1941 with Mike Mitchell & Nick Wiger

Summary

Blank Check with Griffin & David – Episode 1941 with Mike Mitchell & Nick Weiger

Release Date: February 2, 2025

Hosts: Griffin Newman & David Sims
Guests: Mike Mitchell & Nick Weiger
Produced by: Ben Hosley

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Introduction

In Episode 1941 of Blank Check with Griffin & David, hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims delve deep into Steven Spielberg's infamous comedy film, 1941. Joined by special guests Mike Mitchell and Nick Weiger, the episode offers a comprehensive analysis of the movie's creation, execution, and legacy within Spielberg's illustrious filmography.

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Overview of 1941

1941 is portrayed as Spielberg's attempt to follow the massive success of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind by leveraging his "blank check" from Hollywood to produce an extravagant passion project. However, the film is widely regarded as one of Spielberg's notable flops, struggling to blend comedy with war themes.

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Taglines and Marketing Challenges

The discussion begins with the hosts addressing the film's marketing strategy, emphasizing the overuse of the phrase "the most explosive" combined with "Comedy Spectacular."

• David: “[00:31] '...the most explosive movie ever made and a Comedy Spectacular.' This speaks to the inherent issues with this movie that they're selling—it's supposed to be both hilariously funny and massively grandiose.”

• Griffin: “[01:39] 'Most equaling best.' It's a classic case where 'most' is used to imply superiority, which isn't always effective.”

This dual-tagline approach set unrealistic expectations, leaving audiences confused about the film's actual content and tone.

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Analysis of Movie Content and Humor

Griffin and David critique the film's comedic elements, noting the scarcity of memorable and distinctive lines devoid of offensive language.

• Nick Weiger: “[02:10] *'My question for you is, did you consciously avoid a quote from the movie because you couldn't find a line of dialogue that didn't have an Asian slur?'”

• David: “[02:18] 'I think there are very few quotes from this movie. There are very few distinctive lines that don't have something offensive.'”

The guests argue that the film's humor often falls flat, relying on chaotic and excessive slapstick without clear comedic targets or context.

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Character Analysis

The episode delves into the ensemble cast, focusing on characters portrayed by Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Treat Williams.

• Griffin: “[03:21] 'You could say Dan Aykroyd is like the V of reason among the various people who are going crazy.'”

• David: “[04:05] 'It's fascinating how Spielberg cast Aykroyd and Belushi but failed to give them meaningful interactions or roles that clarify their significance.'”

Treat Williams' character is critiqued for lacking depth and clear motivation, making it difficult for audiences to root for him.

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Direction and Production Critique

Mike Mitchell and Nick Weiger assess Spielberg's directorial choices, highlighting how 1941 deviates from his strengths in seamlessly integrating humor into non-comedic films.

• David: “[07:09] 'Spielberg's operating principle on this movie was 'anything goes.' This feels like a deliberate attempt to screw up, possibly to feel grounded after early successes.'”

The extended cut's documentary reveals Spielberg's struggles with balancing scale and humor, ultimately leading to a disjointed narrative.

• Griffin: “[45:39] 'He led with spectacle but forgot the story, focusing too much on visual gags without sufficient narrative support.'”

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Box Office Performance and Reception

1941 had a lukewarm box office performance, barely recouping its budget worldwide. The episode compares it unfavorably to contemporary comedies that succeeded through tighter narratives and stronger comedic foundations.

• Griffin: “[156:18] 'Steve Martin’s The Jerk was a major hit, making 1941 look more like a missed opportunity rather than an attempt to capitalize on Spielberg’s success.'”

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Comparisons with Other Films

The guests draw parallels between 1941 and other Spielberg projects, as well as comedies that managed to balance humor and narrative effectively.

• Nick Weiger: “[31:25] 'Red One also fails as an action-comedy, similar to 1941, but Used Cars manages to succeed by maintaining a coherent comedic vision.'”

• Mike Mitchell: “[91:56] 'Movies like The Jerk and Used Cars hit the right balance of laugh-out-loud moments while keeping the story engaging, something 1941 struggled with.'”

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Guest Insights and Anecdotes

Mike Mitchell and Nick Weiger share personal experiences and observations about the movie, touching on its chaotic energy and lack of cohesive humor.

• Mike Mitchell: “[112:08] 'I paused the movie to read about Dumbo and Trumbo on Wikipedia because the film itself wasn't engaging enough.'”

• Nick Weiger: “[163:21] 'The film’s attempt at parody is overstuffed, making it hard to identify why certain jokes are funny, leading to a disconnected viewing experience.'”

They also highlight the film’s technical achievements, such as Greg Jein’s special effects, which, despite their excellence, couldn’t salvage the movie's overarching flaws.

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Closing Remarks and Future Episodes

As the episode wraps up, the hosts and guests reflect on 1941's place in Spielberg's filmography and its lessons for aspiring filmmakers. They tease upcoming episodes, including discussions on Raiders of the Lost Ark and other Spielberg films, promising more in-depth analyses and engaging conversations.

• Griffin: “[171:53] 'Next week, we'll dive into Raiders of the Lost Ark, another pivotal Spielberg film that marked his remarkable comeback.'”

• David: “[172:25] 'Stay tuned for our exploration of the Indiana Jones series, where we'll uncover what makes these adventure films stand out in Spielberg's career.'”

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Notable Quotes

• David: “[00:44] 'This movie had like six similar taglines... big and funny, expensive.'”

• Nick Weiger: “[17:24] 'The unrelenting cacophony is like the Waterworld stunt show at Universal.'”

• Griffin: “[25:14] 'Movies like Dr. Strangelove have a clear point of view, whereas 1941 leaves me wondering what it's even about.'”

• Mike Mitchell: “[57:52] 'Griffin, you're getting riled up here!'”

• David: “[74:35] 'He was proud of the movie and wanted to move past it, but it ended up being a chaotic mess.'”

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Conclusion

Episode 1941 of Blank Check with Griffin & David offers a thorough and critical examination of Steven Spielberg's overambitious comedy, 1941. Through engaging dialogue and insightful critiques, hosts and guests illuminate the film's shortcomings and its impact on Spielberg's career trajectory. Whether you're a seasoned film enthusiast or new to the podcast, this episode provides valuable perspectives on one of Hollywood's more notorious missteps.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the episode's substantive discussions.

Transcript

[Griffin]

Blank check with Griffin and David. Blank check with Griffin and David.

[David]

Don't know what to say or to expect.

[Griffin]

All you need to know is that the name of the shadow is Blank check.

[David]

Blank check. The most explosive podcast ever made.

[Griffin]

Wait, that's what you did?

[David]

So here's the thing.

[Griffin]

Is that the tagline or something?

[David]

I was digging through all the trailers and the posters last night, and there was one I was trying to find that was. I can't quite locate, but all of the trailers kept using these taglines that are like, the most explosive Comedy Spectacular in history.

[Griffin]

I just know A Comedy Spectacular.

[David]

This is the thing.

[Griffin]

That's the tagline. I know from the.

[David]

One of the advertising materials I saw combined the two, because a lot of the trailers kept on saying the most explosive movie ever made, and the posters keep saying a Comedy Spectacular. And one of them combined it, and it speaks to the inherent issues with this movie that they're selling of. It was, this is so funny and so big.

[Griffin]

I mean, that's the movie at large, but.

[David]

Okay, but they were just saying that as a statement and being like, don't you want to see a movie that's really loud and expensive and has jokes in it? And you're like, what's it about? And they're like, don't worry about that.

[Griffin]

Uhhuh.

[David]

The most. It's the most movie.

[Griffin]

What about this one? Soon the screen will be bombarded by the most explosive barrage of. And it looks like the word shit in Japanese ever filmed. So again, it's just like, right? Like most. Most screen filled. Like there won't be a dull second.

[David]

No. And this is one of those classic cases of most equaling best.

[Griffin]

Yes, exactly. That's. That's. I mean, that's the story of 1941.

[David]

Griffin. It's the most movie ever made, and we all agree that it's probably the great American film.

[Griffin]

He took 10 minutes to do this. Yes, please.

[Nick Weiger]

It's all excess. It's. It's spectacle. Like, it. It at least delivers on spectacle. But I.

[Mike Mitchell]

My.

[Nick Weiger]

My question for you is, did you consciously avoid a quote from the movie because you couldn't find a line of dialogue that didn't have an Asian slur?

[David]

Nick, there was a quote on the IMDb page I was close to, and then I realized it had an African American slur in it. Oh, there you go.

[Griffin]

Very good.

[David]

I think there are very few quotes from this movie. There are very few distinctive lines that don't have something.

[Griffin]

I don't think there are. I don't Think there are really a lot of distinctive lines, period. And that's why I was like.

[David]

I didn't say memorable, I said distinctive.

[Griffin]

I was just like, what are you even looking for? I don't really know what the like killer line from 1941 was.

[David]

I was looking for this one statement. But it speaks to how this movie had like six similar taglines that were used in alternation, all of which are just trying to get the same point across, which was big and funny, expensive.

[Nick Weiger]

There's the Ackroyd monologue, but there's nothing in that that really I can even remember specifically. You know, like when he's up on the tank and he's trying to calm everyone down during the, you know, zoot suit riot.

[David]

Well, I can barely understand what he's saying during that.

[Griffin]

Just like screaming at the top of his lungs.

[David]

Just his weird like fast autistic computer speak. Right. It's like the most extreme version of I'm Dan Aykroyd, you have a tank and I'm shooting at you. When did IO Everyone is car salesmanship.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah. Every line has the intensity of Christopher Lloyd in the Adams family. Just like everyone is just shouting everything.

[David]

Here's a fun question I thought of while watching this film last night. If you, if you were talking to someone who had seen this but had no frame of reference for Dan Aykroyd as a person, how would you describe to them who Dan Akroid plays in this movie? He is first build. I know it's because of alphabetical, but his face is big on the poster.

[Griffin]

He.

[David]

He's one of the people the movie was sold on. He's a huge fucking star at this moment.

[Griffin]

Yeah, sure.

[David]

I. I don't think you could explain to someone what his character does in this movie in a way that really clarifies who he was amidst the 80 characters.

[Nick Weiger]

It's. It's hard to even know his function in the plot. Like exactly like he's the closest you.

[David]

Could say is like there's a 10 minute stretch where he's like concussed and is doing weird shit. But you're like. That could describe almost any character in this movie during any.

[Griffin]

He's 10 minutes stretch of V of reason sort of at moments amongst the various people who are going crazy. Right?

[David]

Yes. But that's also.

[Griffin]

Once again you're describing this a terrible challenge. I hate the challenge.

[David]

I just think it's fascinating that this movie is like we got Ackroyd. And you're like, how are you applying him? And they're like, we don't really know.

[Mike Mitchell]

My first note was not enough slurs. So I. So I. I didn't real. I got. You guys are right now.

[Griffin]

Now.

[Mike Mitchell]

In hindsight, yeah, those are really bad.

[David]

You gave it one star on letterboxd, but only for that reason. Lack of commitment.

[Griffin]

One star per hundred slurs.

[David]

It topped out there. Hi, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David, the most explosive comedy podcast ever made. I'm Griffin.

[Griffin]

I'm David.

[David]

You look very worried.

[Griffin]

This movie really bummed. Bummed me out as too strong, but I was just kind of like, I have never seen it in full.

[David]

Yeah, same.

[Griffin]

And I really just had that thought of, like, it's gonna be like, interesting.

[David]

We all think that everyone thinks this.

[Griffin]

And like, there'll be like kind of, you know, a lot to excavate about. And there is to some extent, like. But it's just. I was just kind of flabbergasted by how boring it was.

[David]

Do you mind reciting the thing you texted us yesterday while you were watching?

[Griffin]

Let me find it. Yeah, yeah.

[David]

This is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their career, such making Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

[Griffin]

Sure.

[David]

And are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Such as 1941.

[Griffin]

Sure.

[David]

I mean, a perfect example of like two mega successes followed by a no notes disaster.

[Mike Mitchell]

Has you ever had someone who's been so, like, like, so sure that they were making a disaster because he was. Because this was like, I'm gonna. They're gonna hate this. They're gonna. I'm gonna buy.

[Griffin]

That's a good point. It's a bounce that he sees coming while he' but what's also weird about.

[David]

It is we've maybe covered things that are like bounces that people see coming, but it's bounces where they're like, look, there's some esoteric, uncommercial thing I've always.

[Griffin]

Wanted to do, I'll do.

[David]

And I have the cache to do it and I'm leveraging it to get this out of my system. But this is like him making something ostensibly in the trappings of what should be a popcorn movie and just doing it incorrectly and knowing he's fucking it up. There was. I watched this. There's an hour and 40 minute documentary on the Blu Ray which has been carried over from the laserdisc. This thing has been ported over for like 25 years onto various editions. And it's mostly talking heads of just like Spielberg Zemeckis, John Milius, Bob Gale. And he says, my operating principle on this movie was anything goes. And he was like, I don't want anyone explaining to me that it's a bad idea. We can do anything we want, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense. And I'm like, this feels like a guy who actually wants to, like, fuck up on purpose because he's feeling the burden of being seen as a golden child.

[Griffin]

He's, like, running headlong into the wall, being like, what happens if I hit my head against the wall?

[David]

And he's like, either it works and I'm literally unstoppable, or I'm grounded in a way I maybe need at this moment. This is a miniseries on the films of Steven Spielberg. It's called Podrasiccast. Today we are talking about his first bounce, 1941. A World War II movie?

[Griffin]

In a manner of speaking, yes.

[David]

Sadly. Because our guest today would be very, very well suited to talk about a World War I movie.

[Griffin]

Go on.

[David]

Well, they host the Doughboys podcast. Wow. Where one wore off.

[Mike Mitchell]

We were both scratching our heads.

[Griffin]

You guys like, which one's that? No, of course the Doughboys are. Were the names of the soldiers. Yeah, the American soldiers.

[David]

Right. And In World War II, they were called the action boys with a Z. Right. We should have got Gabrison Rogers. And staying around.

[Griffin]

The British soldiers were called Tommy.

[David]

Okay.

[Griffin]

That was like, how British soldiers referred.

[David]

To, like, the sort of interesting.

[Griffin]

In World War I, the classic British soldier was called Tommy.

[David]

What were American Doughboys?

[Griffin]

Is when it was called.

[David]

No, I'm before World War II.

[Griffin]

I don't know GI Joe. I don't know Google type of way.

[David]

Nick Weiger and Mike Mitchell.

[Nick Weiger]

Hi. Hey, buddy. Thanks for having us.

[David]

Of course.

[Nick Weiger]

Can I. Can I say one thing to your listenership? First off, I'm a huge fan of the podcast. Mitch and I are both big fans of the podcast.

[David]

God bless you.

[Nick Weiger]

Always happy to be. To guest on. Always honored to guest on the show. This is the first time I feel like every time we've guessed it on Blank Check in the past. I think this is the case with. With how you tend to schedule your show. We've been like 18 months in advance of when the miniseries comes out. It's like, that's true.

[Griffin]

Now we're close.

[Nick Weiger]

Exactly. I was listening to the dual episode on the commute to the studio. It's like we're very. We're almost caught up to the present with the Spielberg series.

[Griffin]

Isn't this Also kind of the first time you guys have not been on a movie that's like a really sort of big kind of previous movies you.

[David]

Guys have covered, right? Who Framed Roger Rabbit, they Live and Seven.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, right.

[Griffin]

They're really good movies.

[David]

They're all at least in conversation for that director's masterpiece, if not the undisputed one. They're at least in that talk. And this is. You're getting what is like. I don't want to say inarguably, but pretty widely considered his single worst film. You'll find very few people something lower at the bottom. Right.

[Griffin]

It's like, I mean, you know, it's like how whatever. George W. Bush is a bottom five president. Right? Well, you know how people do rankings of presidents, These historians, they're always like ranking presidents. Yeah, I always think it's really weird.

[David]

My. Well was sarcastic. I want to state that because no one laughs.

[Griffin]

I don't like George W. Bush. Sure, fine.

[David]

I don't like him. I love him. No, what I was gon is Dog Face. They were called the Dog Faces.

[Griffin]

Dog Face was a nickname for U.S. army soldiers, especially enlisted infantrymen in World War II.

[David]

Wow.

[Mike Mitchell]

Kind of insulting.

[Griffin]

Yeah, this does seem insulting to use.

[David]

My first wife served first wife to use my. My. My recent favorite word on the podcast. I do feel like this is kind of like inarguably Spielberg's greatest folly. Right? This is like the biggest swing and a miss and the sort of public fallout kind of like humbling moment.

[Nick Weiger]

It is a big swing. I mean, that's the thing. He's trying stuff and. Yes. And my tepid defense of this movie, which I have seen before, I don't. Mitch, I don't know. Had you ever seen this before?

[Mike Mitchell]

No, I've never seen it. This is my first time I've ever seen that.

[Nick Weiger]

I watched this movie as a child. I saw this when I was in elementary school and it, along with another Ackroyd movie, Dragnet. I don't know if y'all remember the Dragnet. City of Crime. Yeah, that was like one of the first. One of the first times I saw a comedy with someone I thought was funny where I was like, why is this not funny? Like, I was like, I had like a, like a nine year old brain of like not understanding how someone who was funny could be. Could, Was, was capable of being unfunny.

[David]

This is why I'm so happy you guys are on for this episode because.

[Nick Weiger]

I mean, as you said, because we're experts on unfunny.

[Griffin]

Why Are these comedians not making me laugh? It's so weir.

[Mike Mitchell]

I got the Stanley Cooper.

[David]

Apple tagged this as a comedy podcast.

[Mike Mitchell]

The Stanley Kubric take is I, I agree with. Maybe Kubrick thinks it's a great movie, but just is not funny at all.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, right.

[David]

You should have released it and sold it as a drama.

[Nick Weiger]

And, which, which. And, and I'm sure y'all have some of this in the dossier, but I, I, I was shocked to find that that was. This was originally developed as a drama. But like, the, the, the thing I picked up on.

[Griffin]

On.

[Nick Weiger]

I watched it twice for this episode, and the thing, I picked up the.

[David]

Theatrical cut both times.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, I just watched the theatrical cut twice. The. I've maybe I was realizing this. I've maybe saw the extended cut because I watch it on TV as a kid. Maybe that's the version I saw.

[Griffin]

Extended cut was the one that was largely mainstay.

[David]

Right?

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

And then was on home video for a while. Now it's. It's optional. Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah. So. So watch it. But, like, the thing I picked up on speaking to Kubrick that I didn't pick up on as a kid, not knowing who Slim Pickens was. Once Slim Pickens showed up, I was like, oh, he's trying to make, you know, doctor Strange love. Like, this is an attempt at that sort of. That level of. Of, of, you know, war satire.

[Mike Mitchell]

And by the way Slim Pickens plays. He's a dope. He's a doughboy. He's a former doughboy.

[Nick Weiger]

That's right. He is a former doughboy.

[Mike Mitchell]

He serves.

[David]

This is true.

[Griffin]

And he does give Wendy's four forks in the room.

[David]

Solidus has gotten bad.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

Even though right in the. Isn't as good anymore.

[David]

There's that scene where he keeps saying, cigarettes are back. I don't know why. My Slim Pickens impression is fine. Goofy.

[Griffin]

It was fine.

[David]

No, this is a perfect movie where you're like, why is none of this funny? And you're watching and you're like, it. There isn't like a clear, like, well, this is obviously conceptually doomed, unfunny. But just every moment, there's, like, a black hole of comedy.

[Griffin]

I'm just kind of like, why am I not laughing? Like, this is, you know, vaudevillian, you know, big, silly, slapsticky stuff. Why am I kind of like, is it too good, in a way? Like, these are all too good at staging action. And so I'm actually kind of just, like, watching what happens, and it's not quite, you know, goofy enough. I don't know. Goofy things happen.

[David]

Yeah, I have, I have a couple takes, but I, you know, we, the reason we're recording this closer to the date was we were trying very hard to make this an in person record, you guys being on the east coast. And then it didn't quite work out. And there was a question of, of like, you guys are going to be doing a live show here in a couple months. Should we wait and reschedule you for something later? And I was like, maybe we do something later as well. But you guys on 1941 really feels right. And watching it last night, I was like, there is a larger conversation to be had here without getting academic. A dumb version of this conversation. We're watching this movie genuinely makes me step back and go, like, what is funny?

[Griffin]

Yeah, right. How does something become funny?

[David]

Why is anything funny? Because it's really weird to watch incredibly funny people in circumstances where you're like, I could see this being funny and things like that are not ineptly crafted, you know, and are certainly given all the resources and support they need. And there's like anti laughs without it feeling like anti humor without it feeling like disastrous failed humor. It's just not funny.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, it's like John Belushi and, you know, in a fighter jet cracking a Coke bottle in half and then gargling with it and then throwing it out the, you know, throwing it to the ground. Like that could be funny. Like that could be a bit of physical comedy. You're watching this like, okay, all the pieces are here, but you're watching and it just feels abrasive or like nothing at all.

[David]

I watched the extended cut, which is two and a half hours long.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh God.

[David]

I had a notes app that was write down every time you audibly make a sound. And I believe I had five full laughs.

[Griffin]

Four farts.

[David]

A lot of farts. Farts were their own note. I think I had five like, huh, huh, and like two like kind of half chuckles.

[Mike Mitchell]

Not bad, honestly.

[David]

Yeah, it was a little higher than I was expecting. I will say they basically ended by the one hour mark. Like at a certain point the movie just wore me out. I think there were none in the last hour possibly. But the Belushi Coke bottle is one that got me. I will say anytime Belushi is on screen, it at least resembles there's energy. It is comedy adjacent. You're like, I'm not laughing, but I get this as comedy. Whereas other scenes you're like, I don't even know what I'M seeing anymore.

[Griffin]

But wait, I do want to hear. Yeah, what you. So, okay, Nick, you'd already seen 1941.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[Nick Weiger]

You.

[Griffin]

You had some memory of it. What did you and Mitch you'd never seen? What did you guys think of 1940? Which is broadest reaction?

[Mike Mitchell]

I. I think it's good that what Griffin was saying with the. With the doughboys are good guests to have on for this. I can tell you why I think it doesn't work. So were you afraid of me wavaging my finger there?

[Nick Weiger]

You're getting riled up.

[Mike Mitchell]

I am getting riled up.

[Griffin]

I was about to say it's too woke. No, I'm about to give a little.

[Mike Mitchell]

Ackroyd type speech right here.

[David]

Hell, yeah.

[Mike Mitchell]

Unga pachka.

[Nick Weiger]

Yes.

[Mike Mitchell]

There's too much. Too much going on at once. I wrote down Steven Speedberg. That's what I said, because. Wow, Mitch, Steven Speedberg, he's going nuts. There's a million you. It's a sort of thing with comedy where you're like, oh, you got to let things breathe a little bit. And no joke. There's not like. There's almost not a single joke that gets to kind of breathe in the movie. It's all so deliberate, so fast, and then also at the same time, people are falling over or yelling other lines at the same time. It's like such an insane. Like, maybe it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world or something. He was trying to, like, evoke that or something. But it's. It's just too much stuff.

[Nick Weiger]

There's a. It has. It's the unrelenting cacophony of like a, you know, the Waterworld stunt show at Universal. You know, I mean, it just. It just like, kind of like things are just keep happening.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

And you can take that for. For 20 minutes, but if you take it for two full hours, it just. It just. You get numb to it. Yeah. It's like every single scene has a car exploding or someone getting punched in the face or people getting knocked over by people getting knocked over by cars, a building collapsing. There's like. There's like Robert Stack just giving exposition outside the movie theater. At a certain point in the background, a Jeep just flips randomly. And it's just hard to, like, track what's happening.

[Mike Mitchell]

By the way, one of the funniest moments for me is him just going and enjoying Dumbo. That's, like, so great.

[Nick Weiger]

Which is a quieter moment.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

The best moment in the movie is when anytime Dumbo is playing and I'M watching Dumbo. Locked.

[David]

The fucking Dumbo.

[Griffin]

Oh, my God. Dumbo is so good. Thinking about, like, ah, should I show my daughter Dumbo? And then being like, ah, Dumbo is really sad. Like, it really is upsetting, like the mom. And I'm like having all these thoughts about Dumbo. The movie is, by the way, now being moving on from Dumbo. And I'm like, still thinking about Dumbo.

[David]

My friend Alejandra used to have a standup bit about the reason why Atlas Shrugged is so long is in the middle of the book. The main character reads another book and he's like, in Great Expectations, just you read the full Great Expectations. And then on page 500 it goes. And she closed the book and said, wow, what a good book.

[Griffin]

Here's.

[David]

And it's like that with Dumbo, where you're like, dumbo is like famously 50 minutes long. It's very short.

[Griffin]

Very short. Yeah.

[David]

Watching the extended cut of the movie, I'm like, you could have just given me Dumbo in full.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Just have people and I would have been happier.

[Griffin]

Look, Steven spoke. This is what I want to throw to you guys. I'm sort of realizing as I look, as my. I look. Look at my Spielberg rankings, okay? I think the worst five movies he's made are his comedies.

[David]

I inclined to say, you're right.

[Griffin]

Things like, you know, like, the Indiana Jones movies are fun adventure movies. They have comic tones. Like, so same with Tintin. Sugarland is like sort of a comedy. Kind of like comedy drama, caper. Right. Catch Me if youf can is a comedy, but, you know, it's again, like a caper movie. It's very melancholy.

[David]

I was going to say, I mean, Sugar Land and Catch Me if youf can operate on a similar register of being kind of like dramedy.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I'm keeping those, like, with a.

[David]

Chase structure versus straight comedy.

[Griffin]

His worst films are 1941, the Terminal, Hook, Always. And I'm sorry, the BFG.

[David]

No, I agree.

[Griffin]

And like, I mean, the BFG is a kids movie, but it is, you know, sort of a. Simpson is for losers.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

1941, the Terminal and Hook. Yes, but especially 1941. And his two worst movies are his two, like, straightest attempts at a comedy.

[David]

But I feel like you hear people say this a lot, especially in. Disagree with me on 1941. No, but I think I have the same five as you and maybe a slightly different order. When people discuss, like, Spielberg, they're like, and of course his Achilles heel is he can't do comedy. And when this came out at the time, people were almost celebrating, like, thank God this guy isn't invincible. He's got a weakness. He can't do comedy. What's weird about it is I think Spielberg is incredibly good at putting comedy into non comedic movies, 100%.

[Griffin]

He can have such a light touch.

[David]

And it's part of his magic, is his balance is like, even in something like Saving Private Ryan, which is like so relentless, it could be so dire. He'll have stuff like Jeremy Davies doing like physical comedy.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, that's just funny where you're like.

[David]

He'S really good at the instincts of like, when do you, like, take your foot off the gas a little, Have a little reprieve, Something that doesn't feel flippant to the rest of the tone. All the Indiana Jones movies are funnier than this movie for ostensibly being comedies.

[Nick Weiger]

Alex park is funnier than this movie. Both Jurassic Parks he directed.

[David]

Yeah, right. But it's like when he's like, you know what I want to do? I want to just simplify and just do a straight comedy, he like, falls apart.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

He seems to be searching for whatever a superstructure. He can't have this movie also. I mean, this movie's real problem is what is this movie about?

[David]

Well, this is the thing to talk.

[Griffin]

About, because I know the movie, what the movie is about. It's about a genuine historical event that, that they're having fun with and supersizing. What the fuck is this movie about? Like, what am I supposed to walk out thinking?

[David]

Exactly?

[Griffin]

Like, we're like, I truly don't really know.

[David]

There were two really interesting things I found out in this, this special feature documentary. Right. And like, I think at the beginning of it, Spielberg says, like, you know, they liked it in Europe.

[Griffin]

Huh.

[David]

And he's like, so I go to Europe when I want to feel better about 1941. But he was like, basically it felt like we made this movie that only, like, me, Milius and the two Bobs enjoyed.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Like, he's sort of like, none of us have any shame. We had such a good time making this and it felt like our big fuck you to everything and everyone. And we just had uninhibited fun. Right, Right. But the two things they said that stuck out to me. One is they're talking about the development of this project, which, as you said, Weger started out as a drama and then at some point transformed into a comedy. And they're talking about how the two Bob Zemeckis and Gale discovered this real incident. That they morphed and combined with a couple other things. The idea of there being a Japanese attack on California and they're talking about, like, that felt like a great starting point for a movie. And then Bob Gale goes, I mean, in real life, the event happened in 1942. And I'm like, wait a second. So right off the bat, why the fuck is this movie called 1941?

[Griffin]

That's a fair point. It's a good point. I mean, the battle of Los Angeles did take place in 1941.

[David]

That is not the big problem. But it feels emblematic of, like, you can't even explain to me why you're doing this. Why is the title of a movie a different year than when the thing happened? Why are we changing things willy nilly? The other thing was he talked about how the Robert Stack character he originally offered to John Wayne, that was his wildest.

[Griffin]

This is what I know. Yeah.

[David]

John Wayne to do the film, right? And he had, like, developed a friendship with John Wayne.

[Griffin]

They get the script to John Wayne, and John Wayne is like, you shouldn't make fun of this.

[David]

The way Spielberg put it, he was like, I'm on the phone with John Wayne. John Wayne pitched me a project he wanted to do. I was like, I actually have a script. Would you mind reading it? He's like, absolutely. Send it over. And he's like, john Wayne, like, called me within two hours of the messenger dropping the script off. He clearly had read it immediately, right? And was irate. He was really mad and was like, how dare you? American soldiers, he said, fought and died for this.

[Griffin]

I thought you were an American. I thought you were gonna make a movie to honor World War II. This dishonors the memory of what happened. Don't even make this film. I'll be very disappointed if you wind up making this picture.

[Mike Mitchell]

And the way, wow, Pilgrim. At the end.

[David]

Then you throw out some rap racial slurs. The way Spielberg put it, he was like, john Wayne was like, this script is a slap in the face to the US Military. And Spielberg's retort was, I don't think it's a slap in the face. I think it's a pie in the face. I have respect for the US Military. I just think it's fun to put pie in faces.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And I'm like, there's the whole problem right there. This movie has no point of view.

[Nick Weiger]

It doesn't really have a way like.

[David]

This is offensive because it's not taking the military seriously. And Spielberg's like, I have nothing critical to say. About the military. I just think it's funny when pies go in people's faces, but, like, right.

[Nick Weiger]

It's going back to, you know, the. The kind of attempt at making, you know, a Dr. Strangelove. It's like Dr. Strangelove has a point of view, like, you understand what it's saying about, like, Cold War hysteria. This one, I have no idea what it's trying to convey.

[David]

Dr. Strangelove. MASH.

[Griffin]

Dr. Strangelove is anti war. Mash is anti war. These are movies like. Like 1941. I kind of agree with John Wayne. Like, yeah, I'm like, I agree with.

[Mike Mitchell]

Him on a lot of things.

[Griffin]

On a lot of things.

[David]

Mostly his Playboy interviews where I'm kind.

[Griffin]

Of like, well, and I guess that we can talk about how it turned from a drama to a comedy. Because it's like, yeah, what it's about is like a paranoid on edge nation after Pearl harbor, kind of like, you know, exploding into suspicion and chaos and all that. And the movie's like, I guess it's kind of like these dorks. And I'm like, they're not dorks. They're freaking out and it's causing problems. Like, but that's even scary.

[David]

Something like, the Russians Are Coming. The Russians Are Coming, which is another movie that feels like a big influence on this.

[Griffin]

That, to me, is the most obvious analog. And that's a movie about paranoia. That is. That is funny. The Russians are Coming. It's funny.

[David]

And it's also like that movie functions more as social satire where it's about, like, the American public reacting to something rather than like a scathing indictment of the military.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And it's like, that's a take too.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I know.

[David]

And instead this movie is just kind of like, everyone's dumb.

[Griffin]

No, to me, this movie is like, we have lots of money.

[David]

Yes. Also.

[Griffin]

But anyway, Nick, what are you gonna say?

[Nick Weiger]

Oh, I. I was just gonna say, and. And Mitchell, I want to hear what you have to say as well. But like, I was just gonna say that it's. It's 1941 is the movie. Right. So it's set before, like the kind of the. The outbreak of the. The full fledged American involvement in the, you know, European and. But like, for this to work as satire, World War II would have had to be a big nothing. Right. Because it would have been like. Like, look at all this hysteria. These people getting worked up over. Over this thing that was like this, you know, whatever that was, that was a false alarm. But like, it, it. It Completely. I. Again, yeah, I kind of sympathize with John Wayne's perspective, by the way, how. How much John. How much John Wayne have felt like, you know, towards the end of his career, towards the end of his life. Spielberg makes Close Encounters and Jaws. He hears Spielberg is making a World War II movie, and he wants him. And he gets the script delivered, reads it immediately, and then, like, on page five, a lady's trying to fuck an airplane.

[Griffin]

Hey, John. I mean, I think John Wayne, who is a fascinating figure, like, had. You know, he had this whole complex, fascinating political figure. Well, how he didn't serve right. And he played all these servicemen in movies and stuff like that. And he, I think, had a weird chip on his shoulder about, like, you know, being a phony actor instead of a real hero shoulder.

[David]

What was like. It was a. He had, like, imposter syndrome.

[Griffin]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And the whole thing with John Wayne is I grew up just thinking that he was this, like, super square, right? Like, that was what I knew about him. Then you start watching John Wayne movies, and you're like, this guy really pops. This guy rocks. The screen eats this guy up. He's so good.

[David]

He's one of the definitive. I don't know if he's a good actor, but he's an unbelievable movie star. Right.

[Griffin]

I just want to watch this guy, like, pour beers. Like, this total. But, you know. Yeah. Like the zoot suit riots, which are part of this movie.

[David]

Big part. And by the way, the extended cut. I was, like, trying to look up what the differences are. It feels like it's 90%. That plot line.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Put back in.

[Griffin]

That's like.

[David]

Which is the main thread of the version I watched.

[Griffin]

That's like, a really interesting, charged, scary part of history where, like, white soldiers started beating up black people and Mexicans and stuff in, like, the middle of the war. And, like, patriotism is curdling. Again, not in Spielberg's like. Well, it's like a big set piece where, like, a bunch of punching happens. Like, this is great.

[David]

When I say that his take on the movie is everyone is dumb. I don't mean that in a pointed way where he's, like, trying to comment on, like, human fallibility or whatever. It's just, like, going against the adage, like the comedy adage of, like, play to the top of your intelligence. Like, it's very hard to make audiences find dumb people funny, especially at, like, played at length.

[Mike Mitchell]

This. That's.

[David]

And this is a movie where everyone is just low Intelligence in a way that doesn't feel like it's commentary on anything.

[Mike Mitchell]

That was exactly like another reason why the movie isn't funny. It's just a comedy of. Of misunderstandings where you're like, oh, there's. They shoot. John Belushi shoots. Treat Williams is plant. You know what I mean? It's like. And then the Japanese submarine is out at sea, lost for most of the movie. It's like, not. And I get that it's not a real threat and that they're just paranoid. But you're just like, like the comedies of misunderstanding is bad. It's. It's. It's. It's boring. There's no stakes.

[David]

That's exactly ass movie because you get.

[Griffin]

It right away what the joke is. And then there's not really. Yeah, they're still lost.

[David]

Smarter than the characters. And to your point, like page five, minute five or whatever, you're like, okay, Nancy Allen really wants to Airplanes. Where's this going? It goes just there across 10 more scenes. She just keeps wanting to fuck airplanes.

[Griffin]

It doesn't heightens.

[Mike Mitchell]

I was, I was excited when Slim Pickens found the. The. In the Cracker Jack box. When they actually. When they found. When the Japanese found the compass. I was like, thank God they're gonna go to like Hollywood now. And then Slim Pickens swallows it. And I was like, fuck, this sucks. Like, I want. I want them to go. I want something to happen here. That's why I actually. I liked. I liked the zoot suit stuff just because I. At that point I was like, this is fun to watch. You know what I mean? It was.

[Griffin]

It's fun to watch. Yeah, he's a good director. Like, that's what the zoot suit rides thing. I'm not mad about it in sort of a. Like, I can't believe he didn't remark on those seriousness. I'm just. Again, I'm kind of like, well, there is something to that, but the movie is not interested in whatever there is to that.

[Nick Weiger]

It's not saying anything in its depiction. I mean, it obviously completely sucks out, you know, removes the racial element from the historical thing. But like, it also is like it's depicting it but not. Not saying anything. But. But this, this goes back to a thing I should say earlier of like. My tepid defense of this movie is you watch that sequence and you watch. It begins in the dance hall and that, that, that whole bit, that big dance contest sequence that turns into a fight, it's like, that's pretty dazzling to watch.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

It's. It's. It's an impressive bit of staging. And to contrast it with another one, 1941 versus red one. Like. Like two. Like action comedies that absolutely do not. That. That do not work. Red One is just like a. Like a. A muddy.

[Mike Mitchell]

That made me mad. To compare. I actually do. I am now. I'm. Now I think I like the movie way more.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

Because Red One is like a muddy, ugly mess. There's nothing to look at that. That $250 million CG, you know, goop fest that. That's at all, like, appealing visually. And this movie at least has stuff where it's like, oh, okay, he's doing stuff.

[Mike Mitchell]

I gotta. I gotta pitch.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah.

[Mike Mitchell]

1940 red one.

[David]

Yeah, there we go.

[Mike Mitchell]

We pitched that to the Rock. It's. It's bad. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's a period piece with. With Callum Drift.

[Nick Weiger]

That's great. Right?

[David]

Right to your John Wayne point. Wigs. Like a thing I kept thinking about in that whole anecdote. Mitch, you killed it. Bezos is blowing your phone up right now. John Wayne, similarly, in this period of time a couple years earlier.

[Griffin]

Sure.

[David]

Was Mel Brooks's first choice for the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles.

[Griffin]

Sure. I mean, John Wayne died the year this movie came out. He was also like, this is the very end of his life. He obviously saw suffer from cancer at the end of his life.

[David]

Yes. Sends him the Blazing Saddle script. John Wayne reads it, calls Mel Brooks back immediately. Is like, this is the funniest thing I've ever read. I could never do this movie.

[Griffin]

Right. Okay. So he had good taste on Blazing Saddle.

[David]

He was like, you know, again, he.

[Griffin]

Was like, I love the slurs. So many.

[David]

And I get to say all of them. They're like, no, those are the other characters. You're supposed to be a good guy.

[Griffin]

To be clear, I'm slandering John Wayne when I say that that is a.

[David]

Movie that is very pointedly commenting on American racism.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Right. Racist old man. Right. And was basically like, this script is really funny. I think it'll be a great movie. His famous line was, I won't do it, but I'll be first in line to see it. Sure. And he just was like, I think my fans will murder me. And I don't think it will help your movie. I think it will, like, lend too much.

[Griffin]

I think I would have up the movie. I think he's too. Right. He's too big a deal for that 100.

[David]

Right. But like he read that script and was like, I get it. I get what you're doing here. Which makes like the framework of his like absolute dead on precision. This is the problem with 1941 on paper. All the more like he wasn't just reacting to something, being countercultural, you know, he wasn't just being conservative. He was like, this sucks.

[Griffin]

Do you know what John Wayne's tombstone says?

[David]

Larry Rip. That's what Leslie Nielsen's tombstone said. My favorite tombstone of all time.

[Griffin]

His tombstone says feo fuerte y formal. Spanish for ugly. Strong and dignified. He requested that be on his tombstone. Anyway.

[David]

David February. February movie preview. Okay. And I gotta say, it's a pretty interesting February we have coming up.

[Griffin]

Yeah. What do we got?

[David]

Heart Eyes is.

[Griffin]

Yeah. From our friends.

[David]

An original horror film directed by our friend, past and future guest. Overdue to have him back on the pod. Josh Rubin.

[Griffin]

Yeah, well, he's been busy making films.

[David]

He has. Which is wild.

[Griffin]

And he's got a new one, Heart Eyes. That. That looks really exciting.

[David]

Love hurts. I would argue one of the weirdest Kwan action movies movies to be pushing the fact that it stars two Academy Award winners in history. All of the marketing is Academy award winner Kee Quan, Academy award winner Ariane Dubose. And you're like, yeah, right. I guess so.

[Griffin]

That's very exciting. You've also.

[David]

Well, let's acknowledge that someone's coming.

[Griffin]

Hail to the chief.

[David]

Stomp. Stomp.

[Griffin]

President Red Hulk.

[David]

Let me check my glasses here. I'm used to Hulks being green, but this one's red. Finally, finally we can stop talking about Red Hulk because we'll be able to see him and vote for him. Yes.

[Griffin]

And also opening up, you know who's going to possibly kick Red Hulk's butt?

[David]

The monkey.

[Griffin]

Paddington in Peru.

[David]

Oh, sure. But can we look. Paddington Peru were all obviously excited to eat some marmalade sandwiches with Paddington. Although I'm a little worried about how they've maintained with the long distance flight to Peru underneath a hat.

[Griffin]

What's awesome about all this is that there's lots of interesting different kinds of movies in theaters that you can go see.

[David]

And with Regal Unlimited, the whole point is you sign up and seeing three, four, five, six of those movies is easy and affordable.

[Griffin]

And I find that once, you know, you have the Regal Unlimited. Right. You know, sort of the option of basically like, let me pop over my theater, I have three free hours.

[David]

That's what's nice.

[Griffin]

You do it more.

[David]

You do it more.

[Griffin]

Go see the movies.

[David]

Go see the Movies.

[Griffin]

Sign up now in the Regal app or at the link in the description in our show notes and use code blank check to get 20% off your three month subscription. And then you're going to be in the Crown Club. You're going to get rewards. You're going to build up points and.

[David]

Get free popcorns and sodas.

[Griffin]

25 grades off candy on Tuesdays, 50% off popcorn discounted ticket.

[David]

Go to the Regal Crown Club website. And as I said, it's a little deep, It's a little buried in here. There is a section where you can redeem your points for old promotional movie memorabilia like Red one socks.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[David]

Follow the link in the show notes, go to the Regal app, click on the unlimited banner and then follow the instructions to sign up and enter promo code blank check when prompted to receive your discount. And look, I'm just going to say it again, David. Signing up for Regal Unlimited or maybe gifting a membership to a moviegoer in your life.

[Mike Mitchell]

Sure.

[David]

Great way to support the show. This is, this is a dream advertiser. Yes. A dream partner for us. We want to keep this going. We think it could benefit everybody, especially the movies.

[Griffin]

1941. So in 1973, Steven Spielberg made a movie called the Sugarland Express. He had a preview screening for it at USC's film school and in attendance was Robert Zemeckis Bob EZ, who is attending film school and tracks down Spielberg and says, please watch my 15 minute short film, A Field of Honor about a combat veteran who's gone crazy. And he'd written it with his friend Bob Gale. It won this special jury prize at the Student Academy Awards and Spielberg was blown away by it.

[David]

And we covered Zemeckis years ago. That short is notably like a pitch black, hyper, like political, sort of like countercultural satire.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

It is the kind of tone that this movie is going for. That's what first gets Zemeckis on Spielberg's radar.

[Griffin]

And those guys graduate. Zemeckis and Gale, the two Bobs, as you call them, they write some tv. They work on a movie called Tank about oil protesters.

[David]

This is where this sort of who.

[Griffin]

Are gonna blow up a building with a Sherman tank.

[David]

Right. They have Spielberg's ear. His star just keeps on rising. He's kind of taken them under his wing as proteges. He's also introduced them to John Milius.

[Griffin]

Yes. This is how they meet.

[David]

John Milius, Spielberg once a week go skeet shooting with John Milius, I believe.

[Griffin]

I guess so.

[David]

They certainly go out hunting or whatever.

[Griffin]

Sure.

[David]

And he introduces them and they're sort of like, how do we write a script that one of these guys will buy? And Milius had some sort of deal set up where he was guaranteed two pictures of the director and three pictures as a producer. And this is coming off the success of Patton, where there was a big let's valorize the military kind of like trend in Hollywood. So the Tank thing, I think, starts as them being like, how do we write something that would appeal to Milius and also would likely get greenlit? They're just looking to get something off the ground.

[Griffin]

Yes, they wrote a script called the Night the Japanese Attacked. Initially it had a slur in the title. Then it was called the Rising Sun. And they were like, yeah, Wesley Snipes is going to want to make a Rising sun movie. So we'll hold off on that. Gets called 1941, this outrageous concept about hysteria on the home front after Pearl Harbor. It is based on three events, none of which happened at the same time. The the Japanese sub being cited off the coast of Santa Barbara in 2-22-42, that happened. That led to the Battle of Los Angeles, where people started shooting in the sky at probably nothing because they thought they were being invaded. And in 1943, the sort of zoot suit riots between sailors and zoot suiters who were being seen as unpatriotic for not signing up. You know, they were like anti authority.

[David]

But they're like pulling all these pieces of like the whole Ned Beatty plot line of this guy getting a like, aircraft gun in his backyard. Did happen, but not in California and in a different year. But they were just sort of like plucking. I mean, Tank. I'm forgetting what the take on Tank was, but it was some other pitch. And then they bring it to Milius. He's like, I. But what else are you guys thinking in terms of war? They start talking about the Battle of California. Then. Then it like morphs into like. Try writing something like that. They think to write it as a drama, and then at some point it shifts into comedy.

[Griffin]

Well, Spielberg is looking to make a movie. So Spielberg had made these movies, Jaws and Close Encounters. You guys like those movies? Yeah, Yeah, I like those ones.

[Mike Mitchell]

I was. By the way, I just want to say that I might just get fail on my grave. Just ugly. Forget the strong and dignified. I've been holding that in for a long time.

[Griffin]

I wanted to fire that off.

[Mike Mitchell]

Jaws is probably my top 10 films of all time.

[Nick Weiger]

You're a big Jaws guy. I love Jaws. I love Close Encounters. Actually, maybe I have Close Encounters ranked above Jaws on my personal list. But they're both like incredible movies.

[Mike Mitchell]

Jurassic park to me is. Was. Is the King. I mean, like, that's like the perfect age. I saw that movie. I just.

[Griffin]

Similar.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. And, and, and. But Jaws is like going down to Cape Cod when I was younger and Jaws being on in the summer. It's like what? Like the idea of movies even just came from Jaws, I feel like. And that. So that's like. And they're the best. It's the. It's one of the best of all time. And you know, 1941 is. It's a movie.

[Griffin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Spielberg's thinking of, how do I follow those two movies? He circled a pirate movie that was being written by Jeff Fiskin, that he wanted to be like an old fashioned sort of Errol Flynn movie. He exits that movie because pirate movies are just not hot. He's briefly attached to something called the Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings.

[David]

That was made, was it not?

[Griffin]

Yeah, John Badham directs it. Whatever. He also sounds like a Matthew Robbins.

[Nick Weiger]

Sounds like a Troy McClure movie.

[David]

Yes, it really does.

[Griffin]

The Contabilis fantraption of whatever.

[David]

It is a Robbins, though, right?

[Griffin]

Matthew Robbins wrote it with Hal Barwood. The Sugarland Express guys. He also circled Magic, the haunted puppet movie with Anthony Hopkins that Richard Attenborough ends up making. He was gonna make it with De Niro.

[David]

Imagine how that puppet would have looked.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I don't know. But then he was like, like Attenborough did a great job with it. Did a better job than me, whatever. I don't know. Instead he's sort of thinking, like, what if I do a big swerve? Right?

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

How about a comedy? Milius, I think, was sort of initially going to direct this movie.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

So John Milius, who's obviously a very chill and normal guy who was kind of older, I feel like, than the rest, maybe a little older than the Spielberg diplomas, but was sort of friends with all of them.

[David]

There was a chain of sort of. Coppola mentored Milius. Right?

[Griffin]

And Milius, Apocalypse Now, Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David]

And Coppola kind of stamped him and verified him. And then he kind of took Spielberg and Lucas under his wing into Palma. There was this chain in the way that Milius.

[Griffin]

But then they pass him.

[David]

Yes, they all do.

[Griffin]

I mean, Milius's big, best known movie is Conan the Barbarian, if you've heard of him.

[David]

But all those guys talk about Milius as like the greatest writer Amongst all of them, Weger took a banana out of his pocket. I thought he was happy to see us. And in fact, there was a banana in his pocket. And now he's eating a banana.

[Mike Mitchell]

We were enjoying your guys combo. You guys were. You were doing a better job than we could ever do talking about this movie. And we looked at each other, we nod and we took out food. We started eating.

[Nick Weiger]

We decided while you're on your John Milius tangent, we're like, we're going to deploy Chekhov snacks. So Mitch grabbed his kind bar and I grabbed my banana. And we're having a great time.

[Mike Mitchell]

But we're having a great time.

[Griffin]

And Jammy's sitting on the couch.

[David]

By the way, for all this, we should credit Jimmy in the title of the episode as the third guest.

[Nick Weiger]

Emma's dog. For people who aren't regular doughboys listeners. Mr. Producer.

[David]

So what I was going to say is Milus has this deal at the time, right. Right at set up at mgm. So he brings the script to mgm. The first note is, you got to change that fucking title. Right? That's when they changed the title. And the head of MGM at the time reads it and is like, I don't get this. Absolutely not. Passes on it.

[Griffin]

Right?

[David]

Then a year passes and when Spielberg's like, I don't know what to do next, which I. I get. I understand how if you make Jaws when you're in your 20s and is the biggest movie in history, then you follow it up by making this incredibly personal movie that is going over budget and over schedule and everyone thinks is going to be your folly. And then that succeeds wildly. You're like, what the do I do now? And you're reading a script like magic that is good on paper. But you're like, is this too small? Like, how do I outdo myself? What. What Feels like it's living up to the expectation I've set for myself. Like, it is safer to do the thing that on paper seems more dangerous.

[Griffin]

He's in a certain way, he's drawn to two things.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

He likes the Ferris wheel sequence. His Spielberg brain immediately is sort of like, I, that'd be fun to do.

[David]

Because he's originally just reading it as a friend of the king. Yeah.

[Griffin]

But then secondly, more importantly, he's like, yeah, what if I did something wild and funny? You know, Like, I didn't approach it, like, as an experiment, but I thought it'd be a great opportunity, he says, to see. To break a lot of furniture, see a lot of glass shattering it was basically written and directed as one would perform in a demolition derby.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

I mean, he's sort of saying his mistake right there, where he's basically like leading with the spectacle.

[Nick Weiger]

Right.

[David]

But it's like this is his metal machine music where he's like, what if it's like all antagonistic and extreme and it's just chaos.

[Griffin]

He doesn't have a passion project, so this becomes the clearest thing for him to do.

[David]

And Close Encounters felt like, this is my most personal movie. This is the most personal film I'm capable of making at this point. So he's like cashed in that ship already and it's worked. This was the other. The reason I'm winding up this whole thing is when Spielberg signs on, they go to Columbia because he had just done Close Encounters with them to say, this is the next movie I want to make. And in the year that it passed, the now head of Columbia was the guy who had passed on the movie at mgm. And he rereads the script and he's like, I still think this isn't good. I stand by my assessment this isn't good. But I guess if Steven Spielberg wants to make it, but it wasn't a.

[Griffin]

Columbia movie, it was a Universal movie.

[David]

So then he had a first look deal at Universal still left over from Jaws, and the budget was getting so big that he went to Universal and convinced them to team up on it. And Universal ended up getting the bigger piece of it. But it was a co production. But I just like that everyone involved was like, we said no to this movie two years ago. We stand by that you haven't fixed it. But I guess if Spielberg sees something in it that there's something we're not getting. So everyone's kind of going into this movie being like, bad idea.

[Nick Weiger]

It makes total sense why everyone would say yes to it, given his recent track record. And also makes total sense why he would feel a bit of hubris. You know, like, it's like I, I understand absolutely how everyone arrived at this. It's a. Just to return to the Ferris wheel real quick, which I think is a good, another good sequence. Like it's like, you know, again, there's, there's stuff to, there's stuff purely from a visual standpoint that's, that's, that's very engrossing in this movie. I mean, just, even just a high angle shot he does to connect the, you know, the people in the Ferris wheel cart to the ground. It's just like that, you know, like we're Talking one perfect frame. I mean, it's like that's, it's a good shot, you know, But I feel like the Ferris wheel becoming unmoored from its hinges and rolling down the. The boulevard. That feels like something Ben would like. Ben, am I correct there?

[David]

Oh, this is what a great instinct, Tiger.

[Griffin]

Did you like 1941, Ben? Yeah. We haven't checked in with your opinion. Well, okay, so I wanted to be comprehensive.

[David]

Right.

[Mike Mitchell]

Going into this.

[David]

So you started from watching 1900 and worked away.

[Griffin]

I started with year one. Yeah. Good, good.

[David]

Better joke. Better joke. Better joke.

[Mike Mitchell]

No, it's okay.

[David]

I stepped on it.

[Mike Mitchell]

But I'm familiar enough with the Ferris wheel. And to answer your question, wigs. Yeah.

[Griffin]

100% man.

[Nick Weiger]

Hell y.

[David]

Now I. I think why Wise is onto something here, which on paper, this should be your kind of movie. Like you loved Crime Wave, the Raimi movie that Raimi's kind of disowned.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[David]

That is similarly all kind of like live action cartoon. Like people bunking each other on yelling and chaos. Very slapsticky.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Right. Done at a very small budget, but like at this kind of manic pitch the entire time. This movie has elements that feel like they should be fucking catnip to you.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. And even just like the kind of.

[David]

Porch esque quality of it.

[Griffin]

Right. Big TV movie. Exactly. Yeah. But no, this could just not grab my interest.

[David]

It's a real like eyes sliding off the screen thing.

[Griffin]

I. That's how I felt watching it. The thing I said to you, I already text it.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Was I'm watching 1941 right now and it's such a slog. I think it's ruining my day. Definitely that. Not just Sunday with Three Children. This anecdote I really like. Spielberg's making Close Encounters. He's talking to Francois Truffaut, one of the great filmmakers and an idol of Steven Spielberg who's in the film.

[David]

Could just be clear. He is actively developing this script, overseeing rewrites while he's making Close Encounters.

[Griffin]

Truffaut says, and this is Spielberg quoting him, I like you with keeds. You are wonderful with keeds. You must do a movie with just keeds. And Spielberg's like, well, yeah, I've always wanted to do something like that, but I've got to finish this and then I'm going to do 1941. It's just this movie about the Japanese attacking Los Angeles. And Truffaut just apparently said, you are the child and was like, you're making a huge mistake. So Trufo was right. And he takes Truffaut's advice and is like, I guess I'll knock out a kind of, like, Raiders ET Double bill after this. Just kind of level it out. That's the thing about Spielberg where you're like, oh, 1941. What a bomb. How do you follow that up? It's like, I don't know. Raiders of Lost Ark and Etsy.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

So maybe just go and, like, suck his dick.

[Nick Weiger]

But this is.

[David]

Well, I. Gladly.

[Griffin]

But this is.

[David]

This is what is fascinating to me, talking about this movie. Just, like, the weirdness of it. Treating World War II like it was a canard. Right. Like, this movie tries to, like, wag the dog World War II, or, like, the thing that, like, Dr. Strangelove does where it, like, creates an incident that never happened. Right. Based around, like, the Cold War and the missile crisis and paranoia and all this sort of stuff. Stuff he's, like, riffing on a thing that we know turned out horrifically for, like, most of the planet.

[Griffin]

Yes. Bad.

[David]

Right. And then the movie he does right after this is a, like, adventure serial where the villains are the Nazis set during melted exact same time period.

[Griffin]

True.

[David]

And he finds the right way to thread the needle. And of course, like, post Schindler, he said, like, I couldn't do another Indiana Jones movie where the villains are Nazis because I took it too seriously at the. At that point. And I didn't want to make light of it. But you're like, fucking Last Crusade and Raiders have this balance on, like, somehow keeping in mind the enormity of the tragedy and the villainy and all of that sort of stuff without it being distracting. Whereas this movie, you're just like, hey, can we just, like, remember what's going on in the background here?

[Griffin]

Yeah, I. You're right. There's so much to say. I mean, he also tried to make this movie called Growing Up. I'm just going to kind of move past that. We can talk about a later episode.

[David]

Was Growing up the orig. Sort of Fableman. Yeah.

[Griffin]

People sort of think that Zemeckis and Gail wrote it okay. For him because he was like, do you want to write a movie about kids for me?

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And they said, like, it kind of. It was like a nerd versus jocks thing. It wasn't like a sensitive, like, divorce movie.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And that they, like, got some money and Spielberg was, like, casting kids. And Caleb Deschanel, the cinematographer, was like, this sucks. This script is ass. And, like, I don't think you have a good idea here. And Spielberg is like, yeah, forget it. I won't do this. And he et is what he sort of settles on later. Anyway, instead he decides to do this gigantic, you know, overwhelming, expensive movie. Even though this is a comedy about, again, nothing in particular. It just screams like, money. It's crowds, sets, explosions. Like, you're saying, like, it's like that Armageddon commentary where. You know, the iconic DVD commentary for Armageddon where Ben Affleck is like three sheets to the window. And like, in the first scene, there's the helicopters taking off behind Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck on the oil rig. And Ben Affleck's like, that just costs $250,000, right? Like, it doesn't need to be there. It's not part of the plot. There doesn't need to be a helicopter taking off right now. And that's just $250,000, like, right behind us, just, like, drowning us out. That's what this movie is all the time.

[David]

This movie feels like that is the explicit purpose of every scene. Like, the center of every scene is the most expensive thing that's happening in the scene. Not just as a background element moment.

[Mike Mitchell]

But also, who is the star of this movie is.

[Griffin]

Great question, because I walked into this movie, I loaded this movie up being like, well, Belushi is kind of the star, right? And it's like, now Belushi's just punctuation.

[David]

Oh, it's a classic Ackroyd Belushi two hander. And I'm watching it and like, an hour and 20 minutes in, I was like, jesus Christ, are they never gonna interact in this movie? Yeah, there's the point where they're both on the same street, but I think Ackroyd's knocked out and Belushi's on the other end. And I'm like, But they're physically in the same space. Are they finally going to link up? And then they, like, go off in opposite directions and at the end of the movie, they salute each other in coverage. They literally never appear in the same shot. It is so insane to make a Belushi ackroyd comedy in 1979 and go, what if they never talk to each other?

[Mike Mitchell]

That's that. That was it. I feel like it has that problem of, like, a Caddyshack or something, which, by the way, I love Caddyshack. Of course, Caddyshack's pretty good, but. But the. The Wally is maybe. And Wally doesn't do a bad job. That guy Wally, I'm Like a young guy. Young guy. My cat's name. I love the name. I. I just am like, he. This is. This is maybe the main character of the movie.

[Nick Weiger]

This is a character who wins the dance contest.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

So it's kind of the zoot suitor. Yeah.

[David]

So that's right.

[Nick Weiger]

It's. It's.

[David]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

He's the closest thing there is to a lead, but it's even. He's like, kind of hard to track. And he seems like a peripheral character. The way he's introduced the extended cut.

[David]

Is mostly adding in the meat of.

[Griffin]

His story because he's in I want to hold your hand. He's in the Zemeckis movie I want to hold you'd hand, which is the.

[David]

This carries over Wendy, Joe Sperber, and then Eddie Deason and a lot of early Zemecka stock company people that we talked about when we did that series.

[Mike Mitchell]

I think he's pretty good in this. I was actually surprised that he didn't. His. He didn't do too. I mean, he worked consistently, but nothing really huge.

[Griffin]

Never got famous. Did kind of just fizzle out. He does. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe it's just sort of like there's other guys like him.

[David]

Yeah. But they talked about, like, as the script was getting unwieldy, Gail and Zemeckis were like, we should identify a kind of like, central viewpoint character that you can go back to with like an emotional through line to track as we're like, cutting across all these story lines sort of. Look, he's not bad, but in the, like, cacophony of this movie, it. It doesn't like, help clarify the movie. And you're also like, this isn't that gripping against the scale of the other happening. And Universal famously like, freaked out like, six weeks before this movie came out and were like, this thing is unwieldy. And their expectations are another Spielberg blockbuster. You need to cut 30 minutes out. And they cut 30 minutes out like last second. And unsurprisingly, they cut down the 30 minutes with the least famous person.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

Right.

[Nick Weiger]

The. So. So she is.

[Mike Mitchell]

He is the most boring, though. I mean, like, it also is like, I do want to see more beliefs. I want to see the other people, but it just doesn't totally.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, he's the most vanilla character, but. But. But. Although vanilla is a flavor. But the. The. He's like. He's like the most like just kind of straight lace, like, you know, like the closest thing the movie has to protagonist. But even the way he's introduced in the diner, he's. Glenn Miller's in the mood is. Is playing and he's doing, you know, the jitterbug. Like he seems crazy there. The way that you're onboarded to this character because they're. They're making like, he's washing dishes. They're doing a little hobbit dishwashing song. And.

[Mike Mitchell]

And you don't even know if you're supposed to like. You don't know.

[Nick Weiger]

You're supposed to like him. Like. And then the other guy who's making breakfast is like dropping whole eggs with shell onto the flat top. And it's just like, what. What is going on here? Everyone's just batching.

[David]

That happens in the first 15 minutes of this movie. It is disorienting because you, like, cannot find a handle of like, what am I supposed to be focusing on?

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah.

[David]

Let's also just acknowledge the cold open of this movie is like, I feel like one of the most infamously hubristic moments. It is the thing where, like, Spielberg talks about everyone wanted to take him down a peg. They were looking for, like a way to ding his armor. Everyone's going into this movie. The expectations are unreasonable. Even if it had been good but not great, people would have had their knives out. And the opening scene of the movie is Spielberg parodying himself. And people just take out machetes and they're just. Just like this. So hard. Right off the bat, I.

[Mike Mitchell]

Look, we were. We talked about this a little before we started recording. And I did that. My first thing that I wrote down, of course, because the first thing that happens in the movie. But I was like, would the Jaws parody annoy me today? Like if it was a different director that was parodying his own movie? And I don't know if it. I mean, I maybe would even like it. I can't tell. But it is. There's a lot of hubris from. From Spielberg, but I.

[Griffin]

Yes, I.

[Mike Mitchell]

It doesn't bother me that much, I guess. But also, is that through the lens of me being a child that was raised on Jaws and loving Jaws? I don't know.

[Nick Weiger]

It's. I think it plays pretty. It like, feels pretty obnoxious to, like, parody your own thing. It feels a little, you know, I. I understand as a way to. Way to start the movie, it's a little off putting.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. I was just saying I gave it points for being hornier.

[Nick Weiger]

It is a little hornier. It's the same actress, right?

[David]

Way hornier. It's the same Actress. And part of this is maybe the weird Zemeckis thing, because Zemeckis is, as we uncovered, maybe the horniest man alive.

[Griffin]

But, like, horny in a very, like, old school, kind of like a GI as, right? Like a sort of busty lady pinned up in his locker or whatever, where he's like, check a load. That's his horny vibe.

[David]

Did I say this in our Here episode? I don't know that I, I, I was. Was communicated to by. By someone who had worked with Zemeckis on developing a project that didn't happen in the last five years and said that they had a meeting with him for three hours and the only two things he wanted to talk about were boobs and special effects.

[Griffin]

What did he want to say about boobs?

[David]

Everything, apparently.

[Griffin]

I don't understand.

[David]

But, like, had no, like, story notes, casting ideas.

[Griffin]

He's just like, I'm thinking big boobs for this one.

[David]

He's just like, you know what I like, like, areolas. Jesus.

[Mike Mitchell]

By the way, if there was, like, if the shark was there and his fin got bigger after seeing the girl or something, I would have liked something like that.

[Griffin]

Like, give me the naked. That's already funnier.

[Mike Mitchell]

Give me the naked version. Why, why did, why are you holding backwards just a half halfway point.

[Griffin]

Spielberg is too smart, and I think Z and Gail are too smart to, to actually do the great Naked Gun, where it's like, yeah, this should have no rocks in its brains. Like, this would be so dumb.

[David]

Can I, can I open a little Naked Gun tangent here, please? I do a yearly rewatch of the trilogy. The first, second, and third funniest movies ever made, did that pretty recently. Right. Naked Gun 2 1/2, which is the first one that David Zucker directs solo. But Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams were still producers and writers on it, so they were all involved. Comes out after Ghost, which Jerry had directed solo, had been this big transition. I'm a serious filmmaker. Movie that's a huge blockbuster and an Oscar nominee and winner and everything. Naked Gun two and a half parodies Ghost. It is like, the only other example I could really think of of the exact same thing. You're saying Mitch doing it that closely after. Right. There's the slight bit of difference of, like, this is David kind of ribbing his brother.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

So it's not quite the same director, but Jerry's still involved. It's not the cold open. It was the trailer for the movie.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

It doesn't feel galling. It feels like Kind of funny that it's like this guy who went serious is cutting himself back down to size. And also it's within a framework where that is what is expected if you're gonna make a Naked Gun movie after you've made a best picture nominee, you have to make fun of yourself. Right. Like everything needs to be on the table. But watching that and thinking of other spoof movies and everything, it hit me while watching 1941 last night. Is there a fundamental rule that if you're spoofing something, it has to cost less money than the real thing you're spoofing?

[Nick Weiger]

It should look a little jankier. Yeah, it should look better. I think that, I think that's, that's kind of like just kind of like a sketch comedy sort of rule. Yeah.

[David]

And, and I feel like, you know, you guys have worked in the same kind of like sketch comedy doldrums that I have. And especially like, like, you know, 2000s video sketches.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah.

[David]

There is a level where the production value is so bad that it actually fails to function as a parody. I think of like a lot of like, what if Wes Anderson directed blank videos that are bad, where you're like, if you can't successfully approximate his style, the satire doesn't work. But yet you need to get within spitting distance. And like Mel Brooks movies, Naked Gun movies, like all of them hit the right balance of like this is done with genuine craft. They approximate the thing just enough. But it doesn't feel like you're thinking about how much it cost.

[Nick Weiger]

There's almost like a dust. Yeah.

[David]

Did this cost more than any other war movie that had been made up until that point?

[Griffin]

I mean, that's a fair.

[Nick Weiger]

It's kind of the Last Action Hero sort of issue too.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Nick Weiger]

It's just like that feels like kind of two and Last Action Hero works better than 1941, but it kind of feels too expensive to be parodying. To be a parody. Yeah, there's kind of like a weird like double Uncanny Valley with parody because it's like there's also. You can though have like a, a, a, a tik tok where someone has like a paper bag over their head. And that kind of works. But then once you start making it feel like a real thing, it needs to have a certain level of, of of, you know, fidelity behind it to feel like a parody. But then you go too far and then it stops feeling like it's, it's any fun at all.

[David]

Dead on.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[David]

Cuz you can get away with nothing or you can get away with getting fairly close, but you can't go over. And ideally you want to exist in that middle space which is really hard to hit.

[Mike Mitchell]

And you're right.

[David]

Precisely.

[Mike Mitchell]

That whole sequence of her going up on the periscope. It looks great.

[Griffin]

It looks impressive.

[Mike Mitchell]

It looks impressive. It does, yeah. But then the payoff is like a Japanese man being like Hollywood seeing the.

[Griffin]

Girls and truly doing Borat horny noises at her. You're just like, oh, okay, cool. Great.

[Nick Weiger]

Right.

[David]

Because the bit is you start with the same actress doing the same night swim scene from Jaws and then they're.

[Griffin]

Kind of mimicking the music and then they're just doing the music. John Williams score for 1941 kind of goes. It kind of goes. He showed up.

[David]

It was ear warmed into my head last night when I was trying to fall asleep. But you know, rather than a shark, the thing that pops out of the water is this German submarine. And she's riding on the like periscope and it feels very phallic and as you said, these soldiers all come out. The Jaws opening is just this classic like man, look at the fucking Spielberg magic. They couldn't get the shark to work. He had to design a sequence where you don't see the shark. It's all suggestion. You're like, that sequence costs so little money to construct.

[Mike Mitchell]

True.

[David]

The moment the submarine starts coming out of the water and she's like straddling the periscope. You're like too expensive. Too expensive, too complicated. Not funny. You know, it's like you have made something more technically complex than the thing you're parrot being there.

[Nick Weiger]

There's another bit of self reference in this as well. Right. Is because I believe it's. Is it the actress from Duel, the, the gas station operator who's also. Yeah. Also in the snake slate.

[Griffin]

Belushi fills up his plane and then. Right.

[David]

Like I'm almost trying to astonish. This movie doesn't have a Close Encounters parody as well.

[Griffin]

That, that sequence is kind of funny. I think the plane like, you know, that the, the gas are up and then like the, the this, you know, the, the gas going everywhere.

[Nick Weiger]

It's kind of fun, I guess the nozzle, the, the unwieldy nozzle kind of like, you know, being similar to the snakes. I guess that's what it's trying to reference. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, it's that, that one's. That. That part's okay.

[Mike Mitchell]

I just like Sims so half heartedly being like it's kind of funny kind.

[Griffin]

Of Sort of chuckling.

[David]

Yeah. But also like Spielberg says this on the laserdisc where he's like, this is something only dual Die Hards will pick up. But I, I'm like, right at the time of this release, Duel is a TV movie.

[Griffin]

If you caught it on television. Right. It's like you can go check out the vhs.

[David]

That's not a thing that most people are going to pick up on. Can I just read my full 1941 laugh list?

[Griffin]

Okay, go ahead.

[David]

One reveal of Japanese soldiers disguised as Xmas trees.

[Griffin]

Oh sure.

[Mike Mitchell]

Which is, which is cut. It's cut in the version I saw.

[David]

That's an extended cut. Okay. And then I found out in watching this making of that's a direct lift from a Marx Brothers movie movie that he was like, I want to do the Christmas tree bit. Number two, I wrote almost everything Slim Pickens does.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

I think this is the most wholly successful performance. But also like sub subplot.

[Griffin]

He's just Slim Pickens. That guy's funny.

[David]

But to Mitch's point, there's kind of like a clearer comedic game in his little section. That makes sense. We'll circle back to this. Number three, I did put down Belushi with the Coke bottle. Got, Got it out loud, huh? For me. Number four, Eddie De and revealing the ventriloquist dummy.

[Mike Mitchell]

Insane, by the way.

[David]

The way it's revealed.

[Griffin]

It's really weird. And we'll get to it.

[Mike Mitchell]

I, I, I have a question for you guys, please. Because you said he almost did this movie magic. And then I was like, was this a nod to that?

[David]

Had to be.

[Griffin]

It must be, right?

[Nick Weiger]

Had to be.

[David]

Cuz the other thing is they wrote the script where the two guys in the carousel were supposed to be Abbott and Costello. Carney. Art Carney and Jackie Gleason.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh, that's who it is. The Honeymooner.

[David]

And they even wrote it as like one guy's a mailman and the other guy is a like they wrote it in the script that way. Then they have Spielberg on board. They're like, we can get anyone they want. They reach out to Jackie Glen's agent and they relay back Jackie Gleon refuses to ever work with Art Carney again.

[Griffin]

Oh, damn. Okay, Right. Well, Jackie Gleason was a. Yeah, bit of a tough customer.

[David]

And I want to hold your hand had come out at this point and Spielberg was like, where did you find this Eddie Deon guy?

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Rewri. And make it Deason and an old guy. So it's Deezen and the mayor from Jaws. But. But like, I don't think he would have given Art Carney a ventriloquist dummy. I think you're dead on that. That was like a weird. Him making jokes about movies he didn't direct.

[Griffin]

But again, it just kind of feels like, you know, it's just, well, let's throw more props at this. And more explosions and more.

[David]

Yeah, I'm not that I laughed at it. The physicality at the reveal of you see a blanket next to him and it slowly rises.

[Mike Mitchell]

It's pretty funny.

[David]

And then the head lips stuff's up. I gave a half chuckle at Belushi as old man eating spaghetti. The weird cutaway to Belushi's cameo as a second non speaking character.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah.

[David]

I gave a half chuckle to water coming out of the dummy's nose at the end of the film.

[Nick Weiger]

That's pretty good.

[Mike Mitchell]

That was good.

[Griffin]

Yeah, Pretty funny.

[David]

And then two full laughs at the dummy getting its own credit in the end credit.

[Griffin]

Yeah, that was good.

[David]

And the explosions during the credits, which are the most I laughed in the entire movie.

[Griffin]

Joe Flaherty getting the width in the credits of all these people. And Joe Flaherty's good.

[Nick Weiger]

I think he's good in it.

[Griffin]

He kind of crushes his seeds.

[David]

But let's also say in terms of.

[Griffin]

Like this movie, RIP Joe Flaherty recently.

[David]

Recently passed.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

It's unfunny in a way that almost defies logic. This is a movie that has like four cast members from Stripes, three cast members from Laverne and Shirley.

[Griffin]

Bunch of SNL people.

[David]

Two people, two SNL people. Like it is pulling from all the groups of the peaks of comedy, both like commercial and in like snob circles at the time. On top of of like 10 dramatic film legends, including Toshiro Mifune.

[Nick Weiger]

Yes.

[Griffin]

His only like movie that he spoke English in or whatever. Yes.

[David]

Every other American film he made he was dubbed over by Paul Freeze.

[Griffin]

Cool.

[David]

Who I believe is the ghost host from or the narrator from the Haunted Mansion ride.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

Victor Freeze, of course, was Batman's enemy. Fell in a ice cubes. Right.

[David]

He's sort of a tragic figure because his wife, Nora Freeze, of course.

[Mike Mitchell]

Wait, they dubbed over him over Mr.

[Griffin]

Freeze? Yes, they did.

[David]

They would dub over Toshira Mifune in every other American film.

[Griffin]

He did his English dialogue. Yeah.

[David]

This is the only film, American studio film in which he actually speaks.

[Griffin]

Right.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah, I, I heard that he like yelled at all the like extras off. He like got them in line for the movies. The IMDb. I Am DB trivia says that he like got all the extras in line and was like, like that's not how soldiers act. And like got them acting like soldiers.

[Nick Weiger]

That's God.

[Griffin]

If he yelled at me, I would melt into water.

[David]

So by the end of filming, those men would have died for him.

[Nick Weiger]

Hell yeah. But like now, now my. My wife walked out cuz she didn't watch any of the movie. But she came outside when I was watching it once and. And she, you know, she came to the living area during the credits and.

[David]

She was packing her bag.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, yeah. Just signed a new lead case. We're very happy for the. So. So like every like third card or whatever, there's just like a random explosion that comes up. And she watches it and she does laugh at it because she's like why the fuck are things exploding during the credits? Yeah, but it's kind of a microcosm for the movie as a whole.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Nick Weiger]

You're just watching it as like why are there inexplicable explosions every like, you know, like, like every like four seconds? Like what is going on? Exactly.

[Mike Mitchell]

I have to have these.

[David]

Yeah.

[Mike Mitchell]

I have one thought on the credits as well. Well, first of all, there's two thoughts here. One, the dummy is sentient cuz it notices things before. The guy from Critters notices things. I forgot his name already.

[Nick Weiger]

Eddie Decent.

[Mike Mitchell]

Eddie Dieson. Eddie who didn't have as big of a career as I thought either. I was surprised by.

[Nick Weiger]

He was in. He was in a lot of stuff.

[Griffin]

Specific career. Very specific.

[Mike Mitchell]

We.

[David]

We covered him when we were doing the Zus movies, but he was this discovery and they were like, he's just like this and no one else is like this. And you put him on screen and he goes. And then he started getting bigger opportunities and people were like, oh, he can't memorize dialogue, he can't take direction, he can't hit marks. You can sort of just let him like spin out.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[David]

But it was hard for people to figure out how to put him in any other context.

[Mike Mitchell]

I love watching him spin out. He is very. When I first heard his voice, I was like, what is this character? And then I was like, oh my God. It's just. It's Eddie. It's the guy from Critters, Eddie Decent.

[David]

He's famously was also the voice of Mandark on Dexter's Laboratory.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh yeah. Oh right.

[Griffin]

It's a Dexter's enemy.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

His rival, the sort of Grimes to Dexter's.

[Nick Weiger]

And he's probably old enough for his entire childhood. Like Was Pre D's nuts. So he avoided that. That would have been tough.

[Mike Mitchell]

That is. That's a really good point.

[David]

Yeah, he is. He is very active on Facebook and he is often posting about how.

[Griffin]

Never a good sign.

[David]

He is often posting. Get ready.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

He's often posting about how he's been banned from local LA diners because the waitresses got uncomfortable by his compliments.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh, boy.

[David]

He's one of these. These with the dummy tell a lady to smile anymore.

[Mike Mitchell]

I'm hoping the dummy is the one doing. Which, by the way, the dummy is credited in the. In the end credits, the dummy got a full laugh.

[Nick Weiger]

Mention that as one of his laugh lines.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh, oh, oh. That's what was on your. Sorry about that.

[David]

Yeah, yeah. But just be clear. Two of the laugh lines were things that happened during the credits.

[Griffin]

Right. Which you have to. Especially after the director's commentary is two and a half hours.

[David]

Two and a half later.

[Griffin]

I'm gonna read something from the dossier that I do think underlines what we're saying, which is Zemeckis and Gale are like, look, our script was cynical. It was like a dark movie, like a dark comedy. And then Steve comes in and, you know, his tone is very different. And it becomes more of a screwball comedy. And Spielberg's like, yeah, I was just trying to max out visual gags. My role models were hellsa poppin with Red Skeleton. Preston Sturgis screwball comedy. You know, basically kind of like there shouldn't be, like, every. Something should be happening every second. Right. Like, that's sort of. To me, that's. If you think that of a Preston Sturgis movie, you're reading it wrong. But like, obviously, Preston Sturgis movies, the dialogue is very fast. There's lots of jokes, I think that.

[David]

So intricately set up. Big laughs come from, like, oh, my God, you put all the pieces in place perfectly. And for 15 minutes it's been leading to this very clear, understandable, sort of like conflict or whatever it is. I mean, here are a couple things he said in this retrospect.

[Griffin]

Looney Tunes becomes the thing he's referencing.

[David]

Brings Chuck Jones in during development and says, chuck, I want you to come up with the wildest visual gags you can. And, like, Chuck Jones comes up with a gag that's sort of like an explosion of the moment where Tim Matheson drops the bomb and it's rolling towards the speech where the bomb is sentient and it's like rolling through the town on Main street and driving everyone crazy. And it's like five minutes of the bomb rolling everywhere in town. And Spielberg was like, I don't know how to achieve this. And he was like, it was a great sequence and it would have been great in animation, but I couldn't even begin to figure out how to film it.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And then he says, and this interview is from maybe the early 90s or the late 80s. He goes, you know, today you probably could figure out a way to do it with CGI computer generated imagery.

[Griffin]

Right. It's a new concept.

[David]

What a time capsule that he was like, oh, I used insider lingo.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

The other thing he said was he was like, at the time, people complained that the movie was too loud and too chaotic and cacophonous. And I look at it now and I'm like, it's no different than playing Doom.

[Griffin]

Oh, wow. Spielberg, the gamer.

[David]

And then he went, by the way, not true.

[Griffin]

Doom is very like kind of quiet and. Yes, exactly.

[David]

Spire. But no, but he was like, yeah, I don't think the movie is that different from one of the CD ROM games that kids would play.

[Griffin]

Play.

[Mike Mitchell]

Dear God. Well, he was right about the current. Doom is very similar. But he didn't have a pre copy of doom 2016 or whatever.

[Nick Weiger]

No, no, he's.

[Griffin]

Doom, isn't that.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, no, no, it's. Yeah, there's. I mean you're like, whatever. There's some.

[Griffin]

There's demons. Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

There's demon. You know, there's there's the. But it's like there are moments of just walking down corridors, you know.

[David]

Right. Doom is like skinmarink. Like the first. Doom is like liminal horror.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. Yes. Much better paced. There's moments of quiet in. Feels much better than that.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Which this. There's also moments.

[Nick Weiger]

There's also a BFG in Doom, but it has its.

[Griffin]

The big F gun bfj. Bfg Is Quake just like kind of goth Doom. Is that all Quake really did to Doom?

[David]

Huge question.

[Nick Weiger]

I guess it's got some more Lovecraft in it too.

[Griffin]

Yeah, kind of like a little more.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, but it's. But yeah, it's kind of. I mean, the big Quake thing, a. It was a fully 3D engine. It was like this kind of 2 1/2D thing they were doing with. With. With.

[Griffin]

You can't actually.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

You're strafing and stuff. That's the difference. Okay. You still have quick. Anyway, this is the most interesting thing Spielberg says.

[David]

Okay.

[Griffin]

I. So he says, I sort of saw the movie 1941 as a big Hollywood musical. Like an Old fashioned golden age musical. And I had talked with John Williams about doing like eight big Big bands numbers, like Big Big Numbers and the Zoo. You know, the jitterbug contest is kind of the only thing that remains of that concept. And he's like, I kind of regret not making it just a big musical. Now that's one of those things I hear where I'm like, that is a good idea, but you're insane.

[David]

Right?

[Griffin]

Like, if that's your idea, then that's a different movie and you should make that. Start from square one. Exactly.

[David]

Now he frames it as.

[Griffin]

It really just sounds like they're like, oh, could we have explosions and musical sequences and like boobs and. Yeah, money. And, you know, it's just. They're throwing everything in.

[David]

He frames it in this interview as, I didn't have the courage of my convictions at that time to follow through on that. Right. And then he's like, you know, I had this anything goes principle. And basically at the beginning of Temple of Doom, I do the type of musical number I wanted to do in 1941. There is one other movie Spielberg has made that was originally developed or at least temporarily developed as a musical. And then he welched on it for the same reason where he's like, I got scared. I didn't know if I could tackle it. I took all the songs out. Do you know what movie that is?

[Nick Weiger]

Correct.

[David]

No. Do you know what it is, David?

[Griffin]

I feel like I do. And I'm gonna be annoyed when I. I'm gonna guess it is spoilers.

[David]

The other movie I put on the same tier as this in Spielberg's filmography. Correct, Correct. Which is also left with one song where the daughter sings on the ship.

[Griffin]

Which is a nice sequence, but I.

[David]

Believe five songs were written for that movie. You just similarly said, I just. I got freaked out by doing. Doing it. And you hear this thing across his career that he always wanted to make a musical. And I do think it's fascinating that when he finally did it, he was like, if I start with west side.

[Griffin]

Story, right, I'll just make one of the most famous musicals of all time. And then I'll. This is kind of nail it. I'll just like do all the other stuff real good.

[David]

But he kept toying with trying to make his own original musical and then being like, I don't know. I don't know if I can pull it off.

[Griffin]

Yeah, that's interesting.

[Nick Weiger]

You'll like his west side Story. I'm a big fan.

[Griffin]

I think it is one of the most like jaw dropping, incredible movies ever made. And Griffin thought it was okay.

[David]

I like it quite a bit. Which gets framed as me hating it.

[Griffin]

I, I was setting you up for this.

[David]

Yes, I think some of it is extraordinary. I think Anel Elgord is kind of the Achilles heel of the movie, which feeds into a bigger Spielberg failing to identify good young leading men thing that hits the last 10, 15 years of his career.

[Mike Mitchell]

What's he been up to?

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, what's he been up to?

[Griffin]

Where to go hiding. Hey, Ansel, where's the boy at?

[Nick Weiger]

Come on, Mitch. You like the Spielberg west side Story?

[Mike Mitchell]

I like it quite a bit. I'm probably in between. Griffin Sims, I would say is probably where I land on it. I'll say this great place to be because this made me think of it.

[David]

It's empty right now. There's no one here.

[Mike Mitchell]

Join us. I'd fit in perfectly. A little puzzle piece jump through the screen. My question to you, this is a kind of a hot take. Take that. The dance sequence in this, the punch fight dance sequence. If that came out this, this decade, would it be amongst the, one of the best dance sequences in the last 10 years?

[David]

This is the thing with Spielberg. You're like, I feel like we talk about this, we use this as like a gauge or descriptor a lot. But the types of movies where like, if you were at a bar and this was playing on TV or projected on the wall behind you with the sound off and you're catching glimpses of it, you're like, does this roll right? Do I need to watch this? And the second you actually lock in and watch it sound on as a movie, you're like, this is a mess. But if you just looked over your shoulder while you were drinking and saw that staging for 15 seconds, you'd be like, oh, so this is one of his masterpieces.

[Nick Weiger]

It's, it looks rad. And again, you know, I, I don't want to belabor red one, but if, if you took the Krampus set piece in red one, the slap, you did Krampus schlock and you, you remove that and instead substituted this jitterbug dance contest. Like, it'd be like, hey, you know what? Red one has blank. @ least that sequence is cool. So yeah, I, I think you're right. But, but I did feel very like it does feel like a proto west side Story. Like, like even the scoring there, the, the John Williams kind of simulacrum of like a Louis Prima sort of a big band number is Kind of Leonard Bernstein. It. It is kind of like. Like, it's. It's. I don't know. That. That. That's one. That's one of the few times in the movie where I feel like everything just kind of comes together.

[Mike Mitchell]

Hot take. Better than any dance sequence in. In La La Land, for instance. Instance.

[Griffin]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how hot.

[Nick Weiger]

No, I mean, like, you know, that's. That's. That. I don't. I don't feel like that's a film. That's like. It's choreography is mind blowing.

[Mike Mitchell]

It's got some.

[Griffin]

That's fine. But also, I think that is the.

[David]

Failing of almost all modern movie musicals.

[Griffin]

Yeah. I think lan's even right. I mean, that's why Better man, which is out in theaters right now, probably gone by the time.

[David]

It might be gone by the time we finish recording Better man came out three days ago.

[Griffin]

Exactly. Is really trying to solve those problems of, like, you know, it's like, how do I shoot a musical sequence in a movie? Do I just have a wide. So you can see all the dancing and see the sort of choreography altogether? That's boring, though. It's static. Or do I cut into the action a bunch and now I'm like, you know, messing up the rhythm of the songs and of the, you know, of everything. And the CGI goop layer, though, never.

[Mike Mitchell]

Doesn'T help the Better Man.

[Nick Weiger]

I saw Better Man. I saw Better Man.

[Mike Mitchell]

I saw that Tiff. And I. I don't hate Better man. Weirdly, it's a very confusing movie. But I do think that this. This dance sequence feels so much more authentic and real than almost anything you.

[Griffin]

Said It's a huge crowd.

[David]

Yeah, I think you're spot on. And, like, it's the thing I always complain about is I see modern movie musicals and I either feel like the choreography was sort of an afterthought, it was the last piece of the puzzle and the one they didn't devote enough time and practice and thought to. Or the dance has been worked out.

[Griffin]

And we can't see it.

[David]

There is not confidence in the way it is shot and cut.

[Griffin]

We're just not getting to see it in its sort of full form.

[David]

And it feels like it's always either or. And it's part of what makes you wish that Spielberg had made five musicals in his career where you're like. The way he treats action and the basic staging and blocking of dialogue scenes shows such an understanding of how you should approach a musical. And you'll get those Moments that are static. But also to your point, Mitch. There is the moment in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where like the, the Russian spies or whatever are like circling them. And he's at the diner with Mutt Williams. And Mutt like starts a fake fight between Rip, like the preppy college guys. Rip Mutt, a true human.

[Griffin]

Canonically dead. Of course. I know, I know he had the.

[David]

Courage that John Wayne lacked.

[Griffin]

Yeah, John Wayne, dead yellow bellied coward.

[David]

But do you know the moment I'm talking about where Mutt basically like, sure.

[Griffin]

Yeah, starts the fight at the diner.

[David]

He starts a fight between like the preppies and the bikers so that there's can break out. And I'm like, that's like a version of Spielberg almost trying to do the same thing he does in the zoot suit sequence visually that he is able to contain within like 25 seconds where you're like, there is an economy and a cleanness to that.

[Griffin]

He's the best at that stage. Yeah.

[David]

Whereas this is the one time I feel like almost in his entire career where he's not doing the incredible Spielberg math of how do I simplify the sequence as much as possible? His greatest skill set is to like show up on the day and go like, how do we make this the fewest number of shots? How do we like find the way to like convey this information as quickly and cleanly as possible and with a little bit of charm and wit. David.

[Nick Weiger]

Yep.

[David]

You know what I love?

[Griffin]

How about quints? New year, new chance for new clothes. Okay, well, listen to me. I think everyone needs to try and refresh their liquid quality pieces, but stay on budget. I think everyone needs Quince's mango Mongolian cashmere sweaters from $60. I genuinely love Quince. I think I've talked about this on the show before, but I am Quince pilled, right? I be loading up quints and buying some nice soft shirts and good fitting pants all the time. They've got some activewear, performance tees, tech shorts. They've got, you know, soft shirts that are warm, which I've been really favoring in the winter. And you know, they're priced 50 to 80% less than the similar brands because they partner directly with the top factories. No middle men.

[David]

Perfect.

[Griffin]

And they only work with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices.

[David]

No sharks.

[Griffin]

Anyway, so yeah, if you want to upgrade your closet this year without the upgraded price tag, you should go to quint.com check for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com check to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com check. Bye.

[David]

David.

[Griffin]

Oh, hello.

[David]

Hi. How are you doing?

[Griffin]

I'm good. I'm good. I mean, Valentine's Day is coming up.

[David]

I mean, I was gonna bring it up. You're a married man.

[Griffin]

Sure. For me, there's only one place I trust. 1-800-flowers.com.

[David]

You gotta show your wife that you love her and that you care.

[Griffin]

Each year I'm ordering stunning, high quality bouquets from 100 flowers that my wife absolutely loves. And we're partnering with 1-800-flowers to make sure you're a Valentine's hero with this exclusive offer for a listener.

[David]

An easy sell. This is a great time of year to encourage people to order flowers for the love of their life. Look.

[Griffin]

And they.

[David]

This doesn't need extra spin on it. We don't need to put any mustard on this ad.

[Griffin]

Reed offer with double the flowers. Double the roses for free. When you get one dozen, they'll double your bouquet to two dozen. It's the perfect way to say I love you without breaking the bank.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

2100 five flowers. It always delivers.

[David]

Trust. I trust you when you say that. Yeah. This is all that needs to be said. Ding dong.

[Griffin]

And who's that at the door?

[David]

We should check quickly.

[Griffin]

Right?

[David]

I mean, I know we're almost. We're getting through this ad read.

[Griffin]

Okay. I'll tell you that I got a great bouquet from 1-800-Flowers. Arrived right away.

[David]

I'm just gonna walk to the door quickly.

[Griffin]

It's really nice. I didn't get roses. I got a sort of double multiples.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Hand outraged.

[Griffin]

Comes in a really nice container. Yes.

[David]

Who can plant a rose bud?

[Nick Weiger]

My God, Dan Pluck Petunias, too.

[Griffin]

It's been a while.

[Mike Mitchell]

How are you?

[David]

Dan Candyman. Cam. Been a dog's age. It has. It's been a long time since you guys have invited me to come over.

[Griffin]

No one invited you.

[David]

I felt like it. I felt it in the air. My ears were burning.

[Mike Mitchell]

Wow. Dan Candyman, you look like crap. Crap.

[David]

It's been a rough couple years.

[Griffin]

Why? What's going on, Dan?

[David]

I come from the Candyman family, of course, of the Montreal Candyman. And we're a flower family by trade. The name does tend to confuse people. Along with me singing a song that's a modified version of the Candyman, the Willy Wonka song. And it always confused people. So I'm actually here today selling candy.

[Griffin]

Okay, well, I'LL buy some candy to.

[David]

Raise money for my high school's back basketball team.

[Griffin]

Okay, cool. How much?

[David]

You're not going to ask any questions about that?

[Mike Mitchell]

What are M and n?

[David]

I. Well, you know, these are just gray shells.

[Mike Mitchell]

There's not a color in sight.

[David]

Look, I'll admit. Yes, I'm selling candy. That's not really why I came in here today.

[Griffin]

Okay, what's going on?

[David]

I need flowers. I no longer have the hookup. My family has completely divested.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh, well.

[Griffin]

And I actually do have great news for you because all roses from 1-800-Flowers are picked at their peak, cared for every step of the way, and shipped fresh to ensure lasting beauty. The bouquet I got came fresh, sat on our table looking great for ages. Didn't like wilt after two days. Like some, you know, local sort of bodega flowers you might buy or whatever.

[Mike Mitchell]

Comes with a little packet.

[Griffin]

Little packet to sort of spruce them up and make them alive.

[David]

Gosh. Because this is a stressful time of year for me. You know, Valentine's Day is really rough on Dan Candyman.

[Griffin]

I don't.

[David]

Because I'm part of a very large polycule. I have to get a lot of flowers.

[Griffin]

I hate all your lore.

[David]

I think it's interesting and people are going to be excited.

[Griffin]

Well, you better get on it because bouquets are selling fast. Lock in your order today. And of course, if you do order a dozen roses, they'll double the rose bouquet for free. That's a great value. To claim your double roses offer, go to 1-800-that's 1-800-FLowers.com check to get your double your roses offer.

[David]

100Flowers.Com check now that sounds great, but I have to admit my many, many partners have some pretty specific tastes. Double roses sounds nice, but by any chance does 1-800-Flowers offer kaleidoscope roses, hand dyed 24 stems in a purple vase with wind chime included. I'm looking it up. Okay. They do you have it? Great. What a great product. Would you like to buy 1m?

[Griffin]

Sure. Fine. Give me an M. There you go. Thanks.

[David]

That'll be 25.

[Griffin]

Wait a second.

[David]

I have to raise money.

[Griffin]

1,800Followers.Com check.

[Nick Weiger]

I will say so. There's the. The se and I don't know how sequential we're going here, but the. The.

[Griffin]

I don't think we can because I don't remember the sequence like it's too boring.

[Nick Weiger]

It's not a coherent sequence of events.

[Griffin]

Big sequences.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

But they don't really KN to each other. That Importantly.

[Nick Weiger]

Anyway, so Belushi. So Belushi going into the city and you know, like they're his, his, his plane is pursuing the other plane with the, you know, the, the, the, the, the horny airplane lady and the guy who's trying to seduce her.

[Mike Mitchell]

Which God bless her.

[Nick Weiger]

God bless her.

[Griffin]

Tim Matheson. Right. The straight arrow.

[David]

As horny as the jaw Animal House actors.

[Nick Weiger]

Oh, you're right.

[Mike Mitchell]

As, as horny as the Jaws opening is, I wanted the movie to be more horny. So I was happy with the horny plain stuff.

[Nick Weiger]

That, that is fun. So, so they're, they're like that. It's kind of a detangle.

[Mike Mitchell]

The playing Titan.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, so they're. Yeah. The birthing sequence at the end is really unsettling. After, after she pretends to be a guy's dead son for an hour. Movie's wild man. Anyway, so the, there's the, there's the two. There's like the dog fight, right? The plane pursuing the other plane. Plane through the city. And like his sense of geography, like he uses the Roosevelt Hotel like sign is like kind of a landmark. And like there's like four consecutive shots where you're seeing the Roosevelt Hotel. I think that's whatever the sign is. Like, like from four different angles just so you can get a sense of like where all the anti aircraft batteries and where all the civilians on the ground and where the planes are in relation to each other. And it's just like this guy is just the best at this. Like this is so he, he makes this, he. This, this. The 3D environment is represented in a 2D plane in a way that makes complete visual sense to anyone who's watching it. So you have, yeah, you do have stuff like that where it's just like again, this is just like really exceptional craft.

[Mike Mitchell]

Which by the way, there is a moment in that where I got annoyed where they're like, we're gonna take Hollywood to Highland. And I was like, you're at Hollywood in Highland. You remember when the tank guys yelling that. Yeah, it.

[Griffin]

Geography.

[Nick Weiger]

Right, right.

[Mike Mitchell]

Sorry.

[David]

To the point of what Sims just said. No, no, what's crazy is that like he can't stop himself from doing that. From like the constant like geographical centering, like giving the audience the visual information to understand the relationship between images. Story wise, he is almost pointedly doing the opposite. Like you saying, it's hard to recount this movie in order. It feels like there is very little, little relationship between scenes in this movie.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[David]

And like I understand part of it is that it's doing this kind of tapestry. Like 10 different plot thread stuff.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[David]

But it's like actually hard to keep track of any level of cause and effect in this movie. And part of it is just realizing this as we were saying it. Like there are like six different fundamental misunderstandings in this movie.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Like unlike something like a lot of these sort of like satirical war movies. Right. Where you're like, the Russians are coming. There's like one thing of like a Russian shows up in town and they think it's an invasion. You know, like Dr. Strangelove, one wrong call is made kind of shit. This movie just keeps stacking up misunderstandings.

[Griffin]

They don't really enter. I mean, some interact and some don't.

[David]

But a lot of them don't. Right, exactly.

[Griffin]

So you're like the submarine thing kind of is a self contained story and.

[David]

It sort of has nothing to do with Belushi who's just on his shit.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

He's being attacked because Tim Matheson is trying to get laid because Nancy Allen only wants to fuck inside a plane.

[Griffin]

Right. And then there's like the. The Warren Oates character who's kind of like the sterling hating character.

[David]

Street lover.

[Griffin]

But we barely see him.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

And he's like only spoken of for a while. And then when he shows up, it's kind of like an hour into the movie and you don't care.

[David]

Right. And you're like, they're right. Everyone's right. That the Japanese do want to attack California. But also the Japanese have no understanding of geography. So you have this whole misunderstand understanding based on where they are. So it's like everyone reacting to a threat that is real, that they're misunderstanding, but also the people who are the threat are fucking up the thing is also not real.

[Griffin]

But of course it is real in that World War II is real.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

And will be a thing, just not here.

[David]

Right.

[Mike Mitchell]

This ties into the Treat Williams character. I didn't know if he was a good guy. I was like, is he going to end up with a girl at the end of the movie?

[Griffin]

And then he's an asshole.

[Mike Mitchell]

He's somewhere between, between Bluto and the Hillside Strangler. He's like, he's either.

[Nick Weiger]

He's.

[Mike Mitchell]

He's like either like a fun villain or the worst man in the world. He's like trying to grab kind of. He sucks.

[Griffin]

Yeah, he's kind of right. Just a straight up sort of sociopath bully. Like, I mean, Treat Williams is. Is fine at that, but you're kind of like, what's this character doing here?

[David]

Bob Gail was saying that one of their big ideas they had when they were like Spielberg saying it, like, keep on coming up with more, more and more, more. And they were like, you know what's a funny setup? A guy desperate to lose his virginity in the middle of warfare.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And I was like, okay. And they're like. So we had this whole scene written where they're like hiding out under tanks trying to fuck because the guy's so worried he's going to die before he loses his virginity.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[David]

And then as he's explaining it, I realize he's talking about the Treat Williams.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh my God.

[David]

In the movie. There's the reveal of the tank moving, moving, and her running away in terror because he's been trying to sexually assault her. And it's not just that he's been like a pushy creep the whole movie. That moment is like he has grabbed her and pulled her under a tank.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[David]

And she is like running away and pulling her skirt back up. And I'm like, how did this go from this being a character you're kind of rooting for to get laid?

[Nick Weiger]

Well, I will say that's the thing.

[David]

Like. Yeah, him being like a rapier Bluto.

[Nick Weiger]

Right?

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[Nick Weiger]

But. But my understanding is I. And I didn't watch the extended cut. My understanding, the extended cut. There is a scene where he. A high. Right.

[David]

Yeah. There's also a big like glory hole scene where they're like spying on girls in the shower and then a woman comes out and yanks.

[Griffin]

And then a dog jizzes into a. What is it in cla and Van Wilder?

[David]

Dog Claire.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Yeah. There's also a scene where Retreat Williams is looking for hair gel.

[Griffin]

Oh, interesting. And he, he finds it right on the ear of a friend.

[David]

It's. It's a fact in his Belushi's.

[Griffin]

It's just one of those things where America was like. There's this great sequence with the hair gel. Everyone loves it. And I'm like, so what's the sequence like? Ah, he jerks off and comes on his ear and it sticks there. And I'm like, doesn't do that. That's not a thing that happens.

[David]

It is so funny.

[Griffin]

That's never happened to anyone in the history of society.

[David]

They talk about the Fairly Brothers Glue. The Academy Award winning Farrelly brothers.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Talk about.

[Griffin]

Well, just one of them.

[David]

Did they not. Did Bobby not have any credit? That's insane. Poor Bobby. They talk about how when they were filming that on the day Stiller was spiraling over the logic.

[Griffin]

This doesn't make any sense. Why would it. Why would it go all the way, like just vertically into my ear?

[David]

And you're like, that's not how like come holds it looks wrong. Like, what are you talking about? And there's the moment earlier where he like comes. She knocks on the door and he's like, hold on. And it's like he's looking for where the cum went so he could clean it up, right? And in that moment, he turns 360 degrees and you see there's nothing on his ear here. And they were like, Stiller was freaking out over this. And we were just like, Ben, you gotta trust us. It's funny. And I feel like there's so many stories about Stiller.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right?

[David]

Something like that. And it being like he's freaking out over nothing.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[David]

He's overthinking it.

[Griffin]

But this one, I'm kind of with him.

[David]

Yeah, he was right. And yet results were undeniable. Yeah, she put that come in her hair. And that movie made $200 million because everyone at every author this was like, you got to see what this hair gel is.

[Mike Mitchell]

I remember when my mom and dad were just laughing so much at that moment. I saw it with my mom and dad and sister and they were just going nuts and I was like, that's gnarly. Like, like that was the poster for.

[David]

The movie was her in a red dress and like a Marilyn Monroe seven year itch pose with the hair flipped up. And every article in review I remember about that movie is like, you're not going to believe what happens in the hair gel scene. You have to see it for yourself.

[Mike Mitchell]

By the way, another. Another issue. Treat Williams not a virgin. He. There's a bad. No, he's not a virgin at all. Rest in peace treat. But like he's like, he's a chad. He's a chad.

[Griffin]

He doesn't read as. I mean I guess you could buy it as like, oh, it's all, you know, it's all show with him and he's think actually right. Like covering up for. But it doesn't make any sense.

[David]

Weird game of telephone of like this thing getting like so far away from the original idea.

[Griffin]

Have you guys seen Used Cars? These mekis movie that he made shortly after this with Kurt Russell?

[Nick Weiger]

I've never seen Used Cars.

[Mike Mitchell]

I've never. But I think it is maybe playing at the. At the Vista right now.

[Griffin]

It's worth seeing.

[David]

It's highly recommend.

[Griffin]

It's far Better than this.

[David]

It is incredibly funny, and it is the exact tone this movie is going.

[Griffin]

It's. This movie is close to that movie in, like, just manic tone. But Used Cars is about something really stupid, which is used car salesmen across the street from each other basically getting into, like, a prank war.

[David]

Correct.

[Griffin]

And this movie is about World War II, you know, and it's sort of like the tone is all wrong. And maybe there's a way to make it right for 1941 that they just didn't figure out. But with you Used Cars, it's like, yeah, just simplify a little bit. And then I can, you know, root for people and think they're stupid without spoiling it.

[David]

Used Cars also builds to one big set piece that is like a logistical production, like Wowzer. Right? And that maybe was not really expensive because the movie didn't cost that much, but certainly is, like a big to do. And it, like, earns pulling off this one sequence where the movie at that point has been so moderate and skilled scale that you're, like, laughing at the excess of it because it's so out of nowhere. You can't believe suddenly this movie's heightening to this level versus, like 1941, starting at that point.

[Griffin]

Right?

[David]

He also, Spielberg, in. In this documentary, I'm quoting 8,000 times, says, like, you know, he's like, I'm proud of the movie. I had fun making it. I should have let Zemeckis direct it. Their voice and their sensibility was like, they're on the page. And I didn't get it and I didn't have a take. And they were much angrier and more political and, like, they maybe could have pulled it off. But there's the incredible, like, ripple effect of, like, I want to hold your hand bombs, which they make while they're sort of developing. This script comes out before this. This bombs. And then people are like, oh, those guys are trouble. I want to hold your hand is great, right? But it's like, oh, flop. And then they write Spielberg's first flop and they wanted to make Back to the Future Next and Spielberg was going to produce it, and they were like, if you produce our next movie, we will seem like you're cronies and no one will ever take us seriously on our own. So Zemeckis, like, puts out, I'm a director for hire. I need to just do a studio job and, like, impress people. Gets Romancing the Stone over, delivers on Romancing the Stone. Romancing the Stone is a success. And then that Leads to him getting to make Back to the Future with Spielberg as producer and everyone like trusting that he's his own guy. If they had directed 1941, it probably would have been better than this, but.

[Griffin]

I wouldn't have gotten the.

[David]

But I don't think it would have like we would have not had the next 10 to 15 years of Zemeckis we got, I'm guessing.

[Mike Mitchell]

Wow.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah. And I also, I'd like. I, I don't know if like a stronger directorial voice, I, I haven't read the script, but a stronger directorial voice or a, or a more dialed in directorial voice to what the script is going for necessarily compensates for the problems in the script, which I think, I think is a bit is the main issue with this movie. It's just a little overstuffed and the narrative is hard to track. Griffin, going back to Treat Williams real quick, did you feel seen up on screen seeing a character who's defining characteristic as he hates eggs.

[David]

Does hate eggs to a degree you can't imagine.

[Nick Weiger]

Wow.

[David]

Every time the eggshit was called out, I like physically held a thumbs up to the screen, which I was not doing at any other point in the film. I' I hate that I'm rooting for this guy that I'm relating to him well. But he's right about eggs.

[Mike Mitchell]

Zemeckis figured out the Treat Williams character with Biff. He basically who else hates manure?

[Griffin]

You're right.

[Nick Weiger]

The manure bit at the end is the same payoff as the eggs bit at the end. He ends in a, ends in a pile of it.

[Mike Mitchell]

And also Treat Williams and he's like.

[David]

Similar a date rapist who like in Back to the Future, you enjoy his comeuppance if he's vindicating.

[Mike Mitchell]

And in this one, I guess Treat Williams also gets kind of like assaulted by the lady is kind of what has come up with this.

[David]

But then that's a good point of Wally character feels like Crispin Glover in Back to the Future with like less of a take.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Way less of a take.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Here, here's the thing. I want to throw just like into the, the conception of this movie. Right. And, and like the idea that like Zemeckis maybe would have directed this better, but should this not have been directed by anybody? Wigs and Mitch, have you had this experience as well? Because I was thinking this while watching, watching it of like reading scripts that come across as like potential jobs or just like things that are like floating around the industry that you get your eyes on. And you're like, oh my God, this is so funny. This is the funniest script I've read in a long time. And then the movie comes out two years later, it's a disaster. But the movie isn't really that different from the script. And you like the realization I've had sometimes of like, there are certain things that are funny on paper that just immediately fall apart if they are realized where you're like, this is funny in mind's eye. And the second you have real people doing it in front of like a proper set, you can't stop thinking about the fact that like, oh, World War II is happening, you know, like, like that.

[Nick Weiger]

I. I know what you're describing. I can't think of a specific example.

[Mike Mitchell]

Well, it happens to us every week with Dope. We write the Doughboys episodes.

[Nick Weiger]

That's true. The scripts are great.

[Mike Mitchell]

Scripts are really, really good.

[David]

Yeah, yeah. You have Rosenthal do a pass and then you're like, this is the best one yet.

[Mike Mitchell]

I know exactly what you're talking about. Just with auditioning and stuff and like. Yeah, for me it's always more like, oh, this, like kind of. This works. Like, this is like they. It seems like the person gets this or something. And then, yes. When you see it made, you're like, something was lost in translation or whatever. But I can't.

[David]

I think it's also very often with like kind of high concept special effects comedies where I read it and I'm like, this one's actually well written. It has good jokes and good structure.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[David]

And then like, the execution of those things is so fine for like, how it stays funny, but within stakes. Like the one I kept thinking of while watching this, a radically different movie, but like the Sitter, the Jonah Hill, David Gordon Green movie was like this really hot script and it was like, oh my God, There are like 10 incredible lines on every page of this thing. And then you watch it as a movie and. And you're like, it's less funny the second they're actual kids.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah, sure.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah.

[David]

You know, cuz you just can't stop thinking about like, is this like child abuse?

[Nick Weiger]

Right?

[Mike Mitchell]

Like, yes, I know. I'm trying to think of a specific version of that, but like, I mean, like, I know that there's been so many instances of it. I. And I do have a couple in my head. I'm not going to say them, but. But because I don't. I'm not going to say them, but.

[David]

Sure.

[Mike Mitchell]

But I remember, just, just remember when like year one was Coming out. You mentioned it earlier. Perfect example how excited excited everyone was about that movie. And the cast was gray and then that movie just fell apart, basically.

[David]

I mean, but that was like the hottest script.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

That like the hottest people were attached.

[Griffin]

Comedy legend directing it, new comedy stars starring in it.

[David]

Right. Big concepts, like first like new project after knocked up year one.

[Griffin]

It kind of feels like an old Mel Brooksie movie. Right? Yeah. You know, caveman.

[David]

Everyone was like, this script is funny on paper, but it's one of those scripts where you're like, cool. It'll take $60 million to mount.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Because it needs like giant sets and extras and. And you watch it and it just like falls apart in real time.

[Mike Mitchell]

Can I.

[Nick Weiger]

Can I throw out a theory?

[David]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

Is the number one cursed who gets.

[Mike Mitchell]

Okay, let's movies with 1941. Red one.

[David]

Red one.

[Griffin]

Well, red one, sure.

[David]

Yes. But that's three sticks.

[Griffin]

I can't like look up movies with the number one like. You know what I mean? I don't know. Way to summon a list here.

[David]

Transformers 1.

[Griffin]

I like that movie was good, but.

[David]

Wasn'T a big flop.

[Griffin]

Didn't do well. Transformers 1 is one of those movies where it's like, you know, it starts out with like, oh, I'm just like a ordinary transformer working in the mines. And I'm like, he's a robot.

[David]

That turns into like.

[Griffin]

It's such a weird thing.

[David]

That's the thing. By the last 10 minutes you're like, is this a perfect diamond cut screen?

[Griffin]

It's. Did you guys see Transformers 1?

[Nick Weiger]

I did not.

[Mike Mitchell]

Wait, can a 1 be in the title? Like 1917. See, it's 19 and 17 is. There's no one.

[Nick Weiger]

There's no one. No, it doesn't. Another one that doesn't count. How about how recent Bomb Horizon said out loud Horizon and American Saga Chapter one.

[Griffin]

I mean, certainly a big flop, but a big flop.

[Nick Weiger]

Bit of a flop.

[David]

Air Force One is the only title that's coming to mind as well liked hit that has stood the test of time and has won in the.

[Griffin]

And I'm a huge fan of the airplane when a certain president is aboard the current one by the time this episode drops.

[Nick Weiger]

Ready Player one.

[David]

Finally.

[Mike Mitchell]

Wow.

[Griffin]

I'm huge fan.

[David]

I think they fight over. Yeah.

[Griffin]

I think Ready Player one is a terrific film, but a lot of people don't.

[David]

Yeah. And it's one of Loaded Weapon one. I'm saying that's. That's a flop.

[Griffin]

I've never seen it is. Do. Do I wonder if it's any good.

[Nick Weiger]

I have seen it. I remember it making me laugh when I was like, 13.

[Griffin]

It's just funny that it's Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson. You're like, oh, so it's like an action movie. They're like, no, no, no. It's a parody. Parody. And I'm like, but those guys could just be in an action.

[Nick Weiger]

Yes. Right.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[David]

They could have actually been alternate casting in any of the buddy cop movies of the previous five years.

[Griffin]

So are they funny? And I guess I've never had the question answered for me. I mean, Samuel Jackson can pretty much do anything.

[David]

Agreed.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

That movie must have been Emilio getting jealous of Charlie.

[Griffin]

This is the thing of his brother.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[David]

That he was like, I can make fun of.

[Griffin]

Seriously do Hot Shots. I'll do this. Yeah, yeah. We're.

[Mike Mitchell]

Theory is bad. There's.

[Nick Weiger]

It starts to fall apart.

[Mike Mitchell]

There's a ton of good ones.

[Nick Weiger]

You got Godzilla minus one. You got. That one was good one. One of my favorite movies. I'm not the biggest Rogue One fan, but it is a good movie.

[Griffin]

That's a good. Pretty good movie. All right, you up?

[Mike Mitchell]

Bad.

[David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin]

This is terrible.

[David]

Sucks.

[Griffin]

I want to say about John Belushi, who we've talked about, but, you know, we've never covered well, obviously, because he's. He's made a lot of movies. Yeah, yeah. He was as. As we've. You know, Spielberg was, like, obsessed with snl. He knew, I guess, you know, like many people that it, like, had a lot of juice and he was, like, kind of a groupie for the first season. He went to almost every take.

[David]

Did we talk about this in our group text?

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

So that's like. That's like much publicized.

[Griffin]

Is kind of dorky of him.

[David]

Yeah, Much publicized that during, like, those first five seasons, he would go to almost every take.

[Griffin]

He was hanging out and he was.

[David]

Like, entranced by the production and, like, the machinery and everything. What's crazier is that I have heard from people who currently work on snl, he still goes to more episodes than he doesn't.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I heard that.

[Mike Mitchell]

Wild.

[David]

That he'll just shot. Show up and they'll be like, yeah.

[Griffin]

He likes giving Disney.

[David]

He's standing in the back. No, he, like, doesn't. He's just like, I love watching this happen.

[Griffin]

I mean, good for him. If I'm Steven Spielberg, I would like to. I would just do the things I wanted to do.

[David]

Totally.

[Nick Weiger]

Wait, was like, was he at the infamous taping depicted in Sex Saturday Night at that Real time.

[Griffin]

I'm not actually sure about that. I mean that, that taping was so crazy.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah.

[Mike Mitchell]

Everything there is a moment where, where, where Sammy Fableman is in the background.

[Griffin]

They're, they're playing a dual role.

[Mike Mitchell]

Like Belushi.

[Griffin]

Yeah. One in one shot. He's actually playing Sammy. Favorite one.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[David]

If you look really closely, it's eagle eyed viewers watching Reitman Saturday night, you can see an actor dressed like Steven Spielberg is laying one of the famous bricks in those final seconds before George.

[Griffin]

Carlin's monologue finally did it. Matthew Reese, kind of a curveball. Is Carlin kind of good? Yeah.

[David]

This is the thing. I, I, I'm going to say this. I think I fully hate that movie.

[Griffin]

Fair enough.

[David]

And I try to reserve throwing the H word out at films, but that movie drove me insane. Yeah, I think it basically, basically has like 10 borderline great performances in it.

[Griffin]

There's some bad ones too.

[David]

But I did think this watching 1941 Last Night where I'm like, if they announced tomorrow that Steven Spielberg wanted to make a movie about any version of the first five years of snl, even just having seen Saturday Night, I'd be like, sign me the up.

[Griffin]

I mean, sure, I will say. I just, I'm seeing here in the notes that Steven Spielberg was the guy who told Adrian Brody to do the Rasta dance introducing Sean Paul.

[David]

Yeah. He also told Ashley Simpson to.

[Griffin]

Ashley Simpson. Right. Just, just lip sync it. And he did give a picture of the Pope to Sinead O'Connor.

[David]

He knew the only time forgiven notes.

[Griffin]

Yeah. He was just like, hey, do you want this?

[David]

Yeah, it's probably, he actually gives a.

[Griffin]

Picture of the Pope to every musical guest. She's just the only one.

[David]

Just folds it up, puts it in their pocket.

[Mike Mitchell]

You should rip up a picture of the two popes on Doughboy, see what happens.

[Griffin]

You should, you should wait. Have a Pope month.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Conclave. Conclave.

[David]

Man.

[Mike Mitchell]

If the doughboys went to the Vatican.

[Griffin]

Yeah, doughboys go to the Vatican and invisible force throws them out. Like, you try to cross the border and you're just like expelled.

[David]

What would Vatican month be called?

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh, man. Boy, this is the pun master.

[Griffin]

Is there like a McDonald's in the vat?

[Nick Weiger]

Like, is there like, I wonder if there's Vatican City. Sparrow. There's got to be something. Yeah, Fatican's pretty good.

[Mike Mitchell]

Vatican's pretty good.

[Nick Weiger]

Vatican shitty is, Wait a second.

[Mike Mitchell]

Vatican shitty is pretty good.

[David]

Is there as actually a, a sabaros of the Vatican City?

[Griffin]

There's no way there's sabaros.

[Nick Weiger]

No, there's got to be something.

[Mike Mitchell]

I haven't seen Conclave yet. Do they. Did they show. Do they show a sabaro or anything like that or.

[Griffin]

Yeah, they get a big pizza in Conclave. I mean, two popes actually does have a pizza sequence.

[Nick Weiger]

Oh, right.

[Griffin]

Two popes. Yeah.

[Mike Mitchell]

Where.

[Griffin]

Where Hopkins says, that's my pizza. That's a real sequence.

[David]

I'll say. I did. I did hear a rumor about the Vatican City sabaros.

[Griffin]

What's that?

[David]

That I just established may have. May not exist. I heard a rumor that someone I know went there and they looked in the marinara tank.

[Griffin]

Oh, God.

[David]

And they were doing a Jaws parody inside of. Oh, wow. And then they went back the next day, and in the marinara, they were doing a parody of the.

[Griffin]

Of 1941.

[Mike Mitchell]

I hear the. I hear that the. The sparrow at the Vatican City is where they. Where they store all the holy water.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, I've heard that for the entire world.

[Mike Mitchell]

World that's wet. Remember the joke is that it's wet.

[Griffin]

Yes. No, he knows. He knows. We all know the joke. And you guys should listen to Griffin Sparrow episode of Doughboys for a moment where I was making dinner, I think, while I was listening to it, and I started to have that moment with comedy podcasts sometimes where I'm like, am I having, like, a panic attack or a brain event or have they just been talking about water for a half hour? Like, it feels like you've lost your mind.

[Mike Mitchell]

It sounds like you hate us. Which is the right.

[Griffin]

No, I love it. It was so funny.

[Mike Mitchell]

Which, by the way, my interaction to anything Saturday Night Live does is like most convenience is that they can do no wrong. I love Saturday night and Saturday Night Live and everything about it is great.

[Nick Weiger]

You.

[David]

You text us every Saturday night.

[Griffin]

You were like, my review a.

[David]

It's another one for the record books, boys.

[Griffin]

10 out of 10. The streak continues.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, Real quick. Sorry. I just. I heard at the Vatican. I remember the Vatican City Sparrow. That in the pasta water where they cook the tortellinis, that the. The shape of water guy hangs out in there.

[Griffin]

The. The fish guy.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, he's in there.

[David]

Why? I. I was coming up with a Sally Hawkins take, and I think you had the better one. I was drafting it.

[Griffin]

My. She jerks off in the to.

[David]

Yeah, exactly. That's. I was gonna do sh.

[Mike Mitchell]

Water guy got fully baptized in the sparrow.

[Nick Weiger]

He's hardcore Catholic now. He's like a J.D. vance, like, late in life conversion.

[Griffin]

Right. It's. He's weird about it. Right? He. He keeps saying ecumenical. You're like, relax.

[Mike Mitchell]

Do you think. Do you think to go on a Saturday Night Live, do you think it is, like, the most bulletproof of all shows still? Because I still do think that people are not as critical as I know comedians are of it. Like, it.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Publicly.

[Nick Weiger]

What are you talking about?

[Griffin]

So much shit, though.

[Mike Mitchell]

It does get shit.

[David]

But I think. Yeah, I think you're right, Mitch, that, like, I will hear people say, like, oh, my God, SNL is so irrelevant. Like, why is that still on the air? And I'm like, you clearly don't engage with it anymore, but you cannot deny that they. This show has basically stayed culturally important for, like, the first, like, 20 years of SNL. It's like, oh, they're obviously peaks and valleys.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[David]

I would say they've basically remained kind of center of the culture for, like, 25 years, uncontested.

[Griffin]

And it's also kind of one of those, like, well, why don't you go do a better one? And no one's ever, like, no one.

[Mike Mitchell]

Can pull it off. And also, this movie is kind of this. You want this movie to be in SNL feeling movie. And it's.

[Griffin]

It should be. And it's not probably the kind of anarchic feeling Spielberg wants. And that's why, just to finish my point about John Belushi, that character was a minor character in the script. And they kind of beef it up once they cast him, Right.

[David]

His. That character was only supposed to enter into the film. Basically, at the point where he lands on the ground, he was supposed to just be a last act. Here's one final element of chaos. Cast Belushi there. Like, we gotta thread Belushi through the first two thirds of this.

[Griffin]

Belushi and actor are both doing snl. They could only do three days a week of filming. And Belushi, I don't know if you guys know this, was very interested in using the drug cocaine all the time.

[David]

Does JJ Have a citation for that?

[Griffin]

And Spielberg, I think probably because Belushi died so young and so on, has always just been like, it was wonderful working with him. It was a great time. But I think on set, he was a bit of a nightmare. And at one point, Spielberg yelled at him, like, you can't do this to me for $350,000. You gotta show up on time. Cause Bell, she was always late to set, didn't know his line.

[David]

But, like, that's how Animal House was made, right? Where he had, like, two to three Days off per week, and he would, like, shuttle back and forth and was like, delirious.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right?

[David]

And it comes out the year before this, and it's like a revolutionary, amazing in it. It's, like, culturally, like, shattering. Right.

[Griffin]

Do you guys like Belush?

[Mike Mitchell]

I love.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

I mean, I think he's like. I think all of us. He's like, a little bit before our.

[Griffin]

Time, but very much.

[Nick Weiger]

But I think if you watch his, you know, totemic, like, performances, it's like, okay, this guy had the juice. And, you know, obviously, life tragically cut short.

[Mike Mitchell]

It was interesting to see a movie that I like. I see Belushi doing stuff that I haven't seen before with 1940. Not. Not that he did something different, but I'm saying, like, yeah. Oh, this is just footage of him I haven't watched because I'd never seen the movie. And it was like. I got. I get it. You know what I mean? I get why he was a star. And. And.

[David]

And. And that's the thing. Like, as I said before, every time he's on screen, it at least resembles a comedy, which you can't say for, like, John Candy and Dan Aykroyd.

[Griffin]

You can't.

[David]

The other wildly funny people in this movie who are all basically at the peaks of their careers, Belushi is the only one who, like, actually has that level of juice. To your point, there are basically, if you're like, discounting small supporting roles, there are four Belushi like, movies. Even in Animal House, he's in a lot less of it than people remember. But It's Animal House, 1941, Blues Brothers. It's five. I'm sorry. Continental Divide, Neighbors.

[Griffin]

Neighbors, which I've never seen.

[David]

Those are the five movies where, like, Belushi is above the title. His face is the biggest on the pipe poster. I was such a big SNL kid. I discovered SNL when I was, like, 8 or 9. And the video store across the street from us had a bunch of VHS of the first five seasons of SNL. So I was, like, rabidly watching first five seasons, SNL. And it was canonized for me in this massive, massive way. And my father was such a big Belushi fan. He showed me Animal House and Blues Brothers way too young. And I was sort of raised at the altar of this guy. I remember at some point when I was young, my father saying to me, and then, you know, Steven Spielberg made 1941, which was this big flop, right? And I was like, what's that? And he was like it's like a war comedy with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

[Griffin]

And I was like, how have I not seen this?

[David]

So it's the best movie ever made. And he was like, no, it sucks and it's not funny. And I was like, how is that possible? But I think that's like the way in which this was received in a way that also doesn't help this movie upon release is like the. No, the idea of like, oh my God, Spielberg is going to work with the most exciting people in comedy. Like the people who are fucking burning down the institutions. And the first these trailers that I was searching for, that fucking tagline. I wanted the first teaser trailer for this movie, which is a year before the film comes out, was by all accounts directed by John Milius and I would say is funnier than the entirety of the finished film is. Is John Belushi landing a plane and then doing direct address to the camera, sort of like war ad. Like I'm out there fighting for you. You I need to enlist you to come see my movie next year. Like it's. He's pitching next Christmas and it's just Belushi doing straight to camera chaos. And if you see that trailer and it says like from the director of Jaws and Close Encounters, one year from now there's a John Belushi comedy. And then you sit in the theater a year later and this is what you get. Like the poster is like his giant caricaturized head.

[Mike Mitchell]

20 minutes of him total. Maybe in the movie. Right?

[Griffin]

Maybe, maybe. And a lot of it is silent. Like it's just him driving a plane.

[David]

But like that's what they were leading with.

[Griffin]

Yeah, well, what else are you going to lead?

[Nick Weiger]

Right.

[David]

The second teaser trailer. The second teaser trailer shows a model set of the loss of Los Angeles. And Then a big ST 1941 letters numbers rise out of the the ground and then it just does like Superman flying credits of every cast member. Yes. Which you go into the list of like Ned Beatty, Christopher Lee, Shira Mifune, all this.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

It's just giving you all the names and then says like the most explosive comedy event in the year. Those first two trailers show combined zero seconds of footage of the movie. And all they're doing is get ready. This is going to be the biggest shit of all time. Like they like put a fucking target on their back.

[Griffin]

Yeah, they did. They also meant to make it for 12 million and it cost 30, 31.

[Mike Mitchell]

Which is so much slower than I even thought it was. Honestly. But I guess with 1979, that's quite a bit. Right. But.

[Griffin]

But it's, it's a lot of money.

[David]

It would be over $100 million.

[Griffin]

It basically made its money back domestically, barely. And that's it. It made some more worldwide. So I don't think it was a total disaster, but it made Spielberg look bad because Jaws had gone over budget and over schedule and now, you know, Close Encounters, they kind of around. Right, exactly. And like kind of made it seem like a low budget movie and turned into budget movie.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

And so it's by what? By Raiders is when he's like, I need to demonstrate that I can like contain a budget, which he does too.

[David]

Where like you can get away with it if you keep making one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

And then this time it's like if you're just breaking even, you're done with your.

[Griffin]

When it came out, like I said, it basically turned a profit. Pauline Kale did like it. Pauline Kale is like one of his earliest fans.

[David]

But then turns on him by Rage.

[Griffin]

Turns on him for Rage.

[David]

Next movie, she's like this, it's Kitty.

[Griffin]

But largely critics hated it. And you know, it would like you say Griff. Like they had just set themselves up for disappointment. Like, you know, the audiences were just, I think, expecting the funniest and biggest movie. And it's like, you're not getting funny. I guess you're getting big.

[David]

Yeah, but the big isn't funny.

[Griffin]

I know. And it feels like you're being being yelled at.

[Nick Weiger]

Very.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

Very strange.

[Mike Mitchell]

That's insane. To turn on of a raider.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah. So I, I mean like, I. Yeah.

[Griffin]

Pauline Kale was basically like Raiders. She's just like boring. This is like Schematic. He's like lost the plot.

[David]

And she was the one person who, when Sugarland Express came out, her review is like, this is one of the greatest debuts by a filmmaker ever. He's going to be one of the great American filmmakers. Like called it Dead On. And then by Raiders, she's like this fucking kid playing with his stupid toys.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

John Candy is like barely in this movie, but he does have.

[Griffin]

In this movie.

[Nick Weiger]

But he does have like one of the few hard jokes that, that worked for me, Griffin, which is the. When Dan Aykroyd gets knocked out, he gets hit in the head. And John Kenny's like, oh, he always had a glass head. I kind of like that glass head. But there you go.

[Mike Mitchell]

There's also he. He also has the, the bit where him and what's the actor's name? McRae.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

NFL player.

[Griffin]

Hal McRae is a baseball player. What am I talking about? Frank mc. Professional football player.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. Where they, they get, he, he gets soot on his face and, and he looks like a black man. And then he throws flower. It's the flower part is like, why is he throwing flour at him anyways?

[David]

And then they laugh at each other while Candy's panicking because they look like they're doing opposite Minstrel. It's like a very weird bit that goes on for a while.

[Mike Mitchell]

It's weird.

[Griffin]

It's also in Use Cars.

[Mike Mitchell]

I, I, I actually liked that there was like a per. Because he's like, to the back of it, he tells K to go to the back of the tank. And I think I actually liked that there was like a guy particip. Even though it's white people who wrote this joke. I'm like, there's a man participating in this. These kind of racy jokes, which before it's like we're pointing and laughing at, like the movie is pointing and laughing.

[David]

At people that he's more active. But it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, I'm, I'm not even framing it as like a punching down, like, punching up thing. It just so often in this movie, you're like, I don't understand who the target of the joke is. Right. And like, for how much Spielberg would cite the Marx Brothers and like, Looney Tunes and these things that had this sort of like, chaotic. A million things are happening and nothing's too big moments. All of those things have a very simple, like, innate setup of like, the Marx Brothers usually go into fancy places. They're at opera houses or like, dinner parties, and you surround them with a bunch of. Well, well, I never. And you're like, wait, I want to see those people be taken down.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, right, right.

[David]

It's funny to see Margaret Demont get taken down a bit. Bugs Bunny can be an to a hunter because a hunter is pointing a gun in his hole.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[David]

And he has to, like, fight to survive. Right. And that way it's funny when he, like, is a stinker. This movie is like, everyone's just yelling at everyone and doing yes. And you're like, I don't know. Like, I have no perspective on who I'm supposed to be. I don't want to say who I'm supposed to be rude rooting for, but just sort of like who any joke is at the expense of why did John.

[Mike Mitchell]

Can you throw flour at him? It doesn't even. We don't know. It doesn't make sense.

[Nick Weiger]

That whole. And, and, and, and again, yeah. You're not sure who, like, who's supposed to be the butt of this joke. And then in within that tank though, there's all sorts of shit like that happening. Like there's. There's also Dan Aykroyd who's like, yeah, he. Dan Aykroyd puts a sack of oranges over his head and then he puts the two oranges on his eyes and is like, I am a bug. And that's the sort of things like if that's in the script, I like, I have no idea how they reached that point. But like, it's probably just not.

[Griffin]

There's no way it's in the script.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, so it's probably just not in the script. Right. So Spielberg is just pointing a camera at, at a funny guy and saying, I don't know, do something funny. And so it just feels completely random.

[Mike Mitchell]

I mean, it's very funny to think of me of like interior. You cut back to interior, tank cuts back to whatever else.

[David]

Here's like a great encapsulation the movie for any listeners who did not bother to watch it. Right. There are like eight major plot threads just within this one thread of the tank guys. Right. You have John Candy and Frank McCray doing this like race swapping play. Right. Then you have Dan Aykroyd in the back. This is all in the last like 20 minutes of the movie when it's reaching a fever pitch.

[Griffin]

Everyone that's on the street starts at.

[David]

A fever pitch, right?

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

So like Candy McRae are doing this. Ackroyd is directly behind them with oranges on his eyes going, I'm a bug. And then immediately after that, the tank runs through the walls of a paint factory.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

Into giant vats of colored paint, making like huge colored explosions. And you're like, there is too much.

[Griffin]

Going on far too.

[David]

And none of it has to do with anything else. Just one of the strings. And then we're like cutting back to like Tim Matheson like trying to fucking.

[Griffin]

In a plane or Ned Beatty like blowing up his own or whatever. Yeah. You know, like where you're just like.

[David]

Talk about the Ned babies.

[Griffin]

Like, what's going on with that?

[Nick Weiger]

I don't know.

[Griffin]

It's just sort of like I want to shout out Greg Jean, I think is his name who did the miniatures on this movie. He's a legendary miniature guy. He'd Done Close Encounters because, I mean, Spielberg says this, like, they did the most incredible job, like making Hollywood Boulevard. Like, the details on all these buildings are amazing. Like, it's an incredible, incredibly masterful technical achievement. Like what they're doing, all in the service of the bullshit you're talking about and blowing it all up. Greg Jean, I also want to say, did star the Next Generation's Ventures. He built the ships. And there's a famous. My favorite episode of Star Trek, One of my favorite episodes is Cause and Effect, which is the episode where they get stuck in a time loop because a ship keeps coming out of a black hole and crashing into them. And then the day, it's a Ground Groundhog Day episode. And when that episode ends, they avoid the ship. And it turns out that it's the USS Boseman and Kelsey Grammer is the captain. And he, like, calls in, he's like, hello, how are you doing? And it turns out he's from, like, 80 years ago. He's been stuck in a time loop for 80 years. And the USS Boseman is NCC 1941 as homage to this film.

[David]

Wow.

[Griffin]

There you go.

[David]

And when Kelsey Grimmer falls into the time warp, does he go, oh, my Lord.

[Griffin]

It's just so funny that it's Kelsey Kelsey grammar. Yeah, it's like Frasier era. Kelsey grammar. Wearing an old.

[David]

Thank you for recognizing what I was getting.

[Griffin]

It was very good.

[David]

Thank you.

[Griffin]

Anyway.

[David]

David.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yes.

[David]

If I know one thing about you, okay, it's that you're tired of figuring out what's for dinner every night after night. Especially on those busy weekdays when you walk into the studio every day and you go, I'm so tired. Tired. I go, don't even finish the sentence. I know the one root cause of that problem.

[Griffin]

Busy weekdays. I just had it. Busy weekdays.

[David]

No, I'm saying it's you trying to decide what to make for dinner night after night.

[Griffin]

Busy weekdays. How do you make my weekdays less busy?

[David]

These issues are linked. I go, how are the twins? Sleeping? You go, no problem there. I'm joking. Through the night. Yes.

[Griffin]

I have to feed my family.

[David]

You have more mouths.

[Griffin]

And that is true. Although they just eat. They don't eat lovely meals. But I have to make lovely meal. And I get home and my time limit is. My time window is limited. And it is hard to just kind of, you know, find a magic recipe in the fridge every single day.

[David]

What a compelling personal. It is sort of experience this is. Yeah.

[Griffin]

I mean, if you really want to get into it, basically, like, it's 5:30. Right. Dinner's got to kind of be on the table because everyone, everyone's going to bed around seven.

[David]

Right. Podcasting has ended 15 minutes before that.

[Griffin]

That's. That is why be honest. Anyone who listens to the show might notice that I am a little. But look, it's easy to find time to eat well because you can get 50 wholesome, hassle free meals to choose from every week to get delivered right to your door. These hellofresh ready made meals that go from fridge to fork.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

In just three minutes. One, two, three minutes.

[David]

That's the journey. I like fridge to fork.

[Griffin]

It's the same high quality ingredients. Ingredients in restaurant or the flavor you expect from hellofresh, but none of the work. Okay, so it's not like I hate this stuff you're talking about. You know, they give you all these pre packaged ingredients. You make a meal that's fun. These things come together with minimal mess and just a five minutes of prep. Your oven does most of the work, not you.

[David]

But this is what's nice about Hellofresh is they got a lot of variety. There's a lot of adjustment you can make on your end as the customer to serve your own needs. So as you're saying, you got two twin now that don't eat real food, but sooner rather than later. They will.

[Griffin]

They will.

[David]

And you can adjust your order fit a family of five rather than a family of three.

[Griffin]

Yeah. You can get up to 10 free meals and a free high protein item for [e-mail] Check10FM. That's Check10FM.

[David]

That's interesting. That's interesting. Code. We've never gotten that code.

[Griffin]

No, that's why I'm repeating it.

[David]

Hey. And Green Chef is now owned by Health Hellofresh. So with a wider array of meal plans to choose from, there's something for everyone. I personally love switching between the brands because I'm verse. And now my listeners can enjoy both brands at a discount with us.

[Griffin]

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[David]

Gail said Bob Gail, when they were just like running wild, just throwing any single idea at the screenplay, right? And, and he was like once we like were commissioned to write this movie, we just started doing a ton of research and looking into all the things that happened, happened like in this area in this time period, interesting, weird stories from the war that we could fold into the script. And the way that, like, the Beatty thing is based on something that happened. They were looking for real life inspiration. And he was like, I found out about this incredible thing. I'm going to speak about this very quickly and probably get a lot of the major details wrong, but just try to do a quick overview.

[Griffin]

Cool.

[David]

There's. Yeah, get ready. There's this thing called the Boeing Wonderland, which was when the Boeing company was making all the warplanes, all their factory plants where they were being constructed. They were worried were going to be targeted targets by the Japanese to be, you know, bombed or whatever. So they built faked hyper detailed force perspective miniature towns, a pretend town named.

[Griffin]

The Boeing Wonderland atop the roof of.

[David]

This plant so that anyone flying overhead would think it was just another suburban neighborhood. And it was basically a thing that only worked from the vantage point of someone in a plane from a reasonable distance that far above. And he was like, this is such an interesting thing. I can't believe this is real. People don't know about it because it was, like, kept top secret at the time and, like, wrote it in as a whole plot thread and was like. We had this scene where they're, like, touring the town. And then we decided, like, it was just one thing too many in the movie. And I'm like, that sounds more interesting than 90% of the. That ended up in the movie.

[Griffin]

This is the whole thing. It's just like, maybe that should just be a movie.

[David]

Totally.

[Griffin]

Like, rather than whatever this is before.

[Nick Weiger]

30 years later we get welcome. Welcome to Marwin.

[Griffin]

A better movie is welcome to Marvin. Better than 1941? Yes or no?

[David]

This is really difficult. Have you guys been welcomed to Marwyn?

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Can you weigh in on this?

[Griffin]

I mean, Nick lives in Marwin. Call to be clear, it's one of the action figures.

[David]

This is true.

[Nick Weiger]

I think I'd rather. I think I'd rather rewatch 1941 than. Than Marw.

[Griffin]

That's fair.

[Mike Mitchell]

I like 1941. That's my big.

[Griffin]

How much do you like it, Mitch? Like, as we're winding down here, it's a C, right? So you're saying kind of like it's over the border of enjoyable.

[David]

You give it the great movie, but.

[Griffin]

You don't mind, I want to watch.

[Mike Mitchell]

The extended cut because by the way, what happens to Hollywood? Holly, what's his name? Slim Pickens.

[David]

He's just kind of dropped from the movie. I mean, that's the other interesting thing he Said is that Spielberg wanted Slim Pickens in the film as a reference to Dr. Strange, of course. Explicitly. Right. Originally he was going to be in one shot, non speaking. Which is like very hubristic in the same way we're talking about him like referencing his own movies and pointing at the best example of what he's trying to do through a visual reference to one of the actors. And Gail and Zemeckis very smart. Hartley were like, hey, Slim Pickens is one of the best character actors alive.

[Griffin]

Right. You might as well use him.

[David]

You might as well use him. This entire plotline didn't exist.

[Griffin]

And that's why it's kind of separate.

[David]

From Milius suggested they were like we should come up with something for Slim Pickens to do. And they were like, what if there's a who's on first situation? This guy's right. You can do this whole thing. And it's like this is the strongest comedic idea in the entire movie. It is the thing they came up with last.

[Griffin]

He's funny.

[David]

Basically reverse engineered from having the actor. But it's also the only comedic setup in the movie where I'm like, the game is really clear to me. The stakes are really clear. The interplay is clear. The sort of like culture clash between the two of them. He plays it so well of like being terrified but also feeling like what is the patriotic thing to do to how to stay in my ground. And then like interrogating him with prune.

[Mike Mitchell]

Juice because pretty funny. It's.

[Griffin]

Prune juice is funny.

[David]

It's like funny and it's like they landed on it by mistake at the last.

[Mike Mitchell]

How do they not have them come in at the end?

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, it's like an extended sketch that's just like a like self contained and then abandoned. It doesn't even actually impact the plot because it's like the compass. They don't get it out of him. So they figure out to use. They're like tracking the radio to figure out where Hollywood is. Right.

[Mike Mitchell]

They should have. They should have. From a toilet perspective. You should have seen the compass coming out of his astronauts hole.

[Nick Weiger]

I think that would have been good. You mentioned. I think that's a great solve. I think we should have seen Nickel Boys but POV shot from a toilet of a compass falling out of a man's.

[David]

What if you do an upside down Nickel Boys and you shoot an entire movie from the perspective of butthole.

[Griffin]

Spielberg's like, it has to be in the movie. They're like, the film is unreleasable. Yeah, you have a naked asshole shitting on the camera. It's now like an X rated film.

[Mike Mitchell]

I don't care if you got a. If you got a brown compass falling on the camera at the end. I think that that's. That's pretty good.

[David]

Yeah. No, I'm just like, you could build the entire movie out of this. Like, there is something better about like, you know, just like a small town guy gets like abducted by like confused Japanese soldiers and they have this weird standoff within a submarine.

[Griffin]

That's the thing though. There's half a dozen plot lines in here that probably would make a funny 90 minute, you know, not as big budget movie. And maybe you can like put two or three of them together and weave it into like a silly farce and this is just too much.

[Mike Mitchell]

I've never sims. I've never seen you this with like, you're like, you're just like, we just need. It sounds like you want to end this movie itself and end this episode is just too silly for you.

[David]

Really? You've never seen him, like, every time.

[Nick Weiger]

We'Ve done the podcast, My Daily Existence.

[Griffin]

I must end this episode. But no, no, I. But I kind of. That's how I felt about the movie, though. The whole time I was just like.

[David]

And it's a real Boston, guys, let's wrap it up.

[Griffin]

But I also just feel like I don't usually like these kinds of movies. They're not us good.

[David]

No.

[Griffin]

Anytime anyone's like, oh, I want to do like my take on It's a Mad Mad Mat. I'm like, have you watched It's a Mad Mad Mat. It sucks.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah. Also not very good. Like, is. Is there one of those.

[Griffin]

It has some funny stuff. Like, you know, as all these things do. Rat Race has some funny stuff. Rat Race is pretty good, actually.

[David]

Rat Race, directed by Jerry Zucker.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Rat Race, it's a mad world. Gets a lot of juice just out of being the first time someone tried that. And you can even feel it now, like living in the present and having watched all the things that have attempted it to do it. It has a certain energy from like the novelty and the ambition of what they're pulling off.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And it also just like it. It cast a wide net. They correctly got all the funny people. They let all of them do their funny things. But it is like an incredibly long, misshapen movie.

[Griffin]

It's like three hours long.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

You're just like, all right, enough already.

[Mike Mitchell]

I think it's also trying to be funny in a different like this, this is confused about what funny it's supposed to be. And Mad Ma Ma Mad World. It doesn't. It isn't like the thing that's going to make you, like, fall over laughing, but it is like it knows the type of humor it is, I guess. And this one, it just feels confused.

[Nick Weiger]

You also know what you're watching. It's like, oh, they're all trying to get the money. Like, it's like, okay, again, there's. There's a big W with money underneath it. And they're all trying to.

[Griffin]

The setup is incredibly simple. And it's just like, now we'll just have sketches essentially, and they're all on.

[David]

The road, which means they can run into other funny people. But you have the main five threads and you understand them in relation to each other because. Because they're all working towards the same end goal.

[Griffin]

Weirdest thing about that movie is that sort of like Spielberg following up Close Encounters even more seriously, it is Stanley Kramer's follow up to Judgment at Nuremberg. Like, that he was like, I'll do something silly after this.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Starring Spencer Tracy, which this, you know, should be. And instead it feels like whatever. Like, it feels like an epic in search of, you know, more jokes or a plot or a point. I don't like it.

[David]

I don't either, but I don't hate it. It is just like. It is a confounding.

[Griffin]

I found it like a chore. I did as well, you know, like, kind of like, okay, not helped by.

[David]

The extra 30 minutes I committed to.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I want to like that.

[Mike Mitchell]

I want to watch that now. I want to watch the extended version. Is that. Is it not.

[David]

Maybe you're going to give it a B minus. Maybe you're going to like that even more.

[Mike Mitchell]

Sims, which one did you watch?

[Griffin]

I watched the regular version. Mitch, I also feel like you especially your sort of take on a lot of modern cinema is kind of like, I'm crying out for a Spielberg here. Like, as much as, you know, you're, you know, 1941 is flawed, you're just recognizing, like, there's craft.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin]

And like, that's something that's just missing. Unless, you know, it's Red One, obviously, which is the best crafted movie. No, I still haven't seen Red One.

[Nick Weiger]

It's.

[Griffin]

I'm going to watch it.

[Nick Weiger]

This is. This is reductive. But movies are things that you. You look at and listen to. And at the end of the day, this is directed by Steven Spielberg, the dp, who's. Whose Name, I forget, but like, shot a ton of like, like, you know, great movies and let me double check William Fraker. Yeah.

[Griffin]

Great legendary defense and, and, and, you.

[Nick Weiger]

Know, it's got a John Williams score. I mean, there, there's. It at least has that going for.

[Griffin]

Which is good. Yeah, the John Williams score is genuinely.

[David]

Is genuinely good.

[Nick Weiger]

It's got like a lot of Copeland in it and it's.

[Griffin]

Yeah, exactly. It's kind of. I feel like it's on the right side of me.

[David]

It's got a really strong hummable theme. Like the, the. The score is more in tune with the humor this movie is attempting than the movie itself.

[Griffin]

Theory of this film's here. Humor.

[David]

Yeah. But it's, I mean, it's like, it is fascinating as a sort of like, we'll talk about sometimes, like, people like, who seemingly walk straight into a cultural cancellation where it's like, oh, there's some part of them that wants to be caught.

[Griffin]

Spurlock.

[David]

Well, that's, that's the most extreme version of it. Right.

[Griffin]

All right.

[Mike Mitchell]

Hey, we know, we know, we know.

[Griffin]

We know, we know.

[David]

You know, but there's also like the version of people who will sort of like self sabotage a career because they can't handle the pressure.

[Griffin]

Who. Is there someone in particular you're thinking of?

[David]

Well, you know what, this is the first credited screen appearance. He only appears at the very end, is the only moment I clocked him of Mickey. And he is someone who talks that way about his 90s.

[Griffin]

I basically behaved in a way of like, get me out of famous.

[David]

But even just what he picked, like the projects he took on and how he behaved on set was part partially that, like, he could not handle the pressure of everyone being like, you're the new Daero. You have it.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Right. Like, we're all looking at you and I think it's not quite the same thing, but like, kinds of kindness. I remember when you walked out, you were like, this is Yorgis being like, I need to fight back against the idea that I'm like automatic prestige.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

Yorgos being like, I am not the next Tim Burton. You. Jesus Christ.

[David]

Right. I want to make people angry at me again so I can like reset the table. Yeah. And still feel trapped, transgressive.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

I do think the way Spielberg talks about the making of this movie and the decision making process and being like, I just like, want to not hold myself to any standard is like almost consciously him trying to get his biggest flop out of the way so he can move on from it.

[Mike Mitchell]

I like that.

[Griffin]

Yeah, maybe there's something to that. And again, he follows it up with his, you know, kind of his two biggest hits. Right. Apart from Joe. I mean, I don't know.

[David]

And like, Raiders is arguably his tightest movie.

[Griffin]

It is. It's his tightest movie in every way. And it's storyboarded to hell and it's came in under budget and on time and all that. And it's him being like, I learned my lesson. I'm a good little boy.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Before we play the box office game, is there anything else you guys noted in this bloated ass movie that we have not touched on?

[Mike Mitchell]

Sims, I want to say this, that as much as I say I do like it and I appreciate it, I did pause the movie and read the entire Wikipedia for Dumbo during the movie. Hell yeah.

[Griffin]

Much better movie.

[Mike Mitchell]

And then read the entire Wikipedia for Trumbo because it sounds. It just reminded me of Trumbo.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, sure.

[Mike Mitchell]

So I. I was very distracted and took like an hour break. I thought the second half of the movie, I thought once it gets to the zoot suit riot is basically when I was like. That was more when I was on board and all the big spectacle and the house sliding off. The Goonies. Is it the Goonies, Cliff?

[David]

Cool. I know David is always very skeptical about the notion of fan edits and the fan edit community.

[Griffin]

I am.

[David]

Yes. One of our listeners recently emailed us and I scanned through it. I haven't sat down and watched it, but we have our infamous, infamous battle about which half of the holiday is good and which half is bad.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

And a listener emailed him, was like, I agree with your take. So here is my cut of the holiday. That is just the Kate Winslet half of the movie where Jude Law and Cameron Dayes never appear on screen.

[Griffin]

Sure.

[David]

That cut itself is an hour and 10 minutes, which speaks to how long it is. But even at the end where the two like cross over, he cut around any tone.

[Griffin]

So you don't even see them.

[David]

You never see them see them.

[Nick Weiger]

Okay.

[David]

But this sent me down a rabbit hole of similar fan edits. And there's one guy I found on Reddit. I will. I've been mean to pass this along to you, Mitch, who is advertising that he did a cut of Romulus where he took out all the dumb fan service callback. Took out. That took out all the lines. And people were like, this is a lot.

[Griffin]

I would watch that. Just.

[David]

So then I messaged this guy to get a link to it and he was Like, I have a couple other edits you might be in. Interested in. And one was a similar cut of Solo where he did a similar, like take out the dumb fan edit or the Dumb fan service and like streamline the story.

[Griffin]

Right. There's not too much of. Right.

[David]

And he did a cut of Miami Vice that he called Miami Nice.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

Where he was like, can you combine the superior aspects of the directors and theatrical.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

And I'm like, this guy seems really interesting. I like all of his thought experiments. What I want someone, maybe this guy to do next is do a cut of 1941 where you just put in the entirety of Dumbo. It's a clean. It's a pretty light lift.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I'm just watching like the elephant. The mom elephant caress Dumbo while she sings Baby Mine. And I'm just like, animation is so beautiful. And then I'm thinking about like in 1941. This must have felt like really revolutionary to watch something like this. And then we're not watching Dumbo anymore and I'm like, boring. Like back to this shitty movie.

[Nick Weiger]

So you can obviously go. You can certainly go full frame with some of the Dumbo. You've got the. You've got some wides of the screen with the theater watching it. You've also got some reaction shots of Robert Stack. I wonder if you have enough to sustain the full movie just between like kind of, you know, cutting through existing footage. I think it'd probably be funny if.

[David]

We just occasionally talk back to Robert Stack.

[Griffin]

Like 80 times. Still good.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, I was reminded. My thing is, I was reminded of how good Robert Stack is. And Beavis and Butthead do a very. So funny.

[Mike Mitchell]

He's going to movie too.

[David]

I like.

[Nick Weiger]

He's good in this. He's like the funniest.

[Griffin]

He's so funny.

[David]

Immediately after this, figure out how to use him in comedies properly. He's pretty good in this.

[Griffin]

He's good in this, but he actually just sort of seems like a serious person who's trying to clean up the mess. And you're like, I support you, Robert Stack, but right. Airplane gets the straight arrow joke with him. Much better.

[David]

I want to call out the. The fan edit Redditor is username. Straight Cuts, no chaser. And if they tell me that they don't want me saying their username on Mike, then I. I will have this cut out the.

[Griffin]

I'm sure they would be happy.

[Mike Mitchell]

I have one. I just have. I have one last. Just two last thoughts, basically. One, I was like, I like that it was I like that it was light hearted because there's like sirens going off and it's about the destruction of Hollywood, which is like if it was a dramatic movie watching that this week, it probably would feel like too.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Movie we watched this week is always. Which is entirely about like forest fires and guys trying to like, you know, airplane extinguish in planes, flaming trees. It's just a weird 2 Spielberg to watch in a very tragic week for the Los Angeles era.

[Mike Mitchell]

So I was happy that it was lighthearted. I, I, the end there. I want to ask you guys this. He's like 42 is going to be an even bigger year. Were they angling first? Was that a sequel angle?

[David]

Feels like.

[Griffin]

Christ.

[Nick Weiger]

It feels like it.

[Griffin]

That would be. And they, they could watch Bambi.

[Nick Weiger]

They called Hatchback.

[Griffin]

That was.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin]

That's just the, the movie is just like the guys who didn't go overseas are just like, should we watch a movie?

[David]

And they go watching franchise set up to just be like, yeah, we can make one for every year.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Jesus. We got these years unlock.

[David]

Yeah. I have 38 years ahead right now.

[Griffin]

Go ahead.

[Nick Weiger]

I have two more quick things. One is and, and you get y'all, y'all may have have the, the factual answer there but like so in this one is fictionalized where the land of Hollywood land is busted off by John Belushi's plane. Right, Right.

[Griffin]

The famous Hollywood sign used to say Hollywood Land.

[Nick Weiger]

Well, my understanding is because I always. What I learned is that, that the land was destroyed by the Rocketeer. So do you know which is true?

[Griffin]

Oh boy.

[David]

You're a rocketeerist.

[Nick Weiger]

I'm a rocketeerist. Yeah.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Yeah. No, it was definitely Billy Campbell. Is that the Rocketeer? Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

Okay.

[David]

I feel like in the, the movie Hollywoodland.

[Griffin]

The, the Ben Affleck movie. Adrien Brody and Adrien Brody. Right. Yeah.

[David]

Where they use the like of the land as like a metaphorical darkness. Right. The darkness is so great. This place isn't even a land anymore. It's just an idea. But I feel like they explain in that what actually happened to the letters. What did happen.

[Nick Weiger]

I think Adrien Brody in that movie as Lazlo Toth takes it down as an architectural experiment.

[David]

He pours water on runs his. Hang along.

[Griffin]

There's a Brody verse that is slowly building up where his village character unfortunately is going to pop into the only.

[David]

One man who can stop it.

[Mike Mitchell]

I have a, I have a buddy who.

[David]

Private Royce from Predators.

[Griffin]

Sure. Or what about the mean record executive from Cadillac Records. I'm just Arthur Chess. Yeah, exactly.

[David]

I think it's Arthur. It's definitely Chess.

[Griffin]

Chess record.

[Mike Mitchell]

I have a buddy who confronted the Rocketeer outside of a hotel and said that he didn't believe that he was the reason that the land went down. And he, and he punched and punched. Rocketeer punched him.

[Nick Weiger]

That's crazy. I'm kind of with the Rocketeer there, honestly, like.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. I mean, like, even if it was a thing that he, like, was made up, like, it's still.

[Nick Weiger]

Don't confront. Leave the man alone. He's an old man, you know?

[David]

Did you read that op ed where the Rocketeer said he was voting for Trump?

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Griffin]

Really disappointing.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

I mean, I guess I should have seen it coming from, like, an art deco 30s hero who's, like, kind of Irand coated.

[David]

Yeah. And it's also just like, I don't know, he's an old man. And like, what's he done recently outside Dancing with the Stars, you know, and punching the guy?

[Nick Weiger]

I, I, I have one more, I.

[Griffin]

Have one more thing.

[Mike Mitchell]

He almost, he almost did a movie a few years ago that he was going to do. Red Rocket was actually going to be Red Rocketeer.

[Nick Weiger]

Oh, yeah, I did read that.

[Griffin]

He just didn't want to show Dick on Shawn. Baker insisted.

[Mike Mitchell]

Wait, what was your other thought?

[Griffin]

Yeah, what's your other thought?

[Nick Weiger]

My, my other thing? Going back to Trumbo. Fun fact. The W, The Wikipedia.

[Griffin]

Of course. Let's please go back to Trumbo.

[Nick Weiger]

Gotta go back to the Wikipedia entry for Trumbo was written in a bathtub.

[Griffin]

All right. Yeah, of course. There you go.

[David]

Yep.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin]

The page itself is wet.

[David]

Yeah.

[Mike Mitchell]

By the way, Los Angeles has an idea to help battle the fires in the future. They're gonna build a bunch of sparrows.

[Griffin]

That's good.

[Nick Weiger]

You know, I actually heard, I heard, I went to sparrow last week because I was just like, we're dealing with fires out here. And it's like, you're kind of like, I just want some trashy food to kind of comfort me.

[Mike Mitchell]

And it's great.

[Nick Weiger]

All these fast food workers are still on the job, God bless them. So I went to the Sbar at the Fox Hills Mall to get myself some comfort food.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

And they're, they're, they're boiling the marinara. Back there in the marinara is Trumbo with a typewriter in the screenplay.

[Griffin]

But he's got a mustache and a chef's hat on. Hey, I'm writing my screenplay. I'm Italian Trump over here.

[David]

Also, I know we finished. We moved on from our Adrien Brody little side, but I don't want to offer spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the Brutalist yet. You know, my favorite scene was in that movie.

[Griffin]

What?

[David]

When they go to Italy and the old guy pours the marinara on the marble.

[Nick Weiger]

That is. Really feels beauty.

[Griffin]

That was. That was very touching and very sensitive culturally, I found from Sabaros.

[David]

Of course, you see them go to Sabaros, ask for a cup of marinara.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah, I. I want. I went to one of those hydrants that wasn't working and I followed the. I followed it back. Guess where. Guess where it ended up?

[Griffin]

Is it Sparrow?

[Mike Mitchell]

Sparrow.

[Nick Weiger]

Oh, boy. That's whole. That's an issue.

[Mike Mitchell]

That was part of the issue.

[David]

I. I'm really glad he. The time they answered, much rather than just telling us.

[Mike Mitchell]

My. My only last thought is that. And this sums up this movie to me.

[Griffin]

Yeah, please.

[Mike Mitchell]

This sums up this movie to me. Is that when they. When they do the cred. I mean, I know we've talked about the credits a lot, but when they do the credits and. And maybe we said this already. The explosions.

[David]

We.

[Nick Weiger]

Before the explosions.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. Every character they show is just like, ah. They're all just.

[Griffin]

No clip of anyone being quiet in this movie that you could find.

[David]

And can I actually just say one more thing before we play the box office game?

[Griffin]

Yeah, I think you need to.

[David]

I forgot to bring this up earlier, but Weger, when you were saying that this movie has the manic energy of the Water World stunt show, which can sustain for 20 minutes, but not like a full two hours, did you hear the rumor that Universal is going to replace that with a Saguaro World stunt shot?

[Griffin]

Again, for any listener who doesn't know what's going on, please listen to Doughboys Every week, a wonderful podcast, but especially.

[Nick Weiger]

Griffin Sparrow's episode, the Super Nintendo adaptation of Sparrow World actually has an amazing soundtrack. It's a weird.

[Griffin]

Yeah, it does. It does. Yeah. So this film came out. This actually, actually is weird. This film came out at Christmas time. I don't think this is a particularly good Christmas.

[David]

No. But as I said, that teaser trailer.

[Griffin]

For Lushy going.

[Nick Weiger]

The wreath at the end. End when he knocks his house into the. Yeah, it's. It's kind of like a very light Christmas movie.

[David]

I also think that, like before Spielberg, you know, basically created the modern blockbuster with Jaws in a summer release, Christmas was the number one most desirable release.

[Griffin]

Christmas is much more wide open. You're right.

[David]

It was the Best.

[Griffin]

All of these movies are big. So it's opening number three.

[David]

Okay.

[Griffin]

Which is pretty, like, decent, but, you know, as it wasn't like the success they hope for and number one at the box office is kind of the biggest play of the year, sort of. It's a big sci fi movie.

[David]

It's a big sci fi movie. We covered it on our Patreon in 1979. We've covered it on our Patreon. Is it 2010, the year we make Contact?

[Griffin]

No.

[David]

Is it Star Trek the Motion Picture?

[Griffin]

That's what it is.

[David]

There we go.

[Griffin]

Star Trek the Motion Picture, which of course was a television show. They were going to make Star Trek Phase 2, and then Star wars came out and they were like, this needs to just be a movie. These are movies now. And Star the Motion Picture arrived and did well, but was also disappointed, disappointing.

[David]

It's also like almost like if they announced tomorrow that they were green lighting a $200 million NYPD blue movie with the original class.

[Griffin]

Literally. Yes. I mean, maybe. Okay.

[David]

It's not. I'm trying to think of a better analog.

[Griffin]

The X Files is kind of a good analog, I guess, but only. But they've already done movies of that.

[David]

It would be the X Files. Hex Falls didn't have two movies and a revival.

[Griffin]

Yeah, like. Or. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, some kind of big cult show.

[David]

Yeah, it just.

[Griffin]

But not the biggest show.

[David]

How massive the Star Wars Close Encounters effect was combined with, like, Trek being the original cult show that lingered.

[Nick Weiger]

Real quick. Sims, I know you've covered in the Patreon. We've. They people have heard your take. But, Sims, as. As a Trekkie, what do you think of. Of Sergeant Motion Picture?

[Griffin]

I am a huge fan and huge defender of, as it was known at the time, Star Trek the slow motion picture. I think it just.

[David]

Or the motionless picture.

[Griffin]

Or the motionless picture. I've been. I saw it when I was a kid and I was just very taken with it. It is objectively boring, and it is objectively kind of like, not very good at, like, the Star Trek stuff. Like, it doesn't really have a really good handle on Kirk and Spock, and.

[David]

It'S a great mood piece, but it's.

[Griffin]

Such a cool, weird, moody movie and all the visual effects are so cool, and I love the story and I always will defend it. But Khan is, you know, episode, you know, Star Trek 2, Wrath of Khan is them figuring everything out like the formula for these movies. Kirk and Spock's dynamic, everything. I mean, I Love. I love that movie.

[Nick Weiger]

I want to shout out, while we're talking Star Trek. Nicholas Meyer, who is the director of Star Trek the Undiscovered Country. End of Wrath of Khan. Yeah, it's. But Nicholas Meyer, when I was on the. During the WGA strikes, he was out on the picket lines like every day. I'd see that guy all the time. And he's, he's like, you know, he's a. I, I believe it was born in the 40s, so, like, you know, he's still out there.

[Griffin]

He's like in his late 70s. He rocks. I mean, I, I love me kind of.

[David]

David, do you have the, the Star Trek the Motion Picture soundtrack on vinyl?

[Griffin]

No, I have Wrath of Khan on vinyl.

[David]

Okay. I bought it and then a better version came out. I'll give you the old version, the less good version. Fair enough. Second thing, this episode's coming on February 2nd.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

Yesterday, February 1st on our Patreon, we finished the jelly trilogy contest.

[Griffin]

And we're about to start now the Next Generation.

[David]

We're about to start doing all the Picard movies.

[Mike Mitchell]

Wow.

[David]

Very excited for that.

[Griffin]

All four of them. There's only four. But then we have a little treat for number, for movie.

[David]

We can say it.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Galaxy Quest.

[David]

We're tacking Galaxy Quest on.

[Griffin]

Why not?

[David]

Why not?

[Griffin]

Why not now? But listen to this. Box office.

[David]

Sorry, okay.

[Griffin]

1941 is opening number three. No, I'm just saying I didn't know this until now. This is devastating for 1941. Number two at the box office. New this week, opening against 1941 is one of the best comedies of the 70s.

[David]

Wow.

[Griffin]

And like a shot out of a canon holy, like movie star.

[David]

Is it the Jerk?

[Griffin]

It's Steve Martin.

[David]

Yeah. That is devastating.

[Griffin]

So, like, that movie is what, 85 minutes long or whatever? You know what I mean? Like, and like, so a guy who.

[David]

Had never been in movies before probably cost what, 5 million?

[Griffin]

Yeah, exactly. Cost no money. And just like it cost $4 million and made a 100.

[David]

Right. And it's just like two generations of comedic geniuses, Carl Reiner and like Steve Martin, just building a perfect comedy out of nothing.

[Griffin]

Right? So, like, that's tough for 1940. I can just go see the Jerk. Like that's much better.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Number four.

[David]

And handily outgrossed it. Yeah.

[Griffin]

By far. Number four is also a kind of 1941 esque movie, but it's a very serious war masterpiece. But it's also an out of control control.

[David]

Is it Apocalypse Now?

[Mike Mitchell]

Apocalypse Now.

[David]

Wow.

[Griffin]

So you can also just go see the real thing. You know what I mean?

[Mike Mitchell]

That's insane.

[Griffin]

Just go see Apocalypse now if you want to see a bloated, amazing war epic. Yeah, can I, Can I.

[Mike Mitchell]

Number five, can I quick interject here? Isn't it weird that Billy Corgan doesn't sing about 1941 and 1979?

[Nick Weiger]

That's a great.

[Griffin]

Like the movie.

[David]

It is weird.

[Griffin]

He should. He should be like, great note, Mitch.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, cool. Because hot take.

[Griffin]

That movie is good. Something like that.

[David]

I give it a C. Corgan's hard to do. That's a little Corgan, right?

[Griffin]

1970. Just keep doing that right, Wer and.

[Mike Mitchell]

I will do it occasionally.

[David]

That's good, Mitch.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, that was good.

[David]

That was a good corg.

[Mike Mitchell]

But he should have sang about 1941.

[Nick Weiger]

It's his favorite year, but he should have sang about another year.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah, let's go see 1941. Like that's have been in the song.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, let's go see 1941. It sound like Cartman.

[David]

Get some cheesy poofs.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah, you know what? He should have sang it like Cartman too. Honestly, he should.

[Griffin]

Why didn't he sing it like Cartman?

[David]

Like, can I throw a big take?

[Griffin]

Like, what if Rick Rubin started doing that when he's like brought in as like, you know, a big budget producer for a new record? He's like, you should sing it like Cartman. It's my one note.

[David]

More Butters. Less timid. I feel like south park has strayed away from its real core, which is Cheesy poofs. I feel like they barely mention cheesy poofs.

[Griffin]

I have not seen south park in like 15 years.

[David]

I'll tell you what, that comes up. Cheesy poofs content.

[Griffin]

Oh, shit. Number five. I just want to. So you know, we've got Star Trek, the Jerk, 1941, Apocalypse Now. Number five is a hit movie. Is a hit movie.

[David]

Okay.

[Griffin]

But it's also a number movie. Much like. So 1941's even getting outboxed in the number title realm.

[David]

Is it a year as well?

[Griffin]

No, it's just a number.

[David]

It's just a number. Is it 10? Blake Edwards.

[Griffin]

Blake Edwards is 10 with Dudley Moore and Bo Derek.

[David]

Another, dare I say it? And I know this term has been retired, but I think it applies too directly for this film that it is a big tittied hit. 10 is a big tittied hit. And there's another low blow to open against two comedies that are really sticking.

[Griffin]

With the culture I've never seen 10.

[David]

I've either.

[Griffin]

I just.

[David]

Now it's got big boobs.

[Griffin]

You guys seen 10?

[Nick Weiger]

I saw it. I saw it many years ago. I remember it being like.

[Griffin]

It's like now wait a second, it's one and then zero. That's what I put into Google, which.

[Nick Weiger]

Has turned into zus here.

[Griffin]

You've seen it years ago.

[David]

I remember.

[Nick Weiger]

I just. I think I remember just like cuz I. I knew I like Dudley more and so I don't. I think it might have been. I might have been too young for like the comedy, but like the right age for the raunch. Memory serves right.

[Griffin]

Right? Of course.

[David]

It's fun. Funny that the setup for that movie is Dudley Moore, who is 2 foot negative 6 inches, is married to Julie Andrews statuesque woman. They go on vacation and he sees a younger woman who is so hot that the movie is basically like cheat on your wife.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

And Blake Edwards was married to Julie Andrews.

[Griffin]

Oh man. Also at the box office we've got. And justice for all the Pacino movie. Silly. Yeah, but you know. Not bad. No, but you've got the film Starting over which is the Burt Reynolds sort of romantic dramedy with Jill.

[David]

That's a good movie.

[Griffin]

Pretty good movie. Kind of one of his more serious like actually pretty good movies. You've got the Rose with Bette Midler, which was her kind of breakout Mark Rydell film.

[David]

Playing not Janis Joplin playing a Janis Joplin esque diva.

[Griffin]

You've got the Black Stallion with Mickey Rooney that got him the like late in life. Oscar. Oscar nom.

[David]

Never seen me neither actually. Yeah, I saw the. Carol Ballard did the remake, right?

[Griffin]

It's Carol Ballard.

[David]

Yeah, I saw that.

[Griffin]

No, that's this one. That's this one.

[David]

Oh wait, then who did the.

[Griffin]

I don't.

[David]

There's the 90s black stallion.

[Griffin]

Yes, there is.

[David]

Yes. Carol Ballard did the year.

[Griffin]

Is it just about a. A horse? Like what is it?

[Nick Weiger]

Can I. Can I look, I. I know I flopped with my R1 movies cursed earlier. Like I know that did.

[Mike Mitchell]

Didn't.

[Nick Weiger]

That didn't take. How about this? Are horse movies cursed?

[David]

Interesting.

[Griffin]

You mean like it has to be like. Because there's lots of movies with horses.

[Nick Weiger]

Centered on a horse.

[Griffin]

Spirit Stairs.

[David]

Horse in the title.

[Griffin]

Spirit Stallion of the Simmer.

[David]

Yeah, we don't like Warhorse. You and I both put that pretty low in our sc.

[Griffin]

I'm not a big fan of War Horse.

[David]

What's the best movie with the horse in the Dreamer.

[Griffin]

Never saw Dreamer that's my favorite line in the movie Hamlet too.

[David]

Oh, sure.

[Griffin]

When. When he's introducing Kim. What's her name? What's her fucking name? Oh, Elizabeth Shu.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

And he's like trying to get the kids excited about Elizabeth Shoe and they're like, they don't know who she is. He's like dreamer with a horse. It always makes me laugh.

[David]

Spirit. I haven't seen Spirit Running Free or whatever the recent one was called. The original Spirit is very well animated and a bit of a snooze.

[Griffin]

I've been thinking about showing Spirit to my daughter, but it seems kind of chill.

[David]

I was going to say it's a perfect. Like that age movie.

[Griffin]

The.

[David]

But no, I think wer you might have redeemed yourself with this take Hidalgo.

[Nick Weiger]

Do we like Hidalgo?

[David]

No one likes Hun.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right off the bat you need to respond to a Seabiscuit.

[Griffin]

Oh, Seabiscu. Seab.

[Nick Weiger]

Seab's like as good as you can get. That's like. That's like the ceiling for a horse movie. And that movie is mostly not about the horse.

[David]

Yeah, but does anyone give a about. What was the other. The Malkovich one called.

[Nick Weiger]

They made a Secretariat movie.

[David]

Secretariat.

[Nick Weiger]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin]

That one's even.

[Nick Weiger]

That one's not bad.

[David]

Seabiscuit's all right.

[Griffin]

Number 10. The box office is.

[David]

That's a pretty good take, Wag.

[Griffin]

It looks like it's a re release of a George P. Cosmatis movie called Sin or Restless, starring Raquel Welch. This is not important.

[David]

Weird.

[Griffin]

Anyway, that's the box Office game for 1941, and I just think it illustrates how badly its lunch is getting eaten by better movies. And like next week, Kramer versus Kramer comes out.

[David]

Wow.

[Griffin]

Which is like one of the biggest scores of that year, isn't it?

[David]

Number one?

[Griffin]

It certainly is up there. And it wins Oscar and all that. So it's sort of like I've never.

[Mike Mitchell]

Seen Kramer versus Kramer. I think it's coming to the vista. Never seen it. I know. Blind Spot.

[Griffin]

It's good. It's dated, but it's like a very watchable movie.

[David]

I think the sequel is better.

[Griffin]

Go ahead.

[David]

Kramer versus Kramer versus Matlock versus Infinity. The is that someone's behind on double.

[Griffin]

Oh, am I? I am. Because I got addicted to.

[David]

I transmuted the joke a bit. You've been addicted to band splaying.

[Griffin]

Listening to her Brit pop series.

[David]

I turned it to verses, of course, in Mitch's original joke. The purity of it is that they meet. They don't fight. They meet.

[Mike Mitchell]

I appreciate You, Griff, even making a joke off of that joke, which I think no one liked.

[Nick Weiger]

When I said it's a good joke.

[David]

It'S a good joke. I like it. The more it has to be explained.

[Mike Mitchell]

How about Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Kramer and then a Seinfeld movie underneath it? How's that?

[Nick Weiger]

That's fine, right?

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[David]

Versus Kramer.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, I like it.

[David]

Yeah. You could do Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Kramer vs. The Laugh Factory.

[Griffin]

So are just. What are Hoffman and Streep doing in that movie?

[Mike Mitchell]

Well, they're there.

[David]

They're. They're like on the stand.

[Griffin]

Okay, Right. Uhhuh.

[David]

And she's like, crying about the wall with the clouds in the boy's bedroom.

[Griffin]

Right. And then we just cut to Richard's.

[David]

No, they're on stage. All of her on stage at the Laugh Factory. But she's like, on the witness stand.

[Griffin]

And then Michael, Richard, it's just like the movie is just happening.

[David]

Slurs. And Dustin Hoffman's like, aren't you supposed to be defending.

[Griffin]

You know what's still crazy?

[David]

What?

[Griffin]

Michael Richards doing that shit.

[David]

Can I say it's so crazy, I at least once a year watch the Seinfeld on letter.

[Nick Weiger]

Real bit of tv.

[David]

Stop laughing. It's not.

[Mike Mitchell]

We were just talking about this. Yeah, probably with the similar people you were talking to about it, I'm sure.

[David]

Yeah, probably. I watch it so much. It's so fascinating because it is like the last moment culturally, where the news travels slowly enough that the studio audience hasn't heard it.

[Mike Mitchell]

Right.

[Griffin]

They haven't actually heard it. So what about it?

[David]

No, no, that's the thing. They start laughing because they think it's a comedic setup.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

And you're like, today, if that happened, it would hit the Internet so fast.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

That the night. Night before, anyone going in to see Letterman would have heard this already. And this, like, taping happening 12 hours after the event. That's was a little too fast for people to have context.

[Mike Mitchell]

I was saying it's the last new laughs at Kramer. Kramer never gets up more. The new, new fresh laughs never happen with Kramer ever again after that moment.

[Nick Weiger]

Wow.

[David]

I think that's right.

[Griffin]

It's the truth.

[Mike Mitchell]

All right.

[Griffin]

I think.

[David]

No, I think it's right.

[Mike Mitchell]

It was worth it.

[Griffin]

We are done.

[David]

We're done.

[Griffin]

We're done with 1941.

[David]

Guys, thank you so much.

[Griffin]

You guys did a great job.

[Nick Weiger]

Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. Just said, I'm so glad you're doing the first half of Spielberg's filmography. And, yeah, it's really always again, always such a treat to come on the podcast.

[Griffin]

I think we'll do it. We'll do an in person episode this year.

[David]

I think so too.

[Griffin]

If you guys are in New York at some point this year, it'd be great to finally cut it up.

[Mike Mitchell]

Iron it's going to happen.

[Nick Weiger]

It almost happened.

[David]

It almost going to happen. Hopefully you guys got some live shows scheduled in the area and we have our designs on it and hopefully by the time. Yeah, we know far enough out on the schedule what we can do for you guys, it'll be. It'll be in person to commemorate you guys joining the five Timers Club.

[Nick Weiger]

Oh, that's fun.

[Mike Mitchell]

Do we get jackets like snl? Do we get jackets or anything or. No.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I guess we'll get some jackets.

[David]

You get some jackets.

[Mike Mitchell]

We got to do a pizza tour in Connecticut. We're very, very excited. Also, it's all. We have a big text the Blank Doe. Where where I. Where I. We get to get your movie takes we bought. We bother you and ask you for your movie takes every day on the.

[David]

Daily well and vice versa. And especially the takes we don't want to say on Mike. I will say I did a show with Tammy Sager, frequent guest show, great person, upcoming guest on our show. If everything works out. Absolutely. But I did a show with her and she came up to me backstage and said what are the three most recent texts in Blank Do? That was the first thing she said. I want to see what the last three texts were.

[Mike Mitchell]

And was it you guys explaining the end of the Brutalist to me? Because it was pretty helpful, honestly. It made me like the ending.

[Nick Weiger]

That was PE Performance from the Blank do thread. When we're out. That was about Chopper doing a good list. That was pretty.

[David]

It was the. It was in there. Yeah, absolutely. It was. It was us at its peak. Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

Can I shout out Someday we'll create.

[David]

The mutual million dollar Patreon tier where you get to read that text. That sound only ever make it public if it's $1 million per person get.

[Griffin]

To join the thread. You can't participate, right? Yeah, exactly.

[Nick Weiger]

Can I. Can I shout out Griffin real quick? Griffin, I don't know if you have a steelbook related nickname yet. I would.

[David]

I don't.

[Nick Weiger]

I would pitch the man of Steel. But you know, you could also be a. A green book riff. The Steel Book. I don't know. It's a. Just whatever you want to. Want to run with there.

[David]

But I like man of Steel books. Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

The man of Steel Books.

[Mike Mitchell]

The steelbook.

[Nick Weiger]

Steelbook. Unclear what it's referencing. And what it's referencing is a bad movie. The. The. The man of steelbook connected me with like, like, the site you sent me to did not feel like an actual retailer, but the Ninja Scroll Blu Ray, which. The steelbook, which was in very limited release, and I. My. My preorder got canceled. I was like, griffin, yeah, I'm in a jam here. You got to help me out here.

[David]

Right? You had pre order from Crunchyroll. And then they ran out and I went to my Blu Ray message board. This seems to be a recurring problem. I'm going to dig into who people say, because at this point, everyone else had sold out of it.

[Nick Weiger]

And the URL you sent me was.

[David]

Like you to Bull Moose.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah, Whatever it was, it was like one of those weird, like, Estonian sites that, like, illegally streams NBA games, you know, that you find that's just like. It was such a weird vent. Like, like, website that actually delivered and actually had. You know, I got. I ended up getting my steelbook, so. I really appreciate that you got your steelbook. I did. Yeah.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. This is why.

[David]

The way you told me.

[Mike Mitchell]

This is why Natalie's had a go bag long before the fire started.

[David]

The. The way you confirmed that the steelbook had arrived successfully been delivered was you took a picture of your hand holding it and just wrote in all caps, griffin Newman has a 10 inch. And I said, that is the coolest way anyone has ever been given credit for knowing which e tailers to get steel books from.

[Nick Weiger]

I stand by that.

[David]

Exactly. A deeply dorky thing. No, but it was. It was a. I was. I was happy to do that Mitzvah. And you guys are. Are the best. It's always a treat.

[Nick Weiger]

Griffin is hung like Seabiscuit.

[Mike Mitchell]

All right, Jesus.

[David]

Let's start.

[Griffin]

See, Biscuit had a famously small penis.

[David]

God damn it.

[Griffin]

He could run real fast.

[David]

I called him C Penis in the locker rooms. Anything you guys want to plug outside of DoughBoys at large?

[Mike Mitchell]

1941. You should check.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah. Check out 1940 plug.

[David]

1941.

[Nick Weiger]

Yeah. DoughBoys podcast about chain restaurants. Me and Mike Mitchell Sims and. And Griffin have both been on. If you. If you. You haven't listened, good jumping on points available in recent memory.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

And people should watch Mitch's show on. On Peacock. Twisted Metal. Mitch's plays Stu and Twisted Metal. Twisted Metal is. Is. Is really funny and it's got a lot of good action. You know what? It succeeds in an action. As an action comedy in a way that 1941 doesn't.

[David]

So I. I would. I would strongly agree with that. And season two is coming out sometime this year.

[Mike Mitchell]

Season two is coming out sometime this year. Yes, for sure.

[David]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

It needed more also.

[Mike Mitchell]

Oh, go. Go ahead, Sargur.

[David]

No, no. What were you going to say?

[Mike Mitchell]

I just. It needed. We. We talked about this a little bit. 1941. Needed more candy. Needed more candy.

[David]

Need more candy. No, I was just going to say not. Not to force your guy's hand. You. You calling out that you've had Sims show a couple times. The person you gotta get on Doughboys is Mr. Ben Hosley. Wow. I think there is a real, like, kind of heater of an episode untapped. I mean, it would be the next time Ben's in Los Angeles.

[Nick Weiger]

It would be a huge honor.

[David]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

[Mike Mitchell]

Let's make it happen.

[David]

He's got a pin.

[Nick Weiger]

Ben, you were great on. I loved your PTR episode, so. Yeah, definitely. Next time you're in la, we'll figure it out. Out.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah.

[Nick Weiger]

Well.

[Mike Mitchell]

Yeah. Come on.

[David]

All right.

[Mike Mitchell]

I mean, it's not going to be fun for you, Ben, but come. Come on. Come do it.

[Griffin]

All right.

[Mike Mitchell]

I get super three.

[David]

Thank you guys for doing this. Thank you all for listening. Tune in next week for. Let me see, another stinker from Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is just. I say it at the beginning of that episode. It's one of the greatest comeback movies of all time, if not the undisputed greatest.

[Griffin]

We recorded that episode with great Brian Michael Bendis.

[David]

Yeah. Legendary, legendary comics writer. Yeah. An Indiana Jones super fan. So tune in for that. As we said, next generation Picard Trek movies coming up on Patreon.

[Griffin]

That's right.

[David]

We'll start off generations, but also February 11th doing Spielberg TV movies.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Something evil and wicked.

[David]

Yeah. Isn't that. What? Savage.

[Griffin]

Savage, not Wicked.

[David]

Anyway, I had Wicked on the brain.

[Griffin]

It's kind of just a. Yeah. Damp ending, but. Yep, that's true.

[David]

And as always, that ending was so damp, I briefly mistook it for a sbaro.

[Griffin]

Should I put pepperoni on it?

[Nick Weiger]

Sims, when's your out?

[Griffin]

Oh, whatever.

[David]

Great question.

[Mike Mitchell]

Okay.

[Griffin]

I mean, I'd love to be done by in two hours, but we'll see. I mean, this movie is less.

[Nick Weiger]

Casey just laughed at that.

[Griffin]

God damn. Come on. This movie is not weighty enough, you know?

[Nick Weiger]

Right.

[David]

I think there's.

[Griffin]

There's plenty to discuss, obviously, but it's not like a.

[Mike Mitchell]

Well, but wait a second.

[Griffin]

Wait a sec. You know, like, where it's like Jaws and you're like, did we, you know, forget one of the 10 most famous movie sequences of all time, you know, or whatever? Like, it's the Jaws episode.

[David]

We forgot to talk about, like, half of his teeth. We only covered the top half.

[Mike Mitchell]

What's the quote?

[Griffin]

Oats.

[David]

I'm trying to find.

[Griffin]

It starts with, like, a J.

[Nick Weiger]

No.

[David]

Doesn't it? Oh, yes, it does.

[Nick Weiger]

A subtle tip of the cap.

[Griffin]

Yeah, very subtle.

[Mike Mitchell]

More horny, though.

[David]

I like that.

[Mike Mitchell]

I like that aspect.

[Nick Weiger]

Is it a little hornier?

[Griffin]

This is gold, Griffin. We're missing this great gold.

[Mike Mitchell]

Hold on, hold on.

[Griffin]

That's true. That's true.

[Nick Weiger]

True.

[Griffin]

We're recording it.