The Big Picture - The Michael Keaton Movie Mount Rushmore

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

With ‘Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice’ on the horizon, Sean and Amanda enlist the help of Michael Keaton superfan and ‘Blank Check’ cohost Griffin Newman to carve out the Michael Keaton movie Mount Rushmore: an ode to a career with incredible peaks and long, fallow stretches (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by ‘Between the Temples’ writer-director Nathan Silver and producer and star Jason Schwartzman to discuss the unique production style of the movie, how to inject a specific comedic tone into a script, the movie’s inspirations, and more (1:45:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Griffin Newman, Jason Schwartzman, and Nathan Silver Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the summer of 1999, thousands attended what would be the final iteration of the Woodstock Music Festivals. But unlike its namesake, Woodstock 99 was not about peace and love. Join me as I dive deep into this story about music, mud, violence, and tragedy. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Stephen Hyden, and this is Break Stuff, the story of Woodstock 99. Available Tuesday, August 27th. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75

in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Michael Keaton. Later in this show, I'll have a conversation with a different actor, Jason Schwartzman and Nathan Silver. They are the star and the director of Between the Temples, a new comedy about a cantor who can't sing, who's just lost his wife and can't get along with his two moms. I promise this movie is a comedy. It's a very funny comedy. Nathan is

a great filmmaker. Jason, of course, is a great actor. They were both great guests. Stick around for that chat. But first, we have another guest, a very special guest, a returning guest, a guest who's very ready to talk about Michael Keaton. It's Griffin Newman of the Blank Check podcast, among many other things. Hi, Griffin. Hi. Thank you guys so much for having me here.

It's the call I've been waiting for my entire life. Do you want to just go off about Michael Keaton at length? Can you first set the scene for everyone and describe your shirt for those of us just, you know, listening along? From the fine folks at Super Yaki that says Michael Keaton rules and it has a black and white photo of him. I believe it's from Jack Frost. I think this is a concert scene from the beginning of Jack Frost. One of his

lesser films. Not to get ahead of the conversation, but I don't think any of us are going to put that etch it in stone. Right. Yeah. I mean, so we're doing a Mount Rushmore today. This is a relatively new concept on the show. I would say a controversial concept. I was going to, I almost asked Bobby to prepare a summary of the feedback we got about our political takes and our, you know, correspondence between presidents and films. And then I thought better of that so you know we'll get we'll get griffin's input on um the importance of the four presidents on matt rushmore and what

they mean to him but uh yeah that was a that was a a wrench that bobby threw in the proceedings which i thought was a good i'm not sure to what you guys are referring because i all the positive feedback sure came straight to me. It was great. Everybody was really happy about it. And they thought it was really coherent and cogent. So we're just going to run it back. Thanks so much. As it was.

Did this come over CyberDust? How are you receiving those messages? Chris and I have developed a proprietary way to receive messages from listeners that you guys aren't part of. Is that through Zin or how do you guys do that? It's funded by Zin. Okay. That's exciting. We're in trouble.

That's why they're not funding the actual making of their pouches right exactly yes we're talking about michael keaton today of course because we are on the eve of the week of beetlejuice beetlejuice a movie that i have been touting for months and also been made fun of about my touting for months yes and of course this is one of the well maybe one of the signature michael keaton parts we'll talk about whether that's the case and whether it belongs in the Mount Rushmore formulation. We are recording mere hours after the opening night premiere of Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice at the Venice Film Festival. A rapturous four-minute standing ovation. People taking to their feet as if possessed by Beetlejuice around a dinner table. Well, okay. You know, I want to talk about Beetlejuice and Beetlejuice and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,

but I want Griffin to explain why Michael Keaton is his guy. You know, like, why is this the person that means so much? Is Beetlejuice the reason that he's an actor that means so much to you? It's a good question. I've been, uh, I've been trying to do my homework, uh, you know, big picture style, really cramming, trying to get everything in, or watch as much as I could, or revisit as much as I could in preparation for this episode. And in the process of this, watching a lot of Keaton in a short period of time, I've been trying to work through crystallizing what it is I like so much about the guy and where that relationship formed, because it's just kind of a thing I feel like I've taken as a given for most of my life. He is, at this point, I want to say my default

favorite actor alive answer. When I am asked that question or when I feel the need to surrender that information for some reason, he is the one I jump to, which isn't to say that I like every movie he's been in or that he even has the greatest hit ratio of any actor, I do think I basically always find him compelling to watch. There are a few things in my blind spots that I've gotten through now in prep for this that tested that theory for the first time. There are a couple movies that got a little on edge. But I think that's part of what I find interesting about him and his sort of weird, complicated narrative of this guy who kept on kind of gaining and losing A-list movie star status has had several flirtations with being kind of at the top of the heap or at least top of his lane

and kind of has a tendency to fuck it up or lose it. I think we're now existing in an era where we are basically 10 years past what is considered his comeback of 2014, of course, when everyone flocked to throw him his flowers for his supporting role in Need for Speed and the Robocop remake. No, but it's insane that those two movies come out mere months before Birdman, that he was doing completely thankless supporting roles in IP Trek the same year he gets an Oscar nomination. And I think we're now 10 years into him basically being codified as elder statesman. He has had flops in that run. He has had movies that don't hit in that run. But I think he's a little etched permanently into Michael Keaton's back forever. We're always happy

to see this guy. He's about to arguably possibly have his biggest hit ever. If not his biggest hit since Batman. It seems like it. Amanda has some

doubts about that. We'll see. We shall see. I just need you to stop texting me from industry conferences at like 4 p.m. Why?

Like I'm hearing on the street that Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. I have information. Sure. Don't you want that information? No, but Griffin, to your point, I was going to offer positive theory that maybe Michael Keaton is now at this moment the perfect level of famous. I think so. Like maybe he actually, and obviously there have been ups and downs. And as you mentioned, there's going to be a 10 to 15 year run where we're going to be like, well, Herbie fully loaded. I had forgotten how precipitous the drop off was.

It's fascinating. And there are several. Like, I think there's a real dead zone. But there are, I mean, it's interesting, actually, how well you could track his career onto the presidents, where they land in American history, the gaps between the four presidents on Mount Rushmore, the sort of peaks and valleys of American history. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I think there's some direct correlation there. Yeah, okay.

Oh, that's interesting. Don't spoil it. I know you're preparing for some other content. This is true. We love that you do your homework. This is true. And I also want to talk about that with you guys at the end. But Bill Simmons often talks about Tom Hanks as like one of the like premier market corrections for Michael Keaton.

And you can even like you can see that like you can see when the Hanks rise really starts in the 90s and the Keaton movies start getting shifted over. So there are definitely, definitely like peaks and valleys. I think what you just said, I've kept that in the back of my mind as I've been doing all this work. I think that is one of the like key ringer universe theories is the Hanks as market correction for Keaton that I think about all the time. Totally. And I, in prepping for this, tried to go through chronologically. I was not rewatching movies that I've seen a million times or seen recently. I was focusing on gaps or things I haven't seen in forever. And so I was really kind of charting. I got through almost everything in the 80s and 90s in the last two weeks. And that's really the period of time where he's in direct competition with Hanks,

and they're sort of like, you know, neck and neck. And I feel like a cornerstone of Bill's theory is like, when he got Batman, it was like, well, he just got a thing that Hanks could never pull off. Keaton conclusively won. They were both having hits and misses, but Batman is something that was like maybe unattainable for Hanks. And then immediately, Keaton sort of starts fucking up, and Hanks starts his 10-year run of being the most beloved star in America, 10 successive years of $100 million grocers, best actor wins, best pictures.

Yep. Similar choices in, but like slightly different. This is such an interesting idea. I mean, it's literally like, you know, Keaton works with Ron Howard for a decade and then like in comes my guy in Apollo 13. You know, it's really, there are a lot of similarities. And I do think that they have a, I mean, the feeling could be the same, but there, I agree, there is something slightly different, slightly weirder about Keaton. Keaton is a little weird, you know, and that is

what makes him special. This is what I've always loved about him. As like a child, young movie fan trying to get my bearings on things, I think there are performances like Beetlejuice and Batman that are so bizarre for a major movie star to be given, especially in a broad studio comedy, quote unquote, or a big temple superhero movie, where he was just always pinging for me. And I hadn't seen a lot of the weird films in between his high watermarks, but it always felt like this is maybe the strangest performer to become a conventional quote unquote movie star. And not only that, but his movie stardom was somehow tied to him figuring out how to make his weirdness

work in those contexts. He wasn't tamping things down. He was like weaponizing them. In that sense, there's a logic to why it was tough for him to sustain it or have consistency, because it's hard to find what he fits into properly. There are certain projects where you're like, he's too weird for this. And other things where you're like, this is him trying to be normal. You know, I think he was always kind of fighting with how he fit into this. And I think to your point, Amanda, about him now being at the right level of fame, there is this question of not did he at times tank his career on purpose, but it certainly felt that at a moment where Tom Hanks was going into overdrive and clearly made a choice of like, I am running for the president of

Hollywood. I'm going to be the top of the heap. I want the responsibility of that. I want to have to be in competition with myself on maintaining this run, this miracle run. Keaton kind of kept swerving off of the obvious movie star playbook. And the clearest moment of that is him just walking away from Batman. Something that I think was seen as like unfathomable at that time. Why would you blow this? You can make any four movies you want in between Batman entries, and you'll be golden forever. It's particularly because when you get into the middle and late 90s,

when Hanks is rising, as you said, it's not that the movies he makes are bad, but they all just seem small. They don't seem major, and that clearly leads to one of the dips that we're talking about in his career. And, you know, normally for an actor like Keaton, who's his age on this show, we do a Hall of Fame. I don't really think you can do a Hall of Fame for Michael Keaton's career. And that doesn't mean that it hasn't been a great career and in a very

accomplished career, but he doesn't have 14 movies where you're like, God, we're really gonna have to fight it out to determine which belongs in position 12 and which belongs in position nine. Like, it just isn't that kind of an acting career and and some of that are the choices of the movies i when i was going back and doing my research i was filling in on a lot of the 80s movies that weren't like mr mom you know which i've obviously seen a million times and non-canonical right but he did a lot of movies in the 80s that are very much like a canonical you know like a they look like they should be guy and he's the relatable american you know who's trying to figure out some sort of situation and like make good they

look like they should be and but they aren't the ones that have been handed down to us. And so I hadn't seen a lot of them because for whatever reason, movies that I think did work in the moment, they always kind of, a lot of them just tend to be like the number two or the number three version of whatever else is out there that we now revisit.

Yeah, I think you're right. And it's another thing I found interesting. I mean, there were a lot of those movies where I would look at them over the years and go, how have I never watched this? If I like Michael Keaton this much, and this poster looks pretty good, and this premise seems okay,

how have I never gotten around to watching this? And there's a reason these movies aren't passed down. Most of them aren't profoundly bad. I feel like I only watched two films that I would fully stamp as bad. I think a lot of his career is, to be blunt, mid as hell, where he's just making these really mid choices,

working with kind of like real journeyman directors, often with good co-stars. And there's something on paper that you can see totally working. Oh, this would be a smart fit for what he is as a movie star at this point. And then they all just kind of don't totally work. And some of them you can put your finger on it and some of them you can't.

But there was this feeling that he was just kind of treading water, especially in the 90s when in theory he should have been the king of the heap, pick of the litter. You're Batman. Do anything you want on the side you know i think that let's just talk about beetlejuice and the new movie briefly okay because we just haven't spent a lot of time talking about that movie i revisited it last night it's the only one of the kind of keaton classics that i actually went back and re-watched and you know it just

really is genuinely one of my favorite movies of all time and a movie that is like a total gateway to a lot of my interests you know and seeing it seven eight nine years old and for a lot of people our age you know like i have had a lot of friends like oh have you seen beetlejuice yet i love that as a kid like we all did yeah so that movie imprinted on a lot of young people but it also also, I think, set a standard for him in a way that made him seem not like the guy from Gung Ho, but something a little bit more daring, a little bit more exciting,

a little bit weirder, as you said. And that movie existed kind of in amber for a long time. You know, it was a box office hit, but it also is an all-time cable and VHS classic. People had it in their homes. It was rented constantly at the video store. And it's been 36 years since that movie came out. And I don't know if that's the longest period of time between sequels, but it might be. It might be the record from original to sequel. And obviously, it kind of is working in a similar way

to the movies of the last Hall of Fame that we made where we talk about people who grew up with a movie and then they get old enough to have kids. And then they can, like kids who grew up with Toy Story and now can take their kids to Toy Story 5. That will be me. You mean the last Mount Rushmore? Sorry, the last Mount Rushmore.

Which was a Pixar round Mount Rushmore. And now Beetlejuice is 36 is more than 25, but we're 30 in the case of Toy Story. But it's a somewhat similar proposition where I think parents of 10-year-olds will be taking their kids to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and telling them about how when Beetlejuice came out. So anyway, Griffin, I

assume this is like the gateway to Keaton for you as well? I think it has to be. Or maybe Batman? Yeah, I think it was Beetlejuice before Batman, honestly. I was just to be. Yeah. I think it was Beetlejuice before Batman, honestly. I was just double-checking my math. I believe Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is tied with

Top Gun Maverick for longest gap with nothing in between. Sure. But it's, you know, a longer... Remember how fun that was? That was great.

I really... That was a great summer. Longer gap than The Hustler to Color of Money. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you think about what a seismic feeling there was of like 150 years have passed

between these two movies. All of Hollywood has changed. We've gone from black and white to color. Beetlejuice, meanwhile, has basically just kind of stayed this perennial, as you're saying, like point of pop culture. And there was stuff like the Saturday Morning Cartoon Show that ran for many years, the Broadway musical that was successful

earlier this decade. I mean, there are like things that have kept it afloat, but most of it is just this movie continuing to work with generations, continuing to be something that people revisit. I probably watched it for the first time, I think on Comedy Central when I was like eight or nine and it started playing.

I immediately locked into like, I haven't seen no movie like this before. And I'd probably already seen other Burton films and yet Beetlejuice's tone, humor, world building, plotting is so bizarre and specific and is so strange how you kept on, we've been texting a lot about Beetlejuice recently, Sean, and you keep on using the word miracle, which sounds hyperbolic, but it really is this movie where you're like, how did all these pieces come together in a form that everyone got

that was super mainstream, accessible, fun popcorn for a movie that's like rooted in German expressionism and like Borscht Belt comedy and Gallo's humor and all these weird elements. It's a PG movie with severed heads. You know, I mean, it's just, it's a very strange thing in our culture. And a film that arguably has like

four protagonists, like a very kind of unconventional narrative structure. So, I mean, that is the thing in the context of Keaton is he's in it for, I read 17 minutes, but 20. It takes 38 minutes for him to show up in the movie, even though he's the guy on the poster. That's what I was going to say. The first time I watched

it, my parents were letting me watch it on Comedy Central, and then my bedtime hit. And I said, I can't stop watching this. And I said, well, tape the rest of it. And when I went to sleep, it was the moment when they dig him up out of the ground and he pops up. So I went to sleep just having seen Beetlejuice came on screen. And I went to school the next day and I was like, this is the greatest movie I've ever seen. And when I get home, I get to actually spend time with Beetlejuice. And I get there and I'm like, this performance lived up to all the expectations I set myself over an anxious school day of who this guy could be. And that is the thing that's miraculous about that character, which on paper, it's like, how does anyone play

this? And you hear all the stories of like, Burton really wanted Sammy Davis Jr. You know, his like first instinct was just get someone who's like an old school entertainer and have them do their shtick in ghoul makeup. And instead, Michael Keaton comes in who's like sort of this dinged comedy star who had it and then lost it, agrees to take this title character over the title role that is actually only, as you said, less than 20 minutes of screen time. And he creates a performance that's that big that you don't question it. Yeah, I'm always a little bit skeptical of my own fascinations pre-10 years old. Anything that got into my bloodstream before I turned 10, I have to be like, is this actually

good or did I only just arrive at the right time in my life? But re-watching Beetlejuice last night, I was like, this is genuinely brilliant. Like creative, strange, certainly, but in it, not just in its own world building, but its own like willingness to be unashamed, to be as strange as it is. And obviously there are like a million component parts that come together. It's like, it's Burton at the right time.

You've got the Danny Elfman score. You've got all these actors. I think one thing that has helped it sustain in the culture that isn't always the case with a lot of 80s classics and certainly 70s classics is, you know, not just Michael Keaton, but Winona Ryder and Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis and Catherine O'Hara all persist in our culture. I mean, they're all arguably more famous now than they were at the time of the movie's release and maybe even in the 90s. And so there's something fascinating about everyone being able to come

back together for a movie like this and not feeling that strange. You know, in Top Gun Mavericks case, there's just two actors who come back for that movie movie like this and they're not feeling that strange. You know, in Top Gun Maverick's case, there's just two actors who come back for that movie because most of them are either not alive or it wouldn't make sense for them to be in that story. And in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, there's like a reunion kind of feeling to it as well,

which is interesting. And you know, Burton, we'll spend some more time on him next week. Griffin, you and I were texting about him last week, just that miraculous eight movie run from the 80s through the 90s. And then one of the steepest and strangest declines in movie director history.

But at this time, coming off of Pee Wee, before Batman, he is the right person at the right time in a culture that is waiting for a kind of kiddified version of horror. Like it's like the world was ready for a kind of macabre humor that he was perfect for. And there was like kind of a sad boy thing that he really, you know, executed very well on. Or a sad girl thing in the case of Lydia in this movie.

And it just, it's this unusual brew to make a very special movie. I'm looking forward to the sequel, but I also just feel like I'm going to be disappointed. You know, Griffin, you were saying people

that you've talked to who've seen it really liked it. Obviously, the buzz is very positive for it and people want to see it. But the original does hold a very personal place

in my heart. So I don't, you know, I feel like it's not as personal for you. Are you like, do you have any expectations for the movie? Not in don't, you know, I feel like it's not as personal for you. Do you, are you like, do you have any expectations for the movie? Not in the way that you do. I mean,

and not, and not in like a making fun of you way either. I mean, I think that, and as you said, we'll talk more about Burton, but this is really where all the, like everything comes together for Burton for me.

And it is, you know, also the most accessible. And it, and it has like the right balance of the horror elements and the original Beetlejuice. So I'm looking forward to it. But I didn't like set my life or my movie watching life by the original. So I feel a little more comfortable just going down nostalgia lane and then Jenna Ortega being in there just because, you know,

you need something for the kids. Yeah, definitely. But it seems like people have enjoyed it so far. The reviews from Venice are good. The thing that encourages me from what I've heard from people, and it's the question I keep asking and why I know who's seen it, is is it weighed down with self-important legacy sequel bullshit? And everyone has told me that it is not.

That it very much feels like Keaton, O'Hara, Ryder, Burton, all of them came to it with the same goal, which is like, can we just try to recapture some of the energy that we tapped into 36 years ago that felt like this perfect confluence of everyone at the right place at the right time? And that it, you know, as much as Top Gun never totally works in my eyes, and as you said, Amanda, what a great summer, that movie can support the weight of like, this means

something. And the key to Beetlejuice is it should just kind of be fun. I just want like imagination and energy and comedy. And that's the magic of, I think Keaton's performance in the movie in particular is he's talked about in interviews trying to re-identify how to tap into it.

And he's like, you know, the thing with Beetlejuice is like everything's in bounds. There is nothing you can do as Beetlejuice that is out of character. And he can sort of assume other characters.

He can transform. He can take on any power, all this sort of stuff. And there's the sort of in-universe special effects-y side of that. But there's also just him as a performer can just throw anything at the wall at any moment and it fits. And especially watching a lot of the early Keaton movies leading to Beetlejuice, the thing I just kept coming back to is like the guy has the most incredible reserve of energy. He just has, like, such a motor inside of him that is often manifesting as all his the kind of performer where you could see it being dangerous letting him play something like beetlejuice of you need to rein this guy in

and yet there is a bizarre sense of discipline i do feel like he has a finding what the exact sort of like space of that guy is he never goes full theater kid. Yes. Even though those are his interests, and in many ways, kind of all of the chances that he takes from, you know, doing Dogberry and Much Ado to Beetlejuice, to like the career with Tim Burton. And I know what you mean about the motor and like the constant energy and motion, but it never like gets out of hand,

or at least in the good performances. He like never totally goes for it. And so there's something about him that even though there are many choices in this filmography where I'd be like, oh God, really? Are we going to do this? He can always sell me on it. And it's just because it just seems like he's a cool, confident guy being like, let's try it. I have an important question for you, griffin as a as an actor as well but i as i was watching beetlejuice you know there's

a famous moment where he's kind of hard-selling baldwin and davis's character and he's doing that i've seen the exorcist about 167 times and it keeps getting funnier every time i see it and he's really it's like the rip-roaring beetlejuiceice part. And as I was watching that, I was kind of wondering to myself, does Michael Keaton have excellent acting technique or is he just a weirdly charismatic person who knows how to tap into the oddity of himself and that makes him singular? And where is the line between talent and personhood?

Right. And sometimes is that just enough to make you a great star? I think it is both. I think personhood tends to be the thing that makes someone a star rather than a great actor. And there are obviously cases of people who are both. But when you talk about people who have some sort of stickiness as movie stars that isn't just one performance, but is across a career, even if it's not consistent for 40 straight years, there is some like unique, no one else is like this person on screen. There's something watchable about them. There's something bizarre. I do think he has a lot of craft. I think as you watch his career go on, he learns how to hone that craft better, whereas sometimes it was totally misapplied.

But I think going back to what you said, Amanda, and it's why I go back to him being my favorite actor, is I always find him compelling to watch, and I always struggle to crack exactly what he's doing. There is something confusing about his style that I find compelling, and it never feels like weirdness for weirdness sake. It feels like it is coming out of some strange extension of this guy's bizarre energy, in one moment, simultaneously be very big, very stylized, very over the top, and yet feel grounded in something incredibly specific, incredibly like kind of emotionally grounded, psychologically based, and still feel a little elusive, like he's holding something back. When you watch Robin Williams in these sort of like Beetlejuice-esque performances, the times in a movie he was allowed to let her rip

and everything is in bounds, there is nothing he's holding back. He is throwing every single thing at the wall. And the moment you just called out, which as you said, is kind of the peak of him going most Beetlejuicy, the start of that moment is he comes in a thousand miles a minute, he's throwing fastballs, they go, what are your qualifications? And it cuts to him pulling back and goes, oh, well, I went to Joliard. And the start of that speech is him pulling it all down to zero. He takes all the Beetlejuice affectation down, he stops manipulating his face, his eyebrows settle for an instant, and he's in his real speaking voice. And then he ramps it back up. And he's showing you in real time, like, he's not, he's playing with the levels.

He's not blowing the whole tank every time. His ability to modulate, whether it's from performance, performance, or inner performance, is definitely the secret to a lot of the later stuff. You know, we'll talk more about spotlight but spotlight is with this person who you've come to expect being big and over the top and even you know his comeback with birdman was you know a lot um it's still it's still more restrained though than it could have been in a different and one of the more restrained things in the movie but then to watch him in Spotlight, where the discipline and the holding it all in

is the essence of... It's like an incredible performance. Yes. But then, and also then, like, cameos, like, when he shows up, spoiler alert, in Spider-Man Homecoming, and he's both, like, the prom date's dad, and, you know, and he's playing with all of those things all in one movie

and turning it up and turning it down. Completely delightful, in my opinion. And not only that, but like, I think almost agreed upon as one of the few MCU villains who is both appropriately kind of grand and operatic and comic booky when he needs to be and is also like grounded focus scary just in dialogue with the other guy when he needs to be yeah i mean i think there's there's

another one reason for that is like he's just not a person with superpowers he's just a guy who builds something yeah you know and that's also you know there's something kind of like human and blue collar about him and i think that's like a part of his character as an actor is he's just like a fairly regular guy from who grew up outside of Pittsburgh. And still just like post screenshots of MSNBC on Instagram. Yeah, it's just like a, you know, Democrat from Pennsylvania who's super into the pirates and the Steelers, you know, like that. He really is still that guy.

And peak of the Batman stardom, he puts his money down on a ranch in Montana where he still lives and knows everyone in town. And basically, by all accounts, in his fallow periods where he wasn't working or was doing bad work, was like, I'm happy I just fish all day and chew tobacco. And you're like, this guy's for real? This isn't some weird affectation

or some put-on-to-appeal to the red states like we see a lot with the sort of, a certain stripe of A list leading man let's say yeah yeah he um he his his persistence but like never he's never the center of culture obviously he was this at the center of culture when he was batman that was the one time where all eyes run michael keaton since then he comes and goes and he has eight to nine year periods where no one cares about him and he's just kind of trucking along

in movies like Jack Frost but he for whatever reason like he's got a handful of movies that don't go away and and everyone's always glad to see him

yeah well you haven't had a chance I mean obviously you think he's incredibly hot which is a very funny thing to me it's very funny to me as well

but I don't know he showed back up in Birdman he's like 60 something years old and I'm just like, well, this is very compelling. Yeah. You love an old guy. Honestly, he was recently, he was in GQ. He did one of the video things that they do where you go through all the roles,

and I'm like screenshotting the jacket. Like, how can I buy this for my husband? Can we call it in? He also works at GQ. That's not how it works there. I don't know what to tell you. I think he looks great on the red carpet. I said to you guys before we started recording, not enough coverage of Michael Keaton on the Venice red carpet.

And yet his red carpet looks are almost always like white t-shirt or work shirt tucked into acid wash dungarees yeah well there is like there is a confidence to his performance to all of his performances that enable kind of you know him to get weird and also to be normal that i do think kind of shines through and speaks to me i agree and he's just like i'm here i'm doing the things that you know i'm interested in he belongs you never it never feels fake or put on with him ever. And so I do think that that's very appealing, both, you know, in terms of his looks, but also his vibe. And really the last 10 years, it's just like Michael Keaton shows up and I'm like, oh,

great. It's Michael Keaton. I'm just, I'm really happy to either watch you be a weird MCU villain or, you know, be a journalist or to like talk about this fish you caught, which he does on Instagram. He's also kind of undeniably only gotten better looking with age. You watch the really early works and he obviously has this very bizarre, very distinctive face with very extreme features that almost feel incompatible. And also a real case of 80s hair.

Oh, absolutely. Going back and looking at these movies, you know, the kind of like tightened curl that is like a little puffy,

you know? You could do a whole thing just on his hairstyles and it would be dense. Well, and then also, I was watching, he does have like the Costner thing

in a bump where at some point you start bumping against the hairline. He's going through a traumatic number of things with the hair in conversation with the culture at the time, his own genes. A lot is happening. It does correspond to what's going on career-wise, but now he's worked it out.

Totally. And I think you start to watch even like from the 80s when his face is very soft and those features are so extreme that you get to the 90s and the lines start to form around the corners of his mouth and the wrinkles above his eyebrows and all of that stuff helps him and then now he kind of looks better than he's ever looked before and he's 72 playing beetlejuice again it's crazy i mean i guess let me go on record and say that i've you want to fuck beetlejuice that's what you said like not the look the hottest he's ever that i'm going for yeah but the best dressed maybe can you say that

are you sexually attracted to Beetlejuice I'm really not I'm sorry I'm sorry to say that just be honest Griffin is here I'm here

we're all listening maybe maybe the maybe the the prom dad Adrian Toomes the vulture I mean

you're hot for the vulture I think Kitchen's really nice that's all I have to say you know when he opens the house you're attracted to the vulture and I mean... You're hot for the vulture. Unbelievable. That kitchen's really nice. That's all I have to say. You know, when he opens the house. You're attracted to the vulture and you're attracted to Joker. That's something we can also confirm. I haven't seen Joker 2 yet, so...

No, but Joker... The original Joker film, Joker. The dancing is very effective. I don't think there's enough dancing in the trailer for Joker 2. Let me say that right now. I'm filing all this. It's a musical.

Okay. So... So I've heard. Is there anything else you guys want to say about his stardom and or his acting style i do think that that was a pretty tight clarification of kind of what makes him special even though he's just a pennsylvania democrat i mean we talked about this very much but like he is very funny and he did kind of start as a comedian and i was going back and watching some of his Letterman appearances.

He was one of like the great recurring Letterman guests and just that comedian can hang with Dave vibe is another part of his superpower, right? And it is a little bit of the confidence and the like the strange funniness that is specific to him that we've been talking about. One of his earliest gigs was he was on a short-lived Mary Tyler Moore variety show on Primetime where he and David Letterman were two of the ensemble players who had to do like song and dance numbers and skits. And they bonded really hard there as like, neither of us should be here. This is not a right fit for us. And then their relationship over decades when it's like, oh, here's Letterman's This is not a right fit for us. And then their relationship over decades when it's like, oh, here's Letterman's friend who's now starting to be in movies. Here's Letterman's friend who's now in bomb movies, but he still books him because he likes him.

And then it's like, now Letterman has the star of the biggest movie in the universe on his couch. And he's known this guy for 25 years. You know, all the dips and valleys, but you watch those and he's always approaching those segments 25 years. You know, all the dips and valleys, but you watch those, and he's always approaching those segments like a comedian. He is funny on every talk show. I find any little interview I see him do is funny, and he is very self-deprecating, or I should say, at least,

he kind of minimizes his own comedy career. He's one of these guys, in the 70s and 80s, a lot of actors sort of tried stand-up to get their foot in the door, basically to use it as an audition reel to ultimately get on a sitcom or get in movies. And they had like 10 minutes of material that they did for seven years until someone cast them. And he talks about his own life as a stand-up like it was that, and yet his material was incredibly good. Everyone who came up around the same time as him said like, no, he was legit.

He was a real comedian. was incredibly good. Everyone who came up around the same time as him said like, no, he was legit. He was a real comedian. Whether or not he thought of himself that way, he had really smart material. He wrote it himself. He did his reps. Not a lot of it is still captured.

There's the one Bazooka Joe routine, which I feel like you sent again, Sean, that circulates around. Yeah, it's so good. That's perfect. And you do kind of feel like,

is he this lost like Stephen Wright that just wasn't kind of captured but was ready to drop it all the second he got into movies? We should play that routine just so people can hear. Bazooka Joe Boba Gump. Now, I'm sorry. I don't care if you're the president of a corporation. You can be Alexander Haig and you can't not read these.

You know, you can't throw this. You just don't do this. You just don't put Bazooka Joe in your mouth and throw the thing away. No one in the world does it. You know, you can go, AWACS? Yeah you just don't do this. You just don't put Bazooka Joe in your mouth and throw the thing away. No one in the world does it. You know, you can go, AWACS? Yeah, I say we send them, just a minute here. You know, you can't do it. You can't put it down.

And here it is. And I'll just read it to you. Now, you might not laugh, but I think this is very funny. He says, Bazooka Joe has a clock in his hand, you know. And Tubby says, what are you doing, Bazooka Joe? And he says, I'm throwing a clock out the window. And he says, why? And Bazooka Joe he says I'm throwing a clock out the window and he says why bazooka Joe says I wanted to see time fly I know I'm gonna win stubby says no time bazooka Joe it's rather ethereal

subject isn't it I'm bazooka Joe says well it depends on how one views time. I mean, do you see time traveling in a horizontal line? It's a great point to bring up the fact that he was a comedian. And also, it does something really interesting with his movie career because the first three or four roles, you can be like, oh, comedian making an effort to become a comic movie star. Again, it's not unlike the path that Steve Martin went.

That's what I was just going to say. But if you look at Steve Martin or Chevy Chase or Eddie Murphy or any of the big 80s comedy stars, he starts out in a somewhat similar place. But very quickly, kind of abandons that entirely. And in many cases, just goes for pure drama in that first decade that none of those other actors, it would take them years, sometimes decades, to be willing to take on roles like the role in Pacific Heights. You know what I mean? I mean, we just got to get to it. I just have so many questions about Pacific Heights. But I want to make one key distinction before we jump into that is in opposition to the guys you just listed, he was not developing his career like a comedy star, even when he was

starring in comedies which all of those guys hits and then started like building their movies from the ground up finding their key collaborators developing scripts working with their writers honing their sort of comedic persona and building vehicles around that and he from the get-go was kind of like i'm an actor for hire why do you think that was any sense of that? And I wonder if part of it is that in his mind he didn't think of himself as a comedian

and he was like, I'm ready to be, you know, Jimmy Stewart. Hire me and I show up and I try to improve the material. I don't think about

my star persona as there is a comedic sensibility I need to preserve and maintain. It's interesting though, you identified that he formed a bond with Ron Howard.

Yeah. And he obviously formed a bond with Tim Burton. Two, frankly, of the signature filmmakers of the 1980s in Hollywood. And those were great picks. But it didn't feel like what Eddie Murphy was doing. Where it was sort of like persona first and we build around the persona. And not only that, he had those two relationships which were really good. And he picked those guys well. But Ron Howard, you look,

and the movies he does with Ron Howard are often either right before or right after the huge Ron Howard movies. Right, those are great ones. Right. And with Burton, he happened to be in three of his best films ever. Like, Burton, they clearly had something together that was the peak of both of their careers, arguably, at least within mainstream Hollywood. Howard, he was a little off, and otherwise, he struggled to find those partners. Yeah, I think this is, I think Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is his fifth Burton movie, right?

Yes. Because Dumbo also happened. Dumbo, did you see Dumbo? I didn't. I saw Dumbo at a... I remember this. What's the theater that Disney owns in LA? El Capitan.

El Capitan, yes. I saw the El Capitan at the premiere with the organ, and it was bad, unfortunately. So you haven't shown it yet. I haven't. No, Alice will be seeing that film. So we're not going to go through every single stage of the career.

But what I want to do is, you know, we can talk about what are the four signature roles. And I also want to hear about your personal favorites. I have some personal favorites as well. I did a somewhat similar excavation that Griffin did. There were plenty of 80s movies that I had not seen that he had made that had just completely

gone through the cracks for me. I'd seen pretty much everything in the 90s and some stuff still have holes from the 2000s when he was kind of in the wilderness there.

But let's start with like personal favorites and we can find out whether one or two of those personal favorites will be able to crack into the Mount Rushmore because, you know, we know for a fact that there are two profound locks for our conversation.

Probably three. The fourth one is still elusive to me. Griffin has indicated like he's going to make some strong pitches. Okay. So are the two locks Beetlejuice and Batman? I think so. I think they have to be. Now, which is which president?

Right. Yeah, we're going to have to. We know which is which president. Right. Yeah, we're going to have to get into that. Should we remind people of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore? Griffin, can you name them off the top of your head? Yes.

It's Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, correct? No. Fuck! No. Wow, you're an Andrew Jackson guy.

Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, yeah. Sorry. Tell us more about your interest in Andrew Jackson. He's a complicated historical figure. I just think he was a chill dude. I think he was an extremely normal president.

That was the worst one for me to get wrong and the worst wrong person to pick. You could have said like Rutherford B. Hayes. I could have, right? That would have been a choice. So it's Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abe Lincoln. Why are we doing in that order? Is that the order that they're listed on Mount Rushmore?

It is. It's not chronological, though. It's not. I don't know why that is. Maybe they wanted Abe to be the bookend. Because chronologically, it's Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt. Maybe it's also like a face shape issue and some geological, you know. Could be architectural.

Have you ever been to Mount Rushmore? I never have. Griffin? I never have Griffin I never have I haven't either shall we all go I mean if we're gonna run out of ideas

at some point let's pause the recording we're gonna fly out and meet together and we'll consecrate the Michael Keaton Mount Rushmore live at Mount Rushmore

and we'll also recreate the finale of North by Northwest here's an episode pitch the Mount Rushmore Mount Rushmore well what happens there which president is which president on Mount Rushmore and which, what happens there? Which president is, which president on Mount Rushmore

and which movie represents each of them? Oh, wow. Just go inside of itself. This is the kind of metatextual work that's expecting from you today. Yeah, thank you. Well, I mean, my instinct, just to get these out of the way,

is to say that Beetlejuice is George Washington and that Batman is Thomas Jefferson. But I'm open to, it doesn't have to be chronological. It can be just what they represent. Obviously, George Washington, he was the first, you know, he was the breakthrough. You know, that great painting of him on crossing the Delaware, you know. Right, that LeBron reenacted in Paris. That was cool. That was normal.

Here's my first possibly crazy pitch. Yeah. Does George Washington almost need to be Night Shift or Mr. Mom? So if you're doing purely chronological. Yeah. I mean, yes, but I don't. And I think, and it would be Mr. Mom, and I think Mr. Mom is an interesting conversation to have.

I think there's an argument of whether we're doing pure time-based history or whether we're doing significance. And I was going to respond even to what Sean proposed with Batman as George Washington. I'm open to hearing that. As sort of the foundational, you know, big ticket, well-known, early on in the career thing that sets the rest of our great nation in motion. Our Gotham's avenging angel who cannot tell a lie.

You know, a man of dignity and honor. Right. So if I can do my broad overview pitch here, and this is radical, I'm not going to be firm about this. Okay. But it's just how I've sort of been conceiving of this. The weirdness is that he has Night Shift and Mr. Mom right out of the gate, right? Like his first film period is the Joan Rivers movie Rabbit Test,

in which I believe he has a non-speaking role I did not watch. Correct. It's an interesting movie. Joan Rivers got to direct a movie in 1978. Where Billy Crystal gets pregnant is the plot line? Yes. Correct. Oh's an interesting movie. Joan Rivers got to direct a movie in 1978. Where Billy Crystal gets pregnant is the plot line? Yes. Correct.

Oh. How does he handle it? Pre-dating the film Junior. Okay. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Right. He handles it with wit and charm, I think,

largely. Oh, sure. Panache. Yeah. But Night Shift is like his first proper movie and he is the co-lead in a film that is

a relative hit. He goes straight to Mr. Mom, which is like a full-bore hit. It feels like he has now fully arrived as a comedy star. And then he basically trips up for the next like four years straight to the point that Beetlejuice is a comeback role for him and a bit of a reinvention, which is why I think there almost needs to be this recognition of there is the first phase of his comedy persona, which is what he refers to as the glib young man thing.

This sort of very high energy, well-intentioned kind of wheeler dealer who's not as smart as he thinks he is. And he talks about that he almost immediately got tired of doing that, even though he probably could have run that for another decade straight if he had thought about his career in a more conventional comedy star way and immediately started pivoting largely into movies that don't work. I would say Johnny Dangerously is him trying to fit the glib young man with a different kind of tone and stylization. A film that I think is excellent but bombed pretty goddamn hard when it came out. And then the next couple of movies are all bad or sort of indifferent or whatever.

And Beetlejuice is this kind of striking, like, we didn't know he had this in him. This is a new thing. It's a different type of performance. He's like rebuilt his career. And then Batman is such an insane pivot from there to something that I don't think anyone could have predicted. Okay, so lay them out presidents-wise. This is my wild contention, and it sort of carries on to how long his dead period is.

Right. Is there a case for Mr. Mom is George Washington, Beetlejuice is Jefferson, Batman is Lincoln, and then Roosevelt is our choice of the later period Keaton revival, which I have a feeling is going to be spotlight maybe. Well, I'm going to work on it. So you're not a John Adams fan is why you're telling me. Go on.

Well, it's kind of because we've got Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, right? That's how it goes? No. You mean on the Mount Rushmore? No. You mean on the Mount Rushmore? No, in history. Because he's saying everything in between Washington and Jefferson is total garbage. And so I just think that's overlooking the work of— No, John Adams was an important president, certainly. I'm not saying that everything in between in the American presidencies is garbage, but I do think it's in terms of these culturally relevant... HBO has a miniseries they would like to show you, Bimbit.

I think Johnny Dangerously and Gung Ho are interesting movies to discuss. I agree. Johnny Dangerously, I also, you know, Griffin and I have a lot of crossover in our taste when we saw movies. Amy Heckerling, at the

relative start of a very interesting comedy directing career, one of the clips that I think I sent both of you guys was him doing, like, Cagney and 30s Gangsters.

And his affection for those characters is obviously very present. It's ultimately, like, maybe not the best movie of all time, Johnny Dangerously,

but it's fun. Gum Ho is a very strange relic of the 1980s about a Japanese car company that buys an American car company and attempts to institute the workings the

working style of Japan and the factories in America and Getty Watanabe is in it and you know it's in that like it's slightly cringe inducing

culturally insensitive but it's a movie that is made with the intention of doing the opposite. And, like, reflecting, you know... We're all kind of the same, you know, but we're also different. Sure, but, you know, it is also about, like, car companies in the 80s

and factories shutting down. I mean, you know, a real version of this movie came out 30 years later called American Factory, which is one of the best movies of the last 10 years. So, I mean, it's not... Gangnam's not great, but it is, and you know, it's cringey from top to bottom in terms of its cultural sensitivity, but it's interesting. It's interesting to me, especially because it has a serious character to it that none of his other previous movies do. Right.

This is the movie where you're like, oh, to the point Griffin was making, this guy wants to be Jimmy Stewart. That's actually what the movie tells you. He doesn't want to be that. I think the script

for that movie is incredibly dopey. I think Geddy Wants to Not Be is really good in a way that makes you angry that no one ever gave him this much to do ever again. In a part that is not

terrifically well written, but it's the most meat he's ever gotten in a film. And Keaton, I think, is really good in it. And it does feel like the movie where he's really making in a film. And Keaton, I think, is really good in it. And it does feel like the movie

where he's really making an effort to be like, I have to break down the glib young man thing and build what the new thing is, which is the kind of like blue collar, smart ass with a sense of integrity, sort of core Keaton persona we're talking about. Touch and Go doesn't exist, is a hockey drama

that is just kind of, I mean, to call it bad is almost giving it too much attention. The Squeeze, did you end up watching this, Sean? I did. It is one of the most bizarre studio films I have ever seen. I just could not get my head around it. I had a hard time understanding what was happening. I appreciated its

eccentricity. Did you watch this at all? I didn't. It's streaming on Tubi right now, which is why I think Griffin and I watched it within 12 hours of each other. I'm not even going to try to summarize it. No. Other than just to say like

he's an artist who gets into hijinks and some criminal conspiracy. Right. And it's very unusual. Tone is all over the place. It's shot like an in excess video. I could not follow the plot on a scene to scene basis. I would say in our analog to circle back and give the respect that he deserves, Amanda,

Johnny Dangerously is the John Adams. Okay. I mean, that's fine. Yeah. I just, you know, I would vote to not go chronologically. And so I would make the case to do Batman as George Washington. You know, I mean, really just sort of like the biggest brand reach, if we will. And, you know, I understand that Thomas Jefferson.

Because you think America represents the biggest brand reach for the exiles. George Washington does, you know. And then Jefferson is more of a Beetlejuice, where, like, definitely significant. Also, we have some questions. We'll play well overseas, also. This raises an interesting question, though, which is, is Batman, like, the cornerstone

of Michael Keaton movie star, or is it, in a weird way, the outlier, even though it is the biggest one? Well, let's talk about Batman. Okay. Because, obviously, it was a weird way the outlier, even though it is the biggest one? Well, let's talk about Batman. Because obviously it was a left turn casting when it was announced. Many fans were very angry about the idea of Michael Keaton playing Batman.

He's coming off Beetlejuice, Clean and Sober and the Dream Team, a trilogy of movies that do not indicate that this is the person who should be playing Bruce Wayne. And when the film arrived, basically everyone changed their tune and very, everyone realized that he was incredibly well-suited, that there was a kind of internal oddity to Michael Keaton that we had not really

been thinking about Bruce Wayne having, but of course is essential to Bruce Wayne because he's a guy who goes down into a cave and dresses up like a bat and fights crime, which is just inherently strange. michael keaton you know to me remains the best batman i think you know i know people love christian bale i like christian bale as well as batman right but i mean that's my vibe yes it's in there are different kinds of movies but in tim burton's world he fits so wonderfully and those movies are forget about beetlejuice they're like they are world-conquering sensations the first one especially like setting the tone

and, you know, artistically, the second one is one of my favorite movies as well. So, it's kind of hard to know, like, what does it mean

to be George Washington? World-conquering sensation. Yeah. You know? There you go. Yeah. Well, a landmast, in the case of America.

Well, listen, it's all complicated. Yeah, no, you might be onto something. You might be onto something. But otherwise, But I think, I do think you're right

that it's an outlier. Right. Heman you know three times he circles back again for the flash uh what a fun summer that was yeah super cool listen but he at least was good i mean he was the only you know he was good in it yeah he's the only also very strange except for when that affleck showed up also for a minute in the car and george clutie as well oh yeah i mean they were all in that film anyway that was terrible but outside of three it's part of birdman too i mean it's right there you know yeah and and whether or not we're gonna put birdman in but he is in conversation with it he come you know he goes to the mcu at some point like it is in and all of the ways that he doesn't live up to like our idea of what the actor who plays Batman should be like shape all of it.

You know, it's maybe an obvious one, but I think so was George Washington. I like how seriously we're taking this exercise. This is great. So then what is Beetlejuice? It's Thomas Jefferson. Who is Beetlejuice? Okay. Big in France.

Big in France. Why? Like what are the other reasons? like what are the other reasons like what are the literal reasons um read your jefferson biography passionate yeah um uh let's see he is a lover he is well that's one way of putting it but that's also one way of putting what Beetlejuice is up to. I mean, some questionable romantic... Entreaties. Yes. In Beetlejuice.

That's right. It's strange, sort of, that we all show to children. Bit of a scurrilous cad. Yeah. Messy lines between professional life and relationship life. That's right. Right. Which is a tremendous amount of euphemism

that we're doing here. Yeah. It's like, what is this really sad history? I think that's really all I got. Okay. You know, and also... It's not a strong connection. Well, slightly more of a supporting...

I mean, supporting character who kind of... whose brand really blew up. That's your take on Thomas Jefferson. Listen, TJ was number three. You know what I'm saying? Like I said, he was in-

He is effectively the author of our democracy. He was in Europe for a while. Okay, okay. Which Beetlejuice was as well. Let's be clear. Exactly. Beetlejuice is effectively

the author of our democracy in American movie going. Yes. Yeah, that's- The Americans- There's a strong case there. You know, less screen time,

more influence. That's kind of- That's what we're doing. I think that's a really good but like you know less screen time more influence that's kind of that's what we're doing I think that's a really good case okay thank you I'm gonna think I'm gonna think long

and hard about that let's talk about the rest of his career just a little bit as a means to getting towards Lincoln and Roosevelt can we talk about

Pacific Heights for a second certainly so like what's your plan there Michael Keaton's character you know well just

have you just seen it for the first time? Yeah. Okay. But I was just kind of like, where is this going? Like, this is very, very involved real estate fraud for what seems like a minimal amount of payback in... Or like, you know, pay, in my opinion. I just watched this for the first time as well.

I was quite entertained by it. I think he's incredibly good in it. You keep on kind of waiting for the turn. It is weirdly one of the cases, one of the rare cases of a movie where you wish they explained stuff more. It almost feels like it needs a monologue, like end of psycho style of someone

outlining his entire psychology cleanly. Because by the end of it, as you're saying, Amanda, you're still like, I don't totally get what's in it for this guy, what his end goal is, what makes him tick. As much as Keaton plays him very well, his whole kind of bracket is bizarre. And without spoiling the movie for people who haven't seen it, I kept wondering if this was in any way vaguely based on Robert Durst. Because there's a similar inexplicable, why is this guy doing this shit that it feels like will ultimately catch up to him? This doesn't feel like a smart way to use your power and money? Right.

Yeah, I mean, I guess if you haven't seen Pacific Heights, we don't want to ruin the movie for you. It's a thriller from 1990. It feels like an intentional kind of buttressing against the Batman mythology, you know, where he's like going to play a very evil guy who moves into a home and won't leave and is causing a lot of problems. Yeah, but that makes it sound more like a horror movie. It's a thriller. who moves into a home and won't leave and is causing a lot of problems for the people who own the home. Yeah, but that makes it sound more like a horror movie. It's a thriller. It's a thriller, but it is also just like a 80s yuppie nightmare.

Yes. And it is very funny as a cultural product of that time. And Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith play the startup landlords and have they gotten the cabinets right? And so and spend a lot of time in a lawyer's office, like learning San Francisco tenant loss. Yes. Which is and they're like very upset about them. And you're like, well, who am I supposed to side with the landlord or the tenant?

You know, so I like it as a social study. It's a contemporary anxiety. Totally. It's also a movie that feels like Adrian Lyne trying to make What About Bob.

Yes, exactly. It's like a very bizarre mix. Very well said. So part of what I like about it and that is something that is more or less gone from our culture is this is one of the first movies

that Scott Rudin ever produced and it's directed by John Schlesinger who, you know, made like Cowboy, Marathon Man, a million great movies and it's directed by John Schlesinger who you know made Midnight Cowboy Marathon Man million great movies and it is a

brilliantly made kind of dingy little thriller you know totally and the 80s are kind of chock full of movies like this

but this one captures Melanie Griffith Matthew Modine and Michael Keaton at a great time in their stardom it's great and just like

stacked supporting cast like Laurie Metcalf is the real estate lawyer is helping them. You know, every scene someone amazing pops up. It just really, really feels like a lot of work for a real estate scam. That's all I have to say. I agree.

And you keep waiting for the turn of like, is he going to become a serial killer? Or is there a larger scam here? And at the end, you're a little confused by what his main… Right. What was really in it for him. Anyway, it's him anyway it's not it's not on any of the Mount Rushmore

it's the kind of movie that if we were doing a Hall of Fame it would go in and you'd be like oh wow we've got four already and then 12 years

would go by you'd need to put it in for Hall of Fame just to represent it being an important step in his career in a weird way and it also feels

very strategic that it's like this is the first thing he does after Batman. In between Batman and Batman Returns, where basically any movies he makes are going to be hammocked between two genuine, guaranteed blockbusters. He makes this and One Good Cop, which I would argue is the worst film of his I have yet to see. Interesting. I actually didn't watch this one.

This is one of the only ones that I've seen. It is a disaster. And is one of the few movies where I think he is bad. Where he's giving a bad performance, but the whole movie is out of whack. But that feels like maybe a miscalculation of what kind of thing should I be doing as a movie star

where Specific Heights is, I want to immediately play against whatever box people are trying to put me in. Okay, quick conversation. Is there any case for Batman Returns? I think that obviously that movie belongs to Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito in many ways. That's the thing.

But this is definitely one of the best movies that he's made. And I think he's great in it. And I also think in the Amanda zone, there is an argument for this being him unlocking his real sexiness on screen for the first time.

He's very dashy. The real power of Batman Returns is their chemistry together. The urban legend has always been that, you know, of course, Sean Young was supposed to play Vicki Vale

in the original Batman, gets in this horse riding accident and Warner Brothers wanted to recast it with Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer had had an affair years earlier and he had reconciled with his wife and Michael Keaton was

like, you cannot put her on set with me. I can't get back into this. And by the time Batman Returns happens, he is divorced. And i don't know if they reignited anything but it does have that energy their heat is amazing when i i didn't re-watch batman returns i just fast-forwarded to everything where it was michael keaton and michelle pfeiffer and that was that was a great way to it's incredible but it's a very cool movie yeah but it is so much of that belongs to Michelle Pfeiffer.

I tend to agree. I just raise it because you know, we're entering a period here in the aftermath of Batman Returns with a couple of

interesting parts and a couple of star parts but there's a long dry spell that is ahead of us and his inability as Hanks is rising to figure out

what his mode of stardom is and what the parts that he picks. Yes. It's at least worth noting because as we go through and we say, okay, much ado about nothing, that's a supporting part. That's not really in the conversation.

It's cool. It's cool that he did it. And also it was an interesting case of him finding a way to interpret Shakespeare in a different style than any other actor I've ever seen. Yes. And that's because of that weirdness that he brings to every performance style. And then you've got four leading parts in

four conventional seeming Hollywood productions. Right. That are drama and comedy. That just like don't live on.

That don't quite get to where you would think they would have gotten to coming off of Batman, Batman Returns, Beetlejuice. So you've got My Life, a drama about a dying man.

You've got The Paper, a very kind of noisy Ron Howard ensemble about a newspaper. You've got Speechless, a classic romantic comedy set up with Geena Davis reuniting after Beetlejuice.

And then you've got Multiplicity, an antic Harold Ramis high concept comedy. All four of these movies, I remember being a kid and being like, that's going to be my next favorite movie. Right.

My life may be the least of those four because of its adult themes, but even that movie, I was like, oh, wow, interesting. Adults have children and then they die. Like, I remember thinking about this. And none of these movies really worked for me ultimately yeah um and i have some affection for them i was certain i was gonna reclaim the paper when i re-watched it and then i was like

respectfully i'm not reclaiming the paper i think it's a mess i like the paper quite a lot but i also cannot argue against what both of you are saying like it is a mess but it is the kind of mess i adore i want it to work. Yes. It's one of these things we get asked to mailbag sometimes. Like, you could just do it do-over. And they could do-over with the same cast, like, right now even. And we could make some tweaks and maybe it would work. I agree with you.

But it doesn't. It's a real... It feels like the... It could have been great. It feels like the exact movie, him reteaming with Ron Howard at this point, that should, like, unlock him getting to the Hanks phase of his career. And it comes a little short. My life, you're like, this should be the most emotionally devastating thing I've ever seen. Yeah. It is weirdly a movie that has, like, the mise-en-scene of an episode of Mad About You.

Everything just lands a little soft without being bad. There's, like, you you know a little bit of like I had to fast forward at some point I was like I mean just because once the baby shows up I was like

I can't do this right now I mean it is it's tough have you ever seen My Life Without Me the Sarah Pauly film yeah yeah I have

there is one scene in that movie that is basically the spine of the premise of my life stretched out for whatever that film is, two hours, that in that one scene is more emotionally effective than this whole dramatic device of the film of Michael Keaton recording videos

for The Son He Won't Live to See Born. And there is like four minutes in that small Canadian indie film that came out 10 years later where Sarah Pauly does that, that I never stopped thinking about as one of the most emotionally impactful things I've ever seen in a movie. And it's hard to not judge my life harshly against that as like, how are you not making me cry with this film? And if this movie isn't making me cry, then why am I watching it? Yeah.

It's a tricky one because it's it's Bruce Joel Rubin coming off of writing Ghost yeah winning an Oscar for the Ghost screenplay and it's his big you know directorial gig and it is there's something kind of flat and uncinematic about it um yeah and then you know I I raised those four movies because those are the four movies where he is staking his claim. You know, Tom Hanks is winning multiple Oscars in this period. And there are a handful of other actors who are also kind of rising at this time. Like we're right on the edge of the George Clooney moment.

Brad Pitt is starting to rise as a movie star. A new generation is kind of coming in and setting aside some of those 80s figures. And then while he does some cool things, the double Ray Nicolette performance in Jackie Brown and Out of Sight, which is great, and he's great in those movies, you know, him being the narrator and inventing the Abbots. Like, he has a couple of cool moments

he does live from Baghdad in 2002 on HBO. But this is when he's slowing down a lot, and there's starting to become gaps in between movies. He's showing up in odd places. I mean, the double Nicolette rules, but it's also like two small performances. Yes. You could make the case that like 15 years go by

before you really need to have a conversation. Kind of. And I think, you know, there are two big sliding doors in his career that we need to acknowledge. One is that the four movies you just listed in that 90s run that feels like his last conventional play for sort of normal movie stardom,

A-list kind of leading man stuff, the first of those three movies happen in the time, theoretically, between what would have been his second and third Batman movies. Warner Brothers is annoyed with how Dark Burton made Batman Returns. They replace him with Schumacher, but they go back to Michael Keaton and offer him $15 million. And he turns it down and says, I'm tired of doing it. I don't want to do it if it's not Tim. And those three movies probably just become a weird rounding error

if it's followed by him doing Batman Forever in 95. And instead, you're like, this is what this guy did instead. And multiplicity is kind of his last strike to get back to like a more comfortable, maybe classic Michael Keaton broad comedy turn. Right. Now that he's decided he's done with the Batman thing. And when that doesn't work, it does feel like he throttles down and goes like, I don't know, I'll just kind of float and do whatever. It really does feel that way. there's one other sliding doors moment that i neglected to mention which is fascinating and i always forget this which is that he effectively shot the purple rose of cairo in the jeff daniels part with woody allen woody allen looked at the

movie and said this isn't right they did weeks of filming and just completely reshot the movie with jeff daniels yeah which is something that you know has happened over time you know in the said, this isn't right. They did weeks of filming. And just completely reshot the movie with Jeff Daniels. Yeah. Which is something that, you know, has happened over time, you know, in the history of Hollywood, but is uncommon, especially with an actor like Michael Keaton, who was somebody who was like on the rise. It's pre-Beetlejuice, but still. Well, that's the thing.

I think he was a guy who had a couple hits out of the gate, then a couple flops, and then he gets fired from this high-profile movie that comes out and people like. That was almost seen as maybe a final nail in his coffin that puts a certain light under his ass for Beetlejuice needing to work. And the story has always been that he was just, quote, too modern for

Purple Rose of Cairo that I could totally see. You watch Johnny Dangerously, which is him doing this heightened 30s, 40s gangster thing, but he's doing it with this very modern meta sensibility versus Purple Rose

needing a sort of kind of earnestness. And, you know, off of that, he does Beetlejuice and he does Clean and Sober, which we kind of passed over, but was like his first

real dramatic role, which he is incredibly good in. That comes out the same year as Beetlejuice, and I think he gets the National Board of Review award for best actor for those two movies together in 88. And that is kind of the one

thing, by all accounts, that helped sell Warner Brothers on him as Batman, as much as that seemed like a crazy choice. They were like, he did just give this performance that had that kind of more conventional dramatic darkness to it. Playing a drug addict who is also manic

and cartoonish and big and, you know, spastic. I found that movie really overwrought going back to it. I hadn't seen it

in a long time. It just feels like a relic of the way that we portrayed addiction stories in the late 80s that maybe we would not have done

in quite the same way. But he is good and he is doing something he had never done before previously. But I don't quite think it's like at the level of signature performances in his career. But I would argue that it's not until...

I guess the interesting argument is did Cars play a role in bringing back Michael Keaton? So I recently, I saw Cars for the first time, Griffin. Congratulations. Thank you so much. At a play date with my son and with Sean and Sean's daughter.

I like the idea of it just being me and my daughter. And some other people. Yeah. Who is Chick Hicks again? Chick Hicks is his mean rival, the green car, who's a bit of a jerk, who he gets in the three-way finish with. And it's Owen Wilson, Michael Keaton, and his old mentor. Okay, got it. Yes, bit of a villain in the film.

Right, and he has, like, the tire sponsorship or whatever. They're competing for that. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. Okay. Now, that's 06.

A lot of, you know, he's done a lot of movies in between. I mean, first daughter, I'm sure is important to you. Well, it's not even the good daughter of a president.

Which one is that? That's, um, chasing more one chasing Liberty. Yeah. With Matthew good as the secret service agent who she falls in love with. And then they get separated. And then they have to meet at the,

what is it like, the Liberty Parade or something in Berlin? Definitely. But they do, it's like cleared and so she can pursue a, The Liberty Parade in Berlin? Something like,

right, Griffin? Yeah, that sounds right. There is, or like one, you know, some sort of like, I don't know, and then Matthew Goode is there.

What if we had Michael Keaton in Chasing Liberty and Mandy Moore was falling in love with him? Would that have worked? That's probably the better duo. Maybe you can choose from the two movies. There's an age gap. And I think that we all are underestimating

the power of Matthew Good in that movie. Matthew Good is good in that. That is just one year before Match Point, okay? Is Bruce Greenwood her father in Chasing Liberty? Is that right? Is that one of his 15 president performances? That's also sounding right. No, it's Mark Harmon.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to call out that he has what I would consider a proper trilogy of supportive girl dad performances in family comedies. He has First Daughter. Yes.

He has Herbie Fully Loaded. Herbie Fully Loaded. Yes. First Daughter, of course,. Yes. He has Herbie Fully Loaded. Herbie Fully Loaded. Yes. First Daughter, of course, he's president dad. Herbie Fully Loaded, he's race car dad. And then there's Post Grad, which was the one sort of post-Gilmore Girls, Alexis Bledel vehicle,

where he is just supportive. You're going to figure out what your career is. No rush, dad. Really, really tough. Incredible pull. But then outside of that, he's doing like kind of direct to video

action movies I mean films that like quicksand with Michael Caine I mean stuff that like just fully doesn't exist the last time with Brendan Fraser these are really depressing

credits on his IMDb for somebody who was Beetlejuice and Batman he directs his first movie The Merry Gentleman the first of two sad hitman dramas he directs his first movie, The Merry Gentleman, the first of two sad hitman dramas he directs

and stars in. We are going to talk about Knox Goes Away. We must. 2010 is probably the real comeback. Yes. Toy Story 3,

he's Ken and then the other guys, which is a very big hit. Toy Story 3 is the perfect one so Tarantino didn't watch Toy Story 4, right? That is what Quentin just said. Yes.

On the Club Random podcast. Sure. His second appearance. A podcast I definitely listen to all the time when it's not Quentin Tarantino didn't watch Toy Story 4, right? That is what Quentin just said. Yes. It's on the Club Random podcast. Sure. His second appearance. A podcast I definitely listen to all the time when it's not Quentin Tarantino. He's the first return guest. In all the episodes, yeah.

Okay. I, of course, forever contend that Toy Story 4 is better than Toy Story 3. Okay. But I do think... You and Quentin

can get into that sometimes. It's not right now. I love Toy Story 3. Michael Keaton is a high point of it. He's very funny in it. Holding on to my Keaton stock throughout a really dark 2000s.

In 2010, I'm starting to think I'm going to get a return on my investment for not selling. Because Toy Story 3 is a big hit, obviously. He's a supporting part, but kind of a scene stealer. It's animated. His face isn't in it.

But the movie's so huge. I'm telling myself he's going to get a bump from it. And then that same summer, he is incredible on the other guys. It feels like, you know, Farrell and McKay as guys who grew up watching Keaton, being like, can we get some of that lightning in a bottle? Just let him

just be funny. Let him go. Kind of energy. And he is remarkable in it. He has like five lights out scenes in it. And I walked out being like, well, now he's back. Now he's going to be

in all these movies. Everyone's sold. And he basically is kind of foul again until Birdman. He has like another four years of being lost.

So let's talk about Birdman. Because you were joking about Need for Speed and RoboCop and those are kind of like complete, we can ignore that stuff. Birdman, of course, is touted as his big comeback.

It's a film that is playing on his persona as a superhero star, kind of washed up superhero star actor. And this is a movie that was widely acclaimed. It is also one of these very particular kinds of movies. I'm wondering if movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once will fall into this zone

at a certain point where at the time we were like, yeah, Birdman! And everybody was on board with Birdman. And then like 12 months later, everybody was like, Birdman sucks.

And I can't really remember where I stood at the time if I'm being totally honest. I think that I liked it with some serious reservations. I remember it being an Ina Ritu movie I liked more than others.

I think a lot of that was about the kind of self-reprisal of the actors and the stars and the people behind the creativity of the movie. Even though it is also very self-regarding as are all Ina Ritu characters. Also Emma Stone's in it. Emma Stone really at the peak of her powers. I though it is also very self-regarding as are all Imo Ito characters. And Emma Stone,

really at the peak of her powers, I mean, she's remarkable in that movie. And, you know, Edward Norton and like a great cast. Most people would say

this is a movie that would have to go on his Mount Rushmore because he is so celebrated and it's his only Academy Award nomination. But he doesn't win.

But he doesn't win. Oh, I think at the beginning of that season, everybody was like, well, Michael Keaton's going to win. It's locked up. Eddie Redmayne won for the, I mean, so it is an Oscar. The worst win in 10 years. It is an Oscar travesty, even though, I mean, no offense to Eddie Redmayne, but like he

won for the theory of everything. That movie stinks. It's bad. And the most frustrating part of it is that movie wins picture, director, screenplay. It like sweeps the major categories. But the one thing I want it to win is Keaton and it is that movie wins picture, director, screenplay. It like sweeps the major categories. But the one thing I want it to win is Keaton and it loses that. Yeah. So regardless of what you think about it,

and I do want to hear what you both think about the movie, Keaton is excellent in the movie. He's wonderful. And he's the perfect person for that part. Well, let's put a pin in this. Go ahead. But yes. Go ahead.

No, it's time for your take. Go. I think he is excellent. I would put that performance in a very similar vein to Brendan Fraser in The Whale, where I think he is doing an excellent job of what is asked of him. Yeah. And I think the movie is kind of built on a foundation of bullshit. Yes.

And I think in both cases, the director is kind of misunderstanding the power of the star. As much as it is doing a good job of like just kind of testing their craft and their skill in a way that is very showy, that lets a lot of people have to sit up and go, I guess I can't deny this actor. There have been serious bones inside them the whole time. I don't think, my key issue with Birdman is, you said he's a perfect fit for it, because obviously, he's a former Batman who then entered this wilderness period. Now he's playing this guy reckoning with this. The entire framework of Birdman acts as if he is like Cam Gigonde. Yeah. As if he was this like dumb hunk who was just like a ripped body in a suit who was never taken seriously but just rode

this gravy train and now is desperately making a play for some sort of sophistication some artistic credibility and as we've said here he was always a weird choice to play a superhero you can't build a movie around this guy was an obvious action star who's now wound up when everything about him is how was this guy ever an action star how did this happen? And he didn't even really sustain it. And I think he's doing what he's doing really well in Birdman or what he's asked to do. But I also think so much of the movie is built on this idea that no one takes him seriously and everyone thinks he's kind of dumb. And Michael Keaton is too inherently intelligent an actor. Part of it is literally just his eyebrows and his eyes,

but he isn't capable of being on screen for two seconds and not looking like he is deep in thought. And even when he's in his glib young man period, the humor of Mr. Mom, Johnny Dangerously, Night Shift comes from this guy being intense in thought and then saying the dumbest thing you've ever heard as if it's brilliant with a confidence that he's able to sell on people in the room. And I think on that level, Birdman just like totally falls apart. On top of, I think it kind of has stupid takes on acting and drama and theater and criticism and all

these things. i think you're totally right the movie i find the movie exasperating it will surprise absolutely no one and i he's very good at it in the sense that he the movie would be even more exasperating and all over the place were he not in it being a little restraint allowing edward norton and emma stone and everyone to just like absolutely fly off the handle. And they're really fun in that. And he's providing like a balance

that the movie desperately needs. But unfortunately, it needs like a lot more than that to be good, in my opinion. And I mean, it's still bullshit that he didn't win. Here are the nominees this year. Eddie Redmayne, who won for Theory of Everything. Steve Carell as Foxcatcher. That was a strange time.

Bradley Cooper as American Sniper. I'm not even going to bring it up, so I won't start laughing. Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game. And Michael Keaton in Birdman.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my wildest hope going in. Do that vote 99 out of 100 times. By the way, guess who was not nominated? Ben Affleck for Gone Girl. Well, yeah. You know. My wildest hope going in. Do that vote 99 out of 100 times. By the way, guess who was not nominated? Ben Affleck for Gone Girl.

Well, yeah. You know. My wildest hope going into that Oscar telecast was Graham Budapest is going to sweep the major categories other than Keaton winning. Right.

Ray Fiennes not nominated for Budapest. Right. Nightmare inverse of all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So, I don't think we have to do it.

We don't have to do anything. This is our show. What are you going to do it we don't have to do anything this is our show Griffin is our case Lincoln no yeah well you want to do Teddy Roosevelt

I think that there's something interesting about that but we can talk about it 2015 he plays two men named Walter in two different films I thought that was notable

in Minions he plays Walter Nelson sure I don't remember who Walter is one of the villains I think so right he voices one of the I have never remember who Walter is. One of the villains? I think so, right? He voices one of the...

I have never seen this. Minions, The Rise of Gru remains the only Despicable Me universe film I've seen. Okay. It is a weird blind spot for me. They're pretty funny. I don't know if you know,

so they speak like a language that's made up of different... I think Minions are cinema. They're the degradation of our culture. I have... I just... I've never gotten it. It's not... It's not.

It's not. I genuinely laugh out loud every time the Minions do anything. The world and the films built around them don't really care. But the Minions themselves just make a Minions Saturday morning cartoon. Knox and I will watch it. It's a pretty good idea. Thank you. 2015 also Spotlight.

So he's the star of two consecutive best picture winners which is something that i think contributes significantly to concretizing this second or third wave of stardom and makes him as you guys were saying at the beginning just kind of one of the guys of hollywood for a four decades it makes it not a fluke yes and spotlight of course a wonderful drama a very different it not a fluke. Yes. And spotlight, of course, a wonderful drama, a very different kind of a film from Birdman in terms of its tone, in terms of the kind of story that it's trying to tell. He is sort of the star,

but also sort of a supporting character. It's an interesting, what does he call himself? A player coach? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

In the, and when describing his role in spotlight, which is the Boston globe team who investigated just rampant sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Yes. This is a traditional docudrama. Yeah, yeah. I think there was a mild surprise to him not getting an Oscar nomination for this, and I attribute it partially to a little bit of category confusion of they were running the entire cast and supporting and it felt like he was

borderline lead, if anyone is. But also his work in it is so steady, so unshowy. I think Mark Ruffalo is quite good in Spotlight, but it was unsurprising

when he was the only person nominated and he's the one guy who has a conventional actor-y scene. Rachel McAdams. You're right. I'm sorry. Got a, you know. And she's also similarly, yeah, steady and understated.

I just want to say, in Best Actor, Eddie Redmayne once again got nominated for The Danish Girl while Michael Keaton was not nominated. This was a rough time. This was a good time in Hollywood. This was a really, really, really tough time. And then this was also like sort of a make-up because Leo wins

for The Revenant. Like it's the Ina Ritu like finally gets the guy, the best actor, his Oscar. Yes. No, I mean, this is my favorite,

obviously, of his performance. I love this movie. I think it is like a very conventional docudrama, but also so, it's a great journalism movie and also so lived in and you really do feel like you know all these people and it is of a it communicates both how like

deeply personally personal each of these stories were as well as it being you know just like worldwide and and that kind of that last scene or not even the last scene but the credits where they just reveal the you know following the spotlight investigation abuse cases were discovered and it's like four full pages i mean maybe the only effective use of that device in any real life movie ever yeah and and it really is a gut punch yes because you do feel in this movie that you get to know each of the the victims that they speak to or the survivors that they speak to. So it's really well done. And he is so good in it.

And like I said, so restrained. And there's that final scene right before they publish where they're like in the office with Liev Schreiber. And they're basically talking about how it took them too long to get it. And, you know, they had all the pieces, things were sent to them. And there's this moment where in front of everyone, it's like, oh, it was Demetro. That was you.

And Keaton is just like, that was me. And it's just screen, like camera on him. He says nothing. He's just doing it on his face. It's lights out, devastating devastating but like not too much but not too much back to early conversation this is the movie where it's like this is just pure craft he has taken down all the sort of ticks and tricks he does have the inherent motor and the energy into him in him that keeps it all sort of flickering but he's not doing any big moves and

yet i remember seeing this movie in theaters with my mother, and at one moment, one of the early walk and talk down the corridor of, you know, the newspaper office shots, my mom and I both start laughing and then look at each other knowingly and go, the walk, he can't stop doing the walk. And there is this very distinctive Michael Keaton walk that is like somewhere between John Wayne and like Elvis Presley. Like it's like this sort of jazz sashay with a lot of hip work, you know, and like real tight legs that he would stuck in this incredibly restrictive suit that limits all of his like nervous tics and puts all that energy just in his eyes and his voice which is why I think he was so effective but even in spotlight where he's stripping it down he's in elder statesman mode

he's not trying to flash and be colorful there is that little bit of like rock and roll in him that he can never totally drop right and you know, you know, and he ultimately, like, he gets the background source to, he has his moment of, of journalistic. I really like his, the tension between him and Jamie Sheridan's

character and their history together. And, you know, Jamie Sheridan, another one of those Danny Houston types who every time he shows up in a movie

you're like, that guy's bad. But I really like that anxiety of, like, old friends and they've gone in two separate directions in terms of what they perceive to be michael keaton has a kind of dignity even when he makes mistakes in the movie and his you know we can talk about whether or not that should be the movie there i it's to me obviously the superior movie to birdman whether or not it's a superior performance i think can be debated and probably will be debated no matter what we decide here um the interesting thing about this movie is like what happens after this is like he kind of it's a superior performance, I think, can be debated and probably will be debated no matter what we decide here.

The interesting thing about this movie is, like, what happens after this is, like, it's the same thing that's happened in the 90s. Whereas he's like, Michael Keaton is back. And then he's in The Founder. And then he's not back. You know? I'm going to make the case for The Founder. Okay. The Founder is a movie. Because now I'm like, Keaton's popping again.

We're all on board. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was looking ahead. I was like, he's starting two Best Picture winners in a row. Get ready for the founder winning Best Picture next year. I had my chips on it. It sort of gets punted around. Late period, Weinstein Company running out of money.

Pre-scandals, but the business is already collapsing. And then gets kind of an unceremonious, largely January dump. I think only gets a Golden Globe nomination. I saw it when it came out, felt very disappointed January dump. I think only gets a Golden Globe nomination. I saw it when it came out, felt very disappointed by it. I have gone back to it and rewatched it like two or three times. It is a movie that has weirdly grown for me.

It is absolutely on the lower end of the kind of like Moneyball, intense men struggling with their demons, trying to be good at their job. Right. Break a broken industry kind of subgenre I love. Wait, let's not put it in the same sentence as Moneyball. Moneyball, 10 out of 10. He's pretty good in it, but it's not Moneyball. It's not Moneyball. I'm saying it's the lowest end of what I like about Moneyball. Yeah.

There's just a weird energy to every John Lee Hancock movie. I agree. When's the movie gonna start like is this gonna turn into a movie at some point is it gonna feel exciting at some point

there's just a kind of inertness to his directing style Little Things the most extreme version of that where where it ends feels like it should be the start of the movie

such a strange thing anyway you know that's the founder has a script by Robert Siegel who wrote The Wrestler and big fan super talented screenwriter

just a movie that I wish was better than it was this movie came out right before it really started doing the show and writing about movies more and kind of

getting into it and I had a very similar thought that you had where I was like wow I gotta start really paying attention to the founder and then

that was not necessary and then it didn't happen yeah I think it's I think he's perfectly adequate in it but it's not a movie that I feel like or really paying attention to the founder. And then that was not necessary. I think it's, I think he's perfectly adequate in it, but it's not a movie that I feel like will be in the first three sentences

of his obituary. No, absolutely not. And then, you know, I have, like, I have an appreciation for the movie Worth, which was kind of dumped onto Netflix,

which is an interesting film about, is it Lawyers in the Aftermath of 9-11? 9-11, yes. Correct. And I think he's very, gives a really good performance in that movie. But aside from that,

has just been kind of doing programmers and been doing superhero movies and, you know. He's also doing, I mean, in Spider-Man Homecoming, in Trial of Chicago 7, even in The Flash, dare I say it, you get really excited when Keaton shows up. Yeah, but cameo king a little bit.

Yeah, but, you know, but it is a little bit like, oh, that Keaton magic is coming back, which is... He still has heat. Exactly, which is kind of forming the last 10 years.

Trial of the Chicago 7, I believe, because that movie was in development for so long, was going to be Spielberg directing Sorkin's script for a while, and then Sorkin,

even once he took it on as a director, it went through a bunch of cast shakeups. I believe Keaton was supposed to play Kunstler for a while, which is obviously a much bigger role. That's Rylance? Correct. Yeah.

And then there was some scheduling shakeup, and he wasn't available, but he still wanted to be part of it, and he took the smaller part. I do think it's the most electrifying eight minutes of the movie. Totally. A movie I do not like very much. But you feel,

not just that you're excited like, oh, it's Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton rules. But he's really locked into something and using a different energy than he usually has. Worth, I think,

is totally rock solid. Dumbo, I do want to make the case for him playing basically evil Walt Disney in this movie. A movie that is basically Tim Burton having an existential crisis in real time about what's happened to his career and how he's been commodified by this major studio.

And he casts his old collaborator to play like a Walt Disney stand-in who I believe my friend Karen Hahn referred to as business Beetlejuice. It is him just playing kind of like sadistic, white-haired entertainment mogul. But then, yeah, you're in this weird space and like none of the movies that don't work stick to him anymore in the way they used to

in the 80s or 90s. The Protégé is like this nothing Martin Campbell, Maggie Q vehicle where he is the second lead. A movie that, if I can make the case, Amanda, is largely built around the idea of how sexy he is at this age, a movie that, if I can make the case, Amanda, is largely built around

the idea of how sexy he is at this age. Okay. That is basically the hook of the movie is she is like hired to kill him, but he's too hot. Yeah.

It does not work. I can't even say he totally works in it, but it's interesting. It's interesting that he did this and it's interesting that no one holds it against him. No one's angry

when he cashes in for the end credits of Morbius. He's like the one guy who kind of came out of the flash with a little heat

arguably. Right, yeah. Got a bump from it. Wasn't dragged down by it. What about Knox goes away? I mean, I mean, what's going on here?

What? What happened? What happened to this movie that she directed? Yeah. So let's just be very clear. Knox is a last name in this situation. John Knox is a hitman with some form of, it's not Alzheimer's, it's more accelerated.

Yes. And so instead of reuniting with his son because he's a hitman and has Alzheimer's and is, you know, losing all of his faculties, he just becomes more evil. And I didn't, I mean, I guess, you know, listen, dementia and all forms of that stuff is very cruel. It seemed quite cruel. And I was also like, really, this is what we're doing? That was a very strange choice. It's not a movie that really works at all. That's all.

That's all I have to say. And once again, I just want to restate, in 2006, his only other film he directed, The Merry Gentleman, is also a sad hitman movie starring him.

That one, I believe, was developed with a different director whose appendix burst 10 days before filming and Keaton said, hey, I'll direct it and just kind of stepped up and did it. It is okay, but it is odd for a guy who like does not seem to have grand directing ambitions,

doesn't talk about it as like a major thing he wants to express, twice has connected to a script and gone like, why not? I'll direct this. And even when he did Press for Knox Goes Away, he was a little passive about it where he was like, I liked part, and I figured if I directed it too, it'd make things easier. Not, I have something burning inside of me. And both of them are, like, conflicted hitman, end-of-life crisis movies. I mean, he seems pretty casual about it. I think in the GQ piece, he was asked about Batgirl, which he was in, and then it didn't release. It wasn't released.

And he was like, I really like those guys, the filmmakers, so I feel bad for them. But like, for me, whatever. It was a check. It was some fun. Like,

I'm fine. Those guys recently guessed a blank check. Yeah. Yes. So, but even there, he was just kind of like,

well, you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I admire that. Yes. That whole attitude. When they were on blank check,

I didn't want to get into too much, but I was asking them about what it was like to work with Keaton and they were sort Blank Check, I didn't want to get into too much, but I was asking them about what it was like to work with Keaton and they were sort of talking about in terms of like, it feels like you are playing

with the come-to-life version of the action figure you grew up with as a child. Right, right, right. Be like a director of that generation directing Michael Keaton in a Batsuit on set

and then have it be a movie that doesn't exist. Literally doesn't exist. It must be very bizarre. So 2024, of course, brings us Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, and also the film Goodrich. Yes. Which is directed by Haley Meyers Shire. Yes, Hallie. Hallie Meyers Shire, excuse me, the offspring of the most important marriage of your life, other than your own. I don't know if it's the most important. She is the daughter of Nancy Meyers and Charles Shire. She's kind of a human legacy.

I mean, her entire career and existence exists in the tapestry of the Nancy Meyers, Charles Shire divorce cinematic universe. And anyone who has seen Home Again starring Reese Witherspoon. All 12 of you. Yeah. Listen, I went to the premiere. There were at least 200 people. They were forever changed that night. And a really great house.

I think the house that they picked once belonged to Jennifer Garner at Ben Affleck. So, you know, it all comes together. Goodrich also stars Mila Kunis. As his daughter? Yeah.

Yes. And so he's learning how to be a dad or a granddad he was he was a bad dad with mila kunis who is now an adult right he had young daughters with his new young wife who i think okay goes away or has a health problem and he's left to be single father for an extended period of time with young children, which he's never really known how to do. That's obviously going to work on me, regardless of the quality of the film. Like, who cares? This is your favorite movie of the year.

It's coming out in six weeks. I mean, get excited. It's a Ketchup Entertainment release. It's going to blow up the box office. Ketchup Media? Ketchup Entertainment. Sure, yeah. Of course.

So, from the hospital, solo pod. I think you should do it. I don't think that's going to make it. Let's just make our picks. Now, I'll say this. I think you made a really strong case with Batman in George Washington. Thank you. But you can't have it all.

You know? So, you're going to take Birdman? You're going to make Birdman Abraham Lincoln? I'm not going to make anything. I'm just saying you can't control the entire board. You got to let Griffin make some moves. That's fine. I have literally, I have nothing for Teddy Roosevelt.

I don't know. I'll defer to you guys. But I do think Spotlight is Lincoln. Okay, Griffin, what do you think? If Spotlight's Lincoln, I mean, Beetlejuice has to be one of the slots, right? So now is Beetlejuice Jefferson or Roosevelt? And if we're not thinking about chronology here,

but we're thinking about the power of the president themselves and what they represent. I think there's something cool about Beetlejuice as Roosevelt. Just getting out there? Well, yeah. He's the rough rider.

There's something unusual and fearless about Teddy Roosevelt. I do have to do a lot of Teddy Roosevelt research. Shame on you. I'm sorry that I'm not to the dad history portion of my life yet. I will get there. I still have to finish the Napoleon podcast.

Okay? But I didn't re-read my Teddy Roosevelt research. National parks beloved by Democrats and Republicans alike, right? You can kind of fit him to whatever you want your message to be. Mm-hmm.

Teddy R? Sure. Okay. I mean, you know, he would be a big D Democrat today. Right. Based on his social policies, yeah. Okay. So are we saying that Mr. Mom is the fourth slot or is this still in contention?

Anything can be in contention. As Sean said, I can't choose everything. Because Mr. Mom as Jefferson sort of makes sense as the unbridled, the energy, the passion, as you said, the sort of architecture of the democracy, right? It's his first real leading man movie. It sort of sets the template of how he occupies that space. Thomas Jefferson is the Mr. Mom

of the United States. Here's a question. Is Mr. Mom good? I know that's not necessarily important to this exercise. No, I'm glad you asked this. I'm glad you asked this. I think it's kind of good. Yeah, it's kind of good. In like an early 80s way. I think you could explain to me,

because this was not a movie that I grew up with and I watched it a little later in life. Not for this podcast, but maybe in the last 10 years. And I watched it and I was like, this feels pretty junky. This feels like pretty mid, as you said earlier. And I know that it was a hit and I know that it kind of codified

his movie star persona for a period of time. And so all that is important. It also endures as a concept and also a future where you could be a Mr. Mom. You know all that is important to this exercise. It also endures as a concept and also a future where you could be a Mr. Mom, you know? Absolutely. Here you are now,

but in 1983? I love having a Mr. Mom day or a Mr. Mom weekend. Okay. Yeah. Mr. Mom week? A little bit less so.

Too much. Mr. Mom year? Not really. Like a Ms. Mom week is also, you know, Mr. Mom month is kind of a good rich situation, which is also interesting that he's now going back around to sort of old a Ms. Mom week is also, it's, you know, more than I want. Mr. Mom month is kind of a Goodrich situation,

which is also interesting that he's now going back around to sort of old man Mr. Mom. Well, maybe that is the ultimate case, is that this is still a part of his persona, his character as a character.

I think it is. I also think that, I would say, I think the movie's kind of dopey. I think the big takeaway, I hadn't seen in a long time, probably since my young initial love affair with Michael Keaton after Beetlejuice.

My parents were like, you should watch this as well. My first and strongest feeling watching it is you see how much John Hughes was so underrated for his sense of visual comedy, which was often kind of unshowy. But watching someone else directing one of his scripts and not really adding anything to it really underlines

what John Hughes did as a director. And later on, he found better directors to make the films that he didn't also handle himself. The movie looks junky as hell. It's got odd rhythms. It's got sort of no cinematic sense.

Does have a great cast, great performances. Keaton's kind of on fire. He is genuinely funny. Right, and the case for it is almost that it's like, this is him single-handedly wheeling a movie into working. It's all on him. I think I accept. Okay.

Even though I have more affection for Night Shift, Johnny Dangerously. I don't know if I have more affection for Birdman, but I mean, Birdman is a very faulty film

with great stuff in it. Is there great stuff in Mr. Mom? I'm just going to say that out loud. Was there great stuff in Thomas Jefferson? Yeah, that's my point out loud. Was there great stuff in Thomas Jefferson? Yeah, that's my point. Okay.

There was great stuff in him. Okay. I mean, there was a lot of stuff in him. Right, yeah. But some of it was great. His ideas, remarkable. Sure. They persist to this day.

So is the idea of Mr. Mom. Okay. You know? This is kind of the case. That we would all contribute to raising a child in 1982. I don't think it's one of his four best films, but I think it's kind of inarguably one of his four most important. Okay. I see it.

I'm okay with this. So will you announce the Mount Rushmore of Michael Keaton? This is really normal. And when people cut it out of the context of this two-hour podcast and are just like, here's Amanda comparing precedents to Michael Keaton films. I'm sure that that will do well on the internet. Anyway, the Michael Keaton, Mount Rushmore. For George Washington, we have Batman. For Thomas Jefferson, the influential film Mr. Mom. For Teddy Roosevelt, we have Beetlejuice. And for Abraham Lincoln, Spotlight.

I like where we landed. Griffin, are you cool with this? I am. As the world's biggest Keaton fan? I agree with you. Even just like pure Keaton comedy, I prefer Johnny Dangerously. I prefer Night Shift. I prefer Multiplicity even. But I do think if we're speaking to some larger sense of the cultural narrative of this man,

it kind of has to be where we landed. Which of these Keatons do you most want to spend an evening with? I think that you know. Beetlejuice. Mr. Beetlejuice. Mr. Beetlejuice. Griffin, where can we find you? Blank Check with Griffin and David podcast that both of you have been on recently

and hopefully will be on again sometime soon which I host with David Sims from the Atlantic and we go through director filmographies and we're kicking off David Lynch right now. We're in the early days of David Lynch which will take us through most of the rest of the year but we'll also be doing a Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice episode on our main feed tied to the release of that as sort of a catch up from our Burton miniseries that ended very poorly four or five years ago we ended on a rough note that's right around when I started listening to the show too and I've been saving

the Eraserhead episode for my sojourn to Telluride so I'm very excited to be listening to that while I sit on a bus for two and a half hours Griffin thank you so much you You're the best. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. Lovely to see you. Thank you. You had reached out and said, we've got to figure out another episode to have you on. And I just

said, are you doing a Keaton episode? You hadn't even told me it was on the schedule yet, but I felt it was in the air. Maybe it was going to happen. We're mind meldy these days, for sure. Well, speaking of mind melds and speaking of presidents, Griffin, do you want to, can we, are we allowed to tease

his next appearance? Yeah, go ahead. No, I was going to ask Griffin if you want to, because you've really been, you've been studying the Constitution. I've been trying.

I've been trying. Yeah. And also, so did we decide whether international, it's American presidents only, no international presidents. American president movie draft.

Yes. Okay. That you and David are going to be a part of. Yes. I international presidents. American president movie draft. Yes. Okay. That you and David are going to be a part of. Yes. I'm calling it the presidential movie draft. Right. Okay. But that doesn't limit international presidents.

It's just only movies that Donald Trump has appeared in are eligible. Right, right. So huge Home Alone 2 fight coming. Yeah, you guys will be back in November for that, which I'm very excited about. And we're all studying very hard. And there'll be all kinds of arcane rules around it, which we're currently sorting. Is everyone going to wear wigs? Absolutely, powder wigs.

And also, I mean, I think yesterday we settled on any president drafted is taken as an implicit endorsement of all of their policies and actions. Right, yes, exactly. Yeah, certainly. Totally. 100%. Yeah. Griffin, thank you. My pleasure.

Let's go now to my conversation with Jason Schwartzman and Nathan Silver. In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Really? Yeah. There's the sausage, bacon, and egg. A crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour. They sound amazing.

Bet they taste amazing, too. Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax. At participating McDonald's restaurants. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Nathan Silver and Jason Schwartzman are here. Wonderful new film, Between the Temples.

Jason, I wanted to start with you. You have a long history of working with independent filmmakers, but it's actually been a while since you've made a movie at this scale. So why this movie? Wow. Because why not this movie? I mean, I don't really think about it. By it i mean like the the good fortune to work and you know every um job always sort of feels like it's your last one and i i mean i i mean that you know it's such a weird business and you know obviously you have a faith that you'll work again but it's you don't know from from where you know, and, and like in this case, like, you know, um, I had just finished making this film in Spain and I, um, was working

with our now mutual friend, uh, great actor. And I had really come to, um, to be friendly with him in Spain. And to the point where if he said, oh, you should listen to this album or you should check out this thing, that would mean something coming from him. And because I admire his sensibility and taste. And when I got back, he wrote me an email saying there's a filmmaker who's trying to get in touch, they're going to get in touch with you, Nathan Silver. And I really think you need to meet him and talk to him because he has an idea for something that I feel the two of you should meet and know each other. And that's like, how could I have ever foreseen that?

Like, if I hadn't been in Spain, I would never have met him, and he would never have been able to get me to sing Nathan's praises, and they had worked together on a previous film. So, you know, each thing is its own project but it they they do have their each thing also does have a gives life to another thing um and so you know i just this movie i met nathan and and that was really what was i said yes this is the kind of person I would like to know. And the way he wanted to make the movie was different. And just from watching him, I watched also this movie he made,

Cutting My Mother, which he's also in. And it was kind of a great way to meet him without me, you barely get to know him. I feel like I did this before the interview too. I watched cutting my mother. I was like, I feel like I know Nathan. I know.

And so, and there's a, and so I think that, um, when I, you know, just seeing the person that he was, um, and then coupling with the,

the, the treatment script that I had read and what he was proposing for this movie. Um, but this is all prior to us actually meeting but seeing him in the movie I just thought this is a great person and I think that this would be a wonderful adventure

so that's sort of really how it all came about. I have a lot of questions about your process but I was wondering Nathan, I read that you wrote this with Jason in mind. Yep. And you've been working at a prolific clip for the last 10, 15 years making films.

Yep. But this film, there are a lot more recognizable names. It seems like a bigger movie relative to the previous films that you made. Was that a very conscious choice when you were thinking about the idea? Were you like, I'm going to make a movie that's going to be a bigger movie

than my last 5, movies yes i mean my co-writer chris and i we wanted to make something that was uh slightly larger just because we'd been going at it with these movies that were like you know sub two hundred thousand dollars for the longest time so i feel like this movie actually allowed us to have like a proper crew like i had an ad and a script supervisor who were key to this like all to us making our days for sure and also just like getting the best movie out of this that we could um but i think it was also i'd come to this point where i had just been making one to two movies a year, and I was ready to spend more time on the script stage. Even though it wasn't a full script, it was a scriptment,

which is kind of like between a treatment and a full script. But the dialogue isn't separated out. It's just suggested. So it's like it runs around like 60 pages. But Chris and I put a lot of work into that. And then it was written for Jason. And so once we convinced him to do it, we then started to think about who we wanted to play Carla. And I had my,

I got married, actually, Damien Benard, who had introduced me and Jason officiated our wedding. Congratulations. So that was kind of a funny thing. And he was so happy that Jason was going to be involved in this movie that I was going to shoot. And so I got married and everyone got COVID at the wedding. So I was in Paris after and I'd lost my sense of taste. And I was having these feverish nights. And I woke up at one point and I was like, it has to be Carole Kane. And I don't know what it was.

Something about having COVID in Paris led us to Carol Kane. And I wrote to my producers and my co-writer and everyone was like, duh, it was always her. It had to be her. And, you know, so once we had our actors on board, we then just started talking at length about these characters. I'd already started, you know, the discussions with Jason, but then we brought Carolyn to them. And that shifted everything so that we were just constantly rewriting this script mint until about like three weeks before production when we started working on the dialogue.

But we just dialogued a few scenes before we started shooting. And then the rest of the dialogue actually came about during the shoot. So the actors would get like the scripted pages, maybe two days before, one day before, morning of. So is that part of the adventure that was appealing to you, Jason, working in that mode? Totally. I mean, it's appealing to do it with someone that you have such a strong, um, feeling for, uh, just an instant trust in,

then it's totally a blast. I don't know. You know what I mean? I don't know if it's the, if it, you know, there's, I don't know if there is an ideal way to work.

So, you know, I just, I just go by person by person and that was what he was going to do. And my job is to help him make the him make the movie that he wants to make. And so I'm really just in service and of service to him and how he wants to make it. And it was super fun.

And it was, he's Scripment, but it really, I mean, it's more like a little book. I've heard it's like a novella. I would say it's just not formatted like a script, but it's by no means general or rough. I mean, you can read the story, and that's what I loved about it. And even just the choice of words, the way it was written said a lot about he and Chris and the way, you know what I mean?

And it was kind of like reading it in real time because the way a script sometimes can get laid out, there's the description of a room and an environment and then you know the characters all the characters speak and it's and it's you know it's it's divided and it's it's formatted that way for a reason so it can be separated but there's something about reading it more in this paragraph style like you know he enters the room he sits down he says can i have a glass of water she says no i just ran out and there's something about including the dialogue in the body of the

text um made it have a a kind of um like it was unfolding in in real time for me and it was really exciting to read it so it was more like i was reading like i was saying like a like a diary or something you know what i mean like uh of someone's recollection of of something and it felt more um uh alive begs the question why do you write this way because then it opens i feel like the actors bring more of themselves to the project. They open up more, they have more ideas because it doesn't feel like it's set in stone and they're coming to this script

that they have to then just memorize and perform. They bring themselves to it. And that goes for the crew as well. I mean, we were just, we would, the whole crew, because there was like this opening in there for each person's interpretation of what they had taken away from the scriptment. So people had like crazy ideas that we ended, we would then utilize throughout the whole process. And, you know, my script supervisor, Gordon, he said it best. He was this you know this I'm glad this wasn't

scripted because then I could feel the movie but I you know if it had been a script I think that I might not have done it because it would have maybe just come across as like a standard you know indie rom-com type of thing but you could feel what kind of movie it was going to be because of the formatting like that it was going to have this kind of wild you know energy to it and this you know that would be offbeat it kind of um you you know when you're reading it it says he enters the room and puts down his jacket well if you really think like we when we'd go to shoot those things you know just that little sentence is like a huge thing it has weight yeah and it's like um and it also has to be figured out like where is he putting the jacket what's it you know and it sort of has changed actually the way that

i've read prose um it's actually like because like it's reversed it in a way. So now I'm actually thinking about the details between sort of sentences. Like if you were to shoot it, how would it be? Because it's a lot. One sentence, if you're shooting a page of a movie, if you're shooting a quarter of a page on your call sheet, that's what we've got to do today. Well, that might not seem like a lot, but if it's in this form, one quarter of a page could be like eight pages of actual script.

Do you know what I mean? Like there's so much in every sentence that it really does leave it kind of open for like what's going to happen today. So you've got to bring it every day. You have to make it live. Is there any kind of rehearsal or walkthrough? Because blocking the movie must be more complicated

if you don't have it particularly sketched out, right? Well, so we would rehearse. We would talk through a lot of the character elements. And then we only had Jason and Carol together one day before they started shooting. So we rehearsed a key scene. And we kind of felt out what was working, what wasn't. And that informed how we were going to write the dialogue for them. But each day, we would go over the scripted pages we would just think

about what we could lose because we were on a very limited timeline it was an 18-day shoot and we were shooting a lot and as jason just said like what might have occupied you know a quarter of a page in the scriptment might have you know know, when we delivered the dialogue, the scripted pages, it was like 10 pages that we were going to shoot. And so no one knew how any given day, no, no one knew exactly how much we were expected to shoot, like on the production team. So it was always a surprise that kept people on their, on their toes for sure. But, um, then you would start to like, just cut out things that weren't quite working. And we would revise on set.

It would be, you know, me and Chris, so my co-writer and I, and then the cinematographer and the script supervisor and the first AD. And then the actors, we would just talk through what was working, what wasn't, what we could lose, and what it would mean for the next scenes we were shooting. So we would start revising those ideas if something clicked in the current scene in front of us. But I will say, too, it was fun because we'd had so much time,

though technically not a rehearsal, just the process of working with Nathan and Chris for over a year, talking about the characters. In a way, they were kind of like rehearsals, just feeling things out and even just seeing what they laughed at in a casual conversation is kind of insightful. And to the point, I think where, you know, I think that even though, um, on the day, um, we are moving things around a little bit, the things that we're moving around are things that we love and that we've been living with for a long time. So it's like, we might've rearranged the room, but this bed has been in

our family for now 50 years and this couch for a hundred years. I mean, everything is significant. Nothing is arbitrary. And that's just sort of the wonderful feeling of saying, well, what if we just try the bed over there? And then, you know, so it's doing that, but it's rearranging things that are meaningful. Jason mentioned cutting my mother. It seems like that was significant in developing this story in this film

and thinking about your mom. And where did Ben come from? Where did this idea come from? So basically, I shot a documentary about my mother because she had been in all my movies. And then there was one movie I cut her out of because the scene that had her in it just didn't work with the story and she wouldn't let it go she kept like bringing it up she held it against me said she would not forgive me classic Jewish mother you know um so in order to make it

up to her I decided not classic actor not classic exactly not no classic mother Exactly. Classic mother. Classic mother. So in order to make it up to her, I proposed this documentary about her. And while shooting it, I discovered that she was in this B'nai Mitzvah class, that she was going to get her bat mitzvah. And she'd grown up in this socialist household. Religion was really far from our family. We were culturally Jewish, but it just wasn't like, it was like Jewish humor was our religion. It wasn't the rituals. And so when I found this out, I had a conversation a few weeks later with my friend, and he'd been

a publicist on a bunch of my movies, Adam Kirsch. And as soon as he heard that, he's like, wait, your mom's getting a late in life bat mitzvah? Like that's a movie. And like, she has, it has to be like a Harold and Maude type movie where she falls in love for the, falls in love with like the rabbi or the cantor who's a younger guy. And I was like, no, no, Adam, that's like a terrible idea. And then of course he ends up you know he's a producer on the movie and he eventually convinced me that there was

something there and I enlisted my collaborator Chris Wells C. Mason Wells who hates Harold DeMod and also is a goy

he's not a Jew so he's the perfect person to like hates Harold DeMod he hates Harold DeMod why is that? he thinks it's cloying so it was kind of this person who had so he didn't feel like he was beholden to beholden

to anything um in that movie so we just started like taking apart like what we wanted our movie to be and it it was super helpful you know so it didn't it felt like we could make something new what did you think about ben jason well i i i loved this uh person and and i loved you know and and like i said we had this year together so um uh he evolved and um went through little changes and things, but who he was was always the same person. And I think it's a complicated answer, and there's a lot about him that I really loved, but I think that initially his loss was an attractive element to this character. And this moment of the past and the future,

like, you know, is there a future for this person? You know, and what is a life? I mean, not to sound cheesy about it, but like, was that it? Was that it for him you know is he done is this the sort of the end of his life uh is this the beginning you know and to me it's really about like these um places in our life where um you you don't realize it maybe until after but that it was you were just walking to the other place. And I think that's really what I felt about the character.

There was a real sense of like, inertia, you know, and like, and it really like, and also he's a person who's helps, you know, the canter and singing and song and religion.

And all of a sudden he is lost his ability to do that and his love for that. He's questioning that. And I thought that was such a, that was something I feel like I had never really seen before. Great metaphor about purposelessness. Yeah, totally, totally. great metaphor about purposelessness yeah totally totally and I just think that like just the you know the idea too that like the people that often I mean obviously you know it but it was fun to read a story about a person who's there to really help kids like move to this next phase of their life but really isn't like sure it's worth going to the next phase

like what's it what's the point you know what I mean with his mother yeah and I like sure it's worth going to the next phase. Like what's the point? He's working with his mother. Yeah. And I just think it's like really kind of like that really made me interested in the guy, you know? Nathan, I have a lot of questions about Ben. So he has a very Oedipal kind of a story. It's about a guy who lives with his two mothers. Yep.

And he falls in love with a woman the same age as his mother. Yes. And this is a movie the same age as his mother. And this is a movie about your experience with your mother. These are, you know, these are, I, you know, it's the Jewish mother syndrome where your mother holds such a massive spot in your brain because they form you. And they also, like in so many families, like they're the matchmakers. They're trying to set their kids up and they're doing that here. And he has, you know, these two mothers. It's like, it's kind of like a Jewish joke, really.

You know, so it was, it's funny. And my mother loves the movie. So she sees it as like the elements of her that are in Carla. She really, she likes. But I think it's more just like the whole vibe of the movie and seeing these characters connect got to her. So, I mean, maybe in some ways it's an odd tribute and we're all messed up humans that have like things that we don't even know we're putting on paper or on screen.

But like, I'm just another messed up neurotic Jew. It's very funny, but it's very deep, like Jason was saying too. Like there's something very profound about it. Jason, I was wondering something, especially when you're dealing with this like incredibly sensitive material, you've got a guy who's going through like painful loss

in a variety of directions, but you're also dealing with the scriptman. You've worked with a lot of directors who are very precise and exacting about their screenplays. Are you putting in more time like the night before thinking about what you're going to do in the work? Less time? Like how does it compare to other movies? I mean, I don't really.

My weird kind of fantastical thing that I've convinced myself of and I try to do is that each project I work on is sort of the first one I've done. Or like so that I don't compare each situation because no situation is like the other. And I've observed sometimes other people I've worked with getting frustrated that something's not like the way it was on the other thing. And I go like, well, yeah, but it's because it's not. I mean, it's this.

And so to the best, I mean, it's hard not to carry experiences with you and try to, but as much as I can, I, you know, I go with each thing as its own thing. Now, that said, I'm always thinking and I mean, I'm, you know, fearful of doing a bad job. As anyone, it would be fearful of you know people are spending their time with you on set it's not just your time there it's everyone's time and so you want to hold up your end of the bargain um and do the best you can and so that just is the same for everything um uh is just being prepared but i do do think that I would say actually not to sound like a slack about it,

but not even the night before. I think the most important thing was trying to get yourself into a zone that morning where you were susceptible to whatever was going to happen. Because it's not even you. I mean, it's not just you

that it's it's the vibe of the crew it's the location it's you know how's nathan doing how did the cinematographer sleep how does carol feel all of these things when you're making a movie like this like it's actually incorporated into it you know other movies, maybe it's all about leaving that back and just attempting to fulfill what's on this script. Not a checklist, but we are getting these things and we will leave behind how we slept. But here, I think we're all living together. It's a part of it.

And so we brought ourselves even more to it. And so I think more than the night before, it's like it's the night before and the morning of and the ride to work and the breakfast together and it's everything. And like I was saying before, I think it is a lot of pressure though because it was exhausting.

Like the end of every day was exhausting because even though the scriptman is there and and literally you could have you could make the scriptment and it would be i think great and i think and it is we did make the script but i do think that um the elements the things about the movie that were unforeseen that no one could have foreseen, I think happened because there was an openness that Nathan created, but that openness is exhausting. I mean, because you've got to like be like, I suppose it'd be like a music. I mean, it's like having a conversation. Like you're, you want to listen and it's all like each person has to add something and to do that you just gotta

really be like there nathan have you ever had the experience where you have an intention of making a movie you've got a scriptman and you know all the beats and then you start making the thing and i assume these are made in continuity no they're not oh that's mind-blowing. I can't even fathom that, but we can get back to that. But something happens. Someone like Jason, an actor, or someone who's working on the movie is like, I'm going to make this choice. And then that choice can potentially upend

this house of cards that you're building and that it changes significantly. Oh, yeah, that happened on this. It was my third movie, Soft in the Head. An actor, one actor went out of the room and was supposed to be out of the scene another actor went to grab him brought him back into the scene and basically we just kept rolling with it and it changed it it it condensed what would have taken 20 minutes of screen time into a five minute scene

so we had to rewrite the whole thing that night and was it the film better for it yeah yeah because it was it helped us understand what the movie was it happened a few days in and after that we knew what we were in for and this character um this character who we didn't necessarily know was going to play a major part a key part in the movie ended up becoming someone yeah he was one of the main characters i ask this because i interview a lot of filmmakers on the show and many filmmakers i get the impression are very interested in the idea of control and controlling expectations and even though making movies you have to be improvisatory and be able to make decisions on the fly.

There can't be too much room for changes like that. Yeah. And yet you have now like a reputation as a filmmaker. Somebody's like, yeah, this is my process. This is actually,

this is what I want. And that seems like a very slippery slope to me. But you seem very comfortable with it right now. I love it. I mean, it's funny. My DP, Sean, he always says that I'm the best version of myself on set

because I'm like, I feel at ease in the chaos. And maybe it goes back to just being in my family, which is they're extraordinarily loving, but it's always like, what's going to set someone off? You know, who's going to feel this way at this given moment? And so I just, I always, it makes me feel at home to be in a state of chaos. And I also love injecting these movies with life, with energy, you know, this kind of mania. This has screwball elements in it.

And so it's almost like setting it up to be like a naturalistic screwball, you know? Is it hard to be funny in this environment jason i mean i'm not really i wasn't really thinking about um you know funny because the this character is you know really in a rough period of his life and you know it's like when we do all these there's a scene where he lays in front of a truck that he's hoping will run him over. And, you know, like when I saw the movie for the first time, people, you know, they were all laughing. And I can see that it's funny, but I mean, I never thought, I mean, he's going to, he wants to end his life. Um, and so he's, you know, he's, he, he, he, he's in a place where, you know, he's in a lot of pain, psychic pain and mental pain and anguish. And, and so,

you know, that kind of thing, like, I'm not really thinking about the funny, I mean, I just sort of think it's like, it's not funny. Um, But on the other hand, the things that are funny are between the takes instead of between the temples. But one of the things that I love about Nathan is he really inspires the best out of other people. And he could be lying,

but I don't think that I'm a funnier version of myself. fires the best out of other people. And he could be lying, but like, I don't think that I'm a funnier version of myself, but I definitely feel like my jokes land with Nathan. I almost had a heart attack from laughing. Sometimes they don't land with everybody, but sometimes I think to myself like, this is like, Nathan's like a great, at least in upstate New York at that time,

my material was killing. And like you say, we hadn't been working together long on set when something was said, and he fell to the ground. He held his chest and fell to the ground. And I thought something was wrong, and I had never seen him laugh in person, and now I'm used to that.

And I just have to warn people, no, no, no, don't worry. Let it pass. It shall pass. is a serious thing. I think that the underside of it is that it's full of love and joy and it's maybe like the... If it's like a knitted, like a needlepoint thing, maybe like the actual needlepoint itself

is perhaps kind of sad, maybe the but the actual thread that we used was like a family heirloom and made with a lot of love and joy and made us laugh so it's like the fabric of it is nice you know it's not negative i don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't seen the movie, but the final meal. Yes. Cinched the movie for me. It's wonderful. Super incredibly funny. That was so fun to do.

Sorry. That was what I wanted to ask about. Basically, how do you orchestrate, especially in this style, a scene with that many characters, that many voices, and that energy that you're trying to capture and make it work? So we shot that over the course of two nights with two cameras. It was the only scene that we actually had two cameras for. And basically we had two versions of the script, of the dialogue for the pages. And there was one version, and it ended up that some actors were fighting for one version of it

and some actors were fighting for one version of it, and some actors were fighting for another version of it. Interesting. So we shot both versions because we couldn't come to an agreement. And then we shot another version that Jason came up with, which is a game of telephone, which you'll see. And it was basically like putting those three things together seemed... Everyone was worried for our editor, John McGarry, that he had his work cut out for him. But what he saw in it is he's like,

we'll just make it like a three-act structure. Use all three versions and build off those three and that will get us to this kind of chaotic state that we need. And it was also... No one knew what the scene was actually going to be in the end. So there was an inherent sense of mania to it all that obviously fed into the characters coming from the people playing them. And it was kind of, it felt like a free-for-all at times, but it was this kind of contained chaos that somehow worked out.

And it's the scene I'm most proud of in all of my work because it's so good. It's so entertaining. And talking about him being at home in the case, like, I mean, it's, you know, all the actors are talking about what they think.

And everyone at this point in the movie is like, you know, very connected to their, or if fighting for i don't but like they're they're protecting their character or what they think their thing is and now you've got all these actors around one table and you're proposing different things that possibly undermining what one actor was maybe building towards you know i mean like what are you talking about i've been constructing this whole thing and the other one one's saying, how can you take that away?

That was my, that's why I did the movie that long. Like, whatever it is. And so you have it all happening in real time because there's, because it's just a quick shoot and because each day takes so much out of you because you have to be focused on that day, you don't really get to, we're dealing with it as it's happening.

You know, when we got to that, that's when we start talking about it. And Nathan, it was so cool because he, I just loved it. I was just kind of grinning. He really was just like, okay. Yeah, I knew everything was going to be pretty great because he didn't seem like thrown at all and yet seemed

to hear every single thing everybody was saying so it was like I was like wow he's making and he was and he was actually doing it sincerely he was listening to everybody and making them feel heard and assured that their idea was protected. And yet everybody was sometimes saying opposite things, and he was agreeing with everybody and had everyone's back. It was some kind of beautiful thing, and I just was like, this is going to be so wild. But I knew he was, it seemed like that's what he, it seemed like that's what he was after.

There's a mode of criticism that says you should only look at the text and all that matters is the text in front of you, the movie or the painting or whatever. It doesn't, the formulation of the work is irrelevant. I don't really subscribe to that, but I subscribe to it less than ever because I've been having a lot of conversations with filmmakers and actors where they talk about something like that. And it's like, I knew that scene worked. I didn't need subscribe to that, but I subscribe to it less than ever because I've been having a lot of conversations with filmmakers and actors. Yeah. But they talk about something like that. And it's like, I knew that scene worked. I didn't need you to explain that you did it in this way where there were three competing ideas and they came together.

But it's better when you know. Like, it's interesting that you are like advocating for this filmmaking style. Yeah. Which is very unorthodox. Yeah. But now you are like a representative of, would you recommend anybody else try things this way? Well, I wouldn't recommend people make movies because it's an insane, it's like you have to be slightly mad to set out to do these kinds of things. So it's like you find your own process through the making of them.

You find the places where you fail and the places where you have, you know, some sense of what you're doing. I think I went into my first feature, which was a total, you know, flop. And I went in with this idea that I had to control everything, that I had to be that kind of dictatorial presence on set. And it hurt the movie. It's not natural to me. It's not natural to who I am. So then my second movie was made in this improvisatory style. And I felt so much more comfortable. And I was like, it didn't come from like, I need to be like the next like Robert Brisson kind of person. Like I could be, you know, that's not where I succeed. Even though I can love his movies doesn't mean that I am him.

And so I just had to accept that, you know, I had to accept my shortcomings. And I think that's important as a filmmaker to just find out who the hell you are and what you can make, you know. And, you know, not try to emulate these artists who you might love, but who, you know, where you'll succeed better with another another process another method for your work and also it's like it's uncon though it's an sometimes unconventional way you know the truth is that the conventional ways um is not like you know typically like on a movie i mean and there's no right or wrong way to do it but like typically typically in a movie, you know, for good reason, sound is an issue. And so if you're filming two characters, but there's six characters talking, but two are on camera, the sound department will say, could we get this with no overlapping? So we have just your dialogue clean. That's a conventional way to do it which

is fine that's that dinner scene for instance it can't live like that and so like that's a thing where the convention is to do it the way nathan did which is everyone talk and we're gonna and we're gonna film all of it and when i saw I was like, oh, that's what they were talking about at the end of the table. I had no idea what they were talking about down there. And I just think that was so cool because it wouldn't have worked if it had been devised. Do you know what I mean? It really, like Nathan, like that's the ultimate control is just to let it happen in that thing, in that moment. Like to me, that's like the ultimate badass move. That's like the super director.

And it takes all these people to come in and have, like I'm so grateful that like Sean, my DP, Chris, my co-writer, these people have, you know, they trust me. And they're willing to throw away some ideas that maybe they think should be there in order for the movie to work. They kind of embrace this chaos too. And obviously, like all of our whole crew and all of our cast, they did that. And it means so much, you know,

because without that, I'd have nothing. It really worked. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you so so much we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen okay go ahead go uh this movie um by i i've seen i've just watched a bunch of grimier movies that are on criterion and i'd recommend anything by him the strange mr vincent is incredible can you give a brief snapshot of what it's about and why you should watch it? It's about a man who basically allows another man to go to prison on his behalf and then must deal with the consequences, the guilt of that. That sounds great.

Jason? Sam? I would say Challengers. I was recently working in Atlanta and I love my family, but without them, I was a lot more free to see things

in a theater. I think I was just so happy to be there and watching Challengers, I thought I think it's cool to think this. I was thinking, God, this is great acting. You know what I mean? I was just looking at these people going,

this is great. Like, these are great performances and they're doing such good work. And I just, like, it just got me, like, excited. And then I just thought, and I also thought, gosh, it's probably hard to film sports. It's probably really hard to film tennis.

And I found it to be just so thrilling and exciting to watch and beautifully written and executed and the music was fantastic. And so I would say that's one that I saw recently that I was really jazzed about. I'm with you on Challengers. Nathan and Jason,

thank you so much, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Very nice. Hey, thanks to Jason Schwartzman and Nathan Silver. Thanks to Griffin Newman, the great Griffin Newman.

Thanks to Alea Zanaris. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks to Ben Hosley from Blank Check. Thanks to Bobby Wagner, who is our producer for his work on today's episode. Amanda, I'm off to Telluride. You sure are. And when I come back. I feel like I should have packed you a little bag with treats.

It's not too late. I know. Well, you're leaving very soon. Soon. Yeah. Yeah, I can't wait. What's your snack strategy for? I usually eat roughly 11 granola bars in four days and that's it. So we'll see how things go this week. I'm a bit concerned for my personal health. Nevertheless, I shall return. And when I do, we'll talk about the movies and the movies that are coming this fall. We'll see you then.