very propulsive. It's just not that it doesn't really grab me.

I like the characters. You know, you like the lonely saxophonist. It's a very propulsive. It's just not that it doesn't really grab me. I like the characters. You like the lonely saxophonist. It's a very Griffin character. But no, it's like how Kubrick made Fear and Desire. You can watch Fear and Desire and be like, hey, this is the beginning. There are seeds of something interesting here.

But if you see it in 1953, you're like, boom! Rotten! Yes. It's only interesting in any context. but if you see it in 1953, you're like, boom, sure. Rotten. Yes. You know, like it's only interesting in any context. I mean, our,

our buddy Alex Ross Perry made the very good point. It's nice. It makes you feel good. Even a genius had to make some shit, you know, to figure it out. Right. It's,

it's, it's kind of, uh, especially from the, the, with the prism through which we tend to talk about people in their careers and whatever, it's so much harder if it's like this person landed and they were genius.

They had great thoughts and they knew how to communicate them perfectly. It's not just that it's like humbling to watch something like Fear and Desire and have it suck. But it's also the fact that it gives you the ability to actually see craft and thought and approach develop. So there's a little of that in these, I guess. But, you know, just a little. I think much more in Trio, but Trio ends up being glib in how it handles almost everything. Well, let me tell you how he made Trio.

Let's see. Even though he took a break from making movies he didn't stop trying he would go from company to company give him plans he had a bunch of scripts that he'd written they would always get rejected exactly uh he had been branded as a director who knew a lot about movies but would only make cult movies that not no one would see some of the movies he wrote Something called The Flower of Evil A horror film about a set Of male and female twins

Something called Fight Night The story of a rock band From JJ Sorry that's all I have about this one lol Something called Anarchists An action film about a covert group of anarchists Attempting to overthrow the Japanese government In 1924 in Shanghai

And this did get made by Yu Yong-sik In the year 2000 Sounds cool He had a lot of friends apparently Kept him feeling sane He had a lot of friends That's good news

Seeing here he had friends He had a lot of friends. That's good news. Seeing here, he had friends. He was a sociable sort. So, it'd be funny if it was like, Andy, here's Parker. I knew no one for five years and was constantly lonely. No, he had buds. Yeah.

You know. He ate three meals a day often. We hope so. Sleeping was a hobby. He had a bud called. I wouldn't even call it a bit of a profession He would spend upwards of one third of his day doing it Lee Honey says who

Had made a low budget film He died He's no longer with us But he said we had in common The fact that we both hated films with posturing Flash and trickery We scoured through films made by directors Who didn't pretend to be

artists or great masters masters and we had long discussions that's all interesting to hear it's just that i do feel like his movies these two movies are kind of a little heavy on the flash trio's like all fucking like bravado he's got like a shot that goes through like a bullet wound in his hands like it's got all this very flashy stuff for like a low budget movie yes all right so trio he you know wants to make a more stripped down film he wants to make what he calls a graduation piece

ending my cinephile period simple film frank and unobstructed without sensitive you know without quoting other films without flash or trickery he says once again not Not true. Not really true. No. I saw myself as someone without the aptitude for fluff films,

art films, socially conscious films. I wanted to make a film that didn't belong to any category. It's a lot of things he's saying, but at the end of the day, I don't think he succeeded. He wanted to start with something very minor.

People starting to, trying to solve problems by depending on family or religion while emphasizing that no one can solve your problems but yourself. Okay. Look, this movie's about three characters. A trio, if you will. People who end up together, who are all sort of at

a point of, their lives have sort of at a point of their lives have sort of atrophied for different reasons in different ways they are all sort of frustrated and bored and despondent and angry in different permutations

and basically end up being all drawn together to go on a crime spree and form this weird sort of family unit. But you have this sort of one young guy who's sort of a wannabe gangster who is unintelligent.

He often says how bad his low, how low his IQ scores are. Yes, there is one man who essentially describes himself as a simpleton. Yes. But he is sort of driven by machismo and rage and posturing.

Then there's a very depressed jazz man. A suicidal saxophonist. He's always trying to hang himself. Yes. You have this sort of opening like Harold and Maude. Who is a cuck.

Right. And I'm seeing here he wasn't played by Jason Clarke. Weird. American remake win. No, you have this sequence. I think it's kind of fun. It's a great role, Jason. He's a saxophonist.

Now he's suicidal. Why is he suicidal? Well, he did get cucked. He's got a wife. Jason, he doesn't have a wife. I'll take it. His wife does like having sex with him.

Jason, you're playing a nanobot terminator. And, you know, he gets cocked. Sure. Just every role he plays. Yeah. Go on. Sorry. Your mom cocks you with your dad?

Sure. You're playing Abraham Lincoln? I am? No, he did get cocked. Don't worry. He did. Am I totally wrong in remembering Genesis having some weird sexual dynamic between him and the mom? I wish I could answer that question for you, but unfortunately, I do not remember a single thing.

I don't know if it's just I'm bringing Jason Clarke baggage with the movie to me, but I remember watching and being like, it feels like he's jealous of Kyle Reese. Maybe he is. Maybe he is. That he's not his own dad. That he's not the one. I almost want us to do the Terminator movies on Patreon. Like, partly because we can

watch, like, two really good movies and one pretty fun movie. And then three different attempts to revive the franchise that are all incredibly flawed and forgotten see dark fate i really like but i remember liking it the best of the three but they're all forgotten yes and two of them have arnie in different roles yes like one of them has fake cgi arnie yeah that's true they all have some version of arnie you're right yeah god maybe we should do them terminators I think we should yeah

Alright We've decided that we're going to do the Terminator movies On Patreon next year probably Okay Okay so there's right Suicidal guy keeps on trying and failing to kill Himself the sort of stupid Violent guy walks in on his wife

Missing Okay Okay While his his child lies just like He walks in on his wife fucking him. He walks in on his wife fucking a guy while his child lies just like there in bed, right? Yes, he does. He does see this, yes. And he's just so depressed that he...

He sees her breasts. Yes. She's nude with another man. And she does not stop fucking this guy when he walks in. Uh-huh. No, she doesn't. She just locks eyes with him. Right.

And keeps doing it. And he just takes all of his shit. Yeah. And lights the house on fire as he leaves. Right. And walks away. And takes his daughter. And takes his daughter. I'm done with this. Yes. Right. And then the third woman that he and his violent dumb friend

sort of decide to rob a cafe out of like apathy right sure wants to yeah i don't know i mean there's something i like to just them being like we're so fucking bored right and despondent and miserable why not just like do a radical thing and uh a woman who is in the the shop when they commit the robbery comes back to them. Yeah. And sort of volunteers herself to be the third member, says she has a lead on a couple that they can rob. And when they get there, it turns out it is her ex.

Right. Who has left her for a younger woman. She's trying to locate her child that she had with this man. Yes. She's got this missing child. that she had with this man. Yes. She's got this missing child. Right. And he claims that he murdered the kid. Briefly.

But he didn't. No. Kid's actually alive. Yes. Gotta find him. And the three of them form this weird family unit trying to find the kid. Yes.

Semi-crime spree. Apparently it has some basis or he was sort of inspired by this like series of armed robberies that had happened in korea okay so maybe that's why because like it doesn't really make sense that they're on a crime spree you know what i mean like you know so like it's sort of like he is just kind of like tying it to this real thing and yeah i i don't think this movie takes place in any world of realism I think it is more just about a mood and a vibe and I agree with Ben

I do think this movie does have semi-successful vibes at times Ben said it was Vaporwave both of them and I said sometimes does that just mean 90s and Ben said yes or just any kind of vague reference to asian culture sort of makes it vaporwave but to me vaporwave is like the incarta loading screen or whatever that's like you know supreme vaporwave you said echo the jazz music in

this yes combined with the echo the doll dolphin but then sort of manipulated in some you know slow down chopping and or screwing you said Ben does February of sometimes just mean 90s and Ben locked eyes with you and then purple smoke started leaking out of his ear stud

while midi music started playing air roar Park says the theme of the film is very simple While MIDI music started playing. Error. Park says, the theme of the film is very simple. It's about how no one can take responsibility for your life except yourself. Apparently he gave a three-hour lecture to the production staff who were all dubious

about what kind of a theme that was. But he definitely had this in his head. Because all three of them are people who are just like, I've sort of been fucked by the world. Right. All three of them are people who are angry in a general sense or self-hating, but also like furious about their circumstances. And they're a little psycho. They're all. They've all lost it.

They've all kind of snapped. And it's right. The whole crime spree is just them trying to like exact revenge on the world. Right. That they think is not fair to them. Yes. But it doesn't solve anything. It doesn't make anything better.

Yeah. And their issues are so different. Yes. That they're not. They don't really make sense as an ideological team if that makes sense I don't mind I think that's what I kind of like about it though that they're like incompatible well apparently this is your favorite film of all time

this is the number one best movie we've ever covered on the podcast I'll say this I've been making a list you're like wholly dismissive of this entire thing I think this is a stinker. I think this is a stinker.

It's got interesting moments and scenes. Can I ask you a follow-up? Yeah. You're checking it twice? I'm checking it twice. You're making a list. I'm trying to rank the park movies as I re-watch them. These are the only, no, I've seen every park film except for these two, which I've now

seen and deemed bad. And I'm a cyborg, but that's okay. Yeah, I can't believe you haven't seen that one. It's the namesake of our miniseries. You think you would have watched it in advance? Wait, let me check the poll. Pretty sure it's winning. Let me check the poll.

You didn't put your thumb on the scale. You're going to email Lynn right now? Yeah, you didn't get Twitter blue. No. Let's see the poll right now. This remains Sympathy for Mr. Podcast about four points ahead of Decision of Podcast. Our pod has pulled to 20%. Okay. No, I'm sympathy for Mr. Podcast about four points ahead of Decision of Podcast. Our pod is pulled to 20%.

Okay. No, I'm a sub. You know, I was in college when that movie came out. I don't know. It was harder to see things, maybe. I don't know. But anyway, I did put Trio above The Moon is the Sun's Dream on my current two-film list of park movies. You know, I'll add to it as I re-watch every film.

You know what I mean? So did get, it nudged ahead. Okay, okay. But I did not think it was very good. I just zoned out so quickly. And I don't think that is true of any of his other films that I've experienced. Usually he really grabs me. I zoned out immediately on the moon. I didn't like that one either.

This time I was going in and out. Because there's scenes that are compellingly strange. The first minutes of trio i was like he thinks this one's bad i don't know like this is all right and it's also just like it it is uh and then i just kind of lost it it like it looks good it moves well it's got some action yeah some action um there's a what was i gonna say this feels like the kind of movie that he could remake and be like you know what I now know how to tell this story and make it into a good film

kind of how people thought Cronenberg was going to remake crimes of the future and he was like nah I just like that title right it's like just a different movie but the other example I mean you were saying the housemaid was remade and things you know people just being like I didn't really quite remaking your movie is kind of a fun vibe. You're like early film.

I was trying to think of other examples and I kept on instead getting caught on the Cronenberg not doing that. I feel like it has happened. Hitchcock remade himself twice. Well, he remade A Man Who Knew Too Much.

Not little. Little. I do, but I think the original is... What are you squeaking over there? That's my chair. I do think the original is better. I think the remake is much worse. Oh, interesting.

But the remake is certainly much more dazzling and has major stars and is in color and all that. Isn't there another film of his own that he remade? Probably. I don't know. Okay. Look,'t know. Okay. Look, Trio, we can talk about it more if you want, but I will note that

it didn't do very well. And Park thought, is the whole industry in cahoots to ridicule me? Is everyone conspiring to ridicule me until I collapse from exhaustion? Yeah. And so he thinks, I'm going to walk away. This isn't going to work for me.

You're saying this movie, you just fucking check out on it. There are scenes that are incredibly bizarre. I mean, there's the scene where the violent guy in the trio comes back to the hotel room where they're hiding out at the apartment or whatever. And the depressed saxophonist is massaging the woman's breasts. And he thinks they're woman's breast. Yes. And he thinks they're having an affair. Yes. And he's instead trying to help her because the kid won't nurse.

Yes. That seems interesting. Yeah. Yeah. They're all just really depressed and doing this. I think you like it because they're all depressed. Yeah, I do. You know what? I kind of relate to this movie.

I might go out and do some crimes. No, no crimes It's against the law Who cares You're going to have to get an earring That's the first crime I'm going to commit Crime of fashion Yeah

Look I'm going to get a long chain coming off my ear As this film is failing Park feels like he's being tagged with, he's the cult movie guy. Sure. He's the B-movie guy. Mm-hmm.

As a critic, this guy was like a champion of kind of like pulpier, smaller movies. So he thinks that people are tagging his actual directorial efforts as similar. Like, oh, he makes like, you know, glossed up trash. Right. Because because like that's what he likes he likes to take that kind of a movie anti-intellectual right yeah so he's like fine i want to make a popular film that's much more like sort of professional right and so joint security area

which is his next film is like him being like i need to make a mainstream feeling movie yeah which is interesting because i wouldn't call that movie mainstream feeling movie. Yeah. Which is interesting because I wouldn't call that movie mainstream feeling. I've never seen it. I'm excited. It is really good. And it is like, it is certainly also a movie with like

a very direct concept. It's a mystery film. It's set in a really specific location. Sure. It is not like these movies at all. And it was a big ass hit. It was the biggest, I think it was the biggest Korean film ever made. Yeah.

So it is wild that he goes from you know, this poo poo platter. Right. To like one of the biggest films in his country's history. But that also, not that it was like made cynically, but that he was like fine, you want a movie that works? It is just funny to think about him going like

And then he was correct and he knew how to do it My mistake was not making a movie people want to see That is good So I guess I'll do that next time You know what fuck you guys I'm going to make a good one next time It's on site I feel like any other time someone tries to do that

You're like well if they knew how to make a good movie They would have made a good movie the first time A and B if you're that Like sort of Dogmatically aiming for success at all costs, that ends up feeling kind of cynical or hollow. And the fact that it worked is a little fascinating to me. But also, sometimes we've got to learn from our mistakes. Yeah.

M. Night Shyamalan style, of course. He also, another guy who made two movies that didn't really connect. And Sixth Sense was like, you know what, I'm going to make a movie that cannot not be a hit. 100%. He's like, let me think about what might really just sort of pop in a theater that's like very old-fashioned and straightforward. Again,

not that Sixth Sense or JSA are really that at all. They're very idiosyncratic movies, but they, whatever. Results spoke for themselves. In both cases, the guys were vindicated. Yeah, the only other thing here you already had mentioned, which is basically like,

he thinks he was, for both of these movies, really bad with the actors. Yeah. Very controlling. Treating them sort of like intellectual inferiors, he thinks. So he does think that's part of why these movies stahink. It's hitting me these both feel like memento confusing crime based memento is like so good that's the that but that's the that was the one thing sure but yeah no nolan starts off with following and then he does memento and those are both like you know

heavy handed crime movies yeah yeah but again good I mean way yes I mean memento is incredible but even following following is like pretty good like would you agree Griffin

you're looking at your phone I'm just I'm emailing Lynn to ask him to you are not the IMS don't waste that I actually we have a comfortable email discourse you're not doing that are you really

I don't know what I'm doing let me see I'm sending out a tweet you're sending out a tweet oh sure you're also going through my context list and trying to think what else I can get to boost this. Let me try and find box office games for these films. We're going to go... I guess we're going to... I can't summon the Korean box office.

Okay. I mean, right? I don't have that power. Do you not? I don't know. You tell me. I mean... God, how... I i mean that would be i i was

just gonna find the u.s box office from the times these movies were released okay but i don't i mean i can try to see if there's like korean box i was going back to like 1992 but i don't look david you do yeah yeah well the, well, the thing I'm... It might be fun. I hear what you're saying, but like they might... I might not even be able to... Well, for one, I can't find a chart

going that far back. I can find charts sort of going back to like, you know, the mid 2000s maybe. Got it. Like 2002 seems to be about as early. But even then I can only find like calendar yearly charts. I can't really find

weekly charts. Well for this week let's just do what you had planned initially and we'll figure it out. I had no plan whatsoever. Well. But I can find the fucking box office from 1992. Don't tell the series. I'm gonna do what I've always planned. This show has been airtight until this moment.

We've never made a mistake. Let's just check the list that we prepared ahead of time and let me just cross. Intentionality and perfect execution. Our entire smoke screen will collapse if you admit that you did not have a plan going into this episode.

Where is the fucking box office from the TV? Here we go. Alright. So this film came out in some sense. Very small. February 29th 1992 in Korea. Okay. Oh, weird. We've done

this box office game. Really? Yeah. It's Memoirs of an Invisible Man's release date Oh weird okay So number one SNL comedy And it's not memoirs No that's number two What year is it again? 1992

It's Wayne's World Wayne's World exactly Number three famed bomb starring action star Hudson Hawk no good guess Stallone one of his three bombs there's three bombs in a row

this is the most notorious it's not Judge Dredd no which I just did on Jamel Bowie's podcast Unclear and Present Danger oh that's a clever pick for them to sure yeah no no comedy terrible unclear and present. Oh, that's a clever pick for them to, sure. Yeah. No, no, come on. Comedy.

Terrible. Oh, Oscar? No. My mom will shoot. There you go. Okay. You like that movie? I think I did. Okay. Number four. Didn't stick with me. Classic, quote unquote, chick flick. You know the story about that movie that like, Schwarzenegger and Stallone were caught up in such a competition that Schwarzenegger floated out that he up in such a competition that schwarzenegger

floated out that he was attached to this movie so that stallone out of spite would try to get it and then stallone signed on short there was like you fucking moron i never would have done that that script is dog shit he basically pranked him into making that movie it was like i hear schwarzenegger is gonna pay like $15 million for the right. Exactly. Yes, he does. He did. Schwarzenegger did confirm that.

Stop my mom will shoot. Number four. Come on. Classic chick flick. Classic chick flick. Thelma and Louise. Still Magnolia's fried green tomatoes. There you go.

Okay. Tomatoes. Number five. One day we'll cover it on this podcast. One day. Yes. Number five one day we'll cover it on this podcast One day Yes A film from a very Big director of the moment but sort of one of his Forgotten films an adventure drama

Set In Forests Mosquito Coast No That's a good movie though It's sort of a medical drama Medicine man You were talking to Tina the other day that we gotta good movie though it's sort of a medical medicine man we were talking McTiernan the other day that we gotta just fucking do it

we gotta just buck up and do McTiernan then we can do the predators or something I don't know that was Ben's conversation was how do we start talking predators on this show yeah we got it you wanna talk predators yeah absolutely one way or another we gotta do it start talking predators on this show uh yeah we got it yeah you want to talk predators yeah

that's slimy yeah one way or another we gotta do it we gotta do it gotta do it all right now trio came out in May 1997. May 24th, 1997. Okay. I don't have the South Korean box office for you. Okay. I'm sorry. Maybe as we move through.

Apology accepted. Yeah. You know, as we like move on. Yeah. Right? We can, I could tell you maybe like, we could talk about the top films of Korea that year. Uh-huh.

You know what I mean? Maybe we should have JJ start digging in. I'll ask him if he can find any box office receipts, I guess. Yes. That's a notion. Just receipts of tickets people bought at that time? Receipts of tickets. Yeah.

Just literal receipts. We're going to see if JJ can track down like cell phone photographs of dirty 25-year-old paper receipts of tickets. Yeah, just literal receipts. We're going to see if we can track down cell phone photographs of dirty 25-year-old paper receipts. So essentially, this film is coming out on America's Memorial Day weekend of 1997. Okay.

And this is also a box office game we have done, although long, long ago, because it is the Lost World Jurassic Park. Biggest opening weekend of all time. $90 million at that time. Number two, something has survived. Something has survived. And you know what the answer is?

Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs. Bum, bum, bum, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. This is such a good episode. Bum, bum, bum, bum. David is doing a stretch episode. David is doing stretch it out hand motion. I'm just like, I really want to call

our own shop, but I'm just sitting back and watching this episode coming together in real time. It's crazy to be part of something you know is going to go down in history. Look, we have a bunch of good guests coming up for all the other episodes. This is going to be a great miniseries. It's going to be a fun mini-series a lot of great movies to cover all these movies feeling pre-defeated pretty pretty silly yeah no not defeated just like you know what do we get

where are we supposed to but it makes it more astonishing that out of that we created the best episode we've ever done yeah well you know it's that egg salad sandwich i ate no okay lost world okay number two number two dark comedy that I am a huge fan of. Addicted to Love. Addicted to Love. Bam. All right. Number three.

Science fiction film that I am a huge fan of. Well, it's not Lost in Space. No. No. 97. May. Fuck. It's not Event Horizon?

No. Good movie, though. Yeah. It's a pretty big hit okay but not massive but very big worldwide. Fuck. Uh, uh, fifth element,

the fifth element. There we go. Number four comedy. Yes. Spoof. Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

it's not a way. No, uh, it's not a, a Zucker No Austin Powers International Man of Mystery

Number five A wonderful Pulpy thriller That I think we both really like For grown ups Good movie Just a good adult movie 1997 for grown-ups. Good movie. For grown-ups?

Just a good adult movie. 1997? Yes. What studio? The studio is Paramount Pictures. It's a Paramount Picture. It's a pulpy, adult,

grown-up thriller. Tell me about the star of the picture. The star of this film is a great movie star. We've covered many of his films because he's a favorite of John Carpenter's. Okay, so it's Breakdown? The film is Breakdown. I wish I had the courage.

It was the first thing that came to mind. I know. From the director, the future director of Terminator 3. And U571. Yes. Jonathan Mostow's Breakdown, which is just a fucking great movie

It's a corker If you ever want to check out Just a fun movie We've also got this week We've got Father's Day Funny Liar Liar He can't lie

Volcano What's the tagline my favorite tagline ever fuck uh things heat up the coast is toast oh right i mean was anything ever better than that did we ever have it better than the coast is toast the coast is toast david is holding up his computer and shaking it the poster poster was just 90% tagline. The coast is toast. They saw that. They were like, I don't even know if the movie should be called Volcano anymore.

I think it should be called this. Am I wrong? It's a terrible movie. Was Dante's Peak Things Heat Up? Dante's Peak, which in my opinion is a better film. I just remember some like disaster movie that era having things heat up like may 1997 yeah sure sure things heat up and then the date uh let's see dante's peak exploding soon they didn't do a great job there i guess it costa it costa toast uh the

movie aka volcano that was a trailer that terrified me when I played well it's a little scary because like there was the whole idea of like as we all know Los Angeles is not on an active volcano except it turns out it is I was like this whole fucking time I just the whole 90s thing where they're like weird stuff's happening in

LA and there's the one guy who's like look I know no one's ever wanted to listen to me but my research indicates there's the one guy who's like look I know no one's ever wanted to listen to me but my research indicates there's actually a volcano and Tommy Lee Jones is going like what are you saying son what are you talking about why can't I play that guy why can't I do that three times a year

not as many of those movies anymore I mean Moonfall of course had Sam from Game of Thrones going like well my research indicates the moon is a spaceship right that was a thing. You know what? I was asked to audition for that one and I didn't. But I think he also wanted that fucking.

Sure. You've also got Night Falls on Manhattan. Mm-hmm. The, who's that? That's Sidney Lumet, right? Yeah. Late Lumet. Late Lumet.

With, what was it, Garcia? Yeah. It's one of those things where he would just be like, here you go With, what was it, Garcia? Yeah. It's one of those things where he would just be like, here you go. And everyone was like, no. You know, like, you know, in the 90s. What about this? No, no, no. Andy Garcia.

Don't know who that is. Melanie Griffith undercover with a sedum. No, thank you. That one's weird. Yeah. Number 10. I had completely memory hold the fact that Sidney Lumet was married to Gloria Vanderbilt. Gloria Vanderbilt? Yes.ilt. Gloria Vanderbilt?

Yes. Who's Gloria Vanderbilt? Of the Vanderbilts, Anderson Cooper's mother. Oh. Cool. Sidney Lumet was married to her. He was. Only, yeah, enough for, well, seven years.

Yeah. Bizarre. So that's the box office from America When this movie sort of came out in Korea Which I think it barely did It made a trio of dollars Yeah exactly So that's the end of that episode

But you know what My apologies to the sponsors of this week's episode Which we'll do those ads later Make good coming up Hey the ad reads this week's episode. We'll do those ads later. Make good, coming up. You're right. Hey, the ad reads were good. The episode just sucked. You sure that was blank check?

Not dog shit podcast? Cracked movie club? Oh. Wow! Remember when we were so mad at them for some reason? Yeah. Yeah. But tune in next week for joint security area

the sixth sense to Parks wide awake and praying with anger first real film this episode has been such a hit we should have mentioned Trio is impossible to watch Moon is the Sun's Dream That's on YouTube trio.

Someone like just emailed the bank, the blank check account with like, Hey, here's actually a legible subtitled version of this movie. This movie is not available. Thank you to Jonah for doing that. Yeah. I will not say his last name because you have engaged in piracy.

There are, there are very, very bad. I think like torrents or rips out there but like they're the subtitles either don't exist or they're really terrible what is so wild though is uh this not only a subtitle but like incredibly fucking high quality right and there are a bunch of titles at the beginning this is a digital restoration done in 4k by the korean film archive in 2019 using the original negative so there has been this really nice

restoration done of this movie that they don't let anyone see. Anyway. Apologies for that as well. Ben, what were you going to say? I made a note at the beginning of the episode we promised to discuss my nicknames but I feel like this has again

been such a banger. What's the run time here? Because we're done. Let's say, I don't know, just about a minute, an hour 40. We're doing the fucking nickname. This is a long episode.

Shortest episode we've done. All right, miniseries nickname. So we know here, I'll just read them out quickly. This is just the miniseries specific thing. It's not his regular. Bruce Ben Kenobi, Kylo Ben. Oh, we're doing it all the way from there.

Listen! Ben Knight Shyamalan, Ben Sape, Sape anything, Ailey Benz with a dollar sign, Warhawes, Purdue Urbane, Ben 19, The Fennel Maker, Robo Hawes, Ben Glitch, Mr. Incredible, Eat Drink Ben Hossley, The Hossle Day, Beetle Leaf Juice, Public Benemies,

Hossica, The Ditch of the Jersey, Stop Making Bens, Hawes Picking the City, Ben Hossley Went Sally. the jersey stop making Ben's Haas pig in the city Ben Hosley went Sally oh it's pretty funny really the secret life of Ben's that one's a real whiff the great mouse fart detective pretty funny good Haas break kid Ben's

in the Haas yeah that's what we settled on for Ben's with a Z he used to call himself Ben with a Z Ben's skate from new Haas really alright Bronco Hosley back in business Because Ben's with a Z. He used to call himself Ben with a Z. I know. Benscape from New Haas. Really? Alright, Bronco Hosley. Back in business. I think that was a Richard Lawson

suggestion. Haas the Great and Powerful. So we have a lot of nicknames to do. Okay. We really never did a Zemeckis name? So this is the thing. Apparently the list is... Oh, this is a disaster. We never did Zemeckis. Then we did the ones after Zemeckis. And then the run of Fosse, kubrick selick boyle oh fuck jesus okay so i'm gonna throw out a couple quickly okay pod mayor before cast mess yeah i think his name is bones audio daddy bone sound

daddy bone sound bone sound. I like that. Alright, great. That's what he gets for Zemeckis. Because they call Jack Skeleton Bone Daddy. I'm throwing the names on the magnet wall. And that's the business of course I've run. So your company's called Bone Sound because it's Bone Daddy. Done.

Jeremy Jambi. Done. Alright, so Bob Fosse. Well, I feel like there was an obvious one for this, wasn't there? Huh? Hmm. Hmm. Should we go back to 18 month old Reddit threads? Can we find that?

Probably. It's always what, what, what happened to the nicknames? You know, it's a lot of that. Yeah. Yeah. Joe Gideon. Joe Gideon? No, I'm just running through elements of these movies. All that Haas.

Two Zs. All that Haas. Great. Clack. All right. Spielberg. Not Spielberg. Zemeckis. No Spielberg, Zemeckis. No, we did Zemeckis.

I mean, Kubrick. Sorry, Jesus. We didn't do Zemeckis. We did. We clacked that one. Wait, what happened? No, we clacked Selick. Oh, that was Selick.

Oh, God. I wasn't going in order. I was going in order of ideas coming to me. All right. Okay, so Kubrick, we've got Kubrick, we've got Zemeckis, we've got Boyle. Okay, now here's another. I know we're going hard on the Haases right now.

Sure. But Haas 9000. Yeah, great. Clack. Clack. Let's make that one HOS just for variety. Because all that Haas is 2 Zs. Thank God we did that. Okay. Haas 9000 train podcasting

sunshine millions who wants to be a Ben Ben life Ben ordinary no this doesn't make any sense doesn't make any sense at all god it would be perfect

If only it made any sense I'm gonna put a thousand podcasts in your pocket Steve Haas How about The Ben Like the beach No that's bad What about this What about this

What about the bench What That's bad too It's like Ben and Beach What about this? What about this? What about this? What about this? What about the bench? What? That's bad, too. It's like Ben and Pete. Bad. Fuck. I feel like people used to suggest names to me. I know.

That's what I'm saying. I know. And they always come up and I feel like I read them on Reddit and I can't. I responded to things when they happened. We've definitely pinned ideas in the past. Okay. Well, I have a thread from eight days ago that says Ben's Keaton nicknames.

Okay. This is a nightmare. Keaton nickname ideas. Go. Okay. Steamboat Benny. The Great Stoned Face. Scumbum Jr. Sherlock Hosley Jr. I like Scumbum Jr.

Scumbum Jr. Clack. Clack. Clack it, baby. Clack it. Okay. So now we have Zemeckis. And Boyle.

And Boyle. Ah, fuck. Boyle's the one I think is going to kill us here. Boyle is tough. Well, it's not tough. We could just do the work. We could just do the work. Okay. Who framed Ben Hosley? Okay, wait.

I got a thread for Boyle nickname. Here we go. B2BenSpotting. Okay, here we go. B2 Ben Spotting. Porch Dog Millionaire. Sure. It's better than The Ben, so I can't really complain. B2 Ben Spotting is kind of fun. Go on.

The Beneral, in honor of Rosaria Dawson's shaved vagina. But that also works for fucking Keaton. Now, what if we used it for both? Spread it across. How quickly can we get a magnet maiden duplicate? We have scum bum dog millionaire. Benster day.

What? You can just put your name in anything. I think the Ben roll on two is really funny. Shallow ditch. Clickety clack. Shallow ditch two is really funny. Shallow Ditch. Clickety Clack. Shallow Ditch is kind of funny. Ben Shine. Oh, wow.

Yeah. What about Scumbum Jr., though? Are we going to give up on Scumbum Jr. that fast? Yeah. Really? Yeah. 120 Haas. No.

No, that, I mean. Find me some Zemeckis thing names. All right. The Ben-er-all. Ben Manson, the Haas. Who bend Roger Hosley. B2 Ben spotting is kind of funny. I kind of like it

Alright we'll do that The Ben role is just kind of We're going to put that in as like an alt That's kind of like a floating name Ben to the Hosley part 3 I'm sorry what? Ben to the Hosley part 3 I heard the words you said

Ben to the Hosley Part 3 Alright did we do it? Binocchio Great oh clack Wrap it up Alright Best episode ever

I mean it sucks that We're gonna spend the rest of the year Living in the shadow of this episode Pace magazine should just go to print now. Because you fucking... Absolutely. Go to print. Spool up the press.

Not since Under Siege 2. And listen, if you came up with a better nickname than the ones that we came up with, too bad. Here's the thing. I'll say this. The tiles have been clacked onto the board, right? We heard the clack. We've heard the clacking

and it would be tough. We have to grow out our nails in order to get underneath there to be able to peel them off. Unfortunately, we all clipped recently. I bite my nails. We can't. There's no give, right? Yeah. When this episode comes out, feel free to make one

general thread with suggestions for the six miniseries we just ran through. Yeah, great. But put them all in one place. Yeah, and we'll look at it at some point. Wow, you bumped I'm a pod 4%.

And Lynn hasn't even weighed in yet. Still firmly in third place. And Lynn's going to correct this. Let's keep the poll open for five days. David. Let's just run through the ones we just committed to. Absolutely not.

Already closed the file. Bonestown Daddy. Haas 9000. All That Haas. Two Z's. Scumbub Jr. in yeah yeah all that haas yeah two z's uh-huh uh scumbum jr yeah uh a bent to the part three yeah and b2b spotting is that what we're saying yeah okay sounds good and the benarol is just kind of out there he's just out there yeah that might that might be more general nickname now right you might add to the long list.

The Beneral should be one of your titles. And I say end it. Great. Done. Good night. David. Yes. Next week. Next week, Joint Security Area. Look forward to that. And as always, I'll now hand to Griffin.

Oh, and as always, thank you so much for handing to me. And I'll just say, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty, Barty, Barty, for our social media and for running the world's most fair and even poll that unfortunately is going to be disrupted radically

once I get Lin-Manuel Miranda to person. He's going to go on live television and endorse my pick. He owes me one. Thank you to AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing, Leigh Montgomery and The Great American All for our theme song. David is on wrapping

a sandwich? Oh, baby. Thank you to JJ Birch for our research. JJ, start looking up those Korean box office games. Tune in next week for JSA as we said. Go to BlankCheckPod.com

for links to some real nerdy shit such as our Patreon Blank Check special features where we do commentaries on film series, finishing up the apes now, getting started on the oceans movies. We're going to swim across a couple oceans with

boys. And as always, there's the free Patreon membership now you can sign up for. Every 10 days, we unlock an episode from three years ago on the Patreon. And we're just now getting started with

our Mission Impossible commentary series. Mission Impossible. Sandgun! Just in time if you want to re-watch them before Dead Reckoning Part 1 comes out, you can revisit those with

us. And, as always, Producer Ben, aka Perdue or Ben, aka the Ben Ducer, aka the poet, aka the meat lover, as always. A.K.A. the fuck master. A.K.A. dirt bike Benny. A.K.A. white hot Benny. A.K.A. soaking wet Benny. A.K.A. the Haas. A.K.A. Mr. Positive. A.K.A. Mr. Positive. A.K.A. close personal friend of Dan Lewis who's looking good. Oh my God.

That look crushes. A.K.A. the voice of reason. Jordan Hoffman had a really funny joke which is that he's in character to do a biopic as Jay Mask Maskis from Dinosaur Junior. Really, really good joke. A.K.A. the Commish. A.K.A. Wishful Ben. A.K.A. Hosleywood. A.K.A. the Futzer. A.K.A. Producer N. A.K.A. the Bass Stealer. A.K.A. the Mind Warrior. A.K.A.

the Class Act. A.K.A. the Batgirl. And the Bad Boy. Two point. And Mr. Earring. Mr. Two point. And Mr. Earring. Mr. Earring. Mr. Earring.

Lord Studlington. This is what Nicknaps from other podcasts, Bad Boy Bully Ben from the Flophouse Short Circuit 2 episode, after he described all scientists as lame nerds who do homework. This is something you do.

Okay, bye. All right. Let's look through. Joint security podcast. Okay. Sympathy for Mr. Podcast or some version of that, which is kind of fun. Yeah.

And obviously there's two movies that basically fits. Yeah. I'm a podcast, but that's okay. I mean, that's also okay. It's a very funny title. It is one of his less well-known movies, but still. Yeah. And the decision to podcast is kind of a fastball

straight down the middle. Nothing wrong with that. I don't think anything else really fits. Hmm. You can't really squeeze anything into the word sympathy. No. You can't do like pod- sympathy. No. I don't think right.

But I do think sympathy for Mr. Podcast is funny. I do too. I'm a podcast but that's okay. It's it's funny decision to podcast is funny all three are funny should we do a poll I kind of should I I'm gonna text Marie okay but maybe let's start recording so we can get

this on mic let's save nothing for not on mic I was recording that the whole you were recording holy shit wait what wait a second sneaky but that's that's end of episode content because that's not how we start the podcast, Ben. That's fine. I just, you know.

I figured, why not? Why not start rolling? Okay, ready?