Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Walk with J.D. Amato

Episode Date: December 27, 2020

In 1974 Philippe Petit performed his infamous walk between the Twin Towers. Director Robert Zemeckis many years later after discovering the story in a children's novel would create a 3D film based on this event. But most importantly in 2018, J.D. Amato appeared on Blank Check to discuss the motion picture technology of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. Continuing in that tradition, J.D. returns for the third annual Talking the Walk. But this time instead of high frame rate, J.D. explores The Walk's cutting edge use of visual effects. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch including this year’s commemorative Talking the Walk design @ shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com Music selection: "Night Break" by Kevin MacLeod. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Why? That is the question people ask me most. Pourquoi? Why? For what? Why do you walk on the wire? Why do you tempt fate? Why do you risk death? But I don't think of it this way. I never

even say this word. Death. L'amour. Yes, okay, I said it once, or maybe three times, just now, but watch. I will not say it again. i use the opposite word podcast for me to walk on the wire this is podcast say la podcast so picture me it's 1974 new york city and i'm in love with two buildings, two towers. We should have stopped it. That's why we did it. Or as everyone in the world will call them, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. They call to me. These towers, they stir something inside of me, and they inspire me a dream. My dream is to hang a high wire between these Twin Towers and walk on it.

Of course, this is impossible, not to mention illegal. So why attempt the impossible? Why follow your dream? But I cannot answer this question. Why? Not with words, but I can show you how it happened. And so we must go back in time across the ocean because my love affair with these beautiful towers

did not begin in New York. No, no, no, no. In case you couldn't tell, I'm not from here. No, my story begins in another one of the world's most beautiful cities. I guess I should have told you guys

Griffin planned to just read the whole script while we did the episode. Say podcast. Philippe, are you okay with that? Yeah that yeah i mean i've got the script up right now if you want to just do it philip i have one question for you you're talking about dreams you know you're dreaming of uh your your great dream how do you know that you're in a dream like how do you distinguish between being in a dream and being in the real world like do you have anything that might help you with that

you know like any kind of object or implement i'm seeing that you're you're looking something up right now and i'm just gonna kind of keep talking until you've uh gotten whatever it is you're looking for uh some type of mess it's like a thing that's tangible. You can touch. Qu'est-ce que c'est? A totem? A small object. Potentially heavy. Something you can have on you at all time.

It has to be more unique than that. Like this is a loaded die. But you can't touch it. Exterior. Paris. Street. Day. Close on a rain puddle. JD! JD, that was a great bit by me.

I set him up for his great bit. You're messing with this great bit. This is so good. It's over now. You see, JD, you see, only I know the balance and weight of this particular loaded die. That way, when you look at your totem,

you know beyond a doubt you are not in someone else's dream. Thank you. Thank you. Griffin can do a great Joseph Gordon-Levitt talking about the die in the Inception. I just wanted to call it out. Sorry.

I didn't know one of Griffin's impressions in his back pocket was a Joseph Gordon-Levitt inception. I apologize for stepping in in this podcast. It's my number one. It's my number one back pocket. All I have to say is, I mean, you're clear. I don't know.

I mean, even though you invented the slogan, you may not be a committed blankie. I mean, I just don't know what to say. You might not love movies as much as we thought you did. Right. You might not want to blanket or thank it. It's just difficult difficult to know all i have to say situation i mean sploosh a single bicycle wheel splashes through the puddle the camera rises to five petite 20-ish wearing a ratty black clothes rides a unicycle through the narrow streets just imagine robertveck is sitting down to a typewriter and being like, all right, sploosh.

Or he can't, he can't find the word. So he's doing that thing where he's like Googling. He's like, what's the word for water? Splanch, splinch, splinch.

Oh, sploosh. Babe, what's the, what's the word you said the other night? What's the, what's the word? Sploosh. Yes. Sploosh. Babe, what's the word you said the other night? What's the word? Sploosh? Yeah, sploosh.

Thank you. See, for me, I think he found sploosh immediately, and then he called out for his wife, and he went, honey? And she went, yeah, and he leaned back, and he went, I have a good feeling about this one. This one's definitely going to make more than one black hat. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it.

We'll talk about it. Look, I mean, let's just say it. This is the time. This is the place to talk the walk. It happens only once a year. Is that a rule? It can only be once a year? We can't double talk a walk?

No, a walk can only be talked once a year. Okay. And I think where it lands within the year is fungible, though it seems to have been in a similar corridor the last couple of years. It's happened in the last four months. Usually, as the leaves are turning, that tends to be when we talk the walk.

An autumnal walk. But this is a winter walk. This is the last episode of 2020 on main feed or on Patreon. And this is the one week that we usually don't release an episode. We're usually dark the week between Christmas and New Year's. But there were some schedule shifts and we looked at it and we said the only way the walk can be talked in 2020 is if we slip it in at this last second. And that was the priority. That was the number one priority.

It was. I would also point out, I mean, people are home. I don't know. Like, you know, it's a good gear to maybe just not take the week, give people something at the end of the year. Sorry, JD, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, I think this is also the longest gap between my appearance on Blank Check ever.

Well, are you including the patreon episodes or are you talking main feed only i think regardless no that's very interesting i'm very happy to announce that by google when i google your name uh the blank check wiki is the third hit hell yeah it. That's pretty good. And so the last time you were with us, according to the Blank Check Wiki, was November 11th, 2019. Wow. Right.

For the last Walk Talk. Yeah, that's more than a year. More than a year. Even when you go by when we're recording this, it's more than a year. Yeah, let alone, yeah. Wow. It's been a long halft this, it's more than a year. Yeah, let alone, yeah. Wow. It's been a long halftime, one might say.

All right, so let's catch up. December 2019. Not bad. I'll say that month I think was okay, right, for me? Let me look at my calendar, but I feel like there was no big thing going on. I don't know. Looks like I saw to kill a mockingbird

on broadway so that's fun right yeah ed harris yeah um i actually have yeah there was yeah holiday parties the rise of skywalker came out sure that was that was a movie yeah i saw i think we should turn this into sort of, because this is the last episode of a year, this should turn into like a year end retrospective where we just each take turns going through our calendars and being like, oh, yeah, I had that meeting. Yeah, that was a good meeting.

I do feel like my calendar is going to get a little less thrilling at some point. I'm not sure exactly when. The difficulty for me might be differentiating between the separate months of this last year at a some point. I'm not sure exactly when. The difficulty for me might be differentiating between the separate months of this last year at a certain point. But anyway, JD,

sorry, I interrupted you. I don't know what I was saying. You said it's been a while since you've been on the show. And I'm here and I'm happy to be back. Hell yeah. I haven't seen David or Ben in person. I had a little social distance street hang or two with our friend griffin one i think one you just one yeah just one

you biked into the city and gave me a delayed birthday present which yeah i know right i know what you want to say it or you want to say it you can say it it. I forgot to wear it, but you gave me like an employee uniform from Chuck E. Cheese. A shirt and a visor and a wallet. Were there two different shirts? I think it was quite a few items. Yeah, it was two different eras of the official uniform of Chuck E. Cheese.

I think 180s, 190s. Or 90s or 2000s. Yeah. There's a section on the Wikipedia for episode versus movie length, uh, where they've calculated the ratios. And My Neighbor Tortoro is fourth in that. The episode is one hour and five minutes longer than the movie itself.

Wow. Anyway, sorry, carry on. Wow. Well, this is a hefty movie. It's not that long, but that means we're gonna

have to just go we're just gonna have to go really long which is you know fine sure it's very hefty yes yes disgustingly i mean let's let's say exactly what's happening here we've already announced that we're talking the walk 2020 but this of, of course, is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Real slow on the cue there. This is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who had massive success early on in their career are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear.

And sometimes they walk baby. And this is a miniseries on the films of Robert Zemeckis, Bobby Z. We're talking The Walk with jd amato so this started with obviously 2018 we did an episode on billy lynn's halftime walk that came on that was jd's five-timer club episode actually right that was you you get in the robe and uh and and I feel like the bit sort of organically generated of what if we try

to make this feel like it's an event like you know and every year we have to do this. So then there was that question of

do we every year do a new episode on Billy Lynn's halftime walk? Do we find another thing to do? And then naturally last year

Gemini Man was coming out it felt like a time to revisit some of the high frame rate 3D talks we had had that episode so we took a walk a farewell to frames and a great episode a great episode but it was it was an odd sort of like off format

we were kind of what's the third walk going to be how do we continue this is it only going to be about Ang Lee and high frame rate? Because it feels like those two things aren't going to keep being so evergreen for this podcast. And then Robert Zemeckis wins March Madness, and it's served up on a platter there. Here you go, an episode on a movie called The Walk. And a movie which itself uses a lot of wild technological uh uh sort of toys and just to give some context

to if to new listeners is that you know i work in film and television myself and i have a particular affinity for the process of making films and all the work and thought and beauty and consideration that goes into the technical prowess and the craft prowess that makes films. And so one of the things I like doing is coming on Dear Old Blank Check and really appreciating the work that goes into making movies. And that started with, you know, a bunch of movies. But Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was sort of the thing that launched all this. And I will say my experience with The Walk was it was not a movie that was really on my radar. Remember when it came out?

It's not a movie that really grabbed me back when it came out. And when you guys said, oh, this will have to be The Walk this year, I was sort of like, am I just doing this episode because it has the word The Walk in it? Correct. I would say that's 90%. am I just doing this episode because it has the word The Walk in it? Correct. I would say that's 90%. I would say this is a bit of a JD, but anyway, look. But, but, but, but. Not a movie you had seen, not a movie you had any affinity for. Right, yeah, this is not a movie of passion for, per se, yes.

But then as I started unfolding the leaves, and I re-watched The Walk, and I realized. You had seen it. I had seen it, and I rewatched The Walk and I realized. You had seen it. I had seen it, but I didn't really remember it. It was one of those movies that I just, it didn't grab me immediately when I saw it. I think because it was, there's a lot of stuff going in my life at the time. But now when I rewatched it and then I started folding back how they made it and what went into it. Suddenly I realized,

and this is my thesis for this episode. I think The Walk is one of the most overachieving films when it comes to visual effects that perhaps has been made. And I think the work and process that went into The Walk is absolutely amazing and astounding. And people do not recognize it because i think it's attached to a film that for whatever reason didn't grab the zeitgeist at the time but i think film fans if you're a true film fan i think it is worth going back listening to this episode where we're going to dive into what makes this movie so special from a visual effects standpoint and appreciating what this film did, which is actually phenomenal, impressive, amazing, and next level in ways that I didn't even realize until I started doing my research for this episode.

Wow. I mean, you texted me, I feel like, a couple weeks ago and said, I think I finally figured out what my take is. I think I finally figured out the shape of the episode. And then for the last couple of days, you have been texting David and I and saying out the shape of the episode. And then for the last couple of days, you have been texting David and I and saying, you guys aren't ready. Yeah, you would be like,

we're going to talk the walk. And I was like, yeah, good. I'm glad. We confirmed a time. This is exciting. I'm into it. And you're like, no, you don't understand. It's one of those where I'm like, yes, I don't understand. There's no conflict here. I agree that I don't understand. There's no conflict here.

I agree that I don't understand. Not even attempting to understand. Hold the kickback. Okay, wait. Wait, JD's holding something up. JD's got a bell in his hand. Go. The first word is simple.

It's barely a clue. It's the thing we start doing at just about two. The name of a render that blazed this film trail betrays the friend's promise that makes them pro-bail. JD's ringing what I would call a Christmas bell. Whistling. Spoke in a riddle and whistled.

Okay. I wish I had written that down, because I'm already trying to retain the specific language. Well, the listeners at home, they can stop and rewind. Yes, exactly. Anyways, I don't really know what you guys are talking about. But the special effects in this film are some of the most beautiful visual effects

and what it took for them to make them. And I don't think people realize and watch this movie how much of the movie is visual effects versus live action assets and i feel like this is perhaps the high watermark of modern zemeckis in his what i feel like is a thankless and brave effort where he took his like you know machete and went into the jungles of the uncanny valley and was like i'm gonna go in here and i'm gonna climb my way out and i feel like the walk from a technological visual effects standpoint is the first film where he emerges from the uncanny valley triumphant and says look at what we can do with visual effects. And I can get into more of it, but I just want to set the table that the visual effects in this film are stunning.

They are beautiful. It is, they go beyond the call in every single capacity. And I can't wait to get into it with you guys. I will say um i don't think you're the only person there's a very small but committed fan base for this film would you agree with me griffin like it's not big at all but i remember when it came out there were a few critics who were like i think that movie is quietly incredible you know the the general take was obviously well you know it has this very dazzling sequence but it's you know very padded and why did he make it and what's this accent you know like there were all the critiques were there but there was there was people who were kind of whatever it worked for it transfixed them the visual effects obviously were a big part of that

look there there are dyed in the wool zemeck Otoris, and I feel like especially they've come around in the last five or six years who really try to investigate the later work and find redeeming qualities in them. There was certainly that contingent with this movie. What I was surprised by is I was looking at the Wikipedia, and this movie was 83% on Rotten Tomatoes. It actually generally got positive reviews, which I remember it being kind of negatively received, but I think there was just very little actual excitement for it outside of major outlets. I think the reviews, though,

and there were some that were like rave levels, but there were a lot that were just like, look, the you know the main sequence itself is so dazzling that i can't you know exactly like you know like that sort of edged fresh if you're gonna go rotten tomatoes just because of the highs my with all the caveats my walk away from the movie was very similar to what a lot of the reviews seem to say which is just like i i don't know if this thing works, but like, inarguably the 20 minutes

where he's walking, especially if you see it in IMAX 3D, are unbelievable, and they kind of single-handedly justify the movie existing. Now, I remember, from my first time seeing it in theaters, I just want to say, being like, really turned off by the rest of the movie until it got to the walk.

And being like, that's like stinky poo-poo until the movie until it got to the walk. That's like stinky poo-poo until the last, that 20-minute stretch. Did you turn to anyone and maybe hold your nose and go like, during the movie? I saw the movie by myself. I did turn to many people and tried

to get them to lock eyes with me so I could do the stinky poo-poo. What I'm doing right now is i'm imagining um we're hearing the audio of what griffin just said and then suddenly it becomes a little distant and we see that it's playing off of a laptop in robert zemeckis's office and griffin's sitting in a chair across from him in an interview trying to get a role in the next zemeckis film. He's like, he's queued up several exhibits, and this is like exhibit, you know, queue.

He's like, we're not done, by the way. There's a few more episodes. We haven't even gotten to Morrowind yet. I already tried and failed. I have nothing to lose anymore. Oh, my gosh. But I'll say this. In re-watching it, I was a little less harsh on it in that I went, I don't think this is good rather than I think this is horrible. I was sort of a little more complacent with it outside of maybe the first 30 minutes, which are the hardest to swallow.

And I watched it at home, but I watched it it on 3d tv 3d blu-ray so i still got the sequence in that sort of glory and i do think that's still pretty stunning it's and a bizarre here's the here's the thing that i think is interesting is um you guys talk a lot about movies that shouldn't or movies that don't exist right movies, and that's essentially usually what that actually amounts to is it's movies that come and go and no one that really worked on them was really passionate about them. And so there's no lasting embers of passion that anyone can read. It was just sort of like a marketing move.

And I think this feels like a movie that you would think would be a movie. Oh, it's a movie that, you know, is sort of telling the story of this thing that a documentary came out about before. And, you know, da-da-da. And you might think that's a movie that shouldn't exist.

But I think what was interesting is it's not a movie that didn't exist. There's some weird burning ember of it left over. And I was trying to figure out what it is, why there is this burning ember. And what it comes down to, I believe, is the visual effects. But to speak to your point,

and I think this is going to be a larger discussion about this movie, of what works and what doesn't work about it to some people, I think it is largely a successful movie, especially at what it's trying to achieve. The story that it's telling is a particularly... I think it's a tough story to tell because it's about someone who wants something and sort of gets it. And there are obstacles,

but they aren't obstacles that require too much of putting themselves on the line. They're physical obstacles. Yeah. And so I think that's hard to tell from a storytelling perspective. And I think this film

does about just as good a job as you can do at telling that story in a narrative way. And the big, I think the big critique that you get about it, and I can see Griffin

taking a big breath, is, you know, the film is really split up into two hour sections. The first hour, which is all set up, which is that's the hour that most people are like, my God, can we get through this?

And then that second hour, which is like... The heist. It's the heist. And it's so fun and it's so captivating. And I think there's this feeling that I've seen out seen out there that that i definitely felt myself when i was watching where i was sort of like can we get through this first hour so i can get to the fun stuff and the sort of question i want to pose is do you think you would have as much fun in that second hour without the first hour and i don't know the answer to it i'm posing that as a question it's not a i'm not directing you look here here's the thing i this is one of those movies for me where i watch it and i go like i wish this didn't have to be a two-hour movie

like i wish it should be a 75 minute movie yeah that's but that's even the thing of just you're like 20 years ago this could have been oh robert zemeckis is doing a $30 million IMAX movie that is 60 minutes long, you know? Right, right. And it was just designed to be sort of like an experiential thing. This movie is sort of torn between working as a, you know, narrative scripted retelling of this famous story, which has been famously retold

in an Oscar winning documentary that was very popular only a handful of years earlier and being this sort of technical showcase, this sort of visceral experiential thing. And I think it threads one needle far better than the other and for that

reason it ends up, J.D., like what you're saying, feeling kind of like two different movies smushed together. Well, sure. But I'm intrigued by J.D.'s, what J.D.'s putting forward, which is,

and I want to add onto this. I want to say a few things. One, I saw this film at the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX Theater for, it was the opening film of the New York Film Festival, if you remember.

Humblebrag. I have, I think think never been more terrified in my entire life to see a film and i'm saying that with no hyperbole whatsoever i was in a state of moderate panic sitting down what do you mean and like i am really afraid of heights and falling and airplane. You know, like, I feel like this is fairly well known, right? And we're going into a movie no one has seen. This is the press screening before the premiere. We're in the IMAX theater, which as you know, there's no escape.

Like, unless you snag those really nice seats right in the back, Griffin, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. You know, there's no aisle. you're stuck there right right i'm with my peers who i want to think of me as like uh you know a competent big old freddy cat exactly yeah like a grown person who behaves himself and everyone's like you know and this thing sort of seems stupid but like i hear you know it's it's the it's gonna be cool like the the walk itself will be cool you know there's there's like and it's just that thing where i'm like i don't know if i'm gonna be able to handle this like i i don't know what this is gonna look like and you're you're having the feeling that i had when griffin took me to 4DX. Sure.

Sure. You were just like, I don't want to be, I don't want to lose control in that way where I'm like surrendering myself to a chair that will punch and spray and so on. Yeah. So that influenced my viewing the first time because by the end I was just like, I did it. I got out of that thing alive. And I truly was freaking out during the big sequence, which I think is very good. Like the walk itself.

So that's one aspect of it. The second aspect that I just... The other thing I wanted to say before I lose it, and just to reinforce what JD is saying, I think this film has the worst opening of a film ever. A few movies have a start again.

Wait, how does this get more disastrous? Hold on one second, I'll tell you. No film starts lower. And maybe as JD is sort of possibly arguing, like, you know, maybe that's almost thematic. I think it starts over black and we hear a voice, a voice with a slight French accent, eager and full of energy, a voice full of passion, full of fury.

This is Philippe Petit. Why? That is the question people ask me most. Why? For what? When I rewatched this film last night with my wife, Forky, of course, she had the question that I think a lot of people had. I think this was a common question in 2015, which was, why does it? No, no, no. I mean, that's a question. But no, why does it start with him standing in the Statue of Liberty talking to the camera in a French accent?

It's just a simple question. Yeah, great question. There's no answer. I don't know who sat down. I imagine Robert Zemeckis, like maybe he pulls up a chair backwards, you know, just something fun before the pitch.

And he's like, here's how I imagine the first minute of the movie. Joseph Gordon-Levitt wearing some spooky contact lenses with a mushroom haircut balances on the torch of the Statue of Liberty and then talks right at the camera for 10 minutes in a god awful accent. Do you think that's like a good energizing start to a movie? P.S. The movie is over two hours long.

I'm just saying. I'm just saying. And maybe JD's right. Maybe there's a purpose to that. But it's that's that's that's a per there's a purpose to that but it's the worst opening to a movie ever yeah i mean look i'm i'm a zemeckis fan a zemeckis apologist even uh you know me too me too i think i would say me too despite the fact that generally got positive reviews and even a few raves it did not feel like there was a ton of excitement for this movie and there's that thing that inevitably happens with like a a movie

that is sort of designed to be an oscar play especially one with a big budget happening at a studio level not an indie film you know um this is uh wait what is this this is tri-star right sony right uh but one coming in with this much sort of uh uh expectation especially from a major director if it doesn't immediately become an oscar front runner it sort of is like deflated even if some people like it yes you don't want to get goldfinch right you know where it's like you don't want to get goldfinch the goldfinch and everyone's like the what finch and it's like i'm sorry don't worry about we got another oscar movie coming in three weeks just just forget we ever said anything about goldfinches okay we want to be a real studio over here right but i'm like a dude always rooting for zemeckis i went to see

this not imax but in 3d probably like a weekday matinee. And that opening hits, and I just remember immediately feeling like, fuck. Like, it's impossible for this movie to be a masterpiece from the first frame. They've already misstepped so wildly that the movie could recover, but it's never going to totally work. I wish he turned around and he said,

oh, I didn't see you there. It feels like that, and it feels like fucking Piero's Cargo in the bathtub saying, oh, ha, ha, and teaching you how to say my cheese smells bad or whatever, you know? Here's what I would say. I think you guys are right that it's a strange ending i think i think the thing that's hard about the first not ending the first hour is that it is um it's giving a lot of exposition that ultimately doesn't we don't necessarily need as an audience at least it doesn't feel like we need no the guy takes 10 minutes to say i wanted to walk between the twin towers without really telling me why he wanted to walk between the twin towers and the only real question is why the fuck did this guy want to do

this fucking thing that's so crazy and like i don't think that zemeckis can answer that i don't think that james marsh's film really you know like that is sort of the unknowable you know appeal of it right but at the same time the guy is talking for 10 minutes as Griffin did. Oh, the dream. I dream of this. It's like, okay, yeah, I get it. You wanted to do the thing that I already know you did. Well, here's what I, and this is wild speculation because I have read the script. And Zemeckis did a full previs animatic of this movie after he wrote it.

So the script and the previs that he pitched and the final movie are almost identical. There's very few differences as far as I could tell. Have you watched the entire previs? I have not watched the entire previs. Okay. But I know a lot about it. And my instinct as to why that opening might exist

may come from the fact that if you start on Sploosh, the tire goes through the puddle and we're in Paris and all that stuff. Oh, the accordion. Excuse me. Stick for it, please. Yes, yes. Zubi, zubi, zubi. It takes us about 45 minutes to ever get to New York.

And if you're seeing this movie, you're tuning in to see these beautiful images they've crafted of New York and the World Trade Centers and all this stuff. And so my instinct is that this is a way to prime the audience of, hey, this is what you're going to see later, this beautiful sort of stuff.

First, let us go back in time and tell the story, and then we'll come back to here now whether that's successful as an opening obviously you guys have strong opinions too and i i don't necessarily disagree i do i do think it's very goofy but it's it's hokey and that would be the nice way to put it i say but i think that leads to another discussion that I want to have, which is, you know, Zemeckis lets a lot of things be very broad. And when I think about Zemeckis' career, he is a director that I am so aware of, but if you had to have me force me to explain what it is he was trying to

say in his films, I don't know if I could necessarily come up with a consistent through line as to what he's trying to say in the same way that you can with a lot of other directors. And that's not necessarily a criticism. That actually might be a strength because it means that he's not just saying

the same thing over and over again. But I think one of the things that does unite all of them is that he lets things go pretty big. And I know what we can sort of get into the plot of the movie in a little bit. But for example, there's the,

like the stoner character that has like a freak out a certain point. And it's like a very big performance that feels out of back to the future or something where it's like, Oh, this is a little more of a cartoon than it is real. And I think sometimes that can be a thing that makes the, the, the Zemeckis triangle hard to you know piece the pieces together on I mean there's I I want to just dive in the deep end

on this because I I feel like I can't talk about this movie without talking about this aspect yeah I I think a lot of the failings of this movie come from the inability to capture uh, uh, Philip Petit in a way that feels like a recognizable human being. Sure. Certainly. And a person who people would want to follow,

which is crucial. Right. And if, if I can just follow this for a little bit, I think it's a failure of Gordon Levitt's performance, but I also think it's a failure of Zemeitt's performance, but I also think it's a failure of Zemeckis' screenplay. But it's one of those things

where, like, Man on a Wire was one of those kind of crossover documentary successes that feels like it breached a little bit beyond

the audience of people who usually go see documentaries because there was this thing of, like, you gotta see this. It's so engaging. It's so entertaining. The story's unbelievable.

This guy is unreal. You know? And I put that in that thing of, like, you gotta see this. It's so engaging. It's so entertaining. The story's unbelievable. This guy is unreal, you know? And I put that in that category of, like, I feel like Free Solo had a similar kind of thing, and Searching for Sugar Man, where it's just like, these are, like, really inspiring human interest stories with these guys. You couldn't write a character like this. No, you couldn't find an actor to play a character like this.

These guys are just so fully themselves. And Philip Petit in particular is just like this over the top, like puck-like kind of like, you know, he's got this real weird, like there's something very childlike and sort of menacing about him, but also very innocent, romantic, but then he has this hard edge, and he's so opinionated. And part of it is just like watching this guy tell his own story was so engaging that you're like, I don't know if I want to see anyone else tell his story. And even, he had a book based on this experience, which this movie is directly based off of. And I'm like, I don't even know if i'd want to read the book part of it is seeing his physicality and his voice and everything he's just such a

unique person and there is just that weird x factor of like in man on a wire man on wire uh he he says like you know i just looked at these buildings and i said i must walk that i must put my wire there and you're like that makes no sense to me. But it makes complete sense to this guy. Like he is so possessed. He is so single minded. He is so on his own wavelength that when you watch him, you completely understand why he had no doubts. And you also understand why a certain type of person would be attracted to him, follow him to the ends of the earth, put themselves in harm's way

in order to help him realize the dream. It's really hard to recapture that in a fictional movie because he's a guy on paper that doesn't make any sense. And I think one of the things that happened, and I don't know what is going through the heads of any of the people who made this, So I can't project onto that. But I can say that the movie seems more fascinated with the act itself than with the people behind it. But in order to tell a quote unquote movie in the sort of Hollywood sense, you have to have this main character. you have to have this main character. And it feels like the movie is actually less interested in petite as a character,

rather than as petite as an actor who does a thing that has this beauty and representation to it. That because all of the resources and imagery and beauty of the film is centered around the action and the act and what that represents. And I think the images are so strong and beautiful of that, but the film doesn't feel as fascinated with who he is as a person because you don't see that come out in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance or how it's shot or how it's told. It's more like, let's get through all this character stuff so we can really get to what this film is about, which is the beauty of this action and what it visually represents. Right.

Right. And it's like, I don't know. Like, I found some quote from Zemeckis talking about why he really took to this story and that he didn't know it had really happened, you know, despite obviously being alive at the time that he read a children's book adaptation of it to his daughter.

And then at the, like, at the end of the book, realized that it was a real thing and then started digging into it. And then obviously when man on on wire came out and made the story so big and was successful won an oscar and everything then there was some sort of juice behind the idea of doing a new version of it um the zemeckis quote is he said to me it had everything that you want in a movie it had an interesting character who's driven and obsessed and passionate. It had all this caper stuff. He was an outlaw. There was suspense.

And then he did this death-defying thing. But the problem is, what's interesting about this guy is that he's driven, obsessed, and passionate. There is no deeper answer there. You know? There's nothing in the story of what made him decide to do this.

It's just an impulse. And everything... I must do it. I must attest to you. nothing in the story of what made him decide to do this it's just an impulse and and everything i am right the carnival stuff right i don't know like the tradition essentially everything in his life up until him landing in new york and putting the team together is not super interesting and you you're like, Zemeckis could have done an oceans 11 thing here where page five is him landing in New York, you know? Um, I agree,

but he does all this. No, what are you gonna say? I just think he's, he's, I don't know if this is true or not. Cause I don't know how much he cared about man on wire, but obviously man on wire was a,

was an Oscar winning movie. Man on wire also has a heist movie structure right like it's sort of it has those recreations it's kind of trying to do like a kind of mini budget like 70s thing right like and so maybe the other thing i want to say like i can't just do a height you know like i don't know he's a hokey guy as jd is saying yeah and so sploosh like i can see him just being like well we gotta go to france we gotta drink it in but i agree with you griffin he we this you know might be better served by him getting off the plane to start the movie we can we

can flash back for five minutes you know that's the other factor i want to get into and jd i apologize if we're front loading a lot of our big theses for this movie first because we assume you're going to run the table on the rest of the episode but yeah i feel like we're just like look i have a few things i want to say okay yeah he's gonna bring a bunch of stuff out here again and like i don't know what that's about right is is there gonna be a scavenger hunt do i have to leave my apartment for this episode um i i feel like a that's a way in which they were uniquely fucked by man on wire is that man on wire is not just a successful documentary but that is half uh uh recreation restaging so half of the movie is watching these sort of dramatic recreations

of everything that are really fucking well done. They're like really, they feel like you're watching somehow documentary footage from the night. They cast the young people well. It's not overplayed. It feels pretty verite. And there's real tension the way those sequences are constructed. And then you have Philippe Petit in narration and in cutaways talking straight down the barrel of the lens to you the audience explaining what was going through his head so it is somewhat bizarre that this movie almost exactly copies the structure of that that you started out with narrator philip pete looking at the audience walking you through all these recreations that

you're seeing except it's two levels of artifice versus man on wire where it's like real guy storytelling and then artifice and the artifice is a lot more naturalistic than what we're seeing in this movie um but that's that's another aspect of it is like you talk about the hokiness of zemeckis and i'm pretty interested in like this marwin and forrest gump as like three movies of a piece right where two of them are based on documentaries one of them is based on a book but in all three cases he's sort of taking a more complicated story and reducing it to the most inspirational aspects you know which is what he likes to do to sand off the rough unsavory edges of these characters um it's bizarre to me because it's zemeckis that he doesn't try to build some more emotional backstory for philip petite you know like it feels like that's the hollywood

thing that zemeckis would do is like come up with some larger emotional explanation make this more of a love story make it more of a whatever but it really just is kind of him doing like it's Zemeckis making a movie about like a Christopher Nolan protagonist. Right. It's Zemeckis making a movie about a guy who's just kind of like a heat seeking missile. Sure. Which is an odd choice for him because he's so usually drawn to very emotional and emotionally driven protagonists and i think what's difficult and i could the little that i do know about what went into the the attempted selling of this movie is what you're saying about philippe pratit is what's so interesting is that he says this thing that sort of has no, I just had to put a wire there and you sort of believe it.

But from a storytelling standpoint, it's really hard to portray that without the magic of reality there to bolster that. And so I do think what Zemeckis sort of did is he sort of did a quick sort of, here's a bunch of data points of this person's upbringing that hopefully connect to let you understand why this person might be this way and i think it's what's hard is that it's they're not really they're not scenes or context that's providing you with much actual support for his actions it's just sort of like a character study

of these things that might have sort of been swirling in his head, but none of it is one-to-one related to what he's doing because what he's doing is such an act of passion over logic. He's chosen this thing because he's obsessed with it. And those of us who have done things like that in our lives,

when you do something that's irrational or passionate over logic logical you can't explain why you're just pulled to it and from a filmmaking standpoint that's really hard to to communicate especially in a Hollywood way like example do you remember the 3D like arcade

near the audio boom studios yes VR world VR world they had one of the simulations vr world they had one of the simulations where you would walk a plank yeah and they had fans even set up so once you got to like halfway across this plank they would engage and obviously you're seeing like being at the top of the world trade center i took mushrooms and did that you just do things like that sometimes no i don't i screamed and went ah and there was just children around it was very embarrassing

are you telling that story to argue that you are the kind of just driven protagonist that jd is describing yeah sometimes you just gotta take mushrooms and go to a VR arcade. Ben's sort of saying he's sort of like a Philippe Petit in that he took mushrooms and went to a VR arcade. Yes, and inspired the entire city. I'm sure Philippe Petit would be like, I salute you, what a grand coup. Yeah, Ben's on the digital plank being like, oh, the coup is over, the coup's over.

They know, dude. There are these guys like Fincher and Kubrick and Nolan who have all made movies about seemingly kind of emotionless, just like obsessive protagonists in pursuit of a perfect thing. But it takes a certain kind of obsessive mind to do it yeah and zemeckis has too much of the kind of like crowd pleasing like i want to make a movie that touches people kind of thing and and i the thing that just feels for me like such it's it's kind of the key to zemeckis adapting this story is everyone i know who saw a man on wire would say like and can you believe that thing where when he gets off the wire he sleeps with those women there's that moment that everyone talks about which is like he has this woman annie who's like his lover who's been with

him for years who puts herself at legal risk who works so hard on this and then he gets off the wire he gets arrested when he gets out of jail these groupies come up to him and they're like do you want to have a foursome with us? And he's like, absolutely. And in the documentary, you see some silly like Benny Hill style recreation of him jumping in bed with these ladies. And he goes like, well, yes, you know, I mean, I felt bad for Annie. But, you know, here are these women that, you know, I had to sleep with them. I am French.

What can I do? And the whole audience of the landmark sunshine is like. No, but then they cut to her. French! What can I do? And the whole audience of the landmark sunshine is like, ah! No, but then they cut to her, and she's just like, I was very hurt. Like, I was incredibly hurt. And that's the end of their relationship. And this movie makes the end of their relationship I was a New Yorker

now, and she did not have what it took to stay in New York. They make it just this sort of decision that she's like, I don't have the same passion that you do. And you leave out the part that he did this fucked up thing the second he got off the wire. It sort of reminds me of when Ben

stumbled off the VR plank into a group of eighth graders and was like, do you know where the foursome is? And then Ben's face got put on a wall at VR World and he wasn't allowed in. It's very similar. And then Ben hired a lawyer

and tried to sue his way back in because he said he needed the VR equipment to quote-unquote hack the banks. Yes, that's the exact point I'm trying to make, J.D., yes. The thing with like,

I love Free Solo, which I think is a better documentary than the Man on Wire. Although I like Man on Wire. Yeah. And that movie, to me, drills down a little more to the Alex Honnold experience, the experience of these types of people. Because it is a little more focused on, one, yes, here's this person who does this thing that most people just won't understand right he climbs this rock and if he you know does one thing wrong he will die like it's just complete yes no like you know no one would ever so there's that but there's the

appreciate he you know he what he's doing is a craft you know and it digs into what is so incredible about the craft for him which man on on Wire does with the balancing, I feel. It's been a year since I saw it, but you know. But then it's also about, Free Solo is about the experience of knowing him and loving him through the eyes of his girlfriend. Well, that's the key, is that Free Solo is like, right, she's almost the lead character of that movie, yes.

And that, to me, is so fascinating. It's not just that, that yes here's this person who does this thing you don't understand but that the of course there are people who he matters to you know and man on wire has a little of that and it has annie and all that but like at the end of the day he's like i am mr mischievous picklet you know i i vanish into the clouds aha you know like he's a personification of delight but i think that is what you're what you're tapping into is the magic of documentary because in documentary you can let your camera search for that truth and as an audience member you are experiencing that truth come across at

the same time the filmmaker is in narrative that exploration of truth has to be done in a different sort of dance pattern with the filmmaker and with the subject. Whereas in documentary, you're observing it and you're getting that primary source. And so you can sort of you can observe these sort of befuddling paradoxical characters and try to discern why they are what they are. Imagine, and I bet someone will try to do it is going to try to make a free solo movie. And I think that will have the exact same struggles as something like this because it's, it's hard to,

it's hard to create narrative justifications for a character that's driven by things that are so inside themselves that they don't even realize what they are. I will say the, the the only difference is no accent required that's well here's the other thing here's the other thing i think is important you would say that but fucking gordon levitt did an accent for snowden so he'll find a way to do an accent for anybody wait does he have to play honnold is this like the rule now well i think I think that I, you know, I think the other thing I want to say about Free Solo is this, is that as a kid, I liked Free Solo

the most because of Jabba the Hutt and Salacious Crumb and Ewoks. Okay, wait a second. But when Solo gets captured, that movie, it ends on more of a downer, but I think that there's a lot of good stuff in there. JD.

Very funny. David's smacking himself in the head. This is another key difference. Another key difference is that Free Solo is a fly-on-the-wall documentary in the way that you're saying, JD, where these things are happening, unfolding in real time in front of the camera, and you're coming to the same realizations as the filmmakers. Man on Wire is largely like a one

man show. It's like this guy looking at you and telling the story and so much of the movie is the kind of unreliable narrator question of like, is this guy for real? Like he feels like a bullshit artist. Can he really be this magical where he just claims he looked and he thought my wire has to

go there? is there nothing more going on with this guy so you're watching half a guy telling you his interpretation of what happened and you're watching half recreations pretty much you know i mean the smallest sliver of the movie is other people talking about what happened he really dominates the narrative which it works if you're questioning the guy and going like, is this guy for real or is he a bullshit artist? I guess the proof is in that it actually happened. And here's the footage. But still, it's hard to believe that everything was this whimsical, that he took off his clothes and started dancing around looking for the wire, all this sort of shit.

all this sort of shit but then when you have an actor playing the guy who feels like he's not really on the level like he can't be real it adds another level of disconnect especially when i feel like gordon levitt is is forefronting the obsessive tendencies of this guy rather than the sort of impish charm of this guy which which you need some of that fucking charm. And he's like very serious in this outside of maybe just the opening 20 minutes. This is a larger question, and it's maybe not one that is solvable today. But it is that George Joseph Gordon-Levitt was, I think, a very charming actor for a lot of his career especially when he starts to emerge again you know post third rock from the sun you're like oh like that that guy from the sick you know from thing thing then things i hate about you and stuff oh he's like uh he's very

talented well he took a couple years off and then he had that year that was like mysterious skin brick both at sundance at the same time now he's the new leading man the new young guy yeah and like he played a lot of serious parts right you know in like uh the lookout and stop you know he like it took a lot of but then you know you've got 500 days of summer you've got inception and dark knight rises you have premium rush looper like loopers loopers maybe sort of him getting too serious again though i guess it's a brief span where you're he does love these intense busy acting roles where he's gonna do something you know he's gonna have a look or an accent or a physical thing you know like it's so maybe that's partly what is hampering him and like the apotheosis of this

as you say griffin is snowden where i'm like i guess this guy's doing a snowden impression i wasn't looking for that like it's one of those things right it's like he's going way toward the snowden voice he sounds like kermit the frog and everyone's response is you could have just sounded like you no one would have docked you points for that and this is one of those cases where like he trained with the real philip pitti for months he became fluent in french like he did fucking everything i mean there's the the joseph gordon levitt thing that just is like it's the whole story is when they asked him to host snl and he's like cool can i do the entirety of make him laugh from singing in the rain

and they were like we only have a week of rehearsals and he's like, cool, can I do the entirety of Make Them Laugh from Singing in the Rain? And they were like, we only have a week of rehearsals. And he's like, don't worry, I'll spend four months preparing for it. Like that was his story that they asked him over the summer, would you want to host in the fall? And he was like, I will build the walls in my backyard so I can do the practice of running up the walls and doing the backflip and everyone saw it and they were like i guess that's impressive right it was like it was cute to a point it was like yeah he's trying really hard but right there was something kind of annoying about it this is i guess the joseph gordon levitt paradox but i do like him in a lot of movies i know he too now vanish i think he's very good in uh the trial of chicago seven but that's because he's playing a twerp here's my hot take sort of well deployed there yes what's your hot take i like joseph gordon levitt if only because he seems like he's enjoying

himself on screen and sure while yes that sometimes can take me out of it and sometimes i can be like yeah i don't know i for the most part revel in seeing someone that seems to be enjoying doing their job and diving into it without any level of cynicism or sort of like i don't know if i want to be doing this like he feels like so fully in whenever he's doing stuff. And he's so in that sometimes it takes you out, but he really seems to be enjoying it, which I want to say I appreciate because there's a lot of actors,

especially these days where it's like, oh, my way to act is to not act, to sort of just like stay above it and outside this. And I like that he's got this sort of like, and it may be a very passe way of acting where he's like i'm gonna get into it i'm gonna do the work i'm gonna like have fun becoming the best philip petite that i can become um and for whatever reason that tickles this part of me that sort of enjoys that in this sort of like weird old hollywood way but i get how it can rub people the wrong way he's like a dork and he's a drama nerd like he's a drama nerd.

Like he's, it's that thing of just like, I want to show you how quickly I got off book. Yeah. I forgot about 50-50. He's, he's good in that. I think he's really good in 50-50. That's sort of a movie that I feel like whatever is not, you know, discussed a lot, but it's, it's a solid movie and he's very good in it. But that's sometimes where he doesn't track, where you're like 50-50.

Okay, he's proven now that he can do this kind of thing. And then I think he's really bad in The Night Before, which is like him and Rogan again, same director. Like very similar vein. I have not seen The Night Before. He's just like really over the top, really overcranked and unnatural in that. And it's like, there's not, it's hard to identify like,

oh, he's always good playing this kind of thing, and where he gets into trouble is this kind of thing. He has tendencies that you can identify that are like, these are the bad performances versus the good performances, but it doesn't feel like there's a consistent algorithm to like, he's better with these types of directors,

or these types of characters, or this kind of genres. I do, much like you, J.D., I can never really hold it against him because I do appreciate that he clearly cares so much. That he really, like, feels like a guy who is honored to be a movie actor is going to do 110%, do everything he can to try to serve the movie the best he can but sometimes I feel like he takes it for granted absolutely not sometimes I feel like some of that energy is misplaced like he just he applies it to the wrong areas

there's sometimes forced through the trees problems with him we forgot to mention Don John I'm sorry that's crucial to all Joseph Gordon-Levitt discussion as well because it was like basically at the height of his fame because that's the year after Dark Knight Rises

and Looper and Premium Rush and Lincoln he's great in Looper yeah he's good in Looper I like Looper and I like him in Looper but the year after that he's like and here's my writer director debut about about a guy who loves the gym and jerking off. She's a dime.

And you're just like, this is what you had kind of in your back pocket? This was the passion project? My body, my pad, my ride, my family, my church, my boys, my girls, and my porn. I also wanted to ask, and I'm assuming the answer is no.'m assuming what i say to that go ahead sorry you want to say to that say it sploosh sploosh baby i i i'm just assuming i have not seen it that no one has seen uh hijacking drama 7500 that just kind of quietly dropped on amazon like last year no i mean he essentially snowed him was his last movie in 2016 and then he had three movies on streaming this year he had the hijacking movie he had uh project power on netflix right and trial of

chicago seven but those were like his first three movies in four years essentially right anyway it's an interest i mean i think he can bounce back not as a star perhaps like star star but as a guy you know um i'd like him to bounce back it's kind of wild watching him in chicago seven where they're like you're this like whiz kid da you know uh who's like rising through the ranks and uh you there's that scene where they run into the park with his daughters and you're like is joseph gordon levitt really old enough to have two daughters this age and then you look it up and you're like fuck he's 39 that's also just a function of like you know he was on television when i was a child like and i'm i'm old now i mean i'm saying he's still boyish, and you're like, what is the next 10 years of Gordon Levitt roles going to look like?

I don't know. Can I say this, though? Yes. Oh, no, here comes the bell. Next. Next is a word that Whitney did miss in Vertigo Westworld, but not urine in the abyss. Whitney did miss in Vertigo Westworld but not Murin in the Abyss if Travis B.

Welker pulled a prank on this word it's change would at least be beautifully heard are we supposed to acknowledge this acknowledge what acknowledge what David huh so JD

we've been talking for about effects we've been talking for about an hour i wanted to get to get into the visual effects because i do think those are we've been talking the walk for about an hour correct we've been talking the walk yeah yeah okay that's right um right like you know i let we should talk about that because i do you know that's that's the biggest component of this movie and it's the thing you're obviously the most intrigued by so let me tell you the story of the walk visual effects as far as I know it. And what I think is so fantastic and what makes this movie such an overachievement and so amazing. Number one, just to set the stage, I want to say visual effects themselves have gone through a huge evolution, obviously, in the past 20 years.

From being something that's used to only do the fantastical, to being something that's used to be utilitarian. And I think there was an era in the mid-2000s where there was a lot of VFX used to solve production problems. But it was used simply as a stopgap between a problem and a solution. And I feel that The Walk is a film that uses it not only to solve the problem of a literal impossible shooting scenario, but then elevates its visual effects to the point where they are so beautiful. And they are not direct replicas of reality. They are heightening reality to something that is photographic

and beautiful and painterly in a way that is really hard for most films to do. And so that's the context. But what makes it really amazing is the story visual effects. That's the context. But what makes it really amazing is the story visual effects. So Robert Zemeckis, while he was doing A Christmas Carol, I believe, was... Most boring movie ever made. I don't think I've seen it. He had made a full pre-vis animatic of this film and was taking it around to different studios,

pitching it, saying, here's the movie that I want to make. And when it came time in his pitch to say what amount of money he wanted for it, the number that was in the air was $35 million, which, if you are not a film geek, $35 million is not a lot of money no that is the amount of money that in the 90s was spent on like a rom-com and robert zemeckis is hoping

to make a film that is a period piece special effects extravaganza that takes place entirely in an impossible VFX scenario. And even just for perspective, Trial of the Chicago 7 is a movie that costs $35 million and almost exclusively takes place in that one courtroom. Yeah. And so he was literally apparently laughed out of the room at multiple studios where they're like, it's impossible. You're either going to end up spending a huge amount of money or this thing's not going to get made or it's just going to be

like a not worthwhile endeavor. The only company that humored him was TriStar, who then said, all right, why don't you go do it? And that's when he turned around and pulled together his VFX team. His VFX team was people that he had pulled from other projects they had worked on and most notably someone who sort of piqued my interest was his vfx supervisor this guy kevin bailey and he approached kevin bailey was like hey here's what we want to do and the budget for the film is 35 million dollars and kevin kevin bailey's i think his vibe was like wait that's like the effects budget it's like no that's the whole movie the effects budget is like in the teens of millions which if you look at the effects budget for films that have as many shots as much screen time of vfx

as this it is more than 35 million dollars it'll be a $50 million budget line for VFX. And this whole film is $35 million. Can I just interject with two things quickly, JB? Yes. Just to contextualize for our listeners, this is this weird era of TriStar that we've oddly covered a couple of times now where Tom Rothman leaves Fox, moves over and says, like, I'm going to run the sort of adult auteur driven Like, I'm going to run the sort of adult, auteur-driven arm of Sony. Not Sony classics, but not the big blockbuster films. And the four that they make right off the bat, in the order I'm forgetting, are this, Ricky and the Flash, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. And there's a fourth big one that I'm forgetting. Money Monster!

Money Monster. there's a fourth big one that I'm forgetting. Money Monster! Money Monster. But it was like kind of big 90s movie stars, auteurs, old kind of like an earlier era of adult high budget, you know, mid-high budget.

They were all sort of like, can you make these things for 35 to 50? But prestige-y studio movies. That all flopped. I think it's worth pointing out that Zemeckis, in between A Christmas Carol and This Made Flight, which is also a,

I mean, it's not maybe as complicated a movie as this, but it has obviously an incredibly dramatic plane crash sequence, and that cost $31 million. Yes, and Flight was the same team that worked on this, the VFX team. And that was a Paramount movie, but whatever. The only other thing I want to say, I have from reliable sources who worked at Sony and TriStar at the time.

I don't know if you heard this in your research, JD. What I have heard from people from when he was pitching the movie is that his original intention was to have Philip Petit play himself and be de-aged because he thought no one could play him. Wow. I did not hear that. He was kind of right. I mean,

not, not maybe the de-aging, but you know, yeah. The sources that I have that did not come up and I think it would have come up. Okay. Um, but what they did, the sources that I have that did not come up and I think it would have come up but

what they did because Zemeckis this time had gone fully through bushwhacked through the uncanny valley you know blazing trails for the rest of filmmakers by making these full CG bizarre technical

just like we're gonna try this the tech might not be fully like, we're going to try this. The tech might not be fully here, but we're just going to go for it. He is now a master of workflow and he trusts the people around him. And when they say, okay, we can do this, but we've got to do it in very specific ways. He's like, I'm fully on board.

Let's go with it. So the way that they shot this movie was absolutely bonkers magoo nuts. Bonkers magoo? um bonkers magoo you can look it up online um for the the most of the film almost every shot has cgi in it um of because they shot this almost entirely in montreal and so almost every location is totally re-established to be wherever that they're supposed to be at the time. And when you watch the movie, you really cannot tell that. And they do a phenomenal job of just piecing together all these locations.

This is one of those films where essentially, unless they're like touching something or sitting on something, it's probably CGI. Everything more than like six feet beyond the actors is CGI. Background. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. And so for the big finale that takes place in the Twin Towers, that was the crux of how are we going to shoot this thing? So what they ended up doing is they pre-vised.

And they pre-vised, number one, they took old, they went into archives and got together all the old blueprints of the World Trade Center and painstakingly went through and pieced together every nut and bolt and brick and everything they could find of it. And then they also went through the archives and took all these scans and photos that they could find of the materials and tried to replicate those. Not only did they do that, but all of the blocks surrounding the World Trade Center, they put together a team of a handful of people, not that many people, and designated them each to take over a section of blocks and go, hey, here's maps, here's blueprints, here's photos of the blocks. Recreate these down to the like ac units to the fans on top to the type of doors they went through and did that and when it came time to shoot all the stuff on the on on the wire itself they were like okay how do we do this like because we need

to have actors we can't do this all cgi just not going to feel what it needs to be so what they landed on is like okay we're just going to make the tops of the world trade centers and put those in a studio and those will be the only things that we have that are real but then the studios that could get they could actually only make a small corner of each of the tops of the buildings because of just the size, the budget, what they had. So they built these small weird corners and then they shot in simulcam, which is a sort of a system where they have their previous models loaded up into cameras. And then they have this tracking data that they're getting from their cameras so that Zemeckis could sort of see

roughly where the horizon lines and buildings were in the digital space. And then they shot all of these plates for their live action stuff in this entirely green universe with just these two little pieces of the World Trade Center. And absolutely everything else was done completely digitally. digitally. And the painstaking detail that they went into with a team that was maybe like, I think it ended up being like five supervisors. And then like all the teams that worked underneath those supervisors is absolutely insane. And, uh, uh, an example of like the types of problems they're running into, right. So normally when you shoot live action integrated with digital stuff, um, you want to have your live action plates be your source material for your lighting, right? So let's say you want to put a, you know, whatever,

a digital Mario in the middle of Times Square. You're going to take footage of Times Square and you're going to take this lighting image, classically using this technique created by this guy, Paul Debevick, where you take these HDRI photos of a mirror sphere at different brackets so you can get the brightness of the different lights. these light sources are on this mirror sphere then you inversely project that onto a theoretical sphere around your digital set and you project the image there and then you shoot light rays through it so that that image is lighting your digital um thing so then like you have mario in there and he's being lit by the the digital information of the light well the problem is well he gets a mushroom and he gets bigger yeah different lighting exactly he gets a mushroom and then he walks into the vr experience and starts screaming stuff and trying to grab eighth graders and then mario his face is on the wall

right next to ben absolutely but the thing that you can probably glean is in the walk the entire universe is digital and the only live action elements are joseph gordon levitt walking across this wire which by the way i you know that's one of those like factoids it's in every sort of like epk about the thing is that joseph gordon levitt did a lot of the wire walking himself right he learned how to wire walk right yeah and then in the wire walking segments um that couldn't achieve, they had a stunt person and they did facial replacement. But what's so hard is that they needed to then light. They needed to create all their lighting scenarios in advance and then have Darius Wolski do his lighting for each of the setups and then go into the digital world and then try to match those

while also making it absolutely accurate to like the degree of sun where everything is in New York City. And the amount of work that that takes to get that right is so outrageous. But when you watch this movie, it is so beautiful and so painterly that you don't even consider the fact that all of that stuff

is absolutely fake. It just, you have that feeling of like on the wire vertigo, not to mention they're rendering this all in like super high resolution stereoscopic for all the IMAX stuff, which is, as I've talked about in the Billy Lynn stuff, like so, so, so much work to get that stuff so perfect. And I can find almost no shots in this movie where it feels hacked together or overly digital. It feels like it is. It's this like I keep saying painterly because it has this quality to it that is so beautiful. Hello, this isin from the future um you might remember in the war of the worlds episode

jd recorded uh a little uh addendum uh from the future um about how he wanted to say that tim robbins performance was good, but he felt bullied by us because we had shit on the performance that much, and so he backed off, but he felt like he was being dishonest to himself, so he recorded himself saying that, well, saying pretty much what I just explained to you, and then Ben placed that into the audio later. And this is going to seem like it was a planned bit, but it wasn't. It's actually just a happenstance. But I think the walk looks bad.

And JD came in so loaded talking about how impressive the visual effects of the movie are and how people misunderstand that he was going, Zemeckis, for this heightened storybook aesthetic, that it's not favoring realism. And I think it's impressive that the effects were done on such a limited budget. And I regret not asking JD questions about how it was done on such a limited budget, because that's the one thing I do find impressive. But even though I conceptually like what they're going for, I don't actually like the way it looks other than the walk itself. But when they're on street level, I think it looks kind of ugly. I regret not, I don't know if I regret not pushing back on it. I mean, who cares? But I definitely was so disarmed by the weird J.D. Bell riddle thing, which I guess, depending on where this is placed in the episode,

won't have been resolved yet. But it was like J.D. It felt like J.D. was being weirdly normal and not doing a lot of his chaotic bits other than that one thing which was so disarming that I felt like I was sort of not on edge the whole episode but like confused like I I was like 25% of my attention was spent trying to figure out what was going on. So I didn't mount the argument for why I think the movie looks bad, but also it's not much of an argument. It's just I don't think it looks good. Respect it. Don't like it aesthetically. Aesthetically, one of 8,000 words I always mispronounce on this but it's it's the one that i probably use the most

of all the words i butcher um okay back to the episode it's very good look and walsh is obviously a great cinematographer and it's it's beautifully it looks beautiful like it does not look cheesy in the way that it feels sometimes. But I feel like you get into this weird territory where all of what you're talking about, J.D., we're used to this sort of technology applied to our biggest, highest budget films. The Marvel movies are largely made this way now. We always joke that they're all shot in parking lots in Atlanta. But they are shot in these sort of green screen spaces where like aside from the chair they're sitting on, the walls of the apartment might be CGI'd, let alone the outdoor spaces, let alone the planets, you know, all of it.

Right. And I think with films of that size and that scope where it's all like eye candy and you have fully CGI characters and action sequences and so many things that could never be done in real life. People accept the sort of heightened artificiality of all of that. What they might not register much the way you're talking about with The Walk is that like the most banal things in those movies are also CGI. that like the most banal things in those movies are also CGI. You know, when the Hulk's eating at a diner, we know that the Hulk's CGI, but maybe you don't realize that that diner set is only 5% constructed or whatever the fuck, right? And then there's something like The Mandalorian where I feel like they've made this big breakthrough because of having these hyper high resolution screens with these fully rendered backgrounds that all the

actors are acting against so they have a sort of grounding of environment even though there's very little tactile environment around them but also i think when i watch the mandalorian the thing i'm always so impressed with is how well lit i think that show is because so often the the failing of these types of things as you're saying saying, JD, is that you're required to get the right lighting down in a green screen space to have the background look correct once you comp it in later, which is very tricky. It involves a lot of math and science in advance, which you can speak to much more intelligently than me. But something like The Mandalorian, I feel like is doing all that work, having a better

reference because there's literally a screen behind them with the background. But what they're going for is a lot more naturalistic. They're trying to make it look like it's more naturalistic. And Zemeckis is going for this very extreme stylization here that I feel like audiences will buy if it's 300 and it's cranked to that degree or it's marvel and everything is fucking wackadoo but when they see a movie like this that ostensibly takes place in real cities and no one has superpowers i feel like there's this immediate revulsion people have to like why does this look so plasticky well and also there's just the weird things like joseph gordon levitt having blue contact lenses that contribute so much more to the unreality

than anything else we're talking about. And it should be the other way around. So can I do a quick little film school thing since you brought up The Mandalorian? Okay. No, I meant that with more enthusiasm than I sounded. I was adjusting my position and I feel like it came out as a sigh.

Well, maybe let's get a clean take. Let's try it again, David. Yeah, let's do it again. All right. So would you like me to do a brief little film school now that you brought up The Mandalorian? Okay. Wait, David, that still sounded...

That really... Let's move on. I'm getting... No, we need one more. I am no longer interested in film school. You're losing my attention. getting no we need one more I'm no longer interested in film school you're losing my attention David we need one more just one more

put some stank on it please and then we can go on and can you do it in a bit of a French accent if you'd like I could do a little bit of film school

now that you've mentioned The Mandalorian oh okay yeah alright he sounds intrigued sploosh sploosh baby zoopy zoopy zoop so griffin what you're talking about is what's referred to as a light stage and it actually harkens back to something that uh this person who i think all the blankies and you guys should actually dive into

is really interesting helped craft some of the technology behind this guy, Paul DeBevick. And I mentioned Paul DeBevick before because he was one of the people that worked on the technology of reflectance sphere and what's called image-based lighting, which is when you basically do that thing with the mirror balls. Talking about where you're using images to pick up lighting on stuff. Now, when you think about a movie like Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park was one of the first films that people were like, whoa, that stuff looks like real. Like, I can't tell the difference from the CGI, which that sort of I think has been exaggerated. If you go back and watch Jurassic Park, like it looks good still. But you're like, yeah, that's CGI.

Like, let's not act like that's not very that era CGI. Also, people forget how few shots there are of the dinosaurs in that movie. Yes. And, uh, what they actually ended up doing is this was before sort of image-based lighting was a ubiquitous thing. And so they shot the scenes in real life.

And then the people in their VFX department had to just go through and just tweak digital lights over and over again to be like, does this look good? Maybe this looks good. What if we put another light here? And it's just like painstaking, insanely expensive, timely process. So you're saying it was essentially trial and error. It was trial and error going like, let's move this thing here. All right, let's let it render for a week. Well, nope, that didn't look like we wanted to work. All right, let's try it again. Let's move this light here and da, da, da. And it ends up looking great because they had all the best experts in the world working on Jurassic Park, but that is not a repeatable

process. So what Paul DeBevick did with, and a lot of people were doing some of the similar stuff at the same time, was created this idea of a light stage, which is how can you mimic real-life lighting scenarios onto digital items and also do the inverse where you take digital lighting scenarios and have those impact real-life actors. And so we've already talked about image-based lighting, and there's a lot of ways that that has evolved over the years that have to do with the different types of light

and how light plays off of different colors and materials and how that can influence things that in special VFX are called BRDFs, bidirectional, reflective. I don't know what the rest of the words are. Wow. Embarrassing. Some things. I don't know what the rest of the words are. Wow. Embarrassing. Something. And so the way light stages work is basically he created this cage that, you remember those like balls that you'd see at like the learning center? Remember that store that was like,

it had like mist on a computer and then like books and then like maybe one or two puzzles the learning center and they had those things that are like the like weird plastic orbs that could go small and then you pull them out and they become big so you took like something like one of those and put all these little leds and they are rgb leds so you could increase the values of red blue and green on the different lights, which theoretically can represent the full lighting spectrum. And now, using that, he could take digital lighting scenarios and put an actor in there and then essentially adjust those lights using all the data from the computer to then light the sources that way. Now, it started looking really good and you could replicate, you know, you could basically do digital stuff on live action, live action on digital, but then you could use that as a bridge.

So let's say an actor couldn't be in a location. You could take all of the image-based lighting data of a location, store that data, bring an actor into one of these light stages, input that data into the digital thing, create this light stage information, and then project all that data onto the person so that you could basically put someone somewhere that they weren't able to make it to the shoot for or whatnot. And so a lot of people were using this for doing facial replacement or like the movie gravity was almost shot entirely using these light stages like i don't know if people realize gravity um almost the only things that are real in gravity for the most part are the actors faces almost

everything else especially when they're in space is cgi the suits are fake the helmets are fake i mean people don't understand the degree. Once she gets inside the ship and takes her suits off for those couple of short sequences, but other than that, everything but her face is CGI. So then for Gravity, what they ended up doing is they took this idea of light stage

that kept developing, and instead of a bunch of LEDs, they had tons of them. And instead of just red, blue, and green, they actually increased it to have the full color spectrum of cyan, mag had tons of them. And instead of just red, blue, and green, they actually increased it to have the full color spectrum of like cyan, magenta, all this stuff. And then beyond that, they started getting into LED panels where you actually take video screens and you build boxes of video screens.

And what Gravity did that was absolutely fascinating, you should look this up if you haven't seen how they did this, is they had imagine like the type of like robotic arms that you use to make cars right they had the camera on one and then they had the performer in another and then they they would record all their animation and all the camera movement of the animation in gravity and then output that data to these robots project the renderings of the digital space onto these um led panels that are around the actor so that the light of the led panel was lighting them and then program the camera movement into both the and not all the

kids not like they're moving the camera what they would do because, because they wanted the panels to fully encapsulate the performer, they'd remove one little panel. And all they would do is they'd have the camera move backwards and forwards. And then all of the lateral movement would be done by spinning the actor on this little thing. So they're basically stuck in this weird gyroscope that is letting them match their face movements to the movements that are in their digital space. And it's absolutely brilliant to see. And when you watch Gravity,

you don't realize how much work has gone into that. So anyways, the Mandalorian, they took that even further and they built these gigantic light stages using full like LED walls that then they could just shoot all this stuff and have all of the actual natural lighting, lighting the characters.

And that's why it looks so natural is because it is the actual natural lighting being projected through these light stages. And it's absolutely beautiful. And it's cool. Yeah, really cool. Interstellar used this too. I believe that's the first movie is set in space where Nolan was like,

rather than have these guys acting, it's a green screen and you know it's it's bright and it you know it's not atmospheric let's like surround them with blackness and stars and like you know and prometheus used that too but but it's different because the main lighting is coming from the spaceship interiors that they've said this is doing exterior scenes with digital backdrops and having the computer figure out and what's so cool with this yeah that because the question you would you might ask then is how do you shoot that and then also um cut out the actors that they're not overlapped with the background like you know you do the green screen well they use infrared light and you can basically put

infrared light like behind the actor and put off these flashes and infrared camera that then creates a black and white mat to make a custom travel mat of whatever you're shooting it's really brilliant stuff and it's really interesting problem solving and then they also get really interesting skin and lighting data of actors, essentially by projecting different colors and types of lights. And then seeing how the shadows and all that play of these different colors and then taking that data. And that's what's making modern digital actors, their skin looks so real because you have something that's called subsurface scattering that has to do with on your skin, you have oil, and then there's the different layers of your skin that absorb light. And when light goes into your skin, it bounces around and it actually changes its polarity and all this stuff. And so by getting all this data, that's the reason why

modern sort of like facial replacement stuff looks so real. When, if you look back at like the Scorpion king it all looks like weird plastic kendall faces being put on actors when they try to do facial replacement i don't know scorpion king looks like a scorpion king to me i mean guy was a scorpion no there's that famous there's like the famous shot i know what you're talking about i just wanted to shout out the scorpion king thinking of'm thinking of the shot, JD, and the bottom half of his body is a scorpion and the top half is a king, so sounds pretty 10 out of 10 perfect for me.

I mean, the Scorpion King sequence in The Mummy Returns, which maybe we'll talk about one day. I suppose we could do old Stevie Summers. You've been pitching for several years in a row to make one of our winters summers exactly is i mean it just i remember in the theater being like did they not like send the right movie like did they like was it did they send like a an unfinished version of the movie by mistake like that i rarely have had an experience like that.

Yes, yes. And where they've talked about, like, we weren't done. They have kind of basically copped to, like, we did what we could. Right. Have you guys ever seen a movie that wasn't finished? Yeah. Like, a movie that was, like, put out in early release, and they later put out a new version of it that was like better

well cats i mean cat well sure cats cats they kept doing patches but i also i mean i talked about this on the episode but i saw uh uh whatchamacallit life of pi in like an unfinished form which was really bizarre oh interesting yeah right i mean i've been shown you know whatever is being described to me as like you know cuts, like maybe the color correction isn't done. Maybe, you know, something like I have never been shown something like what Griffin is describing where it is. There's a lot left to, you know, it is not in a form ready for wide audiences yet. I saw a very funny rough cut of a big action movie that's coming out. Is it the one we know you've seen or a different

yes that's the one you know i've seen we won't say it was very it was very funny because it was like fully just like some scenes were just like cubes bumping into each other yeah that would that's gonna make the final cut i mean there's a whole cube sequence clearly when you watch it like that it makes you realize how embarrassing it is to be an actor like just how vulnerable you are because your performance looks stupid until the effects are finally done have you ever seen that the behind the scene things of like it's like super girl or one of the cw shows yes yes yes it's so funny yeah i mean i always recommend people watch like the star wars making of like i love to think think about Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher and folks running around those cardboard sets.

And just thinking like, God, this thing is bullshit. Like, I can't believe we're doing this stupid movie. Like, there's no way they were doing that and thinking like, oh, this will definitely work. Like, I have full confidence in this guy. definitely work like i have full confidence in this guy but but i think that sort of like investment of belief becomes even harder the less oh tangible stuff there is around you right it's like being on a shitty set with like a david prowse saying darth vader dialogue like this is like one thing it's another thing to be doing like tennis ball with like a second ad reading dialogue off camera and shit well i think you need to be a psycho and like in not in a real way but like

you know in the joseph gordon levitt way where you're like well this guy's just different this guy's just a weirdo do you think you could ever be an actor david no like what do you think you could ever be an actor, David? No. Like, what do you think the extent of, what's the biggest part you could get and it go okay? Like now? I mean, like I did like high school drama. Like I acted when I was a teenager. It's not like I've never done that. Yeah, I'm not doubting you. You're the one doubting you.

No, I mean, now, I could probably play a person that is a stock type in a movie. I feel like that probably would give me a little more of a comfort zone. You know what I mean? If I'm like playing a shopkeep or, you know, like a taxi driver. You know what I mean? Because then it's like, okay, well, this guy is, this is, the movie is essentially doing a bit with this guy anyway, right? Give me a role that you think you could do.

I have one I want to throw out, JD. Okay. Do you think you could have played one of the New York cops on the roof in The Walk? Those guys are big. With the subtlety that we're seeing from those guys in that movie with a, Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I know that everyone's walking here, but you should stop walking here.

Oh, Hey, can I get a sandwich? I think here's another pitch from the walk. Yeah. David, I think you could have played the elevator operator. Oh yeah.

Um, that guy, I actually, you know what? All right. Well, for one, shout out to Jamesames badge shout out to

james badge dale who's just gonna get a bunch of shout outs on this podcast because he's in a lot of these movies he's in flight two right you know um who i really enjoy is the sequel yeah yeah he's really fun he's the best performance in the movie um and i like that sequence because it is pretty, it's one of the only sequences of the heist that involves personal interaction, and I love that Philippe Petit is not like, okay, I will handle this. I can convince him. Instead, he's like, I'm going to go sit here

like a big baby until you get me up there, and then James Van Dale has to be like, hey, look, I'm sorry, buddy. He's Sicilian. He has to go make a human connection and he's so good at this I'm going to roll up and be in this poster container until, you know, let me out

when you need me James Van Gel has like six lines, ten lines the whole movie, and every one of them are, they're so good he brings so much reality to the to the movie in a way that's really fun he's kind of the only person in the movie who's playing like a recognizable human being i would agree with that weirdly the second most grounded

performance in this movie is probably ben kingsley yeah just he's, Ben Kingsley's at least playing someone who's like a little unnerved by Philippe. So he's kind of like, you know, fatherly and concerned. The Ben Kingsley thing is weird because I think his accent is also terrible, but it's the example of like, somehow he's getting at the right energy

for the character that you'll forgive the accent versus Gordon Levitt, where the accent that you'll forgive the accent versus gordon levitt where the accent is bad and also the energy's off-putting his accent's crazy because kingsley is no slouch with accents he has done dozens of accents he's also a very talented actor this accent is more in the connery zone where you're like i guess he just talks like this and i'm just not gonna think about it. He's just not really trying to... This feels like they asked him if he wanted to be in it

two days before they started filming. It does. But he's good. I mean, he's human. Yeah, he's good. David, do you think you could pull off the elevator operator? No. I mean, I think that would be bad.

I think I could try. Cop you could do. I mean, your read for the cop just now was great i i think what my read was a little underplayed for how zemeckis wanted them pitched though i you know but on the day bobby could massage you give you a couple cups of coffee he could get you there that's not bad for a first take he'd want a little more mustard on it that's all i know the elevator operator no that's like a guy because that guy is like a guy from now because there are guys in new york who are unchanged from 1970 whatever who are still

in charge of elevators and such and still want to talk about the jets or whatever you know and like right ben like you know there's just still that guy and like oh absolutely he's that guy you know that guy is great construction there was the freight elevator operator guy, and you had to run on his schedule. He's got a clipboard, and he's got the toot. He pulls the lever. Okay, David, I'm getting your lines for you. Oh, boy.

That guy's also, he's got to play tension. That scene is a little bit of a pressure cooker it's a good scene that's like one of the few scenes that's not the walk that i'm really kind of into i'm just saying the cop it's an easier role to play because all you got to do is wave your arms and yell whoa whoa hey oh my god this guy's on a freaking wire i could have done the stoner so much better i would have just shown up and been confused uh here wait i'll do can i they would have had to spend a couple hours sobering you up before you were ready to film uh i think i think maybe ben has to allow you oh no there you go yeah there we go okay Okay. Okay. Griffin, you'll be JP. Oh, wow.

That's exciting. That's a good role. And are you going to be Petit? Yeah, I'll be Petit, obviously, just in terms of acting talent. Yeah, sure. All right. Should I read stage direction? Is that helpful?

Yeah, read stage direction. Yeah, please. Okay. Interior, construction elevator day. The elevator is a coarse construction lift, a simple box with ragged ply walls and no ceiling. What floor?

Petit looks up and sees writing on the elevator wall. Car number three, zero, one, one, zero. Let's see. What floor? What floor? Well, here we are. One ten. Jimmy stops and turns slowly to Petit. Uh, let's see. What floor? What floor? Uh, well, here we are. 110. Jimmy stops and turns slowly to Petit.

110? There's nothing up there. That's just the mechanical floor. Yes, that's perfect because we need to be close to the roof. The roof? Why the roof? Jimmy gives JP a suspicious look. Uh, yeah, we, uh, we, uh, uh...

Petit begins talking a mile a minute. Oh, we have the pieces for the antenna, and the antenna mast, and all the components for the electrified security fence, and the insulators that have to be installed before any of us wiring can be started. And that needs to be coordinated with the initial sizing of the conduit port,

and that can't happen until we measure the... Now JP jumps and begins ranting on the top of Petit. You know, before any of the wiring for the aerial system can even be initiated, not to mention that the project is four months behind schedule and the... Jimmy cuts him off. Whatever. Watch your fingers. And scene.

I'm going to say that turned into something of a J.D. acting showcase. It was a big J.D. showcase. Well, I don't know if you've seen me in the tick or vinyl. No, no. Wait a second. No, these are not your credits. Officer Krupke, I think, is your biggest role to date, right? It is. That's the only role that I've ever had. Officer Krupke, West think, is your biggest role to date, right? It is. That's the only role that I've ever had.

Officer Krupke, West Side Story, I know your credits, baby. Don't try to slip one past me. Officer Krupke, that's the role that you get if you can't sing. Can you not sing, J.D.? What do you think? Do you think I'm a good singer, David? You're very talented. Based on my nasally Chicago accent accent do you think i could sing i i mean i wasn't thinking hard about it but you're a talented guy you're a bit of a jack of all trades you got all kinds of you know strings to your bow as they might say maybe you could sing i don't know david are you challenging me to a sing-off right now definitely not david you want to get into a sing-off with jd on mike you guys

are gonna sing walk this way you're just gonna sing walk this way guys no no no we're not doing that oh my god he's talking walk this way walk this way also right that's like this way shouting right wait JD do the bell thing or something come on let's let's okay the bell is out

Andre and a stained opposite of day did the next word on screen. Kind of first, you could say. While George dreamed to do this on the face of a man, Neil did it for real, or perhaps just with Stan. How many of those do you have?

And I don't ask that in any, just as a logistical question. I got it under control. Don't worry about it. I think that's a Pixar thing. Andre and Wally B was the first Pixar short film and the George Lucas-owned Pixar originally. I'm trying to parse these as much as I can in real time without taking notes.

I'm not taking notes. I thought about it, but I decided it just didn't want to happen. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know what you're talking about I feel like we are done-ish talking about the plot

the walk, the movie we didn't even get into the plot what plot? what are you talking about? walks of the clock World Trade Center okay I feel like the walk sequence is the only thing we might want to talk about more. I can't think of anything else in this movie that is really worthy of intense discussion.

Okay, here's how I think we can get, since you are banning me from talking about the plot of this movie. Not at all. Encouraging. Not a ban. I challenge you to talk about the plot of this movie. Not at all. Encouraging. Not a band. I challenge you to talk about the plot of this movie is almost how I feel about it. Here's what I contend. Just give me a number between

1 and 10 and I'll tell you what that page of the script is about. And we'll do that 10 times. I was like, 1 to 10? Is it a 10 page script? No, I'm just saying And we'll do that 10 times. It's like 1 to 10. Is it a 10-page script? No, I'm just saying we'll do 1 to 10, 10 to 20, and we can sort of like dip our little stick in.

I think it's great that you have the script to the walk, but it's not like, you know, some major scoop. These things are obtainable. There used to be that guy on Prince Street who just sold screenplays. Remember that guy? Yeah, that guy rolled. Yeah. Oh, boy.

Fine, David. I'm just trying to bring some levity to this dang show. Oh, right. Clearly, I am having no fun at all. No, it's just like, here's the only thing I really remember from the first half of the movie. Is it that you remember that Papa Rudy, a divinely

savagely strong man, stands below waving his fist at Teen Patent while clashing a golden cigarette? No. It's the scene where it's the scene where I guess he does his first wire walk over the pond or whatever, right? In France. And the winos.

The winos are like, hey, fuck you, you know. That's Ben's ben's role yeah ben's the drunken french fisherman who's like why is this guy walking on a wire i just want to sit here and drink my wine but philippe is narrating for us as he does throughout the fucking movie and he's like and then they are they are talking and they are making fun of me and you need absolute concentration when you are walking like and he gets angry and it is hysterically funny it is not he does not seem like someone who's actually angry but it is just very funny to see joseph cord 11 try to be angry in this really strange performance that's all that's my only i just wanted to say that that's funny.

Yeah. Ugh. I mean, my favorite part of... Sorry, this is not even... There's nothing funny about this. Don't just read the script. That is not funny. No, it just tickles me.

It just tickles me. My favorite part is that, you know, when the fishermen go, click, click, click, a series of stills, a boatload of very drunk fishermen, another boatload whistle and cheer, another fisherman catches a big carp,

no one pays any attention for teeth performance. All right, stop it. Screenwriting is such a strange thing because it's not really an art form. Like, you would never... Oh, my gosh. David Sims of The Atlantic.

David. Cancel him. Can would never. Oh my gosh. David Sims of the Atlantic. David. Cancel him. Cancel him. Cancel him. Let the man finish. The author is dead. Yes. I'm call me Roland Barthes.

No. In just that, like you would rarely sit down to read a screenplay after a film had been made. Right. Like, you know, that would be a bit of an odd exercise to sort of crack open's a jd a motto well clearly like you know it's it's it's a blueprint

and it's this incredible tool and it can be so crucial to a great movie but it is sort of it's a it's a part of a movie right like the movie is sure is the product that's's all. It's just funny. Yeah. No, I get what you're saying. I mean, it is a, what's wild about it is that it's an art form that is sort of washed away by the tides of the greater art form

that eventually gets made. It is an art form that is means to an end. There is an art to doing it specifically and there are separate arts to like how to make a script readable, how to make a script that would prepare one to make a great film, how to make a script that someone would buy.

All these things are different sort of skill sets in terms of how you make the pages flow, but at the end of the day, it's means to an end. And what's so hard about it is there's no real way for the average viewer or moviegoer to actually understand or appreciate whether a screenplay is good or not. Because obviously, you know, there's the old adage that, you know, you make the film whatever 25 times, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. whatever 25 times blah blah blah blah um and so you never know okay the screenplay might have been totally different and or the tone might have been changed by the director or scenes might have been cut or things might have happened because of production or you don't know what notes came in or

what you know and also the inverse i mean there are great movies that came out of screenplays that were incoherent yeah and it's a there's that sort of thing that kind of bugs me that once in a while someone will get their hands on a screenplay and post excerpts from it and be like god like this sounds awful you know what i mean like i feel like that happens with movies of the past where they're like look at this plot description look at this character description like this and it's like yeah that is kind of you know cheap or pithy or whatever but like it's also designed to grab the attention of someone with money the product is the idea like you know what what you're seeing is really what matters right i mean sometimes you're trying to describe things

in a way that make the people who control the purse strings open them up and sometimes you're just trying to write things in a way that is easily digestible because you're submitting a script which the lowest level assistant to a producer is going to read and it's going to be one of six scripts they read that day like there's so many weird kind of strategic uh arts that go into screenwriting and here's actually a great example not with screenwriting, but with VFX, that is a perfect example of this is when they're doing the first teaser trailer of The Walk, basically TriStar was like, you have to let us just determine what this is going to be,

because we're going to sell this thing. We're going to get people out for this. And so they actually were putting direct direct communication with the vfx team who had already been doing all this work and they'd already shot the movie and the style and aesthetic of the movie is all about this sort of cloudy misty day that petite does this thing and they they crafted this really beautiful again painterly look that's all about sort of like overtones sort of like i remember and also the trailer began with the um the shot of like going up the world trade center right like up the ridges the sort of fame and so like there was also which we haven't talked about much that sort of spooky thing to it that

it's like oh it's recreating this building that so many people will remember yes we should definitely talk about that um but what was it what was interesting was that um tristar was basically like okay you guys have to make it really sunny and like the sort of like light dappled beautiful new york city that's what people want to see and they were like uh well we shot all this to be like this cloudy, moody, sort of intimidating, beautiful version of that sort of like that feeling of being on top of a mountain where it's both intimidating and beautiful. And they were like, OK. And so they gave them the like light dappled New York. But all of the live action footage was lit to make George Gordon-Le levitt look like he's in this sort of like cloudy atmospheric thing and apparently uh uh is it tim rothman tom rothman tom rothman yeah tom rothman

called them up specifically and was like what are you guys doing this is a disaster this is so bad you guys are like we're in so much like this is not a good start to our relationship because it just didn't match and they had to go listen we took your idea we hear you we know you think that that's what people want to see you have to trust us when we tell you we know how to make this look cool and they're like like, give us two weeks. And they rendered a version of it that looks like the final film. And Tractor was like, oh, wow, yeah, this is beautiful. We should have just asked you what to do from the beginning. And that's a great example of sometimes what people think they want,

whether it's a screenplay or an animatic or whatever, isn't actually what they want. Or they don't know that there's something better out there and that's one of the hard parts of making movies you have to get all these people on board with these things that they might not be able to visualize or see I also feel like I mean in doing all these Zemeckis movies in a row

the mocap ones in particular we've been talking a lot about 3D and the weird like you know supercharged rise and fall of 3D as like a new modern trend and there was obviously this period where everything

was being put into 3D every animated movie every blockbuster was being converted or being like kind of hastily shot in 3D but I feel like the walk comes at the tail end Billy Lynn is the absolute last case of this of like once a year there would be a movie that critics would say this is actually an artistic use of 3d you need to see

it if you're gonna see it you should see it in 3d on the biggest screen in the way like gravity was the perfect confluence of everyone being like this film is rip-roaring like popcorn entertainment. It's also very sort of like canny and sort of like brilliantly constructed. The 3D is done with real intent. That is how this film is meant to be seen. I feel, you know, obviously Life of Pi was a similar thing. Avatar is the most obvious example of it. But there were all these cases of like it

being both it's like oh it's well reviewed it's taken seriously as a movie it gets oscar nominations or wins it's also a big hit and i think they thought the walk could be a budget version of that which is why their marketing was so based around like look at the fucking buildings in the sky because they were trying to sell this idea of like you won't believe how this thing fucking which is why their marketing was so based around like, look at the fucking buildings in the sky. Cause they were trying to sell this idea of like, you won't believe how this thing fucking looks more than really selling the story. It's not just the 3d.

There's a movie once a year, Griff. And I'm sure you're like where it's like not being sold as a genre or a franchise or a star driven movie even, but it's like, this is the unique visual spectacle of the year right like that there's just some yes there's just nothing like it we can't describe it you know that and like that's that was billy lynn of course like that's a lot of but for a couple years there

that was 3d was obviously a parcel with 3d yes absolutely uh in the 2000 2000 what if i told you this was a post-conversion 3d is it really this was not shot native stereoscopic wow and they took such care and affinity towards making it not only because one of the things that they talk about is their goal in this film with all the special effects including the 3d was not about photorealism. It was about imbuing, communicating the feeling of being up that high and New York. And they're like color. Certain things are not actually photo real to how New York is,

but they feel more like New York than if we did it photo real. And the, the, the 3D conversion was one of those things where they were like, they broke a lot of rules of physics and of the literal reality because they realized they had to make it feel like it was high up

and had that feeling of vertigo more than they had to actually communicate literally what it's like at that height. In fact, they took a helicopter ride to just not only take reference photos and things like that, but to just experience that feeling of height from that exact point in the sky

so that they could use that as a reference for how they needed all the 3D conversion and all of their shots up high to feel, which I think is so interesting and beautiful. But you and I contend, J.D., we both agree that coralline is the best use of modern 3d and it's similar to what they do in this movie which is using depth in a very uh expressionistic way it is and and it's it like watching this for as much as i don't really like this movie on whole, I look at elements like that and I'm just like, man, it's a fucking bummer that 3D got like choked, you know, that that it got overplayed and watered down and people are so burned out on it because you watch this and you're like, even if the movie doesn't work in totality, everything that works in it is because it is thinking with an added dimension of storytelling. It's not just a little sort of like bonus feature on it.

They're really using depth as an additional tool in their storytelling language. Now. Okay. The next thing that I. Okay. Am I allowed to. Can I. what do you want to talk about because i want to talk about the twin towers but that's what i was gonna that's what i was gonna bring up next but first i want to do this oh here's the bell david looks so excited

drop pw's ladies phonetic e add the thing you might use to catch a hummingbird or kitty. The diner's owner in mainframe. And this might seem crazy. Sid's take on Beale. But make it more lazy. So. So. Couldn't parse that one at all.

Kitty, by the way, incredible. The Twin Towers are in this movie the world trade center and it's this this is just i mean i may be even repeating myself i believe this is basically what my review said but like it's so spooky and evocative to see them right and those shots where you're like going up them and like my parents work downtown like i remember you know the world trade center very well and i remember the first time i went back there after 9 11 and like it was so bright all of a sudden because the sun was visible like which was so eerie yeah it's an incredible thing to think about i think they did a very good job replicating it. You know, yeah, yeah.

But then also there's like the thing where Philip Petit is like, and my ID card says forever. And I'm like, you're taking me out of how spooky and strange this is. And that's how I feel about so much of this movie. It's like when he is on the wire and it's so tranquil and it's so frightening at the same time and you're like oh my god this is like incredible to think about and then he's like narrating and the cops are like hey forget about it and i'm like stop taking me out of this zemeckis like you've created something that is so wonderful to look at and think about, and you're ruining it almost every second it's happening. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. But I had almost the exact opposite reaction, is that I actually felt like this was one of my favorite post-9-11 depictions of the trade towers that I've seen. I know what you mean yeah because i didn't feel like they languished in the oh and then they came down or like it didn't end in like a title card that was like in 2001 like you know what i mean like it and it didn't even have that like you know i feel like movies have done the thing for so long where they have this sort of like false imagery of 9-11 where it's like a cloud or a shadow sort of imbues the idea of the smoke from that day. And they have these hints of the ominous nature. And I feel like what I actually liked was that it didn't feel like it relished so much in the 9-11-ness of the towers.

It felt like it was celebrating them as these entities. And I actually felt the opposite way from that ending line of when he's like, and the thing said forever. And I thought it was about to be this ending thing that was like, but of course I couldn't, you know, whatever. And the fact that it just left it at this sort of like optimistic, like, oh, I could go back forever kind of thing. For some reason that it worked on me.

And I was sort of like, oh, thank God that they didn't go down this like in remembrance of the mighty Twin Towers. You know, it kind of chokes me up despite myself. But I think it's despite myself. I think it's a bit of a corny one. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I should just give myself over to it. This is my question with so many of these sincere works yeah sometimes of course they totally work on me and i love how sincere they are and other times with the walk for example

i'm just like i i think this is this is too so like whatever you know you're i'm not emotionally connecting to this i don't know well i mean we've also talked about like zemeckis starts to fall into similar traps that late spielberg does where it's just like there's so much on the line the expectations are so high the budgets are high he doesn't fully trust the audience he can't totally let go he needs to always slather some additional shit on there whether it's like the the extra endings whether it's the overly expository dialogue whether it's like really broad comedy there's always this feeling of just like i want to make sure i have them in the palm of my hands yeah and i i feel like this movie is subtle for zemeckis especially the last 20 minutes i feel like for zemeckis, especially the last 20 minutes. I feel like for Zemeckis plays subtler because there are things that he

could have hit over the head that I don't feel like he does. And I, I agree that it, it, it does tend towards being very broad and very on the nose and a little saccharine at times. But if I found myself able to give myself over to it and just sort of enjoy it.

And I find it, it's not that, you know, I wouldn't say that I love this movie or this is one of my favorite movies or movies going to stick with me forever, but it's a movie that I actually enjoyed watching, especially when that second hour kicks up. And if I just sort of give myself over to it,

which I think is the power of Joseph Gordon-Levitt too, is I'm like, well, if he's enjoying this, I might as well enjoy it. It's sheer will, right? You well enjoy it. Just sheer will. Right. You have to get on board with him

because, right, he's having so much fun. Yeah. Right. I feel like Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the Robert Zemeckis of actors and vice versa. Ooh. That's a take. That's a big take.

That's a big take. JD, I have a question for you. Not in terms of oeuvre, but in terms of tone. Yeah. Hit record, Bobby. J.D., have you seen Allied?

I have not. So, Allied will be our next episode. I'm a big Allied fan. We've been building up to this one for a while. I have not rewatchwatched it david saw it didn't like it at the time i'm hoping that he will be converted on this episode that i will still like it on rewatch as much as i did the first time but a lot of what you're saying there is also a strange irony the fact that i saw it days after donald trump's election and i will be

watching it again day you know whatever days weeks after joseph biden's election it's just crazy right but anyway sure allied is the movie right after this for zemeckis and it's far and away my favorite of late period zemeckis but a lot of the things you are saying in defense of this movie which i watched for the second time tonight and still fundamentally doesn't work for me overall right despite my passion for elements of it. Allied works for me in all those levels. And part of what I like about Allied is the weird stylized unreality of the visuals. Which I know turned a lot of people off. That Allied is also very CGI.

Very sort of like painterly. Which I think is him sort of doing a digital version of like heightened rear projection, matte painting, sort of like 1940s drama visuals and those techniques. But I think that film has a little more confidence of tone because it's like we know what we're doing. It's an adult story. It's a smaller story. It's got an easier emotional spine to it.

doing it's an adult story it's a smaller story it's got an easier emotional spine to it um i i still think this is this weird like it's such an odd transition for him out of the three mocap movies in a row plus the two mocap movies he produced through his production company at that time plus the other ones he had in development that were going to happen before Disney ended their deal. He kind of like returns to live action in this weird zone and he like makes Flight, which is hard R. He makes this movie, which is like, you know, a remake of a documentary, but kind of more an adult minded thing. It's also a soft PG, this movie. That's what I was going to this movie that's what i was gonna say pg right it's both like sort of

designed to be a highbrow adult popcorn movie but also is totally family friendly it's like very much a visual spectacle 3d like fucking uh eye candy movie and then he goes back to allied which is like i feel like his most sober adult movie in a lot of ways, even if you don't think it works. And then Marwyn is just like the worst traits of all three movies rolled into one, combined with the mocap stuff. this movie sort of represents what my hope for big directors a lot of times ends up being. Like, I think we've talked about this, Tim Burton, where like my dream is that Tim Burton would just make like a $10 million movie.

He made one that's called Big Eyes. No one respected him. Yeah, I know. But something I, that was the bummer. It's like, oh, we did it and it didn't quite, it didn't do it for me. But I just want, I like when big directors take all that they've learned and do something that forces them to work within a box and then see what comes out of that and i think some really interesting stuff has come out of the walk

and the second part of this i want to say is um you know i i think so much of the discourse of you know film these days is like you know down to the the rotten of the discourse of, you know, film these days is like, you know, down to the rotten tomatoes of it all. Is it good or is it bad? And for me, I think the thing that I keep trying to impart,

especially when I come on blank check, is that even a movie that if you don't love it in totality, if there's some sort of passion behind it, that's what's beautiful and interesting about the process. And that's the sort of the glimmering Horton hears a who is like, someone's shouting like, Hey, look at this, we poured some passion into it. And for the walk, I think it really comes in the form of the sort of the visual story that they're telling in that last hour, and throughout and how they approach

things and how they problem solve. And I think that's, what's really beautiful. And so, you know, I just want to make sure that in doing all this, that it's, I, I don't think it's worth pigeonholing to me of like,

do I love this movie? Do I hate this movie? It's like, there's stuff I like, there's stuff that I don't like. Um, but I think there's a lot of beautiful things and I wish more people would find in the movies that maybe they don't love the one or two things that they can see is that sort of passion bubbling over but

that's that's that's me from someone who makes stuff hoping that that's how people can engage with but i feel like david and i have talked about this a lot and like david your day job is as a critic your responsibility is like people read your reviews to try to decide whether or not they should see this movie right like ostensibly the idea is sure yeah yeah there are other there are other aspects of it well famously famously you boiled on every movie to whether it's a quote a nut or a butt yes the classic simsian nut or butt scam great now that's a thing nut or butt all right go well we finish your thought i have something to say but finish your thought griff but and also david prepare it prepare to determine whether this is a nut or a butt in the end yeah you got

to give it another butt rating at the end of the episode and if there's something in between another butt you got to figure out what that is okay maybe it's another butter look david what i was gonna say is uh my buddy uh jesse jesse ryan knight uh uh good guy uh one time said to me like the thing i like about your guys podcast is it uh and and you and i talk about this david like a lot of times we only figure out what's working on the podcast when other people say things to us. And we're like, oh, that is a thing

we should double down on, you know, that we haven't been doing consciously. But he said this thing to me, he was like, it's not really until I started listening to your podcast that I realized there's something good in every movie. Right, yes. That he liked that we would have a sort of generosity. Right, that like even movies we shit on would be like that one performance is good or that score slaps

and in the same way i feel like when we talk about our favorite movies we will highlight the things that like don't work in them even if we think they're ostensibly perfect films but i do think that's like a big part of what we try to do with this show and then sometimes i'll see people be like oh they're such easy lays. They like everything. And it's like, well, I mean, we don't end the episode with a 10 point rating. And I feel like a lot of times

if I actually assigned a number score to movies, people would be surprised what my actual rating is relative to how I talk about it on the show. But it's like, I don't think our goal here is to say like, nut or butt, you know, this isn't the Atlantic. That's not a requisite. I think our goal here is to like talk about movies in the way that JD is saying from different

perspectives, David being a critic and me working on stuff and our guests, whether they're filmmakers or writers or what have you, to try to like find the things that are interesting about the movie and why it was made and how it was made and all that stuff. Well, you said I just find that a lot more interesting than just saying like this movie blows or it rules. Although we certainly do both of those things at times. And don't forget that Ben also compares the movies to his how they resonate with his traumatic childhood. Yeah, a key detail. I mean, Ben, Ben is but Ben is the emotional entry point of the show. Ben is really the protagonist. He's the audience surrogate character.

I take it you didn't watch The Walk, correct? I did. I actually, listen, out of three years of doing these, this is the first time I walked The Walk. Wow. To talk The Walk. Right. You never, right.

Fair enough. I wouldn't touch Billy Lynn with a fucking, whatever length pole this guy used yeah but if you took if you took mushrooms and saw it in 120 i i think you would that's like right you would have walked out of your clothes and ended up in like a sony office building i mean ben ben saw gemini man with us high frame rate 3d and your response was yeah that makes sense you were like a lover of 40x i say it's the future cinema but absolutely should i say the thing i was gonna say it's it's now reacting to something 20 minutes ago okay

yeah say i just just wanted to please something you guys were talking about you know a billion years ago um reminded me that i did interview robert zemeckis as i'm sure i've discussed before for the film allied from our tough interview oh for ally for allied for allied he was a tough interview he was ornery i didn't have a lot of time with him and it was sort of earlier in my time with the atlantic before i was just kind of like now i would just be like i only will talk to him for a while or not at all like no thing you know what i mean like because yeah you don't get anywhere if you only talk for like 15 20 minutes like it's just you know you're just one of a million people they talk to but i did ask him what griffin is saying like i was like your last film was so joyful and upbeat and lovely in terms of celebrating this guy why is this and allied is so dark and

downcast and and much more like you know shades of gray and he did cite something that i i like to think about a lot when i'm thinking about filmographies and we you know we you know the the classic truffaut quote his response is you know truffaut says every filmmaker's decision to make a film is always a reaction to the film they just made, right? And that does, that does, he's here, and he was like, I don't know if I do that, but maybe I do that. And like, but that does feel like what Zemeckis does, right? Like more than anything, if you're trying to figure this guy out, he is either encouraged or discouraged by the last thing he made and like swerving or leaning in and this thing that i've cited many times that he says in interviews i i thrive on

uh tension and combativeness creatively and i struggle when people trust that they think i can pull something off so there is that hyper reactionary thing to him of like what you're saying, JD coming in and saying like, I'm going to do this story this way at this budget is very much. I think him trying to create circumstances where he will have tension and executives don't trust him because he'd rather that than people going like you're Robert Zemeckis. You know what you're doing?

Hands off. Yeah, absolutely. Now, I would like to play the box office game, but JD is getting his bell. This is a perfect time for it, I would say, as we transition to the box office game. Okay, he's whistling. The bell has been rung. I know you're eager and don't want to wait,

but I have bad news. We did lock the gate. You now have the spot, but how to get in? It requires reflection, but not Fong or Blin. It's simple indeed and requires no honor. Just the first two words spoken by Brian Connors.

With that you'll be in, dancing like Ellen, Shaw shanking yourself out of a shuftan heaven i i mean i there there's moments there where i was like oh oh maybe and then no and then it would it would lose me immediately jd are we supposed to be solving something or is this something that our listeners are supposed to solve? I don't know. That's so interesting you bring that up. I don't know what you're

referring to. Yeah, what are you guys talking about? I have no idea what you're talking about. But maybe you could check your email? Oh boy. Okay. Oh, I'm seeing that there's an email. Okay. Should I read aloud what the subject line is? Yeah, open the email.

Open the email. Yeah, open the email. The email subject line is envelope. Oh email open the i open the email the email subject line is envelope oh there's an attachment a pdf can i read this uh i'd love i'd love uh uh griffin to read this oh my god so there is a drawing uh it's it's a it's a crumpled up piece of paper. It's a crumpled up piece of paper. It's been unfurled. It's been scanned in. And there's a little stick man with a big belly. It looks a little bit like a snowman, one could say.

Right. And it says- He's got a sort of blank expressionless face. Yes. You know, he's got a- Yes. It says, Misty Blankie blankie no r it doesn't say mr blankie it says misty blankie misty blankie you could have stopped me i gave you all the clues

i recorded a secret hour-long interview with Kevin Bailey, VFX supervisor for The Walk. The only way to access it is via the clues left in your podcast, XOXO Gossip Man. Now that's the part I like, is XOXO Gossip Man. I think it's been too long. I was waiting for society to address that balance. Kevin Bailey, is that how you pronounce that? I just want to make sure his name is pronounced right. Yes.

So basically, as I started doing my research for The Walk, like I said, it was not a film that I had much. I stumbled upon a bunch of interviews with Kevin Bailey, the VFX supervisor for The Walk. And his passion and his expertise was really interesting. And he was a sort of Horton, here's a who that I heard sort of chirping that I was like, okay, there's something here. And when I started diving, I uncovered his career, which is so fascinating and interesting. And we don't get into it too much in the interview, so I will talk about it here. He was a high school student who sort of convinced his high school to buy him some computer graphics equipment,

him and his best friend. And they made a little demo of these sort of like spaceships racing through their school, representing the sophomore class, the junior class, the senior class, the freshman class.

And they did such a good job and pushed their, what they had the limits that Lucasfilm actually invited them to come tour the Skywalker ranch. His first ever credit is Phantom Menace, pre-visualization slash effects artist. That's his first credit. Much like that's where our podcast started, David. So Griffin, here's the...

After he graduated high school, Lucasfilm hired him and his best friend out of high school to instead of go to college, just go straight to Lucasfilm and work on the phantom menace which they did and then from there he became this person the vfx world who sort of jumped from place to place he went to a place called the orphanage and then he went to frame store and then from there or not frame store image movers and then from there he uh founded something called atomic fiction and if you look

he is a person who he has touched or had a hand in some of the best vfx that has been done in the past you know 20 years and i'm seeing all the films all the films that i think are the high watermark he sort of was a part of or had something to do with or oftentimes was the vfx supervisor on so something what movies sin city is on here yeah jd what are some movies you like um the caribbean movies he had world's end right at world's end is the best looking one superman i mean at the time what they were doing was absolutely next level stuff he's worked on a lot of the zemeckis films and a lot of Zemeckis projects as Zemeckis sort of like attempted all this crazy stuff.

He has worked on every single Zemeckis since Christmas Carol, including Marge Needs Moms as a, you know, Zemeckis producer movie. He worked on Flight, Allied, Walk, Marwen, and Witches. Yeah. And it was just really interesting. And so I reached out

to him. I was basically like, hey, can we record a secret podcast? And he was like, I don't know what that is, but yes. And we had a lovely conversation. We got deep into a bunch of details show, when you watch a movie and you like something that was done in the movie, I highly recommend trying to figure out who was the reason that that happened and remembering them and following their career a little bit. And I think Kevin Bailey is a name that you guys should remember and keep an eye on

because I find that when he has his hand in special effects, whether the movies turn out good or not, he has done something interesting with how he's approached the special effects. And beyond that, something that he's done that's really interesting that I think is fascinating is famously in the film world, there's a lot of issues with VFX studios not being financially viable. not being financially viable. And his whole thing is about trying to create financially viable VFX studios and finding creative ways to solve problems to make things viable. And one of the things that he created that The Walk was like sort of one of the first deployments of, and so was Flight, was this system called Conductor that his team created, which is fascinating. And to briefly go into that, basically in the VFX world, famously, if you want to, you do all this crazy work that requires all this calculation.

And then what you do is you have a render farm, which is basically like a warehouse full of hard drives that are doing all of the processing of all of your data. And those render farms are wildly expensive and huge. And like, there's certain things that only places like ILM can do. And that is their biggest overhead is they're paying millions of dollars to just do upkeep on these render farms that mostly just sit idle. And so he created this software called Conductor that I think is really interesting, that I think is really interesting, which is it cloud sources rendering. And so he uses Google,

their collective sort of cloud processing system and leases processors to render single frames. So it'll be like, he's gonna lease a million processors to render a single frame for 45 minutes. And the cost of doing that is way, way less than if you just had to upkeep this thing that you're only using at the end of production when you're rendering stuff. And he's done a lot of stuff that has to do with changing workflows and figuring out interesting ways to do stuff. And he is really interesting. I love his work.

My conversation with him was fantastic. And this is not something that I knew before. It was truly just as I did research and I saw him talking, getting into what he believed and what he thought was interesting and cool and the way he approached stuff. I was just like, I've got to talk to this guy. And I sent him an email and he was kind enough to give me time in between his other Robert Zemeckis project that he's currently working on. And just to be clear, I emailed Ben ahead of time to make sure this is OK. So I just want to ask two questions to clarify. by yourself in coordination with Ben that is currently being hosted somewhere mysteriously that people will have to use the four riddles,

five riddles that you have read aloud in this episode to ascertain. It was five? Yes. Was it five? Yes, there's five riddles. Okay, okay. Okay, but you're telling me

by the time this episode comes out, it will be housed on the internet somewhere. Yes, it is on the internet and everything you need to find it is contained within the clues in this episode. Can I hear it or must I solve the clues? Okay. I respect it. Just asking. I mean, it's up to Ben.

I would happily send it to you guys if you just wanted to hear it to hear the conversation. No. Maybe we should let him. No. No, I don't think you should no i can figure it out myself or let the reddit figure it out and maybe piggyback off that or whatever however it is gonna go we literally recorded it the same morning as we were as today uh this morning kevin was we're supposed to record yesterday but robert zemeckis called him in to Santa Barbara to his office and so he had to drive to Santa Barbara yesterday

so he was like can we do it tomorrow at 8am so we recorded it this morning he was so kind of me so many times you could have been like no it's Thanksgiving week and I'm making a movie and this is a secret podcast but instead he was like,

let's figure it out. Maybe we do it now. Maybe we do that. So he was the nicest guy and his work blows me away. We stand a legend. We have to get him on now. Well, whatever.

I'll listen. Well, I'm going to listen. I want to go in. He is on in a way. Yeah, in a way he's on. In a way he's never been further from being on the podcast jd uh second question of clarification is gossip man the t-shirt

yes that has to be that has interesting i know or i or it could also be that snowman guy no no no this is the t-shirt as i imagine it it's the snowman guy exactly as you drew him so it's not yeah copyright infringement on the poster it's that man yeah hit film the snowman um and then it just says wait i need to call it up to get this exactly right it just says you could have stopped me i gave you all the clues xoxo gossip man right like that's i think he has to say i think he has to say misty blankie i'm sorry misty blankie i'm just saying you could have cut out the more procedural i recorded a secret hour long you know like that doesn't need to be on the t-shirt

but i you need everything else i've got two pictures of two other things i'd like included on the shirt okay one is the word sploosh and two is philippe petite's entire intro speech at the beginning all right okay okay wait a second wait a second wait a second no griffin don't because remember printing on the back of a shirt is a whole economic proposition that i believe it's a lot more expensive i'm aware i didn't say back i didn't say back you can fit this on the front baby no but i'm saying look i'm just saying look i love bits i love i love what you're pointing out here i'm just saying this i'm looking at this letter this thing is dynamite we we can't fuck around right now we're sitting on a cash cow okay okay and just this image with the you know the way the couple lines are moved but that's why david world on fire i'm that's why part of me is part of me is questioning if we're if we're if we're playing with fire by removing the lines um yeah uh i know

come on we gotta remove you know just just clean it because like look the snowman poster that's a movie no one has seen anyone who's seen it does not remember it that poster is burned into everyone's minds for eternity, correct? Correct. It was sparse. It was effective. Hey, it's Griffin again from the future. So we had a whole extended riff here, brainstorming what the merch for Talking the Walk would be, including looking at a catalog of things that Night Owls, the print manufacturing company

we were working with these days, could produce and could print things on. So we were talking about, oh, should we make bell keychains with Talking the Walk on it? I say we. I was pitching a lot of dumb things. I think it wasn't very interesting.

I've implored Ben to cut it down. So this is a Band-Aid piece to cut that whole thing down. All you need to know is the name of the show is Blank Check. Now, all you need to know is that we're just selling the one item. It's going to be the shirt of the letter, the Misty Blanky shirt. Anyway, back to the episode october 2nd 2015 is when this film came out in 450 theaters like it was a imax only release right right right it was an imax only first week and they were trying the ghost pro thing right uh We should... How much did this movie make, Griffin?

In total? Domestic. Like one Black Cat to do seven, eight? It got to 10. It beat Black Cat. It beat Black Cat. It made 10 domestic. It made 61 worldwide.

It was not a hit. Although, as JD has noted, it was not an incredibly expensive movie, but still, I think it was disappointing. Yes. Sure. Yes. Sure. Yes. All right.

But The Walk opens at number 11. It is not going to feature into the box office game. Number one, a good movie, a big original fun. Oh, not original. It's an adaptation of a book, but a big fun hit. Sort of adventure movie for everyone to enjoy. Best Picture nominee. It's an adventure movie?

Is it The Martian? It's The Martian. Yes, there you go. Yeah. You got it. That is the funniest movie of the year. It's so funny. It's the funniest movie of the last five years.

It's a laugh riot. Obviously, our sides were all split upon exiting the theater from The Martian. The Martian is the one where it's the it's the bunch of little aliens that come to earth and they sort of have foul mouths and they have to fix their spaceship and get back no oh that's spaced invaders sorry spaced invaders i think made slightly less of a cultural impact than the martian why is Space Invaders come up like four times in this miniseries?

Space Invaders was a movie that I watched several times as a kid and it is a weird one. It's one of those early 90s Disney movies where they were just like, yeah, I don't know. What are you doing over there?

Fine, we'll put it out. Weirdly, I somehow stumbled upon the director of Space Invaders on Twitter and he's got like 200 followers and like tweets a lot. And I'm like, you're the director of Space Invaders. You should be in a mansion somewhere. He directed Angus and that Star Wars movie that's never gotten completed.

Yeah. Patrick Reed Johnson. I'm obsessed with this guy. Ben, have you seen Space Invaders? I have not. Ben, this movie is so up. It's a weird movie about foul-mouthed aliens

that crash land on Earth and have to like... And it's one of those movies from like the 90s that it really landed between being a kid's movie and like a weird teenager movie. And it's...

I just remember being disconcerted as a kid, but still watching it like three times because like, I was so mystified by the alien creatures. I'm looking at it now. Wow. Yeah. This is really strange. I'll check it out.

I think you should take some sort of substance that's safe and relaxing, but opens your brain and then just watch the heck out of space invaders and report back to us. Maybe tag that onto this episode. Just your sort of, your sort of take on space. I think this is long enough. We'll make it a 20.

We'll make it a resi for next year. Okay. Number two, the box office. It's a sequel. It's a film we've covered on box office. It's a sequel. It's a film we've covered on this show. It's a sequel.

It's a film we've covered on this show. What number? Is it a two? Two. It's a two. Same director as the one? Yep.

So we've covered both. And there was a three and the director made that two and we've covered that as well. And is it done now or do we think there's going to be another oh there's going to be another it could be another oh yeah oh yeah so this is a two there's been a three there's gonna be a four you can't wait it's not oh oh it's hotel transylvania 2 there you go ht2 HT2, we checked in. We checked in.

That's Sony as well. So Sony is two big 3D movies in theaters at the same time. Well, big is a word that you could use for one of those movies. And another one is a movie that's not succeeding with audiences. But whatever. Number three of the box office. Let's see it's expanding this week and it's doing fairly well it's a drama like a crime you know very dark very intense thriller drama expanding doing well big director but he's kind of emerging with this movie i would say as an otter type the emergence

is it sicario it's sicario i mean like is it the emergence no obviously he's made big movies before it but like it's kind of right it's kind of where people are like i guess we take him seriously officially right like people forget that thaters was like a big hit. Prisoners was like a solid sized hit, but it was kind of disdained. I don't know. Yeah. I feel like it was not critical.

I love that movie. I feel like it was not very critically respected, but that's a movie that like opened to number one at, with $20 million. Right. Right. Cause that stars, you know,

it's about prisoners. What if there's a prisoner? Number four. Wow. had stars. You know, I don't know. It's about prisoners. What if there's a prisoner? Number four. Wow, we've really covered a lot of this box office. Number four is a film we've covered. It's a comedy. A light comedy. Meatballs 3.

It's not Meatballs 3, which I believe is not a movie. Okay. And it's not a James Earl Brooks. And it's not a Cameron Crowe. Is it The Intern? Meatballs 3 is a movie, by the way. I'm so sorry. It is The Intern. I think Meatballs 3

features an ant. It's the one that features the alien that gets stuck at camp. Why do you only want to invoke alien comedies? Wait, Ben, have you seen that one? There's a scene where the alien gets stuck at camp and he smokes weed and he goes, ooh, and he floats into that one? There's a scene where the alien gets stuck at camp and he smokes weed and he goes,

ooh, and he floats into the air. That's a good bit. Meatballs is one of those franchises that just turned into softcore porn the longer it went on, right? Meatballs 3 is the first one rated R and 4 is just like a direct-to-video skin flick, right? It just kept... It's weird. Yeah, cory feldman and jack nance aka eraser head two legends yeah uh number five is it's a it's the middle entry in a trilogy it's easily i wouldn't i don't know about easily

it i think it's the best of the three This is a trilogy that I feel like is already forgotten. Scorch Trials? Yes. It's the Scorch Trials. Yes. It's the Scorch Trials. We face the Scorch Trials. Every Blank Check episode is a Scorch Trial in and of itself.

Right? Wouldn't you say? I know that one because weirdly, as you said, we've covered a lot of movies. And every time this sort of box office period comes up, you always describe it the same way. Forgotten Trilogy, it's the best one of the three. I'm a broken record. What can I say? Rosa Salazar, Outstanding in the Scorch Trials.

Love her in that movie. Ben, it's good, right? Yeah. I don't know what happened. Ben's looking at the meatballs thing I sent Ben a clip from meatballs 2 of the alien with the Wii

okay so this is from 2 it's from 2 okay oh my god I just didn't think the alien was going to look like that that's a real space invader if i've ever seen one oh shit uh so we're done well i mean well i mean we're we're done with the main part of the podcast right this episode's done but the journey is just beginning for many

and well because i mean one of these episodes is never done until we end on David's classic ender. The nutter butt scale. Is this a nut or is it a butt? Is it a nut or a butt, David? For one, I'm very excited to listen to whatever is out there, J.D. I say this sincerely.

Thank you. It was actually really fun, and I appreciated Ben giving me the thumbs up to do it. And Kevin is so kind to have given me his time. And as someone who just – I just spent a lot of time talking to people who worked on Manc, all the craft people. It is always, I find, really interesting and fun to talk to those people because they are at the top of their craft. They're very smart, but they don't get interviewed as much,

so they have lots to say. Like, usually, you know, it's just, there's a lot, you know. Anyway. Am I supposed to- I made him give me an exclusive at the end of the interview, too. Exclusive?

Something that's never been said about the film. Well, all right. Wow. at the end of the interview too. Something that's never been said about the film. Well, all right. Wow. Am I to rate whether the episode is a nut or a butt?

Well, I mean, classic. I'd love to do it how you've always done it, which is Ben performs the theme song. Griffin does this sort of the VO setup to it that really builds it up, and then you deliver the nut or butt. Yeah, so let's just do the usual. You ready to go, boys? Just the usual. Start the song.

Just some cycling. It is a nut or butt. David's gonna say if this movie is a nut or a butt? David's gonna say if this movie's a nut or a butt. It's a nut. Okay. Wow. That was good, right?

So I guess for future reference, the thing we need to establish is whether nut or butt is better. We'll figure that out later. Okay. Well, so then let me, let me end the show then, I guess. Right.

I do it. There's nothing else that I have. Well, JD, thank you for being here. Thank you for talking the walk. Thank you for launching a mystery that will keep people, uh,

occupied over the holidays. Thank you. Uh, and, thank you all for listening through this weird, wacky year. And we'll be back next year, next week

with more Zemeckis finishing that out and we're going to cover the Wonder Woman and Tenet. Two movies we thought we were going to have seen in theaters months ago. David saw one of them months ago, but now we'll finally be able to talk about now that they're available at home under safe circumstances. So at this point in time when we're recording, we don't know exactly when we're going to release those.

But stay tuned on social media and stuff like that. We'll communicate it to you further. But know that those are coming in 2020 long. One, along with the rest of Zemeckis. Hi, it's Griffin from the future. Again, a comedy rule of threes. But also just, there are three things I fucked up that I need to offer addendums to in this episode. So here's the final order of what you can expect at the beginning of 2021. First week of January, the first episode. So here's the final order of what you can expect at the beginning of 2021. First week

of January, the first episode is going to be Wonder Woman 1984 main feed. Okay. Then, so that's dropping midnight, you know, Saturday, January 2nd to January 3rd. Okay, and the following weekend, midnight on the 9th into the 10th, is going to be Tenet. And then we're going to Allied. We're picking up on Zemeckis. We're finishing it off with those last two. I don't know if that's awkward. We were going

back and forth on things, but it just felt like everyone's going to watch Tenet and Wonder Woman over the holidays. Why not strike while the iron's hot, especially since people are losing their gosh darn minds over Wonder Woman. I can't remember the last time people were this incensed about a movie movie so it feels like maybe we shouldn't wait two weeks to release that episode okay um i hope you've liked this episode uh i think it's good but also i mean it's like at this point the talking the walk thing is like a bit like a bit about. A movie that people don't really care about being treated like its episode was a huge event, and then we didn't know how to repeat it for the second year and the walk, the walking, the talk or whatever we did last year ended up, I think, turning out really well and being a little more emotionally resonant than we expected

and then that kind of fucked us because then we're just like now there's like an actual expectation that this is like the big episode of the year and it's just talking about a movie that was not very successful I'm excited to hear the bonus ep

that JD did maybe that maybe cumulatively, if you put the two together, then it will feel like a massive event, uh, worthy of, of the walk title, the walk franchise. Um, he's offered to send me the file. And I said, I don't want to, I want the experience of doing the work to actually find the thing myself. But I know in actuality, I probably am just going to wait two hours, if even that, for someone on the subreddit to crack it and then just link it that way. But I just felt like I shouldn't cheat. At least let someone else do the work. Okay, I don't know how to go back to the episode now, but... And thanks to Lee Montgomery for our theme song

and Joe Bowen, Pat Rounds, for artwork. Go to blankies.reddit.com for some real nerdy shit and go to the Blank Check Shopify page, and as always, why? That is the question people ask me most. Pourquoi? Why? For what? Why do you walk on the wire?

Why do you tempt fate? Why do you risk death? But I don't think of it this way. I never even say this word, death, l'amour. Yes, oh, okay, I said it once, or maybe 30 times just now, but watch. I never even say this word, death, love, more. Yes, oh, okay. I said it once or maybe three times just now, but watch. I will not say it again. Instead, I use the opposite word, life. For me to walk on the wire, this is life.

Say love you. Psst. Hi, everybody. It's JD. Don't tell Griffin or David, but I'm speaking back into the podcast. I realized that I was so excited to talk about the walk that we didn't do any of the bits, which is fine because I think a lot of people are annoyed by the bits. But I think some people like them, so I figured I'd just squeeze them in here. So here they are. Hi, I'm JD Amato, and I love movies. Blanket, thank it.

I'm JD Vance, and I love Gooby. it uh i'm jd vance and i love gooby hank it make it that was a new one uh david grew up in england dislington dislington uh david you grew up in new york did you know spider-man that was a new one that i was going to workshop i think it'd be funnier if david could react to it because it's like the whole point is that it's sort of stupid and uh yeah that that one probably shouldn't have been on this list. It's a Storm Media report. Keiko, Topsy, Bart the Bear is the third tallest famous actor, beating out Bart the Bear in the number four slot.

The older Bart the Bear is taller than the younger Bart the Bear by eight and a half inches. Fellini, Half My Mac. I think that's most of them, to be honest. But now I just sort of have the podcast and I can sort of do whatever I want. And David Griffin don't know what I want to say. Well, this was a rough year. Personally, for being honest, personally, I had a rough end of 2018 and then 2019 are sort of healing from 2018. And then 2020 was going to be the year that I sort of got back on the horse. And obviously, 2020 went sideways. But what it made me

realize is there's a lot of things in my life that were consistent that I really relied on and didn't realize it. And those little consistent things, now that they're gone, made me appreciate the small consistent things that I still had. One of those is Blank Check. And even though it's just something as small as a podcast, I think that can have a big impact on so many other things that have to change. So I'm sure it hasn't been easy to make the show during the pandemic. I'm sure it was very stressful.

So I guess I'll just thank the Blank Check team, everyone who's ever touched Blank Check and its community for loving movies during this wild year. I think 2021 is going to be the year that like Roger Bannister, Blank Check breaks the four hour barrier. Some people say it's not possible, but I think they can do it. I believe it with my heart. But anyways, thank you, Blankcheck.

And in 2021, if it's safe and this pandemic has passed and there is enough vaccines for everyone, let's all go to the movies. All right, that's it. Blank it, thank it, Hank it, make it. Also, please fight for a Jacques Tati miniseries. let's all go to the movies. All right. That's it. Blanket. Thank it. Hank. It make it. Ooh. Also please fight for Jacques Tati mini series. Uh, thank you.

All right. That's it. Is that it? I think that's it. Uh, I love labyrinth. Okay. Goodbye.

Hi there. My name is Alameen Abdul Mahmood. I am the host of the CBC podcast commotion. That's a show where we talk about all things pop culture. We talk about what people are watching, what people are listening to. We get into everything from celebrity beefs to TikTok trends. And look, we're not afraid to get a little controversial. We're talking about things like the Oscar snubs or is Drake really a hip-hop artist?

Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.