Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Year of Living Dangerously with Tracy Letts

Episode Date: April 5, 2026

Tracy Letts - Pulitzer and Tony winner, but most importantly The King of Physical Media - makes his much-anticipated Blank Check debut on an episode about a film that has no legitimate BluRay release. The irony! This week, we're discussing Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously, a romantic drama set against the backdrop of Indonesian political unrest. We're discussing the star-power of Mel Gibson, the improbable performance of Linda Hunt, and, because this is Blank Check - the trench run at the end of Star Wars. Plus, we present the King of Physical Media with some meticulously chosen discs. Log your physical media using CLZ Check out Night Owl Video if your are in the Brooklyn area. ⁠Listen to The 1988 Movie Draft, The 1982 Movie Draft and The Legal Draft Episodes of The Big Picture Read the Linda Hunt Interview Listen to Mike Duncan's Revolutions Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A podcast caught in the fire of revolution. So that's the pie. I've been going tagline heavy on this series, mostly. Not because I'm trying to avoid doing an Australian accent. I could nail it if I wanted to. You ever done an Australian accent? I haven't. I'm told that the secret is really.

Really? Riley. Riley. I feel like the one that's gotten really big when I see doing like Australian accent Instagrams is no. No. No. We're doing it terribly. But that there's a no with an R.

We've been really upsetting the entire continent, this entire series, just so you know what you're walking into Tracy. Luckily, this movie isn't set in Australia, but we have been, you know, our knowledge gaps about Australian history and culture have been exposed a little bit. Look, we thought. Yeah, I've heard some of this, some of your Australian prejudice. I mean, let's get into it.

I admit it to it because I grew up in Britain. Yes, okay, so you've heard, yeah. I'm copping to it, you know? And we thought it was a positive stereotype to assume that upon meeting, every Australian takes out a knife and compares whose knife is bigger than the others. We did not think that was offensive.

Have you ever been to Australia? I have. You know what? This has not come up much in this series. You've been multiple times? Or just the one time? I've been two times. Right. Both for work. No, one's for fun.

I had a good friend growing up whose family relocated to Australia. And I went to visit him when I was a teenager, and then I went, I went for work. I was, I was on a TV show,

which no one should ever make. I feel like you have some similar experiences or similar opinions on the process of making a TV show, which is fairly brutal. I don't know, it depends on the show, I suppose. Okay, you're right, you're right.

What show were you on? It's called The Tick. It was a superhero parody. And we had an extended press tour that ended in Australia. Oh, wow. And they were like... They took you to Australia?

They took me to Australia. And it was a thing where the cast... It was an international press tour. And every time we like jumped a continent or a country, someone would drop off and be like, either we're cutting the budget, we're reducing the cast, or I'm not available for another week of this. And so it got down to Australia and it was just me and the creator of the show.

And they were like, and you're down to do the Australia stop, right? We'll fly you in. It's just 36 hours and we'll fly you back. And I was like, I'm not going to Australia unless you give me five days in a hotel. It was one of my only flexes ever. Were you in Sydney? I was in Sydney proper. But then did some driving around.

Not me. People drove me around. Yeah, he can't drive. I can't drive. I'm afraid of course. Have you been to Australia, David? Never been. I would love to go in theory.

Have you been? I have been three times. Sure. I went once. Somebody was doing my play Killer Joe at an independent production. And so I went for that. I was impressed for that. My play August, I'll say,

County was done at the National Theater when Kate Blanchett and her husband were running the National Theater. So we took our production to National Theater. So same cast? Like you, the whole show went. Took our group down there. And then the third time, oh, was when Carrie was shooting the leftovers, they shot season three? There were only three seasons. They shot season three

in Melbourne. So I have a brother in Singapore. We went, we got, visited him in Singapore, got terrible food poisoning, then went to Melbourne and we got there earlier than she was supposed to start work. But we were there at the same time the Melbourne International Film Festival is going on. A very good festival. Like, Milf, as it, Milf. And we, we just became festival goers. We got, we got passes and just went to all the movies at the, it was a great way to learn the city and learn the trains. stuff and we had a great time in Milf. Milf sounds like a real filth

festival I'd like to frequent. The thing you are teeing me up for here unknowingly, Tracy, which I somehow have not brought up at all this series, is my brother, James Newman, boarded a plane on New Year's Eve, 2025, and January 1st

landed in Sydney, Australia, where he now works full-time as the general manager of the Sydney basketball team. I feel like you have brought this out. I think I haven't within this. I can't remember because of recording order. Right.

But my brother is now like an Australian resident, or he at least has a work visa, is, you know. What does he do for the basketball? He is a general manager. The GM of the Sydney King. Of the men's and women's teams in Sydney, Australia. We are very different people, but I love him very much and I'm very proud. They're a very healthy people, the Australians, regardless of their physical attractiveness. They're always running and jumping in front of you.

There's a lot of running and jumping and biking. Positive stereo. Yeah. They're all fit. He was calling me and saying like, you're the only person I know who's visited. Like, and I know you've only gone like, you know, short trips and work stuff and whatever, but what's your takeaway? And I'm just like, the quality of life there seems unbelievable. And on average, not too stereotype positively, people seem happy.

They do. It is like one of the least tense major cities I have ever visited. There's a lot of running. There's a lot of jumping. There's every animal can kill you. everything, every spider around every corner is a scorpion. Right.

And they're just like running a restaurant. We're out of antitoxins. So be careful when you're, you know, don't you dare bring in a green bean because they'll yell at you. That's why it helps to have a basketball in Sydney, though. You can just dribble those motherfuckers.

I mean, you know, I have a friend just from Brazil and I was talking to her about like the stereotype, you know, that she, the cute stereotype. Like, right, we're always just all on the beach, all the time, just dashing into the water. That's how I feel like about Australians, too. I know it's not true. Yeah. But they're all just running up and

down the beach and jumping in the water and firing up the barbecue. I mean, I'm almost definitely going to visit this year. And for the foreseeable future, Sydney is probably a place I go to more than most places. I mean, it's obviously a big commitment trip, but like, if he keeps working there, I'm going to...

Good food. Surprisingly good food. Seafood. Right? They got all... Seafood and some Asian influence, some spice in the food. It's good. David, you held up one finger. Well, some of, it's funny, just because we're talking about a film that was largely filmed in the Philippines. Yes. Although they did shoot some in Australia.

It was basically an Australian production. He treats witness as his first Hollywood film, even though a Hollywood studio came in and rescued this movie at the last moment before production started. But we're also talking about an Australian filmmaker. Yep. One of the canonical Australian filmmakers. And this is his departure from Australian film. This is really the folklore. Yes.

And we've been nailing all this. discussions of Australia up until this point, and it is continuing on this episode. Should we take a moment to pat ourselves on the back for how good of a job we've been doing? Yeah, Ben, can you cut in like the loudest thumping sound of all time? Or maybe toilet flushes again. What's this mini-series called? This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, such as basically leading the Australian new wave, being certainly one of the leaders. Vanguard. I'm already throwing a flag on this. Really? Yeah. He was not a massive success. Well, well, well, well, you don't think he got there? Well, he got there. Yeah, but the way you describe the ethos of blank check makes it sound like he had a massive success and now he's...

Tracy... Our ethos has suffered. It's 12 years into this show. We're a little bit out of those guys. Not completely out. Some of those guys were saving. Some of those guys are saving. Mostly we want to discuss interesting things. filmmakers. And we're, he doesn't quite, I mean,

his most runaway success. Truman Show. It's Truman Show. I'd say, witness is his guarantor. It happens right after this. Witness is the, is the breakout, right?

The guarantor is what we call, the hit that convinces them to hand you the blank check book. And then I think he is a bit of a blank check filmmaker. I do think his studio run, even though to a certain degree he was a hired hand,

green card, obviously more his personal passion project. Right. Look, the thing is, Tracy, if we had a director on and we said, we think that Hollywood gave you a blank check, they would shoot us in the face. Do you know how hard it is?

Yeah. Even guys we talked about like Nolan or M. Knight Chamalon who really did get, you know, a lot of power. And Mnich Chalong who now... This is still very hard. Mnich Chalemlaw now literally funds his own movies and would be like there is no such thing as a blank check.

Right. Right. But George Lucas, he's the close. He's the model. He's the original. And you love him in his film. Sure. Especially

Wado with you right here he's got Wado look this is a massive success early on the careers

are given a blank checks make whatever crazy passion projects they want and sometimes those checks clear and

sometimes they bounce baby this is a minisuries on the films of Peter Weir is called Podnick

at hanging cast that's right which I approve of thank you okay so then I give up

because what was the other one it's podster and cast mander colon the pod side of the cast really

fuck And better. Okay. You know what? I can't fight that. This is a man of letters here. This is a fucking Pulitzer Prize winner. I'm not going to argue my writings better.

It's Podnick at Hangingcast. You will hear no further gripes from me. Who did Gallipoli? We'll have already aired by now. Yes. Jennifer Kent, the wonderful filmmaker, Jennifer Ken, who made the Babadook and the Nightingale. Yes.

We wanted an Australian filmmaker, especially for Gallip. Yes. We tried for several. What's tough is that they live eight trillion hours away. Right. We did it. What? It was like 9 p.m. our time and it was like the next morning her time. Yes. She was on Zoom. We were taking NyQuil and she was drinking coffee. Right. But she rocked. She was great. Do you like Gallipoli? Very much. Galipoli is phenomenal. Had never seen that before. Had never seen this one before. Both of the Mel Gibson films were blind spots for me. I do have holes in my Peter Weir filmography. I mean, sorry, bit of it. Bit of it.

aggressive question there. Who are you holes? Master and Commander. You've never seen Master and Commander. As I learn more about you, you've been on our friend Sean's show, obviously, you know. I'm third chair on the big picture.

Let's just say I'm third chair. Let's introduce with proper titles here. Not only see third chair on the big picture, not as only is he a Pulitzer Prize winner and drama. Yes, this is true. Tony Award winner as well, as both writer and actor, correct? Correct.

You got to flex it. But most importantly, he is the king of physical media. I also at one point called him a bad bitch on this podcast. Excuse me. I didn't hear that. I believe we called him the boss bitch. Maybe a boss bitch. In our awards show episodes we do annually,

I nominated you Best Supporting Actor for Indignation. And I believe David responded, Tracy Letts, the boss bitch. Because you'd had a really good year. It was a good year. You'd been in a lot of stuff that's when you're in like, oh, Christine and like Wiener Dog and the Lovers. I don't know. It was like very, very sort of exciting.

It's when you meet hit. maker and he gives you the secrets. He's like, here's how you make a hit. Wait, when did he mean? When did they work on? Christine. Christine, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. And he was like, the women have to be little and it will go over $100 million.

And you run to Gretager wig. I'm holding a hot hand. Tracy Letts is here in the studio. Thank you very much for having me on the blank check. Now, you're saying that you've never seen Master and Commander before. I was happy that this is the series that you came on for. it is one of our great joys in life for David and I when we pick a new director, we put them on the schedule,

we immediately crack our knuckles, pull up Blu-ray.com, and go, what do I already have, and what are the holes I have to fill? And then what's the best addition? And it used to be, oh, no domestic release of this. Too bad, I'm not going to have it. I've started being a no matter what, by any means possible, I'm getting all of them.

And this is a varied stack here. We got Le Vauter, Monge, Paris. Right. This is a French copy of the cars that ate Paris. Who's even the distributor here?

Esque editions? Yeah. BFI, about to reissue this in 4K. Got this fucking Mondo second site picnic and hanging rock box. I got that. That's very nice. It's a good box.

I just have the criterion of that. That only has the director's cut and this is theatrical plus the book. You get it's kind of like a better audition. Yeah, I got them both. I tried to convince, I used this specifically to try to convince Amanda, the physical media isn't ugly.

I was trying to combat your, I live in a GameStop thing by being like, but look at this is nice. No, there are nice ones. There are nice ones. But sometimes aren't you a little skeptical of the really nice ones. Sure. I mean, I have giant boxes of movies.

For like, Frickon Congo. I mean, maybe Congo's rude because I know. The boxes are great, but then you're like, inside is William Freakins, you know, Jade. Like, which is a movie I like, but doesn't belong in this finery. I just bought the umbrella. 4K of the live action Super Mario Brothers, which I think is $100 and contains more literature than like the Encyclopedia Britannica.

A film that has four separate books. A film that I enjoyed, but like that most people involved with are like a stain on my reputation. It is objectively dog shit. And I want to be clear, I love that film. It is objectively dog shit. And it comes with a book that includes two different scripts, two rejected scripts for that movie. And that's one of only three books included in that box. Last wave from the aforementioned umbrella, the fine folks.

Yep, I got that. We got Gallipoli has just a paramount, a pretty basic blue that only came out recently. I'm glad they finally put it out. I've got Callipoli, but I'm going to look at my phone. Okay. I wonder if I'm wrong in this is just a reissue. What do you use here? This has a 2023 copyright.

I use something called CLZ. I use that too. Oh, there you go. Very fond of that. Let's see. Gallipoli. How do we spell that? G-A-L-L-L-I-P.

Yeah, that's what I got. From a place you've never heard of comes a story you'll never forget. We both agreed in this episode. Kind of a rude tagline. Yeah, a bit. But then I saw you on your letterbox log where people were getting excited. Oh, fuck, is Tracy Letts doing your living dangerously? I'm sorry.

I didn't realize when I logged it. That's the fun of the sport. Oh, no, no, it's good. Yeah. You like that. But you were posting an anger that you had to watch it on YouTube premium because it was the only better option than the DVD you had. The DVD? I actually

played them side by side. You're aware of this. What is that? This is a Spanish Blu-ray. I've been a little suspicious that it's a bootleg, but it seems like it's not. Have you watched it? Yeah. It looks okay. Well, there's the whole thing where... I would not say it is

reference quality. Right. It looks like probably YouTube Premium just on a disc. Why isn't this movie at... I don't fucking... Why do I have a fucking box for Congo on my shelf and not the year of living dangerous? This is underground pictures.

They put this out. What's the copyright here for the disc release? I'll figure it out. I mean, look, yeah, it's got... This is 2014. I feel like often with these... This is the only country in which any Blu-ray release of this movie

has happened, it was 12 years ago. These MGM United Artists, like, you know, that's sort of tricky period for this, right? Like, the rights will get weird, right? That's always... Isn't that always the answer? It's like, no one can untangle. Sometimes I also want to, like, we'll get into this, but I wonder if there's a feeling of touchiness around this movie.

Sure, possibly. If we restore this too thoroughly and spotlight it too much, are people going to get up in arms? William Freakins Jane? They're not touching about shade? Sorry? Yeah. You know, like, there's other movies that get put out. Well, that's a touchy movie.

That's my people touching each other the whole time. Rousseau's grabbing everyone. And I got the rest of the, I got the Arrow Witness, I got the Dead Poets, the basic Disney release screencard. I don't own dead poets. Do you not like it? Simms is on the same page It's my least favorite weird film I think mine too

Fearless I think is a Warner Archive Truman basic paramount 4K Master and Commander got the steel book but I assume you don't have that yet I have it I just haven't watched it Yeah interesting And then way back's an image release I have that as well

Yeah I don't think I've seen the way back Do you like Brit shit? You know what I mean? Like so like do Master and Commander kind of passed you by just because it was like sort of a big blockbuster at the time and you were like

Like how did it pass you by I wonder. Based on those books, right? I have no, I've never had any relationship to those books. I don't go out to see a movie just because Russell Crow's in it. I don't not see a movie because Russell Crow's in it. Sure, sure. But he's not an automatic guy.

Do you go out to sea? Yeah, exactly. What about the sea? You know, the shining sea. Are you a boat guy? Yeah. Is this the Midwesterner in you? You're like oceans.

They're thousands of miles away. I have no good reason for not having seen Master and Command. Maybe I'll go home and watch it tonight. So it's the best. It's so good. It's one of David's favorite movies. I have not rewatched it since I saw it in theaters. We have not done that episode yet.

Can you say what your favorite where is? That one is certainly my favorite. Yeah. My favorite is... But I love a lot of his films. Huh. Yeah, what's your number one, bud? Is it Truman Show?

That feels kind of lame. But it feels like that might be my answer. What's your favorite? Is it this? It's Year of Living Day. Yes, right. I mean, we talk to you. when we were planning this series being like, Peter Weir,

does he spark interest in the Year of Living Dangerously, was your, you know, your immediate answer. I believe you said it's one of my 50 favorite movies of all time. You know, I made a list recently of my favorite movies. I was going to be my top 100 list. Yeah. And it turned out to be about 160 something on my list.

Is it ranked or is it? Not ranked. Okay, just what's in the pot. Chronological order. And yeah, Year of Living Dangerously is on that list. So it's basically at this point, it's like, this is the canon.

These are the movies. You were just sort of going through everything you've seen being like, these are my favorite. These are the things I will watch again that I know and love. Now, you might have sensed David and I both trying to sniff out some of your movie blind spots, right? What don't you like as much? What haven't you seen and for what reasons? It's because we came into this loaded with a challenge.

Ben, producer Ben, who is not a physical media guy, I've gifted him a couple of discs over the year, but this is not his beat. when we lock down a day and a time to record. I should say I have vinyl. I have a big vinyl collection. I love music. But as far as, yeah, movies, I only really have a handful. Yeah. And he says, you know what would be fun if we tried to gift Tracy with a disc that he doesn't already have.

And I said, Ben, you don't understand the scale of the challenge you just proposed. That's impossible. And then the more we got into talking to him about how hard that would be, the more we were like, wait a second, you should try. You should try, Ben. You should see if you can pick out a movie he hasn't seen and or placed in his collection. And then he bought three, and it sparked a competition in David and I, and we have also each bought three movies for you. Wow. And this is the Tracy Let's Challenge.

There are nine discs that are about to be presented. Oh, fantastic. And we want to know are any of these not already in the collection? Oh, great. Ben, I feel like you should go first since you spurred this whole thing. So I want to shout out. We went to Night Owl Video. You ever been there?

It's in Williamsburg. Great place. Lovely little place. Nice. It's about a year old. It's finally bringing physical media stores back to New York City. Shout out to Night Alla Video. They got a very nice used collection, very, you know, and all the new stuff, obviously.

and their motto is death to streamers, physical media forever. So they're definitely going for it. I was trying to give Ben some help in strategizing. He also went with our friend Ben David Grubinsky, passed and future guest, who was sort of guiding Ben through the understanding of certain labels, have subscription programs. Tracy might be pre-buying a full year.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He had mentioned your subscriber to Vinegar Syndrome. Right. So I avoided those releases. And we're looking for, you want rigorous honesty.

Rigorous honesty. Please. Complete honesty. Absolutely. Because you have about what? 20,000? No. No, that's crazy.

11,000 plus. Still a lot. But I appreciate you throwing out the number 20,000 makes it seem reasonable. 20,000 were sort of starting to approach like the amount of movies that might exist. This is why the challenge is fun. Right. But you buy a lot of stuff and kind of are like, I'll get to it or I have a completionist's urge or whatever.

seen perhaps 30% of the movies on my show. Because I'm currently in this project of like, I gotta fucking watch everything I own on disc that I've either never seen. How many desks do you have? I have over a thousand, I think. I'm nothing like you. But I have a lot.

I think I'm similar now. And my wife is, it goes in one room. And so it's a little mysterious what's going on, I think, to her. But like, then she'll glimpse like, what's, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't worry about it. You live in Brooklyn. I live in Brooklyn. So your space is some, you have some.

It's somewhat limited. There's going to have to be, I'm going to need, there's some shelving conversations I'm going to be to have. Some choices that need to be made. See, we bought this house and it had a basement in it, it looked like a Marriott ballroom. And it's just like, oh, well, this is where we can put everything. I mean, I'm very jealous. Tracy, I need you to know that I now often repeat the phrase, all I want is the type of success where I can have a Tracy Letts basement. It has become basically the driving force of any professional ambitions I have.

is if I can just get a Tracy Letts basement, imagine having a home where there was space for all of my sickness is the way I think about that. And you can pass your sickness on to your family members. Well, that's the real thing. Yeah. All right. Well, and so I want to preface as well, as far as curation, you saw my porch. Yeah.

So just keep that in mind as like a kind of lens. These are kind of three porch movies. It just helps you understand the kind of subgenre of porch movies. So, of course, first here I have a limited edition steel book of Ace Ventura Pet Detective. I do not own this film. You do not own this film. Have you seen it before? I don't think so.

Wow. Wow. You're in store for a good time. Oh, great. How do you feel about James Carey? Funny. Funny. Well, then you probably will at least get a couple laughs at Ace Ventura.

I mean, obviously not so funny that I've ever sought out Ace Ventura, which I think would be one of the Touchstone films in his. His launch pad, obviously. I will say this was part of my strategy was thinking the 90s might have been the era where you were dismissing certain commercial films. Definitely. Definitely. It started in the 80s, but certainly extended well into the 90s.

We'll get more into the 80s, 90s discussion. I will say that I just worked with Peter Farrelly. I shot a movie with him called I Play Rocky, which is coming out later this year. and at one point, I got a note from him to take it down. And I said, wow, the director of Dumb and Dumber just told me I was a little too broad. That's incredible. In a movie about making Rocky. Who do you play and I play Rocky?

I play a fictional bad guy. You'll never make this movie. Boxing movies don't amount of shitter. I'll tell you, Rocky, you will never win best picture. You might have actually quoted a few of them. my life. Do you like to get that call? Because like, Four versus Ferrari, great movie. And you're very, very good in it. But like, it's like, oh, fun, racing. No, no. You're the guy who shits on everyone in the office. I think this movie sucks. I wish this movie weren't happening. But then

what's great about Ford versus Ferrari is you get the scene of the emotional breakdown. Well, that's the version of that character. I, uh, I turned down a lot of those things unless it's got that extra thing. Yeah. That I go, oh, this is, this is good. I want to do that extra thing. And so I play Rocky has that. No, I'm excited for I play Rocky. I am a sucker for that kind of movie. I like, I like Sam. Early word is good.

I'm excited about it. Do you know that the young actor playing Sylvester Stallone in the movie is the same young actor who played Al Pacino in the offer? One of my obsessions of the last decade. I have not seen it, but he's very good. I almost bought you the offer on DVD. And then I was like, it's TV and it's DVD. This is offensive.

This is rude. But the offer is one of the more bizarre things. me. Thank you for the Ace Ventura. I will gladly accept it. And it's one of one right now, one out of one. And so that I should mention that was a shout release. Next, we have. This is Arrow Video. It is a 4K of Spawn.

I do not own that. Wow. That doesn't shock now. Have you ever seen Spawn? I have not. Mark A. Z. DePay's Spawn. Are you familiar with the character? Is he a vampire or a vampire hunter? Oh, Casey. You have from hell. Some more demonic.

Hell spawn. Yeah, he's a former Like a wet-works guy. Yeah, like, he dies, he goes to hell, and Satan is sort of like, I'll let you go back to Earth, but you do have to be kind of like a hellish superhero. Was he originally a comic book?

Correct. Yeah, it's comic book. Todd McFarland, T. Dog Mac. 90s. Very 90s. A lot of chains. And who directed the film? Mark A. Z. DePay,

who's a legendary special effects artist. He's widely credited as being one of the two guys who really cracked CGI for Jurassic Park. and they were like, well, that means you should make a whole movie. And he did this, and I believe he never directed a live action film ever again. He directs direct to video Garfield sequels now. Yeah. Then you're two for two, man.

Wow. I'm thrilled. By the way, this has theatrical and directors cut on it. I recommend directors. Thank you. I appreciate it. And there's some really great special effects. And that's all I'm going to say.

Okay. Roger Ebert gave this movie three stars. And then here lastly, we have trash. Humper's by Harmony Curran. I do not own trash humpers. Wow. I knew that was going to be okay. I was, I believe.

That was the one that was borderline. Harmony Corrin doesn't feel like quite your taste zone, but I also... I've got a couple of Harmony Corrin on the shelf. So I'm glad to have trash humper's on disc. Hell yeah. Yeah, I'm a big fan of his work. And I just, I can't believe three for three. Well done, man.

Incredible. Well done. David, would you like to go next? Sure, why not? All right. Okay, first off, this is the most obvious one. You might have this one. him. This is arrows, yes,

4K release of Dominic Sennis film Swordfish. He's checking the out. He's checking his database here. Which is what I thought, where you, I doubt you've seen Swordfish. I have seen it. All right, you've seen it. Okay, so I was wrong. But one of those where I was like, did you buy it? Just because there's a nice

new addition out of a sense of completionism? I do not own. Okay. Okay. Hugh Jackman, Halliberry, of course, John Travolta. Don Cheadle. Yeah, Don Cheadle. a role that you would play now in this movie

where it made today is Sam Shepard's role as the U.S. Senator who's sort of like, stop, yay, Travolta, you got to cut out your, whatever it is. I don't like these computers. You're right? And Chavolta's like, oh, it's interesting and shoots him to death in like Utah or some, you know, some extravagant location.

Just to make sure I'm thinking of the right film, Halliberry, nude scene. Correct. Correct. They, um, they leaked this, this, oh, a terrible leak came out from the studio. Oh, she's filming a nude scene. An extra scene has leaked. Oh, who could have spilled this info?

Clearly, someone sent them a long-range tracking report, and they were like, can we leak the, can we pay Halliburian another million dollars? There's a moment in the trailer of her undressing, and I remember being surrounded by teenage boys, being a teenage boy at the time, people being like, I hear she keeps taking clothes off. Like, it was, the buzz was really strong. It's a scene in the film, her nude scene. that I would say doesn't feel entirely dramatically essential to the... But she's sunbathing and then she just drops the cover, shows her breast clear...

I have seen the movie. For about 60 seconds and then she puts it back on. The nude scene is what it's sort of known for. I think this is a crazy text. Like, this is a bizarre, like when Hollywood was sort of like, we should be doing like cyberpunk Tarantino movies. And then, like, one year later, they were like, enough of that. Like, we got to stop.

Who directed this? Dominic Sennah, who also made Gone in 60 Seconds remake. He did. He was a Fincher guy. He was one of the Fincher Stable. I always get Senna and Simon West confused. Right. Well, they were both Fincher guys.

They're both, yeah. He did that kind of nasty Brad Pitt movie, California. If you remember that, like a serial killer movie. Yep. He was, you know, all sizzle. No state? Medium to small stage. You guys are four for four.

All right, right. Oh, he did Season of the Witch, which I love. Have you ever seen Season of the Witch? I have. Great movie. One of our finest. All right. Next up, this is a strange one.

This is DVD. Use DVD. Wow. Because I was really trying to get weird. Scott Alexander and Larry Karzewski is screwed. He's checking the database. Now, this is Griffin. An exceptionally strange movie.

I agree with that. Yes. I believe it has never been released on high-down. Wow. Don't know. Have you ever seen it? No. It looks light to medium use here.

We've got some crinkling on this. I don't care about that. It is an odd kind of blank check movie because they had such success as screenwriters that people went, we should let these guys make a whole film. And it was trying to launch arguably three comedy stars at the same time. Well, it's trying to launch, it's sort of trying

with Norm again, Norm McDonald, around the dirty work era, right? Like, our little after. I think it's almost contemporaneous. And then Dave Chappelle, it's sort of half-baked era, Dave Chappelle. I was already going to serve.

Silverman. Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure, she's in there. But Larry doesn't disown this movie, right? I mean, Larry is, he's fond of... I think. They're both. It was one of those movies

that had no idea how to market. It has one of the weirdest trailers. They clearly just have no idea what to tell you about this movie. It is so odd. Because it's quite odd and kind of vulgar. I was going to say it's in this category I would classify as like big budget

studio versions of John Waters material. You know, and I think it's a little post like something about Mary. People want gross out. It is very dark. It's very odd. Oh, thanks.

Five for five. DeVito is great in it. Doing great. Finally, crank high voltage. I've not seen crank high voltage. Have you seen crank? I haven't seen crank. I've actually been on a bit of a statham terror. Wow. And you hadn't gotten to it yet.

I've not gotten to it yet. Both vital. I'm sorry that I went for high voltage here because the completionist in you now means you'll probably end up buying crank as well. This is the sequel, Crank High Voltage. Is Joan Allen in one of these movies? Joan Allen is in death race movie. A movie I really fight for. She plays the eye.

No, I was going to say she plays the Tracy Letts. I don't want you doing death race. It is the opposite. She is the evil prison warden. And she's like, you motherfuckers better death race. And there's a bit in that movie that I love where Joan Allen goes on like a 30 second tear and says every American curse word six times. Nice. Because she's angry at how Statham is breaking her system.

For a while, my. treadmill watches were TV shows, keeping up with the TV shows. But it just became too painful. And so what I've been doing... Because you're going to fall asleep watching these shows that 10 episodes before they do any plot. Right. It wasn't an enticement to get back on the treadmill.

Right. So I've been catching up on a lot of action. Like trashy action. For 90s, 2000s action. Like I've watched the Equalizer series. I saw you log out. Yeah. Extremely solid.

Tracy, I had considered buying you the Equalizer trilogy. So I did some cross-referencing. We were just talking about those movies. I love them so much. They make me so happy. Just to pitch you on crank. The first crank, the idea is it's speed, but with his heart, so he has to keep his heart rate above us. You can crank hurry voltage, I believe he's been given an artificial heart.

So he has to literally, like, grab onto like, uh, like, use electricity. Electric cords and bite them to just wait, really? Yeah. The first crank ends with him dying. Right. And it was enough of a hit that justified the sequel. Well, what if they put an electric heart in him? but it resulted in one of the greatest taglines of all time,

which is he was dead, but he got a lot better. Yeah, he got better. Mr. Statham never made a movie that he couldn't find his way to make a sequel to. Absolutely. All doors are open in the world of Jason Stathen. I like this era of his better, which was more martial artsy, versus this new one where it's like, he's a gentle gardener, but he used to. And then like some nice old lady dies and he has to go kill Hillary Clinton or whatever.

Yes, but beekeeper's incredible. Beekeepers. Have you seen beekeeper? Have you seen beekeeper? Beekeeper is just so insane in the world it establishes. I forget which crank it is. One of the cranks has one of my favorite gags, which is Japanese guys talking to him and you see the subtitles.

And Statham is so out of it that you then cut to a reverse of Statham looking at the subtitles. Like the shot is reversed going like, Neveldine and Taylor. All right. So I got three for three two. Six, four, six. Okay, wow. I took a very specific strategy.

I was like, I feel like the 90s or the zone where you, were maybe not keeping up as omnivorously with all a commercial cinema. I think that's true. And B, also, you talk about on your physical media episodes, so they picture the things you were watching with your children. And I was sort of trying to triangulate your children's tastes where things are going. And I'm like, are there movies that I grew up with that you would not have seen at the time, but that might be good to introduce your children to.

I like, they can come griff stamped. I'm disagree with you. They can also. It knocks these discs a little higher up on the watch list because there's a little bit of an activity here. Okay. Okay. So first of all, Joe Dante's 1998 picture small soldiers. Have you seen it? I have not seen small soldiers. And I assume that means you don't own it? I do not own. Okay. Nor have I seen Joe Don't. I didn't even know it was a Joe Dante movie. You're making a Sherman-esque statement. Tracy, that's exactly what I was betting on because I bet Tracy has respect for Joe Dante. Sure. But he lost track of the last couple. I did. I did not know that was his film. This is an incredible film about the military industrial complex, about the the corporatization of America. Is that a person on the cover?

No, so it is about a tech company, a military tech company that buys a toy company and their endless sort of gobbling up, a conglomeration of everything, and decide to try to make, this film's very relevant now, basically AI toys. What if GI Joe's could actually do shit? And they put military microchips in them and they start literally waging war on our backyard are there people in the film? Yes, there are.

It's not an animated film. It's a live action film. This is Major Chip Hazard, who is the main villain toy voice by Tommy Lee Jones and Franklin Jella, Archer, Leader of the Gorgonites. But this film stars Kirsten Dunst, Gregory Smith. Great Kevin Dunn. Phil Hartman's final film performance,

Dennis Leary, David Cross, Anne Magnuson. It's got a really good cast. Jay Moore, of course. It was that era where we were trying to make that happen. But it's a wonderful film. I think it's a razor sharp satire. You guys are very funny.

You guys are killing it. Big action. I'm going to show that to my son. Yeah. I think he will like it. It's got, it's not a, I know he's very into Kaiju film. I know it is not a Kaiju film. There's a similar energy of chaos.

Creature featurey kind of. The first question is always, is they're a creature. It is mostly very small animatronic puppets, you know, of monsters fighting army men. Got it. And humans being like, the fuck is going on. One of the best films of 1998. Similarly, this comes from, this was DreamWorks, when DreamWorks was launching, and Spielberg was like, we need a family slate.

We need Amblin-esque pictures. And he greenlit odd versions of Amblin-esque pictures that didn't quite perform as well as they should have at the time. Gore Vibinsky's Mouse Hunt, his first film. I do not own Mouse Hunt, nor have I ever seen now. Wow. You'll like that. This is quietly one of the best film craft films of the 90s. If this movie came out tomorrow, best cinematography, best art direction, best sound, best editing. People would be like nothing has looked this good since the 50s.

Who directed Mouse Hunt? Gore of Vibinsky. Oh, you just said that. It is his first film. It is him cashing in the heat of directing the Budweiser Frog commercials. And it's a script that's just the, you know, these two guys are trying to catch a mouse. And he's like, what if it has the aesthetics of delicatessen?

He built an insane house. He insisted on doing almost all of it with real mice. They had like 60 mice who they trained as actors. It's Nathan Lane and Lee Evans. Lee Evans. But it's also it's Christopher Walkins in it, Morrie Shakins in it. It's William Hickey's last performance ever. Oh, yeah.

Wonderful film. Saw it recently at film form. It's a beautiful 4K. This is reference quality. If you score this last one, nine for nine. This is my biggest swing, because this is more recent, but I had a feeling that you just kind of opted out on this whole series. This is, I picked, it's an excellent adventure picture.

It's a family story done in a style, I'd say almost heightened to melodrama, with the broad kind of allegorical storytelling of your biblical epics of your. It is called Avatar the Way of Wall. I've never seen Avatar the way of water. Did you blind buy it? I did not blind buy it. I do not own it.

Nine fresh discs. Now, did you see the first one? Right. Did you see the first one? I've never seen one of the avatars. This is my guess that you just went, not my thing, right? I've not, yeah, I haven't seen. There's a rip-or and adventure about how we have lost touch with nature.

So now I have to go by the first one. This is the problem. We're making homework for you here, buying these sequels. It's a boy. and a whale, the mighty Paiacan, who you will be thrilled to meet. How long is that movie? Let's not talk about runtime. What is a runtime?

Well, just in terms of showing it to my son, there are... Your son will be into it, I would imagine. Your son will be into it. It might be split over a couple nights. It's 192 minutes long. 192 fucking minutes. It's longer than Lawrence of Arabia. It's similar to Lawrence of Arabia.

It might be longer than Lawrence of Arabia. But has your son seen Lawrence of Arabia? That is a question. Actually, you know what, Lawrence of Ruribis is longer. Lawrence of Ravis is almost four hours long. Is it really? Yeah, it's really, really long. This is four discs.

So after you watch the movie, you can go into the making of. You know, recently, Sean and Amanda, on the Big Picture podcast, we're talking about how, even if you're not into it, it's undeniable that the specialness of the special effects are, in fact, kind of jaw-dropping and beyond what you're, you're, accustomed to seeing when you watch a lot of AI slop. I would agree. Or CGI slop. It is very much, yes. It stands in opposition to that. And we agree that it is the best of the three.

Yes, absolutely. Really? Yes. I think the sequel is the best. I do think you could watch it cold. It does a pretty good job of table setting at the beginning of the film. And there's such a big time jump

between the first and the second that there is a bit of a clean entry point. Now, I have to say, you guys have done absolutely beautiful work in collecting these nine discs. I'm really impressed and I'm really happy to have them in my collection. And I'm happy to give all of them a spin, all of them. Does anybody listening to this give a shit about what we're talking about? Yeah.

Oh, very deeply. Are you kidding me? Oh, yeah. You go on Sean's podcast, which is bigger than this podcast. And you guys, you know, speak it. length on these matters. I always assume that those episodes are just very niche, that there's just a very, there's a small but dedicated number of people listening. But this is a growing area of interest for people, I feel like. I do feel like there's this general person, you know, like, there's just

feeling amongst film fans of like, it's just not good out there anymore. It's bad and we need to take a stand and we need to do something. Right. It's so annoying sifting through these streaming services. It's so annoying kind of like trying to find the best version of it, you know, and like it's so satisfying to own something. I don't know. I can just hear a lot of pissed off film guys going, what do you mean he's never seen Ace Ventura? What? Who is this asshole? This is the balance of these things. People got to come to blank check and understand this is the flow. This is the natural order. Have you ever had anybody on this show older than me? Yes. Your father. My father. Are you willing to say your age on Mike? 60. Yeah. My father. My father has been only on Patreon,

but he is 73 now. He's 73. I believe Clint McElroy. Oh, sure. Amy Irving. Amy Irving. She was only on Patreon, though. Colin Quinn, I believe, do you know, I think Colin Quinn is older than you. I would think.

I think so. Colin Quinn is six years older than you. Yeah. There you go. You're rubbing in his face next time. So unfortunately, you don't get, you get to retain the crown as king of physical media. Let me tell you a few people who are older than me. I'll surprise you.

Yeah. We do, there's one last disc reveal. Oh. Yeah. The remainder of the bag, you mentioned, of course, your physical media episodes on the big picture, which started out as just you and Sean, and then grew to include Chris Ryan and Tim hitmaker Simons as well. There was one person who has been desperately trying to make his way onto the physical media high counsel. Well, I'll read this note he left. Mr. Lutz, please accept this meager offering of physical media.

Sorry, it's hard to read his handwriting. It's really chicken scratch here. representing some of my movies, only to a reference quality. It's less about hoping you watch and enjoy in more the honor of contributing my work to the definitive archive, Alex Ross Perry. Oh, Alex Ross Perry. How lovely. And what did he send?

He gave you three of his films, which is her smell, pavements, and Listen Up, Philip. Yes. I own Listen Up, Philips. You own Listen Up, this same, the Eureka edition? Yes. Wow. I own that. But I'll take it. Wow. I mean, this is like an epic L

for ARP that we went fucking 9 for 9 and ARP gets up to bat and immediately you fucking imported one of his movies. I haven't watched it. I should watch it. I think you'd like it. Incredible drama on the price performance. Yeah. Yeah. Price is incredible in it. I don't know if you have another, you know,

a theater legend in his own right who also did Yellowface, which I was going to say. It's important to our discussion today of the year of being dangerous. David? This episode is brought to you. Bye.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. It's about the relationships between adult children. They're somewhat distant parent or parents and each other. I simply cannot relate. I know, right? Having a complicated relationship with your parents. So you can watch that, and you can watch all the other great stuff they've got at Mooby.

to stream the best of cinema. You can try Mooby free for 30 days at Mooby.com slash blank check. That's Mubi.com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free. By the way, the big picture

has come up a couple of times here. They did a 1988 draft. I'm in the middle of listening to it as we speak. I was not invited. I said to them, you know, I'm going on blank check tomorrow. Right. And maybe if the blank check guys,

adopt me, you know, we're all New Yorkers. We're New York based. I was like, maybe, maybe I wind up jumping ship. Let me tell you. The text I got from Sean was pretty definitive. If you even think, you fucking rat. For one fucking second. I was having a fun time listening to that.

That's an interesting year, 88. And I really, I respected Chris, Chris's bind there, Chris Ryan's binder of getting the number one pick where it's like, you're on the big pick. sure, you know, it's like you have to pick die hard. That's sort of like the, and he lost midnight run and I felt for him. His midnight run, you know, well, I sent them immediately upon conclusion, I sent them a few movies they left off. Okay. 1888 draft that I would have. Such as. Gladly, well, thin blue line would be top of great. Definitive. Me. And it was just like,

how is this not? I mean, would be a beautiful use of a wild card pick. Yeah. Did it get snubbed for best documentary? Yeah, of course. Yeah. It was, he was, right. He was, right. He was. He was. He was. He was. He wasn't doing what that branch appreciated. You know, like he was doing something new. So he was, they never liked him. So you'd have to take it in wildcard. I think, did he eventually win for Fog of War? Like, I feel like they eventually gave Errol Morris an Oscar. And then he also did the fucking the stuff for the Oscars. He did. Those were fun. Yeah, he won for Fog of War, though. That's his only ever Oscar nomination.

Like, they were, you know, they were always kind of like too snooty for him. It's just one of the most incredible lasting cultural artifacts is from Errol Morris doing those, uh, that Oscar intro one year where he interviewed people about their favorite movies. We have the clip of Donald Trump looking into the oterotron.

Is that what he called? Enteratron, yeah. Right. And talking about why he loves Citizen Kane and misreading it confidently. Right.

It's a movie about a guy who gets everything. I think he literally says it's a movie about a guy who gets everything. That reminds me. I was at some party in Los Angeles

and David Zastloff. I was with Carrie and some of the other guilded age people. And of course, carries in the HBO family,

of course. The queen of the HBO family. She's on Guilded Age and Zazlov came up and he was so excited to see them and we came to realize after a while. I was like,

oh, the robber barons are his heroes. Of course. He's like, I'll put you ramming that railroad right across America. Yep. I,

God, my favorite thing in the Guilded Age is any time Morgan Specter's character is just like, I feel like I need to go, you know, kill 10,000 railroad. railroad guys just to get my rocks off, you know,

just really got to like go fight with J.P. Morgan about something. I love the Gilded Age. Sure. Guilted Age is number one kind of show for me where I can Google after and learn about the opera war. David just said this in our way back episode with Alex Ross Perry. Have you seen Peter Wears the way back? One of his least seen films, his final film,

the film about Escapies from the Gulag who trekked across the Gobi Desert. all the way to the idea. I remember my mom watching it and saying, this is really good. How come I didn't see this fucking movie? It was completely ignored on release. It's a fairly handsome, like, you know, solid.

It's not his best movie, but it's pretty good. But David was saying he loves anything, any watch that can cause him to open up some Wikipedia tabs and start digging into... You know, afterwards, I'm like, Mongolian in the 50s. What was going on? You know, like stuff like that.

I want to hear your other 1988 snubs. Let me consult. I'm guessing Akira wasn't picked. I haven't finished the episode. Acura was not picked. I'm trying to think of like definitive 88 movies that probably are too niche or whatever. They keep complaining about how bad the sequel slate is. It was very bad.

And in fact, Amanda asked me specifically what my pick would have been. It's really bad. I suggested Lady Terminator, which is not actually canon. Right. That one's not canon? You have Halloween 4, Hellraiser 2, Nightmare 4, but I'm just immediately here. No one... It's not great.

Even with thriller open, no one picked Child's play and no one picked Dead Ringers? Dead Ringers was definitely on my list. I think they mentioned it in their honorable

mentions, but not good enough. Another woman, the Woody Allen movie, another woman, which, you know... That would have been a surprising pick.

It would have been, but because I'd listen to the New York draft where you fuckers who didn't pick Woody Allen. Did nobody pick Woody Allen? No one picked Woody Allen. I want to make it clear.

Woody Allen's name was never settle. People were suspicious. We were in front of a live audience. We were in front of a live audience. Backstage there wasn't like a blood pact. Like we all agree, no one's going to utter his name. It did not happen.

No, no. I think if we were not in front of a crowd. I don't know, though. Like, who knows? Because the whole populist agenda of the drafts of like you're supposedly trying to win the audience's favor. I certainly thought. Dicey, right? The other thing, I will say the other thing with Woody Allen in a New York movie

draft is it's like, okay, well, so do you figure Manhattan is the pick there? There's other definitive New York movies. Well, you know, almost all, like, like, what's the New York movie? Right. It's more of the canon than the idea of he has one film that feels most representational of New York other than the one that's named after a borough and has a poster of the bridge. He has some great fucking photography of Manhattan.

And some really good relationships. Yeah. Well, I would probably pick Manhattan. But certainly if somebody picks Annie Hall in comedy or Hannah and her sister. These are not shocking. No, you're not wrong. Hand on her sisters. The Bear, 1988.

I never seen the Bear. Jean-Jacques. Yeah, the Bear. The Bear, the great, the big Bear actor. It's a great, yes, Bart the Bear, plays the Bear. It is a, it's a nature film, shot really from the bear's perspective. It's very good. I have never seen.

He was a good director. And that is a genre of movie that doesn't exist anymore. That sort of gentle, nature-focused, plot-loat. light, you know, kind of... It's not that gentle. That's the good thing about the bear. We've got some peril. Yeah, yeah.

There's a, there's fucking in it. There's, uh, psychedelic drugs. Oh, yeah? Yeah. No, the bear's kind of... But like, the, the animal drama doesn't exist anymore, right? Right. On a tapestry from like, you know, black stallion to the bear, it used to just be like,

once or twice a year. Yeah. There would be a wide-release movie. We went to the jungle. You're going to love it. And we're like, we think we got this animal to act. Uh, never crazy. Try Wolf. Do you guys know that movie? I've never seen it. I know it. It's a beautiful movie and there's no good

physical media. That's Carol Ballard, right? That's the kind of king of what we're talking about. Terrific. Yeah. I had my neighbor Totero, but then Sean informs me maybe that's not quite the right released. It's tough. You can call it an 88 movie, but to me that's one where it's like, you can't go by the American date because that movie was never properly released in America. It got a fucking troma release. Yeah, right. Yeah. Hairspray. Hairspr is a great movie. change. Never seen. Never seen things change. David Mamet, Joe Mantania, and Donamichi.

A very good... It's the poster where you're in the back of the limo, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good movie. And there's a good disc of that, too. I think it's a indicator has a nice disc of that. Cross and Delancey? Did that come to the line? Amanda, fucking trapped with the shit out of Crosson. And my comedy pick,

uh, chicken and duck talk. Chicken and duck talk. Never heard of it? Looking it up. What is that? Looks like it's a, A Chinese film? Hong Kong comedy. Yeah. Michael Hui.

Very funny. Don't know it. Chicken and duck talk. Okay, I'll check it out. I was pretty astounded that Fennessee didn't pick police story too. He mentioned it as I considered it. I'm like, yeah, you should have considered it and then picked it. That's a good move.

Mystic Pizza? Amanda chose Crossing Delancey over Mystic Pizza. This is really fun how we're relitigating. I was going to kind of... And I will move off this right now, but, My last, Clint Eastwood's Bird, I think one of his best movies is an 88 film. That's an incredible film. They did not draft that.

They did not. A little quick. The one I want to ask you about Tracy, because I feel like a couple times now, Big Picture has done sort of a drive-by of apathy towards this movie, and I like it quite a bit. Clean and Sober, the Michael Keaton film. I like it quite a bit too. I think that's a very good film.

I think I mentioned it actually on their podcast, on one of the physical media podcast, because I was talking about the value of Warner Archive. Yes. Right? which puts out sort of standard issue releases. They're very clean. There's no extras to speak of. There's no giant boxes.

It's just here's the movie in a nice, clean presentation. And it might not have been kind of a big deal movie at the time. But I really like clean and sober. I think it's a very good movie. And as a person sober for a long, long time, I have to say clean and sober is one of the movies that gets it right. It's the psychology of that right. I was on the Michael Keaton.

Michael Keaton's maybe my favorite living out. actor. But I was on the Michael Keaton Mount Rushmore. Yes. It was kind of a bad episode. Like it was a fun episode with you guys talking about Keaton, but like the four big Keaton movies was actually fairly easy for you guys to arrive at. The problem is it's easier and more interesting to pick eight to ten Keaton movies than it is four because the four are always going to be pretty chalk. But they they were just like it was not in the conversation for them. And I went in there being like clearly this is one of his key texts. they get weird about some of that stuff. And I can say, in fact, to bring it back to Peter Weir,

it comes up with witness. You know, Amanda and I really love witness. I think it's a great movie. We will spoil. We'll be on the witness episode next to you. Sean gets, Amanda's going to be on the witness episode. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Fantastic. We recorded it. It's in the back. Well, there you go. Sean gets a look on his face like his ass is sucking lemons. And he says, is it a great movie? Yeah. And I go, now look, it depends on where, you know, it's all relative, right? We could say seven samurai and bicycle thieves are great movies and these other movies. But if you're going to live in a world where you're telling me that a few good men and Pelican Brief are great movies,

then God damn right, Witness is a great movie. Yes. This is also definitively a great movie. I think that's... It is analogous to Kurosawa, where you're like, like, making samurai movies in the Japanese film industry at that, time was akin to doing like a programmer, and he was elevating it to such a high level. I'm not saying witness is the seven samurai of cop movies, but I think there is a similar, okay, but what is the most thoughtful, intelligent, deliberate, nuanced, detailed,

lived-in version of this? And it is what makes Peter Weir a blank check filmmaker, arguably, I would say, not in this film, where he had a little bit of a blank check in the Australian film industry up until this point. This starts to transition him, especially with Mel Gibson, being a guy who had crossed over. But then once he makes witness work at that level, and here's just what should be a cop action movie drama

that is now nominated for Best Picture, best director gets Harrison Ford his only acting nomination. It's like every A-list actor in Hollywood wants to work with this guy. They want to bring their passion projects to him because he can lend integrity to them. But that is the next chapter.

of his career that ends with the film we're talking about today. Well, I think he showed a particular skill at a kind of Stranger in a Strange Land story, which seems to be a theme running through a lot of Peter Weir's work. Even something like Dead Poets Society, which is ostensibly an inspirational teacher, right? But Robin Williams is the stranger and a strange man there. I have... Green card for sure.

Yes. I have, you know, continued to say this kind of quickly because I lack the knowledge and the intelligence to make this point more thoroughly, let alone the historical context. But especially watching his early Australian films, it feels very informed by a man who has spent a lifetime trying to reckon with his relationship to the country he lives in. Do I belong here? What is my ownership over this place? Does this place own me? who has been disposed in my favor, you know? And it feels like his films are constantly cultures,

kind of budding up against each other, interrogating each other, and people crossing those lines and feeling out of sorts in their world. Did I read correctly that this year of living dangerously is a recent rewatch for both of you? He'd never seen it. I saw this film several years ago,

but I did rewatch it for this show. And when did you watch it for the first time? For the first time ever, last night. Yeah. I like to be fresh. Fantastic. Yeah. That's great. Well, what did you think?

I liked it quite a lot. It is an interesting film. I have so greatly enjoyed, you know, the exercise of this show where we cover someone's full filmography. At times, even when it's a great career, you start to get into a feeling of, for like, months. I've just been on this one guy. his wavelength and it's starting to get a little samey, even if I can extricate the values of each individual film, I'm in a bit of a loop here. And other times, the filmography is so disparate that you're just like, I'm swinging all around here. I don't have any grounding force. I have just

by and large felt the cruising altitude of Peter Weir movies is so comforting to me. there is this kind of like thoughtful patience to his films. I love movies that feel like they have some answers that they're not sharing with you, both in terms of actually the text but also the craft, that you can feel the intentionality and the thought, and that's forced you to sort of lean in and try to interrogate what the person is doing. And this movie does have just such an incredible vibe to it. in a very basic fundamental way,

I don't know how many films I've seen that more accurately capture the feeling of being in a foreign country. Just the basic feeling of I have landed in a place and I'm trying to acclimate to how this place works. And so much of this movie is the interrogation of who are the people who landed here and act like they already own it.

Who are the people here who are trying to claim ownership? who are the people fighting to be seen within it. And I also love anytime it can be pulled off a movie about a fairly, how would I put this? He's not a weak lead character, but he's almost irrelevant to the movie in a certain way. He does not drive the action.

No, he's changed by the action. He's changed by the action, and the movie is, okay, I guess I'm leaving this now. He's pretty shallow. He's pretty shallow. Yeah. And he gains obviously some depth. Right.

Because it goes along and he gains some understanding of the way things really work, which is what I love about this movie. I think this piece is so good. Weir's early films, which this thing we've discovered in doing this is that, like, he came out of a background of sketch comedy, like performing and directing and then directing sketch comedy leads to directing theater and then directing film. And his early works, especially his short films,

feel way more kind of barbed and pointed in their kind of sense. satire of this kind of guy, a sort of well-meaning liberal white man who wants to be involved in causes, who wants to help and doesn't quite get it. And this feels like this interesting, I mean, this movie is just the transition point of like everything in his career. But he's basically removed any of the satirical edge from the character. He is presenting it very earnestly, but he is also presenting kind of how unimportant he is. And even in the

framework of it being like, oh, right, he's not telling the story. But I think it's also like about an Australian becoming alienated from like where he, like, it's about Australians becoming alienated from like the Western world or like the way the Western

world works and the way the Western world operates on the rest of the world, right? And he's going in there being like, I'm like these British guys and these America, right? Like, I'm in this mix and then becoming alienated from it, which I think is so interesting, especially that it's Weir's last Australian film before he joins Hollywood. And he does so well in Hollywood, and I don't ever feel like he like, you know, he never like made shit there, right? Like, he always did his own movies. But it's interesting that he sort of says farewell to Australia

by, with that sort of a statement. And the first four films are just so thoroughly about him interrogating his own sense of identity as an Australian of his generation and how he sees the world from that experience. Well, I mean, the character of Guy makes basically one ethical decision in the whole movie, and it's the wrong one, right? Totally fed by his ambition and without any sense of context. It's like, I'm here to do this job and I don't care who gets hurt as a result of me doing this job, as long as it gets me what I'm after. And yeah, I think you can read that

as personal on the part of Weir, especially given, as you say, he's about to go to Hollywood. He's about to leave Australia. He's about to become that. I mean, he's going to become quite a player on the world cinema scene. I don't know if he's making this film.

Because we have a dossier research. I'm going to open it up. But, like, he'd been trying to make this for years. This was a longstanding. fashion projects of it. So he's not making it in this sort of swan-songy way. But it's interesting how it sort of worked out. Have you ever

read the book? The Christopher Koch book. I have. I think it's Kosh. I was about to say, with that spelling, you never know how you... Right. Christopher Koch's 1978 book, which is based on his younger brother's life. His younger brother was a reporter in Indonesia during... Is this the dossier?

Have you opened? I've opened the... Yeah. It's not physical. You seem disappointed. It's a Google Doc. I mean, especially given year of living dangerously. You kind of want to write a big manila folder right out of a filing chapter. So his brother, you know, was in Indonesia for the fall of the Sakarno regime.

Weir reads the book and buys, reads it in a single day and inquires for the rights like immediately. His quote is, I could smell the, now he, what's this word, sate, satay. I don't know what that is. S-A-T-E? Yes. Interesting.

Not sure. I think it's just a different spelling of, Satay. The tang of clove cigarettes, the distant sound of the gamelan, the exotic Japanese atmosphere. Like, he, you know, his whole thing, I feel like with weird is he has these like aesthetic

reactions to stories or whatever. It's like, he'll read a script and be like, yeah, that's interesting. But then once in a while he reads a script where he's like, oh, I can't stop thinking about the world. Like the, how, you know, and that's always seems to be why he's in pursues a project. He reads a thing, he goes, this is overwhelming. I could

never touch this. And then he can't stop thinking about. Gallipoli is him walking on the beaches, right, in Turkey. Yeah. And seeing this, like, hand from an Australian... A medication bottle. Right. And being like, oh, my God. And, like, then not being able to let go of, like, right, our boys were here with their shit.

And then last wave was basically the same thing. Like, literally finding an object in a space and then going like, oh, so who is the person who left this here? David had skeered grilled meat. Yeah, right. Sate. Okay. Right. Right.

It was true. It was just spelled differently. Probably JJ's fault. Yeah, it's probably fired. Have you seen the last wave? Obviously, you've seen Gallifoli. Have you seen... Yes.

Last way is pretty cool. Yeah. And that was recently put on a disc, isn't it? Umbrella has had a disc out for quite a while. That's right. I missed out on the Deluxe edition. I had it. Criterion is now also re-released.

I had the old criteria. The DVD. They only have it on DVD. They haven't announced, I think, a Blu-ray or a 4K yet. It is a movie that they own outright. It is a movie that domestically is owned by Criterion, so I think it is coming soon, hopefully. So, we're...

was trying to make the thornbirds, which of course eventually got turned into a mini-series. I don't know if you know this. And then he gets sort of diverted onto Gallipoli, but then the investors withdraw from Gallipoli. So then he turns to Yerving Living Dangerously. Then Rupert Murdoch himself funds Gallipoli, and so he gets put back to Gallipoli.

So Yer Living Dangerously is back Bernard. He had visited Asia in the 60s, briefly, I guess, in his sort of, he went to Colombo, which is the capital of Sri Lanka while he was traveling up through Europe. He was very intrigued by it. Bali had become a vacation spot for him. So Bali is obviously a different island in Indonesia.

I've never been to Indonesia. I will admit now. I have not either. Griffin, of course, has been many times. No. Ben, yeah, you're always been in time. I would love to someday. My wife's been to Indonesia, but she lived in China for years.

So she's been everywhere. Her wife lived in China for years? Yes. Do you not know that? No. Do you not know that my wife is fluent in Mandarin? This is so surprising for someone I'm so close with. Griffin has known my wife since they were teenagers.

I went to high school with David's wife, so I like to contend correctly that I'm actually closer with her than he is because I've known her longer. Is that how you guys met? Nope. No. Complete coincidence. We became friends and he was like, you want to hear something funny? I'm going on a date tomorrow with someone you went to high school with.

Oh, wow. Oh, so you guys, your friendship actually predates your relationship with your wife. Correct. Here is the order. I meet his wife. I meet David. They meet each other. I know both of them better than they know each other.

So true. Three kids. Who cares? But you don't know that she's fluent in Mandarin. Or that she's lived in China. That she lived in China. Is it working as a teacher living in Hunan province? Okay.

But because she lived in China, she was like, oh, I'm in fucking China. I'm going to go everywhere. And so she's been to Indonesia. She's been to Thailand and Cambodia, Japan. Was this right after college? Yeah, right after college. Okay.

So those are the, years we fell out of touch. She was in freaking China. It was hard to contact her, I think. But she says it's very cool. You know, she's, yeah, anyway. Can I circle back to a thing? I know we'll have covered this in Gallipoli, but I think it's important kind of restating. Rupert Murdoch invested all this money into the idea of, we got to start weaponizing

what's coming out of the Australian new wave, not out of as much a sense of cultural pride, or national pride as, I think there's money in the mills. All these good filmmakers seem to be making interesting stuff at an industry that is still so small. Can we turbocharge that by throwing money into it? And so that's how he ends up fully financing Gallipoli, and it was part of what was supposed to be a company that was going to be mimicking this a larger project.

It is the only film they ever make. But Gallipoli gets all this fucking investment, his budget jumps way up from what he had done before because of Murdoch. And the other thing is that there's this energy It's why Gallipoli gets more of an American distribution deal up front with everyone post-Mad Max being like, how do we get Mel Gibson to Hollywood? How do we cross this bridge? This guy is just clearly like a raw element of movie star. If an Australian filmmaker has Mel Gibson, they've like opened a bunch of doors into our offices.

Do we have a timeline for what is considered the Australian new wave? Great question. I think it's basically like the first film that is marked as like the Australian New Wave is like Wake and Fright or the comedy stork and those are both 71. As we've been corrected, Wake and Fry is directed by Ted Kuchef, who is not in fact Australia. This is the whole thing. Walkabout is also marked as an early one, but that's also not directed. But it's like at least those are films where it's like they're filmed in Australia. And then the adventures of Barry McKenzie, which is 72, which is a Bruce Beresford movie. which is like a silly comedy,

but that's starting to spark, like, independent Australian cinema again, right? Like, homegrown. And so early 70s is where you market. Cars that 8, Paris is 74. Right. And that's a really, you know, that's a real Kickstarter.

And then that leads to Mad Max. But this scene is kind of the beginning of the end, because right after this, you get into sort of like, uh, Brian Trenchard Smith, more kind of like just genre plays, Mad Max sequels, Crocodile Dundee.

Like, the thing has become commercialized. Correct. And most of the breakout directors have gone to Hollywood. Right. That makes sense because, you know, I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, and I probably first heard of the Australian New Wave around the year that this comes out. So this comes out in America in 83. Right.

And by then, there have been Mad Maxes. I don't know if Road Warrior had, like, made it to America, but it's probably around when it's... I had seen Road Warrior in the theater, down. Definitely before this. And then like Beyond Thunderdome is 85, and that's that sort of thing where it's like, well, now this has gone Hollywood. And then Dundee is 86. Dundee is 86.

Yeah. And then after that, it's over. Right. And like you're saying, like, all those guys, so like Barrasford, Russell Mulcahy, like even the sort of lower level guys, they've all gone to Hollywood. Yeah. And they go, Philip Noisse, right. And they go make genre stuff mostly.

Right. And then you have Peter Weir and George Miller is the kind of like esteemed, you know, whatever, like Hollywood Big Shot versions of it. I mean, George Miller's the odd one because he figures out how to basically keep... But he still makes like Witches of Eastwick. Like, he still makes... That's the one that like broke him where then he's like, if I'm doing this, I'm doing it on my own terms, even if I'm ultimately handing the product over to Hollywood at the end

of the day. Now, did you see this film when you were, you know, in 83? Like in theaters. Yeah, yeah. So you would have been what? 17, 18 years old. Yeah. And what drove you to see it or was it just seeing everything?

Well, at that time I saw everything. I knew who Peter Weir was. And, you know, Mad Max, or I should say the Road Warrior, had announced Mel Gibson as a movie star in the most profound way. Just a theater full of people going, that guy's a fucking movie star, and I'll follow him anywhere. And I want to see what he's got. And of course, Year of Living Dangerously was quite a calling card for him in that. it's like, oh, he's not just, he's not an action star. He's not Dolf Lundgren up there. He's smart. He's, uh, he can, he can play the male action star, but he can also play the romantic lead.

He's smart. He can also play a guy who's a bit of a son of a bitch, right? He, there, there are a lot more arrows in his quiver. We realized with year of living dangerously. I was thinking watching this and not having seen it before. This maybe feels like his, most normal performance ever. Because obviously, here he's fighting against the Mad Max thing, right, and trying to show his range he has. But then I feel like when his Hollywood persona as a movie star settles, it's still using 10% of the mania. You know, it's the lethal weapon. It's the caged animal thing. And then he can also still be in rom-coms or dramas or whatever, but he does have that odd kind of manic energy to him. And this, he is just so fucking steady. You know, he's

not Charmin and Shmoosan in the way he is in Gallipoli, where he's such an exciting kind of like... He's playing like an innocent sort of, which it's like not something he really did much of. I don't think he's ever played someone this kind of like simple in a way, not simple in like a backhanded way. I never saw the river that is he playing a kind of this kind of guy in that? Like I'm trying to think of a comparable... No, the river he's playing a Midwestern farmer, not completely convincingly, but it's not an embarrassment either. But yeah, he never really did the kind of slightly... right-eyed, you know. It was just making me think of how different sort of Hollywood sees development

of movie stars now where like you have a foreign export movie that crosses over here. Everyone points and goes, that guy's a fucking movie star. And Hollywood's like, okay, collectively, how do we do this? You know, and there's this feeling of it's not like one studio signs him to a 10-year deal, but everyone's like, it is worth continuing to throw money at movies that have Mel Gibson in them so we can test him out and grow him incrementally.

Like he needs to be in spring training, right? It helps if he's in a drama. Audiences need to meet him in different flavors. We need to test what he's good at and bad at at a low enough budget level that this will ultimately help all of us versus your Taylor Kitch, you're on Friday Night Lights,

and then they're like, great, you're the star of three, $200 million movies. But nobody's actually, actually have it. Nobody's actually saying that, right? They're all individually. Right. Yeah. But it did feel like there was a kind of, I don't know, you read about these things like a collective unconscious in the period between when the studio system kind of collapses and the star contracts where, you know, people are literally saying, we're buying this guy, we're sending him to charm school, we're molding him in our image. Things dissipate. But still, there is a sense of like,

movie stars are rare. If there is one potentially on the board, it benefits all of us to just chip away at this guy. Part of it, I'm sure, is also selfishly like, will Mel Gibson look fondly upon us 10 years from now because we financed one of his early films? Not to mention what Mel himself wants, right? Because he wants to be taken very serious.

You know, eventually he's going to wind up making Hamlet. He's going to wind up making Braveheart. He wants to be taken seriously in this way. So, of course, he's not going to, follow Road Warrior with, I can't think of anything stupid enough. Well, right. Oh, you're trying to think of like, what's the dumb thing? What would be the dumb thing he could do?

What's interesting is that he follows Road Warrior and you're living dangerously with three prestige pictures, none of which I feel like were quite it. Like there's the Donaldson Bounty film. Right. Which is like pretty good. It's like pretty good. Everyone's, he gets to be opposite Anthony Hopkins. Everyone's all dressed up and yelling and it's fine.

He does the river. which I feel like didn't really make an impact, but on paper made sense. Who directed the river? Mark Rydell. Oh, right. So, like, you know, he'd done the Rose, that had gone Oscar Noms.

He'd done, obviously, on Golden Pond. And then he does that thing, Mrs. Saffel with Diane Keat, which I've never seen, but I, Phillyenstrom is a good director, but, right, like a bond. That feels like he gets stuck in, he's a little too earnest.

Yeah, and it feels like these are movies that the bigger guys had passed on. Right. And it was like, well, let's gamble on. this Australian guy who's so handsome. Like, he'll make sense. And playing him a little more romantic, maybe. And then he does Thunderdome and then lethal weapon.

And then it's like, okay. It's off to the races. Well, it's off to the races, but it is him doing action for a while. It's like Tequila Sunrise, Air America, like those. And then he grabs the prestige with like Hamlet and... I think what they dialed in with lethal weapon and with Thunderdome in particular, where he's older, where he's like a more haunted Max and everything is like, What's the right level of crazy we want here?

Maybe we cleaned him up too much, you know, with like your Mrs. Softels and stuff. Like, let's get a little bit of the energy back in there. And then those two movies, it's like, we got it, we know who he is, we have a handle on him off to the races. How old is he when he does a year of living dangerously? It's a good question. Still quite young. If that film is made around 81, 82, he's, let me do the math here. 27?

No, he's old than that. He was born in 56. Yeah, no, you're right. You're 26. Dang. He's really young. Yeah. He's only 70 now.

Yeah. And it's obviously he's been famous my entire life. I mean, he is so pretty in this. It is kind of astounding just the serenity of his face. Look, it's the magic of aging. It means if you're Pacino or whatever that I can show someone like the godfather and they're like, I didn't realize he used to look like this. And you're like, yeah, take a look.

Like, there was a reason everyone was going insane about this guy. Apologies for the tangent, but I found recently, through doing some Wikipedia rabbit holes, do you know that Al Pacino is actually on the record as far as we are able to historically document these things as one of the 25 oldest fathers in human history? Oh, well, okay, well, good for him. Good for him. No, I didn't know that. Everyone was like, oh, he had a kid really old.

I'm like, yeah, it doesn't that happen like a lot, though? And it was like, no, he's like, he's up there. Here is a Wikipedia entry. List of oldest fathers on record. And a couple of them are questionable. Like the top guy, they're like, that guy might have been adding two decades to his age. And I'm like, then throw him off this fucking list. Let me tell you, the top 25 you don't know about.

They're not on Wikipedia. They're not bragging about it. On record. There's one guy also. Tony Randall is on this list. Tony Randall had a child at 77. Yes. He was married to one woman for like 40 or 50 years.

She passed away. He married a 20-something. They pumped out two kids for. fast and he passed away. Tony Randall, also from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Wow. So the screenplay's written by three people, right? So we're and David Williamson are one team.

They already had written Gallipoli together. Playwright. Playwright. Right. Playwright. A great playwright, I feel like of the, you know. And then, sorry, it's Coach or Coach. Coach.

I think it's Coach. Right. Koch wrote his own script and they kind of merged them. But we're describes the relationship as bumpy. But it was a little not exquisite core. but like these things were happening siloed processes that were then mushed together. As it usually is, I think, when you see multiple screenwriters on a thing. Somebody didn't meet somebody else. I just think sometimes it's more iterative where it's handed off from one person.

I guess that's more exquisite corpse, whereas this, it was more like Frankenstein's monster, where they're like, we got four bodies, which parts do we want to pluck from each of them? Though the movie does not differ from the book in any interesting great way. Yeah. A different narrator, I suppose, is probably the biggest change. It's not Billy in the book. It's not Billy in the book. Yeah.

It's another journalist in the book. Okay. But that feels very telling. Right. Whether that was Weir's decision or that we are responded to someone else suggesting that. Yeah. It does feel like kind of. No, it's a big.

The most important framework the movie provides. Yeah. Yeah. For how to read it, in my opinion. So, Coach says, you know, and there was initial publicity that left his name off. He says he sort of fought for the screenplay credit. And that, you know, as it always is with these sort of screenwriting disputes, everyone's got their story. But we're, he, Coach says, I gave where a screenplay.

He liked it. He took it to CBS in America. they didn't like the script. And so, you know, there was a polish. It turned into a rewrite. And Coach is like, I know I'm not trying to be like the sensitive novelist here. But like, you know, they had fucked up my story. And I fought to put stuff back in.

And so Weir kind of rewrites the rewrite. The rewrite was done by a guy called Alan Sharp, who was, you know, wrote night moves, like a Hollywood guy. Weir rewrites the Sharp script. more in the direction of what Coach is interested. CBS drops out. Williamson then comes on board. Koch's final estimates is that the script is

55% Williamson Weir, 45% Me, sharp, ex-sized, which was the stuff he really didn't like. So, you know, he's moderately happy. Peter Weir's take is, I ate the novel, I digested it, and it was delicious. I can only recall the taste, but what I then spoke as a result of the experience

was my way of telling the story. He really has a way with words. Like, a lot of guys sat down in front of a DWGA panel or whatever and was like, well, I ate the script. And I tasted it. I will say in our months of reading and watching interviews with Peter Weir, and as someone who loves to just drive a bit into the ground, his commitment to metaphors in talking about his process, he will pick one and he will really stick with it and ride it out to the end of the thought. Right. Yeah.

So, right, they altered the Kwan character. Weir says he's much less likable in the novel. Would you agree? Yeah. And I guess he wanted sort of to alter the balance of that. So in what way is he not likable? Is he just like more of a cynical kind of... Yeah, I think my recollection of it is that he's...

Kwan is more manipulative. Yeah. Because, like, this movie frames, it is a film that positions Kwan as the hero of the story. It is almost kind of like big trouble and little China in many ways of sort of like, here's your like fake lead at the center. But actually this movie is being driven by this person who would never be allowed to be the center of a story. He also says he filled out Jill's character more in the book, the character's pregnant. He felt like that was a little too much, like essentially why would she?

be sort of throwing herself into all of this, why would Hamilton be interested, you know, like in a further complication of that? You know, like, so they removed that. And, you know, it's just essentially, like, I assume this is correct. And we were saying the book is more very much about the politics of the time.

And the movie is not really. Not that it's, it's how am I trying to, like, it's like, this movie could be set in other moments of sort of critical change in a country, I guess. You don't need to know anything. about Indonesian history or politics in order to enjoy the movie, the Year of Living Dangerous.

You know that there is essentially a sort of coup that happens at the end of the film. But, like, this is a crazy and fascinating moment in Indonesian history. And it's only, and, like, the point is that he's only grasping little bits of it anyway, I guess. I will say, I'm the opposite of David in this regard, where I, more than anything, value a movie that can be in conversation with real historical, events, but not require you to open a bunch of Wikipedia tabs. I don't look to those films as educational resources. I don't walk out of them going clearly I know everything, but I like the ability to sort of tell a story adjacent to in tandem with real hard history that just kind of works

as a complete closed loop on its own dramatically. Well, how well do you know Vienna post-World War II? how well do you need to know it in order to enjoy the third man? Yes. Right. I mean, we're going to give you just enough context so you know what the fuck is going on. Right. And then we're going to do any movie. And I think we're is in particular very good at that.

Almost all of his films are like in conversation with larger, thornier issues that are too hard to compress down narratively. But he is telling one very clear emotional story within that. But of course, you've also got the problem. the issue of Peter Weir and David Williamson and C.J. Koch and Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver telling you a story set in exotic Indonesia. Yes. And I think that's a lot of this movie's tricky, like, standing at this present moment is just taking a little cursory, view a letterbox. I feel like there is a conversation for a movie that's a little bit lost. and part of this is

no proper physical media representation, not streaming in the regular places. Kind of a cruddy streaming. Right. Like, is, is this movie a peak example of kind of Hollywood exoticism,

even though it was not fully a Hollywood movie? Or is this a movie that is actually kind of interrogating that, which does not mean is not guilty of any of the attributes. But I do think,

and I especially think this in having watched the earlier Australian films up until this point. I do think that is very deliberately what he is doing. I think he is very skillful at making movies where he is owning what his perspective is and the limitations of his perspective and working that in textually and narratively

and commenting within that. But I think everything we're saying about the re-centering of the Billy Con character, which we will get to momentarily, is its own major conversation, is what he's really trying to say here. Here's a story of a guy who lands in a foreign country

that is under great turmoil and is primarily focused on advancing his own career with a sense of kind of back patty I want to be doing the right thing and falls in love and has a hot fucking two movie stars at the prime of physical specimenship.

I mean, Sigourney is so stunning. The two of them. unbelievable in this, but it's like they're just getting it on while people are really fucking suffering. Right. And, you know. But the movie's very conscious of that. Right. And the actual story is this Billy Kwan character trying to push these kind of useful idiots into helping, you know, rather than hurting.

But without, like, Billy never wants to tip his hand. Correct. Like, he cares too much. Yes. That he's paying too much attention to everybody that he's keeping his. files, right? Yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, even the question of like, why do you have access to the president? You know, why do you have his ear? That he's just sort of kept tabs on everything for any moment he feels like he can move the chess pieces around the board to help the cause. But of course, the tragedy of this

movie is like, Billy Kwan falls out a window and Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson get on a plane and get to go like, well, that was interesting, but back to our normal life. And they just leave the problem there. That's right. And does we get away, with something because he's already established his liberal bona fides, his, these story points that you talk about, colonialism in Australia, is he given us a little extra credit for that, whereas the people who made Casablanca or the third man are not given that kind of credit? I mean, obviously, when I saw this movie in 1983 in a movie theater, none of this shit ever crossed my mind, but I see it now in a different light, right?

40 years changes the perspective. Was, yes, I wonder what, yeah, right, what the sort of discourse was at the time, because this was a big-ish film. It was banned in Indonesia until like 2000. Yeah, well, that's not a country that allowed discourse on its politics until the 21st century. And even after that, yes.

There was discourse and, what was it, Death threats against Weir and Gibson from Muslims who believe the film would be anti-Islamic, forced the production to move to Australia. Yes, right, right. Because they were going to film it. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Because, oh, no, I'm sorry. It was supposed to film in Jakarta. Which is an Indian show. Right. Then it was denied. So then it moved to the Philippines. And then they had to end up filming the final chunk of it in Sydney. Got it.

Because all the actors, I believe. who are not the three principles or four principles are Filipino actors. Yes. Ultimately, films financed by MGM. The first of their Freddie Fields era of famous super agent, who is the president of MGM in the 80s, cost six million Australian dollars.

Don't know what that translates to, but, you know, sort of a small to medium spend, I guess. Sure. about 10, I think, based on the math we did for Gallipoli. See, I was about to go the other direction.

All right, good to know. Okay, I think. They supported the Linda Hunt casting choice, which was sort of a fraught choice. Yeah, so he cast David Atkins at first, who is like an Australian dancer and a national treasure. And I assume they cast him more for sort of like a physical reason. And then they, like, start doing rehearsals with Gibson. And they're like, oh, he cannot hold his own against Gibbs. He was a small Caucasian.

man, but not a man with dwarfism. Right. And so they start like looking for, you know, anybody, essentially. They look in America because they had, according to We are exhausted, they're casting sessions in Australia,

Hong Kong, and London. Wallace Sean tested, which is, oh my God. Unbelievable to imagine. And the other one is Bob Ballopin. Yes. They were like, who are tiny guys with particular energies who are can be pulling

like Mel Gibson's suit jacket. I mean, beyond just the fact that Linda Hunt gives such a good performance, in talking about everything that is tricky about watching this performance today, it is, I just think, helpful to envision how much worse

it could have been. Yes. Because that's a night... To imagine Wallace Sean doing this. No disrespect to the great Wallace's... Of course. It's like... The film would be illegal.

A thing that Linda Hunt is famous for after this movie is Aunt Dan and Lemon, the Wallace Sean play. She's in, right? Yes. It's funny that they I have no idea if this came up of like, what was your Billy Kwan auditioned like? I found a whole interview with her where she was talking about it and comparing notes with him.

There you go. So, you know, how did so bad casting session in L.A. He's reading the Gibson Park, you know. For David, or David Atkins or you're saying Wallachon? No, no, no. We're is like, Reading with people, he's reading Gibson's lines.

Like, everything sucks, apparently. Yeah. And a casting director holds up a photograph, and he was like, that's perfect. And the castor just laughing. And it's like, no, this is a woman. And we're as like, I was just desperate. And I was like, I want to meet her. Like, I, like, please.

She had done one movie up until this point. Right. Had been in Robert Altman's Popeye as part of basically the ensemble of Sweethaven. I think she is Roundhouse's mother, maybe. Right. And she's done Broadway. She'd done some theater. She'd done a lot of theater.

Right. She had gone to the theater school at DePaul University, formerly the Goodman School of Drama. And I believe she was cut. I think she was cut from that program. And then when she became very famous, they went back to her and said, would you mind if we were a...

Fucking unbelievable. An alum. Yeah. She's a New Jersey native, Ben. But grew up in Westport, I believe. Yes. And she's, as a... a teenager diagnosed with hypopituitary dwarfism.

Right, she's 4-9. Yes. She is a Caucasian woman. This is so true. This is unbelievably true. Yes, it couldn't be more true. She asked, I think the sensitivity at the time was more that she was like, can we rewrite this to be a woman?

Like, she was a little bit more like, I'm not sure I can pull off playing a guy. Yes. I don't know how much, unfortunately, there was handering over, like, you know, putting someone in yellow face at the time. When you read the response at the time or people talk about the making of the movie, it felt like their concern was, will this look silly, not is this offensive? Right. It was, this is a big swing. And in a serious dramatic film, does it throw the entire thing off balance?

And the fact that it doesn't and that her performance is so good is, fantasy has been talking about this a lot recently. It is one of those rare examples of a best supporting actress win. that's basically a cakewalk and the only nomination that movie got. It's so crazy. It's similar to the Amy Madigan weapons thing of just people being like, yeah, this is just like this is kind of one in a million thing. This immediately like is stuck in everyone's mind. I mean, it's kind of hard to imagine you're of living dangerously without Linda Hunt in it.

It is the defining element. You make with the movie. I think weirdly, David, that it's considered brown face, not yellow face. because she's portraying a South Asian. Southeast Asian person. This is clearly something I'm very good at parsing out and talking about in like an intellectual. No, you're right. I mean, but no, nobody was concerned about that in 1982.

And nor am I going to, yes, but the decision at the time, right? We show the movies to our kids that come with the disclaimers now. This was wrong at the time. It's wrong now. And I believe that absolutely to be true. Yeah. And that's how I feel.

The thing with this one that's so odd is it's not like Breakfast of Tiffany's or whatever where you're like, well, this is plainly offensive at the time and it's just playing into a stereotype and all this. You know, like Rimo Williams, the Adventure begins. There's only like a year or two after this

and has Joel Gray playing a villain character who is like borderline foo man shoe. Right, right, right. And that is a performance that gets like a Golden Globe nomination. But that, that was Hollywood at the time. They were obsessed with the stunt of, yes. It was as if like, oh my God. And this is, I'm choosing my language very carefully here.

I'm saying that this was their attitude at the time and this is exactly what the danger of the dehumanization was. It was treated as, can you believe this human being convincingly played a dog? You know, that it was like, right, right, right. Of course, it's acting, my friend. and make up in a voice and they change the whole thing. And now we obviously have like an entirely different language for how we consider like who should play what and how. It is interesting that it feels like the gender part of this is the most interesting part of the performance, the most powerful.

And I actually think would be seen as progressive today in my mind. In that in that light, it would. I'll also tell you, you know, when you're the director and you're setting up the auditions and you're working with a cast. director and you say what we need from this character is a half Chinese half Australian dwarf right of a yes within a certain age right and you set up the auditions and then you look out in the waiting room and you go they're not they're not out there they're not they're not coming in because not to say they didn't exist but say there are four of them out there Chinese

Australian people with dwarfism who are coming into audition and maybe two of them are the wrong age and one of them is just terrible and when we were like, oh, maybe we can make this work. I'm not going to rank the levels of offensiveness of which things are touchier than others, but it's like, what if you find the right guy and he's six foot seven? And now he's like walking with like shoes on his knees, you know? And it did feel like the part of this that felt risky creatively was the gender element. And it is the thing that gives this movie this like entirely different like power and text.

I don't know if it's just me watching this from for the first. first time yesterday, but it feels like baked in. And it was this interview I found that Linda Hunt did with Bomb Magazine where she's talking about having just done the run of the Wallace Sean play. And she said, like, that was deliberate in my mind that like I am playing a super personality, that I am not trying to play a man. And you watch this now. And it feels like there is a reading that is pretty easy to get to of this character being like an Albert Knobb's, of being someone who has assumed a different gender identity,

whether out of personal expression or out of means of survival. And that is kind of like the secret the movie is holding. And I think that was the thing that just made this performance so transfixing that, you know, in an era where people are just doing kind of race-swapped casting offensively without any delicacy, playing into stereotypes, without any larger gain,

this performance is not doing that, or rather that's not the main driving force, so people were just like fucking hander the Oscar right away. And as like a kid growing up in the 90s and trying to learn about Oscar history, it was such a weird thing to stumble upon and be like, in like the 80s, they gave best supporting actress to a woman

playing a Filipino man and it's like someone I haven't heard of but now that you're pointing her out she does just kind of pop up in things does he do you suppose there's any consciousness that he's indemnifying the brown face decision

by doing that gender swap I do wonder but I really think the way he presents it is more just the total desperation of we could not find anyone even close to being good for this right And it's such a unique and specific role.

And then he at one point was like, should I make the character even more physically unusual? Should I make it a hunchback? Should I essentially just kind of transform it in a way that it might fit other actors, right? And then he pulls back from that because he finds Linda Hunt. I do think Linda Hunt wins the Oscar because she's good. I do also think she wins because it was one of those kind of like,

well, like you said, like, well, this has never happened before. We have to sort of acknowledge what an unusual performance this is. Who else was nominated that year? That's a good question. It's a weird year. I was looking at because it's Cher for Silkwood, who I think wins the Golden Globe.

The SAG doesn't exist yet. Right. And that's Cher's entree. Right. You know, like into being taken seriously and she'll win. Right. Maybe Cher was going to be the front runner. This is the year. So it's Sharon Silkwood.

Amy Irving and Yentel, a lovely performance, but probably not going to win. Albury Wood and Cross Creek, which is a great performance, but is a small movie. And again, probably sort of like a welcome and welcome to the biz, you know.

And then Glenn Close and the Big Chill which is not like the definitive close performance, but I feel like now they'd look back and be like, should we just fucking give it to her for that? And then this is what fucked close. It saves us the headache of, yeah. Every time they nominated her, they were like, but we'll give it to her for the next one.

And she was the only actor nominated from the Big Chill, which is weird because she is good in it, but she doesn't actually have a big role. I think it just speaks to her status, that she was so... She is the scene where she cries in the shower, which is like a big Oscar-y kind of scene. Yeah. But like, if I'm given someone an Oscar for that movie,

movie, it's like Joe Beth Williams or something. I don't know. It's someone else. Well, it's absolutely the argument for an ensemble award. It is. Right? I mean, that would have won best. Big Chill would have won it hands down. Yeah. And then who's the fifth nominee again? So Linda Hunt, so Linda Hunt shared Glenn Close, Amy Irving, Alphrey Woodard. Right, right. Okay. Good year. It's a great performance. It's an interesting year. That's the terms of endearment year. Right. And they run both of them in lead. Yes.

So, Shirley McClellan opens the theater. Today they would have put McLean in supporting. No, I think they would have put Debra in supporting and it would have been bullshit. No, I think they would have put McLean in supporting, which is weird. I think you're disregarding the kind of like

I know what you're arguing. Elder statesman rule. I would point to Carol as the analog. Yeah, but Officer and Gentleman had already come out. So Debra Winger was a big movie star and that movie's more about her. and McLean is the sparky supporting character

in this bullshit read of it. Like, I think Deborah would have been lead and might have won. Hmm, maybe they should have done some category fraud. But Linda Hunt won. Linda Hunt's such an interesting actor who has such a crazy, interesting career in some ways. But it's also someone that, like,

obviously Hollywood never really knows what to do. No, there's a fascinating kind of like paycheck run, and I don't say that disparagingly, where the studios are like, this person's interesting, How can we work her into our big movies? And you're like, oh, she's like the madam running the saloon in Silverado. She's like the stern principal and kindergarten cop.

Like there's a good series of big studio paycheck gigs for her that all use her in an interesting way. Another one or two Altman movies, too, right? She's in Prediportez. Yeah. And then she ends up on, she was on a 90s legal show. And then she was on NCIS. She's on the practice. Yes.

But as like one of the judges. but N-CAS for 100 years. She was on that show for 100 years. Los Angeles? Los Angeles, right. I always forget if it was New Orleans or Los Angeles.

This is a thing I discovered that I just, I'm so happy. I did the research and stumbled upon this myself. Linda Hunt twice won the Teen Choice Award Surfboard for choice female TV star colon action.

For NCAS, L.A? Yes. Those awards. of course, are full of integrity and wrote it on by... Action. Wait a minute. They give a surfboard?

They give you a whole surfboard? You got a gun for one of these. You got your Pulitzer. You got your Tonys. You got to get a surfboard. You go up on stage and they give you a... I was desperately trying to find a video of her accepting the surfboard.

On her, I'm DB. She is credited once as self at one of those ceremonies, but I could not find any video of it. But both years, I think the category was exactly the same. I believe she beat Yvonne Strahoshky for Chuck.

Maggie Q for the LaFemniquita TV show. Like, it's like four TV shows. Here's Shaline Woodley accepting a surfboard. Oh, it's a full-size-sucking surfboard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was two years in a row the exact same nominees. I think I just like leave it in the parking spot, you know, outside. You're just like, yeah.

No, you got to ride that shit home. I just love that it was four women in high heels who kicked people. And that both times they were like, the teens have spoken. and they like Linda Hunt sitting behind a desk. What if you don't surf? This is my, what are you going to do with a surfing board? Sell it, frame it.

Do we call it a surfing board? It's just surfing board. This is again, you're sort of, you're not really a Hollywood guy I'm feeling here. But to this point, it's like this wasn't an an anointment of a career. She was basically unknown to most of Hollywood. She was, you know, established in theater, but had done almost no on-camera work.

And then Hollywood is like, I guess we got to cast her in stuff, but she never becomes, you know, like, you look back and go like, oh, that makes sense that Linda Hunt has an Oscar. She got a Tony nomination

for End of the World, a play I don't really know in the 80s. Yeah, that's about, that's a, yeah, anyway, she's in the film. Gibson, obviously, was the choice to begin with. Apparently, he was vaguely wary

of the character, I think because he'd never done that kind of a thing, right? The sort of more cool detached. Just the hold the center thing. Right. So, Gordney Weaver,

Peter, we're like the film Alien. Yeah. Like many of us. And so, I don't know. He didn't, he didn't, like, you know, didn't have to press too hard. Her time in between Alien and Ghostbusters

wasn't Rocky, but you do look back at it and you feel her fighting against getting pigeonholed as just genre. As, right, like a sort of an action queen or whatever. Right, and it feels like she tries a lot of interesting stuff when she and Ghostbusters can prove that she's funny, and then that's followed by aliens and gorillas in the mist and everything.

Like, by 84, 85, it's like, oh, Sigourney River can do anything. But she only does one movie in between dangerously, which is eyewitness. Right. She and Bill Hart both kind of anointed new movie stars at that point. Never seen. They're like journalists, right? It's Peter Yates, right? I think James Woods is also.

in that. That's not bad. Sure. You know, when she had been in college, she'd gone to school with Christopher Durang. Right. And he had written these plays. They would do these plays in college, and he wrote these roles for her where she was kind of the, you know, in a sense, he's writing, yeah, they were very, very much comedies and she got to do lots of wacky stuff or be kind of, the fact that she was tall, statuesque, beautiful, long-legged,

And yet being in these screwball comedies, we're playing a kind of Margaret Dumont character in these things that Durang would write. So it makes sense that after Alien, she would say, well, that's not really who I. I'm not really an ass-kicking action star. I do different stuff. But in Year of Living Dangerously,

she and Mel, right, find an opportunity to play. I mean, she's just so fucking smart, right? Her screen persona is so fucking smart. And so you can imagine. a lot of actors who would feel not equipped to play this role

that she plays in Year of Living Dangerously. She has a tremendous amount of intelligence and authority on screen that just is established second one when you see her in a movie that doesn't have a ton of time to backfill character. Right after this is when she does Hurley Burling on Broadway, which I

feel like was another kind of big fucking deal. Yeah. Does she do much theater now? Like, she did Christopher Drang's Spica and Spice yeah That was the last one I think so she doesn't do a lot of it these days Yeah

Is she in these fucking avatar things? Tracy she sure is and she is crazy I'm so glad you asked In a stroke of almost Linda Hunt S. casting It is bizarre what they do with her Sigourney Weaver plays a 13 year old alien So in the first film It is a phenomenal performance

In the first film Sigourney Weaver plays the scientist, a human person. She's like a chain smoking, tired. I'm trying to make these avatars. How do people become aliens? She dies in the first film, Spoiler Alert. But her mind is uploaded, of course, to a mind tree. Don't worry about it.

Would you say spoiler alert after the spoiler? Yeah. It's kind of loses something. A little bit. And then in the second and third films, she plays in Navi, an alien, so motion capture performance, but they use the motion capture

so that she can play a 13-year-old girl. But it looks like It's like her. It looks like Sigourney Weaver's face on a 13-year-old blue cat alien and she is so good

in the films. And she is. It is. A well-observed performance of a teenager. It is. Here she is. Oh, there you go.

Anyway, but back to the Earth Living Dangerously, it's just so exciting having me on the show. I feel like I just want to tell you all these things. Yeah, we're excitedly showing

you our like macaroni. As we said, they were never really going to do Indonesia. They shot in Manila, which was very arduous. Then there were terrorist threats, which was a problem.

Manila is a very Catholic city at the time, I think. Then they start shooting in a village that's very heavily Muslim, and this causes a lot of friction, and they, I think, don't know how much of a mess they're making by doing all of this. They're just blundering around making their movie. So they eventually have to retreat to... I mean, at one point,

a note was left in a vehicle saying, in the name of Allah the Almighty stop your imperialistic film where we will stop you. That's the thing. The discourse of this movie, I think it was not touchy in the states.

It was touchy the places they were filming. That makes sense. Yes. So We're going to leave. Imel de Marcos, the then first lady, a big Filipino politician,

obviously, personally reaches out and begs them, like, don't leave. Like, you know, like, we'll figure this out. But Weir is just kind of like, this is too fucked up. Like, we don't need to be, you know.

dealing with all this. Life first, movie, second is how he puts it. So then they do another like six weeks in Sydney recreating some of the sets, like patching it all together. And, yeah, the biggest battle. What do you think the biggest battle over this movie was after it was, you know, Final Cup?

The biggest battle? Like the biggest kind of like a US sensor kind of, you know, like, you know, the studio thing. Like, it's that there's child nudity. That there's the boy naked. when he's sick. Oh, God. Isn't that how it goes, though?

Like, you know, it's like, well, wait a second. Why are we seeing a penis? I don't, like a child's penis. From the dead child. Right, yeah. Priorities there, maybe a little out of whack. Film came out of December, 82 in Australia. Late January,

late January 83 in America. So Linda Hunt wins an Oscar for a performance that was a year plus old. Wild. Like, she wins in the 84 Oscars. Yeah, and looking through it, it really felt like she just sort of swept all the critic awards. Yeah. It must have been a performance that people were like, that was interesting.

Obviously, that's not a traditional Oscar-winning performance. And then it became such a critic's cause that she carried it all the way. I just think back to the casting thing for a second. An interesting comparison point that I saw people pointing out on letterboxed, to your point of, like, yes, it is incredibly hard to cast these things, right? and in theater, you were granted more sort of latitude of people can play things representationally, and in film we expect a kind of literalism, and how do you find the real person

and also know that they can deliver what's necessary for the role, and all of that, which is, none of this said as an excuse, right? Just that casting is an incredibly tricky art form. The weird kind of counter to this movie is Killing Fields two years later, where they hire Hying Nessnagar,

who basically just was the guy he was playing, and he wins an Oscar, as well, you know? And it's in an academy that has very rarely awarded Asian actors at all. He is one of the few, and it's basically he is considered it's him

and Harold Russell from Best Years of Our Lives or the two times that someone who was like straight up a non-professional actor, we hired this guy based on life experience, and it worked. Even then, you know, it's going to be hard if you go, well, let's just assume we can direct them and we can

the performance out of them, we have to find a four foot nine, half Australian, Filipino dwarf. It's still like a tough challenge. You know, I, uh, years ago, uh, just to literally identify that human being alive on the planet. Right. Yeah. Years ago, I did a play of mine called Linda Vista, and there's a Vietnamese American character in Linda Vista. And we went about trying to cast this role and trying to cast a Vietnamese actor in Chicago was challenging. Uh, we, we, we eventually, got there, I have a Chinese, Korean, American friend who said to me, why are you, why are you trying to cast a Vietnamese person? You're not going to find a Vietnamese person. You just cast an Asian person. And I said, but don't you think that the Vietnamese person would have a different

perspective on that and would want to see themselves, want to see the Vietnamese person represented on stage by a Vietnamese actor? And she said, that's not the way we look at it. She said, if I have to wait for the role to come up. That's a Chinese, Korean American. I've already got a limited number of roles I can play. And now you're going to tell me that I can only play a role if it's Chinese, Korean American. Well, I don't know what Linda Hunt would say since she has dwarfism about a role that comes up in which she's being asked to play a dwarf. Now, would she say something different now than she said back in 1982? I don't know. I don't know. It's, we're not hand-waving or excusing any of it. There are like two fundamental truths, which is this casting would never happen

today, and this performance is extraordinary. And it is like, really the juice of the movie in every way. And back to just the reframing around this character is the whole reason this movie works for me on top of her just nailing the performance so hard. But I think today there would be, some form of reconceptualization around the character somehow. I think today a director would say let's find that person before I do anything else. Right?

It's like I've got to know that I've got that person that I can build this movie around. There was whatever years ago, 2019 Steven Spielberg announced he was going to make that movie about the kidnapping. The kidnapping of Garda Montata. It's been made since then. Yes. But he announced it as

his next film and they said, and now we begin the worldwide. casting search for the kid. And basically after two years, he was like, I can't make this movie. We never found the kid. Right. You know?

And if you're Steven Spielberg, you have the clout to be given the money in the runway to search knowing that you might not find the kid. If you're Peter Weir at this point in your career, they're saying to you, here's when you start filming. Yeah.

In Manila, no less. You decide who's playing that role, but we're not waiting around for four years. Mel's got like two more fucking Mad Max. to make or whatever. Right. Yeah. So the film,

we should discuss a little more in depth, I would imagine. You know, what do we... It opens with Billy Kwan. A character who we'll later find out is dead.

Sure. But is telling the story of the film to us, basically. You're right. He's narrating from beyond... In diary form. Right. Yes.

In a way. Yeah. But... Does this mean we're done with the dossier? We are. I'm sorry. No, it's all right. I'm...

The only thing left there is, you know, the reviews. the reception of the film on, which I can tell you more. There are specific questions we can always plug back in. I can tell you a plate it can.

I can tell you that it was well received by critics. And we're these days just sort of like, I'm not sure about that film's legacy, but I'm glad, you know, it still exists. He doesn't talk about it

in a reverential way exactly, but I think it was a pain to make. Here's what I don't know yet. How do you feel about this film? I love this film. I, you know, sensitivities aside and all, like the things we're discussed.

Like, I just, it's just the kind of movie I really respond to because it's sexy, but also, like, politically complex and, like, rewarding in its complexity. Just, like, not giving you an easy answer, not giving you an easy guy to root for. Like, he makes mistakes that are identifiable mistakes to me. He behaves in a way that I'm like, yeah, I don't. know that I would really be of upright integrity here either. I don't know that I would know how to navigate this situation, but I would be kind of thrilled by it or, and it's just a film that feels very relevant, always. You can say it's relevant now. Everything's relevant now. Right now everything

is relevant. Right now everything is relevant. But like the Super Mario Galaxy movie has never been more relevant. Right. All, all films. But like, capturing like the feeling of a country on the brink of something is hard to do. And I love any movie that does that. And I love like Rossellini movies. I'm trying to think of like, what are other movies that you would put in that genre of like sort of films about a revolution, but that aren't about like the instigators of that revolution.

I don't know. That's an interesting question. But I love revolutions. Missing. Missing is it? Yeah. Another film that's impossible to find right now, right? Isn't missing a... It's not a criteria.

Oh, it's not criteria. Then I should go, fuck myself. You should. But Gallipoli is sort of... I was not inherent in my comment that you should go fuck yourself. Gallipoli is similar in that regard. It is, you know, backgrounding a giant historical moment and showing it to you only through the perspective of people

who don't understand how important what is happening around them is actually going to be. Yes. I, like, what I... Look, I'm no expert on Indonesia. I don't know if you are. Are you... I am not an expert on Indonesia.

This is good to get out there. But like, Sikarno, from what I understand, Sikarno was not a communist, but he was sort of like loosely aligning himself, left wing, loosely aligning himself with the Soviets, maybe, loosely is drifting from the Americans. And what's happening in this movie is the West, the Americans, the Brits, the whatever,

the old nasty stakeholders are like, let's fucking so chaos so that we can get our guy in, right? Like, that's what happened in Indonesia, right? Because, like, Suharto is the guy who replaces him is, he's like, you know, I'll do what the Americans. David is saluting for those of you listening at home. And I know that I am embarrassingly simplifying Indonesian, like, politics here. But right? Like, and I just love that in, what's up in?

Well, because I was really trying to figure out, like, he seems to be this figure like a hero. He is. Sikarno? He is. He's the father of like Indonesian independence. Like right. They broke off from, they were controlled by the Dutch for, you know, 100 fucking more. I mean, how many, you know, hundreds of years. They were the Dutch East Indies.

And like post-war, he's the leader of their independence movement. And completely anti-imperialist, right? He doesn't want anything to do with the colonizers. Right. And, and therefore sets himself up as leader of the country. but of course he's terribly corrupt as well. And that's what the tension of, especially Billy Kwan.

I mean, everyone else here is, they're drifting in here because it's interesting. Like, Billy Kwan wants Sukarno to help. And Sukarno, like, and I guess identifies in Sukarno, like, you know, good, right? Like, you could be doing good. I mean, like, were I in charge of a nation of, what, 10,000 islands with, like, 400 million languages?

and like that had just been liberated from Dutch bond. Yes, I imagine corruption would rain. I don't really know. Like, this is what I don't know. Like, was Sikarno a bad leader? Like, I don't think so. Like, I think it was just like an insane and complicated situation that then the West kind of like blew up. I also think there's an interesting trick in the egg thing when you look at like radical revolutionary movements and how often those leaders are proven to be corrupt.

and whether there is some driving force in them that pushes the politics even if ultimately helpful to their people so that they can achieve their own ultimate desires and gains or if it's just classic fucking absolute power corrupts absolutely but so often you have these arcs of the person being the savior ultimately becoming the exact kind of person that they existed to topple in some way.

I think there's a threat of that happening but I think it never actually even really came to that. I'm not even saying with him in general, I'm saying like globally across history that is a thing that repeats itself so much. History aside, I just like how the film captures that, you know, all of that ambiguity. Yeah.

While still being a 100-minute sexy journalism thriller. Also, to your point, what I like is... It's a pretty darn watchable movie. Yes. But it's not a movie where he's going to break the case and fucking save the day. And it's not a movie where he's like the White Savior or whatever. You know, like it doesn't really...

No, no. It avoids all these pitfalls. It's like an anti-white savior movie, even though it is obviously placing this guy front-centered into story. It doesn't feel like it yells at the audience at any point. But it's why I said the like useful idiot thing is there's this sense of like, as you said, Billy Kwan being like,

man, if someone could get through to this guy, he really could help everybody. And he identifies guy, literally just some white dude named guy who's handsome and charming and is like, he might listen to him. If I can load the right ideas into his, head and he can go relay them and he's a better delivery system than maybe I would be,

does that affect change? I find that idea very moving that this, what's going on globally, politically, what's going on in this country is so far beyond the reach of the characters. They really don't understand quite the world they're operating in. And they basically, you know, one of them dies and the other two run away. Yeah. I mean, right? They get to just live a fucking Hollywood romance.

A scene that I love is when they make it through the checkpoint, it's so tense. And then they're laughing, even though they're, they just witnessed, like, state murder. Right. And I'd probably, because, like, they're just so exhilarated and they're, like, you know, happy to be alive. You wouldn't put that in a Hollywood version of this movie. Because it makes him look like a jerk or an idiot. It's also, yeah. It is begging to be misread, whereas I view that as pointed.

And part of that is the prism of looking at his other films and the continuity of his viewpoints. I brought it up in other episodes, but there is one of the first things Peter Weir did was he made one of the chapters in an omnibus movie called Three to Go. That was truly like the very beginning of the Australian New Wave. Let's get these kids at a film school and try to make a movie commenting on the youth of Australia. and it's three different stories of three different characters. And he made one called Michael that is about a upper middle class kind of very coddled, privileged, kind of well-meaning liberal, intellectual kid who is fighting or he wants to rebel against his parents and what he views, views as the safety of their bubble and wants to get into the shit

and starts entrenching himself in kind of radical politics and radical art and wanting to feel dangerous and wanting to tell himself that he's not just comfortably sitting in an ivory tower. But it is ultimately an act as an effect. It's him just wanting to rebel against whatever is imposed upon him, even if what is imposed upon him is like immense privilege and security and safety. And it builds to him inviting this radical kind of theater troop over. over to his parents' house, mostly to kind of just say,

fuck you to his parents, and then immediately is hit with, like, actually, is this more chaos than I want? And I think it's really interesting as, like, basically the first extended narrative thing Peter Weir ever made on film, because it feels like it is him very much trying to excoriate the exact person

he doesn't want to be. Sure, right. You know? That's sort of cultural tourist. Right, right. And the guy who gets out when things get a little too messy. Right. He likes to believe that he could get down and dirty and really give everything to the cause.

What does he do in this? He doesn't do much. Exactly. That's the difference. And he's really the first act of the movie, like, just kind of circling around. Like, he's really not doing anything. Right. That movie feels, right.

It feels much more barbed. And the way it is, I think, getting at a somewhat similar thing is much less critical. of the character and more critical of the societal systems. And then as you're saying, like, the moving part of it for me is Billy Kwan basically understanding that everything boils down to people, that these issues that can feel so humongous and impossible to manage or ever affect change, ultimately are swung by two people having a conversation, right? And can you get the right two people in the right place? Can you get them to align on the same things?

Yes. of the movie's philosophy is contained in that first conversation that Billy and Guy have as Guy is just arriving. And Billy's talking to him about, you know, he talks to him about Tolstoy and, you know, what would you, do you help the one person in front of you? How do you help? What then must we do? Which is all pulled straight from the book, by the way, this Cosh's book. I mean, the dialogue is pulled straight out of the book. And it's really the argument that, the conversation, I should say, that sits at the center of the film and that we keep coming back to. I mean, like I say, a guy only makes one ethical decision in the movie, and it's arguably the wrong one.

So, okay, the plot of this movie, though. Oh, we're still back to the plot. No, no, it's fine. We don't have to be, but I'm just trying to think, like, how it progresses. I mean, much like Mel Gibson, wanting to show people that he is not just an action star and that he can do drama. This is a guy who wants to be boots on the ground, an important photojournalist, you know, video journalist, film journalist, I guess, doing something meaningful, but also he wants to stake his claim as important. He both wants to feel like he is fighting for the right

issues and also that he has seen as someone who can tackle issues of weight. He's, he arrives, he knows nothing. His predecessor has left him nothing, right? So he's kind of like a true babe in the woods. So he meets all the guys. Michael Murphy, love to see that guy. Always love to see my incredible face. Yeah. What's he, I mean, he's an Alman guy to me. Like, he's a big Alman guy. But he does a million things.

He's great in everything. And he's a terrific. This is only what, two or three years removed from unmarried woman where he's also a son of a bitch. Oh, and Manhattan, a couple of years after Manhattan, where he's also a son of a bitch. He just played this, frisbee germ. Bland waspish son of a bitch.

It is rare to have someone who was that good and that handsome. Yeah. basically fully embrace the idea of being a character actor. Yeah. Right. Has strategically to represent the most annoying kind of person. You know what I've never seen is Shocker?

Oh, yes. Craven movie. Yeah. And I've always wondered what that is. Like, like, he's the human lead being haunted by the Shocker, right? I believe that is correct.

Yes. Is what Mitch Pilegi is the original Shocker? Right. He's the man who sends him to the electric chair and then the man in the electric chair. Maybe I haven't seen Shocker. It's West Craven. West Craven. Yeah.

Yeah. But even like... That sort of weird 80s Craven where he wasn't sure what's good. He's great as the fucking ineffectual mayor

and Batman returns. He's great and away from her. Like he's, he's, I just think he is always good. Always fantastic. And this is such a perfect use of him. He became a big narrator.

He narrates like any PBS shit. That's Michael Murphy. Yes. Anyway. Michael Murphy's there, by the way. Yeah. Still alive.

How old is Michael Murphy? He's 87 years. He's about to turn 88. And I think, And I think he's the only American, well, I was about saying he's the only American, except Linda Hunt, of course, is American. Yeah, right. But he's the only American character. He's the only American character. That's what I mean. Yes. He is the token ugly American. And it's another scene that I think is really telling. But Sigourney is that the, she's a British diplomat. Yeah. Right. But she's an American actor. Yeah. The scene around the table where Michael Murphy is trying to sell Mel Gibson on the sexual tourism of the Philippines, where you're like, you know, okay.

but like cut the bullshit. You're not here because you actually care on any humanitarian level. This is a cushy job because they treat you like royalty and the laws are looser. Your money goes far. You're right.

Yeah. Right. And then who's the other actor? His name is Noel Ferrier. He's an Australian actor. Who is, you might be unsurprised to learn had a big, like, sort of comedy career, contemporary of Barry Humphreys,

who's a big Australian, you know, who's Dame Edna. Is Barry Huffer? He died. He died very recently. Do we get a sense of like what publications, what countries? These would be like wire journalists, I would assume, right? Like my dad was a wire journalist. He worked for UPI.

He lived in Vienna. He lived in Beirut. He lived in Rome. Hated the Australians. No, my dad hated Welsh people. And that is too strong to say that he hated them. It's more that my dad, I would detect in him disdain for the Welsh. Where I was like, you grew up.

so fucking poor in London. Like, what is, you know, what do you have on the wealth? Nothing. Like, you know, it's like, you're just as like a bunch of a yokel as them, except you grew up in like South London or whatever. But like, and like,

and he just kind of had this like, yeah, but they're just so silly. You know what I mean? And I'll be like, this is because we, what, the Brits conquered them a thousand years ago. But this is also Taylor's all time. You're all stuck under the same boot

and you point to the other person. I think they're the fucking problem. It's exactly what was so funny about it. And it wasn't like he was the, only one. It's a common thing in Britain that people are like, ha, the Welsh. Like, and it's just, I'm like, they're like a hundred miles that away. How different are you?

You know, it's like, but no, he didn't, my dad didn't have an Australian thing. Other British people do. I mean, don't you, I mean, like, have you been to Britain? You know, it's like they, the Brits, the way they are, especially with Australians. But, you know, any like, you know, Canada, you know, America. Yeah.

But they're just like, you know, those guys are kind of Britain Jr. You know, we kind of invented this whole thing. They're fucking running circles around the British labels in terms of physical media these days. The Australians are stepping up. I mean, what is a good, is there a good British, like, Eureka? ERECA. Yeah.

Indicators is UK and radiance is UK. Radiance is UK. But like the old tartan label and all that, right? Like, they're gone, right? Yeah. Yeah. But you got imprint and umbrella and via vision. But I'm just pointing to the time.

We got to, let's keep going with the plot. The scene of them sort of like trying to suss out. in Mel Gibson, what is your sexual deviancy? As if the only reason you would take this job is to be able to take advantage, right? And it's like Michael Murphy is basically, I wasn't even going to say, coded. He is like, this is a man with like pedophilic inclinations

who is like primarily driven by underage girls. Yes. And the other guy is like deeply closeted. Right. Right. Because when Billy is laying it all out at the end, that's what he's right. he's poking at all of those sort of unspoken thing.

And in that first scene, I think, where you're introduced to those guys around the table, and they're poking Billy as like, what's your fucking thing? Who are you fucking? What's your fucking deal? And he, like, stands very firm of, like, that is not my relationship with her, you know?

They're like, so you're fucking her on the side, right? Why would you talk to her otherwise? And he has this, like, you don't understand kind of thing, where it just feels like Billy is a character who is completely grounded in, the value of seeing people and seeing the worth of people and the relationship of people

to each other in a non-transactional way. It's why it's so interesting to me to learn that the book character is less pleasant, but I guess, because to me it's like, right, they invest the morality

in the movie in Billy. Because this character is very strategic, but not in a devious way. Yeah, I'd be like, fine, manipulate me. Oh, no, no, you made me fall in the sporty weaver.

Oh, this sucks. Yeah, that would suck. Oh, Look. Don't you hate when that happens? Oh, no, what do I do? Yeah. So, Billy nudges Guy towards Jill, right?

Mm-hmm. And I feel like Bill nudges Jill towards Guy as well, right? Like, there's all this sort of subtle manipulation going on. Mm-hmm. And... And also lets Guy know that he can give him access to the president in exchange for agreeing to make Billy his exclusive cameraman. That is framed originally as just, you do all that. for me and it's like, look, I just want steady work.

Which, of course, is not... I don't think it's the president. I think it's the leader of the communist party. That's right. That's right. Yes. Yes. Yes. But who does later, historically, did become the first president. Am I wrong about this? No. Sikarno is the president of Indonesia. There we go. At the time. Yes. So, what happens is there's a communist, you know,

not revolution exactly, but like, there's communist fighting. Tracy, I'm looking at you because you know everything about this. I assume you know more about this than I do. But there's communist fighting. Sikarno was the first president. Yes. The military led by Suharto uses that as an excuse to completely wipe out

the communists and all opposition. That's right. And then eventually kick out Sikarto. Suharto becomes the president of Indonesia for 35 years or whatever until death? No, not until death. Right.

In the 90s, it's like the economy gets bad and it's finally his time to go. I listen to this podcast called Revolutions by Mike Duncan. I highly recommend it to everyone. it's well known, where he goes through every single revolution that's ever happened. It's just him talking.

It just tells you. I'm on Mexico right now. And it's just always so interesting how it's always the same fucking mistakes. The guys just stay a little too long. And it's like, hey, you're getting old. Do you want to pick a successor? And he's like, well, if I pick a successor,

then you'll try to get rid of me. You know, like, it's like, you start a relationship by cheating on someone. Then you're like, I think you're going to cheat on me. like the whole, like, right, you know, they can't. And Sukarno was kind of laying the groundwork for the communist uprising that was eventually put down. One of the ways he did this was with a speech in which he spoke about living dangerously. Correct.

That's where the title comes from, which is never referenced in the film. It's referenced in the book. Right. Straight off the bat. But. Viveri peri colosso. well said and

like he he called he gave the speech during like an anniversary of their independence and it was about a year before the coup but was he like did he want this coup to happen the way it happened like no right like

like the 30s this is the thing that's all sort of you started to get in the weeds here and it's like I I'm lost I'm lost Again, seeing it in 1983, I couldn't have found Indonesia on a map. Sure. Right. So.

That didn't matter. It didn't matter. But what spoke to you about the film then, I guess? Apart from just they're kind of rocked. Well, again, the stranger in a strange land aspect of it. Right. The quality of the performances, the love story that you talk about, I mean, the scene where he goes into the embassy party and then she comes and she gets in the car with him. and we start to play the Van Jalese song

is just the hottest scene. It's hot show. It's really unbelievably hot. They're really like peak handsome. That's who it. You know, like Gibson and Weaver. Well, they're not only physically attractive, but they're such good actors. And they play that desire so effectively. They don't even speak that much to each other.

No, but then there's also the sort of loaded mystery of like, you know, is there a secret layer to this relationship? Are you gaming me a little bit? Which just kind of makes it harder. Yeah. And the filmmaking. I mean, I suppose with Picnic at Hanging Rock,

he had established that he was a great filmmaker. Sure. But, you know, I just watched the stuntman last night. And I saw you, bemoaning, who's the director? Richard Rush. You know, why did this guy never make

another great film? Yeah. That's one of my dad's... So it's like, what is going to be... How are we going to know that Peter Weir is really that guy? And I think you're of living dangerously. It's very apparent that he is that guy. That scene where the British journalist says, I've taken a bungalow.

And then we cut from there to the guys having a kind of rickshaw or tuck-tuck race down the street. He takes about five minutes to say, I've taken a bungal of it. Yeah, right. He does a lot of purple preamble to, but yes. And then the music. choices and the tuck-tuck race that takes us into the bungalow and then the whole bungalow sequence in which we hear very little of the dialogue being spoken but so much of the sexual tension between Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson is playing out through the dance, the Jerry Lee Lewis music,

all of that. Just the way all of that is put together is really masterful filmmaking, I think. In a really unshoey way, he has such an incredible command of like the music of cinema. in the sense of the magic you can get when you just have every element of this art form working in tandem. And you're not doing anything really gimmicky or flashy, but it is just the camera and the editing and the performances and the language

and the literal music, the blocking, the framing, the art direction, everything. You know, it's like subtle magic trick shit, you know? It just feels like he's always doing like close-up magic that is very skillful in making these things just flow so organically and be so...

His movies are weirdly seductive even when they are not sexually charged. But he'd never made a sexually charged movie up until now. This is his horniest movie. Yeah.

I would argue Picnic at Hanging Rock is very sexually charged but with the threat of sexual violence. Exactly. And it's mysterious. And, like, I mean, it's just at the time, especially imagine

if you had you seen other weird movies when this came out? Probably not, right? Like, imagine being like, okay, what did the guy who made Picnic and Hanging Rock in the last wave and Gallipoli make next? I guess this has a little bit of a handshake with Gallipoli. Yeah. And the Mel, especially, but this idea of now we're going to start digging in.

Yeah. And, like, let's tell us, like, Gallipoli and this both tell, like, human stories of, like, intimate relationships in a grand setting. Like, you know, where there's a big thing playing out in the background. And I just find it ultimately just really transporting. When the movie starts, I'm in a different era.

There's even something about the way the credits look, the way the credit sequence is shot. Over the shadow puppets. Yes, it feels of another time. Very effectively transporting me to a different time and place. And I love that. Our friend Bobby Finger, past and future guest, I was looking at all the letterbox logs for this movie. he used the term meandering as a positive, which I'm like, that is a good way of putting.

The weird movies feel like they're very much on their own time zone. They're working at their own pace, and they lull you into what they're doing. But it's the mood it should have because it's like that until it's not. And then when everything's going down, it makes the shock of that so much stronger, and then the death of Billy so much more, like, you know, unbearable. It is also the thing.

I'm almost most allergic to in historical films or films about important political issues is characters who are so aware of the importance of what they are doing in every line, in every gesture, and filmmaking that is just focused on communicating that to you. The stakes of the importance in a way that is not representative of what it feels to live, to be a person, even when you were in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, you are not burdened with the weight of importance. of what you're doing and how it's going to be studied. I think that's right. Yeah.

I think that's, I think you're right about that. I think, you know, if Woodward and Bernstein were sitting around and all the president's men saying, you know, this is the future of,

you know, fucking fate of democracy rests on our shoulders. You know, but instead they're saying, I got to go and talk to that lady and see if I can get her on the red. You know, it's what's most well judged about that movie

is the amount of time that's them just being like, huh, she didn't pick up. You know? Right. That you're not just seeing the important things

and that they don't immediately have the full picture. The first time I saw that movie when I was a teenager or whatever and it ends with them publishing. Yeah. I was like, wait a second. This isn't the Watergate movie

about like where they get fucking Nixon and like the last half of it is like Congress and, you know, testimonies and like, oh, they erased the tapes. It's like none of that's in the movie. No, it's literally just a movie about getting that story. It's such a good movie.

Rules. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Good for-k it. You got that forte? Oh, hell yeah. That's, I mean, talk about a good image. Is Pakula up or down? Is he like, what do you mean? Back in. Because, like, I feel like for a while he wasn't taking it seriously.

He was in the potential bucket for the losers bracket this year. He's a great great. I don't know. I don't know what. I've heard you reference this. I don't know what this is. Every March we do, 32 directors, a daily vote. A bracket, like a, you know. Who's voting? Our listeners.

And we let them dictate one piece of programming a year. But where do they go to vote? Well, it used to be on Twitter, which I don't know if you've heard, is doing really well right now. It's a normal place to have civil discussions. And now we do it on our own website. Oh. Do it on our website? You can go vote.

I'll vote for you right now. Wes Anderson or Preston Sturgis? Preston Sturge. My man. Is that a correct answer. Yeah. No offense. To Wes, who is a great.

No offense? No offense. Yes. Wes would vote for Preston Sturge. He would vote for Preston. He would vote in a second. Yes. But you had said you were like,

as Becula too many films, is he a little down? No, it's a very great, interesting filmography. I mean, the latter half of his career is a little less sexy. It's what's interesting to us when we try to cultivate and curate who's going to be on the bracket each year is. But you guys already know, you've got this thing planned out for the next five years. We're crazy. Okay, somewhat.

About a year and a half. But we leave gas to let this one thing. Right, right. One director per year. Whoever wins this March Madness thing will just go on this. For a whole series? The fans pick a whole series? Correct.

Who's the last director they picked? The last director? The Coen brothers. The Coen brothers. Poor us. Right. So it was like, they usually pick someone cool.

Five months, but it was a good fucking five months. Yeah. Yeah. And right now, yeah, it's Scorsese. Scorsese, Milosh Foreman.

You haven't done Scorsesey? No. No, because it's a very hefty ask. So that's a little bit of us being like to the fans, like, are you cool with essentially

sort of a half a year on this guy? Oh, right. Which is like, it's fine. I mean, it's Martin's Corsese. We're's, like, the size that is perfect for us. If you got, like... How about Charles Lawton?

I mean, well, you know, he's pretty easy. That's not getting out. Sometimes if there's, like, a guest being floated who might be tough in terms of scheduling, we'll throw out, is there a one film filmography you want to cover? Because we know we could just slot that in anywhere. And so Long we've always kind of kept on the table as, like, is anyone ever going to try to claim that? Pretty good movie. Pretty fucking excellent movie.

No, but yeah. You worked with one of, well, you've worked with multiple blank chick. You've worked with Catherine Bigel. I have who we've covered on that.

I'm trying to think of like, who else. You guys shit all over, shit all over my movie. What is there? Hey. You were a little more positive than the other people.

Yes. I made a joke about you being terrified that you had a physical media. I like that you shouted out Lindor. That was going to get bombed. Who's the other, Marie? Is that her name?

She's on my shit. Larry's going to be thrilled to hear this. We covered the post way back when. Hold on. I'm not done talking about. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. So Marie, she says at one point, she said, well, I missed this vital part of the movie because I just happened to look away from the screen for a minute. It's like, happened to look away. Who happens to look? You don't know how to watch a movie. Because I know what that

means. It means she's looking at her fucking phone, which means she doesn't know how to watch a movie. And she's totally on my shit list. She's on, Marie, you have to earn Tracy's respect back for his trust. I'm looking here, like Adam McKay, Todd Salons. Sure. I'm like, these are people where they're like major directors, but we haven't done them, and I don't know if we would. All right.

But we covered the post. We kind of the post? I haven't seen it. I love that film. We were very, very high on it in the moment because it was a new release, so we were very excited by it. I have not revisited that film, but I like that film. We really don't have.

to do my filmography. No, I'm just trying to see if they're either directors we've covered, but those are the two, I think. Catherine and Stephen. Yes. And then we covered Ghostbusters Afterlife. Of course, you're the main character in that. That was a favor. I don't mind saying that.

I mean, I would say that if Jason were here. The truth is that Mike Judge was supposed to play that part. Oh, really? Yeah. He was supposed to play the part. And for some reason, it was the last minute. There was a scheduling problem. And Jason, we're in Calgary, where Carrie's shooting the movie.

You were already there. I was there with my wife and kids while she was working on the movie. And Jason's like, wow, if only we could think of somebody from Oklahoma who could do a scene. So that's how I wound up in that. But you've not done Jason on the... No, we did a on our Patreon. We watched the Ghostbusters series. So you got to work with Muncher.

Munter's the ghost and Ghostbusters. Okay. A blue guy. Again, just being mindful of timing. Yeah, we should wrap up soon. Try and maybe just hit a couple more. major points in the plot. Griffin, you were referencing, like, Mel's character being aware of living through a major event. Not being burdened with that self-importance, that he is kind of, not

solipsistically, but he is primarily just going, okay, let me figure out the lay of the land. What is, like, who are the pieces on the board and how do I take the right side? He's not thinking about the impact he has. He's just trying to build a good career starting from that point. Where I'm trying to steer us is that Jill passes him info and that the Chinese communists are about to arm the PKK, which is the local communist party. Right. And he makes the decision that we've been saying throughout, you know, the ethical decision that's really not the right one. Ben, we haven't heard what you think about the year of living dangers. I had never seen it before.

Oh. And I really, really loved it. It really resonated with me. I have such romanticism for this kind of life of like a journalist living abroad, living hard, smoking cigs, drinking, hanging out at bars. You've lived dangerously most years of your life. I mean, I would say I have a past and I, you know, still think about those times fondly and glad I made it out.

But yeah, this movie was just. such a joy to watch. Great. I'm glad to hear that. Because I feel like, you know, obviously, this is, my presence here on your show is endorsement of the Year of Living Danger. I mean, you could always come on to discuss a film you don't think works. Like, it's fun

to talk about movies that don't work or that are outright failures. Like, that can be kind of fun too. Can I share it? Also, it made me feel like I was able to live in a Tom Waits song. That is well put. This is just, like, that's the thing with a Tom

Waits song like this is just not my climate I just you know it's Tom Waitsong is not your climate or well because Tom Waits is you know that sort of the bayou and this is kind of like the you know the same thing it's too the air is just too wet for me like I would just be struggling yeah I can't be in in this sort of jungley climate this is a damp movie yes I love the beach I love the water yeah like that that's sort of a I know I would just I would suffer very hard they let the actors

sweat right they do it's part of the sexiness it's part of the like and like And like, yeah, so the decision at Red's like, it's basically, Jill's like, hey, this shit's about to go down. You got to get out. And he's like, aren't I a fucking journalist? Like, right? He does the one kind of journalistic thing. He's like, I'm going to, you know, publish this news. But it's selfish. Because he's like, this is my big story. Right? It's part of his motivation. You're right that it's a little bit of him being a hot dogging, right kind of guy. Yeah. You're right. But everyone else is like manipulating him towards positive. events. You know, they are

driving him as a vehicle in the right direction because I think they all identify. I was thinking a little bit of this movie in relation to broadcast news, which is obviously

so much about completely excoriating the William Hurt character. But there's certain commonalities between these two of just like, oh my God,

here's just a guy with the right shoulders and the right eyes and the right voice and the steady hand, he is so dangerous if he does not have a moral compass installed in him or the wrong people get a hold of him. Because immediately is this understanding of

whatever this guy communicates to the public is going to be heard. You know, he is like a human printing machine for the legend. Right, yes. I just love too, he's a radio dronest. Like, I love hearing him deliver the news. Yes.

And it's not just that he's writing the pieces. That seems so good, too, when he's doing the broadcast and he can't stop sweating. Yeah. Yeah. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion. Inline skates were everywhere. And two out of three women rocked, the Rachel.

While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at Westjet.com slash 30. years. The character Kumar, we haven't really talked about, but sort of a vital

character in the last act of the film. He is. His, the fact that he is P.K.I. Which is revealed late in the film.

Right. Is so obvious when you watch the movie the second. It was like, oh shit. How many times does Peter Weir

show him sort of looking, giving side eye to the other woman who works in the office? Or, I mean, clearly he's it's like everybody knows it

but Mel Gibson But that's what I love about this is like you kind of vibe if Gibson is just he's not dumb but it's just too innocent to really understand like the die has sort of been cast

Well that's also like I've arrived at a situation that is already wrapping up and I'm just like here to have fun and learn things It's the other thing that reminded me a broadcast news where you're just sort of like

there is this cultural reckoning with has the media become something that is now out of our control. You know, it has gained too much power. We have given it to a medium. We don't quite understand where the values can be completely thrown

out of whack based on things like watchability, you know? The answer to that is yes. Yes, yes. And that, you know, there's this attitude of William Hertz more aware that he's part of the problem, but he's sort of like, if not me, then who?

Someone else is going to do it, right? And he's right. I'm not the one who created this situation. You know, with some years, you can look at it and go, oh, actually, if it's not William Hurts, it's going to be another William Hart. Totally. And the other part of it is, for better or worse, this guy projects intelligence. Whether or not he has intelligence is irrelevant.

Whether or not he understands the situation is irrelevant. It is that no one will listen to Billy Kwan. And people will listen to Sigourney Weaver even less, despite being a mega babe movie star. because she is a female diplomat. That's right. Right. And this guy is going to be able to, yeah, he's a megaphone. He's going to be heard.

He's the best kind of character. Smart enough to know that what he wants isn't going to happen, but still like a little bit of an, like, can't dodge the true believer thing. I'm like, but what if you fed your people or what if you helped, you know, in the way I know you want to or you could or whatever, you know. And it's such a great, you know. Again, the third man. Holly Martin's, right?

Holly Martin's goes to the same crisis over the course of the film. Not understanding the situation he's in. Having the situation explained to him still doesn't get it, has to see the situation played out in front of him to sort of start to grasp just what the stakes are. It is what I also find fascinating about like the possible queer reading of this movie and the Billy Kwan character is there was a notion of, is Billy Kwan someone who was born?

born biologically female, who has adapted the persona of a male, whether through like a genuine expression of gender identity or strategic means to an end to be taken seriously and to be able to power these things. I think there is like a queerness that Linda Hunt plays. And in this interview I read where she made the super persona comment, she said that was a deliberate thoughtful thing in her mind, that she was not, like, clearly I am playing this role like a cross-dresser. But I think it's part of what's fascinating about this performance is it doesn't just feel like, well, this is like a stylistic kind of flourish that you just suspension of disbelief by this performance.

There is a, even I think in how every scene is played, the other characters kind of eyeballing Billy and going, what's going on here? Yeah, what's the, yeah, what is the. the deal. And part of that is that Billy holds his cards close to his chest. But part of that also is like,

so what, so is, that's the haircut? What's, you know, like everything's a little, no one has really looked or sounded like this. Death of Billy very sad. And like, and just like,

that's really, of course, like, I mean, do you buy that, I don't really think that guy's in danger. As much as guy is in real danger after that and gets through the blockades and gets to the airport.

But you are like, Right, but the loss already happened. I mean, I guess, I guess that guy's eye gets fucked up. Well, and he has to navigate it without any help from Billy. Right, right. It's not just Billy's death, but that he doesn't have a guy. Right. And what he gets to navigate is, how do I get the fuck at a dodge?

Right. And then it is, right. There is, like, it's not like, I'm going to expose this. I'm going to. Right. Oh, I just watched the government murder a journalist. Like, and say he's like, where's the fucking airport? But it's so.

It's so silly that he goes to the palace and the way he conducts himself. Right. It's like clearly he's not thinking in his right mind because he's upset, but also he doesn't have Billy to guide him anymore. Yeah. Right. Right. That's not going to work.

Well, he's also got the presumption of a white guy. Yeah. Like they wouldn't dare kill me, right? Right. Right. And there's something so kind of like undignified about Billy. Billy's death, right? And even the way it is shown on screen that we get the moment of the breaking through the door and Billy's reaction. And then we're mostly seeing just the body lying on the

ground afterwards once Guy comes to the scene. And Guy later says when they're cleaning up Billy's stuff that Sakarno didn't even see the banner. Right. Yeah. Right. Tragic. But it's it's not some epic sacrifice moment. Sure. You know? It's very, it's not effective. Yeah. It's dumb, pointless.

But you understand the, you know, the motivation, the sort of like, yeah, the desire to just do something. And Billy's so distraught because he's been giving money to that family and that young boy gets sick and passes away. And I think that just like really pushes. them over the edge. Yes. Yes. And it's like it's the dehumanization.

Yeah. It is the, these are not chess pieces. These are human beings. We should play the box office game. You're going straight from. I think so. I mean, is there anything else we want to say about the film? I'm just, I'm trying to bring the plane in here.

I don't want to. I think we haven't paid enough attention to Maurice Jarre and Yeah. incredible work. Vangelis, who the song is credited in the closing credits, but Vangelis himself is not name-checked. So you would almost think that

song is written by Maurice. Maurice, and it's not. Yeah. It's the classic, like, Peter Weir would just have like a collection of tapes. He would play music all the time. All the American rock and roll pop music is really, like it's just fun to have

two-d-fruy in this movie. He just liked that little, you know, that little song he uses and uses it twice, obviously. Apart from that, it's Maurice. He uses it twice very close together, by the way. It's sort of unorthodox the way he uses it. Also, Russell Boyd, his guy. And to be clear about Jure, Juree, then goes to Hollywood, does witness, does Mosquito Coast, does dead poets, like, becomes weird, does fearless. This is really the key team that he carries over. Right. Yeah. Russell Boyd, the legend, like, who is, you know, at picnicking, hanging rock, like, when they have no money figuring out all these innovative ways to, like,

make the air feel magical, essentially, and all that. He's such an incredible DP. He's still alive. All the more still working, I think. He hasn't really worked much since we're retired. Oh, is that right. His last credit is the way back. Yeah. And before that, of course, Ghost Rider. He did shoot Nicholas Cage's Ghost Rider. Why is this movie not on 4K? Well, I guess we already talked about this. It's almost certainly a rights issue. It's probably a rights thing. but it is odd that no one's left to figure it out. It's worthy of restoration. Yeah, I agree.

And it's worthy of conversation, right? Doesn't it provide an opportunity to revisit this question of casting? Sure. The question of politics. And it would seem to me that a new release would provide the opportunity to further that discussion. To go hard, I think that's why also MGM. or whoever has fucking access to MGM home video now

through Amazon maybe solely isn't going to just be like, yeah, just like put that one out with the theatrical trailer. I think there's a worry about just giving it the kind of release that Gallipoli got from Paramount, which is just like,

we put it on a disc, are you happy? Versus this is a movie that needs to be, like, have a thoughtfully curated extras package of dialogue around it and context provided. So I don't know,

one of the specialty labor needs to step up. Yeah. This film came out. Do you know about the box office game? I've heard you guys play the box office game. I intentionally did not do any investigation because I want to play legit. An honest player.

So this film came out, limited release January 21st, 1983. Wow. I graduated high school. Congratulations. Thank you. That's as far as my education, but nevertheless. Where'd you go to? High School. Duran High School

and Durant, Oklahoma. Hell yeah. So it is, obviously, it's limited to release, so it's not in the top five. Number one, it's a lot of holdovers, I would say, from, you know, the 82 season. Yeah, yeah. Number one is a big Oscar winning movie of 1982.

A comedy classic. But it wasn't the big. What's Tutsi? It's Tutsi. It's Tutsi. Tutsi was a December release? Tutsi came out in December. Yeah. December 82. Massive box office. Unbelievable box office.

In my past of trying to memorize box office charts and such, it does just feel like the first four to six months of 1983 are ruled by Tutsi. Until E Tutsi comes around. I assume you saw Tutsi at the time. I did. Or no, ET came out before.

In a packed movie theater. Yeah. Did you enjoy Tutsi? I love it. Have you thought about Tutsi lately? Now I feel like I'm like a psychiatrist. I selected it. Is Tutsi in the room with us right now?

We did a 1982 movie drag. on the big picture and I selected to see. I listened to it, yes. A film I've only seen once. Really? Maybe twice. Yeah. But I enjoyed, but I have not seen in years.

Which, what? Tootsie. Tutti. Oh, worthy of revisit. Yeah, I'll revisit. Criterion edition, very good. Yeah. Number two.

Tizzy's number one. What's he up to? Well, it's only been out for a few weeks, but it has made, damn, it's made $81 million. I think it at the time was one of the ten highest grossing films. in American history. All right, yeah. So number two is an action film

that had come out earlier in December. Okay. A gigantic breakout hit for one of its stars. For one of its stars. I mean, the other guy is... It's a two-hander.

It's a two-hander. The other guy's a little bit more of a name. I guess it's sort of a breakout for both of them. But especially for the supporting... So one guy was already more established, but the less established guy really kind of popped on this.

It becomes the most famous actor of the eighties. Action comedy? Yes. Very much. It's 48 hours. Oh, well, yes. Walter Hales, 48 hours. Yes.

Like, Nolte at that point, like, he's not nobody. No, he's a big deal. But, you know, he's an established, coming star. And Eddie Murphy is 21 years old. Eddie Murphy is but a child,

essentially. He's so fucking. So those are, I mean, like, obviously those are like sort of, yeah. It's like, basically, do you want to go see, you know, this kind of comedy? that kind of comment. They're just kings of the box office.

Number three is, I mean, and now I'm thinking about the 1982 draft that you did. Certainly, one of my favorites of 82, probably not my number one favorite, but one of your favorite directors. You know, certainly was nominated for many Oscars, a big drama. It's a big drama. Gandhi. Not Gandhi, but I can tell you that Gandhi is number four. Is it a Lumet? It is a Sydney Lumet. Is it a Sydney Lumet movie?

The verdict. It's the verdict. Yes. So. I think I got that in the legal draft on Big Picture. If we're just all reminding people of our past draft.

I got the verdict. I got the verdict. You got the verdict? Absolutely. That was my like number one. I think so. I can try to look it up. But the verdict is the best.

I got the verdict in the 82 draft. Why do I feel like? I'm going to look it up. Oh, because I took 12 angry men. I don't know. What draft was this? You guys did a legal draft? We did a lawyer movie draft.

We did a lawyer movie draft. I got, this is lawyer movie. So it was drama, comedy, thriller, Oscar winner, movie lawyer that you would want to represent you. Oh, nice. And then John Grisham was its own category. And I got the verdict, intolerable

cruelty, the devil's advocate, Chicago, the firm, and Atticus Finch. Not bad. You got Bridge of Spies, legally blonde, Michael Clayton, Philadelphia, the rainmaker, and Grisham. And then you picked Stanley Tucci and Spotlight as your lawyer. Oh, nice. That's what I knew that I had first round pick and I was like, what would I have

gone for over the verdict? And the answer was, I knew it was going to be a feeding frenzy for Michael Clayton. You got Michael Clayton. I had to get Michael Clayton. Yes. Yeah. Um, so, okay, uh, yeah, the verdict. So number four is, um, Gandhi. What's your take on, of course, the best picture winner, it will, or it's about to be the best picture winner. Gandhi. What about it? You're big fan? No, it's kind of, I feel like you guys all kind of shed on Gandhi. We didn't. No, maybe. They shat on it more than a. I did. It was important in the moment and Kingsley was undeniable. Kingsley's unbelievable in it. I think Gandhi is, you know, it's not one of the great movies of

82, but it gets a slightly bad rap. It's, it's like, it's very watchable. It's like, I still have good. Never seen it. Yeah. I have it in that big Columbia classics box set. And I'm just like, when am I in the mood to just throw on three hours of Gandhi? Let me tell you, well, Kingsley really elevates it. I mean, there really is a way on board with that movie. But also, to see 100,000 extras it's just on an unimaginable scale. You'll never see it again.

Yeah. Yeah. It's all right. I mean, you know, it's not incredible. It's got all the flaws you think it has. Number five is a real Griffin movie. It's a real Griffin movie. Is it an 82 holder or an 83? It's an 82 holder. A

fantasy film. It's a fantasy film. It's like one of my favorites, or is it just my type of thing? I'm sure you love this. It is the Dark Crystal. There you go. Oh, my son's favorite movie. Wow, there you go. Most watched movie in our house would be the dark crystal.

He loves it. Spooky scary. He loves it. Can I tell you the movie I almost bought as one of the three and I actually just could not physically locate a copy in time? But if you have not watched it with your son yet, I highly recommend. Have you guys done Paranorman? He got scared by, is it called Coraline?

Yes. He got scared by Coraline. Interesting. Yeah, Coraline's scary. And so we haven't gone back into, he likes box trolls. And I noticed you had done James the Giant Peach as well. Yeah. Box trolls is the guy who eats the cheese and his face.

Ben Kingsley. Yeah, he's really fucking good. He's good, but it's very freaky. Yes. Paranorman is about fear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is like reckoning with fear, and I think it is one of the better dramatizations of fear mongering I have ever seen. We have it on the shelf.

I think in a steel box. Okay. Okay. So if I had gotten it for you, I would have fucking struck out on that one. Okay? I chose right. I'll tell you the rest of the top ten.

Number six is the toy, the Richard Donner film with Prior and Gleason that is. Remake of a French. Yeah. Perfect politics. Yeah. Oh, does that have perfect politics? Yeah.

Jackie Gleason buys a black man and hands him to his son and says, have fun. Another Oscar. So that's a December 82 release that didn't really translate. Another Oscar winner. That was a pretty. big hit, though. Not at the same scale of Tootsie and Forty an hour. I may have it. 47

million. That's pretty good. Sophie's Choice. Sure. Which is, you know, is okay. I don't know. I don't know what you feel about Sophie's Choice. Haven't seen it since. Right. Since like 82.

Well, I've seen it since then. It was on cable a lot. Right. I recall it being pretty good. Yeah. Peter McNichols. Fantastic in that thing. He's such a good actor. It's, his career is fascinating.

you zoom out. Right. How many times... Just when you discover him later in life and you're like, okay, so who's... How did this guy get started? You know, like,

Sophie's choice is not what you would expect. Uh, number, sorry, number eight is best friends. The Bert Reynolds... Goldie Hawn. Goldie Hawn. Valerie Curtin

screenplay, yeah. Valerie Curtin wrote it with Barry Levinson and it's based on their friendship. Right. So is it as sort of like they're like...

It's a bit of, It's a literary mentality. Right, right, right, right. Directed by Norman Jewiston. I've never seen it. No, I mean, it's not great. Sure, fair enough.

Number nine is ET. Big one. Big movie. And then number 10 is the man from snowy river. What is this? Australian film. Really? Directed by George Miller.

Not that George. George T. Miller. Yeah. Wow. Who also directed the Neverending Story 2. Yes. Australian Western. Griffin was.

offered Crocodile Dundee and had to turn it down. I can't believe it cracked the top top ten. Well, it's opening at number 10, so not amazing. But yeah, but yeah. Kirk Douglas. It's what we were saying. The Australian kind of like, uh, Australian fever is cracking. Kirk Douglas in dual roles as brothers Harrison and spur.

Man from Snowy River is good. I give that a thumbs. Right. And it got a, it even got a sequel, Man from Snowy River, too. What's the, what's the physical media report on Man from Snowy River? are we looking at? I don't think I own it. I don't know. Let's see.

So you have to sort of dutifully like log, like, because the C, the database thing, what's like, CLZ or whatever it's called. It's like, my problem is I'm always like, did I put this in her? You know, like where you do this little barcode scanning. Yeah. But every day, I assume another palette arrives. You're opening them up. It's my, it's my full-time

job. It's my job. Has an Amazon driver or anyone like that ever said to you like, you are fucking, fucking DVDs, buddy. I guess. I live in a dormant building. The Amazon driver has never said that to me. My wife says it to me.

Oh, no, sure. I live in a dorm man building, Humblebragg. It does feel like every time I pick up a package, they're like, got a lot of stuff shipped to you. How many do you have? How many desks? I think I'm probably around a thousand. But I'm not dutifully logging.

I should. How do you store them? Like, do you have shelves? I mean, I don't really know. I have shelves that I have out. grown. There are now pillars of vertically stacked disks like the books and Ghostbusters. This is my problem.

I also have too many disks in storage. A very well-arranged, like, shelving situation, but it's full. And so now the new stuff arrives, and I'm like, well, I'll figure this out. That is exactly where I'm at. I now just have like a shelving unit that is full and then a corner where disks

live. And I'm in between, I'm waiting on the new shelving. I'm watching those Bud Boddicker Westerns right now, that criterion. Is that what it has that how you say? We did every... The tall tea and all the... The renowned westerns. Renowned westerns, right.

Terry and I did every one of them. We did like one a week for five weeks. How are they? They're fantastic. Every one of them. I'm really liking the sort of like, I just have to watch my desks because then it's sort of like the choices out of my hands. Like, I'm not going to agonize over...

This is why Carrie wants me. This is why I pick the movie every night. Right, right. Like, I don't want to choose. I don't want to scroll through Carousel. She's like, the shelves intimidate me. The streaming tiles. I can't make heads or tails of it.

You pick, you put it on, no bitching. Obviously, she's got veto power. I think the entire time we've been together, she's vetoed two movies. What are the two vetoes? Or is it a secret? One of them was a movie with Kate Blanchett and

Judy Notes on a scandal. Notes on a scandal. I hadn't seen it. I put it on and Carrie said, I've seen this and I remember it. Okay. So it was just a been there, done that. That was one veto. Parliament. I don't remember there's something else like that.

No Tondon scandal is a Parliament Hill classic. A Parliament Hill classic? What's the name? There's a lot of scenes set of Parliament Hill, which is a park I used to go to. But no, she doesn't veto. She, if she watched, and she doesn't blame me when the movie is bad. Right. Does she ever tap out? She never taps out.

Sometimes it's hard to keep her awake because she gets up early. But that's napping now. There's a lot of like me making her sit up and I scratch her back while we finish the movie. But your kids do a good bedtime? This is the biggest thing in my life. Because it's pretty good with the bedtime. Good for that. Now, occasionally, I'll put on a movie that I've seen that I like,

and she watches it, and she's like, what the fuck? Sure. Right. The brood. Still, this is a conversation in our house still. That movie rocks. But, I mean, it is certainly, you got to be in the right mood for it. And it's such a poisonously angry movie.

Yes. Which I love. Yes. And I know it's his, like, divorced movie. And it's, that movie rock. But yeah. I want to make sure I said everything I have to say. I wanted a bitch about Marie.

Noted. So wear it as a badge of honor. I wanted to say, oh, the big picture, right? You know, it's questionable whether or not I'm big picture or a blank check. Well, can we get ahead? Can we get a cartoon likeness of you to wear on that desk and tell people they're sitting at Tracy's desk? We're allowing you to sit at Tracy's desk today.

Right. We're not possessive like Sean. We're not. This is a very free and open environment. environment. Sean's a little bit more with the chairs and the committees and the, you know, all this stuff. But also I do, I have airdropped a contract over to you if you want to look it over. There's potentially a five-year first look deal on the table. Not exclusive, but first look. I was surprised that you guys had guests come back. I didn't realize that until I listened to somebody recently.

And you're like, oh, they came back. So I want to look at your, I want to look at your lists. Absolutely. We will, we will, dictated by March Madness. Tracy, we'd love to have you on any time. I don't know. know if you know this, but you're quite an estimable person. So we don't want to just like bug you all the time, but we'd love to have you back. I don't feel like that, but that's all well and good. Right. The last thing I want to say is that you're living dangerously. So I showed it to Carrie years ago. Again, oh, I didn't know the other things we wanted to talk. Did we want to cover Star Wars or did we want to cover Godfather? Say what we're going to say and then Star Wars.

Okay. So, two minutes on Star Wars. So Carrie doesn't remember the movies. I showed her year of living dangerously a few years ago. She had no recollection of it. The nanny and I were watching a couple of nights ago in preparation for this. Former SAG after president. Yeah. And Kerry walked in halfway through the movie. She'd been working in town and she walked in and halfway through the movie and she's like, I remember none of this. I have no recollection of any of this. But she watched Mel Gibson for a few minutes and she said, my God, he's so in his body to watch the way he moves on camera. It was just like, It really is what he could do.

There's a scene where he's going out to the airport at the very end of the movie, and he does a jog out of his sort of high-stepping jog he does on the way out to the airport. And it is a marvel to see. It's too bad what happened to that guy. He was one of our great, great movie stars. And I think even before he went publicly insane, he lost some thread of like the kinds of movies he did. You know, he got too into the sort of Hollywood gigantic paycheck world.

And also his revenge thrillers started getting weirder and darker in a way that he's an incredibly magnetic screen presence. I mean, especially in the 80s. That is a very good quote from her. And I often, almost always, the infrequent times that I now work as an actor, I think I used to do a lot more. Now I'm a professional podcaster who sometimes acts. I think about a quote. That's how I define myself. I'll tell you, the first time you did big picture after Hitmaker had set it up.

Right. And we were watching all that happen. We have a text thread called News and Deals that Alex Ross Perry is in as well as the great filmmaker, David Lowry, we were all sharing Blu-ray announcements and deals. And we saw it happening, right? Hitmaker saying, you should maybe have Tracy. Do you know Tracy? Yes, I can connect it, this and that.

And we go, Sean, you record Tracy today? How was it? And he said, if that guy ever decided to start a movie podcast, we'd all be cool. bumped right down the charge. We're done. That's very sweet. It is our saving grace that he is so in demand in other areas, he is so esteemed in so many other feasts that he never will commit to a permanent desk,

which is why he can be third chair, fourth desk, whatever. But I remember some interview that Kerry gave where she talked about being a full-body actor, how she feels like she can always rely on her theatrical training to, in on camera work, which is often so bizarre and nonsensical and can leave you in a position where things are changing so fast, and you have so little barren of where you're in the story

that you can look kind of nonspecific in a scene that she relies on her instincts and using her full body and everything. And anytime I'm like acting professionally again, I go, like, am I doing full body after shit? Or am I just thinking about my fucking head? Very nice. Very nice.

It means a lot coming from her. She's also a former athlete, and Mel clearly has some athletics in his back part as well, right? It's a big part of it. Yeah. And I think, I mean, you're talking about like, you know, the shame of how fully this man unraveled, but it is an interesting thing where, like, great actors are often people who have a really great dialogue ongoing with their own psychology and their own body and ability to take control

of these things and own them and use them in a very deliberate way. but very often great movie stars are people who have some weird kind of unresolved thing within them. There is some inherent tension that makes them more unwatchable, makes them more watchable, even if it makes them less functional as a human being. And sometimes it is in a destructive way, sometimes it's in a self-destructive way,

sometimes it's just oddness. You know, you meet certain movie stars and you're like, how do you tie your shoes? But on screen, I will buy anything you are selling. It is a fascinating thing. And, you know, we were talking with Marie, now officially on the shit list, recently, who was saying that she had just rewatched Apollo 13. And she was like, how the fuck did Braveheart beat Apollo 13 for Best Picture? And we were like, you cannot overstate how powerful Mel Gibson was at that moment in time.

Yeah. Yeah, he was. Star Wars? Yes. So you threw out one of the worst movies takes I've ever heard of all time. I say this after. Oh, that you don't like the trench run, right? That you specifically said, we all.

all agree that the ending of Star Wars sucks. Give me your appeal. What I said was that the ending of Star Wars is the most boring climax to a great movie. That's what I said. But you said it like we're all on the same page. Yeah. And you're writing it to boys there. I mean, boy and girl, but you know, like where I'm like, I watch the trench run.

I would watch the trench run over. I would rewind my VHS. The DVHs just degraded. It went away. The trench run tattooed on his body. Like he's the fucking. Prison Break character. And the thing about the trench run to me is, like,

I love the climaxes of the other Star Wars movies where he had more money and he went more epic. But it's actually kind of small in this beautiful way. Dramatically, it's like perfect. And even like, I think these moments that are constantly ripped off from that sequence, but exploded and overstated, even down to just the return of Han Solo at the moment you think he's got no support, is I just think so gracefully and sort of succinctly done

without making too much of a meal out. All right. Let me tell you millennial boys, a thing or two. We're young ass whippersnappers. I'm an old millennial. You know, you millennials are so monolithic in their movie opinions. Let me tell you.

First of all, we never called it the fucking trench run. I don't know whoever came up with the trench run. I called it the end of Star Wars. And by the way, the movie was called Star Wars. I always always. call it Star Wars. That I am with you. In this house, we call that movie Star Wars. New Hope doesn't fucking exist.

That really sounds like he had five minutes where he was, they were like, hey, by the way, are you going to put like a title on the other one? He's like, uh, yeah, new hope. It's also so, so funny for him to land on that title after he's promised he would make prequel someday, but hadn't figured out what the prequels were. And he was like, the one safe bet is this is probably a reset point. Because call it a new hope. Because Star Wars.

isn't a good title. Clearly, Star Wars isn't working. It's so crazy how good a title Star Wars is. So a new hope, which is like, it sounds like a Faith Hill album? Isn't it crazy that Star Trek was a title before Star Wars? Yeah, right.

You know what, like Star Trek sounds more esoteric and what is that? Why'd you pick that? No one had done Star Wars? Now, yeah, sorry. The actual trench run itself. Right. First of all, you know, it's stolen from a movie called The Dam Bus.

Yes. He would cut in footage of it, right? Damn Buster's damn good movie. Yeah, very good movie. D.m. But we've not... Why is Luke piloting one of these goddamn... Because he used to shoot Wombrus in his T-14.

Yeah. I don't know. Do you really think that he has the know-how to get into this machine... Drive into this crevasse of the Death Star. That you imagine, like, this is a rag-tag rebel group. And they're like, we've scraped together like ten of these ships. And he shows up and they're like, hey, you're like six foot two.

Yeah, you want to get in this? They also, well, first of all, he's like five foot ten. Secondly, they got like, like 20 like lifer pilots and all of them fucking flame out.

And Luke is the last hope. But he's the Jedi. He's the chosen one. Yeah, of course. But why are we supposed to care about Victor Bono who suddenly shows up late in the movie in the ship?

It's just like, where did he come from? Who's he's? And I'm, one of the guys, one of the big picture guys, tells me that character has a name. We're talking about Porkkins?

We're talking about Corp. The actor is actually William Hukkins. He does have a bit of really rude of you. Victor Bonova. I saw William Houtkins play. I've told Griffin this, I'm sure. There's a play called Hitchcock Blonde, and he played Hitchcock. Oh, right.

On the West End stage, he was with Rosamond Pike. Yeah. And David Hague and I can't remember. He's not still with us, right? Hukins past. He must be pretty old if he is. He also, he's in Brayor's Lost Arc. He's the guy who gives Indian Jones the assignment.

That there was a scene between Porkens. and the mechanic who put Porkens in the thing and the mechanic's name was Beans. Do you suppose there was a scene between Porkens and Beans? They're better than. Tracy, and you are getting at why Star Wars has the

cultural stranglehold it does because it opens up these questions, these conversations we start thinking about beans. You could write 10 Beans novels. Look, I'm a kid. My dad introduces me to Star Wars, obviously, as sort of a right, right? You know, I watch it, like, and then I'm obsessed with the trench front. And yeah, I only know, it's like, yeah, there's the guy who

gets shot immediately, you know, to prove that there will be deaths, like, where these guys are going to blow up. Yeah, I'm all right. Boom. Right. That's point. And then you, like, start to read books about Star or like you get, and you're like, the guy's name is fucking porkins. Like, they, they couldn't spend five minutes, like, figuring out a better name for this guy. Yeah. This guy's got a squid hit. What's his name? I don't know. He's a Mon Calamari. Why is Darth Vader in a ship? Why, have we? Is it a little? He's in a little. a tie fighter. What do you talk about? Have we been led to believe that Darth Vader

is good at flying on these chips? So now what you're doing here is very interesting because it's sort of what we did when we started the show, which is like if you examine Star Wars without the further context, because of course when you watch the prequels, it's like, oh, he was a crack pilot. Everything's back filled and explains. But like, you're

right that the whole thing with Darth Vader in general in Star Wars, where it's like there's a fascist empire. It is mostly run by British white men who are older and are kind of like, you should kill all of them. Who is this sadist robot who walks around

among them with a cape? Everyone else is a fascist Nazi guy. It's what's fascinating about is Peter Cushing, right? Darth Vader getting retroactively turned into the greatest villain in cinema where you're like, he was meant to be like the weird gimmicky bond henchmen.

There's some big guy who's got an odd energy. Who is like, I just wish someone would be like, where are you on the org chart, buddy? I'm amazing. What are you? Why do you get a cake, Darth? Right. There's an emperor, then there's some, you know,

general. I understand all these things. Who are you? And so then it kind of makes sense that he's like, I'll get in my ship. Like, there's some ships. Like, let's go. Right.

Why is he getting a ship? Because it's like, that's the guy James Bond has to punch at the end because it's not satisfying to watch him punch Dr. No. Dr. No is like an intellectual. He's not going to punch.

He's not going to punch. He's not going to put a lot of good ideas out there. He's got good ideas. He's just trying to make America healthy. I stand by that take. I've rewatched Star Wars, the original trilogy with my son. He's liked them. He's watched them two, three times.

But he's not been gripped by them. But he may be a little young for it. I mean, I saw them all in the movie theaters when they first came out. But you're probably. I was the right age. Right. Yeah, sure, sure. Well, the other thing with us.

Eight is when I saw them, I think. I saw the re-release. You know, I've seen them already, but I was there for the re-releases in 97. Those were my first time. And I was 11, and that was perfect. It was everything. I couldn't believe how bad Phantom Menace was. I couldn't believe it.

Phantom Menace is tough because... Yeah. I had always been told it was bad. Finish your sentence. Because... Well, it's bubbling with some interesting ideas and some bad ideas. This podcast only exists because of our obsession

with that film and how we are constantly wrestling with it. How we would keep attacking it being like, are we going to like it this time? And we're not wrestling with... Is this good or not as much as what is going on here? And I contend it is the best of those three. So when it started and people were like, well, maybe he'll like, he's a little rusty,

he'll regain his footing. I contend it's the best of the three. It's the best of the three now. I think the Padre sequence is wonderful, which again, he's ripping off Ben Hurd, but like... It feels similar to the trench run where he's taking a classical visual language of an epic cinema of past and applying it to future... The thing that's happened with the prequels lately, you know,

The prequels come out, they were hits, obviously, but they are derided. Revaled. Yes. And now that the Disney legacy sequels have come out and had their own life cycle, now the fans are like, well, the prequels are interesting, because they are interesting. They're weird. They are weird. They are outside or art.

Right. They are made by a lunatic who can fund his own films at the highest level. George Lucas was like, I want to sort of, you know, write about the fall of the Roman Empire, right? Like, I want to write about this sort of decline. How do fish just... But I also think there should be like the Jamaican fish alien. because kids watch it. You know what I mean?

And like in the original movies, you can see Lucas being tempered and that there's a lot of, you know, a lot of mature people around him as well. And the prequel is he's unfettered. So he's like, we'll have George R. Banks.

And no one at any point is like, this fucking sucks. Like, we cannot do this. That's part of the problem when you become as big as George Lucas. Nobody can tell you. Now everyone reveres Lucas. And I revere him too

because there's nothing like him. and God bless this thing, you know, he did lots of interesting things. But, like, I remember reading interviews with Mark Hamill at the time, like, in the 90s, where he's like, he's the fucking Pope. You getting lunch with him is a day-long production. You can't have a conversation with him anymore, like, where it's just like a regular, like, hey, why are, you know, like, and, like, that's what, and so they're interesting objects in that way, because, like, when, how often does that happen

in Hollywood? Never. Literally never. So, that's interesting. But are they, like, a good movie? No. But you, you know. Fascinating.

It sounds like your son watches a lot of goofy Kaiju movies, which rock, but like they're silly too, right? Like, it's like the right balance of silliness is something that's to be hard to find. Right. Is, like I say, the question is, is there a creature and especially are the creatures fighting? God bless.

I did additionally get two Kaiju action figures for your children. Oh my God. Oh, my God. See, you think the big picture ever did this? There you go. See, we treat our guests, right? Especially after we make them do a three-hour-plus episode. This has been far too long.

That's a really wrap up. That's a funky color, Hedora, but then this is, I think, a really skeleton Godzilla after he is atomized from the end of the 54 movie at the bottom of the... Isn't that fucking cool?

He has a bigger Hedora, but he'll love... You can't have it... He just had a Gamera-themed eighth birthday party. He got so many Gamera... The other kids from second grade walking into this being like,

uh... Has he converted other people, like, or is his friends into games? Gammer? Not at all. No. Right. They're all into like K-pop Demon Hunters or whatever. Which he's never seen. He doesn't know anything about. Right. He goes over to a friend's house and they watch, he has no idea what. But he's not coming home being like, I must now watch K-pop Demon Hunters because everyone's talking about it at school or whatever.

Right. Well, that's great. I mean, I'm right at the start of this with my kids. Like, you know, the sort of like the larger osmosis and you watch how it works. I have to say I didn't do a lot of conditioning to get him Kaiju. Right. This isn't a thing. where this isn't like when parents are like my kids' favorite band is The Clash and you're like, okay, you know. I had the criterion box of Godzilla, which has a big sort of comic book. I know I have it myself, of course. He became interested in those visuals before he could even read and page through that.

And he went through that over and over. He memorized all the, I taught him the titles. He memorized all the titles. And then I said, well, if you like this so much, maybe we should watch one of the movies. and I put on one of the movies. That's it. Immediately. That's right.

Because they are weird. Yeah. Like, they're weird to watch. They're not like movies now. Your daughter, you haven't shown them. No. My daughter is quite fearful as weird as she loves movies. I mean, and she loves Bowser.

Who is something of a kajou? I got her the big Godzilla toy, which she all trains between being scared. Well, now the big Godzilla toy is just a favorite friend in her house. Griffin got her a Godzilla that's like large. But a big, how old again? My daughter's five. But he got her this a couple years ago. And initially, yes.

Sometimes the Godzilla had to be, like, put away. Yeah, right. Like, it was a little. And then Ben had to act like Godzilla was eating his finger and that killed. That bit was kill it. She plays, like, fucking dead comedy. She needs you guys to come over again. She's been asking.

Hey! Hey, wow. Anytime. But, yeah, but she hasn't seen Godzilla yet. I got, I got one. She doesn't like when Ursula gets big in the Little Mermaid. Like that, like, freaks her out. Yes.

And so that's also Kaiju adjacent. So I've been like maybe large as your speed right now. 54. Start with the movies where Godzilla's the good monster and he fights the bad monsters. I think maybe the first movie he watched was destroy all monsters. That, I would say, is the best starring part. Because then you also have the mena in that one, right? The witch?

And I was going to say the little baby Godzilla. Oh, yeah. Manila. Manila, yes. Oh, I know that one. That one's cute. He's a good entry. I'm not even that deep on Godzilla.

I like Mothra. Mothra's cool. All right. So I want to shout out. I looked up our Indonesian listenership the last 12 months got about like 1,500 downloads.

Really? So there's some folks out there so we just want to shout out to our listeners. Very nice. Hello, Jakarta. What's up? Would love to visit.

Sure. It just looks like I was like looking at Google Maps. It's quite stunning. If you're one of those 1500, let us know what the local comedy theater breakdown is. if there's a good opportunity for us to do a live show.

Yeah. Yeah, please do. Yes. Tracy, we've taken far too much of your time. Thank you so much. I can't believe this podcast is going to be four hours long. You're going to have to find some... It's not.

It'll be 315, which unfortunately may not even crack top five ones. It won't crack the 10, I don't think. The audience weirdly just demands longer and longer. I don't know why. You're a king amongst men. You are the boss bitch. You guys are sweet. Have anything to plug?

Is there? And Bug just ended its front on Broadway? Yeah, not plug it, nothing. Ben went to see Bug. Did you not? I loved it. Oh, thanks, Ben. I think it really captures the paranoia of being on drugs.

Thanks. Bug rocks. No, nothing to plug. As I've said before, this is my job. The acting and the playwriting is hobby. That's just right. You're plugging physical media and the value of owning the films you care about. Beautiful in the past, but you guys, yes, Tracy has spoken very well of why it's great to own a disc, but, you know, our fans already know that, I would say.

I will tell you, as someone with a, with a, unfortunately, an overwhelming amount of anxiety at most times in my life, I'm constantly trying to find different pieces of media that can function as a bomb for me, things that for whatever reason, physiologically, just calm me down, slower the heart rate, slower the heart rate. Slow down the heart rate. We need to have long-form interviews with you have started really doing the trick. You got a great voice. Very nice. You got a great voice. But thank you for being here. We will absolutely force you to come back again.

We will hold you to your openness. And thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Witness with Amanda Dobbins, Dob mob for life. We're doing it. He's crossing the ocean. He's coming over to. Hollywood. Yep, this episode, this series has Dobbins, it has Sean, it has hitmaker, it's got all the

big boys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks y'all. Thank you. That is always. And as always, I have to ask, because I almost bought it. Have you seen slash do you own slash has your son seen the Roland Amrik Godzilla? No. And is that a forceful blocking him from that experience? No. In fact, when he turned eight, I said to him, you can now watch any Godzilla movie. If Godzilla's in it, you can watch it. Wow. That had not been the case before he was eight. That's like the best version of like the birds and the bees talk.

You're old enough to start understanding the world. I was limited for a long time to the Shoa era. Yeah. And then I expanded the Heise era, but now he can watch any Godzilla move. Wow. If he ever watches it, please let us know. Because I think he will hate it. But I was curious.

I didn't want to infect your collection with the disc. I don't think it's a good film. Much like Phantom Menace, I've always been fascinated by how broken it is. But I saw it about his age and really struggled with why it didn't make me happy. Langcheck with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin, Newman, and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley.

Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Burch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell.

Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to Blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank CheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.