Blank Check with Griffin & David - Welcome to Marwen with Emily Yoshida

Episode Date: January 24, 2021

Emily Yoshida is back to welcome you to Marwen! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

you just don't get it do you podcasts are the saviors of the world! What word are you replacing there? I know it. Women. Women. Of course. Of course. Women.

Yes. Yes. David, how did you forget the crystal clear moral of this film? If this film exists for any reason, it is to remind us that women are the savior of the world, and it is laser, laser locked on that being its message he should have said mar women and then looked at the camera i mean it's like i just gave that a toast i agree i agree um mark i agree mark hogan camp most of the other quotes on this page, I just feel gross to try to turn into

a joke because of the real world trauma. Podcast won't be invented until 1954. Fuck, that's a good one. Emily, yeah, no, that's a really good one. The tagline for this movie is you can't put this hero in a box.

You should have got down on one knee griffin i should have got down on one knee i should be doing this entire podcast on one knee in silence after my opening and just sit there in one knee in what might be the most uncomfortable moment in the history of major studio filmmaking um tough moment it's a tough moment yes yes but like here are the here are the other quotes no no don't read from the quotes page because all the other imdb quotes are just about his assault like there's only like six on there like it's not even really yeah well emily no one has done any has paid any attention to this movie like no one has gone into the imdb

page and been like i should add some goofs like you know no one's done it uh this sounds like you are creating this sounds like a make work for for the blankies out there there's a pretty blank canvas if you want to give it a shot like marwin there's a lot of room to play around with on that imdb page. If you want to start your own Angel Fire Marwyn fan page, you could pretty quickly become the definitive Marwyn fan source online. Don't tempt me. I have too many things to do. That sounds really fun. Here's the other one.

I didn't want to. It's too much back and forth dialogue, but this is the only other one I thought I could do. Hoagie says, I like to wear heels sometimes. I don't know why but they somehow connect me the essence of dames does it bother you and nicole says it doesn't bother me in the least and his response is good i love dames he loves dames he loves he loves dames right he's hoagie right he's in character when he's yeah he's in the hoagie hug yes yeah uh man what a what a fucking movie do you guys

know i feel like often we joke about movies that don't exist this is a movie that so thoroughly exists it does really exist i was gonna say yes it really exists but it's daring you every moment to go like just try to fucking process what you're watching right now i dare you to keep this in your brain oh i think it's wholly memorable but i think that when i think of a movie that doesn't exist i'm when and when you guys classify something like that i'm largely thinking of movies that had a usually they're movies that have an advertising campaign that i remember really clearly because that's all that I remember. I remember the standee in the lobby of the movie theater and nothing else. Yeah.

Yeah, like X versus Sever, I would put in that category. But this one is one of those too. But I actually remember the movie. Because for the longest time, I think it was at the AMC on 34th. Sure. They had the huge, huge standee, like a room-sized standee of all of the women of Marwen, like size.

And I had seen the documentary and I was like, I don't know what this is. Yep. Yeah. I re-watched the documentary before this. The documentary is one of my favorite documentaries the last 10 years unsurprisingly it's so good very good yeah it's incredible i also also re-watched yes cannot recommend it enough and i will even say if you're uh uh someone

who has not seen the documentary and watched this movie in preparation for the podcast i'd maybe even advise you to go watch the documentary before listening to this uh it's an interesting thing to keep in your head as you're sort of listening to both it's on movie right now it's streaming on movie it's a fucking great movie it's a great movie you know what else is a great movie david takes a sip of beer no david baby okay that's that's a great movie the beer he's calling it right now he's calling it movie david david's taking a fucking movie man what both of you like this movie now i just watched it before we started recording and i got teary-eyed i really got affected by this movie i liked how much steve carell embodied like a down and out or just like a the kind of character you don't see enough it makes you realize how michael scott is just two inches to the left of being an outsider artist. Yes. Look, I want to make this very clear.

Ben is speaking with an earnest, clear-eyed passion, the likes of which we perhaps have not seen since the Spanglish episode. And David's kicking back in his chair, drinking a fucking cream lager with a smug, shit-eating grin on his face like he's ready to fucking go to bat for marwin he's just he's just he's provocateur now he's fucking hollywood hogan he's kind of villain he's holding a pinky to his mouth dr evil style you you've been fucking teeing

this up all week you posted a letterboxd score saying it was good you've been tweeting about this movie being good i've been dreading this episode all week dreading he's been dreading it i guess because he doesn't like welcome to marwin which is you don't like the movie welcome to marwin griffin why everybody loves it haven't you heard the hottest movie of 2018 is it because you're a toy boy is Is that what it is? You're too close to it? I got a lot of thoughts. I got a lot of thoughts.

Okay. But let me just say this. I wish I had never crossed city limits. I wish I'd never even given them the chance to welcome me to Marwen. Let alone twice. You should introduce the podcast, though. I'm realizing we haven't done that. No. Welcome to Marwen. Welcome to Marwen. let alone twice you should introduce the podcast though i'm realizing we haven't done that no welcome this is to marwin welcome to marwin uh this is a podcast uh called uh marwin uh

it's a podcast called blank check the griffin david i'm griffin i'm david it could be called like day degree like griffid griffid you know if we like did a portmanteau right like you know daifun daifun it would have to work Ben in there

and maybe Emily because the whole thing is it's like three names it's so clunky yeah well more when called right in the movie not in the documentary

but yes yes well but no yeah I mean I will get into this but this is a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want to the degree that even 20 years after winning best picture you're allowed to make this and release it christmas day uh

sometimes uh those checks uh clear and sometimes they bounce a baby uh because this this is a big big ass bounce yeah this is a solid bounce i mean classic bounce yeah a valiant bounce david you had said in the past like we had always been wishy-washy at the idea of being doing zemeckis and then marwin is like him daring us not to cover him on the podcast yeah you did your impression on some episode of zemeckis going like look at this fucking thing like like slapping the screen and going like you guys really aren't gonna dig into this you're gonna tell me there's not a ton of shit going on here you know you know it's like how like rob reiner not that he ever was a zemeckis

level but he was he was a big deal director right and he's like eh for the last 15 years i don't know it'll just be a movie it'll be about some guys they hang out you know like it's just like he's just winding down he's just relaxing and zemeckis is like no no no no no i'm putting it all up on the screen guys I saw a documentary let me tell you about this documentary what I liked about this documentary is how horny this guy is I just

I mean this is as we're saying a mini series on the films of Robert Zemeckis it's called Podcast Away we're almost done but I think it's important I was just sort of clocking so you go like The Walk and Welcome to Marwen

two documentary adaptations with Allied a fully original script in between then after this he directs an adaptation of a book that's already been adapted well by an esteemed filmmaker right

in the witch flights an original script uh and then before flight he does christmas carol which is one of the most adapted works in history and then after witches he's doing pinocchio which is also one of the most adapted works in history there is something kind of hubristic about him being like i should tell this story again like he just keeps saying like no i really need to be the one who tells this again yeah it's all true allied is the weird outlier and all that but allied in flight are the two like splits works yeah well it seems with this one especially he doesn't he can't tell the difference between a curator's instinct and a creator's instinct right because if you were like programming a film series and you saw marwin call you'd be like oh hell yeah put that in i love it

but like his instinct is like no i i love it how can I show my love for it? I need to make it again, which I think is a common thing. I think that's very common, but yeah. Right, it's the classic sort of like upper echelons of Hollywood arrogance of like, I saw something I think is great. The ultimate tribute I can pay to it is to make it broader and more accessible

to share it with other people rather than promoting the original thing yeah um can i just say david to correct you our guest today of course is emily yoshida uh the great the mother of blankies i was gonna i was hoping you would never say it i was hoping we could get through this whole thing yes that's the anonymous now our guest is anonymous um i i could just disappear into the background of the Marwen bar. The ruined stocking. Thank you, Emily. The ruined stocking.

What I wouldn't give to sit at a Marwen bar right now. But if I can just correct you, David. IMDB, welcome to Marwen. Goofs. Reve revealing mistakes. Mark tells Nicole dolls cannot close their eyes, yet there are some instances later on where Nicole has her eyes closed. A goof.

Wow, that's a big goof. In many close shots on Mark Hogenkamp's hands, the hands are not those of Steve Carell. A goof. Wait, I don't know if that's a goof. Isn't that just a common filmmaking thing? Revealing mistake. Well, now the movie's ruined.

Let's just all go home. Folks, I don't want to alarm you, but this next one up is a character error. Boom. The Nazis speak Folks, I don't want to alarm you, but this next one up is a character error. The Nazis speak broken English. Fuck, I fucked it up. It's the Nazis speak broken German with heavy English accent, but it's not even written correctly.

Yeah, also, I don't, look, look, look, the goofs page is a nightmare. Someone's got to get in here. We need, it's like a super fun site site like the federal government has to step in the marwin is no good at all it's mad about using light years as a unit of distance rather than a unit of time or something like chill out um welcome to marwin welcome to marwin welcome to marwin emily welcome back on the show welcome to emily who demanded this episode i guess demanded it yeah i guess i violently demanded it um yeah i would have taken so many zemeck i was i was hard hardcore on the bob bz campaign also sure but it was but i would have taken honestly anything um this one's fun because I was pretty sure nobody else was going to want this one.

It is depressing to me. I'm very happy to have you back, Emily, of course. I'm happy to be back. I mean, this is now my third thing in quarantine with you guys. Quarantine's really working out well for me. Well, it's the second, it's the second, but the Mad Max episode came out

when we were in quarantine. Right, right. But we recorded it. But we recorded it. That's what I was going to say. That's what I was going to say. The thing I find depressing, very happy to have you back on the show,

I find it depressing that we've been in this long enough that you've now made two appearances recorded during quarantine when we try to not have people on two consecutive mini-series and you're doing the second to last episode on one of our longest mini-series ever yeah this thing has gone on for a long time it seems seems bad seems like seems like we're all sick of it and wish we could record podcasts in person

but then you watch a movie like this and you remember that we're all just humans and we have emotions and life is hard thank you for bringing it back to the film Ben find yourself in Marwen and life is hard. Man, I like this movie. Thank you for bringing it back to the film, Ben,

who loved this movie so much. Find yourself in Marwen. God, Griffin, when are we getting a steelbook on Marwen? Marwen book. Marwen was one of the first movies to just have its 4K physical media release canceled. That was this period. Like Universal. Yeah, where they were just like you

know what is anyone gonna buy this it was like the beginning of studios saying like maybe not every movie needs to get released physically you know what i have to say about that griffin what cancel culture is out of control cancel culture is out of control and he took a sip of his cream ale by the way it's not a cream ale for crying out loud it's a bell's light-hearted ale it is a low calorie beer doesn't feel light on yeah he's he's doing so much fucking smug prop comedy with this he's using it to like fucking punctuate his sentences when he's like holding it up and shaking it right cheersing his monitor

yeah we see you like Hoagie cheersing his coffee cup at the bar at the ruined stocking I have to warn you guys that this might be I mean I don't know how many times I've been on this podcast now I forget like you know

I have the privilege of forgetting how many times I've been on this podcast and it is forget. A lot. I have the privilege of forgetting how many times I've been on this podcast. And it is a privilege. I'm glad you acknowledge your privilege. Actually, this is your 10th main feed appearance. If we're counting Titanic

as one episode, which we should. We are. We're not counting bonus episodes. No. So, including bonuses, you've got more, but this is your 10th main feed. I'm So, you know, including bonuses, you've got more. But this is your 10th main feed.

I'm sure no one else. Double digit, baby. The first one. I've still done that. You're the first double digiter. Yeah, I am. Well, yeah. So everybody can eat my dust. But the other thing I was going to say is that, like, this might be the 10th appearance of me Emily

on this podcast but it is probably only the second appearance including the special features of

drunk Emily on this podcast hey we love to see it I'm gonna go get a drink you're lightly

toasted Emily you're not drunk but this is good. We haven't even started talking about this movie yet. And this is a two-hour podcast, and we're about 15 minutes in. Fantastic. Ben, thank you for saying it's a two-hour podcast. I'd love to aspire to that.

That's just great to hear. That's very flattering. Aspire to it. It's what it's been. No, I'm saying two hours is a good limit that we usually break through. We're cutting ourselves off after that point. Okay. Griffin is gone.

He's unwelcome from Marwyn, apparently. Now we can only look at Mark and Wendy's nuptials in front of a gallery of hanged men. Well, I like that Emily is being upfront and emotional because it feels right for this movie. I am going to defend the hell out of this because it made me really feel a lot of stuff. And I can't stop defending it. I really can't. I think it's fucking awesome. I think it's fucking awesome. I think it's fucking awesome. I,

uh, I think it's, uh, I think it's a fascinating movie. Yeah. It's a fascinating movie. Um, and a lot of it is,

it works very well. Okay. So Griffin isn't here yet, but I'm just going to talk about this since you, uh, saw this for the first time, Ben, and we're so into it.

So I, as I mentioned to David over text, I, I had to watch this. I'm staying with my mom right now. There's one TV in the living room. And I was like, I have to watch this movie for a podcast. I've seen it already. It's not that good. You don't need to watch it with me. She's like, oh, I want to watch the movie with you. And I was like, oh, don't worry about it. I'll just watch it when you're busy or doing something. But then, you know, I was watching it this morning. Inevitably, she came through and ended up watching the whole thing with me. And she's like, that wasn't as bad as you said it was.

And I was like, you know what? You're right. It wasn't as bad as I said it was. That's my exact experience. They were dunking on this the whole miniseries. They were like, Marwyn this, bad that. But I think it deserves to be were like marwin this bad that it's but i think it deserves marwin this bad i do think it deserves it's oh a cat pig you're in the way come on wow pig is just wow pig is in the conversation pig has entered the discourse all right i'm sorry i'm sorry but i was but i was gonna say that uh

i do think it deserves this is not a qualitative evaluation but like it should be this looming thing on the horizon of your zemeckis journey it is the thing by which all else is measured including like back to the future and yeah it's no it's it's almost annoying that he made the witches like i'm sure the witches will be fun to dunk on or like dissect or you know but like this would have been a great capper like this would have just been quite griff has arrived he's opening something all right he's back i got an entire bottle of wine i'm not gonna be the only sober one on a fucking marwin episode where i where I'm the minority opinion that this movie is demented. I need to be drunk if this is where this is going.

It's a busy night at the Ruin Stocking. We're all tying one on. Oh, my God. He's sipping out of the bottle. What are you doing? I just straight up open a bottle of fucking white wine. Griffin, I'm not saying the movie's not demented. It's not like I'm like, oh, this is a carefully and sensitively made, quiet, you know, this is a crazy movie.

This movie is insane. I just, you know, it gelled much more for me on my second viewing if I'm being actually just sober about it. For sure. Yeah. Now you're going to be sober. I just opened a bottle of wine! You know what? I think I should be stone-cold sober now. What?

No, I'm joking. Come on, come on. But that's exactly what I was saying, Griffin, when you were out. I heard it. I have my Bluetooth headphones on. I could hear what you were saying. I thought you were gonna bring toys over. Oh.

Oh, yeah. Here's Harry Dean Stanton. Hey, I love it. That's a cool action figure. That looks amazing. Yeah, it's great. That actually looks really good. What a good toy.

Griffin, the action, the figures look so much like the actors. It's so good. It's so good. It's so well done. Seeing Marwen and seeing that action figure gets Ben really into toys. Yeah, now he's all... What if Ben's becoming a toy boy? He's going to co-host the merch spotlight.

What about this guy? Oh, wow. I'm just grabbing the three action figures closest to my desk at this moment. Those are good ones, though. If anyone wants to know how my apartment works, at any moment I can reach out and without extending anything other than my arm, grab three action figures. I've been looking for specific action figures for a present for somebody that I should actually discuss with you guys once we're not recording. But I've never gone into this world at all and it's

it's obscene to me it's so it's crazy like how much stuff costs is like makes me want to die but I'm glad that everybody's having a fun time oh I love this guy I don't know who he is no that cowboy the little people cowboy yeah it's like a fisher person what is that like a round

lego it's a little cowboy yeah they're little pegs did you not have little people cowboy? Yeah, it's like a Fisher-Price little person. Like a round Lego demon? It's a little cowboy. Yeah, they're little pegs. Did they not have little people in the ditch, Ben? No. No, we did not. Isn't he cute? People know what I'm talking about who can't see this on the Zoom. They're like those little peg people.

Yeah, he's got little pegs if you wanted to put them on't even have legos we just had wooden nails we just hammered stuff together two by fours that's right that's right uh anyway look there's not a lot of context on this movie getting made i think most of the context is the real story versus this movie, which I do feel like there. I try to avoid, I feel like my tendency to do too much of the sort of one to one like this is the movie we're talking about. And this is what the thing it's based off of was like. And here's what they changed. But I think in this case, it is so fucking telling because for good or ill, regardless of what you think of the movie, telling because for good or ill regardless of what you think of the movie it is a very zemeckis adaptation of the material in terms of what elements he chooses to take from the real story

and what he completely ignores or revises and it's very similar to forrest gump where he said like my goal was just to take away everything unsavory about this guy, you know, to just make Forrest Gump charming and aspirational. And as weird as this movie and this character are, it does feel like almost every story decision he made was to try to take away everything kind of unsavory about this guy, which is perhaps a fool's errand when the material is so fundamentally strange. The idea that at some point

he could break this character into being like a very, very relatable audience surrogate is bizarre because he's a very, very specific man under very, very specific circumstances

who operates in a very specific way. Yeah. I don't know if Mark Hogan came up with the real guy. Is he unsavory exactly like what i mean obviously he's well he's not a pg figure no he's not a pg figure he's got a porn collection i mean come on so does so does movie yes they include that no shame i mean i understand what you're getting at griffin like i do think it's a very Zemeckified version.

But that's actually the thing that I find kind of at the same time admirable and completely doesn't work about this film is that, like, he does actually include a lot of this stuff. It's just through this Zemeckis lens with an Alan Silvestri score going over it. And you're just like, the dissonance, the cognitive dissonance is crazy insane insane insane alan silvestri like what did he like what did he talk about with alan silvestri when they're like deciding how to score him like at home watching porn like has alan silvestri ever scored a scene of a guy watching porn at home wait did they at one point during the porn stuff did they have the drumming like the military drumming was that part of that oh i feel like that's like a deja thing like anytime deja's around there's like the snare drum i don't know if that was during the porn scene but yeah i just

i find it fascinating that like looking at this source material he was was like, oh, I should go the walk-forced-gump route on this rather than the flight route, you know? Because of, as you said, Emily, the innate cognitive dissonance that comes from so many of these story beats being done in, like, the House Zemeckis sort of Amblin-adjacent style. It is so fucking bizarre. Look, I will admit I disliked this movie less than I did in theaters. I don't know if I can say I like it. There is more that I respect about it now. When I saw it in theaters, I was pretty irate, which I think also has to do with my love of the documentary, of the real story, of Mark H hogan camp's work is all obviously very much in my wheelhouse uh so i think i was just sort of like so frustrated with how he worked the story in the

way and then as you said emily like the bizarreness of like you cut that out but you kept that in like at a certain point if you're gonna try to wash it that much then maybe go even further away from reality you know name names what come on let's get into it well okay well i guess first we should we should just set up the very i mean people probably know but yeah the real mark hoken camp was attacked you know outside of a bar who let me let me unpack this because i could i could talk about what's changed by by doing this okay all right welcome to marwin as welcome to marwin everybody welcome to marwin welcome to marwin uh but uh this from the moment he comes out of mocap land zemeckis is at any point in time loosely circling four or five scripts

right like i feel like he's just perpetually been in this state where every four or five months there's another announcement where it's like zemeckis considering blank and then one project finally goes and i feel like i heard this one rumored for a couple years before it finally happened and that it was going to happen with DiCaprio playing Hogan Camp, and then he went and did Allied instead, which was very much like a fast-track project. Can you imagine DiCaprio? Cannot.

Cannot. Would have been interesting. No, it would not. Oh, my God. Okay, anyway, that's fascinating. I didn't know that. That's amazing. I mean, what's weird is I went,

that's a weird casting choice. When they announced Carell, I went, oh, that actually makes sense but we're gonna have to talk about the weird state of steve correll's current career uh within this podcast but this is this is the the real mark hogan camp story and then we'll get into sort of like uh what the movie changes to it okay uh and the documentary one of the many things I like about it is it is kind of elusive. It's structured a little bit like a mystery without any answers

because the guy is really not, does not have a lot of clarity on himself. So as the documentary goes on, you start to find out more and more about the guy and his past and all of this sort of shit. But he still really can't explain a lot of things. And there are a lot of question marks in his life.

So there's something more elusive about the movie, which I think benefits the story. And when I say that he's unsavory, I think the thing that I like so much about the documentary, which is easy to do in documentary where it's a real person and it's harder to judge a real person as a character versus a fictional character being written by Hollywood screenwriters and played by a movie star. But he's got this weird rage within him, right? Which the movie

character is very sort of wet blankety. It's this kind of Corral, wounded puppy dog thing that I feel like he's been doing in dramas for the last five or six years. Right. I would say there's less of an edge to him, but it is, you also cast Steve Carell. So, right. That might just sort of be what you're going to get. Right. All of it is, is offlaid into the intense, like mostly machine gun violence in this film, which I think is actually just as interesting. It's like you had this wet blanket guy and then you see his inner world and it's filled with gunfire. The violence in this movie is a huge part of what turned me on to it. Yeah.

And you can just extract that soundbite that I just said, I guess, and use it against me. And I don't really know that I'm going to be able to combat that. When do they reveal that he doesn't remember anything from before the attack because it's sort of a late reveal and in welcome to marwin oh i feel like that's pretty early in the documentary i feel like yeah uh because it's in the trailer for a second what was what was the question basically like when when his amnesia his sort of total amnesia is revealed in the documentary but i think it's right at the start when he's kind of laying it out almost immediately i was gonna say that's that's such a big thing and

that's so much of what i find kind of confounding about his adaptation choices is what part of the story zemeckis chooses to represent right right? The documentary is obviously at the mercy of, they can only start telling the story at the moment the documentary filmmaker finds out about him. But he pretty early on in the movie recounts, I was beaten up outside of a bar by five guys within an inch of my life. And I had total amnesia.

I remember nothing about my life. And I had to relearn how to walk, how to talk, but also relearn who I was. Which I think is such a fundamentally fascinating thing that this movie doesn't really deal with. There's the thing at the beginning where he's looking at the book with all the photos, the scrapbook. where he's looking at the book with all the photos, the scrapbook. And it's sort of done in this sort of cute way

until he turns to the page that is 18 newspaper clippings of the most traumatic thing that ever happened to him that he just looks at fondly. But also he was a drunkard and homeless on and off for a while

and they kind of are just like, that happened? Yeah, they skim over the part where it's like, oh, he was probably an alcoholic before all this. That's the fundamental intrigue of the guy for me in the documentary, which is he wakes up. He doesn't remember anything.

He learns how to walk. He learns how to talk. He starts learning about who he was, and he realizes he doesn't really like that guy. Right? Right. He barely feels a connection to the person. Right. Right.

And there's this part in the documentary that's so profound where he talks to his friends and he's like, was I like an asshole? And they're like, you weren't like an asshole, but you were like a violent drunk. It was scary to be around you. Yeah. Right. And it's like, was I mean to you? And it's like, no, but it was like tough, you know, and he does have this sort of fear of who he was as like an impartial observer trying to piece together this man that he used to be, that he has no memory of, but that he feels some sort of guilt over. Right.

It's like a reverse kind of RoboCop thing, which is probably why I like it so much. And there's that there's that fascinating thing of like he works at the bar and he's like, well, it can be like Sam Malone and I just won't drink. And just you're watching him next to all these bottles and you sort of have that thought of like, is, you know, what if this guy who doesn't even remember being an alcoholic had a drink and it just like, you know, turned, you know, like there's that weird tension to that. That's that's very compelling. Is it a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing? Yeah. Go ahead, Emily. But I think the inverse of that that's really fascinating about it is the stuff that does stick around.

Like he was an artist and a pretty talented drawer, like just illustrator before all that. And he lost his motor skills or the ability to both write and draw but then he still has this like fundamental creative urge which kind of drop like leads him to do the marwin project which is one of those kind of inexplicable like oliver sax's type like what is the brain how does it work like how does the shoe thing carry over like like that that's just a like that that hung on and like other major aspects of his life didn't and i think that i think that a big miscalculation of this film is that it introduces the it introduces the mario win project up front and and and that this is a guy who has a little village in his backyard where he

has this sort of world war two Fantasia. That's like very like strangely kinky and like, but he's just one of these guys who has a, um, a village in his backyard. You know, everybody, every town has one of these.

Everyone's like, Oh, my town had one of these. I wasn't surprised at all. But then, but then it, but then what it tries to execute then is the third act thing of like, so,

you know, you know that guy right in your life, but this is why he's like that. And like does the reveal of the amnesia, which like is completely unnecessary. Like, I think it's such a specific pursuit. It's such a specific situation that if you don't lead with why it happened,

you lose all the, that's like missed opportunity for gravity for that, for the entire two thirds of the film. I think. Hard to agree. And this is my second major gripe. The other thing I find so interesting about the story itself. And to your point, David, I mean, what

you said about him wanting to be this, like, Sam Malone teetotaler in a bar, it's another one of these fascinating Oliver Sachs things where he's like, I woke up and I just had no impulse to drink ever again. There's no part of me that wants to drink. I don't feel tempted by it. It's not just that he's, like, haunted

by the stories he hears about what a drunk he used to be. Yes, right. But he's still an by the stories he hears about what a drunk used to be. Yes, right. But he's still an addict, though. He's still an addict. Yes. Sure. Sure.

But Zemeckis makes this movie ultimately about the guy needing to cut his pill habit, which is not something that is in the real story at all. Right. For all we know. That's the thing that is a a very unusual change and when i saw milken to marwin i was like i don't remember the pill thing is that in the documentary and so i went back to the documentary and i was like you know i guess he just like wanted to make because deja the belgian witch plays is in it but she's not a representation of his meds the addiction yeah no well but that's because again he's not as clear anyway really except that it's sort of like yeah that's like

my friend and that's you know like and they'll hold up their doll i'd like you know in the documentary um this is major point two for me and it's building off of what you said emily the thing i find so fascinating and so tragic about the story and a thing I think they set up so well from the beginning is that, like, this is a story of triumph in the face of our our ghoulish, inherently fucked health care system in America. Right. by his, you know, he couldn't do much therapy because it ran out. He's a vet who was beaten in a hate crime and then was told essentially like, uh, you're off the plan after like two weeks of rehab. You're on your own. You can't afford

this anymore. And he was essentially one of these guys who should have just fallen in between the cracks, right? Should have ended up just a complete victim of the gaping maw of our fucked society uh and instead he found this weird outlet as you said emily he was this amazing visual artist he lost those motor skills you look at his drawings in the documentary and they're like horrifying violent things like they look like the fucking banned appetite for destruction album cover like they're like really like clearly the product of a

tortured psyche and he comes out of it and he wants to draw he wants some way to express what he's feeling he still has that creative thing you can't knock out of him but he loses that and he finds an entirely new medium this weird outsider art thing that comes through like, I need a hobby. The people at the hobby shop take pity on him. They start giving him stuff for free. He starts building stuff. He gets a broken camera. His camera doesn't have a light meter that works. So it's just trial and error. He shoots a bunch of pictures. He sends them off. They come back. He goes, that roll didn't work. He does the whole thing again he is not making art for anyone else and it is not as much what this movie tries to present of like oh the guy cannot differentiate between his fantasy and his reality it is he is using this medium as means to process his trauma right he is very conscious about the fact despite the fact as you said david that it's hard for him to fully explain the narrative, even though it is clearly like in his head, he understands what he's doing. That it's like, this is my art rehabilitation that I was not given. I had to find a way to heal myself.

He's a more childlike figure in the movie. Yes, he's an innocent in this. There's no question. However. Right. Yes. That's all true. And Marwan Khal is a great and interesting film, and his is a great story.

And that's all worthy of acknowledgement. But at the same time, Robert Zemeckis saw that, I assume saw the documentary, right? I mean, I assume that was what sparked his interest, right? Yeah. I mean, I assume that was what sparked his interest, right? Yeah. And thought like, huh, this guy is, you know, his little, his action figures, his photography is World War II centric. It's like this very old fashioned iconography, right? Like that he's kind of, you know, messing with and, you know, maybe inadvertently, maybe advertently, you know, but like.

That's a sandbox that you could just see Zemeckis salivating at right wouldn't it be crazy to use the power of movies to represent his trauma to make like an adventure movie but also one that where like the war is is both like pretend and also like this insane mental battle. Yeah. Fascinating. Oh, Ben's coming in hot. But also his trash mo-cap movies. Did he go, well, I can make the toys. Oh, it's the perfect outlet for that. It doesn't have to look real.

Right. It can look kind of like heightened and and and like over the top but it's supposed to like it works for him i remember being at a bar with our our buddy rachel lang friend of the show past and future guest and her wife alex pitts friend of the show and i think while we were drinking this story came up on deadline like zemeckis sets next movie at the time it was called the women of marwin with uh corral and i went like oh shit and they went what and i went like this is a documentary i love this is how wild the story is and they kind of went like that's a fascinating story why would he make like why would he remake

that and i said like well what immediately comes to mind is Zemeckis wants to actually cinematically realize the narratives that this guy's created, right? That's, like, obvious. That's the story potential of doing this as a big-budget studio film is you get to actually tell the story in his brain. And in my foolishness, I was like, I guess he'll do it, like, stop motion with, like, the dolls or you'll just see him acting it out. And then I saw the trailer and I was like, I guess he'll do it like stop motion with like the dolls or you'll just see him acting it out. And then I saw the trailer and I was like, you fucking moron. It was just an excuse for him to take this mo-cap shit off the shelf. How did you not see that he looked at this fucking documentary and went like, oh, it's weird plasticky toys. And he like sculpts them to look like his people in his life. So I can cast human actors in the double cast.

We got ourselves a tap from Sims. A light hearted tap. You did a little tap. I just. Cheers from the Davy dog. Yeah. There are a few times I've been more ashamed of myself watching a trailer than that moment when the first mocap shot came up and I went, you fucking moron. How did you not see that this was the plan all along uh yeah i will say right i mean the man had made

three movies where people were criticized for looking like action figures so yeah um these are the two other beats i want to hit quickly and then we can get into what welcome to Marwen does. But the two major differences I think he takes from the real story, one, he becomes this sort of like outsider art figure. He is spotted by a local photographer who recommends him to a friend who runs a Brooklyn art magazine

which ends up with him getting the gallery open that you see at the end of the movie. He's spotted dragging toys along the highway that sticks out i mean right that's noticeable right and in this he says it's like to get the treads with enough damage i believe in the documentary he says it's because he's trying to get the speedometer up to the right number no i i thought am i wrong about that it's the same reason it's he wants the treads to look worn he talks about counting steps though like methodically how many

steps he has to take per day i guess so but he he specifically explains like this this car now has x miles on it and if you right that's what this car is like a one-sixth scale like if you you know he has like a whole thing on his. The Miles thing is what threw me off. You're correct. But there's so much of the documentary that I find fascinating because it gets into this, like, what I think is a really good match for Zemeckis with this material, which is, like, what is the human impulse to tell stories, right? tell stories, right? Here's this guy who's essentially an outsider artist who started creating this work as means of, like, therapy and

processing that then has this value to other people. And he is incredibly uncomfortable at the idea of sharing it with other people, of having to be judged on a serious level, of having to expose his personal things to people in that kind of way. There's a lot of tension in, like,

the last act of the documentary. And it also is this idea of like, oh my God, an art opening in New York City. I'll be like, I'll be normal in New York City. Like he keeps on talking about like Greenwich Village. Like everyone there is a freak like me. I won't feel so weird anymore. And the most heartbreaking moment in the documentary is he goes to Greenwich Village. And it's a bunch of like fucking people who look like us.

And he's like, I don't know, I thought it'd be weirder. Like, he goes to Greenwich Village expecting it to be, like, New Reeds, New York. Right. Rude. Right. Like, that whole thing, which ties into the fourth major change they make, which is this movie goes out of its way to be like, no, no, no, no, don't worry, it's just the shoe thing. Down to the line where he says, when the guys no, don't worry, it's just the shoe thing. Down to the line where he says, when the guys threaten him at the bar, it's just shoes.

In the documentary, in real life, he is a full cross-dresser. And it is not as much cleanly defined as like, I don't know, I just have this shoe thing. Whatever, the shoe thing. It's a weird eccentricity. Because if you make it a shoe thing it become it can become a Zemeckis toy that can be eventually sick

in somebody's throat or whatever it can become a device instead of this very amorphous sort of right it becomes the clock tower or whatever it becomes like one piece of visual iconography that he can repeat a key story points yes well yeah there's that

there's a moment in the documentary where he shows you the closet full of shoes which is like replicated in the in welcome to marwin and like i'm sure right zemeckis was like right well there you go like that that's a perfect image like you know there's stuff like that where he's like yes well but you're i mean right mark hogan camp is there there's a whole transformation thing going on with him and so many which specs which is fascinating like i i love it i love marwood call i love it it's so interesting it's more complicated and i was watching there's a really good blu-ray release they they re-released the movie the documentary when welcome to marwin came out with a bunch of like extra footage they shot of him.

And there were two scenes I was watching on the Blu-ray that really jumped out to me. There's one where he's talking about, like, his, like, trauma and his anger and being alone with his thoughts and, like, stewing on things. And the guy says, like, do you enjoy that, like, being alone with your thoughts?

And he's like, no, not at all. And he's like, do you enjoy that? Like being alone with your thoughts? And he's like, no, not at all. And he's like, do you wish that you didn't obsess over things like that? And he goes, not at all. And then he stares out the window and he goes, look at me. What am I doing here? Talking to you like some kind of woman. And there's this weird like this gets into the unsavory nature of the guy. He has this very weird relationship to women.

Right. He like very much objectifies them and sexualizes them. But then also he's obsessed with like the comfort of the emotional access that he believes women have. And the freedom they have to live an emotional life, which he feels like he cannot as a fucking man in society. And the closest this movie gets to getting at that is that proposal scene, which I think before we started recording, we were saying that's like one of the most awkward scenes ever in a studio film, which is

true, but it is that thing, and it's the only, and then, but then Nicole kind of disappears after that scene. Like, this whole thing where it's like, you mean like, you bought that for the doll, not for me. Like, trying to delineate and him kind of running up against that is, is like, that's the only time the movie addresses

that as being, you know, problematic feels like an overused word at this point, but at least like, not easy, not easy. I would say the other way the movie addresses that in it is in its many scenes of women annihilating nazis with big guns while they're basically in their underwear in themed costumes which are the craziest fucking things and they're all over this movie and they cannot be ignored that is what this movie is doing it is no no that is what's crazy yes david it's about the power of storytelling it's about how we're all we all wish that we could make movies that's what it's about that's all that it's about that's the weird zemeckis thing is you're just like that clearly must jump out to this guy the the idea of like oh my god we tell ourselves

stories in order to live even someone who doesn't think of themselves as a storyteller is innately drawn to using stories and fiction to make sense of their own life, you know? Like, and the stories we tell ourselves and how people process them and all this sort of shit. Like, that's the fucking Zemeckis thing of just like, why do we make movies?

Why do we do this? And it's literally a guy manipulating little dolls in front of a camera. This is right in my wheelhouse he's one of us he's one of me like it's just so presumptuous but then it's weird that he makes this choice where it's like oh no he doesn't have that much agency over the act of creation because he cannot distinguish between sure he's lost in the world yeah he's lost in the world right it becomes more this sort of pan's labyrinth thing but why not get lost in the world yeah i totally have a thing

good for him what are you gonna do especially in his position he's got brain damage he's gonna just like work at a grocery store and his life is watching terrible television like he's got an art form he's got an outlet good for him i'm gonna do this a movie i love the art you don't have to sell me on the fucking let me say my thing let me say what's your name is okay do we like movies here oh my god we love i'm gonna lose the thought i'm gonna lose the thought i fucking lost it god damn it all right don't fucking lost it I was letting you speak I wasn't saying anything I just want to

I'll say one thing just jumping off of what Griffin was saying earlier because this is one of the takes that I wanted to get about this film which is that I was listening to your guys' episode about Polar Express a movie that I've still never seen probably will never see but you know whatever I knew enough about it I could listen to you guys talk about it about Polar Express, a movie that I've still never seen, probably will never see.

But, you know, whatever. I knew enough about it. I could listen to you guys talk about it. And you guys were talking about the idea of Christmas in that movie and it being this sort of like, what's Christmas? Like, what is the thing that they're supposed to believe in? Obviously, me not having seen this film, I was like, well, it's the power of cinema. Like, that's what you're supposed to believe in. Like, that's the belief. It's like the idea of like, oh, you get on a train.

It doesn't matter where it's going. It's just that you get on. It's like, ah, you sit down in a movie theater. You just watch the thing go. Like that's, that seems like a very obvious, like, uh, I guess analogy. And this is what brings me back to the Speed Racer episode where I feel like we arrived at this conclusion in that film that felt like a real kind of eureka moment where we're like, it's about the movies. It's about making art. It's about being dedicated to a craft. And I think the Wachowskis talk about that stuff in a much different way than Zemeckis does. For them it's all about like integrity and like sticking to your guns and stuff. For Zemeckis it's about you know belief

the suspension of disbelief and all that and believing in the magic and all that and making you know cobbling together a world all that stuff. I just think that but I think that this movie I think this movie's fundamental fault and this is a movie that I think is interesting.

It has its merits and is at least a very interesting curio, if nothing else. Absolutely. But it falls into this trap of, I think, any director of a certain age and a certain level of success where that's the only story they know how to tell is the movies like they don't know what else is interesting about the world um they see the story of mark hogan camp and they're like he's a oh i can see how i like him he's a filmmaker he's a storyteller yes well yes okay if i can respond because i don't i think the thing that you guys are not considering is that this movie is set before the documentary Marwen Kong. You know what I mean? Yes.

If that documentary is going to be made about this guy, it's going to be made in a few years. This is about the guy who hasn't yet testified at the trial. He's still in it. But the trial is not part of the documentary at all. I understand that. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that the documentary is it's like, oh, wow, this guy went through this thing and is now like deeply embarking on this fascinating thing and like has a little bit of distance from the trauma and can talk about it. You know, like whereas this movie is more about about like he's gonna become the guy who gets an

art show right like that happens at the end of the movie like you know it's gonna be a little bit ahead like you know so the trauma getting over the trauma is a little more part of the narrative spine that's all i'm not saying like that makes that excuses or that yeah explains everything it's not enough about the the narrative spine because I think that this movie is set like a few years too late. Like, I think it should be about creating the world, about realizing that this is going to be how you do it. Like, coming up with the idea. I remember feeling such a distinct balloon deflation moment in the theater

when it cuts from the first fantasy sequence to him setting up the photo and i'm like oh the movie starts and he set up the whole world perfectly like isn't that the potential in doing a dramatic version of this story is this is what a documentary filmmaker couldn't capture show the guy rehabilitating learning finding this discovering this maybe i'm just so resistant because of netflix and and all that too anything that will end at the start like i don't maybe maybe i'm just like no it's fine like it's fine that he's already built it but i know what you mean there there would be there would be that would be an interesting spine to him creating the world him creating the world is the extraordinary

thing about him the extraordinary thing about him is not him connecting with a woman, which becomes the real narrative driving force of the film. Like the show is this weird thing that's sort of abstract. It's hanging in the background. It's mostly like what's going to happen with him and Nicole. Kind of taking for granted, you have this whole fascinating, extremely unique thing to get into,

which obviously they depict it, but like they don't- That's what I was saying. If they depict it, like I don't think they're taking it for granted. I don't know. I just, I feel like, I agree with what you're saying, David,

fundamentally about like end of Netflix season one is what should have been the first 10 minutes of the thing started on the road and i'm like yeah okay sure great but this movie could have spanned multiple years i'm not saying it takes two hours to get to the point where he takes a photo for the first time i'm saying you don't have to show every moment in real time but why not start at the the discovery of the thing the movie was originally titled the women of marwin and to emily's point the marketing campaign was very much centered around the women and like theaters had giant standees that were the women and separate character posters

and you have a lot of big actresses right it was like that kind of thing and most of the women in this movie are fictional creations that don't even have direct analogs there is a waitress character who in real life is an analog to the uh isaac gonzalez character yeah in the movie she's mediterranean in the documentary mediterranean whatever her name is i forget you know like she's somewhat similar right the russian is there but it's not based on a real person right the russian is not a real person he doesn't have a caretaker like that he has male friends in real life he has a former roommate he has a best friend and that one feels the least real but but that one he has that doll he like that doll is one of his dolls but it's just not a but gwendoline christie doesn't

bust into his house with a horrible russian accent in the documentary right i mean he obviously had a physical therapist but is not a character that is shown in the documentary at all she was not janelle monae with a metal leg being super cool yes Yes. And the documentary does have the character of Colleen, his friendly neighbor. Who moves out before the movie starts. Nicole is an entirely different character. Yes, because I think the movie did not want to subject the real person to a romantic plot.

So they actually acknowledge her. They say, right, wasn't she so nice? But they do not they create a new character because you know whatever they're they're giving it this romantic arc and the and the thing with colleen was uh she's married with three children and he is hyper fixated on the idea of being with her romantically and there are these interviews with her that are very fascinating where she talks about like you know i understand he's a guy in a lot of pain and I want to be supportive. And I think this project is amazing.

But my husband would always just say to me, like, be careful, like, be careful with this guy's interpretation of your interactions with him. And it's a very interesting dynamic that this film somehow neuters and also makes more disturbing in the Nicole relationship. It's pretty weird in this movie, but it's, it's both threatening. Exactly. But it's, it's uncomfortable.

Leslie's good. I will say as the one, as, as, as the one woman on this podcast right now, the one woman is so full of dread about it, but it is like the most familiar dynamic in the world like it is any single woman knows what that feels like like when you realize oh shit this guy's gonna you know

make his be my whatever it's like mommy friend girlfriend please yeah and it's like and it's horrible because like you know you have to do the stupid thing of being like, we're going to be friends and it sounds horrible, but. I got you a Nazi toy. Right. Hey, I don't want to marry you, but sit, stay right there. I'm going to get you a Nazi. That's happened to me so many times. Everyone in this movie keeps pushing that one nazi doll on him merritt weaver

won't stop trying to sell it to him leslie man brings it to his door everyone's like you gotta own this nazi it's true i don't know i mean the guy's got a world war ii city outside his house i mean you don't want a nazi you're like come on you want an enemy buddy all he's got is deja the belgian witch another weird choice they make is that uh the guys who beat him up in real life weren't at least for what i know nazis they were just sure about that there's nothing in the documentary that mentions them having any sort of nazi leanings yeah it doesn't but i i'm not sure i don't know that just feels like a tidy that feels like it might just be a little bow on something it's it's it's a zemeckis give him the flyer that says when the lightning's gonna hit kind of shit like you can have the tattoo on their arm yeah but

it's also he wants everything to relate to them to the to the action figure world like which obviously the documentary isn't concerned with so there's that too he's trying to do the oz thing with it but i that's like an example of just like so little faith in the audience of like i think we'll get that the nazis in the world of marwin relate to the assholes who like beat an othered person and this is like no give them swastika tattoosika tattoos Griffin no no this movie is more complicated than that it is not pandering to the audience it is one of the most insane hostile things in on the one hand and then also a super trickly

no that's what I'm saying and also a super trickly Hollywood inspirational story and it's all being mashed together in front of you at the same time there's nothing like it like it's not like no that's the strange thing about it it's crazy even though it doesn't realize big picture there's that it's not doesn't matter in at all but and the minute beat to beat things it is it panders but also leslie man is like looking at a picture of her with her tits out that he drew and is like, oh, that's interesting.

Like while at the same time, it's like playing soft, you know, Alan Silvestri piano music. I'm saying this movie is discordant. It's crazy. It's an insane film. Yes. Right. We can't just be like, ah, you know, he just Hollywoodified it. Like, no, no's this thing is bananas

i remember in my my review of this i i did make sure to point because i do think that steve carell is excellent in this movie um and i i did you know call out the fact that i didn't think he was doing any of the kind of forrest gumpy type tics about being a special strange man. Like, I thought it was such a, it was kind of a, like, yes, on the bad side, like, kind of just too soft of a performance, too cuddly of a performance. But I did, it felt interesting. And there are moments where he does kind of take, like, some of Mark Hogan Camp's actual enunciation in a way that like selectively, like he's not doing a full on impression, but like there's one moment at the end where he's like is saying what happened. And he says something about like the Nazis were eliminated. He says it like that, which is totally something that Mark Hogenkamp does in the doc.

And it's just like these little it's a very it's a very kind of dynamic and interesting performance but i i remember saying this and being like look this movie is weird as hell i think this is a good performance and people being like i don't know like it seems like he's just doing this you know uh like the whole i don't know what do we What's the name of the Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder thing? I don't know. Simple Jack. Simple Jack. Yeah.

And I was like, no, I don't think that that's the case at all. But I'm wondering what you guys think about it. I don't either. I mean, I have issues with the performance. I want to make something very clear, David. I am not trying to argue the problem with this movie is that he whitewashed everything. I think the problem with this movie is it's completely at odds with itself on a moment-to-moment basis.

Like, it's a very weird oscillation between when he goes full bananas cuckoo pants and when he goes, like, I think I can make this play at a mall in Peoria. And it's like this weird dance between the two. That is how I felt when I saw the film in theaters. And that was, I didn't even review it. It was, honestly, the movie just came and went.

Like, you know, it was so ignored when it came out because there were other big movies and it just didn't work. It was out of theaters in a month. But I even remember you seeing it early and telling me it's the weirdest movie of the year. And I was like, is it good? Because I was excited was excited about it and you were like i don't even know it's it's like impossible to even quantify this thing is so bizarre yeah right and the when i watched it this time i more was like i was surprised at how coherent i found it considering i remembered in the theater being bored and wanting to crawl out of my skin. Like,

you know, like that was sort of my theater experience. How were you bored by this movie? How on earth? I think I was bored by how, when I saw it in theaters, I think I was bored by like being like, where is this going?

And like the scenes of like, he goes to the courtroom and then there's a delay. And then the judge is like well it seems like this guy's a bit of a you know a bit of a problem i'm gonna postpone this sentencing and i was just like what are you fucking nope no that's people are in jail you don't postpone sentencing like that's cruel and inhumane this guy who suffered a horrible assault seems to be a little shaken up right now they have swastika tattooing me right yeah like so it's just like i think i was annoyed at that kind of like whatever you know

that that that typical like we have to wait to get to have you even been to court david you don't yes i have been to court yes plenty of times as a reporter yeah as a reporter yeah you were on the stand you were wearing the the frilly judge robes weren't you judging everybody around you david i do have to reluctantly agree with you i did find this movie a lot more coherent watching right now than i did in theaters i was not bored in theaters but i was perplexed and i could feel the whiplash from a scene to scene basis and in this weird way i'm not even necessarily saying this as an endorsement but i have found very often when we revisit a movie for this podcast that i only saw in theaters and thought was a calamity the second time i'm watching it i'm like well yes of course that's how aloha works right that is the shape right that is the shape of the movie right the book of henry right i think i i think i sort of drilled down more like okay he wants to explore the guy's trauma and the

insane fantasy stuff is his way of representing it and i whatever it just like where i mean also right the first time i'm just like what are these action sequences like is this allowed universal was showing me the movie really early and they were like you gotta be up front with us about what you think about this you can't lie like you can't just give us the like oh it's interesting like you can't just give us to be clear they were showing it to you because they were like, Shrug, we don't know. We need to get someone else's eyes on this. Can you just look at this and tell us if this is anything?

And you walked out and you were like, I don't know. I was like, uh, boy, I don't think it should come out at Christmas. Like that was my biggest note. It was supposed to come out Thanksgiving. And then they pushed it and they were like, we understand. We understand. It's not a holiday season movie. We're releasing it Christmas day. What time of year did Ed to come out Thanksgiving and then they pushed it and they were like, we understand, we understand. It's not a holiday season movie. We're releasing it Christmas day.

What time of year did Ed Wood come out? I feel like October. Because that's the closest corollary to this. And Ed Wood also bombed. Yeah. It didn't do well. It came out at the end of September. Yes, it was like a classic first awards movie of the season type.

Were the gunshots really loud in theater? Because I will say, home experience, I felt like I had to go up and down because those sequences were so over the top and crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I remember it being very loud in the theater. Yeah.

Zemeckis is a big sound mix guy. Yeah. And there was that tension of like, you were always, like the scene in the courtroom when suddenly there's a life-size Nazi action figure shooting, right? You know, like the tension

that it was about to switch was sort of the primary tension, like where you're like, oh, it's, you know, something about to blow up or someone about to shoot a gun, like out of nowhere, that kind of stuff. Yeah.

It works in a theater. It's interesting. And also, I mean, Carell's performance is literally very quiet and the scenes that take place entirely in reality are in a very quiet key. And there's obviously the treacly Silvestri score, but there are a lot of long sequences that are just like reveling in silence

where it's just like extended, uncomfortable silence. We should talk about Carell. This is his post Foxcatcher run, which is just a lot of movies. Obviously Foxcatcher being where he gets an Oscar nomination right like that's supposedly he's leveled up

right like not only is he Foxcatcher you could tell me that was in 2003 you could tell me that okay yeah I was yeah anytime it was 14 14 2014 yeah see that's that's example for me I feel like you and I have talked about this I'm a big Steve Carell. I always think he never got enough credit as an actor. I think you and I both agree he arguably should have won the Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine over Alan Arkin that year. I think that's an insanely good performance.

I don't even like that movie, but I think he's excellent in it yes i think he's unreal in that and then obviously right like you know after he makes that movie before it comes out he becomes this major comedy star he becomes an a-list movie star right we've discussed this a lot with jd in our text threads about how he has like the weirdest leading man career of any a-list movie star where he almost exclusively plays assholes and creeps and like oblivious losers right i mean if we're gonna go back you know right i mean 40 year old virgin obviously it is crazy right like he stakes out territory with 40 year old virgin and i guess the office concurrently where it's like right this guy plays creeps and weirdos and toy and his saving grace his saving grace is well yeah i mean he's a toy boy icon and

we have to stand we have no choice but first six episodes of the office they're going full like smug asshole ricky gervais stuff 40 old virgin comes out and when the greatest creative hail mary passes they're like oh 40 old virgin people find this guy charming let's split the difference let's give him some redeemable humanity right which is probably what keeps that show on the air and makes it now 20 years later the most successful tv show of all time i guess yeah i guess the office is the biggest show in history as a hardcore you know british office fan when the american one came out i was like no well this doesn't work and then right in season two when he makes that shift towards he's more childlike than he is you know whatever actively irritating you're

like right okay he's kind of guileless yes right yeah right right okay so right so post that he's got like they may they give him comedies heaven almighty dan in real. That's a quiet comedy. Get Smart. $100 million. Despicable Me. These movies do not exist. Dan in Real Life. I feel like I saw somebody do a Halloween costume

once of the poster for Dan in Real Life. With his head in between the pancakes. It's unbelievable. The one that truly doesn't exist is Dinner for Schmucks. That's the one where you're like, holy shit. But even that makes like $80 million.

This is the point I kind of want to make. Not a flop. These movies don't really have cultural staying power. It's about a dinner for, how would I describe it? These guys who are sort of like kind of schmucky. Okay, sure, sure, sure, sure. Schmuck like kind of schmucky

okay sure sure sure schmucky but my point is obviously like Evan Almighty is a giant flop because it's the most expensive comedy ever made but most of these movies end up between 80 and 130 million dollars like he pretty much

only makes whether the budgets are too high or not he is a high gross and consistent box office performer as an a-list leading man until burt wonderstone well okay so through all this he's also making the office then you have crazy stupid love uh another sort of makes 80 million dollars domestic yes uh seeking a friend for the end of the world that's not right bomb but whatever hope springs but Hope Springs. But also, Focus Release. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's so bad in Hope Springs.

Kind of a hit. TLG rocks the house so hard. Of course. TLJ in that movie. House is on its side in that movie. Weirdly terrible in that film. And I like him a lot. He's too much, right?

This is the thing. If he's too much, he can really ruin it like if he's incorrect incorrect hope springs is the harbinger he's nothing he's doing nothing he is so clearly in his head about not being michael scott that he has just drained himself of any energy okay all right then you have wonderstone like you say that's just that's just not a that's bad he wants to do a goofball character movie it doesn't work right uh you've got um uh alexander don't forget alexander the terrible horrible no good very bad day so this this is when he's knocked down a pet this is the thing i find fascinating is like he has these films that all do well when he's on the office

and it's just like jesus christ this guy's working fucking hard he's burning the candle on both ends and then he's like i'm ready to leave the office i want to focus on my movie career and then all the comedies he makes after he leaves the office don't do particularly well my god i just realized i saw burt wonderstone and you said the title and i could i was like sounds familiar. That's how unmemorable that movie is. That's an ultimate movie that doesn't exist. Holy shit, that doesn't exist. All right, sorry. Then that's the year of Foxcatcher.

So he gets an Oscar nomination. I think that's a pretty silly performance. I don't hate the movie, but he's not what I like about it. I dislike that performance, yes. Right. And then so after that, right? Okay, the next year he has The Big Short, an undeniable hit.

I also think he's too much in that. But now it's like hard pivot. Oh, I love him in that movie. I think he's great in it. I agree with both of you. I think he's doing a lot, but I still like it. Yeah. I like that version of you. I think he's doing a lot, but I still like it. Yeah.

I like that version of Carell a lot. It does a lot for me. He's very emotional. He's yelling. He's sort of the pulsing nerve of that movie, right? Like Bale and Pitt are playing these kind of like really quiet weirdos. Gosling is doing his, hey, I'm Ryan Gosling. I was born on Grand Concourse Avenue. What are you talking about? Come on, hey, I'm Ryan Gosling. I was born on Frank Fonkos Avenue.

What are you talking about? Let me get a Frankfurter. Coney Island dog. Oh, what I love is Brooklyn and the Bronx, Staten Island, Queens, Manhattan. He counts them off one by one. Apparently he's in Cafe Society,

which I have not seen. Yes. Nobody can say. Nobody knows. Unfortunately, I have seen that movie. I will say not only is he in that movie, not that I love spotlighting Woody Allen films on this podcast,

but worth noting, he is in that movie playing like a tough mob-like studio head. It is the role that Bruce Willis was cast in and Bruce Willis wouldn't learn his lines. They fired him two days in and Steve Carell is playing a role that was built for Bruce Willis. It is so bizarre.

So bizarre. Attention must be paid. It is so bizarre. Bruce Willis showed up on set. There are photos of him. He shot two days. They dropped him and they were like, who's like the next Bruce Willis, up on set. There are photos of him. He shot two days. They dropped him and they were like, who's like the next Bruce Willis, Steve Carell.

So in 2017, he has two movies. He also has Despicable Me 3, but let's set that aside. He has Battle of the Sexes where he plays Bobby Riggs. It's a big, broad performance. I like him in that and I like that movie. It's good. I think it's a good movie and he's good in it.

Yup. I agree. Thank you, Emily. I think he's doing what is asked of him in that movie, right? That's not a movie that I, you know,

remember that well. And he's very much a supporting character. He doesn't need to carry like narrative weight. His job is to be a fucking showboater. Emma Stone's great

in that movie. I feel like that's a movie that has been unfairly dropped. Andrea Riceboro. Two of them. I think I fucking nominated both of them that year at the Blinkies or maybe I'm misremembering. The strain of that movie that is just their romance I think is

kind of perfect. And the stuff about tennis I'm less into. And then he's also in Last Flag Flying, the Richard Linklater movie. God. Which is the opposite. It's the just nothing. He's just.

Blanket. He's so sad. He's so quiet. He's like, it's like he's trying not to do anything. Any tics. You know, Michael Scott. Yeah. Right.

Like, yes. Right. And then the next year, he kind of does the same thing beautiful boy which is nothing i i guess he's going into the negatives he yells a lot in beautiful boy right like this but he is playing sad man again but yeah these these like weird empty like ghost sad man performances that he falls into which i find fascinating that it happens at the same right marwin beautiful boy last flag flying that all these performances happen at the moment when the office is having the second wind and like every 12 year old is like michael scott's

the funniest character in history right and he's like no fuck you i want to make richard linklater's least fun movie like i want to right I want to make the heroine movie. But he is also in Vice, a terrible movie. Awful. I think he is actually good in it. I think he, playing Donald Rumsfeld, is more what the movie should have been. The movie is not on his level, really.

Like, it's trying too hard to be serious and about stuff. I think it should have been more cartoon which is what he's doing more prosthetics and impressions you've made this argument in the past david i think his opening in the movie is great like the scene where cheney sees him speaking and he's so charismatic and you're like oh these guys are like revival tent preachers you know like that's their whole appeal right and then i feel like as the movie goes on he deflates into sad wet blanket man again like i think of the end of his arc is him getting fired right on and on with that movie it's whisper performances right

um and then since then he's only been in one movie irresistible the john stewart comedy that let's be honest turned the world in its head it asked the questions that no one dared ask um david you had one of the most all-time savage compliments in response to irresistible after you saw it oh damn tell me and you said steve carell has weirdly become more hot than he is funny. My God, that is so rude of me. I know, but I think about that a lot. It is truly, it has these last nine months in quarantine. It rattles in my head on a daily basis because I just think about it. Oh, that's so interesting.

Right? Because I go like, it's so fascinating that this guy who was so beloved as a comedy star makes the transition to drama that a lot of these guys do, which to some degree, I think he's fundamentally sort of haunted by the fact that he never won the Emmy, right? That he was never taken seriously on The Office, losing to fucking Shalhoub for the eighth time. Right. It's crazy. And fucking Parsons for the third time. Never won the Emmy. Right. Should have won the right yeah right and so so he goes into

this mode of like i'm gonna completely strip myself of all the michael scott shit post uh foxcatcher nomination and be as dry as possible and it's weird that a he becomes so lacking in humor and b that he becomes really hot he's become this fucking silver fox and even you and i were watching a couple episodes of space force which is plagued with the same problem of like corral why don't you want to be funny but we both had to admit he's looking pretty good on that show he looks he looks good right now he looks incredible right now the salt and pepper close-cut hair and i think i think that must have been i was also probably so bored during Irresistible that I was probably like yeah Carell's half a snack

in this like you know I just had nothing else to focus on he looks good with a beard he looks good without a beard another movie I think he's good in and weirdly hot in but also is very much playing against type is the way way back where he's just playing an asshole

alpha male yeah here's the thing he has such an interesting dramatic career i was thinking about it while i was watching this movie where it's like i think i i feel like and this is not a knock but uh i i think that it was one of these things where it's like okay he had he really i think he realized himself i would imagine that he had one essential thing that he was doing comedically that he could kind of modulate but it wasn't it wasn't a transformation it wasn't different modes of being funny which is like i mean not to say that lots of people haven't built careers off of that that's not abnormal but then i think i think dramatically though it's like unlike a lot of people like i, like I would say Robin Williams didn't suffer from this.

I think like dramatically, he's also kind of more or less doing the same thing in every film. But I really like that thing a lot. And that thing works for me more than it doesn't work for me, even in movies that I don't think are good. And I think it's this weird thing of like the kind of Julia Roberts of like kind of always playing yourself or whatever but I think that whatever that note is that he hits which is usually the sort of dramatic version of Michael Scott like exasperated sort of desperate and hungry for approval and like you know always on the short end of things like it always he's really good at it and it works for this movie and it's worked for i think yeah i think like from whatever that was like yeah around battle of the sexes

onward i think right 2017 yeah isn't he a chicago improviser guy yeah yeah he was colbert's understudy at second city and he was just that guy that everyone was like this dude is so sharp why hasn't it happened for him it took a long time for him to get his

break he was on a bunch of sitcoms that were unsuccessful Dana Carvey show right Dana Carvey show right he was on Watching Ellie

truly yeah some of the best sketch comedy acting I have ever seen is from Carell on the Dana Carvey show um the waiters who are nauseated by food is an incredible non-verbal performance for him and he was on the

daily show yes was on the daily show but it definitely feel like i i think the perception was oh this guy was so talented i guess this is sort of the rut he found himself in and then he like leaves the daily show which i think was seen as like why would you leave that he was one of the first of that wave to like leave at his prime and be like i want to pursue other stuff he gets the anchorman part which leads to him getting 40 year old virgin as a hail mary pass and then he becomes an overnight movie star at 40 and the office is shot before 40 year old virgin premieres before second season comes after all that sort of stuff it's like a perfect storm but it also speaks to this sense like if you compare him to other a-list comedy stars he hit late like despite the fact that he was working his breakout

movie was calling out the fact that he's 40 years old yes that he's too old to be doing this so he had like a weird narrow window where it's like a lot of these guys start out and they're the young edgy dude. And then they have to settle into like the dad role in family films. And he started out being America's dad. But also to your point, Emily, like Carrie and Williams and so many other guys like that who like have the breakout become megastars and then are like, but I want to be taken seriously. There is in their worst performances, this strain of mawkishness, right? The like the sad clown feeling of like, please look at my pathos. perhaps despite not finding his dramatic performances overall as successful as you do,

I do respect the fact that there's none of that sort of pleading, please like me, that he's just like, I am a fundamentally sad person in traumas. Because those characters are all pleading, please like me, like on, it's in the text.

It's not subtext. Like it's like, that's what he gets cast as more, more often than not. I believe it seems like none of us, including me, have seen the morning show, which is a show I've been meaning to catch up on because you've seen it. Guys, guys, I watched all of the morning show. Okay.

I've been meaning to catch up with it because it seems crazy. He's playing a very unsympathetic character in that show, is he not? He's playing Matt Lauer. It's a slightly soft and it's not quite as bad as Matt Lauer, right? Like his deeds were not as extreme. I don't know. I'll have to watch it. I'll have to give it 10 episodes or however fucking long it was.

I do think that that... I'm glad you brought that up because I think that piece of casting is like a huge deviance in this narrative. It is a bit interesting that he... It's like the one Carell thing I haven't watched that we bring up. While we're on this podcast where three out of four of us are saying that Welcome Tomorrow in slaps, I'm going to just like fully go out and say like, I think the morning show kind of slaps. The thing was, when it hit, you know, when it, you know, the first few episodes dropped,

people were like, ah, this thing just doesn't work. By the end of it, anyone who's stuck with it was kind of like there's something happening here you know so i've been meaning to get around to it we should probably swerve back to mulcan and marwin because there are probably we want to dissect right so uh we start on um creepy guy in his yard. I'll say, I actually fully love the opening of this film. I think the opening, cold open adventure sequence is the most successful. And then I really liked the juxtaposition of the hard cut to this guy just silently in his backyard doing this.

I felt like I was such a fan of the story, was very dismayed when i saw the trailers sit there in the theater hoping i like this thing the first 10 minutes i was like fuck is this actually gonna pull it off for me and re-watching it i was like god damn it is sims gonna sell me on this being a masterpiece it's good well no way i'm not trying to say it's a masterpiece i just it went from like a two to a six you know like it's fascinating anyway sorry it's a rich six though it's a very rich very rich the richest six oh my god i could eat that six yeah yeah thick it is a thing i like about corral getting to play hoagie is it feels like him giving this sort of like second

city sketch comedy performance version of a like pulp World War 2 movie hero you know like you feel that comedic energy from it yeah he's good as Hoagie he's like funny right yeah he's good

as somebody who hasn't watched the documentary and i watched it with my girlfriend nelly we are like shout out we are like oh he's doing this cg bullshit but oh wait actually this is working it works this is working it looks like trash but it's supposed to look like i think it looks oh i'm into this movie actually holy shit wait this is emotional and this is like a great story and this character is so unique and fucking different holy shit what the hell is happening and now you're into the fucking movie this movie was for like, like 30 some odd million dollars, somewhere between 30 and 40.

Yeah, it was about 40, right, yeah. At that budget, with this much motion capture, it's impressive. I will say,

they, if I can just petty gripe here, I think of a thing, you're all gonna boo me when I say this, it is the most predictable, cliche, fucking Griffin action figure, nerd thing in the world. She's set it up some more, why don't you?

I think the thing this movie succeeds wildly at for the first time in Zemeckis' motion capture career is you actually feel like they are successfully capturing the facial performances of the actors, right? You watch this and there's like nuances in their micro expressions and you're like, it's making it through the pipeline. Unlike Polar Express where it's being fucking dulled

like you get it you you really feel like you're watching these actors you see the choices they're making if I can gripe for a second and I understand some budget limitation I do feel like this movie does not quite capture

the tactility of the toys themselves. I think it has a very odd relationship to the physics of the action figures. Emily's leaving in protest. Yeah, but I think that's okay because they're sort of half real, right? Because he's putting himself into these things. Right, that's the argument, is how much... It's like, I get into this territory where I feel like, obviously just talking about shit I love,

the Toy Story franchise, but also the Lego movies, I think are very good at owning the physical limitations of how that toy was constructed to give characterization to the characters through their body language, right? And to find, like,

creative outlets for gesture of expression. And this is a movie where, because of the design of these types of dolls, 12-inch closed action figures, you have, like, visible joints, right?

And you have, like, fabric that's bunching up in a weird way because it's on a small scale and all that sort of stuff. as the action figures, you have like visible joints, right? And you have like fabric that's bunching up in a weird way because it's on a small scale and all that sort of stuff. And the movie very often chooses, I'm just going to get all the shit out of the way

while Emily's in the bathroom. Very often chooses to rather than have them conform to the articulation points on the doll that are visible, have them just move like a normal human being. And I think if you look

at the Lego movie where they're like, there are only four points where they can move. And you even look at something like fucking Robot Chicken, which is animated with like Mego dolls, which is our slightly smaller scale, but have clothing like this. I do think they play pretty fast and loose

with like how much can they bend. And then they'll sometimes choose their moments where it's like oh his neck turns all the way around are we really talking about this okay i'm done i'm done you're back from the bathroom i'm done because i'm done that was the timer griffin the timer was emily in the bathroom i got it but the other thing is he's not playing with the dolls in the way that the movies are described like lego movies which which is actually about kids. Yes, I understand. No, I'm just saying, like, he's

pouring himself into these things. And so, you know, because it's not just that the toys move. There's explosions. You know, there's blood. There's all these ways in which they behave abnormally. He picks his comedy moments where

it's like, oh, the head turns around. The head turns around. Like a hundred degrees. They fall off and they split in half. Sometimes they have blood and viscera and skeletons. Sometimes their arm just goes pop. Yeah. Right.

I kind of love it. I love any time. I'm sure that you said this while I was out, but any time they just get knocked over and they're dead and then they are just a toy. That's like the greatest effect. Didn't say that. that i like that i wish there was a little more of that because i do think there is value to owning the limitations of them yeah because that makes it like lego movie that's that kind of fun thing of like this these are toys this is why it's fun to play with emily you're

you're repeating his points we're done with those points they're they're in there in the past but i love it i love it now you're making me look good acceptable okay so just to shout out the women of marwin just to to name them all run them down you have announced them as if they're the 97 chicago bulls of course they all accept him in a way where you're like from oklahoma they all accept him in a way where you're like okay they know his deal but it's crazy sure everyone is just like hey this guy has guy has a fantasy and I've bought into it. And I'd like to hear updates about it. Here's a segment I'm going to force to happen right now. Name a woman of Marwen and I want to get Ben's reaction to that woman.

Okay, so you got Leslie Mann as Nicole, his new neighbor. She's a redhead action figure in the Marvin universe the marvin verse uh she's the newcomer she's so nice in real life she's too nice oh boy it's leslie's doing a great job boy oh boy it's hard leslie man's personal friend of Leslie Mann she rarely plays I feel for her in those scenes because I'm like she's smiling so hard

and I like it but man is it tough to watch I feel like it's what you said Emily it's a very standard

dynamic of man with poor understanding of emotional boundaries misinterpreting base and kindness and a woman trying to figure out how to assess the risk level of the guy how what's the risk of not being an asshole to this person right while also drawing boundaries yeah also her ex-boyfriend

that shit's crazy oh my god he's but he is a cop on the guy's fucking porch yeah cop as hell okay next we've got merit weaver as roberta oh my god who in in real life is the the hobby shop employee and uh in real life the hobby shop is owned by an elderly couple right this character does not exist but in the movie in the movie we're gonna be in the movie, in the movie, we're going to be in the movie now. In the movie, she's the hobby shop owner. I understand wanting to replace almost any character or duo of characters with Merritt Weaver. It's totally fine. Zemeckis should make a mo-cap Merritt Weaver movie

where she plays every part. She's the best in this movie. She's the best. She's so good in this movie. She's always good. Has she ever not been good but is she into him well yeah yeah absolutely she plays that pretty genuinely from minute one i would say emily said no i can't tell he's our psycho no she's not she's just his friend, right? So sure, sure. She's very emotionally invested in him.

She's emotionally invested. She doesn't want to go home with him. Okay, yes, I agree 100%. Steve Carell, he's half a snack. I'm just saying. No, he's not a snack. I have viewed that as a failing of the movie. He's in a backyard playing with toys, David.

But I haven't considered, hey, I haven't considered the possibility that maybe the movie doesn't want me to think that she views him in a romantic light. Because in theaters, I was like, how dare they try to sell me this bill of goods. You mean that they're going to get together at the end? Yeah, yeah.

I was like, I was pretty pissed off at that. I think that the note gonna get together at the end yeah yeah i was like i was i was pretty pissed off at that i think that the note that they hit on the end is the only acceptable note to hit which is if if everybody's being honest in that scene i know we're skipping to the end of the movie now but we're just like we can try it and we might like it or we might not which i think is very in keeping with how that character would handle that proposal of a dinner date you know like right sure why yeah yeah maybe who's to say i might i might enjoy it i might you know there might be something there like but clearly in the moment not feeling that anything's there in in the marwin verse she has a big shotgun she deals with her topless moment in a very funny

way where she's like i have no shirt on what's going on that's the weird zemeckisiness of this movie where he's like no i want like several scenes where they litigate how uncomfortable they are about the fact that he undresses their dolls. Where are you guys in general at this point on Zemeckis' feelings on sexuality? I'll say this. His boob obsession? The man likes boobs. I cannot figure out Zemeckis in general. I have rarely gotten to the end of a miniseries or near the end of a miniseries and felt like

I have this little of a read on a guy. He's so slippery but the sexuality is the element that eludes me the most the guy is horny i feel like two or three episodes into this miniseries someone on on the blank check subreddit summed it up perfectly where it was like that one horny moment in every zemeckis movie. And it was like a cartoon of someone hitting a dog with a rolled up newspaper and going like down boy. It was just like, there's always one moment where he just goes way too fucking hard.

And I just want to say about his sexuality that look, the man is a boomer. He makes boomer movies about boomer people and he likes big jugs. It's like the most basic ass boomer opinion like he's just he literally would go to a store and buy like a big jugs magazine that's how i perceive robert zemeckis's uh feelings about sexuality that he likes like i don't i don't i don't know anything about like how his blood runs you know like well that's a complete i've seen his wife and i've seen the roles he gives her in

his movies that's that's a lot of where i but anyway we're getting to his wife because especially in his digital movies he likes the backdoor bodacious babes as mark hogan camp would say exactly next we have janelle monae underserved i would say in this film is Julie, his physical therapist who has a metal leg. This is the year after Moonlight? Yes. Moonlight and Hidden Figures. Two years after? But this is her first film appearance since that year,

right? Yeah, that's 2016. Right, yes. This is her first film. Yeah, but this is 2016. She shows up just to talk about rocket fuel. Ironically, she would then be in Ugly Dolls, another movie about dolls. But these, wait, you're telling me these dolls are hot and those dolls are ugly? Just saying. What do we think of Janelle Monáe as Julie?

There's not much to say, honestly. There's nothing to say. I love Janelle Monáe. I'm so in the mood of Janelle Monáe I love her as an actress I love her as a musician she's probably the last concert I will ever

go to in my life but I just felt so much excitement out of that Moonlight Hidden Figures year and this was like

the immediate follow up and I was like I'm just excited to get any glimpse of Janelle Monáe on screen again since she's announced that she's apparently america's hidden movie star and character actress and it's just kind of frustrating that she just sort of is there like she's got 15 seconds on camera live action and just a lot of mocap sort of group scenes yeah uh you have isa gonzalez an actress i gotta say i always like and who just kind of started

popping up and stuff a few years ago and i always i always like her uh as carlala the uh her the fellow meatball crafter at the bar a person who would never work at that bar ever in the ever ever it's certainly not impossible in the kitchen it's impossible you see it and you're like you're also an action figure in this kitchen right now they would make her a mascot of the restaurant they would install like a

fucking lard lad donut sign of her outside the top I think by the time it gets to her in this um in in this movie and i do i i i generally like her too a lot um but this is like the most unfortunate part i think of any of the yes of the the women of marwin apart from maybe leslie zemeckis but we're getting to her i would say that gwendolinelyn Christie is the other close one. Yes, that's another contender.

But this is the one where I feel bad for Isa Gonzalez in it because I think she's much better than this. And I think this is, well, whatever. We should go through all the rest of them. I have another thought about this. I think she's putting a lot into it, though. I do kind of commend the sheer force of will she is trying to apply to this underwritten, very thankless role. Right. She wants to be Mark's fun friend at the bar.

Like, she definitely is trying to invest as much reality into that as she can. Right. A genuine finger of unconditional support and empathy. Listen, though, like, I'm just going to say again, like, playing this note of humoring somebody just to like keep them harmless around you is something that I think like, oh, wow, like women in Hollywood are good at playing that. Like it's just like a very like it's a very familiar dynamic. And I think they all do it well. And I think like she does particularly. But yeah.

Great point. she does particularly but yeah great point this is a thing i particularly like about the documentary is that you get to watch mark hogan camp like tell his perception of their relationship and then cut to the woman and be like uh sure and this movie does not grant narrative agency to these women in real life but whatever no maybe leslie man slightly that's about it right uh none of them else none of the others have like scenes on their own well i i do think though like i i don't i'll just say this in brief though i do think that by the time you get to the scene with with uh carlala come on carlala uh yeah when you when you get to the scene with her and she's sort of like oh and then what happened and then what happened like you know like asking him about everything.

You kind of get past the feeling, the sneaking feeling that you might have at one point. Like, oh, is he trying to do this like a kind of, is this like a turbo psycho king of queens type thing where all these hot women are like so fascinated with this guy. But then like, by the time you get to her, you're just like, it's almost weirdly, it's like, what if that times is that like it's just like this it it feels like almost like a commentary on that kind of dynamic sure sort of interesting it's just like no all his friends right are these

hot women who he could turn into barbie dolls with machine guns yeah also this whole town treats him and his eccentricities the way that like uh peewee Herman's town treats him in Peewee's Big Adventure. There's that, oh, the local eccentric who we all find equally harmless despite the fact that he's got some weird sort of observed undercurrents. He has full on S&M tableaus going on in a church in his backyard. Right. in a church in his backyard. Right. You have Gwendolyn Christie is Anna, Anna, his

Russian caretaker who bustles into his house once a month to bring him groceries, I guess, and pick up medicine for him. They seem like that's been going on for a while. Hand deliver an oversized bottle of pills and then immediately tell

him not to take those pills and then leave don't have too many of those okay I gotta go like you know yeah so she's there obviously Gwendolyn Christie a statuesque woman maybe that's why Ritz-Demeckis was drawn to including her I don't know but she just looks regular

in doll form she doesn't look like Gwendolyn Christie it should have made her a bigger doll right diane kruger who i will say looks a lot like the real deja the real uh yes hogan camp which i may just be that diane kruger has this angular striking face i don't know but like when you see the marwin call thing you're like oh that oh, that's wild. Anyway, Diane Kruger, no real life comparison. She is simply Dejah Thoris named after the, you know, the villainous character from John Carter of Mars. The Belgian witch of Marwen, who is a time traveling Nazi spy who represents.

Yeah. Medication. And also his isolation. His inability to. Yeah. Medication. And also his, like, isolation. His inability to. Depression, I guess. Like, she is the dark figure, right, who ruins things and shows up at the worst time and kills anyone nice who comes to Marwyn, right? Like, I don't know. Yeah.

Can I say, there's the weird thing in this movie where, like, he goes to the store and he's like, I need a need a redhead doll and the mirror weaver recommends a doll that already looks exactly like leslie mann there's the fun angle to his real artwork that he's using dolls of like other famous movie characters so in the documentary his mom is a big figure right steve mcqueen is like another guy in town but his mom is a big figure who's not a figure at all in this movie, a big like support figure in his life. And he's like, I gave my mom the pussy galore doll. I know it sounds weird, but it looks like her. And then the other women of Marwen are like Drew Barrymore from Charlie's Angels and Kate Beckinsale from Van Helsing. I, of course, was able to identify all of them. Right. You were more on that than me right i definitely but there is that funny moment in the documentary where the the waitress the mediterranean waitress yeah

right she dumps one of the dolls she's like you have me with that guy but there's a steve mcqueen i want to be with steve mcqueen in your fictional universe so she has given steve mcqueen as a boyfriend yeah anyway uh the hoagie doll, by the way, is Nicholas Cage and wind talkers. Uh, sure. Right. Right. Right.

Uh, Cage could have done this. That would be interesting. Yeah. I mean, Cage would have done a lot. Yeah. Um,

Leslie Zemeckis as Suzette, the French lady who in in the world of Welcome to Marwen is a porn star that Mark likes to crank it to. That's who she is. Like, she's not a person that we meet. He doesn't know her in real life. You see him watching the video. He casts his wife as the fake porn star that Mark likes, that Mark then transposes into. She's in that video?

Yes, that's who she is. And that's Zemeckis' wife. Yeah. That's fine, right? And this is speechless. Who also plays the barmaid in Beowulf. How could I forget? And the burlesque puppet in Polar Express.

That's so weird. Yep. It's crazy. Respect. Big jugs. And let's just say, Leslie Zemeckis, filmmaker on our right, has directed, I believe, two feature-length documentaries about the history of burlesque arts. Absolutely. This is clearly an actual field of interest and expertise for her.

It's just crazy how he leverages her. Yes, exactly. Thank you. Yes. It is weird the way he inserts her into the films. Yes. But maybe they're both into it. I have no idea.

Maybe she's like, I want to play, you know, a fake porn star. Oh, I'm sure they're both. It seems like it's happened enough times now. Right. She's done three documentaries, Griffin. Wow. Behind the Burly Q, Bound by Flesh, and Mabel Mabel Tiger Trainer, which that one might not be about the world of Bolesk.

That might be about a tiger trainer. But the first two definitely are, and they're good titles. Good titles. So that's the women of Marwen. They're all over this movie. You gotta love them. They got machine guns. They murder Nazis. They're kind of invincible. They like to hang out at the ruined stocking. Am I missing anything here? the thing I really kind of keyed in on watching it again this time you know having an understanding

of what the movie was going to be being able to like sort of burrow into some of the weird pockets of it the weird hyper violence of all the Marwyn fantasy sequence does feel like as you said is tied to some sort of like dominant submissive

you know give power to the women kind of thing. I feel like in his original work, in his Marwan Khal work and how it's presented in the documentary, it's very much, my read on it is that he feels very threatened and judged by other men and by the expectation of how he needs to believe as, rather as a male in front of other men. And there's a quote in one of the deleted scenes I watched that like really jumped out to me where he talks about like, oh yeah, like he, he wears drag in front of me the first time I was kind of surprised, but now I'm just used to it. And then they cut to him and he is talking about like the second I get home when no one's around, I put on the stockings, I put on a skirt, I put on the shoes. Like that's my default. And he said, I get all chilled out like women do. I can think deeper, like the more logical species.

And it is like he has this like weird reverential thing of just like women are serene. They are like warrior angels. They are completely balanced and powerful. It is unhealthy in its own way, but it is fascinating. It's a kind of objectification still, though. That's the whole thing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, you found it. I found it. I think the documentary reckons with the weirdness of his reverential objectification in a way this movie doesn't. But David, your argument, obviously, is that the movie is... Those scenes are where that's happening. Right.

Right. Right. argument obviously is that the movie scenes are where that's happening right right right the the film is not textually commenting on it in dialogue amongst characters it is just presenting this absurd overcranked thing to you and i hate to do this more than once on a movie because i just hate this in general as a form of criticism like i never want to say like what the movie should be other than what it is. But I came away from this movie the first time and I still feel this feeling like my, my ideal welcome to Marwen adaptation, if Robert Zemeckis wanted to do it would just be to like let Mark Hogenkamp write a screenplay and then, you know,

maybe put your Zemeckis touch on it or whatever. But like, I would just want to see if he's given a budget like what is the story that he would want to tell give us the straight uncut completely kinky hyper violent type shit like i want to see that movie very much but that's ironically that's a crispin glover movie that That's Crispin Glover being like, right, take the camera. We're going to do this together. Right. Well, you know, I should say this movie written by Zemeckis and Caroline Thompson, who, of course, was a big Tim Burton collaborator. Right. But is like a family film person.

Yes. Yeah. Wrote Edward Scissorhands. She wrote the first Adam's Family. She wrote, right. You know, she's a corpse bride wrote, you know, Corpse Bride. Night Before Christmas, Corpse Bride. But then she also directed Black Beauty.

She directed and wrote Black Beauty. And Buddy as well. And also directed and wrote Buddy. Yes, exactly. Right. So she was a burden person and then went on her own, did animal family films, but is largely a family film person, did City of Ember. It is largely family film person did city of ember it is an odd choice for zemeckis to bring her in to co-adapt this work with him it is it's

and i'm a big fan of her work yeah and it's her first screenplay in 10 years i i have no idea what the story is there how they knew each other or whatever but it's fascinating um yeah yeah i don't know i just wanted to mention her. Emily, I think that's an incredible, uh, uh, I mean, that's the thing that sounds fascinating.

Right. You know, right. Like, I mean, obviously because he's so compelling. Yeah. And I want to see,

you know, it's like you, you come away from watching Ed Wood. You want to watch an Ed Wood movie, you know, like you just want to see like, okay, I got an,

I got an artist, another artist interpretation of, of how this guy, you know, what just want to see like okay i got an i i got an artist another artist interpretation of of how this guy you know what makes this guy tick but like i want to see now the uncut thing i want to see the primary source of yeah you know edward's an interesting thing because it's obviously he did not go through the same you know extreme you know point in like this crazy traumatic incident but right that's another movie that is hollywoodifying and sort of sanding off the edges of a totally a strange person yeah it's like the most obvious comparison for me because otherwise this movie is without comparison right but how often do you see hollywood deal with weird people? Never.

I just like, it's so refreshing to me to just see a fucking- And not be the butt of the joke and to be the sympathetic central figure of the film? Yes. Yeah, right. They're not the comedic foil or like the punchline. They're just, that's who you're following. I don't know. It just, it was really refreshing and I enjoyed it a lot. That's what i like

about the movie ben i mean i do not disagree with you for a moment there but that also gets to what i like about him as a figure you know but like but that's it's interesting because of course this movie was pitched in its advertising as being from the director of forrest gump right like they were very much trying to be like you haven't seen the world until you've seen the world through the eyes of Mark Hogan, Cam. Exactly. He invites you to meet another incredibly unusual person. I believe much more than that line about Forrest Gump, honestly. That's the thing.

Works for me much more. I might argue, I find this movie a little more dramatically compelling and less mocking than Forrest Gump. Many would probably not agree with that but i was mocking up my rankings and it's a real squeaker david isn't it isn't it i was also mocking up my rankings and i was like oh yeah the back half of this is interesting like there's a lot of decisions yeah yeah yeah i think i mean it's interesting i didn't realize that the co-writer of it wrote um on adam's family because i think that you know i i would say ben that i think that most movies are about weird people actually but it's just like how they treat them that's the thing

that's important and i think that i know like a war hero like captain america such a weirdo And I think that I would say- Yeah, like a war hero like Captain America. Such a weirdo. He is pretty weird, that guy. He did kind of get frozen. That guy's different. Something's going on with that guy. Something weird happened to him.

But also, no one loves America that much. The Hulk is very strange. Caroline Thompson wrote Edward Scissorhands, which is the kind of ultimate modern weirdo as hero. Strange digital man, yes. But I think that Adam's Family, and I say this also as somebody who has watched both

the Adam's Family movies like maybe three times in lockdown. Two perfect films. You're a smart person. I think I've watched each of them twice over the last nine months. The last time I watched Adam's Family Values while coming down off of acid, and it was great.

But I do think that Adam's Family is like, it's interesting to know that just because I think that those movies are about deviance in a way that is a very Hollywood treatment of deviance, but they are fundamentally about being not just a little weird, but being outright offensive to most people's sensibilities and, and finding,

yeah. What's so successful about the Adams family movies is that it has fun with it. Oh, we have to, but it has fun with it, you know, and they're they're fun sympathetic people but it also the door is open to anything oh and you are allowed to imagine

anything child they're into all of it exactly they like it all and they can joke about it and you're like how another funny joke and it's in the movies like yes it was a funny joke but it's also what they think. And both of those things could be true and you're going to have a good time. And it just pulls that off. It's impossible. It pulls it off.

But also, we can't go into a full Addams Family tangent here, but it has to be noted, the masterstroke of those two films is that they're a great family. Like, they really are loyal and supportive of each other. I feel like i've seen so many people tweeting recently about the fact that like gomez and morticia were the first time

they saw an adult couple on screen and realized that married people could still be attracted to each other and still feel emotion they're like they're like it's all opposite day and the adams family up to it including like what if a husband and wife really liked each other like that would be the craziest thing zero flame yeah it's yeah they're so good those movies are masterpieces they were yeah they're they are masterpieces especially values which is just perfect it is it is the airplane of its decade values is the rosetta stone for our entire we watched that together i think when i was at your yeah when you were when you were in my place i was like i'm throwing it on and we watched it and we laughed every minute every single joke gets a laugh it's so it's the only

live action movie that feels like peak simpsons that feels like season five simpsons where there's actual emotional underpinning and also just fucking joke density and creativity you tweeted this recently david but like when we finally do the adam simley values episode it's going to be delivered off a balcony avida style at this point it is going to be our grand gesture to the people yes yes yes exactly oh my god i i believe i also i once treated like my ultimate fear i know they did the cartoon so the cartoon kind of blunted this because the cartoon can exist without me worrying about it and there's a sequel coming out one day right but to some one day there'll just be some deadline article that's like, Zac Efron circling Adam's family? Like, you know, just like, you know, someone will get their claws in it

where I'm like, no, no, don't do it. Don't bring it back. You can't be famous. You won't pull it off. Am I misremembering? I mean, my brain is soup at this point. Was it not announced that Tim Burton is going to do a live action Adam's Family TV series?

Wait, what? Oh, God. Good for you. I feel like that was a deadline announcement two months ago that he's doing a TV show for the first time

and he's going to be the showrunner, which is a horrible idea in every regard. Yes, you are correct. Am I wrong? You are correct. This is a, you know,

whatever, in development. Who knows? And the worst part of this is if you ever were to do it in live action again, the two actors you should cast are the people they've already burned in the animated movie. Oscar Isaac. Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron.

Interesting. Charlize Theron. Huh. Yeah. All right. Impossible to top Julia and Houston. Just impossible. You can't.

The teaser trailer for Addams Family 2, which is tentatively scheduled to come out next Halloween 2021, is just like, thing crawls onto screen, snap, snap, and then it says, next year, things return to normal. And then thing pushes the letter A on it and says, abnormal, snap, snap, The Addams Family 2. I just want to say for our listeners who can't see the Zoom. So Griffin is doing this with his hand but he has the background. So he's doing the thing hand but because of the Zoom background it is actually severing his hand

from his arm. So it's really like good VFX right now. I'm actually keying out my hand. I was like blown away by that where it's like, oh, this is the first teaser trailer that is not just trying to hype audiences up at the prospect of a new movie,

but trying to hype them up at the prospect of a pandemic being defeated. Yeah. Right. That's fine. It's like the marketing strategy. Right. Next year, you might be able to see a movie again.

Snap, snap. Yeah. Do we have anything else we want to say about Marwen and being welcomed to it? I took truly two pages of notes. I'm looking through them now. I had so many thoughts while I was watching this. I appreciate it. Jeez.

I'm running through this. You rarely come with notes. I know I've been doing it more recently just because my brain has become a fucking jello nine months in

and I cannot retain a thought for more than five seconds can I do a quick shout out to the documentary that Jelf Malmberg and who is the other

director oh yes that movie rules Spettacolo. Yeah. It's fantastic. If you like Marwen Call, I would check it out.

It's about a town in Italy that does a play about itself every year. So it's similarly sort of like self-reflexive art project in the way, like it kind of scratches that same itch, but it's like this huge ensemble and this like decades long story about this town and it's fan it like it moves me to tears that that

documentary is i mean they're they're great yeah they do a good job yeah they're uh malmberg also edited uh won't you be my neighbor i didn't realize he does a lot of documentary editing i think yeah whatever um yeah but he rules uh Marlon Call's great. I always get the title wrong, but Topicolo's great. Watch both of his films. This is, I think, the only note

I didn't really cover in this. I mean, A, I'll just recite this verbatim. When he shows the shoes to Leslie Mann, and she goes,

so is it like a shoe fetish? And he goes, it's not a fetish. And his clarification is, I collect women's essence helps me understand dames and her response is i get that i get that is i'm sorry is uh jodie foster about to burst in here are you gonna put on night vision goggles am i about to go in a well okay I don't get it but also come on guys

I had to do the silence of the lambs bit I have no problem with a foot fetish or a shoe thing if you want to be into that that is a okay it is truly only the issue of the way he says it to her that's the only problem in the way that she reacts

it's just weird energy between them in the scene. Correct. Yeah. A bohemian like you to Mark Hogan camp waking up in a fever sweat and then this weird morph edit to him running into the bar to get the lava lamp. We haven't watched Witches yet, but I would argue the single weirdest needle drop in the entire Zemeckis filmography. How did I not notice that? What? It's great.

I love it. It's so bizarre. He's going dandy war holes. What? It's when Deja says you must build me a time machine. And he's like, a time machine? And it goes vegan food. Come over to your pad and I'll

do something nice. My God. Is that the most recent song that you think that Robert Zemeckis has ever heard? Yeah, because when you watch all these movies and like Flight, the most recent song is from 1979. That's incredible. For him to pull up a Dandy Warhol song is so bizarre. Griff, there are needle drops in the film Flight? What are you talking about? I don't remember.

The score is not totally diegetic in that film. just you know the sounds of the universe that we're hearing you might not know this but uh john goodman's character in that film has sympathy for the devil okay but what about like when he does cocaine like is there anything up with that scene like david there's no songs about cocaine so i i to tell you this. I hate to tell you this. It hurts me to share this. But in those moments, one could argue that Denzel's character, Whip Whitaker, is feeling all right. You're right. I'm feeling all right, guys.

Last thing I want to share. And this is just like the fundamental, my frustrations. And to some degree I'm just hung up because I love the documentary so much. It's hard for me to view this movie on its own

merits but I talked about the documentary when the end the denouement of the film is him going to the opening in New York City

being terrified about having his art judged when it's never meant to be something consumed by the public and he's like trying to hype himself up like I'm being Grinch Village everyone's weird they're gonna have feathers in their hair consumed by the public. And he's like trying to hype himself up. You're like, I'm going to be in Grinch Village.

Everyone's weird. They're going to have feathers in their hair. And then he goes there and he's like, this is boring. This is so unusual. And there's this shot of him wearing like leather men's shoes. And he's like, I hate, I hate that I'm wearing these shoes. They look nice, but I chickened out. I'm such a coward.

I should have worn them. And then you see him at the opening when people are starting to leave and he goes up to one of the women who's organizing it and he says, I'm so ashamed of myself. I chickened out. And she's like, it's not too late. Put on the heels. And then there's this beautiful cut to him wearing the heels and his stockings.

And he's like, I did it. And they're like, see? And he's like, it does feel pretty good. And that's like the big point of the movie is like even though he's disappointed that like New York isn't the haven for like acceptance that he thought it was going to be, he had the courage to like be himself, which is the thing he keeps on talking about in the documentary.

And in this movie, the denouement is he wears his uniform to the fucking art opening and he accepts a pasta dinner invitation from Arrow Weaver. Yeah. It just feels like that's pretty fundamental. but sushi sorry right there they're gonna try sushi together they're gonna it's gonna be a fun new thing for them or whatever yeah i just dislike that the shoe thing is treated as a quirk in this movie rather than a sort of multifaceted reckoning with his very complicated sort of sexual identity,

uh, in real life. And it feels, it just feels a little gross to me that is, is simplified that much. Cause I think that's such a course. So the guy, and is the reason that these fucking assholes beat the shit out of him,

you know? Yeah. That's, that's just a big sticking point for me but those that's the end of my fucking two pages of notes i don't need to read the rest of them it's much more it's easier for this film to spend time on him navigating relationships with women than the finite details of his you know what clothes he does and doesn't want to wear and how he identifies and all of that. Like that's, I don't think that Zemeckis

is a filmmaker equipped to deal with that. He's equipped to deal with, does Leslie Mann like him or not? Like, yeah. Oh, that's the final note I wanted to share. I'll just read this verbatim. Is proposing with the Purple Heart the most uncomfortable scene

in the history of popular cinema. Why is it shot like the chicken scene from Caché? It is crazy how far away the camera is. I guess because it's so uncomfortable that it's almost like we just have, we can't be near this. It's too intense to even see.

Yeah. They shoot her up doll like one of the doll houses in this part too so you're kind of on doll scale with them there it doesn't cut it lingers for so long past her walking out of frame and him just standing like kneeling there motionless and my additional note was it's the opposite of that shot in Taxi Driver where the camera pans away from him on the phone because it's too embarrassing. Like that Scorsese is like, this is so emotionally uncomfortable. I don't even want to capture it. And Zemeckis is like, I'm going to force you to watch this for 98 seconds.

Sounds like it's an interesting and weird movie that's really sort of compelling to watch in its strangeness. It is. I give it a five. I refuse to give it a six. Yeah. Welcome to Marvel. I could have ended up like this guy if I did acid a couple more times. That's what I was thinking too.

I was like, oh boy. Four or five more drops and I would have been in my backyard in my parents' house in New in new jersey anyway burying jeans yeah god i mean it was so close to getting there yeah anyway their first sale 2021 no ben and tamir where you're saying i'm so grateful in the year 2020 to not be a guy who's just largely home-bred and meticulously rearranging action figures in his domicile. Just to point out, it is 2021 when this episode comes out.

Right. So that's my point. It won't even fly anymore. I mean, Emily, it's December. I mean, we're close.

Congratulations. I'll be posting about it. Check out my stuff. I've got hats. I've got shirts. I've be posting about it. Check out my stuff. I've got hats. I've got shirts. I've got berry jeans. Can I say it? Do you think there's any people who listen to this podcast

and think it's like berry jeans, like they're stained with the juices of berries? Berried jeans. I like that. You're just giving him another idea. That's a whole different concept emily and that's just like yeah welcome you beat the genes with like big bunches of grapes or something right yeah yeah you crush them with your bare feet like or something like

mulberries that really stain you just smack a branch of mulberries right on them or what about buried genes like a bear attacked them i don't know all right let me play the box office game smack a branch of mulberries right on them. Or what about buried jeans? Like a bear attacked them. I don't know. All right, we should play the box office game. Or what about if you like sort of like

air spray a picture of a berry from HBO's Berry on the Jeans like we're almost there. You're almost there. I apologize for saying you could do it. I'm sorry.

What's the word I'm looking for? Not air spray. I know what you're talking about. Air brush. I'm thinking of the Bernie Mac Deaf Comedy Jam jeans where he has his own face painted on them. I ain't joke I kind of made.

I ain't scared of you motherfuckers. I drank half a bottle of wine during this episode. Half a bottle, no less. And you're still just at a five for Marwen. After half a bottle of wine, you're still at a five. Half a bottle in. I'm still just at a five. This film came out December 21st, 2018.

It made just over a black hat. It topped out at 10 domestic. 12 worldwide, am I correct? It only made two. 13 worldwide. 13 worldwide. I wasn't looking up this opening weekend, but in looking up things around this movie,

I saw reporting on the final totals and analysis of a flop and stuff. And they pointed out that this movie saw like reporting on the final totals and like analysis of a flop and stuff and they pointed out that this movie came out the week after our beloved mortal ngs two big budget universal auteur passion projects back to back that both belly flop this was the period where people were like universal yeah yeah uh mortal engines has already fallen to 13 in its second weekend. Oh, it's not even in our top 10? I was hoping it would be in some engines. No, it opened at five and fell to 13 on weekend two.

No respect for Shrike. No respect for Shrike. A 77% drop. That is extraordinary. Someday. I don't have any time frame for it, but must do an ng's pod oh we'll get to the end family we'll do peter jackson we'll do mortal engines as a bonus you're the guest i do want to point out i i found it in the same message board that the same week the welcome to marwin 4k

release was canceled and the mortal engines 3k uh 3d blu-ray release were cancelled those were like the first two so rude oh my god well i still have my screener i actually have a physical copy of of ngs because i'm not positive that it'll ever be available on streaming uh it's probably a peacock right much like the characters of mortal engines you need to hold on to the relics of the past as we move on to traction cities you need to have that disc and place it next to the statue of a minion um absolutely uh thank you emily thank you anyway all right okay number one at the box office is a film we've discussed on this show we discuss it on this weekend um it was a huge

surprising mega hit i know what it is because i also love this movie very much great movie uh it's a comic book this is really one of my favorite holidays movie seasons yeah It's a great movie. Aquaman. Great movie. It is bizarre how big that movie was considering how weird it was and I don't say that as any sort of strike against it. Sea crime. Sea crime. Gotta watch out for those

underwater lasers. Aquaman Nicole Kidman's biggest hit of all time. Number two is I think the movie that most people probably would have predicted would be number one. It's also opening this week. Yes. Right. A huge underperformer.

It just felt like that was going to be the big Christmas family movie and that Aquaman was going to be too nerdy and they totally flip. What a fart that movie was. That movie is a dry fart. And people have tried to convince me like oh no it's not so bad it is so bad it's so bad so bad so bad the song nothing going for it just the songs are just like songs about the thing that has going for it is that emily and ben wishaw are professionals and like they're locked in they do their best yes yeah but that's about it well which which

one song were you about to say me oh I thought I was a good I was good to find a single song I was good to find the scene where Ben Whishaw breaks down in the attic that's the scene where I remember you reported back to me you were like out of nowhere Ben Whishaw's like I got this

oh god but yeah and then like but anytime rob marshall's like i've arranged all these dancers for you they're gonna dance it's gonna be a big musical number you're like oh all right and he's like i've decided to cut 100 times like yeah i'm only gonna show you one 15th of this at a time like why it's so it drives me up the wall uh i feel like i feel like on Topsy watching that movie. Everything's upside down with all these cuts. I don't know. What's number three at the box office?

Number three at the box office, another disappointment. A pretty watchable, solid movie, considering its background. It's sort of like a side equal in a franchise that's trying to figure itself out oh bumblebee bumblebee yeah solid movie that's a pleasant movie that's an ultimate like gentleman's six and a half to seven right it's just the iron giant worse but you're like rip off a good movie and get kind of close to it i'll watch that and hayley steinfeld's in it and she's just kind of like yeah um bumblebee yeah uh well emily you know what that's okay but you know it's got a lot of smiths on the soundtrack

so that's fine i was gonna say i think it'd probably be your favorite transformers movie emily yeah possibly but yeah not that that's a big honor but yes number four i like a lot of the transformers all right okay you know what so do we and we're all friends here number four it's an animated film it was it's it's a it's a big movie that has only i feel like grown in influence even in the last couple years milana no no it's grown in influence it's been out for two weeks not not a disney but it did win the academy award for animated film this year in 2018 the academy award for is not about a baby who is a boss baby is boss. I can't believe I'm not getting this immediately

because this is probably a movie I've watched many, many times at iTunes at three o'clock in the morning, right? We saw it together. Oh, it's Into the Spider-Verse. That's right. Yes. Genuinely a film that feels like...

What a great movie. A great movie, but also a kind of organic phenomenon in the likes of which we rarely see, where I feel like people were kind of cynical about the idea of it. It came out, exceeded expectations, grew, played like a sleeper hit, and I feel like two years later has now been kind of accepted as a classic. and kind of accept it as a classic. Like it only becomes more and more prevalent in conversation, I think, as a reference point, both in terms of what movies can do well and in terms of just as like a cultural meme. It just feels like, oh, that's like

clearly just kind of one of the classics now. In terms of animation, like it's such, it's so often referenced now. It's like, oh, you can do a computer animated movie that doesn't have to look like a fucking Pixar movie. Right, right. It doesn't have to look like shit. Pixar movie. And like, right. It doesn't feel like shit. Right.

It's like redefined, like CGI. It redefined sort of superhero narratives at a time. It can look like Beowulf. Like, and just like, great. I hope,

I, I always, there are more Beowulfs in Into the Spider-Verse 2. What if Beowulf shows up? He's just like, I am Spider-Wolf from the Zemeckis universe. That'd be great.

They should do that. Remember, there's a Zemeckis cube in Ready Player One, another great movie. New York Film Critics Circle that year. Oh boy. We were, I remember,

and Emily, you probably were there for that voting, I'm pretty sure. That was my one and only voting year. Right. And I remember like, we had beforehand been let's let's try and get animated feature to spider-verse i know it's gonna be hard it felt like a radical idea at the time i remember the two of you telling me about like this is our weird like the competition was like dogs yeah i love that was it i love dogs which was you know literally right exactly I remember

you saying to me David like it's autopilot they're gonna give it to Wes just as a career thing as default there was also like Incredibles 2 that year you know like there were other were big you know quote-unquote movies that could have and we were just like now come on we're gonna let's I know people will be resistant to the comic book thing and we give it to it and we were really happy that we did and then everyone else also gave it but you know like it totally swept right yeah anyway that's all thank god we didn't give it to isle of dogs that would have been terrible number five in the movie is a great masterpiece about a great man. Weird. I mean, Sully didn't come out in 2018.

I'm trying to remember what other film this could be describing. It's not the mule. It is the mule. What if it was a mule? Vroom. Mule. Vroom.

Oh, God. What a great one. Thank God that was number five and not what's number six, the Gr What a great one. Thank God that was number five and not what's number six, the Grinch. We should acknowledge the day we're recording this podcast is the day that AT&T announced that all 2021 Warner Brothers releases are going day and date on HBO Max. And buried in that, I feel like it's not discussed. People are talking about Dune. They're talking about Suicide Squad. They're not talking about the fact that Clint Eastwood's Cry Macho

is now going straight to HBO Max. And the idea that I won't get the pleasure of watching Cry Macho, it's six-week-in-release, a Tuesday 3 p.m. showing that is weirdly 90% full of geriatrics. Hell yeah. Is that how you saw the mule? Do you like my new background, Griff? And how I saw Sully.

Yeah, it's the Grinch. No, I hate it. That's how I feel about this new Warner Brothers. It's Matthew Morrison. David is scratching the top of his head. Like he's thinking hard. You, David,

you quote tweeted the news story with just emoji thumbs down. And then someone responded, I'm dying to hear Griff lightning thoughts on this. And I was like, come on. Here's my one word response. Guess. Yeah.

Get out of here how do you think I'm a broken person who I only like going to movie theaters it is the only activity I enjoy how do you think I feel about this it's bad it's really bad whatever we'll figure it out

look we're gonna be I mean we've been talking about David we're gonna be like those like fanatical season pass holders who go to every game. And people are like, you go to every fucking Mets game? And you're like, I gotta be there for my team. And that's how we're going to feel paying some probably like $400 a month AMC diamond pass to be able to see. You're going to be like Mets season ticket holders. Yes. The Mets. We're going to be like Met season ticket holders. Yes. The Met. We're going to be like patrons of the art.

Yeah. Well, whatever. Whatever works. They better give you champagne in the lobby is all I'm saying if that's what movies become. I'm now three-fourths through with my least per se. Let me buy a toy. I'm going to go something. Griffin chugging out of the

wine bottle. Chugging out of the wine bottle. Final thoughts. I like this movie. I give it two thumbs up. Ben, Ben, I have full respect for your respect of this film. I would implore you to watch the documentary. I'm not saying because I think it will make you like this film. Yes.

I just think it's due diligence. To anyone who has not watched the documentary. It is truly a great film. I look forward to it. I know it's the new year, but in case anyone hasn't checked it out, I have a slow Christmas album. It's not too late.

It's only been a month. So look that up. And do you know about this Emily? He promised this in the polar express episode. And I think people assumed it was a bit and he has played it for us now. Do you know about this, Emily? He promised this in the Polar Express episode, and I think people assumed it was a bit, and he has played it for us now, and it is frighteningly real.

It's slow. And it's not just chopped and screwed. This thing is slow. It's really, really slow. It's not just chopped and screwed, but it is chopped and screwed. The cops would pull this thing over and be like, you can't drive this slow.

It's not allowed. It's too this thing this thing is fucking glacial you don't you don't understand how slow this album is okay so it's like it it is like uh in inception slow it's yeah true yeah we're four levels in. At least. This is limbo. This album is going to function as many kicks to come in the future. Emily, congratulations on joining the Double Digits Club. You're the best.

You're the mother of blankies. I put in the work and I reap my reward. My reward is having been on this podcast ten times. But also I feel like I've been getting increasingly sappy because of this fucking year when we have our friends on the show.

But you're such a keystone to this podcast existing in the first place. You are. That's undeniably true. It's undeniably true. It's not just like a glib title. I mean, it's not just that you. And you know, it's undeniably true. It's not just like a glib title. I mean, it's not just that you like named our listenership,

but you literally kind of like helped define what the show was going to be when we transitioned out of that fucking Star Wars bit. Well, I'm, I'm very glad to be here. I'm very glad to, to, to,

to have some sort of holiday season pod with you guys and get to hang out into the wee hours talking about movies. It's my favorite thing. I love it. I wish we were doing it in person. Damn it. One of my favorites. Someday. I mean, it is like I was saying this sort of glibly,

but truly that season of Holiday Movies 2018 when this came out, I loved, and part of it was because of my NGs. But going out with you guys to see it, like, probably the last week that it was going to be in theaters. So good. Going to the bar ahead of time. It was great. It was so fun. Miss you guys.

Just every one of those. The four of us saw NGs together. I saw Spider-Verse the first time with David, the second time with Ben. I saw The Mule with ARP. Like almost every movie in that top 10 is a movie I saw. Of course he did. Yeah.

Right. So it's like almost every movie in that list is someone I saw, is something I saw with like a key blank check figure, which just makes me all the more nostalgic for movie going. Emily, Night Call has ended at this point, but people should listen to the back catalog. Night Call,

the archives live forever. I'm not sure if this will be up or not, but we're, I think we're going to put all of our bonus episodes public. So there might be new to you Night Call out there, which is cool. And that's, that's about it for now and you've gone hollywood and you're making major moves and there's things you can't talk about but there are many exciting emily yoshida yeah it's yeah hopefully fingers crossed

2021 will be have more going on in 2020 where I mostly, I don't know, pretended to do my taxes. I'm still working. Don't talk about taxes on this show. I already made that mistake. I'm playing that one hard, Emily, still. That's my main go-to is like, oh, I wish. I'm so busy with the taxes.

Yeah. In December. I have so much income to taxes. Yeah. In December. I have so much income to figure out. I just can't. The taxes. There are three pay stubs for $2 that I haven't reconciled yet. Oh, my God. No, I'm not in the world of residuals yet, so that'll be a whole other hell.

They shoot blue bloods in my neighborhood yeah hey baby look i'm telling you the the two dollar checks never stop coming in on that show i'm buying m&ms i'm buying peanut butter m&msM's. Oh my God, when they reopen the movie theaters. Yeah. I'm going to come load it. It's over. Wow. Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, subscribe. Thank you to Lee Montgomery for our theme song. Joe Bowen and Pat Rounds for our artwork. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit.

Go to our Shopify store where the Talkin' the Walk 2020 shirts are now available. Should be shipping out along with the pins and the restock of comedy point coins. More merch to come soon. Tune in next week. We're closing it out. We're ending the Book of Bobby. We're talking the witches.

A movie I have avoided watching up until this point to make it special. Have you seen it yet, David? Nope. We're getting bewitched by those rascally witches with friend of the show, Richard Lawson, trying desperately to keep up pace with you, Emily,

but I don't think he's hit 10 yet. No, that'll be his ninth. Oh my God. Yeah, neck and neck. All right, wrap it up. That's the end of the show. That's the end of the show.

That's the end of the show. And unfortunately, now I have to ask all of you to leave Marwen. I won't go. Ex marwin your exile from marwin