Blank Check with Griffin & David - Vamps with Caroline Framke

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

Our Amy Heckerling series comes to an end with 2012’s Vamps, a film produced too late to have an appropriate budget, and too early to be a streaming series. However - we find it charming! Caroline Framke returns to the podcast after 6 years (an eternity for us, but probably a blink for a vampire), and we talk about the pitfalls and pleasures of eternal youth, the B in Apartment 23, and how if Heckerling never makes another film, this one would serve as an appropriate career coda.  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

Blackjack with Griffin and David Blackjack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blackjack Ugh, it's so annoying. You have to keep learning to use new crap that doesn't actually do anything better than the old crap, which is incompatible with the new crap. So also that you can have blogs and watch fake teenagers and real housewives and it's all happening too fast. And I'm tired. I'm just sick and tired of it all.

It's okay. You don't have to do the podcast. That's one of my least favorite parts of the movie. Really? Yeah. Anytime the movie's about like blogs, her complaining about blogs, I'm like, all right. Because you're JunoCore. You're honest to blogs.

I like, no, it's not that I like blogs, although I have no beef with blogs. No, it's just the only time where I'm like, oh, it's 2012. Or it's the time when I'm most like, oh, it's 2012. Sure. Well, because like, I'm like, oh, there are, little did she know what modern horrors awaited. Like all the things she's complaining about, I'm like, oh no, those things were pretty good.

This movie's a weird period piece now. Yeah. It is carbon dated very much to the exact moment it was made. And was even a script that she wrote in 2005. But the most horrifying thing wasn't the situation's book launch party. That didn't get you. Oh, I forgot. I forgot about that. I didn't clock that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you seem in an irritated mood.

Did you struggle with this movie? Ben turned off the AC. It completely shifted my vibe. It is insane. I'm not joking. Because there are. I really fuck. You were in a good mood and now you are hostile. Now you're ready to rant about Julie. aren't you? It's so vital to me. It really is. I can't deny it. We're putting it back on. Ben, we cannot do this for two hours.

This is not an option. I love air conditioning so much. And when I say this, I'm gesturing to the... It's one of those things where like... Red anger lines. Well, and you know what? I'm trying to fit him into every episode, so... President role. I'm a little role key. It's one of those things where like anger lines To fit him into every episode so president role I'm a little rocky he was it is Sims had a mood lit right now What he was in a completely fine mood and then within 30 seconds. He was on on the brink of rolking. I mean what if when

Harrison Ford Thunderbolt Ross was getting mad mad, right, you know, in that movie where there's... You might notice a scene or two of him going like... Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr like, yes, President, President. And he's like, okay, okay. I can't record my podcast unless there's AC on. I'm sweaty. And then finally the leader is like, and like turns the AC off or turns the heat up. The leader just fucking writes my new prescription.

That's all his plan. The worst thing about that movie is the leader. Caroline. See here I thought that the most relevant film for me to see this week for this episode would be Sinners, but no, apparently I needed to see Thunderbolts. Have you seen Sinners? I saw it yesterday for this. Okay.

Well, also to be part of America's... Well, a great international discourse. Yes, exactly, but I was like, oh, a vampire film, I should see the vampire film before we talk about the vampire film. And then I saw it and it was kind of a mistake because it fucking ripped and then it was all I could think about. Yeah, sure. Then I had to watch Vamps again.

I'd already watched it. Yeah, I know. And then I watched again this morning, to be clear. I like Vamps a lot, but they are very different. I like Vamps a lot. The moods were wild mood swings. My whole thing with Vamps, and I'm sure we're about to discuss this.

I think you're about to, right, the headline here. It would be funny if my whole thing with Vamps is, I just think Red Hulk is- Women shouldn't talk this much. Is the first, what's the 90 minute movie? The first half hour I'm like, right, the vampires are in the modern world and they have a Blackberry or whatever.

And then after about half an hour. Yeah. The T-Mobile sidekick is much cooler than a Blackberry. Let's get it straight. There was a moment in my life I thought about getting a sidekick, I think, before I was like, I'm just gonna get an iPhone. That moment was Gossip Girl.

Gossip Girl was that moment. Gossip Girl had a... Blair Waldorf had a sidekick. Gilmore Girls has a sidekick episode, which is one of the most naked, like, T-Mobile has paid for one episode of your show. Gilmore Girls would not make me wanna get a sidekick. Did you have a Nokia N- Nokia engaged? Did you ever engage?

I never engaged. As much as the idea of my telephone calls and my games in one beautiful, perfect, user-friendly package. Those two things won't clash at all. You want me to do committed long-form gaming

on a thing that's also going to keep dinging. No, after a little while, I was like, I think I'm kind of into these characters. I think I'm a little sold on this movie to my mild surprise. I think the first 30 minutes, you're just like, yeah, okay, I get it. That's just like kind of clever, but whatever.

And then I think the remaining hour of the movie is kind of impressively well-pl And then I think the remaining hour of the movie is kind of impressively well plotted. I think suddenly you're like, fuck, this thing actually is a good narrative. And the characters are all great cast. There's no money. That is what I thought you were going to say. The real highlight of this movie is you watch it and you're like, it is impressive that she made it as good as she did,

considering that is one of those films where you can feel the lack of time. You can feel every single background like disappearing two inches out of frame. That is like one of the clearest signs for low budget filmmaking. Don't move the camera. You're like, if you move it an inch,

this entire environment's gonna fall apart. Yeah, like that stuff bothered me more than actually the special effects being janky. That's fine. I think that worked. She is... But even then, I'm like, she is so close to figuring out how to execute the special effects on like an early Tim Burton level, where it's like, oh, the jankiness is part of the charm,

it's stylized in a comedic way, and yet it feels like she's still 5% short of the budget to being able to execute that properly. Like everything's just a little under what it should be in a way that makes this movie very bittersweet to watch. Because you're just like, God, if they could have just given her like 20% more to work with, time, money, what have you, you're like, this would have been, if not received properly as like a commercial comeback film,

it would be a movie our series could end on that would feel a lot more triumphant. Bitter Sweet is definitely, I feel like the word especially, we'll get to it, the end is so Bitter Sweet. I cried both times I watched this film this week. It's fine. I got a little choked up. The ending is very, very emotionally affecting

and like beautifully built to and earned. And yet in that final second, you're like, God damn it, fuck, this effect sucks. This emotional moment relies on... I mean, I grew up on Buffy and I've seen worse. Like, you know, so that didn't, it didn't bother me as much as I should have. And also I was thinking about it

and not to come in here and be like, here's the TV critic ready to relate it to television. Here we go. If she had been three years later with us, this would have been a Netflix show. I kept thinking. And I don't want to say that, you know, not derogatory. I mean, like it could have been, it's a very, the world is defined. The characters are good.

This movie kind of got made at the exact wrong moment. Yeah. And like, what if this is the movie she gets the, well, how much did this movie cost? I don't, I guess we don't know, it might be in the dossier, but like what if she got the 20 to $30 million she got for her last movie for this movie? Yes. Right? Just like more than the, my guess is less than $10 million

she got for this movie, I don't know. The quote in the dossier is 10 than $10 million. She offered this movie. I don't know the quote in The dossier is 10 Yes, right. Yes, the quote of the dossier is 10. Yes. It feels like this movie should cost 20 You're like just yeah somewhere Team would have made a difference. Well anything would make a difference anything would make a difference It feels like if she had waited two, Amazon either would have given her $30 million to make it as a movie, when they were in their sort of Ted Hope led, we're bringing back the Forgotten Auteurs and giving them blank checks phase. Or Netflix would have done it as a series. And either way, she would have had the support she needed.

It would have been depressing that that's how it got made. But like this movie is in a crux point of like the high concept, larger budget studio comedy has kind of died. And things have not shifted over to streaming yet. Yeah. I mean, when I was watching again this morning, I'd watched it alone the first time, the second time my roommate was around, and for some of the effects, especially towards the end, I was like, there's something so specific this reminds me of,

or something that it's trying to be. And she was like, oh, it's Death Becomes Her. And I was like, fuck, that's it. Like it's close, it's almost that, but those effects are practical, they're different, they had more money, but there is such, you know, we'll get into all the vampire things I love, but Death Becomes Her is essentially a vampire movie.

Here's the whole thing with the end gauge. The thing they fucked up, and this is what I forgot about this. Thank God we're surfing back to this. And then, just to, you know, when you see this, you think high-end video gaming, right? When you see that device. My heart starts fluttering.

I'm so excited. Can I see this? Do you not know the N-Gage? I don't. I figured you were just, oh, Karantz with the N-Gage. Oh, no, no, no, I've never seen that in my life. No, Pio was just like, we are going to, at the same time. Make our own Game Boy. Right, and they were like, we will make the world's coolest cell phone and the Game Boy killer.

They thought they were going to like, dominate two industries simultaneously. I feel like where the buttons are on that stresses me out. The issue, oh, there's a lot of stressful things about it. Here's the most stressful. To change cartridges for your games, you had to open the phone and take out the whole battery. No, because they forgot like, oh, right. Like the cartridges go behind the back. We're sort of using like SIM card logic of like, well, you don't change that very often.

It was like which was one of the most classic examples of like, you know. What year was the one thousand and three? Wow. That late. That late. year was that? 2003. 2003. Wow, that late? That late. It was a competitor to the Game Boy Advance. I was gonna say, when was the Game Boy? I'm like, that's not replacing the Game Boy. But the Advance, which had a similar,

was going wide mode for the first time. Oh, I see, I never had the Advance. Right, but again, when you look at this screen, does that screen say wide to you? Doesn't say wide to me. It's like skinny, actually. No, the screen. The skinny little screen. It's skinny actually. No, the screen. The skinny little screen.

It's a skinny screen. It has the screen of like an original Game Boy that looks like a postage stamp in a very wide handheld. Maybe even smaller. Can you show Caroline a photo of the Game Boy Advance for comparison? Yeah, I'm sure you know the Game Boy Advance, Caroline. Because not only is this game... See, I've said this twice and I've been unfamiliar both times.

Of the screen or better and also you will see there was a clean list. It's one of those things where you're like, oh, a gaming company made that. Like Nintendo actually. It has three buttons. I have seen that. And a place to put games. I did not have it. And a larger screen.

Yeah, although the Game Boy Advance had its own problems in that it was not backlit. It was dark as hell. Because they wanted to save battery power and they realized that was just sort of not going to work anymore. Right. You had to get the accessory. I remember I had a little light. Oh, you snap it on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was like third-party companies would make little book lights that would go into the port you would use for linked gameplay.

Yeah, I believe you're correct. Yeah. See, I just feel like my hands wouldn't go that way. It's not natural. The Game Boy, did you ever have those games, like when you were really little and your parents were trying to keep you occupied and at a restaurant? Tiger L.T.R.O.N.C.T. The LCD games.

No, not electronic. They look like fish tanks. Yes, with the hoops. You press the button and then you're trying to get the fish into the tank. So I feel like my thumbs were already prepped for that motion. I feel like the Game Boy Prime made sense to me in that way. But you remember the Tiger LCD games that were just sort of like... Yeah, there's like little, you know, the whole screen was just bits that could light up,

essentially, with pixels, like Battletoads or whatever. Give that a Google while I introduce the podcast. I want Caroline to see this as well. Uh, yes. This is important. This is important to talk about. Battletoads was like someone being like, what if I ripped off turtles,

huge, huge turtles, you know, and no one checked me on that one. Open one tab that's Tiger Electronics LCD game and another tab that's Battle Toads so we can write. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies.

David's fast again. Thank God we turned the AC on. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this has been a mini-series on the films of Amy Heckerling. It has. We are sadly now discussing her final film to date.

For now. 2012's Vamps. I suppose she could make another one. She's how old? 70 years old? It's not impossible. She could make another one. She speaks of wanting to make more movies. But yes, and these final two films are very much anti-blank checks. They are movies where you're feeling the tension of the checks being pulled back. Someone write her a check. Right. And unlike I Could Never Be Your Woman, where you're like, this movie is stuck in a perpetual fit of mania. A little compromised.

Yeah, not one. I'm glad I watched earlier this week, but it did make me feel unhinged. You did watch it. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little like, you feel a little nauseous. It's a little like motion sick. This has the bittersweet thing where you watch it and you're like, the fuck, this should be one of her masterpieces.

You can kind of see it pretty clearly. Introduce our guest. Our guest today, who has... done several power moves that we're gonna get into since entering the studio. It's the great Caroline Framke. First time in far too long. It needs to be said.

Six years. Caroline, here is an LCD game. Do you remember these? I do. And it would just sort of flicker like... Oh, yeah! They clearly did not know the technical names of any of these. It was like a still image that basically you could move left or right. Right, little bits of it would light up

depending on where you wanted the guy to be to do a punch. It was kind of the electronic version of the Water Ring game and it was that primitive. Do you remember the Battletoads? Because I feel like the Battletoads were pretty Ben-coded. I mean, that's a really good game. Yes, it's very hard. It is.

Are they toads that battle? It's truly just them ripping off turtles. They're cool guys, they have sunglasses, their names are Rash, Zit. Right, I think we've talked about this before because I remember us going through their gross names. I'll look them up. Their names, of course, are...

Come on now, they have to defeat the Dark Queen, we know that. I feel like they fight pigs. Rash, Zitz, with a Z, two Zs, and pimple. Yeah, there we go. They're gross. Why are they bodily... Because like that was cool, you know, it's like... Where's perc?

Boys like gross things, they have mutated animals... Yeah, yeah, yeah. ...that are absorbing the vibes of other cultures. I think they fought pigs, or pigs the natural enemy of frogs? I know people good at pigs a lot, right? Like Minecraft and Angry Birds both go, we gotta take down the pigs. Pigs who are, I think, widely considered to be quite nice and smart.

And smart. I would say the Minecraft movie using the piglins is actually a swerve. Like, those are not the traditional Minecraft villains. They were introduced a little later. Pause for one second, because Ruta has called me twice. Oh, boy. What's up with Ruta?

They fucking didn't reschedule it. It was just she was doing with an urgency that is not her usual behavior, unless there's a health problem. No, twice in a row. Griffin's grandmother is so old that any phone call, I think, understandably for Griffin, is like, okay, what's this one gonna be? Right. Yes.

We can keep that in now. Sure. Yeah. She is a sort of background character on the show. Absolutely, yeah. Anyway, big announcement, Scloosie, I will be getting dinner with her sometime next week. Well, it's now in flux.

There was a Monday plan that I've now kicked to post for Ford. Where does she like to go? And of course, you don't have to tell me or we can beep it out. But like, does she have a spot? Yeah, she lives on the Upper East Side. Yes. And she is of an advanced age.

Yes. And her favorite places to go are places that are less than a block and a half. Right, right, right. Of which there are a couple. Right. I wish I had a place. I mean, I do obviously have restaurants that go to or whatever. The diner you were just talking about.

That feels like your place. No, but imagine the level of like... If the diner were downstairs. Well, more like I walk in and be like, David, your table's ready, right? Oh, you want like a cheers kind of like, hey! Exactly.

I mean, we were just talking. The only place I have that is my local bagel place where they do know my name. I have that with an Italian restaurant in Park Slope. I know you do, and it's a lovely thing you have. I talk about it all the time because it truly took a lot of work and a lot of money to get there. I'm not going to name it because we're, but it's a restaurant we were just talking about where they do know my order now. That's pretty cool. That's nice. And I'm not going to name it because it's a bit of a hot spot and it is one of the places where I get

recognized by blankies most consistently. David Buster's? correct. There we go. They know my order and your order is what like atomic wings nuclear level 8,000 credits Caroline and I went to Dave and Buster's I know you that you and Caroline have been doing very griff-coated activity 13-year-olds together like fucking chicken fingers and playing video games and shit. We did not get you know, we didn't boy shit But you went to D&B because I, well, you can tell the story. I mean, yeah, we got lunch. We got a hot dog.

You had a weird amount of time before you had kind of stacked a bunch of stuff because now you're like out in the world more. We're very excited. You know, the twins are sleep training or like they're sleep training. Oh, they're sleep trained now. See, that was not the case before. But he was out in the world. He was like, I'm stacking like five.

They're getting a little lazy now. They've got to get their asses out of bed and start working. They are trained to sleep. So we had like an extra hour, hour and a half before we had to get to a movie. Right, I had a weird gap. And he just goes, I just wish there was, it was Hard Eyes. Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's what Hard Eyes was.

It was Hard Eyes. Josh Rutan, Passing Future Guests. Absolutely, great, a movie I really enjoyed. Yeah, and so he was like, I just wish there were like an arcade or something. I was like, David, there's the Dave and Busters. Well, but that is the weird thing that I expressed that thought. I thought I had not thought was in that brain.

Yeah. And then that you were like, well, there is one. And I'd never been, you'd never been. No. And we wandered in there, and I would say that the midday Dave and Busters wasn't really ready to help us. It's not like we walked in there and someone was like, and here's where you get your card and here's how everything works.

We kind of had to trial and error. That's what I like about Dave and Buster's is you have to take care of your own ass. See, we did not know that. We walked in, I was like, there is no one here. There were maybe three groups of two children who were- This is what makes Dean be different than Chuck E. Cheese though. They're not going to hold your fucking hand. This place isn't for babies. We wandered around for an embarrassingly long time,

trying to find anyone. Where do we get the card? Do we download the app? Whatever. And then we looked up and there's like a giant fucking... Yeah, like here. Start here. But also there are 8,000 giant flashing signs.

There's a lot of flashing things there. It's a very pizza planet in a way that I enjoyed, but it flashing signs. There's a lot of flashing things there. It's hard to know which. It's a planet in a way that I enjoyed, but it was overwhelming. The thing we did. Even though there was no one there, cannot emphasize enough. The only thing we did that I regret, no one was there.

No one was there. Is that I was like, we both were kinda like, well we should play one of the gun games. The only thing you regret was leaving. Was not leaving. First of all, I wish I were still there. I wish I were still there. You should still be there.

And we're like, you know, we're looking at your house of the dead sitting here, oh God, it's all so intense. And then so there was a Tomb Raider one. And we're like, you know, we're looking at your house of the dead sitting here. Oh God, it's all so intense. And then so there was a Tomb Raider one, and I was like, okay Tomb Raider's kind of slightly more, and we start playing it, and then they're like, you're being attacked by wolves, kill the wolves. You have to shoot the wolves.

And so it's just, Carolyn's a dog odor. You're shooting so many dogs, essentially. And I'm like, Carolyn, kill them! I was like, why, no. Like truly almost crying. I'm like, oh, I killed him! And he was like, why? No. Like, truly almost crying. I'm like, I'm an insane dog owner. I'm talking about dogs. I am. You were overwhelmed by it.

It was also overwhelming just because they were trying to get us. They were. They were jumping at the screen. You were right on a swivel though. That was never... I didn't go to many arcades. We talked about how we went to arcades as a team. I didn't really do that. And definitely if I did, my game was not shooting. I feel like it was, you know, I smoked him on basketball,

say that much, and Sims is solidly taller than me, so let us all... This is cool. This is cool and I like this. This is good lore. Uh, it was a good time. And then we have gone bowling since. Because we were like, okay, casting around for what are other things I did before I could drink. You know, like, teen activities.

Who just started an action figure collection together and didn't invite me? Pfft. What is, is there a third, is there a third thing in the Holy Trinity of? Well, for me, and I feel like Ben will understand, as a Jersey, well, I did actually get my, your pierced like a month ago, randomly after I got a great haircut,

and I was like, I think I'm fucking gonna live forever. Should I pierce my ear? Bad girl 2.0 era. Oh my God. You were feeling vamped up. I did not Oh my God. You were feeling vamped up. I was feeling vamped up. I did not think it through, I'll tell you that much. And I got like the upper thing and then they were like, you're gonna need a sleep pillow.

And I was like, what? I'm gonna need a pillow? I did not get the pillow. It's like a donut. If you look up like piercing pillow. I get it, I get it. To stop it. There are some weird piercing pillows.

It looks like other stuff. But I sleep on my back, so it's not that big an issue. But it was like, I have to think about things in a way I was not anticipating. But yeah, I did get my ears pierced. I'll get the other one pierced if you want to do that. But I do feel like the thing I would, my holy trinity in terms of teen activities,

it would either be a mall or a diner, because I grew up in Jersey. Hell yeah. A diner. Well, and we've been to many diners together. Well, not the late night diner. I didn't go to breakfast at diners. I did breakfast at night. I get, no, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I some ice cream, feel sick, stay up. Where would you go, Ben? If Caroline successfully convinces David to get an ear piercing

and then go to a 24-hour chain restaurant afterwards, that feels like he's then stepping in on your territory. A little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Wow, I'm really taking over. I'm just encroaching the whole thing. That wasn't even one of my power moves.

You're not doing anything wrong. The problem is if Ben or I suggested these activities, what are you guys talking about? You're insane. I'd never do that. A lot of people say a lot of things about me. That's all I'll say. But Fran and I were briefly gonna get our nipples pierced for the Dragon Tattoo episode.

Of course. We were like, we're gonna go full Lizbeth. Right. But then we, you know, whatever. We didn't get our act together. Like that was gonna be complicated. That wasn't number one on the priority list. What a shame.

Yeah. What a shame. Would have been pretty funny. Maybe you wouldn't want the AC as much if you had two fucking metal studs in your chest. I think I'd want it more. What were you going to say? Well, to answer your question, what did I do?

Your diner. Or yeah, sure, what was your, yeah. I mean, pretty much anywhere where you could loiter in the middle of the night. You loiter? Yeah, yeah. Teenage Ben? Yep.

Loitering? Crime loiter. Reading aiter? Yeah, yeah. Teenage Ben? Yep. Loitering? Crime loiter. Reading a big leather bound book. Public parks playgrounds. Cozy corner. Playgrounds, but even just gas station parking lots. Oh, sure. Well, maybe the best snacks.

Yeah, exactly. Go to the convenience store. Those are open 24 hours. We had a 24 hour diner near my town where I grew up. So what? We would go TikTok. Oh, classic. Oh, yeah. Perfect. Oh, classic.

Oh, yeah. Perfect. Oh, I see it here. I feel like, you know, in keeping with, sort of keeping with this episode, I feel like I have, as I have aged, I am looking back at like, what did I like to do before my default was going out to a restaurant or going to a bar? Like, are there other activities? I'm sure there are, you know?

And I feel like as a teen, you have to find those other things. Right, that's a funny teen stage. You and I have done these teen things in like the smack middle of the day. Cause that's when you were people there and that's when you're doing stuff. But I do feel like, you know, doing that stuff later at night.

But I would often. As a teen that's where you could go. I would often do it in the day as a teen, I feel like. Right, it was kind of like, how do I fill this weekend day? And then- Yeah, well movies. But if you're- Movies, video games, going to the park.

Boo! The park is nice, what's wrong with the park? I don't know, when I was 14, my guess is I was sort of like, I, you know. Your grimy London park. So instead I would go to Rowan's, which was a bowling alley and an arcade. And that is a very, very cherished spot in my childhood. And it had a bar, and I could order food at the bar.

And they had something called the Combo Platter for five pounds. It was like chicken fingers, fries, and onion rings all on one big plate. All the food groups. The covers. The triangle. Vegetables. Uh, starch? Protein the food groups. The covers. The triangle. The vegetable. Uh, starch?

Protein? The full pyramid. Yeah. By the way, I did briefly consider punishing you for dangling Clueless in front of me by bringing back, oh, I didn't know you grew up in England, blah, and I did. Oh, you don't understand. That would be too complicated. No, no, no.

I know. So I briefly was like, I know it's been retired. And I was like, I'm going to un-retire it forcibly. And then I watched I Can Never Be Your Woman. And I was like, if there were any episode to do it on that, be the one. So I briefly was like, I know it's been retired. And I was like, I'm going to un-retire it forcibly. And then I watched I Can Never Be Your Woman. And I was like, if there were any episode to do it on that, be the one. So never mind. Fuck it. Fuck. We should have done it on that. It's a heavy Brit. And I was like, I was just and I tried.

I was like, I don't think it's funny. I think I just I think I had a mean moment. I was like, I just want to see him squirm. And I was like, let's not do that. You even told me at David's birthday that you wanted my help doing a bit to torture. And then I thought about like what that would actually look like and the conversation I'd have with you to make that happen. I was like, hmm.

You know what the bit should have been for I Should Never Be Your Woman? It should have been arguing that David grew up in California. Sure. Being like, no, no, you think that was like, boy, that was Los Angeles. No. Yeah, of course. Sunny, so sunny. The sun. No Sunny so sunny

Perfect Californian accents Hello David Mitchell right is the one who's like I'm the only You don't want to hear what that yeah. Yeah, we're not gonna do that. I wanna step back and do a little table setting here because you've alluded to this. But all this conversation, by the way, was relevant because this is a movie about like,

do you want to stay young forever? Right, what is it to be eternally a certain age? Right. Caroline, you had two blockbuster appearances on this podcast. Blockbuster was very good. Covering two huge movies. Yes. Showgirls, a big episode, a big film.

I feel like I'm really glad I didn't think that one. I didn't overthink that one, because the second I left, I was like, I feel like that was a big movie. This is what you said at David's birthday. You said like, I never would get an episode like that today, and I didn't even realize how big it was until I left. And we're like, Caroline, every time we put a new

mini series on the schedule, I say to David, what about Frankie? We haven't had Frankie on in too long. And your response is often, I don't want to do something if I don't feel strongly about it. I'm not going to take a slot for someone who would care more about something else. Which I've always thought is very respectable. But you did that in Kiki. But I have thrown... Two great movies, three amazing episodes.

I've thrown you a lot of options. He has thrown me options over the years. And you've usually kind of been like, David Lynch, I don't know that I, you know, am engaged enough with that to be, you know, someone like that, right? What you said to me is like, I don't want to take it away from someone who really wants to do it.

Right, I mean, you know, I feel like- Which is very thoughtful of you. Yeah, like there's something, I feel like there would be something interesting about doing, like if I were to do a David Lynch, it'd be coming from the perspective of, I've never fully engaged with this work in a way that maybe I wanted to,

and that would be different. But I'm like, but he's, there's so much to say about it from a perspective of people who know and love him. I have so many Lynch obsessions in my life that I was like, I can't, I can't even do that to them. People who would, who aren't even in contention to be on the, just people. To people. We put Heckerling on the spreadsheet.

I go, this feels like a Framkey moment, right? David has some offline conversation with you that I'm not part of. And then you get slotted in for Vamps. And it was like, that sort of makes sense. That feels like a good thing. And you'd seen it. Well, that was the thing is that I didn't know that you didn't. OK, so you didn't know that. All right.

You keep going. No, you jump in with what you were gonna say. Well, it's just he asked me like, oh, do you have any strong feelings about Vamps? And I was like, oh yeah, I mean, I saw it and I liked it. And he was like, so you saw it? Like, he stopped. I was like, oh. And I was like, yeah.

And I guess I did not at that time know the full lore of just how limited this one theater release was. We will get to? We will get to how, you know, how I did see it. But I was like, oh yeah, and I saw it. And he was like, okay, so did you like and I said yes, and he said, okay great You're doing that and I said fine. I think we knew when we committed to the series that it would be Harder to book our final two films. Yes in particular that didn't get real releases and that you're like You know as much as heckling is serious

There aren't a lot of heckling or tourists out there who like, you know, as much as Hackerling is serious, there aren't a lot of Hackerling and Taurus out there who like, are like, well, of course I've watched every one of her films. Most people don't know these two movies ever happened, right? Yes. And so when we get to positions like this, there's often this thing of like, look, we can ask a friend of ours who's a good guest to watch it cold for the first time, but it's always better if we know someone who actually has seen it previously and has any feeling about it, right? Where you're not just rolling the dice or someone coming in and being like, it was fine. I mean, right. There's love it or hate it.

It's better if there's some feeling in history. There's certain things like, uh, I could never be your woman where you, well, honestly that movie turned out to be a lot weirder than I thought it was. But initially I was sort of like, at least it's not a big ask of a guest of like, hey, watch this 90-minute movie with Paul Rudnit. Like, you'll have an idea. You did ask me if I would be interested in that one.

Between the two, I would rather Vamps for sure. We kept asking people, hey, here's the heckling list, but if you have any relationship to Loser, I Could Never Be Your Woman on Vamps, please let us know. Whereas there are certain movies, I feel like, where it's like you're making a, you know, a more consequential ask of someone to watch some heavy movie that nobody, I don't know, like, it hasn't come up in a while because we've been doing all these big shots, but it's happened.

Like true kind of movies that don't exist. So David does not relate to me that you had seen the film. I thought you were doing us a mitzvah, right? That you were like, I like vampires, I like comedies. This feels like a fun thing to watch for the first time. Then we have another past guest, hopefully future guest, reach out to us from out of town who doesn't live here anymore and was like, I might be in town in this exact window,

is there anything you guys could throw at me? And we said, have you seen I Could Never Be Your Woman? And her response was, no, but I love vamps. And I was like, fuck, here's someone who's passionate about vamps. Do we bump Framke off of vamps because I thought you were just doing us a solid, replacing it with passion, right?

So then we bump you, David offers Clueless. And I was like, I truly was like, are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure you're not going to get someone for Clueless? Consolation prize trade off. Yeah. Yeah. And I truly was like a little stressed about it. Because I was like, Clueless is Clueless, but I will do it. Like, what am I going to say no to Clueless? Like, I'm not going to say no to Clueless.

And then this other person's and and and now it's aired. Well, then David also relates to me. Frampt is kind of bummed that she's not doing VAMs, so I'm going to offer her a clue list. And I was like, I didn't realize she actually liked it. Sure, sure, sure. Right. Then the other person's travel plans got changed,

was like, I probably won't be here until the fall. And I was like, we got to move Framkey back to VAMs. Because no one else will want to do VAMs. And I believe David's text to me was, Caroline, I am on my knees begging you to do vamps. A little bit. A little bit. No, that's literally what you said.

A lot of it. And I was like, all right, so who do you have? We are very appreciative of you. Oh, no, it's fine. And honestly, frankly, I think it did work out. I have, I think, a lot more specific stuff to say about vamps and also it is only spiritually correct that blonde did Clueless. It's just right. Yeah. It's just right.

It's not the first time a blonde has taken my thing and it won't be the last. And dare I say it, a raven-haired snarkster doing Vamps. Thank you so much. For sure. Thank you so much. I don't have my summer tan yet. I'm not Kristen Ritter. Oh well.

I mean, May is just upon us. The tanning opportunities are just beginning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now before we dig into the movie proper, I just want to give you a shout out. Beyond just you doing us a big solid in this crazy musical chairs of booking, for this season, I walk in, you are finishing up a caricature of your own face and taping it to the front of your desk because you're jealous that you don't have a cartoon avatar of yourself.

You don't have to say that she's jealous. I mean, I was, it's fine. You go, that's much better now. And then you immediately say, now I need shit on my desk to compete with me. Well, I didn't realize there were deaths in general. Yes. I've not been to the studio yet.

Last time I was on the show was six years ago for Kiki's Delivery Service. It was at the old audio boom studio. And I walked in, Ben was the only one here. I beat both of you, which is again, no, I'm thrilled because I'm never the first anywhere as a musician. You walked in those, I was not crying though. This time, dry eyed. But you very quickly established a good desk spread

of the kind of chaos that I enjoy. I'm glad I brought the bag I did today because I had a lot of stuff in it. Three beverages, notebook, novel, and then vape. No, that's actually lipstick. Actually, and this is not a novel. This is Maeve Brennan's The Long-winded Lady, which is anecdotes from New York City

and actually feels very goody-rutherford in that way. But she's just like... That's lipstick? Oh, yeah, it's like, it's like a, yeah, it's one of those. And then I had an O'Mary Playbill. I think this might... It's either... I think this is the tightest one.

I saw both. And some glow-in-the-dark temp tattoos. You gave me some... Three Beetlejuice plushies and a Poppy from Trolls. Yep, and then I have an assortment of Sour Patch Lemonade flavor. Or Sustenance. We're doing great. Yeah, I'm in it for the long haul. Here we go.

Ben, why did this movie put you in a weird mood? It's a bit of a weird movie. It is. Yeah, I don't know. There's the quality. The sort of general, like, I'm eating a generic brand versus the, you know, the RC Cola. It's a little CW. Sure.

Right? A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. A little bit, a little bit. Yeah, yeah. It takes you back to that time of the aught. Well, a happy time for you. A chaotic time. A chaotic time.

Yeah, yeah. I would say I was living my life in a certain way where I don't really remember much of that time. Corner by a little time. You know? David. Yes? I have this wild take. I am HO. Summer is the season of doing things. Okay. And enjoyment.

I love to enjoy things. That is what summer is for. Enjoying things and doing them. I do love to enjoy and do things. I love to do things and I really like if I enjoy the things I do. Well, here's the thing I want to recommend that you can do and doing them. I do love to enjoy and do things. I love to do things and I really like if I enjoy the things I do. Well, here's the thing I wanna recommend that you can do and enjoy doing. Making meals with HelloFresh. I honestly, you're being a silly fella.

I am. But it is very satisfying to make a meal, serve it to people and have them enjoy it. Of course. And with HelloFresh, that stuff is easy. And you say I'm being silly, but I do want to start to push the narrative that maybe instead of like Brat Summer, Hot Girl Summer, this is doing things and enjoying them summer. Yeah, this is doing things and enjoying them summer.

And HelloFresh is a perfect way to kick off that spirit. David, what you been cooking up lately? For summer, maybe you want something that's a little less of a, you know, standing over a pot. Exactly. How about some sticky ponzu salmon rice bowls? Here's what I like about this. I love a rice bowl. It's not going to fall out of my hands.

Sticky ponzu salmon rice bowls. I love ponzu. More ponzu in my life these days. Love bowls. Than ever before. Or what about this? A one pot, creamy paprika chicken cavatappi. I love a one pot meal, Chris. The exact number of pots I'm looking at. Exactly.

And you're putting all this stuff together and you're like, is this going to work? And then suddenly you get that magic moment when you're stirring and you're like, wait, this looks like a meal. Yup. You know, this was a bunch of stuff before and now this looks like something I want to put in my mouth. I know that feeling and that experience so well. And HelloFresh is really good at that. At putting together these quick, you know, home-cooked meals that are actually like fun and delicious, not just like, you know, food to put in your mouth. You get to have fun and enjoy doing things.

They use high quality ingredients, seasonal, fresh produce, proteins that travel from farm to doorstep, and they got easy to follow recipe cards and yeah you can even get the simple kind of heat em and eat em options if that's the you know this the community looking for. That's a little more my temperature. So you can make your summer enjoyable and delicious by signing up for HelloFresh at HelloFresh.com slash check 10 FM and then get 10 free meals with a free item for life that's HelloFresh.com slash check 10 FM 1 0 FM 10 free meals for 10 free meals and a free item in every box. Hellofresh.com slash check 10 FM 1 per box with an active subscription.

Free meals are applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Varies by point. What do you call this era? This is like post-Indie Sleaze. Has anyone named this area? Early 2010s core. I guess it's not not Indie Sleaze. It's like the recession era, like is the problem. It's kind of just like everyone's a little bummed out.

Just post-recession, Indie Sleazin'. I feel like this kind of has to be post-Indie Sleaze. Like I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era.

Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era. Like, I think it's like the recession era is the problem. It's kind of just like everyone's a little bummed out. Just post-recession, indie sleaze in. I feel like this kind of has to be post-indie sleaze.

Like I think no one has earmarked it, but I think some transition has happened that still owes something to indie sleaze. I don't think it's been defined really yet. Post-recession is a good stance. Yeah, right. What's the music people are listening to in 2012? Drake. Jesus. Yeah, right. What's the music people are listening to in 2012?

Drake? Jesus. Yeah, let's really junk that here. It's in the bin. It does weirdly feel like Kristen Ritter is the perfect ultimate avatar of early 2010s New York. Not just because she was the bee. Oh, the bee.

See, we can talk about the bee. This was the right episode for the bee. That show exists because it was just like, she's embodying something that we gotta put on television. No one would, like, she really wears a chunky necklace well. Even though she's got, you know, she's quite... A skinny frame. And a leather jacket.

Yeah, but the necklaces still don't wear her. She likes a slightly puffed shoulder. We had a lot of, like, slightly puffed shoulders. Well, so, the bee, we met the bee... We met the bee. ...in 2012. Her, the apartment 23. Well, so, the bee, we met the bee in 2012. The year the camps came out. The apartment 23. Yeah, don't trust her.

Yeah. And I've told this story before, but I lived in a building in apartment 22 at that time, and I kept filling out forms from... You kept looking for that bee? No, I truly, when I had to fill out my address, I kept thinking like, I live in apartment 23, right? And I couldn't remember if it was me or the bee.

And mail kept getting delivered to my next door neighbor. And they were like, you fucking filled it out for 23 again. Oh, wow. Yeah, anyway, that's a true story. The bee is supposed to be, she's kind of coming off her indie sleep. She's like a party girl who's sort of like, do I need to stop being a stain on her? No, no, no, no, no.

The bee? No, the bee loves her lifestyle. That's the whole thing. She does not grow or change. She's no good, because she's the Bee. She's the Bee. Like, she's fond of the people she's fond of. Her best friend, James Van Der Beek, playing James Van Der Beek. And also, was plausible that she'd be friends with, you know, kind of post-Dawson's Creek James Van Der Beek.

I mean, he's so good on that show. It's such a funny bit. And it was Eric Andre and Dreama Walker? Eric Andre and Dreama Walker was the nice girl, right? Yes. Yeah, she was the nice girl who moved in as the roommate who... Who won't be... She won't be beat. She won't be beat. And all the other roommates have been beat. So the bee does begrudgingly respect her.

But she does not change her ways. Apparently, Eric Andre's character was Meek. That's his name? Or the personality? The personality. I'm like, Eric Andre seems bad casting. Because he was like, Dream of Walker's... I'm sorry! ...co-worker at Starbucks, basically. Okay.

And he, like, liked her. He was an awkward guy. But it was weird casting, knowing what Eric Andre is and can do. And I don't think they ever really got a chance to let him do that. It also aired completely out of order. So just like Vamps, it got a very weird release situation and it never really- Was it two seasons or one?

Two. Yeah. But the second season aired completely out of order. Okay. Right, the second season got that- I think it's still out of order on who, like you do have to like- ABC sitcom treatment where they were like, hmm.

But there were some plots, like there wasn't a ton of like overarching plot, but enough where you're like, wait, what is this? I mean, Happy Endings had the same experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ABC was just always a little bit like, wait, what is this? I mean, Happy Endings had the same experience. ABC was just always a little bit like, what, you like these? I liked Happy Endings. I feel like I said this to you. Like, the way a lot of people feel about Happy Endings

and being, they were, you know, a lot of people were very devastated by Happy Endings ending. I was sad, but I was so much sadder about the B. Kristen Ritter was on her kind of version of a Zooey Deschanel track, where she kept playing like best friends and being like, man, she's really good with like the like off the shoulder like one line responses, the sort of side snark. And then they clearly were like, can we make her a lead?

And Don't Trust the Bee was like part of that project, right? But the fact that the bee didn't change is maybe what made people not totally, you know, get with it. They were like, but she's supposed to grow and change. And she was like, I don't have any interest in that. Once she wasn't really the protagonist of the show. She was the main character. Right. But this thing I think about all the time with her, I think she had several children and kind of like disappeared for a bunch of years

and now of course was in Sonic 3 and seems to be working more. But for like for someone who was so omnipresent, really in like the first half of the 2010s. Yeah, because it was that it was Jessica Jones. Yes. Yeah. She's so great in Jessica Jones. She's great. She's great.

Yeah. Jessica Jones kind of, season one of Jessica Jones such an unambiguous success in an era of superhero TV that is largely not. So immediately different. So interesting. And the Tenet character is so scary. He's so great. So it's kind of the only one of those Netflix seasons that has like a whole season. Exactly. I don't remember much about the other two seasons. No, I kind of forgot there were those two seasons that I'm sure I watched and reviewed them all.

I don't know, guys. Iron Fist. I mean, that guy did have the fist of an iron. And it stuck with me. I remember every part of it. It was like, it was Jessica Jones and it was Daredevil. And now Daredevil's back, but where's Jessica Jones? I was surprised she wasn't on it ever. She... My guess is they're waiting to do something cool with it.

That's another casting that everyone kind of agrees with unambiguously, like, worked. It did work, which when it was announced, I was completely like not, that's not how I imagined that character. She was not the obvious type. Yeah. But I liked the character a lot in comics. Here's what I was going to say. I have a very vivid memory of this and I think about this way too often. She does Don't Trust the Bee.

And it was just sort of like, okay, this lasted two seasons and it made it to air, but it didn't quite work. And it felt like all the networks were like, there's probably a hit show starring Kristin Ritter and we want to solve what it is. She feels like she should be the lead of a hit show. And these are the final years of like the traditional pilot system. Let's get you a show. Right. Where like every January before they start auditioning, the networks all start like competing with each other. The pile of script spec scripts that they have acquired being like, if we can attach a big name to this, this is a go pilot. And someone like Kristen Ritter, who was seen as like hot, you know, and had like value and was ready to be the star of a TV show, they're all sending her their like 20 best scripts

and being like, do you like any of these? And for, I want to say three years in a row, Kristen Ritter signed on straight offer, first position, big pilot show that didn't go. And I would, I was stuck in these fucking pilot system runners every year and being like, well, this script's really good. And it's got Kristen Ritter.

This show's definitely gonna happen. Do you remember what any of them were about? One of them, I believe, was written by our friend Leslie Headland that was an adaptation of her play, Assistance. Oh, yes, yes. I remember that. That was sort of loosely fictionalized

her nightmare experiences working at the Weinstein Company. Right, yes. I remember that. And Alfred Molina was gonna play the Weinstein analog. Oh my God. And was a really good, dark script. Yeah, that would be.

Alfred Molina. Let's clarify. There was another one that was like, I want to say a 60s NASA space race show. And there's one other one I'm forgetting. But in that era, it's like someone like Kristin Ritter has to make a big choice every January of which pilot she's attaching herself to.

And yet, it just might not get picked up. And if that's the case, everyone basically goes, cool, we'll see you in a year. Well, the interesting thing about her too is that, I mean, when you mention those two things and then mentioning the bee, vamps, that kind of stuff, her taste is, you know, a little bit more offbeat than I feel like she might get credit for.

It's the kind of thing too when I was watching this and when I watched, I Can Never Be Your Woman for the first time and I was kind of thinking about all the Heckerling stuff just to get myself in the state of mind. I was like, oh, Heckerling's a fucking weirdo too. She is, it's a good character. Complementary, she is.

She's a little goth weirdo herself. Right, and like, you know, she choices like, you know, All Men as Mother Earth, that kind of thing. She is... It's a good character. Complimentary. She is... She's a little goth weirdo herself. Right, and like, you know, she like choices like, you know, Ullman as Mother Earth, that kind of thing. We were like, what are we doing here? Well, that's a choice I might have advised her on. Right, her royal vizier. But it's a strong choice, nonetheless.

And it's the kind of thing that it seems like Kristen Ritter really responds to, is this kind of stuff where it's slightly off. And I'm not surprised that the pilots she chose then did not catch on. They were all good. I remember every year being like, well, this is the best script this year

and being astounded when it wouldn't get picked up for who knows what fucking reason. I even think one of them got picked up and then like unpicked up at some point. Yeah, I feel like probably, especially knowing Leslie's, you know, what the plays are like and then what happened. I mean, she did Bachelorette, she managed to make that pretty vicious,

but not as vicious, that kind of thing. I think it was trying to do the same thing. I'm sure she got network notes to death. Yes, but like the old rigid pilot system network TV model, at a time where people were still kind of wary of going to cable or going to streaming, and also the money was so fucking good if you could get on a hit show, there was no off cycle. That was like the calendar of which

the thing happened and if you picked the wrong thing in the spring, you were fucked until the next year, right? And in between, it's like Chris and Ritter's like, okay, so I do I like play X's snarky best friend again in a Paramount movie? Or do I play like the lead in a lower budget Amy Heckerling movie and then next year, hopefully I get another shot at TV. And then it felt like she did the Jessica Jones move at the moment where it was like,

yeah, streaming does seem to be the place to go. And if you're playing a Marvel character, that feels like you're set for your life. And the first season totally worked. And then like the entire Marvel Netflix experience like dissipates and it's yeah, this just like seven year run of interesting energy from Kristen Ritter that then has kind of like pulled back. I don't know what you're talking about.

Did you not hear the echoes? Oh, that was a Marvel spotlight, wasn't it? It was not. What if Orphan Black had an echo? Orphan Black echoed. Oh, wasn't it? It was not what if orphan black had an echo orphan black echoes She on that she was the star of it has that already come and gone. Yeah Where's it you want what if orphan black? You're like you guys echo tonight you guys hear the echo Lord and black did not have Tatiana Tatiana. Miss Lonnie was basically the well

This is like Hollywood's newest, greatest pitch, Tron Aries. We all know that your least favorite thing about those Tron movies is that they take place inside a computer. Can we get out of that damn boring world and place Tron on the streets of Los Angeles? Look, every time I said trailer, I laugh and laugh. Right. But it is one of those things where I was just like, that was like truly a great way

to wound me. Yeah. Where I'm like, I love the insane logic of the video game world, right? And they're like, no, no, the bike should go on a street, like a highway. I don't hate the trailer. Shut it! But it feels so fundamentally perverse to me of being like, don't worry, no circuit boards this time.

It just feels like, it's what you do with Tron 8. Yes. Right? Anyway. Which Tron is this? Tron Ares. Oh, I'm sorry. In which Jared Leto plays a computer virus who comes to our world. He sounds fun. That makes sense.

That sounds about right for where Jared Leto came from. I forgot to mention it's a documentary. My thing with Kristen Ritter was that she was on Veronica Mars for like eight episodes. And then she was on Gilmore Girls for eight episodes. And then she was on Breaking Bad. And it was one of those things where it's like, huh, that saucer-eyed goth keeps popping up.

And so you did feel it in the air of like, yeah, they're trying to find the thing for her. That's another sort of Star Trek thing is like, giving people good extended arcs. Yes. Right, and it's clear that there's just like, we have negotiated for six episodes, not that she's being brought back because she's working.

They're like, we have planned an arc that we're pitching to you. And it just felt like she was on the cusp of something bigger for so long. I always like her and I will say watching this movie, it stirred things in me. That I had not felt in a long time. Oh, you were, I find her very appealing in this. You find a pale woman very appealing? This is what's odd. She is so much my type, and yet it was never registering for me previously as hard as it did while watching this. You were in a show with her, were you not?

Was she on Political Animals? No. Are you not in Gravity? I am, but I did not work with her. You are right. I was on four episodes of the deeply remembered Starz original series. I think it was Starz first original series. This, of course, is a Starz movie. But yes, she was the lead of Gravity. And I played a gay computer hacker.

Uh, fabulous. That was one of my lines, yeah. That's right. I was trying to figure out, remember, Kristen Ritter played on Veronica Mars. I thought she was the recast of Leighton Meester, but no, she was playing Steve Gutenberg's daughter. Yeah, it's not a good time for the show. She often would appear on these shows

when the show's kind of easy. Or past the peak of the thing. Yes, right past their peak. Well, that was season two, which was kind of a dip, and then three was an upswing. Is it two that she's in or three? I think it's two. Yeah, yeah.

Three's the color. Two's the Gutenberg. It's interesting, it's flawed. Two's Goody. Yeah, it's real Goody. Just very clear that it had the one season arc, but anyway, yes. But raised the colors. It's interesting. It's flawed. Two's goody. Yeah, it's real goody. Just very clear that it had the one season arc, but anyway. Yes, but she's very sweet and vamps. There's one line in it that's so the B,

that I was like, oh, this is where she was, where, you know, the introduction of Homeland Security as the big bad comes in, which I have so much to say about, and she just goes, oh, the terrorists ruined it for everyone. Good thing for everyone. It was such a B line. The movie has a lot of good lines. I do think maybe that's part of it though is like her thing is usually the like acid sarcasm. And this is the more nully-sweet.

Yeah, she's just more wide-eyed, innocent here. Right. She's just completely lovely, bubbly. Which she does really well and yet still has like the Kristen Ritter darkness to her. Which I think so much of it is the like, and we should crack open the dossier, but so much of these interviews we read with Amy Heckerling, like the ongoing theme of her work is the fight

between the pessimist and the optimist, that she inherently feels like this dark, tortured, acidic, critical person, and yet she loves making movies about optimists. It's also, it's the New Yorker and the Los Angelina, right? Yes. I mean, it's very, what was that, you know, not to go, oh, let's quote a tweet, but the tweet I do think,

the one tweet I think about the most is, um, when someone called LA shitty heaven and New York fun hell. And you know what? It's true. Good. Having lived in both now. Yeah. You're allowed. I just think that there is, And you know what? It's true. Good. Having lived in both now. Yep. Yeah. You're allowed. I just think that there is, both of these characters feel like stand-ins for Heckerling

in different ways, but there's something in casting Kristen Ritter to play an optimist that feels like you are for the first time physicalizing the innate tension within her work in one character. So, Amy Heckling releases a film called I Could Never Be Your Woman in 2007. It made like two or three hundred million dollars. And so, unsurprisingly, starts to explore the world of episodic television after that because it's such an anonymous film. And so, she does direct the sixth episode of the first season season of the office the introduction of Amy Adam hot girl. Yes Arguably the best episode of the first season. I'm just gonna say it. Yeah, no no no office

It's the new Juilliard We're never gonna let you live down you fucking Juilliard anger. That's fine. On our Superman episode. You know, the thing with The Office is... See, I thought we were not discussing The Office. Oh, David. I just won't, I won't be engaging with that. Try to show me some nostalgic clip of, you know, some hijinks on the...

I'm like, no, I don't wish for that to be in my life anymore. Not that it was ever a big part of my life, because I never loved, no, I don't wish for that to be in my life anymore. It is bizarre. Not that it was ever a big part of my life because I never loved the show, but I certainly watched the show pretty much through the end. I guess I sort of fell off after Corrella left. Why have you been making a weird face looking after Corrella left? The camera's kind of zooming in on you.

I'm doing like a crash zoom. Maybe we'll check in with you later in the talking head segment. Yeah, maybe you have something to say later behind closed doors, straight to camera. So like when you say the Amy Adams episode of The Office, I'm like, I saw it one time. Okay, but her directing that episode

is actually kind of perfect. Is it? Well because- She's a pro. Well because she comes in to sell bags and everyone thinks she's hot. Amy Adams does. Amy Adams does.

And it's like she is presented very much as what if Pam were hot is kind of the thing, which is rude to Pam. Right, and it activates the thing in... Her hair is even redder. She's like, you know, her sweaters actually fit. Like she and Jim get along and there's no obstacle and that's, but it's like, that's very,

feeling's good at that. It activates the thing in her of she is still engaged to the fucking guy in the warehouse and is just sort of like having fun, like sort of having this side flirtation with Jim and then she sees for the first time like the idea of him being with someone else which activates jealousy in her. She didn't write that. I mean, I can't imagine she wrote that, but there's also that extended, the extended bit

where it's because like there's a fire alarm or something. Is that or no? That's when that's later Amy Adams comes back and there's a whole Desert Island movie. She did a whole little arc movie bit that's different. Amy did a whole little arc across the first two seasons. Wasn't she already, I guess it's sort of like right when she's starting to get bigger, like Junebug era? Correct. It's like she, once she gets the Oscar nomination for Junebug, she unsurprisingly never comes back to the office.

Interesting. But she is on it a handful of times leading right up to that. Yes, but Amy Heckerling doing, oh, I'm insecure around this hot woman. Right. That tracks. right up to that. Yes, but Amy Heckerling doing, oh, I'm insecure around this hot woman. That tracks. And like, The Office had kind of overqualified directors, especially as it went on. Yeah, it would have people like Paul Feig and Harold Ramis and Jason Reitman.

And it was just sort of like, this is a cool show. The movie directors can work on and not have it seem like their career slipped down a rung. And there's maybe a larger sea change in the industry happening around that time where like her doing TV doesn't look as Bad as it would have five years earlier even yes Well she does that and then she gets signed on to 1985 it which was basically like do you want to do a wonder years? Like an Amy heckckerling Wonder Years. Makes sense.

A show that would center on a girl growing up in the 80s narrated by a woman in the present day. I mean, it sounds fine. It plans to use music of the period as a bad. It truly is. They might as well just be like, Wonder Years, we're going to do a Wonder Years. But none of that came to fruition. Instead, in 2012, we get Vamps. Now, in 2005 2012 we get vamps.

Now in 2005 we get Twilight, in 2008 we get the movie Twilight, 2008 we get True Blood, 2009 we get CW's The Vampire Diaries. Relax Ben. He has a knife. But Heckerling says she more is drafting off of Buffy as a sort of an earlier vampire, uh, work.

And even more specifically that her brother was obsessed with the Buffy movie and she was like, I want to do something like this. And then she went to the original producers of the movie and pitched it to them and then was like, you already did this. They're not going to say yes to this if they've already done a thing like this. But there was a bit of a micro trend, I feel, in the post-Twilight Vampire Diaries true blood landscape. Well, and Buffy was pre-Twilight,

and that's where that was my seminal vampire for sure. Sure, but I think those three things, getting big and being cool and sexy, right? You would feel this thing of like, maybe somewhat forgotten directors coming out and being like, well, I have a vampire script. Where it felt like, are vampires just innately bankable? Is it easier to get money if you have a vampire hook?

Only Lovers Left Alive comes out two years after this? One year after. Yeah. But was a similar thing, I feel like, when he was doing interviews where he was like, this is not a post-Twilight movie for me. I was not inspired by this. This is a thing I couldn't get made until Twilight. Which is exactly what happened to her.

Makes sense that suddenly it's just a little bit more like, well, vampires are in right now, so sure. Vampires are such an elastic metaphor. It is actually kind of wild how many different pointed ways you can use vampirism to say something, be it personal or cultural, that it makes sense that a lot of different directors would be like, yeah, I can make a personal vampire movie.

That's not me just cashing in on trend. That's me Trojan horse and something else I want to say. What was Nosferatu's whole deal? What do you mean, what is my deal? Bring them back. Do we all enjoy Sigourney Weaver doing Nosferatu? Yes, she is so tall. She does a lot of bitch.

She does like a full kind of fucking mad TV audition reel. She is. It's a few racist jokes. Yes. Some of these cultural stereotypes seem antiquated. I understand that's the point of the character. I also get full from Chinese food. I don't know what she's talking about. That is one of those things where I'm like,

Chinese food is very heavy. I often have. This joke turns up on two levels. No, it's culturally regressive and wrong. But it is one of those racist old jokes you hear, I guess. She puts on like a Gilbert Gottfried voice to do it. Maybe Sigourney's always had a bit of the Gottfried in her. I don't know.

She's looking like she's having fun. She's basically playing like, you know, what if Zool had fun? Right. That's very her vibe in the ending scene where she's like floating towards people. There's the one scene where they dress her in a way that feels very evocative, where they give her the full perm and she's in the kind of gold dress. And there's no way they didn't think of that. So this is also Monomay, right?

The same costume designer as... Oh, really? I think, yeah, this is the same costume designer as Clueless. Yes, that makes sense. Which like, you know, you can also tell everything's so rooted in time period. There's so many very specific time period things. And that's something too that I feel like Heckerling is so, like it doesn't surprise me at all that someone tried to get her to do a 1985 movie, because each one of her films, and not even just because of the references they make.

Like not even just the references, which are obviously specific, even though the situation has endured. He is a sober father now. He's doing very well. But everything is so rooted in the time period that it's in to a degree that can be uncomfortable if you lived through it, I get it. It can, and it's also like there's- Making pointed contact. I think there is a certain discomfort I feel watching it

in seeing them try to evoke that specifically on such limited resources, where it starts to feel like a weird kind of cosplay, hollow evocation, just because they don't have the space to get it right. Like something like Clueless, which is obviously exaggerated and a cartoonified version, and they talk about sort of like we were amplifying and exaggerating the fashion trends, and then they sort of became their own fashion trends. And they were also working with, you know, more expensive clothes in the first place exaggerating the fashion trends, and then they sort of became their own fashion trends.

And they were also working with, you know, more expensive clothes in the first place because these kids are rich. Totally. Maureme did like a very good job with what she was allotted, but you feel it's stuck slightly in a weird space of being like a little more heightened than realistic, but not heightened enough to be funny, if that makes sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's also because I feel like sometimes it's a little hard to tell when it is enough to be funny. If that makes sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's also, because I feel like...

Sometimes it's a little hard to tell when it is supposed to be. Like, I feel like a lot of the clothes Kristen Ritter wears in this movie are... They are of the 2012s, but through the... Like, they are also trying to be through the lens of she was turned in the 80s. So, like, everything is a little exaggerated. Yep. Here's what I think is so, um...

No, silence. I is a little exaggerated. Yep. Here's what I think is so... Um... No, silence. I had something to say. What do you have to say? No, go ahead. No, no, no. I just imagine you doing the hands that they do in this movie when they're trying to get people to... Let me know when you remember what you want to do, Sam. I am displeased that Sinners has done better than my movie.

I'm so sad I have no choice but to go fuck. I'm horny, slow horny. The kind of horny I am is very slow. I am single and ready to mingle. He's like, he hollers at you, but he's like, he hollers at you by being like, in three days I will very slowly fuck you. Like so, it's like, it's a long wait.

It will be great. Right. But then when he fucks you, he's gonna like crawl up the bed. Yes, he's a big edger. God, is he edging. Was your father a baker? Because it looks like you are smuggling two buns. This is kind of crass to me, but... Let's go. I think Nostra Aratu probably goons.

I'm always gooning in my castle. I have so many tabs open. I owe OnlyFans thousands of ducats. Whatever they... I am a paypim. Whatever money they... Ducat? I send more ducats than they're in for money. I am a pay pin. Duck. I send more duckets than they're asking for.

Right, they're like, this will be $10. You can have 15, I'm big like that. How much for a dick rating? I'm so pleased I get to see that. Of course. Thank you. Oh my goodness, vamps. But yes, every vampire has their thing.

You know, his is being a sex freak. A lot of vampires are sex freaks. It's interesting that they're not. She says is often in vampire stuff. It's sex, true blood and Twilight. Obviously that's the sort of big thing with the metaphor here, but no, she's much more interested in the agelessness,

the idea of being eternally young, but from different time periods. Here's the super potent thing in this movie that once I locked into this is what she's doing, I was on board, which is she is commenting on her weird state as a person whose currency professionally comes from Amy Hackerling is good at understanding the youth, the younger generations,

what is hip, what is cool, what is new. She has done this across decades, right? Not just that she do it when she was young, but she was able to still lock into it 10-15 years later And like what is this weird balance of being someone whose life is about trying to stay professionally engaged With what is young and new and hip when part of her is also just like I like old gangster movies Right, like I don't want to deal with this shit. And it's this fight of just being like, it is exhausting. As much as, like, people like the idea of staying young forever, how badly do I now just want to let myself be an old woman

and just not have to keep up with this shit? Yeah. No goody in the... How long can we just go to clubs every night? And have to worry about the right outfits and knowing the right bands and all this shit. She's a night person, she says. She's always figured such a lifestyle might be fun for a while. Eternal youth in New York. She liked playing around with the slang from different eras.

It's kind of fun. She, which she's always kind of like to play around with slang. She doesn't like the Twilight vampires. She doesn't like that they can be outside in the daytime. That is the thing. Like what I didn't, I wasn't a Twilight, you know, early adopter, girly, ironic or otherwise. But when I found out that they can go into the sunlight

and not only can they, but it makes them beautiful, twinkling creatures. Like, these are fucking unicorns. Like, these are not... Excuse me. Caroline, if it's not making them a beautiful, twinkly creature, that is the skin of a monster. I'm a monster! A horny monster. Really good fucking Edward Cullen impression.

I'm Edward Cullen! You smell disgusting! Let me get up in those guts! That's the Edward Cullen in the world where. Let me get up in those guts. That's the Edward Cullen in the world where Wallace Shawn is Mr. Van Helsing. Yep. Well, it took us a long time to get there. Introducing TurboTax Business, a brand new way to file your own T2 return, all while getting help from an expert who actually knows small businesses. Got a tattoo studio? Toy store? tiny but mighty taco stand? We've

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One movie that she kind of liked was, she's obviously seen Nosferatu or Bela Lugosi's Dracula or whatever. She really kind of enjoyed this movie that shows no interest in German Expressionism? But she really kind of enjoyed Gerard Butler's Dracula 2000. Oh, sure. She says, I liked his take on it. It was as though Dracula was doomed or cursed because he was Judas and that's why he doesn't like

seeing crosses. It's a very different take on Dracula. She dugs that. She likes monster movies in general. She likes the Wolf Man with Len Lanchaney. The universal classics. She thinks vampires are a good metaphor for Jews, outsiders that feel disenfranchised,

whatever else it's doing. Trying to pass. So that's, I mean, that's the, do you, are you, are you speeding through these or should I? Caroline, what gives you that vibe? I feel like he's taking a lot of time and consideration for everything he's saying. He's got his bullet point, I'm just saying.

I'm looking at the dossier. It's fucking long. Caroline, what do you, what did that spark in you? Well, yeah, I mean, I do, I feel like with... When I first started rewatching Vaps, I don't think I ever said how I watched Vaps in the first place. I was trying to remember how the hell I saw... I had not seen it until yesterday.

Really? Okay, so none of you had seen it until this week. Okay. So that's why when David expressed shock that I'd never seen it, I was trying to remember how the hell I saw it. I was in LA in 2012. I moved out there in 2011. And I was like, did I go to the one theater it was released in? There was not very thorough box office reporting on this, but box office Mojo claims it played in one theater for two weeks. Now, I remember it playing in at least one theater in New York City. I remember intending to go see it, I want to say, at the Village East.

And it was gone before I got around to it. It was really like a movie that stars Anchor Bay, primarily a DVD distributor and a television network. And not a distributor of like fancy DVDs, kind of a cheapo DVD distributor. Mostly like cult horror movies. Exactly. Doing like 40 editions of Evil Dead and whatever.

Got the distribution rights for this movie sort of a bit after filming had wrapped and they announced it as like, VAMS getting a theatrical release will be available to rant digitally 10 days later. Which in 2012, that did not happen often, that the turnaround was that quick and was sort of like screened contractual obligation to put this in one theater. Maybe it was one week in one theater in LA and one week in one theater in New York. It's quite possible.

Maybe. I mean, but I do think I was trying to trace it and, you know, I don't have a totally satisfying answer to this because I never fully got it. But I asked my friend, Karinza, who I hung out with a lot when I first was in LA, where we might have seen this. Because I was sure it was with her. Because I feel like when I first moved to LA, the idea was I'm working in TV and I'm going to say yes to everything. And I'm like, go see those.

Hollywood Framkey, Hollywood Fram. And I feel like it must've screened somewhere. Her best guess, and she- Interesting. It might've been a special screening at there was a theater called Cinefamily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, on Fairfax, which has since shut down

for sex pest reasons. Uh-huh. Very familiar. But they screened a lot of things and it would not have been out of the question for this, something like this to screen there. And I feel like, because I definitely remember seeing it and we could have rented it, but I think we saw it in a theater and I was just going to screenings, going to screenings

and when she was like, do you want to go to this thing? It's from the director of Clueless, it's about vampires. I'm like, what's not, you know, what's there not to like about that? And then I just never researched it any further and did not realize it was such a tortured, weird, obscure situation. Basically, David asked me to be on the podcast. It was basically a like a straight to VOD streaming disk. Before that, I just I didn't even know.

I just was like, but again, that was all the pitch I needed. It makes more sense. So there was an audience. Yes, Cine Family was the kind of place to be like, we're gonna take Amy Heckerling seriously, right? But I imagine, yes, probably disproportionately, the amount of people who ever saw this in a theater saw it at screenings like that versus commercial release.

I mean, what is the reported final box office gross for this movie? $10,000? $3,000. It's not amazing. You're right. You know what? You're right. It's not amazing. I wasn't going to say before that. Oh, yes. But you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. And I feel like what was interesting about revisiting it is that,

you know, whenever you talk about any vampire story, any vampire story, whether it's a teenage thing, you know, a Buffy, a vampire diary is a true blood, a sinner's, any vampire story, inevitably there's gonna be not just metaphors about sex or drugs. I feel like in this movie, it's much more drugs than sex until Justin Kirk and Mary Lou Henner have their moment. They have sex. And Justin Kirk feels like her pointed parody of the over-sexualized vampire.

Yes, the over-sexualized vampire. Yes, the oversexualized for sure. But she's less interested in, I mean, it's basically drugs, but it's kind of, that's not what she's interested in. But I was like, this, vampires are always a metaphor for marginalized people. Because they, you know, whether it's queer people, Jewish people, they're in the shadows, you know, sinners and the, you know, black Americans and Jim Crow South. There's always that.

And when I first started this film, I was like, how weird to watch a vampire story where that's not the case. And then Wallace Shawn, King of Homeland Security comes in. And suddenly the movie's about the Patriot Act and having to delete people from databases so they don't disappear. And how interesting. What an interesting moment to watch that. As Dr. Van Helsing, head of Homeland Security.

Like that full reveal, like first it's like, oh, here's Wallace Shawn, he's like a New York beat cop or detective. This is interesting casting. And then you realize, oh no, he is Dr. Van Helsing, working for Homeland Security. And there's that very, like that first scene where he's going to find the body of the pizza guy.

With Ivan Sturgey, right. Yeah, but the, no, no, no, the pizza guy. Well, Ivan Sturgey is his partner, sorry, but Taylor Negron reprising implied the same pizza delivery guy from Fast Times. Yes. He's also a delivery man in Johnny Dangerously. Yeah. So this is his bit, but Sigourney killed him for real.

RIP. Beheaded him. And there's such a funny moment between the cop and Wala Shahn where the cop like disdains him for being Homeland Security. He's like, go find a subway map and an explosive and then we'll call you. Fuck off. And I'm like, Jesus. Well, this movie is very, you know, again, like locked into specifically satirizing things

like the Patriot Act. I mean, but that's so interesting. It is. It's just, but it also like locks it in. I completely forgotten about that part of it. And it does give it something. Yeah. That, you know, I don't know that she 100% needed to, but I find it really interesting that she wanted to

and that she locked in on Homeland Security and the Patriot Act and, you know... What would vampires fear in modern America? Maybe that's a part of it. Well, also because, you know, we're following two vampires who, from the beginning, were like, I have no interest in being a vampire who kills people, who enjoys killing, who likes human blood. I don't want any part of it.

You're seeing this support group of like, here is the modern progressive vampire that wants to get away from the negative stereotypes. Yes, including Vlad the Impaler, Teppish. Yeah, we should mention Malcolm Yes, including Vlad, the Impaler Tepes. Yeah, we should mention Malcolm McDowell plays Vlad the Impaler. He does. And he's funny. And he's very funny. He's very good in it. This whole cast is...

That's the thing, but it's just like these are vampires. An overqualified cast or whatever. Well, he's a chef of caramel apples. The thing is, he's not a chef. New York's finest delicacy. He's a... The amount of things she was like, what else could he impale? It's caramel apples. Oh, sure.

It's him impaling caramel apples. Yeah, for sure. That and knitting. But it's like, these are vampires who want to assimilate, who are trying to assimilate and just be as normal and as unobtrusive as they can be. And they still cannot do that. And that is really, that's the metaphor, right? You can never fully assimilate.

It's just not possible. Yeah. Yeah. And also the sort of like the never ending pursuit of hipness. Of trying to stay relevant. It is like a fucking treadmill that is impossible to keep up with. Well, right. So it's interesting because she seems, you know, it's this weird tension in the film

where it's both about relevance and it's about how when security is going to get you right like they're trying to stay forever young but it's not enough to just biologically be forever young. They need to figure out how to be relevant young women, which is this whole fucking game that's like rat race they have to do. And then also yes, I like the Homeland Security thing feels like I mean, I was kind of pleasantly surprised by it. I was like, this is actually a very interesting route to go down. A lot of things in this movie are interesting. I think basically, I think this script is like borderline great.

Like, I think if I read this, I'd be like, holy shit, this thing is going to be a fucking knockout. And unlike I Can Never Be Your Woman, where you like step back and squint your eyes and you're like I see the Side good ideas, right? Yeah, but none of them are really executed. Well, I think In scripting every idea in this movie is actually why an executed well What obviously there's not enough money for certain things, but there is a bit of a TV Genki vibe to some of the training like oh this could have been a series like this

Yeah the janky vibe to some of the transitions. I think that's why I kept thinking, oh, this could have been a series. Yeah. And the over-explaining in the 21st, 20 minutes of, here are the rules of this vampire world, because every vampire world has its own rules. Why is Clueless such an incredible piece of filmmaking, which I would also argue is true for a lot of earlier movies, and nothing after Clueless has the craft side so nailed down. Is it truly just money and time at the time we're recording this?

We have not yet done our loser app, which was her last studio film. I think as much as that movie is not as loved as Clueless, I think it has a little movies of that. I've seen some of loser on TV and it certainly looks more like a real movie. I do think if you want me to unpack this for a moment He's kind of like he's like a little bit of an L on his forehead. Yeah, right finger in his thumb a lot of it boils down to like time and support I

Really do think so beyond the fact that you're just like she's got cheaper locations She probably has like harder outs on cast, especially with a cast, a pretty large ensemble with a lot of big names, right? A lot of these people are probably agreeing if it's like, if you can shoot Sigourney out in two days, you can get her. So now you have like a kind of slapdash location

that you're putting her in, and you're having to run through these things. Grant's Tomb. Grant's Tomb. I I mean good bet I have not been there when I I love watching whenever fucking DVDs have any sort of BTS footage not of like you know the interviews but comedy movies being directed and the clueless DVD has a fair amount of this. And I remember something about Mary DVD being like, as a comedy movie obsessed kid, like its own mini film school of just watching uncut footage of the director shaping the scene. And as much

as you can like write it well and visualize it well and cast the right people, so much of comedy is like such a weird precise tone thing, that it's why these movies need like studio funding. Really, if they're going to be more ambitious than like three people talking in a house, if they're going to be more ambitious than like mumblecore shit where you're giving yourself that space and time because the budget is nothing and you just need people to stay in an apartment. Right. Especially for, you know, not just a movie that requires special effects, but

I feel like I was also reading a couple interviews with her about this movie and how she would have loved to have done more flashbacks or like more... Right, right, a lot of what appeals to her is the long life that's been lived. And period stuff is really expensive. I love when they turn into a bat, too. Oh, so you missed that. You missed that. So you're just sort of like, why no bats? Why no bats?

That's, you know, that's a fair, that's a fair day. You just think that's a good bit? Yeah, and then they're kind of like talking as bats. Going bat mode. Oh, sure. You didn't like straw in the rat? I love that. Straw in rat, okay.

Very fun. I was like, that feels, that feels Ben coded. If I may close this loop for a moment, right? You watch her directing like Clueless and this footage of her directing like the wedding scene at the end. And like the actors throwing out ideas and her finessing it over and over again and things being able to play out in a group shot where you're seeing the real timing of five people, like finding a new moment and riffing on it and finessing

it and whatever. That is like the thing that like money gets you is the time and space to do that. Right. And I have been on so many shoots like this where they're like, we know we don't have that time. So this is going to have to be constructed in the edit we can't spend five hours rehearsing this until it's perfect and then get 20 takes of the whole scene playing out in the master they're like we just have to start shooting

so then you get into this zone where your shots become tighter and less composed because you just need as many editing pieces as you can possibly get, and you need to start getting them fast. Just getting fucking footage. And I think that leads to this feeling of it being like TV, which traditionally was always more constructed like that. You hire pros and you get funny line readings from them,

and you create the chemistry in the edit later, versus the best comedy movies, you're feeling like it's like fucking old Hollywood musical shit where you're like, I cannot believe the relationship of these two people moving and speaking in the same frame at the same time. And like, that is even more than the effects because I actually think it is impressive what she got visually considering how low this budget was. Yeah. I mean, the moment when Van Helsing's first kill

is pretty horrifying, actually. The burned alive vampire, it's pretty good. I just think she made certain balances of like, these effects are important. I want to shoot enough days in New York, even though a lot of it was Detroit. Yeah, a lot of it was Detroit, but it's also, because it's a vampire movie, you got to do it at night.

It's a big cast. She clearly spent money on the wardrobe, all this sort of shit. It's like the big concession she's making is time. And that leads to this feeling kind of clumsy in ways. Now, the film, as we say, was made for about $10 million or so, because that's kind of what she could get from Lauren Vercell, the producer, who had made that movie City Island, another kind of low-budgety New York comedy.

That was a mini breakthrough. Exactly. Yeah. She also was Red Hour producing this. Stuart Kornfield, her old friend from AFI, Pencilers Company, at a moment where they were very powerful. Sure. I'm almost surprised that they weren't able to get her even like a couple million more to help out

But it also feels like her old friend is doing her a solid get down the phone. Let's get Ben on the phone. So He'll be in a good mood the next one. Um One of the funniest things is what was it was he at the Emmys or something or I forget? He knows the Oscars it was when he presented the Oscars then he was like tweeting like You know like as he always does, like minute by minute through the end. They were like, aren't you at the Oscars? And he was like, go next! And I was like, all right.

Alicia Silverstone's in this film. Now, she's in Clueless, which is another film that Haley Heckerling made. Heckerling... A lot about her performance in that episode, and we talked about the sort of ramp up of her as the Aerosmith girl. We did not talk larger career, because the fall off of Alicia Silverstone is culturally one of the more interesting things we've lived through.

It's a bit of a boomer. Yes. A boomer. Yes. Obviously she's in Clueless and then her next real big role, she is in True Crime in a small role or whatever. Something like that. I think it was shot before.

No, but it's like her next is the 97 double barrel of Batgirl in Batman and Robin and Excess Baggage, which with Benicio del Toro being very normal. She like immediately after Clueless signs, I think it was a three picture, six million dollar deal with Paramount where they were like, we are in the Alicia Silverstone business. Or was it with, I think it was with Sony, actually.

Excess Baggage, I can tell you, is certainly a film from the great people at Columbia Pictures owned by Sony. I think that was the first of what was supposed to be her three-picture deal, but there was essentially a bidding war. She had a company called First Kiss that was the label. Clueless is so huge, and people were even like, she couldn't get an Oscar nomination. She deserved one. And she very specifically did not do the TV show, because she even like, is she gonna get an Oscar nomination? Is she a media box office?

And she very specifically did not do the TV show because she was like, I'm gonna do other things. Right, she signs this deal, she's got three movies and they're like, we're giving you autonomy here. Like you are a producer on these films, pick your material, cast them. Then Batgirl comes up, which at that moment probably seems like, well no shit.

They want me to be in a Batman movie I should fucking do that So that leaps frogs to her next project and then her first thing in the Columbia deal is excess baggage where she's like I want Benicio del Toro. I'm picking the director They talk about that the whole movie is like her selecting the things on the soundtrack This is supposed to be the real moment of like Alicia Silverstone builds a movie for herself and her taste and it is just kind of like completely ignored. It's an interesting movie. It's not bad. In my opinion, it's weird. And Del Toro is really, really weird in it.

Like, usual suspects era, Del Toro as like the sexy love interest. And here's a person who's actually weirder than we thought. Yeah, exactly. But for like, Batman and Robin makes her look kind of silly. More than anything, people are like, this is embarrassing. I mean, Batgirl's not a very rich role. But she's, I mean, she's, she's abominable in that movie.

And people are kind of like laughing at her. People are laughing at her and people are mean and sexist to her. Like, 100%. She is also so fucking bad in that movie. It's kind of crazy, because you're like, you're clearly a talented performer. Character is horrible. And I get that this is a circus,

and no one's good in that movie. Now, now everyone says Uma and Arnold are good in it, and I can kind of go with them in that, but certainly George and Alicia and Rob, Chris O'Donnell, but especially George Clooney and Alicia Silverstone, just the line deliveries where they just kind of feel like, they're like, did I get that right? And Schumacher's like, I don't know, let's keep going.

Like, you know, like onto the next crazy set. You know, it's just- I can also say like Chris O'Donnell at least like wears the suit well. Like he understands how to be the action figure. Whereas a sense of Robin more than the other two. I think it is like the reason Alicia Silverstone is dinged harder by Batman and Robin than anyone else

is it's a little close to what we were talking about of like when Travolta fucks up, where you're like, you look silly, how do you not have enough self-awareness to sort of like protect yourself from this? But it's also a horrible role. Absolutely. But then it's just immediately followed up by like, okay, but here is her movie. Sure.

People go, eh. And Columbia never cashes in the other two movies in her deal. No, but I will I will always go to the mat for Blast from the Past. A fun movie. A movie I really like that's kind of also like salty sweet and interesting with Brendan Frazier. I think that movie is fun. An incredible premise for a movie and a premise that only could have worked in the exact year

They made the movie pretty much. Yeah, I haven't seen it in you know 20 plus years Recently it is okay She's in the Kenneth Branagh loves laborers lost which is basically just ignored Doesn't really make any money at all and it's that's it. She does the graduate on Broadway sure, but the boring role And that's it. She does The Graduate on Broadway. Sure, but the boring role. Totally. Elaine?

Yeah, the girl. Yeah, and then NBC's like, we've got Alicia Silverstone, we're putting her on TV, and it still felt like, Oh, she, that's someone who was a movie star. That's kind of a big deal. I was pumped for mismatch. It wasn't just that it was her,

it was Darren Stone created it. Right. No, dude, I was way pumped because I was like, It was one of the most hyped shows that fall. Right, and it's like It's Silverstone is that kind of star where in the early 2000s you were like well They they and was she playing a mate matchmaker? So she's so it's Emma again. Yeah Exactly, the whole right and that showed just kind of stay just didn't work

Yeah, right and she now like she she then it's over pops up and things in little parts But I mean, it's like the the idea of her leading a movie... Totally. ...is gone. When they... She pops up in Beauty Shop, the great beauty shop. Yeah, a strange performance. Funny, strange things.

She's like Diane Keaton's daughter in the book club movies. She's one of their daughters. Oh my gosh, she is. And I remember she's in... That's a bad role, too. ...The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Right. The Lentham-ost movie. And I remember she's in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, the Luntimus movie, and in a small role,

she's Barry Kiyogan's mom in it. And when I interviewed Yorgos for that movie, I was like, Alicia Silverstone. He was like, yeah, I love her, clueless. I love Alicia. Why doesn't anyone use her? It was great to work with her. But more often it's like she was-

But it was almost like this Greek pervert had to appear and be like, y'all like clueless? Is Alicia Silverstone? Does anyone have a number for her? She got zero bump from that. Because it's not a big role. Right, and I think more of shit where it's like she was the replacement mom in Diary of a Wimpy Kid 3. You know what?

After the original cast left. God bless. Yorgos, she's in his new movie. Oh, right. Bagonia. Great. And she is also, I don't know that you taped your Clueless episode before the Clueless TV show was announced. That she is going again.

Oh, you know what? No, but that has been announced. It was announced. But two days after we recorded our episode. Dude, did you know that the cast of Bagonia is Emma Stone and Jesse Plamins, Alicia Silverstone, and Stavi? I did know that. That's crazy. Yeah, cause people are-

Like, Yorgos is like, just get me the nearest Greek king. Another Greek pervert? Yeah, exactly. You wanna say, corner of the internet that is really hyped on the idea of Stavi being a supporting actor candidate. In a Yorgos movie?

It's possible. I can see magic there. Absolutely. He might just like nail it also I was one of our best he kind of is great. I think he's basically kind of undeniable boys and being like let's talk like Nefarious fat guy shit guys and then be like let's do it, you know, like like what kind of bad behaviors can we get into? You guys hear him on WTF as well

I know I should listen to the gates and just basically talked about politics for like 40 straight minutes at the end of the episode And was so fucking small. He is very smart. Yes She's done a lot of theater. Oh, yeah, right really good in this she is she's really good In my opinion, she's really doing a lot of the clueless stuff the little you know The little mouth tug that she does, so cute, you know, like, and the kind of, like, sweet with a little salty... Curly hair, clueless. What do you think of the makeup?

What do I think of the makeup? The vampires in the movie got the eyeshadow. Now, that, of course, is an Amy Heckerling staple. Amy Heckerling always has the raccoon eyes. Well, I will, yeah, that's true, right. That's one of her things, but it does feel very like, okay, so these are the vampires. We're going to put very intense eyeliner on them.

And sometimes... But I will say, of that era, I was putting a lot of eyeliner on them. So I feel like it was also just like... But I'm guessing you look better than Todd Barry. No offense to old Todd Barry. Well, thank you so much. But don't we once again think that we're in...

an exact midpoint of like, you're 10% over it being realistic, but 20% under it being funny exaggeration. Where it just sort of maybe looks a little sloppy. I mean, yeah, definitely like it's smeared, it's not quite there. It's been, that's kind of what it looks like. Can I ask you guys, have you done over your many, many years,

how many other vampire movies have you done? Really good question, actually. Not that many. I mean, every episode's in a Sphurongi episode. Well, we did the Twilight franchise on Patreon. We did. And we have covered John Carpenter's vampires. John Carpenter's vampires. Okay, that counts. That counts. But for how sturdy a franchise this is, a franchise.

A sturdy mythos. Yeah. I mean, it's just they're so... Well, what are the big vampire things we might have done? Let's see, we bought a zoo, was that vampire? Okay. We haven't done Neil Jordan, we haven't done Coppola, we haven't done Jarmusch. No.

We haven't done Herzog. Herzog. Like I'm thinking of... I'm like, did you guys, like, was, you know, if you, as much as you liked monsters or any, I don't know if you were monster boys, were you vampire boys? Big time monster boy. But you're not as big a vampire boy.

I was gonna say, a vampire boy. You like the, uh, I'm a monster monster. Like a Frank, like a Frank is like a, or like a thing, or like, you know, King Kong kind of thing. You know, I'd say as a child, I kind of, my mind sparked the most at Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Okay. That was very big for me, but I also think like, Scooby-Doo as a gateway into the monster archetypes.

G-g-g-ghosts? Yeah, but also like Frankenstein's mummies, zombies, and then I was watching your movies. What are we in the Monster Mash? What's going on here? NEAR DARK. NEAR DARK, a great vampire movie. Another revisionist vampire film. Yes.

But I was really into the classical monster types, Great vampire movie. Another revisionist vampire film. Yes. But I was really into the classical monster types, both the funny versions and the older, quote unquote scary ones, but the ones that were not modern horror films. Vampires just always interested me less. And it is funny that every time I hear a director I like, and I had this exact feeling when Sinners got announced. Isn't Dark Shadows a vampire?

Yeah. Another good call. Tim Burton. Every time a director I like announces they're doing a vampire movie, I'm like, what is it with vampires? Most of the time I enjoy it. And yet I'm never amped up the idea. And like I saw Sinners and I was like, fuck, there's still juice in this vampire. Yeah.

There's stuff you can do with it. And yet I am sure the next time someone I like announces a vampire movie, I will go, why again, why another one? Why do you not like my movies? All the movies we listed, I basically like. You know, and I'm like, as long as there was some personal point of view,

like Only Lovers Left Alive is one of my favorite movies of that decade. I mean, Only Lovers Left Alive is kind of the artier vamps. Because it's also like, we've lived through so many years of society, here we are just kind of chilling, what do we do with ourselves? America's getting weird. I think his metaphor in that movie is more kind of like, hipsters not being able to reckon with the fact that they're still alive, right?

It's sort of like that movie's about like... Old junkies kind of being like, geez, we made it and now we like live in Detroit and like world's going to shit and... There's like elements of that and like interview with vampire, like that kind of thing. Sure. I definitely remember when I first, you know...

I gotta watch that show. Everyone's telling me that show is so good. It's good. And I mean, the thing that... And I hear it's a little horny. It's very, David? Anne Rice's interview that... And I hear it's a little horny. It's very... David? Ann Rice is interviewing the new part. I know, I know. A little horny?

Pump your brakes. I hear it's a little horned up. It is fucking sex. Wall to wall. Wall to wall. Dicks on dicks, man. Dicks on dicks. I need them on top of each other. Like a little sandwich. No docking. Just stacking.

No Big Mac, you know, moist maker there. You want Jenga Towers. Does that ever happen? Like a little sandwich. No docking, just stacking. No Big Mac, you know, moist maker. You want Jenga towers. Yeah. Does that ever happen? Like Jenga towers? Is that like a sex act where people go to a sex party and just go like, how many dicks can we stack

on top of each other? Let's do a Jenga thing. But then you're gonna need like ladders and step stools. Yeah, it's a complicated system. Are you talking horizontally or vertically? Who knows? I'm talking vertically. Let's play around.

Oh, I was talking, see, my brain went to horizontally. So we've got a lot of different ways to go. That I feel like is more like building a rope bridge, though. Isn't it? Like, sort of slap by slap. Oh, boy. If you're going horizontally, I think... Jenga Tower has to be vertically, and it's the same game of like how many guys can stack on top of each other

before everyone else does. I will say the mechanics have rapidly run away from it. I feel fully in control of what I'm saying. Sam Raimi never made one. I'm just looking at all our vampire movies. The other one, Thirst, part two. Oh, that's another good one! No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door

from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. I love vampires. I've long loved vampires. Who's your favorite? Well, I mean, I guess. Dracula. No, no, I wasn't a Dracula girl. Angel. I did not like Angel. Rude.

I liked Spike better than Angel. Angel solves crimes in LA. Maybe tricking them. He does solve crimes. He does solve crimes. He took over a law firm. Actually, you know what vampire was thinking of a lot during VAMPS is Harmony. The blonde vampire from Buffy and Angel.

She's a... She's got a VAMPS. You're right. She's got a VAMPS. She's got a what vampires are thinking of a lot during VAMPS is Harmony. The blonde vampire from Buffy and Angel. She's a... She's got a VAMPS. You're right. She's very VAMPS. I actually rewatched an Angel episode where she like... The great Mercedes McNabb.

Mercedes McNabb, and she's working as Angel's receptionist, and she has a little montage in the morning where she's getting ready and brushing her fangs and warming up the rat blood, and it's very VAMPS. Oh, I have to swing in here for a moment. Hotel Transylvania trilogy. Oh, interesting. They have vampires in it?

Trilogy, I'm sorry. Yeah, of course. And that is a trilogy and that is canon and you can mark that down and you can put it right in the book. Yeah, that's great. And vampires always like very much interest me. Definitely, you know, they were sexy in a way

where it's like, well, they're not having sex. They're having sex though. It's penetrative, it's interesting. Who is your vampire? Is it Buffy? It's gotta be Buffy.'s penetrative. It's interesting. Who is your vampire? Is it Buffy? It's gotta be Buffy. I think it's definitely Buffy.

Was that your activation? Like, do you feel like you were naturally inclined towards vampires as a child and Buffy was the best version of that? Or was that when you first locked in? That's when I first locked into like, well, actually, I was going to say that was when I first walked into like narrative TV being a thing that I really fell for. But actually that was Hey Arnold, which got a shout out in this film in a slightly rude way, but I love a Hey Arnold shout out.

Just like Jake Fogelman gets a fucking drive by in this movie. Look, some of these be friends with someone, right? Are they friends? That feels really important. But all of these references feel like, right, oh right, the first draft of the script is 2005. Yes, like we're making fun of talking head shows. But there's also, you know, something that's always transgressive about vampires.

So one of my very best college friends is a drag performer in Brooklyn. I think I probably shouted it on Showgirls because that was her favorite. The Wonderful Miss Malice. And every January, if you're in Brooklyn, you should go to their vamp-themed show every January for their birthday. Not a vamps-themed show. Not a vamps. A vampire theme show. Vampires. Every year they do it.

Every year they find new shit to do. This year there's definitely more Nosferatu stuff. She likes doing vampire lovers, like very classic 60s, like Ingrid Pitt, like vampires. Because there's that whole genre. There's a really good Lost Boys this year. And it's just the kind of thing where being in this room full of very only queer trans people who are just like like vampires are a thing. They live in the dark. They are the thing that people are afraid of. Like, so for that room, it was like, this is queer coded in a way that we all cottoned on to as kids. I guess I, you know, I guess I was closeted as a kid. I just don't even think of it that way. But I don't, for me, that's not what it was really about.

It was more like this story is so interesting and intricate. And I liked learning the rules of the Buffy vampire world. So I always am interested in how the rules of vampires shift between depictions. And if someone finds a new sort of- A new thing to do. Like, you know, the idea that a vampire, like all the vampires who like, you know, the idea that a vampire, like all the vampires who,

like, you know, one vampire sired will die if the sire dies is, you know, an older thing. But this, the vamp one, the vamp version is very interesting. I feel like you will age back to the age you were. Right. And if you are too old, you will die. And then I think, I was like, that is a really interesting twist on something I have seen many times. And the other thing about not to do my own David Bullitt points where I'm like, and is a really interesting twist on something I have seen many times. And the other thing about not to do my own

David Bullitt points where I'm like, and here are all my thoughts. Do it. One thing I find very interesting about vamps and something I was really trying to think about, and I don't think I can think of another example, and I'm sure someone listening to this will find it. I cannot think of another vampire thing

where the primary love story is between, is a platonic soulmates thing. Because usually vampires are very tortured lovers over time. And it's like very, we are this, like only lovers left alive is like we are this couple, we have stated that the hunger is very that. Another great movie.

Yeah, love that movie. Interview with the vampire, like all these very tortured lovers over decades. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And this or the, or there's a mortal and a not-mortal like Twilight Buffy. But the platonic, like, we are roommates and we've been hanging out for 20 years, having a good time, is very different.

Yeah, and cute. Here's my vamp's question. Who makes a stem? How do the stems get made? Well, that's where I'm just like, if we had a TV show, we could get into that. We could get into that. Because the movie does not, correct me if I'm wrong, attempt to explain what distinguishes us.

Let's do some of the table setting of the story, because we've been talking around different aspects of this. Well, sure. I mean, I was going to do more of the dossier, but that's fine. We'll circle back to that. Yeah. So these two women have been living,

and St. Mark's plays a part in that for 20 years. Goodie. Played by Alicia Silverstone. Native New Yorker. Yes, and Goodie, played by Alicia Silverstone and... Native New Yorker. Yes, and Stacey, played by Kristen Redder. Who Goodie often is dressed in heckerling outfits. Yes, and Goodie's from the 1840s. Heckerling's sort of like modified Charlie Chaplin couture

that you see her doing behind the scenes a lot. Silverstone does like a lot of variations on that. They have been vampire roommate friends for 20 years. They live a very simpatico sort of tandem life where they go out every night and try to enjoy themselves. And are, but as we were saying, are kind of starting to feel the wear of having to keep up with these people. Why is the technology changing? Why are the trends changing?

It's too hard to like keep this all going. I don't know if you folks caught this, but the first scene where they go to a bar, I think the introduction of Renfield, the band that's playing is Molly Israel's band. The daughter of Amy Heckerlin. That's fun. That's cute. And I also love that Renfield is their gay best friend. Yes. The great Zach Wars.

The great Zach Wars. I said he was great. I know, but I'm building on that and I'm cosigning it. You're doubling down, he's great. He's three times great. Did you get that then? His fucking look, yeah he is great. It's very on point.

Oh, the look with the hair? Yeah, the swoopy hair. The like, vague Ed Hardy thing. Oh yes, yes, for sure. Which I feel like was very, like, LA was swamped by Ed Hardy at that time. Sigourney Weaver is the one who turned them. They have an uneasy relationship with her.

Her assistant guy is Todd Berry. Yeah. Very funny. You wish there was more of him. Exactly. Todd Berry is a vampire is a good bit, and there's not enough of him. Money in the bank. He's introduced with fangs, and you're like, holy shit, give me this all day. But they have an uneasy relationship with her.

They have found their sort of vampire chosen family in the support group. People like Vlad the Impaler. You don't want to feed off animals who are like, we will stick straws in rats and be exterminators. We found a more humane way to live. Be a blood anonymous. Oh no, it's sanguine anonymous. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

And they work as late night janitors so that they can have access to rats. Exterminators, yeah. To dead rats. Pretty solid. There's plausibility everywhere here. All of this is like, these are, this is vampire shit you like, where it's like any vampire movie getting into the,

what are the structures of their life? What are the systems they have put in place to be able to like exist and sort of slip by? I mean, you know, and I feel like for, especially a comedic vampire thing, it's like very what we do in the shadows, where it's like, and they are just living life in Staten Island, and occasionally they'll go to the DMV,

and that's just what they're doing today. The brass tacks of how you stay a vampire. Kristen Ritter meets Dan Stevens, a handsome young man. Yep, we love him. This is the tail end of his Foppish era. No, but this is like peak Downton. Well, I was gonna say. Yeah, so Downton starts in 2010. And he's left it by 2012.

I just think every movie after this, there was the sort of guest thing of like, fuck, that's Dan Stevens. He changed his look. So the guest is 2014. One of the hottest screen performances of my lifetime. And I like Dan Stevens, and I think he's been good in other stuff.

But The Guest was kind of one of those things where you're like, oh, a colossal movie star has arrived, right? But I feel like if more people had seen this film, they would have been like, oh, and he's also a freak. Like, why is he not, like, he's not really allowed to be as much of a freak in this one, that's not his role. But the fact that he's in it at all is kind of nuts. This is my point.

I do too, and I think he's really good in this. The fact that he chose to do it... This feels like him doing a funny mocking of how he was perceived from Downton. Sure, yeah. Whereas after this... The romantic lead with the blue eyes. Yeah, yeah.

And then after this, it's like, no, I'm zagging so fucking hard, I'm gonna reintroduce myself and I'm gonna look different and I'm gonna have a jawline. So you're talking about Beauty and the Beast, yeah? And I'm gonna play reintroduce myself and I'm gonna look different and I'm gonna have a jawline. So you're talking about Beauty and the Beast, yeah? And I'm gonna play maniacs. Yes, of course. Maniac.

He is the Beast. He is the Beast. We cannot deny he's the Beast. I think he basically always hits now, but it feels like he would not even let himself do something like this today. I don't know, I feel like- That is like conjuring too much how he was originally perceived.

But I mean, at least it's like he's surrounded by bat shittery. Like his father is Wallace Shawn, the head of Homeland Security. A hundred percent why he wanted to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like this movie is insane and I get to be funny. Yes. Right. Right. And he's very charming in this. Yeah. So he and Kristen Ritter's characters fall in love.

Right. He is unfortunately star crossed. Classic. The son of Homeland Security Van Helsing. And another thing I love throughout these heckling movies is they will set up some sort of dynamic and you're like, oh fuck, so the whole movie's gonna be keeping the two of them apart until the very end. I like that basically 45 minutes in, he confronts her. Yes.

She's caught. She reveals herself and then they just start to deal with it. Right. And it's like always more interesting when the conflict isn't like external forced things keeping them apart. It's like, what are the struggles of how to be together? It's funny when she's like, so what do you want like you want a girlfriend you can go hiking with?

You want to like try new restaurants? Like, I'm not going to be that. And he's like, I don't I don't need to do that. Like, I kind of like he's like, I think actually we are compatible in this way. It he's like, I don't, I don't need to do that. Like I kind of love these, like I think actually we are compatible in this way. It's not just that I like you, I don't need to go hiking. It's a very funny thing to say. The core tension of this movie that kicks in is A,

Weaver's getting increasingly out of control. She's starting- Weaver is a monster. She's a monster and she keeps fucking eating. And she's sloppy. She's sloppy, she keeps eating people, she's giving vampires a bad name, page six is all over it. Right?

Um, but also Kristen Ritter gets pregnant. Which is so interesting. Like, again, you know, I... Something that's kind of not allowed in vampire logic, and they don't address it for a while, but then they do address it in an interesting way. Well, I actually think, yeah, I think I didn't remember how the mechanics of it worked, because I was like, is this like a Twilight thing

where it's just like, well, she's special, so that's what happened. I kind of like that, um, Malcolm McDow is this like a Twilight thing where it's just like, well, she's special. So that's what happened. I kind of like that Malcolm McDowell Vlad as he's poking the apples is just like, yeah, she's pregnant and it won't survive because they can't, so give her a week. Yeah, it'll, right.

Within a month it's gone. That just like vampires can get pregnant, but it's not, we can't sustain life. So it's just not gonna happen. So I was like, oh, that's actually just a very elegant way of dealing with it. Now Alicia Silverstone has been lying to Kristen Britter she is the one who turned her Stacy. Yes, perfect nineties name

I'm goody told Stacy that she was basically the same age as her but like clearly is not has been alive since the 1800s 1840 she's turned in the 1840s, but she I don't think she turned She did not turn Stacy now. Oh, so I'm so Cicero's turned in the 1840s. But she, I don't think she turned... She did not turn Stacey, no. Oh, sorry. So, Cicero turned both of them. Yes. But it's like basically just to, what was it, there's like a very funny line where she's trying to get them to dispose of her bodies and Stacey just goes like, but we're only

good for like trying stuff on and like clerical work. Like that's, we are your assistants. Like that's kind of the vibe. A lot of good lines. But basically, I mean, you know, there's even a line like towards the very end where, you know, we'll get to and I'll cry. Where Goodie is like, I was gonna walk into the sun before you got turned. Like I was pretty much done.

But now we've had a great 20 years. But it's like she got a friend is what happened with that. It's part of like what I like about Only Lovers Left Alive and a lot of the vampire stuff that I like the most is the curse of immortality and getting to this point where you're just like, I kind of wish I could die. This is unnatural. I have had to live through too much and lose too many people

and also have whatever hedonistic pleasures and joys I could indulge in from a life without consequences. I run through them. What's left? And the interesting thing, I feel like one reason why I actually also don't love the scene that opened this podcast, where she gets mad at the blogs. You know, we famously, in the room. But where she gets frustrated about the blogs, not that I disagree with the sentiment at all. and actually the more I thought about it, the more I was like, yeah, no, maybe I also

will shuffle off this mortal coil if I don't have to check my phone ever again. But I don't think, I think I am glad that that's not the only motivation for her being like, it's okay if I die. Because that's not enough. No, no, no. Right, that's a bit of a huge bummer.

Because also, like at that point, she's also... We haven't even... God, I'm glad that you are, you know, down to talk for way too long about so many things. Because we haven't even talked about Richard Lewis as the love of her life. We'll get to Richard Lewis. We'll get to.

We'll get to. But like, my... My... grandmother of some age culturing this episode, right? A lot of my life is now centered around me helping her with devices. And it will often be this wild oscillation between like, this is incredible, thank God.

This is amazing. I can't imagine having lived this long without the resource of being able to watch like any movie at any time in my bed on a thing the size of a piece of paper, right? And the other half of the time she will say things to me like, I was never supposed to live this long. I can't learn all these things. What am I supposed to do? Why is this no longer a thing I can solve

in a phone call or a letter? Why do I need to sign up for more stuff? And I think it's more like... A fair feeling. There was that feeling of like Alicia Silverstone's character is secretly a hundred plus years old. Right. And she's much older than the other one. And I, what I love, one thing I like too is that it's not like she's very nostalgic for the time when she was turned, which we find out, you know, she was brewing cholera and it was a bad time.

Right. It was a horrible time to be a poor person in New York, which I guess she was. And that her go-to dressing style is not that, it's actually the 20s when it seems like she was happiest, when like things changed, electricity happened, people were out having fun and she was like, that's what she's nostalgic for. And also the, you know, movies, cause and I also, she's a cinephile in this.

It's the very heckling part of it. In a way that's very heckling, right. So it's not that she was always resistant to change, it's that she enjoyed the change she was always resistant to change. No. It's that she enjoyed the change she got and then it just kept happening. Well, so Kristen Ritter inside her coffin has photos of like late 80s, early 90s pinup boyfriends, right? She's got Michael J. Fox and shit inside her coffin.

Her taste has remained, you know, static. Right. It's the moment she was turned, right? And it's basically like that feeling of this kind of point in a person's life in between your 20s and your 30s, where you're like, I'm out of the control of childhood, and there's a level of responsibilities have not really kicked in.

And is my life mostly centered around like getting drunk and going out with friends and having dinner and having fun and all this sort of shit? Which is what both of them kind of yearn for, right? More than a specific era of history, it's the point in time where they felt that way for the first time. Which, for Alicia Silverstone, because her lifespan is so much longer, and she was born into a culture that never allowed people to have an era like that, that it makes sense that the 20s would have been the first time that was basically like the equivalent of her being 26 and also culture kind of exploding for the first time.

And she's nostalgic for feeling that way for the first time in the same way that Kristen Ritter is about like 1992. And Alicia Silverstone has been lying about them being on the same timeline and pretending they're in the same place. Because as you said, basically, finding someone else she can relate to this hard in a platonic way gave her the motivation to be like, I guess it is still fun to be alive. I want to do this, but we have to be on the exact same page about all of this shit.

And when Kristen Ritter gets pregnant and she realizes the baby is going to sort of like destroy itself, she realizes there's like a two birds with one stone solution, which is I need to kill Sigourney to sever the stem, which will solve her like, it'll free her. It will free her. Kristen Ritter, you know, to the age they would have been if they had kept aging. It will be the end of me.

So, Kristen Ritter is going to go from 20 to 40 and Alicia's all for stone. She turns 40 in this movie, which is also very specific, that she is turning 40 and that when she finds out she's pregnant, that's also such a cute little scene. I feel like Kristen plays it so well too. And so does Alicia because she said it being like, oh, I talked to Vlad and you're just pregnant and it'll be fine. And she's so excited and she's like, oh shit, you want the baby. And I just didn't even consider that might be something you'd want.

And she's like, well, I'm 40. When am I going to get another chance? Like, that's the reason. Yeah, it's a good line. And Alicia Silverstone, like, does the math and it's like, I can solve this. But the price of it is I will revert to my real age, which will be dead. It is basically a suicide mission. She has to sacrifice herself to this,

unknowing to everyone else around her. She's not letting Kristen Ritter know, because Kristen Ritter thinks that she's gonna turn 40 as well. I always kind of like this dynamic of two characters thinking they're on the same page about something, and one person just sort of quietly, soically suffering in advance, of like, I'm ready to do this and I don't want them to know that I'm doing this for them because they will try to talk me out of it.

And I feel like, you know, Stacey kind of does suspect it, that, you know, they're not quite the same age because good references are not, you know, with it. She loves a drop waste too much. Even though, you know, you can only say Keira Knightley wore it for so long before. She always claims that she learned something from a history channel. And there's a really great gag of every time I watch the history channel, it was just about Hitler, which is what the history channel is. But in this case, it is still true.

That's I was so glad you wrote it, because I was like, that bit is not great. Until that line. And the bit, the early step of the bit, which also feels very heckling is like the way her old timiness kicks in, as she just wants to stop in random corners in New York City and explain what these businesses used to be. Yeah, right. Which is, I think, how a lifelong New Yorker,

like Amy heckerling, feels. It's certainly how you and I feel. Absolutely. And talk all the fucking time. My favorite thing to do is to be like, oh, there used to be a dentist office there. And it's like, who fucking cares, David? Shut up. She's doing the 1920s version of that. And Christopher is like, how do there used to be like a dentist office there. And it's like, who fucking cares, David? Shut up.

She's doing the 1920s version of that. And Christopher was like, how do you know this? And she goes like, History Channel. As if History Channel goes through every- What do you want to say, Benny? It just doesn't seem like she was very savvy when it comes to real estate. Cause if you've been around that long,

why are you in that apartment? Be off the frigging park or something. Come on. Maybe she wants to be in the thick of it in St. Mark's Place or whatever. Or even, I just love the eternal life thing of like you deposit a penny. And then suddenly.

And then like a hundred years later, you're like super rich. I feel like it's very like interview with the vampire is kind of like that where they're like, we have figured it out and now we own shit. But I think part of the- It's true. She has always been kind of like middle income. It seems like she's never amassed great wealth.

And working as like exterminators. Yes. If anything, she should have... You're making good money. She should have made it like some investments. I do think that is a purposeful statement though, Ben, because it's like the whole point is they are relishing being stuck in a stage before you need to start to make future decisions. Oh, that's interesting.

In that way, right? Like, it's that span of years where you're just like, at one point, am I told I need to start figuring shit out? And they are stuck in, like, decades of... That's for later. Well, so that's one thing that I was thinking about when, you know, she does her little blog rant and then she very surely thereafter realizes

that she's gonna have to die if Stacey's gonna, like, be happy and whatever. Is that, you know, for me her little blog rant and then she very surely thereafter realizes that she's going to have to die if Stacey's going to like be happy and whatever. Is that, you know, for me, I was looking at being like, but you did just have like a very fulfilling moment where you got your ex-boyfriend who's now, you know, I will say a hunky ACLU lawyer who is, you know, down and ready to help. And you got all these people. You're saying Richard Lewis now is hunky. I think in 2012. He's hunkier in the present timeline than he is in that wig in the 60s.

Well, the wig is... And I also like... It's not a major studio wig. I just love that that guy played by Richard Lewis is the object of Alicia Silverstone's, like, utter... It's a great concept. If you look at the man of Heckerling's life, and we have not acknowledged he also had

a very long relationship with Brunson Pinschow in the 90s. Sure. Richard Lewis, it makes sense. It's perfect. That you're like, Amy Heckerling, when she was 12, probably saw him do stand up on Late Night and was like, that is my greatest crush of all time. Richard Lewis plays it pretty straight.

The thing, right, that I like about Richard Lewis, I like pretty much everything about Richard Lewis, but in this movie is that he's like, I'm playing as a kind of a tired, sad guy. Like I'm not going to go. He's an old hippie. He's an aged hippie. He's doing the dark complaining thing.

All right, like, ah, Richard Lewis. You know, like, no, he's quite locked in being not that funny. And Richard Lewis also was incredibly good at just maintaining his look, right? Like you even watched the final season of Curb, where he is like so close to death, almost was not on the final season

and dies like before it even premieres. And you're like, man, he for 70 years kept the hairstyle. You know, he likes what he looks, he got it. And the all black outfits and the attitude, like in this sort of vampiric way. Yeah, all right. I mean, he likes what he looks. And the all black outfits. And the attitude. Like in this sort of vampiric way. Yeah. All right. He's like a nightclub comic forever, right?

You know, he's... Do you like Richard Lewis, Ben? I do. You're making the little face. Yeah. I think the thing for me when I remember that that's... This is the way the movie was going, is that I had a moment where I was like, but goody, you just found another gear.

Like this is something... You can help people. Like you change people's mind. You like... Sure you can help people. Like you change people's mind, you like, you connect people and so I had a minute where I was like, oh, do you really have like, this isn't, it's not all just blinds. But it's a sacrifice.

It comes a little bit out of nowhere when she starts talking about her kids and stuff. Well that I- Not out of nowhere, out of nowhere, cause there's the scene where she like looks at old pictures and stuff. It's layered it, but like- Yeah, but I just like, that backstory is so good, I think.

But exactly, it's just resonant anyway. It's kind of weird that she's telling Dr. Van Helsing about it. Why not? He's a nice man. What was Sean? Was he a nice man before the thing? Well, he's interested in her in a way that most aren't. Right. Because he actually cares about vampires. Sure. And he is like, here's a new bit of lore I didn't know.

Here's a great runner in this movie. And he's learning to be sympathetic to them. Yeah, she changed his heart somehow. Other than with Sigourney Weaver, this movie constantly represents the idea that any complicated dynamic can be worked out through a very good conversation, right? Yeah, sure.

And in a way that doesn't feel sloppy, like whatever, wave it off screenwriting, it's like, can she appeal to Dr. Van Helsing as a person and get her to consider her as a person rather than as an abstract enemy? In the same way that Dan Stevens and Kristen Ritter can figure it out. And the Richard Lewis thing, when he's introduced, they're exterminating at a hospital where his wife, Mary Lou Henner, is in the latest stages of cancer and Alicia Silverstone clocks in. This was like her greatest boyfriend ever,

her like political radical college student boyfriend from the 70s, who she had to dump because she was starting to get to the point. I think she says it's seven years. It's like after seven years, I have to acknowledge that I'm not aging and that what comes next. And that he wanted a family and she couldn't do that. Which also like there's a lot of stuff

about motherhood in here too. Yep. Yes. In a way that their entire stuff doesn't always. It kind of doesn't make sense and she couldn't do that. Which also, like, there's a lot of stuff about motherhood in here too. Yep. Yes. In a way, that's where our stuff doesn't always... It kind of doesn't make sense that she wouldn't know the deal with pregnancy. You'd think it would have come up at some point, but whatever. It doesn't matter. Richard Lewis sees her.

It's like, how is this possible? And she says, like, oh, what are you talking about? And then very quickly creates the cover story of like... I feel like there must be a basic cover story for them. It's like, if someone recognizes me, I'm the daughter. Right. Um, and I'm like, okay, so the movie's gonna be 90 minutes of her lying and pretending that she's the daughter.

And then once again, the conversation comes much earlier than you would expect. They dispense with it pretty quickly. Where she's like, I'm just gonna fucking own up to you. He's smart enough to figure it out. Much in the same way that Dan Stevens was. She stops a robbery and there's no way to. And she says, I could like hypnotize you. I think you deserve better.

They have this really interesting emotional conversation about like why he she had to leave him and said you deserve to meet someone else. And did you meet someone amazing? And he said, yeah, I did. And you're in this zone where you're like, so they're spending so much time together, is the idea that they're setting up that now that he's lived a full life with his wife and she is sadly going to pass away, that the door will be open for maybe her and him to be together. Alicia Silverstone and Richard Lewis.

And it's just not really. I mean, I also appreciate that there's never actually a moment, because I had a minute where I was like, oh my God, is it going to hit on her because even though she I mean, I also appreciate that there's never actually a moment. Because I had a minute where I was like, oh my God, is it going to hit on her? Because even though he thinks she's the daughter, and that never happens. No, he's still... He's just like, your mom was great. Yeah. And he's holding a candle for his wife who is still alive.

Yeah. And Alicia Silverstone, in a similar way, like, I think it's not that she has a death wish, but she realizes, like, I could do two great things for the two people I have cared the most about in my entire life. And also, as she says, I have lived so fucking much. Like, I've had my fill. Like, not that I resent still being alive, but I've been, not greedy, but like, I've been very lucky with how much I've gotten to experience.

Well, yeah, her explaining that the reason why she begged to be turned into a vampire, because the, you know, people who are begging to be turned into a vampire is such also like a very, you know, common trope in vampire stories, like people who want... Broken, lost, unfulfilled. Like, you know, like Renfield in this, like he's like, awaken me, and they're like,

that's not how it works, they're like, you know, people on Buffy, there's always like groupies or whatever, you know. And they're like, that's not how it works. They're like, you know, people, I'm Buffy. There's always like groupies or whatever. You know, people always want this or they think they want this. But her reason is also completely different from anyone else. It's not like, oh, I just want to like not die. She's like, I have two kids who will be orphans if I die. And I would rather not leave them alone.

Right. And she talks about that her kids lived until like 80 and 99. I think she says her daughter set the record for the oldest living person. I was just like, yeah, it was unprecedented at the time. And now she has gone on to live like another hundred years past that. But she was like, but the only thing I wanted to do with this was raise them, and I did it. And I did that. So like, what is it now? Right. And I just, I had never, I really like, I don't love, you know, all the, some of the vampire stuff is cheesy in this

in a way where I'm like, okay, you know, I don't need like a bloodsucker's anonymous situation, but I get it. Sure. But I do feel like some of the, like, she, Hackerling clearly did a ton of research. I mean, the vampire bat thing alone, or she's like, we have an enzyme in our spit. And I just spit into him.

I was like, you have done some Wikipedia hole research and I respect it. But some of her twists on the vampire thing, I think are really interesting and smart in a way that ties back to the themes she's the most interested in, like aging, motherhood, relevance. Yeah, those are the big three in this movie, right?

And they all track really well onto vampire history and our cultural understanding of them. And yeah, I just like, it was one of those things where as you said, like first 30 minutes, I'm like, okay, there's some funny jokes in this. Yeah, get the concept. Is this gonna be sustainable? Next 30 minutes, I'm like, fuck,

I like care about these characters. And the last 30 minutes, I'm like, fuck, I care about these characters. And the last 30 minutes, I'm like, she has set up all the pieces on the game board really well and really effortlessly for now, this all being like, perfectly set up for a very effective finale. Yeah, and it's definitely a kind of movie where I feel like she's so, like, it's so close to getting all the tonal mismatches, right?

Like, I feel like, you know, I. She she definitely she clearly loves like a voiceover, an exposition dump, etc. This movie starts with quite a clumsy one. Like it really like and it starts it off on a note where you're like, oh, OK. Like, I'm sure I can tell that Ben turned this on this morning was like, OK. Right. Because it starts and you're just like, fuck, is this like a student film? It's just a little bit.

It's a little bit. And then, you know, then the 60s happened. I was like, oh my God, we're just doing the decades. Photoshopped, like, pictures and like dumb motion graphics. Yeah. Right, but it's because she's like, I... She clearly has so many ideas and she's like, I only have so much time.

This is the most efficient way to do it. And of course, then I went to see Sinners yesterday and I was like, well, that's how you do it. That opening thing, like that was, it's crazy beautiful. But also we had the money. And he does the exact same thing in Black Panther. He is kind of the king of doing that. The like two minute animated in an interesting way intro

that's like, got it, got it, let's go. Yeah. Right, he's figured out how to make that about as elegant as he possibly can. And successfully stick a bunch of info in your head that allows the rest of the movie to mostly be emotional. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I just wasn't going to say I actually I was I was reading David

Sims's interview with Ryan Coogler. Great guy. Really incredible guy to talk to. David's a great guy. Yeah, you know, what a fun guy to talk to. David's a great guy. Yeah, you know, what a fun guy to talk to. I really enjoyed it. We all love David, don't we? But I was interested, I feel like something, I don't remember why I thought this, maybe it's good.

No, I do. I opened my phone and I saw it. One reason why, I think he really encapsulated something that I always, I feel like is the thing I liked about vampires and does come up in every single adaptation. And he really summed it up quite well in your interview. Vampires still have so much of their humanity left, their knowledge, and also they can present as something that's not what they truly are. But I mean, Sinners is partly about vampires being great lovers of art, right? Like, and being drawn to like artistic sort of like, like, tremors in the fucking force.

They're like, yeah, like, oh my God, someone is speaking to the human experience. They can create it, they can steal it and repeat it in a way. Sure. And like, there's, it just rocks that that's sort of like, he's thinking about vampires and like, he hits on that. Rather than just like, it's scary that they suck your blood, which is scary.

Which is very scary. I want to keep that blood. And a little sexy. And a little sexy. I mean, my favorite thing about interviewing Ryan was when- First name basis. Yeah, he's my best friend, was when I was like, can I bring up, from Dusk till Dawn, obviously,

the most obvious sort of like analog. He was like, can I bring up Puss in Boots The Last Wish? Well, that's exactly it. He was like, dude, obviously I love that movie. I love Robert Rodriguez. And when I talked to Robert about From Dusk Till Dawn, he was like, well, my biggest influence was Spike Lee. Like, I was just trying to copy Spike Lee.

I didn't know about this and that or the other thing. I was a 25-year-old or whatever age I was when I'm making these movies. And I love fucking Spike Lee. I love Do the Right Thing. Is it like a 24-hour movie? And then Coogler's like, and I love From Dusk Till Dawn, but what I love is the faculty because the faculty is two genres getting mushed together in a way that shouldn't work and does. Like, that's my bigger inspiration.

That Coogler is not just such a historian and is so smart about the lineage of these things and what he's in conversation with, but also that he's like a fucking omnivore, that his tastes are so varied and you're like, this guy does just find interesting aspects in everything. And then so he's talking to me about the faculty and he's like, and then obviously inside Lewin Davis,

Lover's Rock, the Steve McQueen thing. And then he's like, and then the biggest thing for me is this Twilight Zone episode called The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank. And I'm like, what's that? And he's like, oh, it's about a small town. And then he's like, and Salem's Lot, the book, not the movie, I've never seen the movie

except for the one shot. And I'm like, the shot of the kid floating in the window. He's like, yeah, the one shot everyone's seen from Salem's Lot. I don't remember what interview it was, not to give credit to an interview that you didn't do, but someone else speaking to Ryan Coogler, he talked about how he was, I think, talking to Goranson as they were plotting out the movie about just like, what sort of happened to the Blues?

Like, I'm making this movie about, spoilers for Sinner is the biggest movie in America, probably still has a big influence by the time this episode comes out. But this like lineage he's creating in the history of music and, you know, right, the slipstream of all this stuff, right? Sure, yes. And he was just sort of like... Everything blows something to the blues. There's a big jump, right. Yes. You say this in the interview very wisely.

I'm so wise. Yes. And he was just like, I'm like trying to fill this gap between the blues and hip-hop and funk. What is this missing piece here? And Gordon Simpson was like, grunge. Nice. Grunge was like the 90s big wave kind of capturing the spirit of the blues. And he was just like, I've heard the three Nirvana sounds that are on the radio all the time. I've never dug in. And now he's like, I'm all fucking in on grunts now.

A lot of good shit in there. Right. And it's like drug addicts, like struggling with their sadness and being owned by corporations. And I mean, that mid movie sequence, you know, that Warner, just like, you know, just all the different music eras, it's so impressive on 10,000 different levels, but it's also like very of a vampire movie. Like to see all these different eras. When that happens, and I was completely, I saw the film very early, not to brag, because I was interviewing Ryan Coogler,

didn't I mention that? Go brag, David Sims, go brag. And when that's why I was completely unprepared for that sequence, I really hadn't watched the trailer for Sinners, I just knew there was a big vampire. I didn't even know that that sequence was in there, I saw it yesterday. That's awesome that it caught you off guard or whatever. It's a sequence where you're like, damn, he rocked that.

But then you're also like, damn, B-Boy's spinning around while blues music play in an old saloon. Could suck. Like, could not work. It's a humongous swing. And part of what I think is so thrilling about the movie and has really captured people is it's the kind of sequence where you watch it and when it starts, you're holding your breath and you're like, he is so thrilling about the movie and has really captured people is it's the kind of sequence where you watch it and when it starts, you're holding your breath

and you're like, he is so close to fucking this up. Or this is dangerous. And if he fucks this up, the movie does not recover from this. It's like, it's crazy that that's the big, like that things escalate from there. Like, how is that not, like, I mean, it is a peak, but then the things escalate from there.

But it is the kind of sequence that underlines why he picked vampires. You cannot do that... You can't do that sequence of the zombie movie. Let's open a saloon. Okay. Zombie movies are so much stricter. Was that what you were going to say? We should get a saloon?

Was that what you were going to say? That is what he was going to say. No, because I was just talking about zombie movies with my friends who are asking me about the alien monster. And I was like, you know, with zombies, it's like, it takes six, 40 years for Danny Boyle to be like, what if they ran and people are like, hold on there, Cowboys, zombies behave in one way.

You know, it's like, there's not a lot of variation with zombie stuff. You know what? And this is interesting. And it reflects usually just one kind of thing, which is an apocalypse. Yeah. I am so much more innately drawn to zombies. Like, if you tell me that someone's making a zombie movie, I'm excited. Because the world has to be different. I don't know.

Because the whole world has to be different with zombies. And the whole thing about vampires is that they're trying to be, you know, they're trying to pass unnoticed. And have their space. And have their space and have a good sexy time. I think I do. My gooning tomb. If, like, zombies could just could just like live in the world

and like just eat leftover dead people parts. Just like toss them a torso. I'm so sorry, Ben. Cover your ears. CW show, iZombie, does try to do that. Yes. I feel like Warm Bodies does a sort of version of that as well. But it's like, there's only so much you can do with that. Like with vampires, it's very much like they have one face, it's a human face.

They have another, it's the vampire face. And they have enough of their memories and they have all their previous knowledge. Like they don't suddenly factory reset in the same way that other monsters do. Like I mean, and werewolves are kind of that where it's like once a month, but you, it's involuntary, but vampires give you so much room to work with in terms of a person's memory, what their relationship to the world is, how that changes.

It gives you so much to work with. It's much richer for storytelling. There's more baked in that has interesting potential. I think I do like societal collapse and apocalypse stories and things that get to test human behavior, like stripped down to a twosense. And like, yeah, zombies inevitably are that. I think I also like the iconography of rotting people.

Like, I think if you show me a drawing of a zombie, I'm more engaged. Like, of a cartoon than, like, a guy with fangs and blood dripping down his face. You love a rotting person. But yet... You love rot. I love rot, but yet, like, and I think our buddy David Reese said this on the 20 Years Later episode, he was like,

I can't think of a type of movie I love more with a lower percentage of movies I actually like. You know? And I think like I will be pleasantly like entertained by some junkie shitty zombie movie. But like unquestionably there are more vampire movies that I think are capital G great than zombie movies. And yet I hear someone's making a vampire movie, I'm like, again, I hear someone's making a zombie movie,

and I'm like, yeah, let's go! Even if it's a two out of ten. That's interesting. I mean, I feel like, you know, because zombie movies are about the humans. They're not about the zombies. Because the zombies don't have thoughts. That's what I like.

That it sort of creates a template for an ensemble cast. That is the reason for zombie movies being good, obviously. Vampire stories are still very human. And they're more character studies. Usually, the humans themselves are of secondary importance. For sure. They may be doing an interview with them. They could be interviewing them.

Right, that's also what you do, kind of like with Coogler. Perhaps I should interview a mysterious man. Maybe you did interview a vampire. What do they call humans in this movie? Day players. Day players. Is it Joe Connie? That is a film production joke.

Day players are what you call an actor or a crew member who's only doing the one day. Yes, it's clever. To your point, she realizes that she can get this rush from helping other people, and it sort of gives her a reason to live, but I think it's a really good, unsolvable dilemma, which is like, she's found this new Pappaner step, and yet she realizes the single best version of that involves her dying. And she also, yeah, it doesn't seem to bother her, she just has to adjust, and she's also like, my friend is about to have the opportunity I already had to raise a child she wants.

Right, and so she then also very generously is like, I can bring in horny Justin Kirk and save Richard Lewis' life. He's pretty hot in this. Just pretty hot in this. Marry me. I swear to God. I just think, I like the way it's like, the energy on the side of the room,

we're like, give us a second, tap a moment. With eyeliner, Justin Kirk. Kirk. Ukrainian. He emphasizes over and over again. That's a funny joke every time we do that. I just think it's funny that that character is basically her being like, here's all the shit I'm not interested in with vampires. And let me put it into one character and have someone very charismatically play

the most annoying guy in the world. The most stereotypically annoying vampire-y guy. The black guy who wants to fuck women. Right? It says juicy on her butt and I am going to take her at her word. And he's got the like Nosferatu teeth that don't look cool.

My roommate was like, why does he have gopher teeth? And I was like, fuck, they are gopher teeth. Really hard to unsee. Yeah. The little gopher teeth. And I was like, fuck, they are gopher teeth. Really hard to unsee. Yeah, yeah. The little gopher teeth. But that, I'm sure you have talked, I did listen to your Fast Times episode with Sinner star, Lilla Kirk.

Well done there. Humblebrake, humblebrake. But you... Humblebrake for you listening. I'm sure you've talked about many a comedic sex scene at this point because Heckerling likes those. And there are a couple in this one, like there's the sort of, you know,

Stacey and Ritter and Dan Stevens rolling off the bed and they're levitating kind of deal. But then like the absolutely... I mean, it's not great, but it's... They just pull it off well enough in a way that makes you wish it looked a little better. It does actually remind me of one of the bits I like in this where she's just like levitating along the street and Goody's like, oh my God, you can't do that.

And she's like, it's New York, no one gives a shit. I will, every time that joke is made in anything, that joke is, you know, could not be more bread and butter classic. Oh, it's New York, no one cares. It's true every time. It's always funny. Works every time. You were right. Yeah. But that, but the Justin Kirk scene where he's,

where basically Goody's like, before I die, I'm going to give Richard Lewis the option of would his wife, like would he rather his wife become a vampire and live than die as she is going to. And he thinks about it for approximately two seconds and says, yes, please. And she sends Justin Kirk in there for... To ravish her, essentially. To ravish her.

It's, that scene is insane. I got so dizzy. It's drawn out. Yes. It's very, and then you know, you have the comedic sort of like knocking on it being like it doesn't take that long. You are milking it. Like once you like, you know, does the slit across his stomach and is like, but I'm like, then Mary Lou Henner comes out looking unbelievably hot.

I'm gonna quickly check my notes that I have from the Johnny Dangerously episode. I'm seeing I still have written here, hummumana humana hum." -"A wuga." May we just reiterate? And also, did you clock that the dress she's in is a redone hospital gown? I did, yes. Very well done from Mona May on that one. Fits her like a fucking glove. And she brings him in and that's the last we see of him.

But I'm like, that? That It's a fine send-off. But I was also like, she was like, you have to promise to have her only eat animals and stuff. And then she comes out looking like that, and I'm like, you just made a new Sigourney. Like, she is not gonna play nice. Look, again, in the TV version of this, there's stuff to plumb there.

That's a full season. That's not happening. I, as much as I hope and pray this is not the final film she ever makes. There is something in how much she brings back so much of her history of Heckerlin Company players down to like Brian Backer, who's a rat in Fast Times being a racist dentist. Being the dentist who gets eaten briefly. It was nice to see him. Taylor Negron back, Wallace Shawn back,

Mary Lou Henner back, Alicia Silverstone obviously. I don't think Kirsten Johnson's in... She feels like she should have been weird. Well, it definitely feels like a part where she was like, I like you and you should be in it, but then she's kind of doing a not good British accent. I'm kind of like, you didn't... Because it's clear that there were two separate things of,

she obviously wants Wallace Shawn to be Van Helsing. And she wants someone maybe comically taller? Right, and then Dan Stevens wants to do it, and now you need to figure out, like, who is the woman that Wallace Shawn could have made Dan Stevens with? It's not Kirsten Johnson. I was happy to see her, but it was a waste.

It should be like Joanna Lumley or something. But it is the kind of thing where I'm like, if Heckerling had kept making movies after that, like she would have been in there, 100%. Was she, maybe she was in like a suburgatory because I know Heckerling went on to do a bunch of suburgatory. Yes. And that feels like something.

Did Carrie Diaries. Right. Some of us did the suburgatory. A lot of red oaks. Red oaks. Yeah. Ah yes, red oaks. And I feel like there's one of the big shows she did a bunch of oaks. Yeah. Ah yes, red oaks. And I feel like there's one of the big shows

she did a bunch of episodes on. Yeah. Yeah, but it's definitely. She directed the Hot Girls episode at the office, but we're not talking about it. We're not talking about it, David. She did a Quibi show, of course you remember you commissioned that David, called Royalties,

that I've heard is good and is still watchable somewhere. Oh cool, I mean that's awesome. Everything I commissioned is good. Six red oaks, that I've heard is good and is still watchable somewhere. Oh, cool. I mean, that's awesome. Everything I commissioned is good. Six red oaks, one suburgatory. She did a rake. Three, rake with a stake on his face. A stake on his face. Uh, yeah.

But yeah, I didn't, I hope it's not a curtain call, but it is notable also because, again, she didn't have a budget in that they were all like, yeah, we'll come do it. Like, we'll go to Detroit or wherever. Absolutely. And we'll do it. Yes. For clearly no money.

Yes, 37 days in Detroit, but you know, some New York location stuff. No question. And it is often a real Achilles heel of the Amy Hickling filmography that we keep butting up against as she makes movies set in specific cities and then is told she cannot film in those places. And you have this weird kind of non-specific doubling that is often then married to what is clearly two days of establishing shots that often don't really have the primary actors in them or only have them in one or two. This, there

is like, she got her... She got her people. She did. She got enough days of actual actors in front of real New York places to make it count to mesh well. Just to tell you some other things before we move on to the end of BAMs. First choice for Cicero's was Michelle Pfeiffer, who liked the script. But she said, I could never be your vampire. God damn.

Was busy doing Dark Shadows. Well, well, well. She saw Dan Stevens in a play with Judi Dench called Hay Fever. And then she just saw a lot of stuff in England, because she was making I Can Never Be Your Woman. And that's where she first noticed him, and then Downton Abbey, you know, helped him be a... And yes, indeed, they did shoot in Detroit. They did shoot on a type... But I'm just making sure I caught everything here.

And it was unceremoniously dumped, essentially straight to DVD. I mean, VOD. But it did, according to JJ, it was released just at the AMC Burbank eight. Ever been there? Oh, God. You may have gone to a press screening or something

to be clear. But maybe I did go there. The Cinnafamily story checks out though. It does sound right. And we went to Cina family a lot at that time. But that's not out of the question, for sure. I worked up there at the time. I worked in North Hollywood then. And of course, as we noted, she has done a bunch of TV,

but she's not, has said that she's not particularly thrilled to making episodic TV. Still like writing all the time. She was going to make a she's claimed she's closed musicals opening in the West End this summer. Supposed to be god awful. He was doing it off Broadway with Dove Cameron in 2020 and the hope it would transfer and then everything shut down. Right. It is now finally opening in the West End.

And as we alluded to earlier, it was recently announced that she is executive producing a clueless continuation show for Peacock with Alicia Silverstone back. But it's actually going to be written by the... Gospel Girl people. Right. It seems like it's a little bit more of a John Carpenter or Peggy. And she'll be the...

I think so. Right. The Margaret Collin of that show. But, like, look, three years ago, they announced that Peacock was developing a clueless reboot that was like fucking clueless Riverdale where Cher is missing and Dion has to solve her murder and it was going to be dark and gritty and like, this sounds like the much better universe of things. Sure.

But it is like a little bit, it's a slightly damning statement that like Amy Heckerling is here regularly doing interviews and talking about how much she wishes she could get to make her stuff. And the two things she can do are just circling back to Clueless. Can I do this as a musical? Right, can I get a paycheck for doing this on TV?

Well, I think at some point she's just like, if you're gonna wanna redo this, I'd rather be a part of the most juice. Right. Can I get a paycheck for doing this on TV? Well, I think at some point she's just like, if you're gonna wanna redo this, I'd rather be a part of the residuals. Like, I'd rather get a piece of it. Of course, of course. Let her have her money. I don't begrudge Alicia Silverstone doing the legacy equal either. What's up? Well, no, I haven't seen every Heckerling,

but what other ones are New York based? Well, the Lekus Talkings, but they are all... Vancouver. ...not really shot in New York. Loser is NYU, but shot in Toronto. Okay. Johnny Dangerously is New York. You know, gangstery.

But it's all, it's so soundstagey that it doesn't have the same problem. So basically Clueless and Fast Times, her most famous works, are the LA ones, I Could Never Be Your Woman, is also of course set in just the North. Sun in Los Angeles. And then the European vacation film, This Might Stun You, is actually set all over Europe. And what is crazy is...

Does that include Britain or where we're... There's a whole British section and then Germany and France. Yes. Yes. Yeah, it was a good 30 years pre-Brexit. We had not Brexit. No. But that film actually, like, did... That child of mine.

...filming in five different countries. And was a nightmare. Like, a nightmare, but it is, you watch it and you're like, holy shit, they flew everyone everywhere. But it's really interesting that this one, you know, if it's her last, which I hope it's not, but it's so much like she's like, I want to tell the entire story,

like not the entire story of New York, obviously 1840 wasn't the beginning of New York, but she's like, I'm going to tell you about how this city has evolved. And Goody is, it's because I feel like so many other vampires will like travel and they'll go other places and Goody's like, I've got everything I need. It's very Native New Yorker. Where you're just like, why would I go and I got it. I saw The Shrouds recently, which I loved.

And I think it's already being kind of slept on and misunderstood. And... I wasn't a huge fan of it. I'm sorry. I like the themes a lot. I think I just did not find it to be the most... ...involving movie. I like the themes a lot. I just did not find it to be the most involving movie. I like the theme. I like the tremendous amount and I found it very funny. It's kind of funny.

It is, to me, a perfect example. I want to defend it because I love him and I think it's a very interesting movie. He is so important to me. I don't think it's anywhere near his top tier of films. And yet I walked out of it and said, that's kind of a perfect film if we're unlucky enough that he never gets to make another one. And it feels in a way similar to Vamps and some other filmmakers where they're just sort of like, it has been getting harder and harder for me to get stuff made and I have to make every movie with the awareness that this might be my final statement.

and I have to make every movie with the awareness that this might be my final statement. And Vamps does feel like she's just putting so much in it. Not pessimistically, but just being like, who knows? Right? It's kind of like her final statement on New York, on youth culture, on like relationships, on motherhood, like all these things. I like Crimes of the Future a lot more as a movie,

but I think The Shrouds is a very interesting cuda. I agree with you. To his career. Which I feel... You know, interesting. Vamps, I'm putting in the same category, where it's like, it's not her best movie, but if it sadly has to be her coda in feature films, it is a pretty good one. I think when Cronenberg movies are mega chatty, it can be a problem. I guess is my take. I would say that my read is in that film it is a form of knowing self-parody. I think he is mocking his own critics analysis of his movies being cold and analytical about very emotional things.

Sure. That was my read. I will say I also saw it at the Nighthawk in a row with five people who were committed to watching it as if they were doing a Rift Tracks commentary. Oh, how fun. And thought they were mocking it and I almost went full Joker mode on that. I would go a little Joker mode. I did turn to this one moment at one point and go... With like the intensity of a thousand burning signs and she was freaked out.

You made me write because you started high. It was too quick. Yes. But Vincit Cattell took his shirt off in a scene of mourning and she went, Yasss, yasss. And I was like, I can't tolerate this no longer. I mean, that is objectively hilarious that someone said yasss during the show. But it was coming off of 45 minutes of a fucking meditation on death.

No. They kept being like, um, what? Like, just doing this sort of performative laughing at like, who talks like this? She just saw Vincent Cassel and she flashed back viscerally to him in Ocean's 12 with his sweatpants very low. I was all for her. Which is the only proper response to that.

I was all for her thirsting after Vincent Cassel. It felt like it wasn't done mockingly. It's all been there. It felt like she was mocking the idea of thirsting after him. And I'm like, he is hot and this movie knows it's funny and stop acting like you're smarter. Anyway, the film Vamps directed by Amy Heckerling. Can we talk about the ending? Sure, the ending's lovely.

I mean, it's exactly what you want it to be, I guess is the best way for me to put it. It's a very good gag that is also, once again, not executed. The center of the world? Is that what she said? She said the center of things. It's all happening. Did you read them? Look, if you want to see 2010 Broadway musical billboards,

watch the last scene of Vamps, it's kind of awesome. This one went turn off the dark, she captured it. I forgot about the Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown musical. The Sinatra Jukebox musical. There's so much interesting stuff. Adam's family. Yeah. Yep.

But it's just like... She... They kill Sigourney Weaver. They kill Sigourney Weaver in this very... It's like the mummy return of the Dragon Emperor level graphics. It's a capitate of her dancing CGI skeleton. Okay. When she comes out of the tomb with the saber and she's a skeleton and she's singing,

my eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord, I fully, like, that was the funniest. It was so funny. Here's what I'll say about that as well. Still would. Let me at her! Sigourney with the fucking skeleton. It was her body.

I take my chances. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they don't. They kill her. They kill her and you have this very good gag that once again, you're just like, fuck, if she had a little more resources, this would be impeccable. Where Kristen Ritter immediately in a series of three shots, her butt gets a little flatter. A little flat. The lighting changes on her.

Yep. And there's, oh, and her arms start sagging, right? And it's like two wrinkles. But it's like pretty well done because it's like she doesn't. It's just enough. It's just enough. Where you're like, I stayed out of the sun and I didn't drink or smoke. So good for me. Right. And that worked for me. Yeah.

It's a good joke. Looks over to Lisa Silverstone, who is in not the world's best old age makeup. I wouldn't say so, no. Immediately clocks. You've been lying to me about your age. They bring up the history channel thing and like, are you going to stop aging now? They know. Alicia Silverstone gives the knowing look of just like, this is just going to advance. I, you know, clock is ticking until I decay.

I, but I don't want to die here. I want to go to the center where everything happens. And then they go to Times Square and she like looks around at the world's greatest billboards and flashes back to like the history of New York City. She gets a pretzel, which I'm sad for her for. I wanted her to get a hot dog. But she's...

The pretzels are not that good. She doesn't know though. She didn't even get mustard. It's been dry. It's genuinely very... Did you give her a cool DC to wash it down with? Affecting. But it is a really, you know, for as bad as the wig is. Or as fine as the dust effect is.

The music, I don't remember what the song is, but the song and her flashing back to like, you know, all her stuff and her kids and everything, it fucking got me. And also culture. Like, not just her own personal memories, but like everything she's lived through. It's just, yeah, I don't know. I felt very, I felt very touched. And then, you know, obviously, and one of the reasons Stacey's so sad

is because she's like, now you'll never meet my baby and you won't raise this baby with me. And they hold hands and it's just a very lovely friendship moment. And I will say an impressively straight vampire movie that I don't hold it against it. Yeah, it's true. Which is saying something. They don't really...

No, there's never that, no. Yeah. But I wouldn't expect Heckerling to do that, honestly. No, which is true. They don't really. No, there's no, there's never that. No. Yeah. But I wouldn't expect heckling to do that. Honestly, but it's a very it is, you know, not only do they never have a little moment, but she gets pregnant. It's like very straight, but it is lovely. Well, fucking Dan Stevens will make anyone pregnant. You promise?

It's it's kind of a knockout ending. It's one of those things where I'm like, it was, you know, Times Square is Times Square, but I think there's a New York Times profile of Heckerling that I'm sure you've referenced, where it's like, you know, she's making the Clueless musical, but she, Times Square is like one of her first memories, like coming out of the subway in a stroller,

she's like, and there is Times Square, and it looked like that. And so for her to have this relationship with Times Square, where she's like, this was where every, like she described it as like the center of things. Like this is like, she's, she was like, everything is here. And so for that, there's like such, you know, there's always an analog. Like, obviously, many of these films are personal. But this is such a personal moment. And it's bittersweet because Goody seems to have accepted it and she's happy about it.

I am not convinced heckerling is being like, and now I'm irrelevant and I'm going to die. I have always had a real similar affection and obsession with Times Square as a lifelong New Yorker from how like overstimulating and exciting it was to me as a child to even now when every other native New Yorker I know is just like, why would you ever go there by choice? I have always found it weirdly relaxing and serene

to just submit myself to the chaos of Times Square and stand in the middle or just wander around, whatever. It's where I went the night after prom, like with my friends from Jersey. We went to Times Square. And I was like, because this is the cool, like this is the busiest, most not-New Jersey thing we could do right now,

is go to Times Square and get... We need to go to Seaside Heights. Oh, I mean, that's good too. That's the most Jersey thing you could do. That is the most Jersey thing you could do. Yes, it went the other way. It is so insufferable and annoying and impossible to navigate. And yet, when I am there, I do feel like the way this character feels.

It feels right. This is the center of the world. No. Interesting. I am there, I do feel like the way this character feels. Where I'm like, this is the center of the world. No. Interesting. I am almost always like, get me out of here! I'm presenting myself as the weirdo and the freak. And in watching these movies and in reading all the heckling interviews and in living with her for the last couple months,

we have in our head... I'm just like... I'm really just kind of on her wavelength. And I found myself defending a lot of her movies that people don't like as much that just kind of work for me. And I just feel like I have a very similar outlook on a lot of things to her. And yeah, it's like, in watching this movie, it does feel like the ending is her sort of being like, has my time passed? Which globally than just her and her career

also feels like this is kind of acknowledging the end of a type of movie that doesn't get made anymore. And the last two films she made were basically made past, like on borrowed time, right? Like studios are no longer making these. So now you have to like scrape and scavenge and pull together the wonkiest version of this thing. And that's longer making these, so now you have to like scrape and scavenge and pull together the wonkiest version of this thing. And that's the thing too,

is that she did have to scrape and scavenge for this, but she did get to do Times Square. Yeah. For one night, she got Times Square. She like had her three main actors in the middle of Times Square. There's like triumphs in this movie that really got to me. I still think it is like on whole a good movie

that I enjoy quite a bit. It is frustrating, as we said, bittersweet that it is not like a a good movie that I enjoy quite a bit. It is frustrating as we said bittersweet that it is not like a triumph which it should be. But I feel like it dealt with a lot of the I'm really glad that I watched I could never be your woman before this because I feel like that one was so close to her experience that I feel like it was I mean you've talked about it I won't do it but I do feel like this movie I felt like dealt with a lot of the same themes better because she could take a slight step back. It's actually support like watching it. I was like, I'm actually

surprised it took you this long to get to vampires. Like they're so up the street of everything you want to talk about that I feel like this one she did get to something there. Can I read an extended quote that I found from her? The other David, David, David, we're saying goodbye to Amy Hackerling. We're saying goodbye to Amy Heckerling. Enough. We're saying goodbye to Amy Heckerling. Yes, I need like 20 of them. Come on, what's the quote?

Our friend Hilary Weston, friend of the podcast Criterion, did an interview with Amy Heckerling, I think around the time that the Fast Times release was coming out. And she was talking about where Clueless came from, these quotes that we've sort of talked about before, the projection of the optimist, right?

And she's talking about how much she admires the idea of the optimist and running the world and like putting the shine on them. And then she just says, also a world full of optimists wouldn't be a good idea because what if we all went, ha, global warming, it will be fine. We need pessimists.

You can't just say, oh, here's this thing I made, it's great, although a lot of people that are creative have that. They go, I'm doing this and I'm doing that and they think everything they do is great. And then there are people that say, you know, this has been done before and here's all the ways it could stink.

And then you can't write one word without thinking about how bad it could be based on how people could react, how other ways have fallen flat. And then she basically immediately dunks on life is beautiful on the day the clown cried. But I just think that sort of encapsulates the, like, essential tension between the two sides of Amy Heckerling in her work that is often represented,

but also I think what must feel frustrating to her in trying to get stuff made. Because there was a point in time where the industry went, like, you got it, we want whatever you're selling. And that self-doubt she had was conquered by people begging her to come in. And I think in that New York Times profile where she talks about writing all the time,

and a similar thing with her having vamps on a shelf for years before she finally got it made, I think she is very self-defeating if people are not banging down her door asking what she has. That's a bummer. She made Clueless though. Yeah, she made many great films. We don't discuss that enough that in fact you have never directed Clueless and in that sense you are showing a fucking failure.

Uh, no, I didn't try. Didn't even try. Didn't even get off the couch and try. Cowardly. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Uh, we have not watched or done or lose her episode at the time of this recording, so we're now going to place in the audio of the rankings that we will record after the fact of her entire career. Okay, this is Griffin. David zooming in from the future. Heckerling rankings. Here we go. David, you want to go first?

Number one, clueless. Weird, surprising. Number two, fast times are usually run high. Okay. Normal so far. Number three, look who's talking. I have that over. Johnny Dangerously in fourth.

Mm-hmm. And Vamps in fifth. Okay. And I Could Never Be Your Woman in sixth. Wow. And La Housa Her in seventh. Okay. Euro Vacation in eighth.

Look who's talking too, bringing up the rear. That's maybe the rudest thing you've ever done in a ranking. What? Mr. Toilet Man alone deserves better than worked up. deserves better than the lowest possible. But it's so funny because you're like, how could you say that about Luke who's talking to you? And I'm like, what? And you're like, Mr. Toilet Man,

but then you don't have anything else. That movie is like the Holy Mountain. It's like deranged, like fever dream images. Okay, here's my ranking. You might be surprised to hear we have the same top five just in a slightly different order. But I figured that's basically the argument. Johnny third.

Right. So I have Fast Times at number one. Oh! I love Fast Times. Yeah, that's right. Clueless at number two. Johnny Dangerously at number three. Laku's Talking at number four. Vamps at five.

The number six. Exactly where it belongs. Laku's Talking two. Jesus Christ. Number seven. National Ampions's European Vacation. Whoa. Number eight, La House of Her.

Number nine, I Could Never Be Your Woman. Wow, Piper. Dead in a ditch. Do you remember that watching that movie feels like staring into the sun? It's like having a stroke. It has things in it I like. Exactly.

There is no movie she's made that I dislike holistically. I would say there's one for me. Which is? A little film with Mr. Toilet in it. You're by calling, by referring to it as a film with Mr. Toilet, man, you're proving your entire thesis wrong. He eats poo poo and pee pee and he's voiced by Mel Brooks.

Okay. Anyway, that's our ranking. I like how his spit is blue. Ben's ranking is, look who's talking now 10 times, even though she didn't direct that. It's fun, okay? And there's animals and they talk in it. It has talking dogs.

You don't have to tell me. Okay, back to the episode. We've done this box office game before. We have? Yep. We've done it twice. It's amazing that there is a box office game before. We have? Yep. We've done it twice. It's amazing that there is a box office game for this one. Well, that's the thing.

It's sort of a nominal box office game. But number one is an animated film that Ben loves. It's an animated film that Ben loves. It is called Wreck It Ralph. Correct. New this week. So Ben was wrecking it. I know you actually first watched the movie

on a plane or something, but you were, let's think of you wrecking it. I didn't end first watched the movie on a plane or something, but you were Let's think of you right at the end of seeing it. He said you didn't remember Yeah, you said you didn't remember much but you wrecked it. No more two is a box off at the box office is a Serious sort of big scale ish drama I got a couple of nominations also new this week and we've also covered it on the show We've also covered it on this show in We've also covered it on this show. In the year 2012, it is not a Fincher. It's not an Ang Lee. It is not a Demi, it's not a Myers. It's not, it's not Spielberg.

It's not a Crow. November 2nd, 2012 by the way. Yeah, I know. November 2nd, 2012. Not a Cameron, it's not a Lucas, it's not a Shyamalan. David's spinning his phone cables really fast. Give me a serious Oscar film. Got a couple nominations. Tell me some of the nominations. Best actor. I got best actor.

Yes. I could have won if this guy hadn't already won an Oscar or two. And best original screenplay. I got best actor and best original screenplay. And this person had already won two Oscars? He sure had. It's not a Denzel. It is a Denzel.

It's called Flight. That's right. There we go. Now, number three of the box office wins best picture for 2012. And what is that? It is... Is it the artist? Oh, it's...

What? Are you saying I'm right? With 2012, that's the year before? The artist is 2011. Okay, so 2012, the best picture winner was... Our Go Fuck Yourself? There you go. Now, number four, we just had to get to four. I believe has really befuddled you both times.

I think both box times we played this box office game, you took several golf swings at this challenge. It is an action film. It is directed by a first time director who's better known as a musician. Oh, fuck. The problem is I know exactly what this movie is, and I always get the wording of the title wrong.

Is it called The Man with the Golden Fist? You always say that, and it's always, Fuck! What material? Iron. There you go. There's one episode, I think, where you're like, Prawns, brass, stone!

Like, it takes you way too long to get to iron. Yes. The Rizzo's. Despite, yes. The Rizzo's martial arts film. I believe so. Yeah. Despite Ben's love of Netflix's Iron Fist. Of course. Number five of the box office is an action sequel.

It's an action sequel. It's number two, it's a deuce. It's a number two. Is it a T.O.O. too? Hacker link style? No, it's not. It's an action sequel to Deuce. Did it keep going after this?

So we're at the end of the road. It kept going. What's that sexy voice? Well, I'm doing the guy. No, he's doing the guy. It's not John Wick chapter two. No. But the guy's got a deep voice.

This guy should stay around. Okay. Okay. And it's not Butler and it's not Staphon. No, older. Older? Who's old? Who's old?atham. No, older. Older? Who's old? Who's old?

Stallone? No, younger. Well, younger. I think a little younger. It's not Ford and it's not Eastwood. No. No, but he's mostly an action guy? Later in life only.

Oh, he's got a very particular set of skills. Well, I didn't want to do the accents. Of course. This is Taken Two. That's right. Yeah. Oh, he's got a very particular set of skills. Well, I didn't want to do the accent. Of course. This is Taken 2. That's right. Yeah. A movie I often say has one of the best setups ever. You love the setup for that movie, but it sucks.

Yeah. Very, sucks very bad. It's actually a really bad movie. I don't like Taken 1. Like, I think Taken 1 is massively overrated. It just has the niece and juice and like it's kind of something, you know. You know what? I'm going to say the thing.

It's a perfect cultural object. It is not'm gonna say the thing It's a perfect cultural object It is not a good movie, but it's a perfect cultural object and to is a dog She was like forget it. Forget it. Forget it. Just no Cuz like what they then figured out is like Oh Nissan can just do this kind of thing, right? It doesn't have to be in the taken right and taken three kind of has no hook. Yeah. Yeah, it's just sort of like right He's back. Yeah, it's just sort of like, right, he's back. No, I think no one gets taken in Taken 3. It's okay.

I'm gonna take you. I feel like they should have played around with the titling a little bit more. Taken TOEWO. Taking. Oh, sure. Sure. That's about it, right? Well, hold on.

Given back. The third one should be called Given Back. Yeah. It's good when we're doing... Return. Bits. And Ben goes, hold on. That's when you know good stuff's coming. Number six is Cloud Atlas. We've covered.

Number seven is hotel. We've done this box office game three times. No, no, no, cause this isn't new that week. I'm saying Ralph and flight are both new. Got it. Number six is Cloud Atlas. Number seven is hotel, transylvania There we go number eight is paranormal activity for the one with the Xbox the number three

Yeah, number nine is the connect through his four is not the best Or is not maybe the worst one yeah for a number nine is here comes the boom of course everyone what if we remade? warrior one year later? With Kevin James. And number 10 is the absolutely indefensible Silent Hill Revelation. Sure. Now, David, would you do me a kindness? Would you just, just for my own joy, remind me what the numbers were on Ralph and Flight

Opening Weekend? Ralph was $49 million and Flight was $24.9. Yeah, I remember feeling that the Ralph opening was lower than I expected. It obviously legged it out and had a long tail. So this was November 2nd? November 2nd! They couldn't even give Vamps like a real Halloween weekend? It's close!

You know what, Caroline? You're right. But maybe a week before would have been greater. If they only released it in theater, at least put it out before Halloween instead of two days after. Let us see it on Halloween! That is rude. That's rude! It's a good one. Come on. Theater, at least put it out before Halloween instead of two days after. Let us see it on Halloween. That is rude. That's rude. We have done the week before Box Office, which because it is Cloud Atlas' first week.

Okay. Yeah. Wow. It just, it could have been Vamps. It could have been Vamps. I hope people watch this movie. I hope if you thought this is one you could skip and just listen to the episode. Check it out.

I will say at the time we're recording this, it is on all of America's most free streaming services. It is on Tubi, it is on Pluto, it is on Fubo, it's on all of them. Yeah, this thing is Tubi. You can watch it on Plex with ads, it's everywhere. And do, please do. Yeah. But I think it's quite a good film.

Next up on our podcast is The Con Brothers, so it's not a surprise. No big surprise. I keep asking people, being asked by people, spoilers, but like, what's the rest of the year? And I remind them- The Coen Brothers. The Coens won and they made 20 movies.

A lot of their movies are gonna be covered. Congratulations, that's the rest of the year, along with new release films. Oh, and David's wearing his congratulations shirt. Caroline, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you so much for having me. Far too long, we'll have you on again sooner. Yeah, you wanna do Blood Simple?

Just come back next week. Yeah, you wanna come back next week. Just keep this going, keep this part going. Anything you wanna plug? Not really, I hope I have more stuff to plug by the time this comes out. I just wanna issue a quick apology for anyone who was at a 2016 show at Little Field that had 12 of us,

including Mother of Blankies, Emily, or Sheeta, taking a track for each Carly Rae Jepsen song on the hit album Emotion. Great song. Which featured me. I had taken the song Warm Blood and I decided to give a little PowerPoint presentation on Lesbian Vampires. I did get very nervous and too drunk and I can't imagine that was good. Also I did take that song away from the very wonderful award-winning national treasure writer Hanifa Durrakeb. He wanted Warm Blood and whatever he tells the story about that night, he talks about how he didn't get Warm Blood and he wanted it.

What did he get? Um, I don't remember the... Oh, my viewers, I really like you. And he put up... And the reason why he talks about this is because he put up, um, a screen that just said, tell someone you love them tonight. And he just talked as he can and just gave a wonderful,

moving, meaningful speech about telling people you love them. And people talk about it all the time and reference it. And I... So stop complaining then. He got a great one. I'm saying. But he always talks about how he didn't get warm blood. And that's because it was me talking about lesbian vampires.

And I thought this would be a great opportunity. A great forum. To apologize for that. Cause I do feel like there are some people listening who probably went to that. Emily did the LA hallucination song. Cause she is an LA baby. I cannot think of another example of asking someone if they have anything they want to plug.

Instead, they offer an apology for a thing that happened nine years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember? I assume. No offense to that. I'm sure. I mean, I don't. Do you still have any of those PowerPoint slides? I'm sure I do. I think it's probably online somewhere. I have a shirt that I got for it. But anyway, I just felt like, you know, in honor of Vamps.

You're the best. We owe you big time. Yep. David is gone. Just fucking dropping a celebratory deuce to end the episode. And disrespectful to Amy Heckerling, but I agree. We gave him air conditioning and Sour Patch Kids. We let him go hog wild this episode, and this is how he repays us. God, those Sour Patch Kids, we let him go hog wild this episode and this is how he repays us. God, those Sour Patch Kids hits. I'm saying this is, I had them for a reason. This is how I've managed to do it.

I have to go get a bag for myself. Lemonade Sour Patch Kids, they have apple flavors in the fall. Look them up. I've never tried. The only time I've ever ordered snacks off Amazon. Specialty Sour Patch Kids, get into them. Okay. Okay. Not sponsored by them. That's a good plug. Yeah. Thank you for being here. You're soour Patch Kids. Get into them. Okay. Okay. Not sponsored.

That's a good plug. Yeah. Thank you for being here. You're so welcome. It's such a pleasure. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, subscribe and tune in next week for Blood Simple, the start of the Coen Brothers filmographies.

And as always, canonically, and he's not allowed to say anything against this because he he waived that right David is currently taking the world's sloppy a shit That's how he ended the episode and if he disagrees, then here's his chance to offer rebuttal Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Bardy 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 in 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, BlankCheck Special Features, for exclusive franchise

commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at blankcheckpod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.