Barton Fink with Chris Weitz

Summary

Blank Check with Griffin & David: Episode Summary — "Barton Fink with Chris Weitz"

Release Date: August 3, 2025
Guest: Chris Weitz, Renowned Director, Writer, and Producer

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Introduction

In this episode of Blank Check with Griffin & David, hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims delve deep into the enigmatic world of the Coen Brothers by focusing on their film "Barton Fink." Joined by special guest Chris Weitz, a celebrated director and writer known for his introspective storytelling, the conversation navigates the intricate themes of the movie, the challenges faced during its production, and broader reflections on the Hollywood studio system.

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The Coen Brothers and Their Influence

Griffin Newman opens the discussion by highlighting the Coen Brothers' characteristic monologuing and unique dialogue delivery:

Griffin Newman [04:01]: "It feels like they're in their own track... epitome of beautiful monologuing."

David Sims adds his appreciation for these nuanced interactions:

David Sims [03:15]: "...they are right. This isn't our. This is our first Cohens that we're recording."

The hosts commend the Coen Brothers for their ability to create multi-layered characters and scenarios that invite extensive analysis and interpretation.

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Chris Weitz's Journey and Connection to "Barton Fink"

Chris Weitz shares his professional journey, reflecting on his experiences with the studio system and his personal projects:

Chris Weitz [05:22]: "People might have blamed them splitting up on you just being like, look, there's not a definite one to one..."

Griffin comments on Weitz's struggles and his dedication to creating meaningful cinema despite industry challenges:

Griffin Newman [04:30]: "JJ's job seems more difficult than ever... There's just like every interview they gave is just like..."

Weitz discusses the impact of major studio interference on his projects, particularly "Afraid," which he describes as a movie "that doesn't exist" due to significant alterations by the studio:

Chris Weitz [16:13]: "It was very ambivalent as to whether I... whether I want people to see it or not."

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Analyzing "Barton Fink"

The core of the episode revolves around an in-depth analysis of "Barton Fink," exploring its themes, character dynamics, and production challenges.

1. Character Study: Barton Fink and Charlie Goodman's Character

   • Griffin Newman [04:39]: "This is the first Deakins movie... the lensing makes me want to vomit..."

   • David Sims [10:14]: "The Cannes thing is a big deal... it won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor unanimously."

   The discussion highlights John Goodman's portrayal of Édgar L. "Barton" Fink, emphasizing his ability to convey complex emotions without excessive dialogue:

   Griffin Newman [11:56]: "There's such a good detail for me in him extending to Goodman, if you're ever in New York City..."

2. Themes: Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Demands

   • Weitz articulates the struggle between maintaining artistic vision and meeting studio expectations:

     Chris Weitz [44:13]: "This is like, no shit. But like, you know, you go to like marketing screenings..."

   • Griffin Newman [45:26]: "It is a reflection of what you're bringing to the movie as well."

   The hosts and Weitz delve into how "Barton Fink" serves as a metaphor for writers' block and the existential crises faced by creatives within the restrictive Hollywood system.

3. Cinematography and Sound Design

   • The collaboration between the Coens and Roger Deakins is praised for its meticulous attention to visual and auditory details:

     Griffin Newman [72:30]: "They always know how to really put a focus on Foley work..."

   • The use of sound—or intentional silence—enhances the movie's unsettling atmosphere:

     David Sims [75:10]: "He doesn't do the thing where you see him subtly mouthing the lines..."

4. Production Challenges and Studio Interference

   • Weitz recounts the difficulties faced during post-production, where studio demands clashed with the Coens' vision:

     Chris Weitz [34:44]: "Australian authorized the ending changes... got kicked out of the editing room."

   • The Coens' ability to navigate these challenges without losing their creative essence is highlighted as a testament to their auteur status.

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Broader Reflections on Hollywood and Filmmaking

The conversation shifts to a critique of the modern Hollywood studio system compared to its golden age, drawing parallels with "Barton Fink":

• Griffin Newman [162:00]: "The uniqueness of America not having any investment in funding its own arts... it's a pay to play industry."

• David Sims [173:36]: "What you are really missing is an era where film was unchallenged as a visual."

The hosts express concerns over the lack of job security for artists today and the overwhelming influence of major studios dictating creative directions, stifling individual artistic expression.

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Notable Quotes

• Griffin Newman [128:22]: "The Cohen's always useful. It takes this insane kind of hubris to think, like, I can do it."

• Chris Weitz [146:33]: "There's this little, like, QR code on the poster of every movie. And if you click on it, you get a PDF of the original script of the movie you just saw."

• David Sims [172:05]: "He's a director who could cover, but he's made a lot more epic, costumey stuff."

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Conclusion and Takeaways

The episode concludes with reflections on the enduring legacy of "Barton Fink", the Coen Brothers' mastery in creating thought-provoking cinema, and the ongoing struggles faced by filmmakers in preserving artistic integrity within a commercial framework. Chris Weitz emphasizes the importance of independent filmmaking as a refuge for true artistic expression, advocating for models that support middle-class artists rather than perpetuating an expensive, high-stakes industry that marginalizes genuine creativity.

Chris Weitz [202:08]: "I think, I think what I've come to is that in order to actually do the thing that I want to do, whatever that may be, it's probably going to be independent and very small scale."

The hosts thank Chris Weitz for his candid insights and encourage listeners to continue exploring the intricate filmographies of Hollywood's most influential auteurs.

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Credits:
Produced by Ben Hosley. Research by JJ Burch. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson.

Further Engagement:
Listeners are invited to visit blankcheckpod.com for additional content, subscribe to their newsletter on Substack, and support the show through Patreon for exclusive features.

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This summary captures the essence of the podcast episode, highlighting key discussions, insights, and notable quotes to provide a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened.

Transcript

[Griffin Newman]

Blank Check with Griffin and David. Blank Check with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect.

[David Sims]

All you need to know is that.

[Griffin Newman]

The name of the shadow is Blank Check. Look. But bearing a preference, we're gonna put you on a movie podcast. Blank Check. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the street, so that would rule out westerns. Pirate podcast, screwball, Bible rum. Look, I'm not one of those guys who thinks poetic has got to be fruity. We're together on that, aren't we? I mean, I'm from New York myself. Well, Minsk, if you want to go all the way back, which we won't, but if you don't mind, I ain't asking. Now, these people are going to say to you, blank Check Movies, It's a B podcast. You tell them, bullshit. We do not make B podcasts here at Blank Check Productions. Put a stop to that rumor right now.

[David Sims]

I. You didn't hit it. Which is fine because you're. You're reading the long chunk here. But the way he says, I mean, I'm from New York myself. Well, Minsk, if you want to go all the way back, which we won't if you don't mind, and I ain't asking, you're like, oh, he's suddenly like, you know, he's in his own track. And he's like, but I don't want to talk about that. Even though I just brought it up, that, to me, is the epitome of beautiful monologuing, right? Where it's like, now this guy is in a tunnel, like, he's no longer even thinking about the guy.

[Griffin Newman]

It is a thing that I feel like the Coen brothers. It is where you feel the strongest influence, even in their dramas of like. Like Preston Sturgis and like, Lubitsch and Wilder kind of stuff, where you're like these brief moments where a character starts to hint at a whole deeper life within themselves.

[Chris Weitz]

It is a screwball comedy going on in life, basically. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, it's what I like about the city is that it makes me feel unimportant in a way that I think is valuable.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh, by the way, have you guys seen the clock that Christian Barclay.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

I'm not.

[David Sims]

Not all 24 hours of it, but.

[Chris Weitz]

I popped in, I. I went.

[Griffin Newman]

Some fair weather friend you are.

[David Sims]

Well, they close the museum, and I've always wondered, like, how do you see the nighttime clock?

[Chris Weitz]

They will occasionally schedule a 24 hour session.

[David Sims]

Amazing.

[Griffin Newman]

Or you got to go Ben Stiller mode. Or cannot Take a night.

[David Sims]

Except it's a night at moma.

[Chris Weitz]

So it's like movies come alive.

[David Sims]

Some abstract artist, like, going around. Yeah, exactly.

[Chris Weitz]

I gotta say, dots. I went with my wife Mercedes there yesterday, and it was a redemptive. It was a redeeming experience. It was really amazing. And I recommend. I think it's going on May 21st. It's leaving MoMA. But you're around, you get a chance.

[David Sims]

It's leaving MoMA. Well, I mean, this episode's coming out in whatever. It's a long time from now, so.

[Griffin Newman]

But your monster is being received by the three of us.

[David Sims]

I mean, I've gone to this iteration at MoMA, but it'll return. Like, it travels around the world. Right? Like, that's sort of the thing with it.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, look, David, you say that, and yet the last thing we were talking about just before we started, I've had a few. Is that you were offered a chance to moderate a Q A with the Coen brothers when they were promoting Buster Scruggs, and you were like, ugh, what a schlep. And now here we are, and you're like, as of. I mean, this moment's still their final film together. We keep hearing they're going to get back together, but you just wait.

[David Sims]

Where was the schlep to?

[Chris Weitz]

Unknown schlep.

[David Sims]

Okay, well, so the schlep would have been uptown, like, to the Upper west side. That's not why I turned it down, really.

[Griffin Newman]

Kind of.

[David Sims]

It's. No, it's like. Well, and it would have been late at night. No, neither of those are the reasons. I just was like, they're. As I was saying to Griffin, they are. And we're right. This isn't our. This is our first Cohens that we're recording. But we'll have probably talked about this a little bit already. But they're notoriously the worst interviews.

[Griffin Newman]

Right?

[David Sims]

Like, so, so tough to get talking. And the whole thing with those post Screening Q&As is you don't want to be talking because people don't want to hear from, like, hi, you know, the moderator. They want to hear from these directors who are popping in. But, like, they're known for kind of just, like, not giving you anything. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

I was saying, even beyond that, that.

[David Sims]

Like, mumbling, like, they mumble.

[Griffin Newman]

It feels like they play dumb. Like, it's. What's going to be fascinating about this series is that these movies are so deep and rich as text, and yet, like, JJ's job seems more difficult than ever. Even coming off of like some movies that were hard for him to research because there's not that much information out there. I'm cracking open the Barton Fink dossier and I'm like, this thing's going to be 150 pages. And then I read it and I'm like, oh, right. There's just like every interview they gave is just like, I don't know, they're.

[Chris Weitz]

Not on the record, right?

[Griffin Newman]

They'll talk about it, but they're just really cagey about it. And they kind of play dumb and go like, we just did that because we thought it was funny. It doesn't mean anything. It's not a metaphor, right?

[David Sims]

And possibly they're hostile or possibly they just don't want to talk to you about it or whatever. So I was just kind of like. And like, I liked Buster Scruggs. Like, I like that movie a lot now. I've only actually grown to like it more. But it wasn't a thing where I was like, I fucking want to dig in on Buster Scruggs with these guys so bad. And I just was like, I. What if I have like a really disappointing experience, right? You know, like a truly. Like, they don't like me or I do a bad job. And then I'm like, what if they.

[Chris Weitz]

You might have taken the blame for their not saying much, right? Because people, I remember doing it, it.

[David Sims]

Felt a little no win. Like the win, the opportunity for a true win of like, wow, I had a really meaningful half hour with the Cohen brothers. Felt it felt like a slim ass win.

[Griffin Newman]

People might have blamed them splitting up on you just being like, look, there's not a definite one to one, but Sims moderated Q and A and now they're apparently going separate ways, right?

[David Sims]

That's the other thing, right? I broke them up. They were like, you know, we can't deal with this anymore.

[Griffin Newman]

Like this.

[Chris Weitz]

The Clock, by the way, is a 24 hour movie because I feel like I just referred to it without saying what it was. Is a 24 hour movie which is assembled just from references to time or actual shots of clocks within world cinema. And it is absolutely compelling. Like you want. Think you're gonna sit there for like 15 minutes and you end up thinking, like, I could go for 24 hours. It's just unbelievable to think even how someone would curate and find all the footage.

[David Sims]

Because the way it lines up even to the minute, it's crazy.

[Chris Weitz]

And it, and it.

[David Sims]

And it's a thing too where as you're sitting through, you'll like Check and.

[Chris Weitz]

It will line up. It's the time in which you are watching it. Yeah. That is also the amazing thing.

[Griffin Newman]

And even like with modern like Internet databases and such, it doesn't feel like you can just Google like movie that features 6:13am Nope.

[Chris Weitz]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, like that's just like manual like grunt work in terms of like scrubbing thousands of films to probably pull up all numbers. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Friend of the show Caroline Franke went recently.

[Griffin Newman]

Past and future guest.

[David Sims]

Yes. And she went in the morning. I think they had like an early moment. Did like an early morning thing. So it was like 9am and she says like it's all alarm clocks and shit. Like when you're like. It's like so much wake up.

[Griffin Newman]

See, that sounds triggering to me.

[David Sims]

Right? She's like, it's a little overwhelming, but also kind of intense. I was so annoyed. I wanted to go at 4:20 and it just didn't work out.

[Griffin Newman]

Hell yeah, brother.

[David Sims]

But I felt like that footage would have been pretty dank.

[Griffin Newman]

What is this?

[Chris Weitz]

All the French doobie movies. The French teaching equivalent.

[Griffin Newman]

Jacques and Jean Fume, folks. Who are we? Where are we? What is this? What are we doing? This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

[David Sims]

I'm David.

[Griffin Newman]

He was priding himself for so long.

[David Sims]

I was looking at the moment. I was kind of like, now you were making me think I was looking at Fastball now. One, one last sweep into the clock. And like what time should I. I was just sort of thinking about it.

[Griffin Newman]

I gotta do it. Look, this is a podcast about filmographies, not 24 hour movies about clocks. But perhaps someday, maybe. That's a series. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. This is a miniseries on the films of Joel and Ethan Cohen. We are calling it Pod country for old Cass.

[David Sims]

We sure are.

[Griffin Newman]

We sure are. There was a little bit of debate right before we recorded, but we've settled on that. And today we are talking Barton Fink, which is bizarrely their first guarantor.

[Chris Weitz]

Did it win the.

[David Sims]

It won the Palm Tour.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm putting this forward as a thought because they go from this to Joel Silver saying, I'm going to bring you into Warner Brothers and give you a big budget and major movie stars and try to get you to level up. And to some degree, I think that was Joel Silver having the aspirations of wanting to make a. A higher class picture and viewing Them as a vehicle to that.

[Chris Weitz]

I mean, they must have felt like they were living in a simulation.

[Griffin Newman]

Totally. But you're like, this is a thing that absolutely does not happen anymore, which is like a prestige guarantor. This movie loses money in theaters. It does not translate to the number of Oscar nominations as like, its critical reception would belie or its can reception or anything. It does okay, right.

[David Sims]

But yes, movie.

[Griffin Newman]

It's so undeniable.

[David Sims]

I wouldn't say this movie did okay. It didn't really make much money.

[Griffin Newman]

No, it lost money, right?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, yeah, but it didn't. It didn't have the, like, the Mommy Dearest effect, right, where it's like, quietly, they were blackballed from. No.

[David Sims]

You don't think Raising Arizona was their first guarantor? I think Raising Arizona was there.

[Griffin Newman]

But Raising Arizona is not as much of a hit as you think it is.

[David Sims]

No, it's not. We'll have talked about it. I mean, it's. But it's not. I mean, that movie did pretty good considering, you know, its stature, I just think. And, like, I feel like Miller's Crossing is a bit of a first blank check, you know, like getting to do a sort of a costume a little.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, look, their career is interesting because it has a lot of, like, alternation between, like, missteps and hits that then get them the next one. And then they have to recover and, like, make comebacks. From, like, the swinging public reception to their films at the time. Now, almost all of them have aged well. But it's gonna be interesting to go back through these and see which ones were not well received at the time. I just think, like, this film has such an insane critical reception. Sure. And the Cannes thing, that is historic.

[David Sims]

The Cannes thing is a big deal.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

To the extent that Cannes has to change its rules to a degree. So that's sort of interesting where it's.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, these guys are such.

[David Sims]

I didn't know that can change. So you can only give two awards to one movie.

[Griffin Newman]

This film won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor again.

[David Sims]

And it won picture unanimously.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

And they. I mean, it sort of makes sense. Like, they kind of were like, don't give the Palme d' or and Best Director to the same thing. Why not spread the wealth which has.

[Griffin Newman]

Become the following year? They apply the rule, the Barton Fink rule, basically, of one movie can only get two awards.

[Chris Weitz]

Right. Got it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I do think.

[David Sims]

And then they give the Palm Door to the Best Intentions, one of the worst Palm winners of all time. But anyway, that's not important.

[Griffin Newman]

It just translates into Joel Silver swinging in and giving them the biggest budget they will have until True Grit Hudsucker.

[David Sims]

Is their biggest budget. So it's 25 mil. Big Lebowski costs less. Yeah, that's one where I was kind of like. Because that movie sort of. And lebowski is cost 26 with inflation. But you know, like, it's like they become these guys kind of pretty much post this, but you know, maybe even starting a little bit with motocrossing where it's like they can get a pretty good budget.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

For a. An elaborate ish movie, like a period film or something like that.

[Griffin Newman]

They work pretty responsibly because they're really.

[David Sims]

Really well known for going like working on time and under budget.

[Griffin Newman]

And the other thing is they get an all star cast of people who will work for below their quote. Like it's just they always can get a sort of like good actors, a cast that makes sense for foreign financing. But I very often, I think in their career you have this like these duo relationships between movies of like Far Goes the Guarantor for Big Lebowski, which then bounces. So then they need to make a comeback from Lebowski, you know, like this constant back and forth.

[Chris Weitz]

It's interesting how much like the Big Lebowski's bouncing just doesn't matter anymore, right?

[Griffin Newman]

It doesn't matter. Yeah, but it was a thing at the time. It was seen as like.

[David Sims]

It was a thing. It was seen as.

[Griffin Newman]

We just took these guys seriously and now they're fucking off.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And making like a joke movie.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

They had just won their first Oscar and it was like, we've anointed you guys. And then what the fuck is this?

[Chris Weitz]

Right. I'm kind of interested in like what, what your guys perception is of where they stand in the kind of the pantheon. Because to me, I like, they're the greatest living filmmakers because because of their sheer range, you can argue about any.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

Number of other things.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm kind of inclined to agree with you. I, I do not dislike a. One of their films and I don't know who else I can say that for who has made this many films or even close to this many films certainly living today, let alone in history. I also will say our guest today is Chris Weitz.

[David Sims]

Here he is.

[Chris Weitz]

Hello.

[Griffin Newman]

A renowned director and writer, producer in his own right. Renowned previously and now once again part of a brother team of filmmaking.

[Chris Weitz]

Yes, we're back together, me and my brother Paul.

[Griffin Newman]

But you've been Oscar Nominated.

[Chris Weitz]

Yes, that's true.

[Griffin Newman]

You've had your hits, you've had your bounce.

[Chris Weitz]

Don't take that away from me. I've been pretty bouncy, actually.

[David Sims]

This is why you've been in a.

[Griffin Newman]

Tigger mode of late.

[Chris Weitz]

I've been bouncing.

[Griffin Newman]

You've been tiggering a little bit.

[Chris Weitz]

And actually, that's part of why the Barton fink of it all really appealed to me. Because today, first of all, I'm back. Three years. Three years away. Three years. The desert.

[Griffin Newman]

Four.

[David Sims]

That's what's crazy.

[Griffin Newman]

Three, three, four. Are you sure about this?

[David Sims]

Yes. I looked it up just now. He was last on our show for Darkman in April 2022.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

And it is now. It's April 2025 when we're recording this.

[Griffin Newman]

But it will be about three and a half years between releases.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, yeah. I was heading towards what I like to call the Yoshida line, where it's like you get 10 episodes. And then I kind of fell off the face of the earth. And I don't think. It's not you guys. It. No.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, someone on the Reddit called it out and said, how has it been three years since Whites was on the podcast? Last. Last. And I think we texted you and we're like, that doesn't sound right. Yeah, like, once we checked it, we were like, fuck. It has been three years. You have not been on since we recorded in Ben's living room.

[Chris Weitz]

That's right.

[Griffin Newman]

In the living room.

[Chris Weitz]

It was very. Post. Just post pandemic or just like, I remember I took a. A COVID test on the way there.

[David Sims]

Absolutely out of, you know, common courtesy back then.

[Griffin Newman]

But it definitely. It did not feel like that much time had elapsed. We still talk to you fairly.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh, no, listen, I hear you guys all the time, right?

[Griffin Newman]

You've done us some mitzvahs. You submitted a question for our live mailbag and stuff.

[Chris Weitz]

I think the question was, why are you guys so great?

[Griffin Newman]

Well, it was very sweet, but here's the bigger thing. It feels like you have been in a sort of a real kind of a Barton Funk.

[Chris Weitz]

A Barton Funk, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And you have sent a lot of, like, dark Night of the Soul text. David and I, not to be alarmist, but a real, like, what is the point of doing this, pursuing this kind of career, this industry? What is my life amounting to? Where David and I, late at night are like, chris, is he okay?

[Chris Weitz]

We had to get him back.

[Griffin Newman]

You're good, Chris.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, well, so, yeah, but this is like, I've been thinking about this episode for four weeks, if not months, of like, I'm going to go there in terms of like inside baseball. And also I'm telling you guys to stop me when it gets like two up my own never. But, but in terms of like, you know, this is sort of what's happening in my career and these are my reflections on it. My somewhat acid reflections on working in a studio sort of world, basically.

[Griffin Newman]

But here's what I think is interesting, important for the listeners to know. Maybe a little under a year ago, when your last movie, Afraid. Afraid.

[Chris Weitz]

Afraid.

[David Sims]

Afraid.

[Chris Weitz]

Okay.

[David Sims]

By the way, which was originally called they Listen. Correct.

[Chris Weitz]

Even before that, actually the real name of this movie was Home and we couldn't use it. And then it went through.

[David Sims]

Because there have been a lot of other movies called Home.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, yeah, I sure think that's why. And, and then it got changed by various marketing departments and the studio to things where I was like, fine, whatever, you know. Well, sorry, you were saying?

[Griffin Newman]

I was saying that movie came out, we'll get more into it. But you had a long, exhausting journey with that movie that really came out the other end of being like, what am I even doing?

[Chris Weitz]

Other end, like, like the rectum of.

[Griffin Newman]

The studio, a couple weeks after it was not really released, but escaped into theaters, you text us and we're, we're like, guys, I. I think it's time for me to come back on the podcast. And most specifically, the insight I want to provide is I am now someone who has made a movie that doesn't exist. Yes. And I would like to do a movie that doesn't exist that you guys are covering and talk about the, like, road paved with good intentions that lead to these sort of weird non movies.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. And then actually. And then I started to think, well, okay, what is the taxonomy of flop bomb movie that doesn't exist?

[David Sims]

Because Afraid is not a bomb or whatever.

[Chris Weitz]

It's more. No offense. No, it's a movie that doesn't be big enough to be a bomb.

[David Sims]

That's a little a movie noticeable, like, hence bomb.

[Chris Weitz]

But I feel like a movie needs to have existed for you to think that it does. That it doesn't exist.

[Griffin Newman]

I disagree with that. Here's why I think it passes the movie that doesn't exist test. Because if you say to someone, hey, do you remember Afraid? The John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Chris Weiss directed Blumhouse AI horror film? They'd go like, when's that coming out?

[Chris Weitz]

Friends of mine would ask me, that's.

[Griffin Newman]

The week of Its opening test, which is if you describe it to someone, they'd go, I would remember if that came out.

[Chris Weitz]

It's a Mandela effect kind of thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. You're describing elements that would have made some impact. That's the movie that doesn't exist effect. So we were like, okay, let's keep our eyes open for the next. Right. Movie that doesn't exist. You're texting us during March Madness about who you're excited about, you know, potential ideas. What are the movies that don't exist in those filmographies? Then the Cohens win, and David and I just immediately go, we gotta have Chris Dubarton fink. I know it's the opposite of what he said he wanted to do, but it is kind of the movie about how movies that don't exist come into being in a certain way.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. I mean, it's a very. It's like maybe their most astringent film. Right. There is less joy in this movie, although there is, like, there's virtuosity, but I'd say, like, than so many other of their films.

[Griffin Newman]

I think this is one of the most sickly looking films I have ever seen. It is, like, disgusting to look at. And it is the first Deakins movie. He's perhaps the greatest living cinematographer, and this is the beginning of his, like, miracle run with them. And yet the success of the lensing of this movie is that it makes me want to vomit at all times. And that look is a reflection of, like, the soul of the characters and the tone and the sound design. And yet, getting back to our original point, when you asked the Coen brothers about it, they were like, we've actually had, like, a really lucky run in Hollywood.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

None of this is, like, based on our own experiences. We just thought this was, like, a funny structure to make jokes.

[Chris Weitz]

That is the interesting thing, which. That it wasn't based on the experiment of being ticked over by the studio because they hadn't really. They hadn't become studio creatures, nor did they ever really like. They're.

[David Sims]

They're not really.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, back to our point, they sort of have always figured out the exact right size to stay at where their movies seem like a bargain for the people writing the checks. And they're like, if you can keep it there and you can put these 10 actors in it, then like, yeah, do whatever you want.

[David Sims]

Yeah, it was more fun. I'm sorry. It was more not fun. It was more making fun of that. The classic art versus commerce.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

You know, sort of struggle of the golden age of Hollywood.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like this movie is more than anything, them reckoning with their own internal battle in their minds of who they want as filmmakers, as their reputation is starting to get built.

[David Sims]

The. You know, it is the writer's block movie. Like, there's. I mean, it's about other things, too, but, like, no bet. No movie better, like, tackles the experience of not being able to write.

[Griffin Newman]

But a quote that blew my mind in the dossier that JJ pulled up is, they were like, we have never. We have no unproduced screenplays in our drawer, like, at this point in time. Now they do, and they have, over time, let other people direct unproduced screenplays of theirs eventually. But they were like, at this point in time, everything we've written has gotten made. We have not gone through this ringer. We have not done writing for Assignment.

[Chris Weitz]

What a run.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it's wild. I feel like there was some original point I was going to make when I. Barton Fink, said, you're an esteemed filmmaker, and I'll get back to it.

[David Sims]

Chris Weitz is an esteemed filmmaker.

[Griffin Newman]

He's an esteemed filmmaker, and we have.

[David Sims]

To admit it, he has worked in Hollywood for 25 years. What are we talking about? Like, I guess, was Ants your first. That was the first experience.

[Chris Weitz]

Credited screenshot. But my brother and I've been working for seven years before that, so I got. I found out that I got my first gig on my 21st birthday. So as long as I have been able to drink.

[Griffin Newman]

Wow.

[Chris Weitz]

Legally, I have been within the system.

[Griffin Newman]

Did you have celebratory drinks that night?

[Chris Weitz]

That night and every night? Well, interestingly, what. What it did probably was contribute to the sense that I had early in my career that. That, like, I was a golden child. Right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

Like, oh, here's your birthday present. You. You get to be in this industry.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

And, you know, so I'm going to start. Begin the career story, like, so. So get to work on that Chris Waits feeling on. On Ants before Woody Allen is canceled. So that was kind of a big deal.

[Griffin Newman]

People love that look. I say it all the time. Fantastic screenplay.

[Chris Weitz]

Thanks, man.

[Griffin Newman]

Ants is very well written.

[Chris Weitz]

People. People really like that. And then so we had the studio meeting at Universal, and there is this. This movie that was eventually going to become American Pie. We didn't have any directing experience, my brother and I, and they offered it us to. To direct. And. And, like, I didn't know anything. I'd never been to prom. Like. Like, David, I would. I grew up in England Right. I went to. To six form there. They didn't have prom. And I was like, I don't really like teen sex comedies. But I was like, okay, let's do this. Let's try to make it kind of interesting.

[Griffin Newman]

It was like, no response from David for any of this. We just have to call his ass out.

[Chris Weitz]

It's retired. It's retired.

[Griffin Newman]

Astounding.

[Chris Weitz]

It. You know, it was this kind of unlikely hitch, incredibly profitable.

[Griffin Newman]

And I was like, tons of franchises there had not.

[David Sims]

Like, there's no. Is there anything in the water when American Pie is a big hit where it's like, oh, we didn't see the teen sex comedy revival coming. You know what I mean? Because with Scream, it's like, ah, slashers are back.

[Griffin Newman]

Can I throw out my, my take on it? She's all, that's 98. I feel like that sort of gets credit for being, like, the start of the new wave of our teen movies back.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

98 is also something about Mary.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, that. There you go.

[David Sims]

Right. And it's like the saucy comedy American.

[Griffin Newman]

Pie is sort of you guys synthesizing those two things together.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Which kind of by mistake, right?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, they had both started the year before, and you're, like, at the right place at the right time to have the movie that capitalizes on both things that were coming back.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. In retrospect, it's just happenstance, but like, that, you know, and it was like, okay. And then we were offered every single teen sex comedy for, like, a year. Like, I never wanted danger, right? Yeah. This wasn't my thing, man.

[Griffin Newman]

You don't do the sequels, right?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, I, I, I, I. I had never really seen many teen sex comedies. Obviously, they're required, like, viewing, if you're my age, of, like, porkies and whatever, blah, blah, blah. But so then we're like, oh, we got to not do this. We got to do something different. My brother and I, so we did a movie with Chris Rock.

[Griffin Newman]

Right down to Earth's the second one.

[Chris Weitz]

Down to Earth.

[Griffin Newman]

And then, like, beyond that, you remake Heaven Can Wait.

[Chris Weitz]

You make Heaven Can Wait.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Calling it a Chris Rock movie is, like, underselling. That's a big swing.

[Chris Weitz]

It was a big swing at the moment. You know what? I thought I had a fantastic time working with Chris Rock and a good time working on that movie. I was like, I don't know that that's exactly what I was wanting to do either. But then finally, a Battleboy.

[David Sims]

It does make sense as a sort of like a Fairly large scale comedy. It's a level up from American Pie, but it's not like you're like, hey, can I make a movie with space aliens? They're like, we can trust you to make a comedy like that.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a different tone. And Chris Rock was in that state where people were like, can anyone crack how to make him a movie star? Right?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, and it was like, I can remember this is like a very Barton Fink moment. Like our agent saying, this is a go picture. Right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

And we were like. I was like, I don't know. Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

I like that film quite a bit.

[David Sims]

You also made it fast.

[Chris Weitz]

I feel like we did. We were like. And also, I was younger than that. So you don't think, like, oh, this is gonna take up years of my life.

[Griffin Newman]

Is that 2000?

[David Sims]

It's early 2000. It's Valentine's Day 2001. So, you know, like 18 months later.

[Chris Weitz]

Or whatever right then about a boy, which is like. Was like the sweet spot for. For me and Paul. We go. We go away to. To. To London and we make this movie. And nominated for an Oscar is like, oh, great. This is like, okay, this is. This is me from.

[Griffin Newman]

And not smoke your ass. But I truly think a perfect movie. Like a movie where everything is. That's wonderful. Right? But one of my ultimate comfort movies. I said this to you, but like, day two of lockdown, I was like, what. What should I watch?

[Chris Weitz]

That's good.

[Griffin Newman]

And I like, jumped to a battleboy immediately of just like, this is what I need to calm me down.

[Chris Weitz]

I'm. That makes me very happy. I'm glad. Yeah. And that was like, okay, here we go. This is, you know, I'm just gonna keep on, you know, getting nominated for Oscars until I win one. And then, you know, we're gonna.

[Griffin Newman]

To you guys, at that point in time, you must have been like, we've cracked it. This is what we want to be as filmmakers. This is the tone. This is the final product. This is how we want to be seen and perceived.

[Chris Weitz]

Yep.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Okay.

[Chris Weitz]

And then I read. While we're shooting about a boy, I read the Golden Compass. Or in England it's called Northern Lights. And I was like, oh, this is fantastic. I love this book. I love this author. I want to live in this book for a while. And so I get the gig of doing Golden Compass first.

[David Sims]

Writing or. No. It was like you were going to direct, then you.

[Chris Weitz]

It was to direct. And then I dropped out because I had. I really got the Willies. I was like, holy shit, this is going to be a huge movie. And I'm not sure that I can handle the entire logistical load of this. And so I don't know, I think.

[Griffin Newman]

A lot about a thing you, you said to me previously, which was the best decision I ever made. My life was quitting the Golden Compass as director. And the worst decision I ever made was deciding to go back kind of.

[David Sims]

Because.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, because look, it was. It was a huge movie. It was the most expensive movie that had ever been made at the time. We had to work to get it down to $190 million budget. So I'm going for like. Yeah. And so like, I mean, so. So there was this gigantic kind of CGI element, huge production design element.

[Griffin Newman]

And are you basically like prepping that? I mean working, developing that while you're making in good Company?

[Chris Weitz]

No, my brother was making. So we, we kind of, we went.

[Griffin Newman]

Our separate ways because Battle Boys, the last one.

[Chris Weitz]

Bad Boys, the last.

[David Sims]

Why did you like just kind of consciously go like, I want to do this, I want to do this. These are very different things. We're going to do different things.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. We were sort of presented with the possibility that one of us would have to force the other not to do the thing that they want to do. And we're like, we don't do that.

[David Sims]

Now this read Cohen's and then we can return to your career, of course.

[Chris Weitz]

No, let's go.

[David Sims]

American Pie is directed by. Is credited as being directed by Paul White.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

You are a producer on it. Down to Earth is credited to both of you, right? Yes. So did you get DJ approval as a team at that point?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

It's famously the Cohen's. Do not get that until I think the Lady Killers. It's like somewhere in the mid 2000s, the DGA is finally like. We acknowledge that you are essentially a two headed director.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. They didn't like to grant that to anybody. I think the Cohen's helped break it down a little bit.

[David Sims]

There are brother. It's usually sibling to you.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the thing.

[David Sims]

There's the occasional like Jonathan Dayton. Valerie.

[Griffin Newman]

I was gonna say married couple is the other.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Like it's easier.

[David Sims]

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. They're married, Right.

[Griffin Newman]

They're not.

[David Sims]

Weren't they a couple?

[Griffin Newman]

They were a couple, but they are now both married to other people. They haven't been together romantically in over.

[David Sims]

A decade, but they are obviously dual. There's the. The American Splendor team, Pulcini and Bergman.

[Griffin Newman]

But this is. Right. I think part of it is if you are bonded by blood or by law, it is easier to make your case to the DGA because they're like, well, you have a bond.

[Chris Weitz]

Yep.

[Griffin Newman]

That is established in another realm.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. Well, here you literally need to make your case. You go into a conference room and there is a council of elders sitting there and you have to explain to them why you should be a team. And they ask you questions, trying to poke a hole in your argument.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

And I remember one of them.

[David Sims]

Why do they. In a way, you're splitting money.

[Chris Weitz]

I've thought about this a lot. Okay. It's because eventually it's because of the auteur theory. It is because of the DGA's sort of position, which I appreciate, of course, because it's my union of like, you know, this is a very special role and the film is made by the director. You cannot split it up into various parts so that you don't have some, like producer.

[David Sims]

Everyone will be trying to get a director credit.

[Chris Weitz]

But it's quasi religious because it leads you into situations where things obviously don't really make sense.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

So like my brother and I can't be a director team again. Officially.

[David Sims]

We cannot divorce.

[Chris Weitz]

They said when I remember, and I.

[David Sims]

Had forgotten, this is Jedi Council.

[Griffin Newman]

You were saying this to us. This right before we started recording. I was like, pin this, save this. Because you're. You have. Your show has just come out on Apple plus at the time this episode's come out, Murderbot, which is the first thing you guys have fully worked on together since.

[Chris Weitz]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

About a Boy.

[Chris Weitz]

Exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

Although you've like produced things together and like helped each other. This is like.

[Chris Weitz]

This is.

[Griffin Newman]

But you couldn't get fucking credited for directing together.

[Chris Weitz]

No. Because apparently 20 years ago, when we got the license to do About a.

[David Sims]

Boy, also directed by the Paris. That's right.

[Chris Weitz]

They said, would you ever split up again if you found things that you were interested in doing separately? And we said, of course not, because I don't know, the time didn't make sense. But they've held us to that and we have been cast out of the garden as a team.

[Griffin Newman]

What a lot of teams do if they can't get the guild recognition is what the Cohen's did for years, which is how do we divide and conquer? And it's like we co wrote the screenplay. One of us is credit as producer, one of us is credit as director. We edit under a pseudonym. Right. And try to create a sort of like, weird. How do we even out the positions and the power.

[Chris Weitz]

A conceptual intermeshing so that everyone really understands what's happening.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. But then it's always the thing of just like. Well, they obviously just do the whole thing together. Right. They're called the Coen brothers. Everyone refers to them that way. They don't talk about, like, Joel Cohen even.

[David Sims]

So it took 15 plus years, almost 20 years for the DGA to finally.

[Griffin Newman]

Go like, okay, because does Joel get a solo director nom for Fargo?

[David Sims]

Yes, absolutely.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Which is so weird to consider.

[Chris Weitz]

I don't know.

[David Sims]

Totally.

[Griffin Newman]

And then obviously, like, if. And like, imagine that he would want Ethan's correct and not best picture.

[David Sims]

No, Fargo is not. Because Fargo is the only time this comes up. Because the next time they get a best pick nom is for no country for Old Men. But yes, like, nominated, Best picture. Ethan Cohen. Nominated Best director, Joel Cohen. Like, that's, you know, that's the no country year.

[Griffin Newman]

They.

[David Sims]

They are united by.

[Griffin Newman]

They share three Oscar wins together.

[David Sims]

Correct.

[Griffin Newman]

The movie wins picture, director, screenplay. And both of them have credits in both positions. But that's once again, as you said, a thing that had only finally happened.

[David Sims]

I think it's one movie before that they'd finally gotten the. So that's interesting. But now if you do work together again, you're saying you will have to do a sort of like.

[Chris Weitz]

And by the way, I think. I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this, but I think DGA doesn't say that. Like, there are certain things on the set that only a director can do. Oh, my God. Maybe there are. Shit. Maybe I'm in trouble. But, like, they don't really care if a producer talks to an actor or they act like a director, per se.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, there's also the other thing of, like, there are things that a director can't do this.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, this is the. The. The myth is that they can't talk to. To extras. And I'm not sure that that is.

[Griffin Newman]

Actually true, because first ads almost always end up directing background actors.

[Chris Weitz]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And I had always assumed that was because of some weird guild guideline.

[Chris Weitz]

This may be true in Canada. That is not the case. Maybe it is in America. And I think that there was, like, something where, like, if the director talks to an extra, they become that. First of all, they get bumped up instantly, and they're like, oh, you can't talk to them because. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Huh. The second the director is shaping their performance versus, like, the first AD Talking to a crowd.

[Chris Weitz]

Yes, yes. And the moment that an extra says a Word that can actually be distinguished also, which, you know, the game is always that extras are occasionally trying to say things or to elicit a line. So that. Because then I think you get into sort of SAG stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Then you can become eligible.

[Chris Weitz]

Right. So ads are always saying, like, you know, you can sort of say the kind of thing that a crowd says. Like, you know.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Chris Weitz]

They can't say words.

[Griffin Newman]

Nothing would actually be, like, distinct enough to make out. Yeah.

[David Sims]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

Okay, wait, so Golden Compass.

[Chris Weitz]

Golden Compass. Okay. People just want to hear about the Coen brothers. And I'm sorry, but I'm just going to go there, like, so, okay. I now have a theory that there was an original sin on the Golden Compass, which is that I knew that the stuff about the Catholic Church was going to be too toxic for New Line to want to deal with.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[Chris Weitz]

And they told me that, and I was like, it's gonna be fine. No problem. And then I sort of sneakily, you know, infused my. My cut and my. My film with all these things. And then in post production, everything went totally wrong where they freaked out about this whole thing, wanted to change the ending, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was eventually kicked out of the editing room, but. And I would like to say, like, it's the typical thing of being hard done by a studio, but I should have known better. And when I think about my latest movie, too, I think there's an original sin there as well. But by the way, I want to say, before I complain about studios, I love Blumhouse and I love all the people there. They're fantastic. They're great. So none of the things I say actually apply to these guys. They're the producers on this.

[Griffin Newman]

And look, we can call who screwed.

[David Sims]

You on Golden Compass no longer exists. I mean, I'm sure the people exist, but New Line, the entity that you dealt with then seems to exist. It's that movie's fault.

[Griffin Newman]

But also, like, the. The trailer for that movie I remember so distinctly is the ring from the Lord of the Rings.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Rotating in slow motion and then turning into a golden compass.

[Chris Weitz]

That was. That was like an early promoting thing. And, you know. But wait, wait, wait, wait.

[David Sims]

Oh, sorry.

[Chris Weitz]

That was my fault.

[Griffin Newman]

Really.

[Chris Weitz]

My fault. That was my fault. I was kind of. At the time, things were really stressful with the studio and I was like, fuck it. I know what they want.

[David Sims]

In 2001 D Cinema, opened the door and you see a ring. Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

Wow.

[David Sims]

I mean, to Middle Earth. I mean, it's a little. I'm just gonna say it's a little on the nose.

[Chris Weitz]

It's a little. It is totally truckling. And I think it was at a moment where I was like, back on my heels. They're like, kind of, how do I.

[Griffin Newman]

Win back favor by.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Making them feel I'm a team player. But then that also, of course, like you and putting even more pressure on the movie where now, like, you're saying the quiet part out loud. Yeah, that was always. The design of this movie is the Lord of the Rings trilogy has ended.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

We don't have the rights to the Hobbit. How do we find our next Lord of the Rings?

[Chris Weitz]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And now you're, like, telling them to market the movie. Like, we promise you, this is the new Lord.

[Chris Weitz]

The pressure was always going to be there because they spent so much money.

[David Sims]

No, it's not.

[Griffin Newman]

You didn't create that narrative, but now you're underlining it.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And delivering it to the public.

[Chris Weitz]

No, this is like, so a big movie like that where everyone is freaking out, constantly messes with your head, and so you end up, like, kind of going slightly punch drunk and doing crazy things.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah. No, I get it. I'm also like. I mean, to your point of the original sin thing. Right. Like, you're in this sort of catch 22 where it's like, okay, they go, we'll give you a green light. But yeah. And the condition they throw out to you is like anathema to successfully adapting this thing.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

So you're like, what's your choice here? You do what they want and then you're making what fundamentally is a broken version of the movie in your eyes. And that's correct. It would be broken. Well, or you try to smuggle it in and get it past them, but of course, they then have the right to go, you fucking tricked us and be angry about it.

[David Sims]

Yeah, Look, I mean, the whole thing with the northern. With the northern lights, the book is that it's. It's plainly in the text and it's less in the first book.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Like the church Stuff is way less.

[Griffin Newman]

In the first book, you have to sow the seeds.

[David Sims]

By the third book, they are truly, literally spoiler alerts for his dark material. Killing God like they kill him.

[Chris Weitz]

It's hard to soft pedal that way.

[David Sims]

Right? But. So by that point, I think the whole trilogy had come out. You know, the books had all been. So it's like, we know where that alethiometer's pointing.

[Griffin Newman]

The whole pressure is you need to be able to make the sequels to this. We want this to complete the book series. So you're gonna have to get there. Yeah. Here's a question for you. So getting to the moment of About a Boy where it's like, this is it. This is the movie that represents what I'd like to be a director, how I like to be seen in the industry. That's my question. Like, you have not made a film like Golden Compass to some degree. Is new line like, oh, we want that Chris White's feeling. Is there, like an X factor you can bring to this? Much like Jackson not seeming like the obvious choice to do Lord of the Rings at that time. Like, is there a sensitivity? Is there emotionality?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Was there a thing they were quantifying or that you were trying to weaponize as, like, here's my feelings.

[David Sims]

I can't touch.

[Chris Weitz]

I think I had a Barton Finke feel. There was a Barton Fink feeling at the time, definitely. Like, you definitely have pixie dust. Right. Like you'd made about a boy. Right. Made about a boy. And also, like, oh, he made this, like, small movie, or he and his brother made this small movie that made, like, 10 times as much as its budget. Like, like, let's. Like, let's do it.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like you also told me, I think it was maybe when you very briefly appeared on one of the interminable George Lucas pandemic live streams. And Connor and I only wanted to ask you questions about the clumps.

[Chris Weitz]

I've never been on the. On the George Lucas.

[David Sims]

You have.

[Griffin Newman]

It was really brief. It was like early lockdown, and we were raising money for charity and watching all the Star wars movies. And we had you zoom in during Rogue One. And then I think, like, five minutes into you being on, something happened with one of your kids. Not too dramatic, but you were like, I'm so sorry. I have to go. And Connor for years was like, did I piss him off?

[Chris Weitz]

Not at all.

[Griffin Newman]

Because we had you zoom in while we're watching Rogue One. And then we were like, the funny bit is, let's only ask him questions about Nutty Professor 2 the clumps, which.

[David Sims]

You are credited as Ragger on, along with various other people.

[Chris Weitz]

There was a great moment at a Q and A because you go on these Q and A's when you get nominated for A for the Oscar and people ask you questions and they list your credits and it's like, you know, also nominated as blah, blah, blah, Chris Weitz, this and that, and nutty Professor 2 the clumps. And I was like, oh, God.

[Griffin Newman]

Connor and I were very united on this bit. And then you were like, gentlemen, I'm so sorry, but I do have to go right now. Connor was like, he's irate. And I was like, I really don't think that's Chris's vibe. You don't? But you said to us, right, it.

[David Sims]

Seems like it'd be hard to really piss you off.

[Griffin Newman]

How did you end up being accredited writer on the Clumps? And you said something to the effect of. At that point in time, my brother and I had a reputation for, like, we could take comedies and put a little more genuine feeling in them without being saccharine. That that was the White's feeling was a core of a sweetness and an emotion that feels earned.

[Chris Weitz]

In theory. That is what I still can do, still have a heart.

[David Sims]

It's in there somewhere, folks.

[Chris Weitz]

If you pay enough, you get it.

[David Sims]

Wait, okay.

[Chris Weitz]

Can I say, like. So there's an original sin on my last movie, Afraid, which is like, this movie was a psychological. Was a paranoid thriller like the Parallax View. And the studio, which shall remain nameless, wanted it to be a horror movie so much that there's a number of decisions that make it sort of jumpier.

[David Sims]

And a little more like, more horror. Because the film which I've seen. Has anyone else seen A Farade?

[Chris Weitz]

No. Crickets? Griffey?

[Griffin Newman]

I. I admittedly have not, out of respect to the fact that I know.

[Chris Weitz]

Listen.

[Griffin Newman]

The final film that was released was not reflected.

[Chris Weitz]

It was very ambivalent as to whether I. Whether I want people to see it or not. They were like a long kind of a pamphlet for me about, like, what?

[Griffin Newman]

I have been curious to watch it, but I haven't seen it for that exact reason. You had relayed that ambivalence to.

[David Sims]

I watched it knowing that you had had a bit of a tough time making it, but not really knowing any detail at all. And right as it started, I was like, oh, I can see what Chris. I can see Chris here right away in the family and in how the movie is kicking off and stuff. But then, yes, it does have that sort of the first Purge movie. Not the movie, the first Purge, but the. The Purge, the first of the Purge movies, where they're like, let's do our concept as a home invasion movie, because that's cheap and that's like a way to sort of suggest something bigger but still have like the sort of reliable horror of a home invasion movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, we can cut this out if I'm saying anything that I shouldn't say.

[Chris Weitz]

No, let's go.

[Griffin Newman]

I remember getting lunch with you. I was visiting LA and it was maybe only a month or two after you had wrapped the movie and Megan had just come out. Mithrigan.

[David Sims]

Mithrigan, of course.

[Griffin Newman]

And they had announced that your movie was being pushed back a year. And I was like, what's going on with this? How do you feel about this? And it was just sort of like, I'm told it's a good thing. They want more time. They might want to try some things. But there was already this sense of like, is Mithrigan being a hit creating some expectation of what this movie needs to be or not be in relation to that. And I also remember you just talking about how pleasant a time you had in the initial production of the film and being like, I have been so burned out on the industry and frustrated and heartbroken by these different things. The idea of finding a very personal story, me telling an emotional movie about the way I feel about my family and keeping children safe in a world that's a little bit terrifying. And I can disguise it in just enough horror movie trappings to get it through in a low budget way, unencumbered. And then like a year and a half later, everything had gone upside down. Right.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

But you were sort of like, I think I've cracked the code. If it's this small.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I have two marketable elements. It's this and that. The stakes are low enough that maybe they let me make my thing my way and get it out.

[Chris Weitz]

See, I thought I was clever. I thought I was smarter than the system.

[Griffin Newman]

But it is a playback that has been working.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

That has been like the most consistent way to get kind of emotionally, psychologically.

[Chris Weitz]

I think it really helps if you, if you love the. The kind of product that they want in the end, as opposed to thinking, I'm going to sort of sugar it with sugar, this pill. And like, so the, the movie started when, like, I. I was talking to my friend Honey Abu Asad, wonderful filmmaker, and he was like. Like, I was like, I Don't know what to do next. And he's like, well, what's on your mind, like right now as I talk to you right now? And I was like, well, I guess, you know, my kids are like spending time on the screen and a. Kind of like a worry because you can, you can sort of try to take care of them as much as you like. But like, our home is like, it's next door to the Internet, which is a really, really bad neighborhood. No matter what, there's no way to protect people. And that's what the whole movie about is like, you cannot protect your children from, from the world. And then, you know, it becomes like, movie about a killer AI. And by the way, the year in which it was delayed, it was. Was a year for AI to develop to such a shocking extent that anything timely that it had to say about AI was like, already like, yeah, we.

[Griffin Newman]

Know, but like, you're not getting hired to develop a Walter Beery AI thriller. You're looking in the mirror, you're talking to your friend.

[David Sims]

You're going to take this computer down, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Walter Beery, like, it was.

[David Sims]

Walter Beer is a real guy, Ben. Like, Walter Berry was like a classic, burly, 30s star, b picture kind of star.

[Griffin Newman]

Probably exactly what you. I'm sorry, Wallace Beer, Wally Berry. Yeah. I just. It might sound like an unemployment distinction.

[David Sims]

Oh, wow, look at that guy.

[Griffin Newman]

But the difference between you, like, getting hired to make an AI thriller and then going, what's the personal story I can smuggle inside of this? Versus going, what am I feeling right now and what is the way I can dramatize that into an idea that is sellable?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. As it goes through the, like the process of, you know, of the way that studios put out movies, it just gets twist. Twisted along the way. And this is like, no shit. But like, you know, you go to like marketing screenings and one of the first questions they will ask of an audience is, was there anything that you found confusing?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

Right. And of course that is priming the pumpkin because the moment, like an audience actually has a right to be confused and to not feel as though everything is resolved and explained. But, but like, inherent to the system when this much money is spent is like a sort of deracinating of the original intent.

[Griffin Newman]

I have gone to like friends and family screenings. The roughest cuts, right. Of folks just being like, I just. Before we have to go to like blind test screening.

[David Sims]

Sure. I want someone.

[Griffin Newman]

I want like 15 people who also work in the industry or friends of mine or whatever. A cold aud But a warm audience at the same time. And the lights will come up. And I've seen people make this mistake several times where they go like, so what do you guys think? Anything jump out to you immediately that you bumped on or that you had.

[Chris Weitz]

Questions about bumped on?

[Griffin Newman]

And people are sort of like, no, basically this or that. Or they might call out one thing of like, I missed that line, or whatever it is. The second a leading question is thrown out, the filmmaker expresses their anxiety about something they weren't sure. Woodwork, go, hey, was anyone confused by this thing? Then suddenly, every single person in the room goes, now that you mentioned, I do actually think you're. And then starts offering their notes on what it should be instead.

[Chris Weitz]

Yep, yep, you're totally screwed up.

[Griffin Newman]

You can't ask people that.

[David Sims]

No.

[Chris Weitz]

So Barton Fink, then his. I think it's. It's. It's in a.

[David Sims]

In a way, Coen Brothers movies.

[Chris Weitz]

It looks at the studio, right. In a negative fashion, but also Barton. It is very scathing about Barton Fink himself.

[Griffin Newman]

It is conceit, absolutely blasphemous of this movie. It's like, this guy is a fool, and he's arrogant. He's unpleasant.

[David Sims]

So this is my favorite Coen brothers film.

[Griffin Newman]

Interesting.

[David Sims]

I think, kind of, without a doubt.

[Griffin Newman]

I know this for many.

[David Sims]

Sure. I love a lot of the great Coen brothers movies, like Fargo and Serious man and, like, you know, Raising Arizona and whatever. Oh, no country. You know, all the whatever. And you could kind of talk me into a lot of Coen brothers movie. And ranking movies is a little silly anyway. But this movie profoundly affected me when I saw it when I was, like, 19, I want to say. Like, I was in college, and I was sort of, I think, like. Well, I've loved the Coen brothers since I discovered them as a teenager, but, like, now it's time for me to watch every Coen brothers movie I've never seen. And I've only probably seen this movie, like, four or five times because it's not. Barton Fink is not a movie. You're just all the time like, you know, hey, Barton Fink's on cable, right?

[Chris Weitz]

You know, it's like the Simpsons.

[David Sims]

Barton Fink. We have to, of course, acknowledge that moment in the Simpsons, which is amazing.

[Griffin Newman]

That entire run of, like, the stealth runner of Simpsons jokes that are the kids getting excited in the wrong direction for 90s art house movies.

[David Sims]

Always funny.

[Griffin Newman]

The naked Lunch. I can think of two problems I have with that title.

[David Sims]

Funny. I am familiar with the works of Pavlo Neruda. It's a slightly different version of that trick, but. But anyway, I watched this movie a couple days ago to prepare for this podcast, and I was like, I don't think I've seen Barton Think in years. I put it on and I was like, I could close my eyes right now and I'd be fine. Like, I know this movie so well. It is so impressed on me. It is one of the most influential movies for me in terms of just, like, mood and tone and the way its story works. I don't know how to describe this.

[Griffin Newman]

It's also an incredible film analysis movie. Like, it is a movie that is basically. It isn't consciously designed to be studied, but it's like a fucking playground if you're someone who has a mind where you want to fucking break apart movies and try to figure out how to read them, you know? And, like, even this was my second time watching it. I watched it last night. I saw it probably around the same age as you, David.

[David Sims]

Sure, sure, sure.

[Griffin Newman]

There was, I guess, 2008, 2009. MoMA did a comprehensive Cohen retrospective of all the movies they made up until that point. And Barton Fink and Hudsucker were maybe my only two blind spots at that point. They were playing on the same day. I saw Hudsucker in the morning. I got lunch at moma, both of them. And then I saw Barton Faye. Hudsucker is my favorite Coen Brothers movie that has to do so much with just my taste and my sensibilities. I do not think it is one of their five best films. It is a movie I've watched endlessly, and it means so much to me. And I was just like, holy, that's Hudsucker. That's the one that people don't like, obviously.

[Chris Weitz]

I know.

[David Sims]

And we'll talk about how dearly you love Hudsucker, which I also dearly love, but Hudsucker has your manic.

[Griffin Newman]

It's. It's my vibe.

[David Sims]

Have you seen Hudsucker? Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

When you.

[David Sims]

I mean, like, it's got Griffin energy up the wazoo.

[Chris Weitz]

Definitely.

[David Sims]

The haunted hotel or the trapped in a hotel thing is my favorite thing in the world.

[Griffin Newman]

We're gonna talk about this at length.

[David Sims]

And, of course, there are other versions of that.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

What are other versions of that?

[Chris Weitz]

Shining, of course.

[David Sims]

Shining. That's a great example. Of course. Yes. Duh. Jesus, David. What a genius I am.

[Chris Weitz]

I thought you were just giving me an easy one. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Finish your thoughts.

[Griffin Newman]

No, just that I Was not disappointed by Barton Fink, but I was writing at such a high by how much I loved Hudsucker and how much it surprised me that in my mind, Hudsucker, the Hudsucker for the first time experience always eclipses Barton Fink.

[David Sims]

Yeah. By putting them up the same day.

[Griffin Newman]

I've seen hudsucker upwards of 10 times since then, but I got to see both movies for the first time on a big screen with a proper crowd, on a beautiful print. Had not, not watch Barton Fink again until last night. And yet I had the exact same experience as you where I'm like, yeah, I basically remember every single element of this.

[Chris Weitz]

It's pretty spare. I mean. Yeah, right. It's not.

[Griffin Newman]

It's very primal in its own weird, eggheady way.

[Chris Weitz]

I was thinking about David Lynch a lot when watching this. It feels like it's a little bit in conversation with some of the aesthetic. Like there's a shot which feels David lynch like when just going down the drain.

[David Sims]

Absolutely right.

[Chris Weitz]

And there's the hairdo. There's Barton Fink's hairdo, which feels eraserhead adjacent for sure.

[Griffin Newman]

And just that sort of feeling of like everything is just a little wrong. This is so immaculately made. It is so tightly controlled. You get the clear sense from the first frame to the last. There's not a single decision in this movie that isn't intentional. And yet some of it feels deeply inscrutable. And all of it conjures some feeling within you. Not that Barton Fink feeling, but this sort of like, what's wrong? What is this movie doing and why?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, I think that may be what won it. The Palme d'. Or. Right. Because I remember when they won, it was kind of like American Boys bring home gold. It kind of had that feeling.

[David Sims]

Right?

[Griffin Newman]

Sure. Weirdly, the third film in a three year streak of American Palme d' or winners, which was like an unusual swing.

[David Sims]

Sex Lies is the year before.

[Griffin Newman]

And then Wild at Heart.

[David Sims]

Wild at Heart.

[Chris Weitz]

It.

[Griffin Newman]

And then.

[David Sims]

Oh, no, it's. Sorry, it's Wild at Heart.

[Griffin Newman]

Then sex wise, then this.

[David Sims]

Okay, okay. And it is of course an incredibly exciting time for, yes, American independent cinema. And, you know, whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

By the second half of the 90s, the. The joke that Billy Crystal keeps making is that like the studios can't get a movie nominated for best picture anymore. You know, like this is the start of the wave that by the end of the 90s is just like the American independent cinema is exciting. It's thrilling. There's Something happening here and audiences are engaged and then that dream sort of starts to die.

[David Sims]

Yeah, but Haunted Hotels, Griff, I mean, what else? I mean, very dorky of me, but the 1408. Well, of course 1408 do not go in there.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

I think it's. I told you not to go in there.

[Griffin Newman]

Me and my brother. I told you.

[David Sims]

Me and my brother would always fixate on that moment in the trailer with Samuel L. Jack Jackson shows up while some. Is happening. Being I told you not to go.

[Griffin Newman]

It's also like, look, it's not like they're ruining anything by putting that in the trailer. But you're like, I don't need to see this scene. I can guess that Sam Jack's gonna come back at the end and say, I told you so.

[Chris Weitz]

Wait, which I see.

[David Sims]

1408 is a mid sized horror movie from the late 2000s, directed by, I want to say Hofstrom.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

That is based on, you know, something Stephen King coughed onto a wall once or whatever. But it is kind of like it's a short story.

[Griffin Newman]

Right? The pulpier, trashier midpoint between the Shining and Bar Think in a certain way.

[David Sims]

For sure.

[Griffin Newman]

It's like checks into a hotel to write a book.

[David Sims]

No, it's a guy. No, it's a guy who's like, I'm checking into a famously haunted hotel room because I'm tough and scary and I know that's all nonsense. And then the room, like, I'm gonna take on the really. I love the Next Generation episode, the Royale. For anyone out there listening from season two, which is about a, like a. They arrive on a weird planet that is just a hotel that they cannot leave, which is very like. I honestly may have been directly inspired by Barton Fink because it's just like.

[Griffin Newman]

A couple years later, you're forgetting four really big ones.

[Chris Weitz]

And is it. Is it a space hotel or is this a hotel?

[David Sims]

That seems like an old fashioned episode to find out. Okay, it looks like a. It looks like an American hotel from the 30s. But there's altruist. Yes. Forgetting, of course.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. But it is. It is fundamentally a haunted hotel. You cannot deny that. That I'm not saying the movie.

[David Sims]

So it is a haunted hotel. Haunted, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

By humans. By Johnny.

[David Sims]

That's true.

[Chris Weitz]

What about hostile? Or is that just.

[David Sims]

I mean, hostile sort of there, but I mean, hostile. It's. It's obviously quite naked what's going on there.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Like people don't really get to the hustle and are like, this place seems like really comforting and Inviting.

[Griffin Newman]

There's almost like a richer history of, like, comedies kind of ripping on the. The. The trope, you know, the like Abbott and Costello.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. I guess those are more like, you have to spend a night in a spooky castle kind of shit that gets more to shining. Haunted Hill.

[David Sims]

I love that too.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

I guess I'm basically always pro this.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

What is the difference between a haunted house and a haunted hotel?

[Griffin Newman]

Great question.

[Chris Weitz]

In terms of a taxonomy, because it's.

[David Sims]

The liminal space thing, which has become this, you know, Internet sort of world. Right. Where people are obsessed with what they call liminal spaces. These kind of, like bland, anonymous sort of environments. Like long corridors, samey kind of. Right. Do you know what I'm talking about, Ben? It's a very big Reddit, I think.

[Griffin Newman]

Something about the promise of the hospitality, you know, being like, you are here and you're being taken care of, and yet something feels wrong versus like, I've just walked into a castle with a candelabra. Maybe I shouldn't be here.

[David Sims]

Right. You know, there's some warning signs here, but it's like a hotel. It's like the idea of, like, I'm on a floor with 50 identical rooms and it's one of 15 floors. Your head starts to spin a little bit. Another great example recently, the Eternal Daughter, the Joy in a Hog movie. One of my favorite movies of that year. Which is also, like, she and her mom are at a hotel that no one else is seemingly there, but everyone's kind of behaving like it's normal, and it gets weirder and ghostier. Very good movie. If you've never seen it, it's not.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, it's not quite the same, and it's only an aspect of the movie. But Neon Demon has a lot of, like, what the fuck's going on?

[David Sims]

Weird motel shit. There's a tiger or something, right? And there's a Keanu Y. I always.

[Griffin Newman]

Find this very affecting.

[David Sims]

But this is the best version. I agree. I mean, the Shining is its own thing.

[Chris Weitz]

Burton Fink could have stayed at a different hotel. The studio wanted to put him up in a nicer place. So that was interesting because I remember, like, thinking, he's getting, you know, $2,000 a week King's ransom.

[David Sims]

Right. But he wants to be with the people.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Hotel Earl speaks to the movie. Having this sort of like, get a load of this fucking guy. Like, he thinks this makes him a greater artist.

[David Sims]

I think it's starting with the hair, like you mentioned, where it's like, like he has that hair. Yes. It's to code him as Jewish, which he is like in this way that, you know, like the Cohen's like to, you know, explore that kind of like, what is it to be like kind of loudly Jewish in these kinds of worlds or societies. But also like he thinks he can get away with looking like this because he's different and he's artistic.

[Griffin Newman]

He's not the only Jewish character in the movie. And there are other people who are maybe trying to assimilate more. But it does feel like to your point, he's like accentuating the Jewishness almost as an act of provocation.

[Chris Weitz]

Right, right.

[Griffin Newman]

Like this guy is taking a stance. Everything about to make you uncomfortable is.

[David Sims]

Provocative in this sort of like, I'm not like you, I'm not superficial and I'm not an intellectual and I'm not a Hollywood type.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. He has this attitude. He is an intellectual to every single person he's talking to.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

A quiet I'm not like you. And it doesn't matter if a person is higher or lower status.

[David Sims]

Like is that. That's the one guy that he briefly does seem to be quite interesting. Trance by. Although yeah, we'll get.

[Griffin Newman]

You're right. He wants Mahoney to say, you are the same as I am.

[David Sims]

Exactly. Right. I mean, or at least like I too know your work and I, you know, whatever, like admiring you.

[Chris Weitz]

There's. There's actually like, oh, I just said it. There's. The use of the word actually is really interesting in, in this movie because there's when. When, when John Goodman, when Charlie asks him what he does, he says I'm a writer, actually. Yeah, right. And I'm like, the actually is doing a lot of work because it's like, just say you're a fucking writer.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[Chris Weitz]

But instead he's like, well, you're probably going to be amazed by this, but I'm a writer.

[Griffin Newman]

There's a little bit of like. Isn't this charming?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

David, we both would give Goodman best supporting actor this year, Right?

[David Sims]

Question. Let me take a look. I do think it's one of the most incredible performances, but I'm always forgetting, you know, what could its competition be? So 1991, I looked at the field.

[Griffin Newman]

And I certainly would give him the win over the five nominees.

[David Sims]

Yeah, my five nominees, if you want them.

[Chris Weitz]

Do you want them? Yeah.

[David Sims]

For 1991, for best supporting Actor. Are you interested in this at all?

[Griffin Newman]

I would love this. Please, David, please.

[David Sims]

John Goodman, my winner for Barton Fink. Keanu Reeves for Speaking of Neon Demon, Keanu Reeves for my own Private Idaho performance. I adore Robert Patrick for Terminator 2, Larry Fishburne for Boyz n the Hood and Samuel L. Jackson for Jungle Fever. Those are my five nominees. Great five. 1991 is an incredible year for cinema because this film came out and the Silence of the Lambs came out and these are two totemic movies for me. There's a lot of other great movies.

[Griffin Newman]

I love where they'll get nominations in other categories, but you look at the things that didn't make the best picture cut and it's kind of bananas. Like you have Singleton nominated for director, but not picture. You have this nominated for supporting actor. Two craftwards. Kind of insane. It didn't even get a screenplay nom.

[Chris Weitz]

Inside Baseball. I always had a disappointment.

[David Sims]

Yeah, I think this movie was too niche, like for whatever the Oscars. I mean, I can look at the nominees.

[Chris Weitz]

This argues in favor of there being upwards of 10 best.

[Griffin Newman]

It would have made the 10.

[Chris Weitz]

I was at a discussion in the director's branch of the Academy in our sort of conference room in which I.

[David Sims]

Might slot Barton Fink over Grand Canyon or Bugsy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I'll just.

[David Sims]

I mean, no offense to those movies. A huge offense to this movie.

[Chris Weitz]

No, you're right. I think.

[David Sims]

Oh, you were in a discussion.

[Chris Weitz]

Sorry, we were discuss. We were discussing whether to expand the. The director's nomination thing for Oscar.

[Griffin Newman]

For dga, yes.

[David Sims]

Oh, for dga.

[Griffin Newman]

Wait, for the dga or for the director category?

[Chris Weitz]

For the director category for the Oscars. I'm probably kicked out of the Academy now, but. And Steven Spielberg says, no, I don't think so. I don't even think there should be, you know, more than five pick nominees.

[David Sims]

But that battle has been lost.

[Griffin Newman]

But he wanted to roll.

[Chris Weitz]

And I said, as someone who has not won Best Picture, I'm in favor of there being as many as possible, which obviously shows a lot of balls on my part, like I should be.

[David Sims]

So Spielberg amused by your little bumo?

[Chris Weitz]

He's a. I was. I wasn't joking. I mean, I was trying to dress it up.

[David Sims]

Was he amused by your.

[Chris Weitz]

He didn't seem overly amused, but he didn't seem to want to sanction me either. He was very nice.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, also at the time, it was framed as like, the Oscars need to do this because they seem out of touch and things have trended too indie and they're ignoring blockbusters and maybe the 10 will make things a little more open. There's the Other thing, which is just like it's good for the fucking industry. In a time where it's harder and harder to get serious movies made, to let 10 movies brag about being best picture nominees, I think the 10 thing.

[David Sims]

Has been an unambiguous success.

[Griffin Newman]

I agree.

[David Sims]

And I think the minute they moved it to, you know, it's between 5 and 10 was less good. Putting it back at 10 has been better. There's rarely a true. Kind of like, ah, how the fuck did that get a nomination? You know, like, even the stuff I don't really like or whatever, I'm sort of like, yeah, I can see, you know, where this thing, support came from and all that. I think expanding director to 10 would kind of ruin that.

[Chris Weitz]

I do well, but there's a problem.

[David Sims]

And then of course everyone's going to start expanding everything to 10. Yeah, it could happen.

[Chris Weitz]

But. But in, in my branch, the, the problem was for the directors. Well, are there movies without directors? Like, are you saying that there's going to be somebody who's.

[Griffin Newman]

But that's always.

[David Sims]

That's how it goes.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

Because there are best picture nominees. Without a directing nomination, if you have.

[Griffin Newman]

10 and 10, it's still not going to line up most of the time. Like you're gonna have the weird, like.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, that would be especially. Yeah.

[David Sims]

The true fix that is, I'm weirded out that the Oscars have never done it is that a director should get a nomination for best picture no matter what.

[Griffin Newman]

They should be.

[David Sims]

They should be included 100% nominees.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Like, it's so obvious and it's like, I don't know why the producers insist on, like, I mean, I don't know what that discussion has ever been.

[Griffin Newman]

But like, take it up with Yellowstone Bloom.

[David Sims]

Like nominate the producers too, but tack on the director. That's what they do for documentaries. That's what they do for, you know, like the other feature film categories. So that's my take.

[Chris Weitz]

The thing about, okay, the Academy and the problem. The problem with independent films, you know, kind of dominating nomination and the Academy thinking like, oh, we're not going to be relevant if like the number one box office film isn't nominated. Blah, blah. Okay. We are in a country in which there is no public funding for film. Right. And this is the big thing which Barton Fink has to deal with as well.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

And that why it's different in France where the government will considers film an actual art form that deserves support. Support most other countries. And here it is like that.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

So here we are in this kind of capitalist setup. And I actually kind of realized, like, I sort of can't direct studio films anymore because it is impossible to skin the cat. So that. I mean, this is unashamedly. It is making movies for money. Right, I get it. But then there's art. Sort of is inherently crowded out. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah. It's tough. I mean, I saw Seth Rogen was on Stern talking about the studio, a show that I am, unsurprisingly loving that feels like it was made for me. And when people had described it to me, like, a year ago when it was being made, I was like, holy shit, I can't believe they're giving him the money to make that. That sounds so scathing. I will find this cathartic to watch. Assuming it was gonna be as acidic as the Player, which is clearly a big influence on that show, down to it sharing a character name. Right. And my surprise in watching the show is that it's, like, trying to hold the things that are great and the things that are terrible about the industry simultaneously and very close together.

[David Sims]

It's quite a loving show.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Like, and it does more, I would say, nibble at the hand that feeds that, like, out then. Right. Outright chomp. Like, it's about. It's sort of about how people in that industry want to make good movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, he's. The character's kind of a Barton Fink figure who's like, I've done it. I beat the system. I've somehow become a very young studio head, and what I'm gonna do is somehow sneak important movies back in.

[David Sims]

And he.

[Griffin Newman]

This guy thinks he can be Robert Evans.

[Chris Weitz]

Original sin, right?

[Griffin Newman]

And, like, it represents his quest as good. Like, this is coming from the right place. And yet you just watch this guy fuck it up, and you're like, dude, this is. Was never gonna work. And he was giving this interview on Stern, and he said, like, the thing that's great about the industry is there will be one movie that changes everything forever in many ways. You basically get, like, one of these movies a year at least, where you go, like, Barbie changed everything forever.

[Chris Weitz]

Right?

[David Sims]

At least for a long time. That's now what people are chasing change upon change.

[Chris Weitz]

What was it this year, though? What would you say? Was it Anora? I mean, I.

[David Sims]

You mean last year?

[Chris Weitz]

I mean, last year.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, here's the thing.

[David Sims]

You could.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, a month ago, I would have said, like, Minecraft is the movie that's, like, changed everything. And now Sinners has already replaced it. And by the time this episode comes out, but you're like, Sinners is a movie that is going to change the way people have discussions.

[David Sims]

Sinners is the one changing things and not a Minecraft you don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

The point is these things can happen.

[David Sims]

Multiple things can happen.

[Griffin Newman]

And he's the thing he said that I thought was really profound is that like. Like, it's great timing for David as I'm getting to the big.

[Chris Weitz]

Just leave the door open.

[Griffin Newman]

It takes this insane kind of hubris to think, like, I can do it. I can beat the system. I can sneak the thing through and make it work and be lauded as a genius and change things culturally for the better.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And that's so insane and hubristic to think. And yet people do it. They do it all the time. And if you're not chasing that kind of glory of, like, kind of slipping one past people.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And somehow, like, changing the landscape for the better, then why even bother trying?

[Chris Weitz]

I think there are some filmmakers who have the wind at their back, who are stubborn enough, who are talented enough to, like, you know, actually sort of. Sort of do that in any given period. I think they're like five filmmakers who can work within the studio system and, you know, they are going to be able to have a really good shot at getting. Getting what they want done.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

You know, Scorsese, I like still Christopher Nolan, you know, there's a few.

[Griffin Newman]

But people. People lose it all the time. People win it back. People have it for a moment. I mean, it's like it's the whole fucking framing of this show.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

That, like, it's not always a lifetime status. And also sometimes the movies that change everything aren't good. You know, they're not net positive. But they do break a certain line of thinking in the way that, like, Barbie, you're like, Barbie is a triumph. And it has felt like the two years you're watching, with every deadline announcement, all of the executives take all of the wrong lessons from it.

[Chris Weitz]

People are trying to get that right Barbie feeling.

[Griffin Newman]

And Barton Fink is right. This guy who, like, does not want to work in the movies is almost disgusted when it's proposed to him. They have to sort of, like, launder the pitch in this sort of credibility of, like, you know, this is like what all the other serious novelists and playwrights do. There's nothing, like, loathsome about this. And he's justifying it as like, this will help me build the theater of the people. Is that contempt with which he comes to the thing combined with his Arrogance of I'm such a good writer, I should be able to crack this and do it better than the swill that they're settling for.

[David Sims]

Right. And of course, it's 1941. Movies are not exactly new, but it is a younger industry.

[Griffin Newman]

But the industry has.

[David Sims]

It's a nascent art form.

[Griffin Newman]

The industry is formed. It's settled into a. Cinema is art.

[David Sims]

Yes. Obviously it's not like nobody talked about cinema as art before the 60s or whatever, but I do think it's the 60s is when people or the late 50s start to form proper sort of theories and academic like sort of notions of what film is about.

[Griffin Newman]

Film analysis as we know it today.

[David Sims]

So yeah, the 40s, it was still kind of like, yeah, well this is, you know, this ain't the theater. This is swill for, you know, the working man.

[Chris Weitz]

Right. The possibilities. It's the studio system. So you're signing up to a system in going to be assigned pictures.

[David Sims]

Yeah. They're on contract for one studio and. Right. You do what they want.

[Chris Weitz]

I mean, it's interesting because Barton, so his agent says, you know, this is going to be great and everything, but. But Barton Fink is kind of. He doesn't really appear with any seemingly any kind of energy to. To want to do this. He's just kind of spaced out through throughout. A lot of the.

[Griffin Newman]

This entire movie seem appealing to him and he doesn't even seem excited by the idea of what he could leverage the success into, really.

[David Sims]

He is in a fugue for pretty much most of the movie. Like a weird kind of dreamy. The movie exists in a dreamy state. The latter half of this movie, you know, could be called essentially a dream. Like, it's not like this is a movie where someone wakes up being like, wow, that was crazy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But. And you're. He always feels like. Like he's passive in a scene.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

You know, like even though he's the center of the scene.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. Which is like so not Sid Field.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[Chris Weitz]

Three act structure kind of thing.

[David Sims]

This is such a watchable movie for a mov. Where not much happens and like, you know, it's. Much of its plot is inexplicable or like much of what's going on is sort of like, it's like not. That's what the Cohens are so good at. Like, it's kind of a perfect screenplay. Even though you would never. You'd be bananas to teach this screenplay as an example of anything to, you know, structure your movie as like, it's so watchable. And like, every scene is kind of. You're kind of like leaning forward, like, what's this? Now?

[Griffin Newman]

I went to McNally Jackson the other day and I saw that they had one copy of this, which is Ethan and Joel Cohen collected screenplays 1. So it's blood simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink. It does not seem like they maybe ever published Volume two or on that. This is just the same one that. I mean, at least a compilation.

[Chris Weitz]

I hate when I. I love that Faber and Favorite publishes these things, but I hate that they're not in this. In the format of a screenplay. That is to say, it's not a page per minute, which is like the general guide to, like, when you're gonna be.

[Griffin Newman]

They reformat it.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

I'd be really interested in what the. What. What the descriptions are in Barton Fay.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the thing. And I had heard this from people and I guess I've read excerpts when people post like a page or two of some of their scripts. But I saw this and I was like, I want to have this so I can fucking leaf through this. Especially with these first four movies, they are so sparse. They really are just like the absolute least amount of information that needs to be conveyed to the reader.

[Chris Weitz]

Interesting. So, like. Because I was thinking the reason it's watchable to me, even when, like, it's kind of a punishing film in the way that this film I think kind of is. Is a little bit. You never know when some funny shit is going to happen, so you're sort of always on your toes or some.

[David Sims]

Scary shit, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

And. And. Or there's going to be a great sight gag, you know. And I think that they're really clever, you know, in that way. Like, they will resort to comedy in order to like, sort of keep the artistic kind of arc of things going. Going.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Parton thing. I'm opening the dossier because, you know, we should look at it. Famous story of its genesis that like a lot of con because. Because the Cohen brothers are discussed. But also just because they do. They do set their legend quite firmly, I feel like, with little anecdotes.

[Griffin Newman]

Because a lot of con masterpieces come while making other plans.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

They're trying to script Miller's Crossing, which is their third film, the film they made before this. And they get admitted impass because that's like a complex film of. About rival gangster, you know, mobs. And there's a lot of movie they.

[Griffin Newman]

Had made up until that point.

[David Sims]

Right. And I think they Find it a little boring. They say, like they were not blocked exactly, but their rhythm was sort of up and they weren't having fun.

[Griffin Newman]

That's a movie more concerned with mechanics, where even if you're not like stuck in writer's block doing math. And I think these guys, they talk so much about that. Like when they have an idea for a movie, they talk back and forth about it and work it out in their head.

[David Sims]

Heads.

[Griffin Newman]

And then once they start writing, they write pretty quickly. And I assume it must have been really frustrating for them for the first time to be like stopping going to.

[David Sims]

Make sense because he knows that guy.

[Chris Weitz]

So you have to go to the index cards.

[David Sims]

So they get out of their problems with that story by thinking about another one. They take a vacation. And the vacation is. Barton Fink has two primary points of origin. One, they wanted to work with John Turturro, who is in Miller's Crossing.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

But obviously they haven't made that yet.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

But he's a guy know him. He's obviously somewhat upand cominging. He's worked with Spike Lee and stuff. But they also love this idea of the hotel more for before Hollywood, they have the hotel. Like when they neglected Hotel Blood Simple.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. They said they saw the creepy hotel they'd ever seen in Austin and they.

[David Sims]

Were kind of like, it's like Hell Motel Hell. What if you could never leave?

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

They also had worked with John Goodman on Raising Arizona.

[Griffin Newman]

More like John Grman.

[David Sims]

It's very, very true. More like John the Bestman. And come on, that was fun.

[Chris Weitz]

We have made a really 10 comedy points. Wait, I'm in my own.

[David Sims]

And they certainly write this role for him as well.

[Griffin Newman]

The most fascinating thing, I mean, it speaks to the other day we were singing the praises of John Goodman. Things have gone well in Blank check scheduling in 2025. And that we have a lot of Goodman to discuss. True that we had always that we had our live show and now we have a lot of Goodman in the Cohen series. And you were talking about how he is an actual undersung genius in his execution of characters.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh, God. I think I feel like I talked about this on the podcast before, but like that moment in the Flintstones trailer where his foot is. He's doing the pestle torn.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, sure.

[Chris Weitz]

It's so upsetting. Yeah, sorry, I just had to talk about that for a second.

[Griffin Newman]

He's a genius. Always.

[David Sims]

I'm trying to think of Goodmans we've discussed before. Obviously we've done using Arizona at this point.

[Griffin Newman]

Flight Princess and the Frog. Sure, sure.

[David Sims]

I mean, we must acknowledge Speed Racer, of course.

[Griffin Newman]

Speed Racer. He is Pop's racer, and he's wonderful in that.

[David Sims]

Is that it?

[Griffin Newman]

Possibly. And we're about to double that if that's the whole.

[David Sims]

We're going to obviously do a bunch more. But is there. Because he's been in so many movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Something else I'm forgetting.

[David Sims]

Does there have to.

[Griffin Newman]

Feels like it.

[David Sims]

Not sure that there is. No. No.

[Griffin Newman]

Know at this point, they have worked with him, and he has now been on Roseanne. Right. And he is starting to be accepted as one of America's most lovable people.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And they like John Goodman.

[David Sims]

They like that. But then they like his more menacing side.

[Griffin Newman]

What I love is that they were like, oh, you know, it'd be fun. Is to weaponize that and use how much the public is just naturally endeared to John Goodman and pull the rug out from under them. And they said the second they started filming, they were like, this guy is so proficient and nuanced and thorough in his work that he's finding ways to color in the menace even in the earliest scenes that we thought of this as a very, like, one to one. He starts out sweet and adorable, and then it's a surprise. This guy turns out evil, but instead, he's playing this weird balance of, like, unease and pity and arrogance and scariness and, like, pathetic. It's. It's. And. And Turturro, in the same way, was like, guys, I like the way you wrote this character. I understand you've made him sort of an annoying pill. Will you trust me to try to put a little more humanity into him? I would like to try to put a little more realistic feeling into this guy. So he's not just kind of a setup for a punchline.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And he says that they gave him a degree of ownership, of letting him deepen it, not by, like, changing the text, but changing the characterization a little bit.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Wrote the script in three weeks, as they say. They tend to spill out of it. So the film was. The film was ready. The script was ready. And so then when they go back to Miller's Crossing and then make Miller's Crossing, when it's like, okay, what do you want to do next? They were like, here's Barton Fink. It's ready. It's done wherever we want to do it.

[Griffin Newman]

Same financiers and everything.

[David Sims]

They decide to set it in Hollywood's golden age. But obviously, as you pointed out, they are not basing this on their own experiences, which had largely been pleasant. Like their. Their movies are produced by Circle Films, this indie company. You know, their first few movies. So like, which is basically they'll be like, hey, here's this weird script. And Circle Films would be like, great. We can make. Give you this budget. And they'll be like, great, well, we'll use that to make the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

And their trajectory up until this point was just.

[Chris Weitz]

Boop.

[Griffin Newman]

It just was straight up. Like these guys are with each film proving that they're the real deal. I think you're kind of right that my framing was a little glib in that it really is Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink coming out within a year of each other. That is like a combined guarantor. After, I think people thinking that Raising Arizona was a little silly and being like, okay, so these guys are really good stylists, but do they have anything to say? Is this all like genre riff Lark stuff? And the Miller Crossing and Spartan were seen as like, oh, these guys have thoughts.

[Chris Weitz]

But also, yeah, well, and. And since when did that mean that you get to make a big movie?

[Griffin Newman]

That's crazy. Like, that's the thing that doesn't happen anymore is like two movies that are so good that even though they weren't hits, the industry is like, fuck, I guess we gotta see what these guys did with a bigger budget.

[David Sims]

So, right.

[Chris Weitz]

The.

[David Sims]

The 1941 setting is most important to them. They want it to be right as the war is about to begin. So then that informs the Hollywood thing, if that makes sense. They wanted this kind of the verge of madness and this idea of during that time when like suddenly this. The country empties out of normal people, like in terms of like sort of fit, you know, like 30, 20 to 30 something men. Like now it's like the country has a strange emptiness to it classically, as the Cohen always say, like, ah, we didn't do any research or anything like that. They always say stuff like that. And like when they're adapting a book, they're like, yeah, we read the book you. And you're just sort of like, I just don't know whether or not I should take them seriously, you know.

[Griffin Newman]

What's the other part of it too that JJ dug up is that they were like, no, we didn't really do any research for it. We had over the previous 10 years read these 20 books.

[David Sims]

That's the thing. I guess they had have books in their bloodstream already. There's a book called City of Nets, which is about German expatriates in LA in the 40s. They have the book called Faulkner in Hollywood that's about William Faulkner's experience working as a screenwriter where he never drank taxes.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like they are just constantly digesting things and retaining it. And it feels like anytime they develop a new project, they're like, oh, yeah, we have this filed away in our brain, all this accidental research we were doing.

[David Sims]

And then, yes, there's this very superficial sort of resemblance to Clifford Odettes, who is one of the great, like, playwrights of the sort of red 30s, you know, like, you know, this great left wing playwright who then goes to Hollywood and is not like Barton Fink in that he has success and also drinks himself like crazy. But the character's look is modeled on George S. Kaufman. I was gonna say the Marx Brothers movies and stuff who look like that.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. People were like, oh, they're taking Odets and exaggerating it. And they're like, no, we're just like doing Kaufman directly.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

And they, you know, they're like, barton's a shit. But we do love our characters, which I think is just generally always true of the Cohens. Like, they love their characters even when their characters are in.

[Griffin Newman]

I think now, like, going back to your earlier point, I think they've basically been accepted as undeniable. Now. It is funny to read the criticism of the first 15 years of their work where so many critics were kind of folding their arms and being like, not so fast. This sort of like, we shouldn't be so quick to like, anoint a potential false God in treating these guys as serious filmmakers. And there were a couple different, like, strikes that would be thrown against them. And one of them was, they're so condescending. You see this repeated. They just have such contempt for all their characters. Their movies are just mocking all these people all the time. Time isn't this exhausting.

[Chris Weitz]

It can seem glib and condescending. But I actually, I do think they love their character. I think they take great pleasure in them. Right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. I think that's always been a misread on their work.

[David Sims]

It's the same thing with Mike Lee. It's the same thing. People really struggle with people who write and create direct in quite unsympathetic characters. But they're often sort of misreading it for they're making fun or they're, you know, whatever. Cassie.

[Griffin Newman]

They also love making movies about idiots. But I think their magic is that they, they. They dramatize idiots with compassion. Absolutely. While also understanding what's fun about having a Stupid character driving your story.

[David Sims]

Now Blood Simple's JJ's pointing this out and he's right. Like, Blood simple is a neo noir film. Very obvious. Raising Arizona is a cartoon comedy film. Like, it's a little, like, more outside of genre. Like, in terms of, like, you're like, wow, I haven't seen something like this in a while. But it's a cartoon movie, right?

[Griffin Newman]

It's Chuck Jones chase picture, basically.

[David Sims]

Miller's Crossing is a gangster movie. Like, you know, like. Like with. With all the sort of trappings and fittings and all that. Barton Fink. I do not know how to describe this movie to anybody. Like, it's not really a horror movie, but it's got sort of a horror stuff to it. It's not really a comedy. It's like a very black sort of strange comedy.

[Griffin Newman]

They always said their single biggest inspiration was the, like, Polanski one person going.

[David Sims]

Crazy, obviously, like, cul de sac and repulsion. Like, that makes sense.

[Griffin Newman]

Beyond the sort of haunted hotel thing you were talking about, there are few things I am more just kind of innately in the bag for than person in some sort of weird state of isolation, slowly losing their minds. It is something I relate to way too hard. And it just almost always works for me as a setup for a film.

[David Sims]

And then so people raise their hands and are like, the movie reminds me of Kafka, right? Very, very obviously. And they're like, huh. I mean, I guess we read Kafka in college, but, like, weren't thinking about him.

[Griffin Newman]

Doesn't just feel like they're sponges and they retain everything that, like, they have a fucking library in their brains. I also love that they. They. Whenever they talk about books they've read, it sounds like they're reading in tandem. They always talk about, like, you know, we were just reading no country, and then at some point went like, maybe this would make a good movie. And I'm like, so how's this breaking down?

[Chris Weitz]

Are the two of you sit together.

[David Sims]

Sleeping in a bed, holding hands?

[Griffin Newman]

Right? Are you holding hands? Do you have parallel books? Are you like Bert and er.

[David Sims]

They get their own books. Brothers get their own copies. Obviously, me, John Mahoney is cast because he looks so much like William Faulkner, it's crazy. They don't have to do much to make him look like Faulkner. Faulkner was someone who occasionally enjoyed a drink. I cannot deny this. He had more success.

[Griffin Newman]

Not this level. He was not self.

[David Sims]

Probably not. But, like, they're just adjusting the dials, obviously, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Mahoney is one of one of the great secret Brits.

[David Sims]

Unbelievable.

[Griffin Newman]

But no one knows he's British because he strained the accent out of him.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

He's kind of fake British. Right. Because he was British. But then he came to America as a like 18 year old because his mother, I think, was a war bride and. Right. And that was enough to kind of like.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

To move him and.

[Griffin Newman]

And of course, we've lost him. But he would always say, like, I. I trained it on my system. And yet when I hear myself perform, I still feel like I hear the inflections and drives me crazy.

[David Sims]

Michael Lerner, to me obviously looks like Louis V. Mayer, but it's kind of based on, I feel like a lot of Jack Horner, like a lot of those.

[Griffin Newman]

And had already played both Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer and other projects.

[David Sims]

Jack Warner and Harry Con, two different studio guys in TV movies. I mean, he's a mashup. He is. But I mean, Michael Lerner is just out. He's outrageously good in this movie. He gets its only Oscar nomination, which is only acting nomination, which is kind of crazy. Not that he's bad, but it's just crazy that that was the one.

[Griffin Newman]

Also, if you look at the precursors that year, it felt a little out of left field.

[David Sims]

He gets Lavka only like, that was the one. Like the Los Angeles critics gave him best supporting Actor and that was.

[Griffin Newman]

The spread is really weird because, like, Goodman gets a supporting Globe nomination. It gets no other nominations from the Globes. Right. I think it does get a Writer's Guild nomination.

[David Sims]

I can.

[Chris Weitz]

Look, this is interesting that, you know that the Oscar. Because I was talking earlier about Mommy Dearest. Right. And how that. That movie, which savaged, you know, Hollywood legend and Hollywood in general, turned its back on Faye Dunaway, you know.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, right. It was. And then had reclaimed decades later.

[Chris Weitz]

But in this case, no offense, bad. It's not a good movie. Right.

[David Sims]

It's very watchable and insane. But it's not like you're like, ah, a gem. You're like, wow, I can't believe you're right.

[Griffin Newman]

Not only do people hate it, but they were sort of like, Faye Dunaway, how dare you attack your own.

[Chris Weitz]

You are toxic. Right, but. And, but, but with Barton Fink, you know, the guy who plays the, like, monster. I mean, maybe because he's a fun character as well. Or maybe it's like saying, well, we better own the. I'm trying to think of what the Oscar voter is thinking in that point. They're not saying, you son of a bitch. How could you despoil the memory?

[David Sims]

It's funny that they're like, yeah, yeah, great job playing an evil studio exec. But he is also just a guy learner, where they're probably also just kind of like, you know what? You're never bad and every scene you're in in that movie is funny. And his final scene is hysterical where he's in the fake military outfit.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure. But in terms of Goodman being a rising star and America's favorite and what seems like an obvious Oscar play, and yet I think it speaks to people. Not totally. I think maybe that's. Let me say this. It speaks to maybe the most successful people in Hollywood, I. E. The people who are members of the Academy, especially at this point in time, where it's a more selective group being less receptive to this movie.

[David Sims]

You know, he made one other movie that year in 1991, Goodman. Yeah. Do you know what it was King Ralph.

[Chris Weitz]

Ralph. Hell, yeah.

[David Sims]

So was King Ralph his.

[Chris Weitz]

Norman.

[David Sims]

We were thinking of giving you an Oscar. Nominate that King Ralph movie. No, I. I don't.

[Griffin Newman]

I think they.

[Chris Weitz]

Maybe it split the vote, you know.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, that's why I think this movie, even if they didn't find it offensive, probably made successful Hollywood people a little uncomfortable.

[David Sims]

Yeah, I would say. I think Goodman didn't get a nomination because he's creepy and scary.

[Griffin Newman]

And I think Michael Lerner is like, not so good. But there's also just an aspect of, like, it's a skill piece, performance. He's got three monologues where he talks nonstop for eight minutes.

[David Sims]

I mean, it's.

[Griffin Newman]

You watch like undeniably what this guy just did is. Is like complicated and difficult to achieve on a technical level. And the Cohen's are so deliberate in their coverage that you're watching him do it with minimal cuts. Yeah, I think it was just kind of like, well, yeah, obviously, look at that guy. He's acting.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

Film cost $10 million to make, was shot for 45 days, and they filmed it at a hotel. Dennis Gassner, you know, the great Dennis Gassner.

[Chris Weitz]

I love Dennis Gassner.

[David Sims]

Have you worked with Dennis Gastner?

[Chris Weitz]

I've worked with Dennis Gastner on. On the Golden Compass. He was nominated for. For the Oscar for that.

[David Sims]

A tier, you know, production designer, art direction and costume.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

He's a member of my camp at Burning Man. I have to say, Shout out to. As Galactica.

[David Sims]

Is he really?

[Chris Weitz]

He is. I invited him to. I invited him to join my camp at Burning Man. Go on. Sorry. Sorry.

[David Sims]

No, no, please shout out.

[Griffin Newman]

And his camp is all like peeling wall paper a little bit mosquito.

[David Sims]

So they're right. They find this weird art deco place that's falling apart. They use a lot of green and yellow, as we sort of mentioned in the color of the movie, to suggest putrefaction, you know, like just kind of like everything.

[Griffin Newman]

Not to be hyperbolic, but it is just one of the most viscerally rendered and realized locations in the history of movies.

[David Sims]

It is incredible. Obviously Barry Sonnenfeld has heard the snapshot snap of the Adams family.

[Griffin Newman]

His fingers are running very quickly along the floor attached to nothing but the rest of a hand.

[David Sims]

So they lose their iconic director of photography and they turn to Roger Deakins who obviously then works for them for, you know, 30 years, basically.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Who I don't think at that point was much of a major name had done.

[Griffin Newman]

Sid and Nancy was the biggest crossover.

[David Sims]

Right. I mean another not so secret Brit. And. And yeah, I mean his biggest credit before then is either Sid and Nancy or if you want a bigger budget thing like Air America, but not at.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

That was kind of his only studio movie.

[David Sims]

Right. And they liked his work on a movie called Stormy Monday. Obviously they'd also seen Sid and Nancy.

[Chris Weitz]

Stormy Monday, Yes. I actually saw that movie in the theaters.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you remember how it looked?

[Chris Weitz]

It looked fantastic, actually. I love that Roger Dickens shot Air America because then in every great cinematographer's resume there are movies where you're like, what?

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[Chris Weitz]

You know, it's like, what's the Vanilla Ice movie that was shot by Janusz Kaminsky or something like that.

[Griffin Newman]

Cool as ice. Well, it's also just because basically from Barton Fink on, there is no movie you would be surprised to hear was shot by Roger Deakins. Right. Like Air America is maybe the last time you're like, huh?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, right.

[David Sims]

No, I'm with you on that.

[Griffin Newman]

Every movie on from that point, he is. What are some women? Ethereal voice in the film.

[David Sims]

Yeah, I'm. You know what? He shot the Siege. That's surprising for me to learn Ed Zwick's the Siege. He did a lot of Ed Zwick movies though. He did Courage Under Fire. Yeah. I don't know, man mostly becomes like, yeah, he shoots, you know, the kind of movies you think he'd shoot.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

The shot of the dream stuck in the Mendis verse. He gets out of there. The only shot he had trouble with was the plug hole shot that you referenced, which Joel and Ethan say he made fun of them for. And then every time still makes Fun to this day. Exactly. They're like, okay, so here's something we want to do with this weird shot. He's like, as long as you're not making me track down a plug hole.

[Griffin Newman]

For three decades, it better not be a plug hole shot. Like, that's still.

[Chris Weitz]

I feel like the boys were a little on the nail there. Going down the drain.

[David Sims]

It's early in their career you still want to try stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

It's just like the grossest version of that joke.

[David Sims]

So let's talk about the plot of barton fink. It's 1941. We begin with Barton having great success on the Broadway stay or off, whatever. Like, it's Broadway.

[Griffin Newman]

Standing at the wings, making picture for.

[David Sims]

Yes, you know, I'm sorry, A play for the people.

[Griffin Newman]

He just looks so fucking weasel.

[David Sims]

Self satisfied.

[Griffin Newman]

He's like, right.

[Chris Weitz]

The expression on his face, which he maintains for the entire movie, is the most unflattering, kind of gormless, you know.

[Griffin Newman]

This pathetic, like, focus, this pathetic concentration.

[David Sims]

There are few guys who would have that, like, sort of, you know, whatever risk. Like, you know, John is so happy to play that. Miller's Crossing is like that. Quiz show is like that. Where in Quiz show most actors would be like, I want to make him a little more like sort of straightforwardly likable Tutorial is like, no, no, no, I can do this. Like, I could be the most annoying guy in the world.

[Griffin Newman]

Show is a movie where the premise is a real true life story that a network.

[David Sims]

It's just like, he's so annoying.

[Griffin Newman]

This guy's so annoying. We have to figure out a way to get him off. This entire scandal is a byproduct of, like, people hate watching this guy on tv.

[David Sims]

So funny. He's so, so good in this movie.

[Griffin Newman]

He's so good at. Yeah, that's kind of like gormless shit. But you're just right. It's amazing how much he conveys wordlessly in these first couple of shots of just like, this guy's sort of like self obsession with his own work. His sort of like absolute on edge. None of this actually makes him happy. Even when it's going well.

[Chris Weitz]

That's right. He doesn't do the thing where you see him subtly mouthing the lines. Right. Which you almost have a screen memory.

[David Sims]

He does do at the start of the. Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

He's doing it very faintly when it goes fresh fish. Like, that's. Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. But he's doing it in a way where it feels like he's on edge. Worried they're about to fuck it up.

[Chris Weitz]

Right?

[Griffin Newman]

You know, like, I've seen directors do it where it's really charming because it feels like. Like they're living in the movie, right? It's so deeply in them, they're not even aware they're doing that. And he's doing this, like, in this very clenched way.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

So pretty. Pretty much right away, we're at Capital Pictures, right? Like, it's like he does the play and then he's meeting with Michael Lerner. Michael. And there's the great Michael Lerner being.

[Griffin Newman]

Wined and dined by these, like, rich patrons of the arts, who. He's immediately like, you don't get it. I'm, like, trying to do a service for the people. The people's theater. It's a movement. Like, this guy just can't even accept a fucking compliment.

[Chris Weitz]

He's a prick.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

He gets talked into it. Yeah. He gets talked into this contract by his agent, I presume. It's his agent.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Obviously. It's so much more money, I guess, was what lured everyone west, right? It's like, you're not gonna actually make any money writing plays on Broadway, even if they're sort of well received.

[Griffin Newman]

No. And it was like, for the first time, right. The Hollywood machine has been built up properly. The sound picture is an established. People want language in their movies.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

The transition of this era of, like, if you are successful, if you are a respected novelist or playwright, that's nice and all, but what you really do is you leverage that to go out to Hollywood to make some money to keep doing your own shit.

[David Sims]

Exactly. You have the money to keep doing your own shit there. Right? The actual dissolve is. Or fade is to the beach, the rock, the waves up against the rock, and then to the hotel. This recurring motif of the beach of, like, what does it mean? You guys can, you know, throw your theories in.

[Chris Weitz]

That's another very lynchy thing about this movie to me.

[David Sims]

Or maybe from Purgatory. Yes, go ahead.

[Chris Weitz]

Maybe it's the other way around. Because it does seem like that's a very Lynchy shot, Right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

And, like, it feels like it's. Sorry to interrupt. It's like an conversation with lynch in some way.

[David Sims]

Who is.

[Chris Weitz]

Who is first to certain kind of textures and feels. Because. Because the hotel is very, very Lynchian, I think.

[David Sims]

Yes. I mean, the. Anything with Chet. A tiny role for Steve Buscemi where he's the bellhop. I love that. Like, there is a wall of keys behind him. Like, it's like, you know, 10 stories high with so many keys in it, where you're like, are there other. You never see anyone else there except for Goodman, Right?

[Griffin Newman]

Correct.

[David Sims]

Like, and that's my favorite thing about any haunted hotel. Like, the implications. Like, yeah, there's other people here. You just don't see them. But there's shoes outside doors.

[Chris Weitz]

So it's showing that there are people, but you never see.

[Griffin Newman]

Correct. Which is a really smart choice on their part, which is like, a really clean visual language to let you know these other rooms are occupied.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh, by the way, you're seeing the.

[Griffin Newman]

Shoes, you're not ever seeing anyone else's face.

[Chris Weitz]

$2,000 in 1941 is the equivalent of $41,510. So that's per week. Yeah, that's per week. So he's. He's getting paid shit, tons.

[Griffin Newman]

Can we unpack this for a second?

[David Sims]

That is bananas.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And it's like, but what's the implication that he'll be doing this for a month, for a year?

[Griffin Newman]

I want to pack this because I feel like this goes into a point you started to set up a little while ago, right? The uniqueness of America not having any investment in funding its own arts. Right. Like an investment in cultural enrichment. I was talking to a friend of the podcast, Sam Clements, who works for the Picture House chain and the un the uk, and we were talking about the difference in financing and funding and films and how things feel weird in the UK and the things like the film lottery have started getting gutted, and it's harder to get the things made. And I was like, I think when I talk to my friends working in the American film industry, we're so envious of there being any program like that. And he was like, isn't the Sundance Lab kind of like that? And I'm like, the Sundance Lab is that having to be created, right?

[David Sims]

It's like a prize you win, right?

[Griffin Newman]

As like, being created by not a government, but a successful artist, being like, this kind of thing should exist. Leveraging his entire career to make, like.

[Chris Weitz]

Charities, filling the gap.

[Griffin Newman]

And then even then, I was like, here's what it is. It's like, you submit, you get accepted, you get this beautiful sort of like, sojourn. Staying with other artists, working with them, having actors at your disposal to workshop the scene scenes, getting all these mentors, and then you do a presentation, and at the end of it, they're like, well, we hope that one of the people who saw this presentation wants to give you money to make this movie. They do not help you make the film, and then the hope is if you find money for it, you maybe stand a better chance of getting into the Sundance Festival, which would maybe then lead to distribution. But all of it is still like you're having to piece it together so thoroughly. Right. And in this country, we. We just decided that we don't give a shit about this. But the way the movie industry used to be run, the studio system, which was dissolved for a number of reasons and it was seen as a bit of a victory that now the power has gone back to the artists. They control their own careers. I think long term. I've been thinking about this a lot. I think was maybe a fatal mistake that has fucked the industry forever in terms of eradicating the middle class artist.

[David Sims]

Yeah, well, wait a second. I don't know how I feel about any of that, but. Okay, all right.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, the studio system was largely eradicated because the biggest stars didn't like the lack of freedom. And the biggest directors, the biggest writers, the people who had some level of clout, didn't have a time.

[David Sims]

There was not much tourism or anything really. The studio directed all art.

[Griffin Newman]

They were.

[David Sims]

And they controlled the theaters.

[Griffin Newman]

They did not feel like they had agency and the other.

[David Sims]

Didn't have agency. They literally didn't.

[Griffin Newman]

Correct, Correct. Correct.

[David Sims]

Not a feeling thing.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

Correct. They were bound to do what the studio told them.

[Griffin Newman]

Correct. But there was a model that sort of made sense.

[David Sims]

Let me pack this.

[Chris Weitz]

We're moving.

[Griffin Newman]

We're not moving.

[Chris Weitz]

On this, a Bart Fin episode, there was steady employment.

[David Sims]

I don't think Barton about how this system was good. No. Let me unpack this. You have to let me finish my point.

[Griffin Newman]

You can't cut me off and then say you're wrong.

[David Sims]

Okay, finish your point. Finish your point.

[Griffin Newman]

There was this holistic system of like, we own the real estate, we own the machinery, we own the equipment. Right.

[David Sims]

It's called a monopoly.

[Chris Weitz]

But yes, go on there. You went to. To eat with all the other writers and directors, the mess hall, that kind of thing is.

[Griffin Newman]

But it was also like, they're sort of controlled costs because we own the means of production. Right. We own you. We control you. You're under our salary. Right. I mean, this is a little bit what Hail Caesar's about. It's a lot what Hail Caesar's about.

[David Sims]

Certainly much to discuss about this in Hail Caesar, which is more about the machinery of the studio.

[Griffin Newman]

And if you're a star or writer, director, who's like, proving yourself and you're like, why am I still like subject to the whims of these people owning me, you start to want to destroy this system. What ended up happening long term is basically everything collapsed. And now it's like Warner Brothers loans out their sound stages to other production companies which like becomes both a form of money laundering and a way of intensifying costs across everything. Same to their post production facilities. All these things. But also no one in this industry has any job security anymore. Right?

[Chris Weitz]

That's true.

[Griffin Newman]

There used to be this interest on the studios in exchange for them only owning you. Which was basically they'd go to someone like a Barton Fink and say we're gonna pay you $2,000, $20,000 a week and we have a reason to keep throwing work at you because we're paying for you.

[Chris Weitz]

Preston Sturgis was the highest salaried individual in America when he was at his height. And he did have a certain degree of control because once you're. Once you were compelling as a figure in and of itself. Right.

[David Sims]

But he's one of the only ones.

[Griffin Newman]

Who make himself a little more of a celebrity.

[David Sims]

Earliest writer directors and obviously most of these guys did not even get written like credit.

[Griffin Newman]

Right?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Like their names are not there be.

[Griffin Newman]

Fucking drama school showcases. And a guy would get up and do a model.

[David Sims]

Point of Mank. The great film Mank is. Is Mankiewicz being like I think I actually want credit on this movie. I think it's good.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And Wells being like that's not how this fucking works ever. I am. You know. And like. And Manx like I want it. Sorry. Like please. For the first time ever, I'll actually make that fight.

[Griffin Newman]

You'd have like a drama school showcase and someone would do a good monologue and Paramount would be like, like why don't we get that guy under contract? And now the impetus is on them to figure out how to make in 1010 movies. Cuz we're paying for him and so we just need to throw him at the wall and see what fits and.

[David Sims]

But then they could just cut you loose. They could look and you had no nothing to point to.

[Griffin Newman]

It was not a perfect system.

[David Sims]

No I system about. No we're not.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes we are.

[David Sims]

The problem remind you you don't work in this. Are not. No people should be able to like have agency in their careers.

[Griffin Newman]

What happens now is that people don't work.

[Chris Weitz]

It is. I would say the big problem is that it is really expensive. It is the most expensive art form in the world. And this is like, oh Christ. What? You know the Problem is that there are less studios.

[David Sims]

There used to be like, like there were the majors, the mid majors, and then there was, you know, what do you call it, Poverty Row and all that. There was so much competition. Movies were desired by the public.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

The reason there are less jobs now is movies are not desired by the public anymore. Now we can argue like, oh, they. No, they are and see how these movies do well. But it's like, no, they release most movies, people go to the theaters less. There's way more competition for thing that you watch. Back then there was nothing else you could watch. People lined the streets to go see movies. They would sit in movie theaters all day watching, you know, some good movies and a lot of garbage because it was like, what else are you going to do?

[Griffin Newman]

Well, they also, they gutted their own business model in a way that reduced the value of any single project into a product that was part of a library to boast.

[David Sims]

They did that. But like, it's also, television got invented and video games got invented and phones got, you know, things could.

[Griffin Newman]

There was a. Of fewer people controlling a greater majority of jobs. That has to do with a lot of removal of stigma of what is beneath you or above you. And just certain people grinding so hard and like just being like, I'll just do everything thing. When people have a hot streak, they just like run the fucking table and block other people out. I also.

[David Sims]

Right, but there's less demand.

[Griffin Newman]

But, but I think to this other point, it's like it is, it is so expensive to do this work. Right. In any sort of way. Especially the work to prove that you're worthy of being paid to do this work. It is a pay to play industry.

[David Sims]

Which is why there's another reason it's more expensive. People are paid fairly because of unions that were created after this.

[Griffin Newman]

But now studios like are doing anything they can to circumvent unions.

[David Sims]

But back then there were no un unions and people were treated like garbage and were paid poorly.

[Chris Weitz]

No, but I mean, as compared to like poetry or paintings. Yes, you get some paints.

[Griffin Newman]

The capital is like inherently different.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, it's really hard to do in exchange.

[Griffin Newman]

Really expensive for signing over your freedom to a studio. The other thing they would do was invest in your career and be like, we need to spend the money.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

To control your publicity and your fashion, your style and all this sort of stuff. Increasingly when you read like Sydney Sweeney complaining that she can't pay her mortgage and people are like, how is that possible? You're like, in order to be Sydney Sweeney, you have to pay, like 40 people out of pocket to do the things that the productions used to do for you.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And that's to maintain that particular.

[David Sims]

Say that she said that like, a few years ago. Well, I googled Sydney Sweeney Mortgage.

[Griffin Newman]

She recently.

[Chris Weitz]

What is her mortgage?

[David Sims]

Mom's mortgage. Hey, so Sydney Sweeney's doing all right now. I think she escaped.

[Chris Weitz]

That's nice.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[Chris Weitz]

But.

[David Sims]

Well, she didn't escape it, but she has more things going on.

[Griffin Newman]

But it is another thing that is depicted in Mank when he. Or when his. His nephew arrives. And you got this bullpen of like 40 writers who sit around all day and are just waiting for basically, like the lottery ticket to come and be like, you got to sign something. Do a pass on this.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Do a treatment on this, you know?

[David Sims]

But Mank is also about a man in that system who realizes that system is poison that is destroying America. America, yes. That he works for capitalist pigs who will, you know, make art that prevents people from having political thought. I think. I mean, it's not a movie that's like, you know, what Hollywood is working. You know, like, that's a movie about a guy that ends with him barfing on the floor.

[Griffin Newman]

I think we replaced one broken system with a different broken system, and the system right now functions less.

[David Sims]

What you are talking about is late capitalism, which is what we live in. And it is true of most industries now. And the industry I work into, media, where it's like, people come to me and they're like, how do I.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Climb this ladder? How do I. What's the path? And I'm like, there isn't one. Like, I mean, you can't do X and Y and you can hope for.

[Griffin Newman]

The best, but luck is, like, more than ever. And a humongous.

[David Sims]

It's who. You know, and it's that maybe it's, you know, oh, something opens up right. When you're lucky. Or maybe the, you know, sort of some stupid guy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And this is true movies, too, is like, maybe I'll, like, devote a bunch of money to something. And then after a while he's like, yeah, well, that money's gone and didn't work. So I give up. Like, yes. You know, you'll have little booms like that, which is sort of what, like, the tech companies are right now, which are good.

[Griffin Newman]

But I also.

[David Sims]

Yeah, but it's Apple being like, let's do it. And it's like, it doesn't hurt them to do it, but there may come a day where they're like yeah, when.

[Griffin Newman]

They lose interest, it's a nightmare. Right. But. But it's.

[Chris Weitz]

It will never happen.

[Griffin Newman]

Like.

[David Sims]

No, of course not.

[Griffin Newman]

Cinema being an emerging art form. Right. That America is able to sort of corner but right at the beginning and decide this is how these things are made. But from the get go we're deciding this is capital capitalist structure. This is machinery in America. That's what I'm saying.

[Chris Weitz]

Do you suppose that there will be a patriotic film fund? Right. Because it was announced that. Who's a Mel Gibson and yeah. I don't know, Kevin Sorbo and something were gonna ambassadors to.

[Griffin Newman]

But I don't think the government wants to do that. They like the idea of like people being able to set up something like angel studios and make money off of doing it.

[David Sims]

I think the only time America's ever been really interested in that that is like fdr.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, Right.

[David Sims]

Obviously every other country does it, but that's because forever or many other countries but them. It's also sort of like we are producing something that speaks to our country that makes it interesting for people around the world.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Like, and America doesn't need to do that because they, you know, the American brand is loud.

[Griffin Newman]

But also a depressing majority of our population would have absolute ire and disgust at the idea of their tax going to art.

[David Sims]

Which of course has happens in Britain where they're like I can't believe my tax dollars paid for that crappy movie garbage. Which break people can come on Ben, swing in. I kind of want to see the patriotic movie. Like just like could it be called the patriotic movie? Sure. Like T.P. another patriotic movie.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm going to say it. That'd be the sequel. I'm in favor of seeing it as long as Trump writes and directs it himself.

[Chris Weitz]

Well that's what I'm saying.

[Griffin Newman]

Cuz I love the idea.

[David Sims]

So busy. Let's have him write it.

[Griffin Newman]

Let's.

[David Sims]

He doesn't need to direct.

[Griffin Newman]

I. I think it'd be good if we got him out of the office for a little bit. Got him all a set, got him really hyper fixated on a project.

[David Sims]

But I love the idea. I mean we are in a culture war, so it would be. Apparently we're being so it's like first there was the war on terrorism and now there's the war on culture or whatever. Right.

[Chris Weitz]

But there's.

[David Sims]

It's like all the people you just listed off who would be involved, like everyone potentially who would sign up for that kind of project. It would be terrible. Brain better than ever. Garbage, cognitive function, function, top.

[Chris Weitz]

And it would be exciting to then.

[David Sims]

See that get released and then just have all the people who champion the. The film, the project, the ideas of the film, then just be like, oh, this sucks.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Oh, it's not good.

[David Sims]

Or try to like, so you're saying around, but actually it's good if you really think about it. I feel like every time.

[Griffin Newman]

I didn't like it the first five times, but now I think I get it.

[David Sims]

One of those movies gets made like the Christmas. What was it called?

[Griffin Newman]

War on Christmas. Kirk Cameron, Saving Christmas.

[David Sims]

The one where. Where it's like Michael Moore Has A Christmas Carol happen. It's sort of like. And it comes out and everyone's like, this is bad. Then it's just like, well, let's never speak of this again. Right? Like, it's not like one of those things where people do try to be like, no, I'm. I'm going to watch it. I liked it. Like, you know, it's just kind of.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, well, this is the fallacy every time. Right. But.

[David Sims]

But people actually want to see sinners. Like, everyone wants to correct. You know what I mean?

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[Chris Weitz]

And they.

[David Sims]

Not because of politics or any other reason, they're just like, I don't know. I heard it was good.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

I mean, go see it.

[Griffin Newman]

Right? There's so much of the. The media landscape has been dominated by idea of, like, DEI initiatives are being rolled back and, like, the identity politics era of Hollywood is over and things are now going to go back towards, like, catering towards the conservative, you know, J Credition audience. And then you look at the box office and you're like, three of the top six movies of the year so far have predominantly black casts. I mean, like, exponentially more successful than the movies that in theory are targeting Trump's America.

[David Sims]

You can make a Korean animated movie about Jesus that's told by an animated Charles Dickens.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you know there's another animated Jesus movie coming out this year?

[Chris Weitz]

I made it.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

It's called Another Animated Jesus movie. No, you can do that. And that might hit because people are like, well, the nativity story is a pretty big one.

[Griffin Newman]

And if you release it Easter weekend, it's kind of a good.

[David Sims]

But sometimes then there are those more sort of like niche faith movies where they're like, you know, it's about the triumph of the human spirit and people are kind of like, pass.

[Chris Weitz]

But like, let me know when the.

[David Sims]

Thunderbolts are in town.

[Griffin Newman]

CGI Jesus movie is just barely a movie. Sure. But barely passing One of them days a movie remains under discussed. Good movie?

[David Sims]

Yes, it was a comedy written by.

[Griffin Newman]

John Singleton's daughter, Sariah Singleton. It's a really, really good movie.

[David Sims]

And it's just the kind of movie they used to make, more of, which is a smaller budget, but studio comedy that's very, you know, kind of lo fi influence funny and good to your point, David. My point.

[Griffin Newman]

This is an era where the machinery of Hollywood is working so beautifully and the public cannot get enough movies.

[David Sims]

It's all they got.

[Griffin Newman]

And the idea of, what are they going to do?

[David Sims]

Listen on the wireless, right?

[Griffin Newman]

We can afford to just have a room full of drunk writers who are just each pitching in a sentence or two, and they present it to him as just like, this isn't fucking rocket science. This is one of two wrestling movies we have to make every year.

[Chris Weitz]

Sign him a picture. This is like, you know, it's like, worth remarking, working on.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you want a dame or a kid? Like, there's a formula here. And you decide, like the. The binary. Choose your own adventure path.

[Chris Weitz]

My screenwriter mind when they said, is it about a dame or is there a dame or is it a kid? And my mind went both. And then Burton Fink goes both. And they look appalled at the end.

[David Sims]

Yeah, right. You need a movie to fit a certain formula because people are like, yeah, I want to go see.

[Griffin Newman]

It's prepackaged.

[David Sims]

A movie about this will actually work. Right. And you want. It's beyond elevator pitch. It's just right. It's a wrestling picture.

[Griffin Newman]

Great.

[David Sims]

I love wrestling pictures. I like to watch wrestling on the big screen.

[Griffin Newman]

And the thing you get so much from Lerner's performance, what I think he captures really well is you're just like, this guy is overselling it so hard. Yeah.

[David Sims]

He's laying on.

[Griffin Newman]

He's laying it on way too thick of how much he respects artists. Right. In a way, you know, as best. And you're just waiting for the shoe to drop. And in reality, what he really wants is, is how a lot of our biggest budget franchise movies work right now, which is like, we're going to hire someone with a little personality so they can just hopefully put 2% personality on our formula. But by and large, let's just stick to the formula.

[David Sims]

But it's also the implication I have from Barton Fink is he gets to do this. You're going to be treated well, put up in a hotel, paid a lot of money. Then he produces the first script. We don't see the rest of the movie, but the reaction to the first script is like, no, this is not what we want. This is way too arty. Farty. You need to learn how to make movies the Capital Pictures way. And you get the sense that he will quickly be bumped down the ladder.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Like, it'll be a little more.

[Griffin Newman]

He doesn't know how to play the game.

[David Sims]

You need to go with the pigs, you know, in the slop and, like, learn your trade.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, it's even like, you will never be. You're never gonna work on anything again. We just own you. You're gonna keep on drawing a salary, but nothing that you produce. I mean, this is. By the end of it. Right? You're talking about. Yeah. Nothing that you produce, produces is ever going to be used. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Which. The Makoney character is kind of stuck in that sort of.

[David Sims]

Which is why he, like, his everyday. Is that he vomits, one assumes, black bile. And then it's like, okay, time to drink all day. Like, that's how he's dealing.

[Griffin Newman]

And they, like, pay him with contempt to keep ownership of him. Sure. And you get the sense that this guy probably for the last five years has had one good idea a year.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Like every year he gives them one dialogue exchange or one notion of how to fix a scene.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. But, yeah, they're being paid to keep their field fallow. Right. Is basically the deal.

[David Sims]

I mean, he didn't. Faulkner didn't write all of his most famous novels had already happened.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

And famously, he got to Hollywood and was like, can I write Mickey Mouse? I like Mickey Mouse. And MGM was like, that's Disney. And he was like, I don't understand.

[Griffin Newman]

Quick.

[David Sims]

He didn't really get that idea. And instead he did, you know, a bunch of movies. Like, he wrote, like, 50 movies or whatever, accredited or uncredited, that no one remembers.

[Griffin Newman]

Here's what I want to say. Just going back to the plot a little bit. Or not the plot, but the. The flow of the movie.

[David Sims]

He famously. Faulkner just want to say that he has a credit on the Big Sleep, which is one of the most incomprehensible screenplays ever written.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

Yes, it's a great movie, but also.

[Griffin Newman]

Is constantly cited as, like, this script doesn't even make sense in the movies.

[David Sims]

Right. And that's sort of when we start to think about the OTT theory and Bogey and Bacall and all that.

[Griffin Newman]

There's a little bit of, like, nobody knows anything.

[David Sims]

And I do not know what the answer to the mystery is.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, no one knows.

[David Sims]

I think you can be told. And Even if you're told, you're kind of like, I don't understand.

[Chris Weitz]

Don't worry about it.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Casting Buscemi. Having Buscemi play it as cheery as possible and not a fake cheeriness. Right. He's not going over cranked, but it's like, speaks to the Cohen's already at this point being so smart about how to use actors and their energy of just like. Just have Buscemi go straight down the middle, put no creep on it. And that will be unsettling. There's something about Buscemi just being kind of like quiet and kind that feels a little off. And also just his introduction back to the shoes, Ben. His introduction as Barton Fink walks in this fucking lobby that's empty and then like a trap door opens from the floor out of the basement with shadow shoes. And you're just like, what the fuck is going on underneath this hotel? A thing that is never even touched on again. Like a mystery that is just sort of like quietly seated at the beginning. And then so much else happens and you're like, is there a whole world of drama going on underground? The implication of the shoes outside the door is that these, the residents or the transients are leaving their shoes out every night to be shined and polished. And that he's going down there, but you're like, are there other people doing down there? Does Buscemi spend every night shining a hundred pairs of shoes?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, it's very. It's fairy tale logic.

[Griffin Newman]

And then he gets up to this room and immediately it's just unsettling.

[Chris Weitz]

He is. So he's a schmuck because he's being paid $40,000 a year? Yes. I mean, a week. A week.

[Griffin Newman]

A week.

[Chris Weitz]

And he chooses to stay at a shitty hotel.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

But you don't feel as though he's scrimping and saving in order to start. He's not like making phone calls about how he's finally going to rent the theater back.

[David Sims]

He doesn't know what to do with money. It's not like Barton Finks, like, I'm about to go on a shopping spree, like Barton Finks.

[Chris Weitz]

I want to see him in Rodeo.

[David Sims]

Try would be fun.

[Chris Weitz]

He gets turned away by the mean shop girls. And later he goes back and asks them if they're. They sell on consent.

[Griffin Newman]

Big mistake.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Thank you. Huge. It feels like a. This idea he has of like, I need to be amongst the common people. Michael Lerner's offering we, you know, with Polito, get him a mansion, put him up at the night nicer hotel. Put him in my guest room. He won't allow any of that stuff to happen.

[David Sims]

John Prieto, of course. We love to see him.

[Griffin Newman]

Great John.

[David Sims]

I mean, just the roly, polyous little man.

[Griffin Newman]

We'll have talked about him a lot last week.

[Chris Weitz]

I mean, right.

[David Sims]

Because Miller's Crossing is his, I think, his biggest Cohen showcase. Right. Like, obviously he made a lot of.

[Griffin Newman]

Movies, but I promise we won't give him the high hat in that episode.

[Chris Weitz]

But Polito has been kind of edged out of the Louis B. Merrill here, Right. Because normally he'd be the guy be playing the Louis B. Mara part.

[Griffin Newman]

So there's.

[Chris Weitz]

There's actually something really. There's like real pathos to the fact that he's meek in this one.

[David Sims]

It almost the late John Plato, right.

[Griffin Newman]

He's no longer. It gives Lerner's character a little more power where you're like, if I've seen the first three Coen brothers movies, to see Polito be nudged simping to this guy, it's just like, how fucking hot can this guy run? But the other part of it with the hotel thing, beyond just whatever he thinks is like artistic, philosophical principles, is of needing to be in a real place with real people. It's also, to my mind, the recurring imagery of the beach is just like, this guy wouldn't know how to fucking function on a beach.

[David Sims]

Well, and he doesn't. When he put him on a mansion, he's in a fucking three piece. He's gonna be miserable.

[Griffin Newman]

So there's this idea of the Martin.

[David Sims]

Fink action figure doesn't have other clothes. He's got the one thing, the idea.

[Griffin Newman]

Of looking at a picture of a beautiful woman on the beach isn't like that's the escape, that's the fantasy. It's sort of like that's the idea of that being my idea of a fantasy, that a well adjusted person look to an image like that as an idea of a serene thing to strive for. And for him, he would never be able to enjoy it.

[David Sims]

It's also a hilarious mocking thing to have on the wall of that dingy room where they're like, but for a little color, you know, we'll hang that one picture and it's just such a. I mean, it's what the Cohens are so good at in their entire career. The more you look at it, it's like saying a word a thousand times. The more you read strange things into that weird, cryptic, anonymous image of the back of a woman on a beach.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, this and then is like the fulfilled prophecy thing. This is like the David Lynchy thing again to return to. Whereas, like, if you want to try to read into this, like, what is the. It's not a time loop. Obviously you don't want to like, read like too much into it. But, but, but the, the. The girl at the end purposely adopts the. The pose.

[Griffin Newman]

That is exactly. Obviously it's right. You're mirroring everything. I mean it. When I saw this movie for the time. First. First time, I guess, well over 15 years ago, and until rewatching it last night, had held onto my interpretation so strongly of, oh, he is in hell. And John Goodman's character is Satan or.

[David Sims]

He'S in purgatory or whatever. Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

I remember feeling so strongly John Goodman's character is the devil or some equivalent. And watching it last night, I did not feel. Feel that way.

[David Sims]

You.

[Griffin Newman]

Not at all.

[Chris Weitz]

That's what it is.

[David Sims]

Fact. I love this guy.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't think I was. Yeah. This guy is maybe God.

[David Sims]

I think interpreting him as a sort of demonic figure is perfectly acceptable.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure. I wasn't like, what an idiot. What a misread I had. But it speaks to sort of the weird sphinx, like quality of this movie that you can watch it one time and go, you know what? It's a hundred percent this. It's this and this. And this is how these other elements support it.

[David Sims]

Do not make movies that way.

[Chris Weitz]

I feel rightful misleads, you know, they're.

[David Sims]

Not like, miss the point. They be like, yeah, do what you want.

[Griffin Newman]

It's so much a reflection of what you're bringing to the movie as well.

[David Sims]

Ben, what do you want to say? Well, what I wanted to share.

[Chris Weitz]

What changed for me is that the first time I watched this, I was.

[David Sims]

So aligned with him. And you were frustrated artist. Right? Like perspective.

[Griffin Newman]

No. New School poetry.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

I. I majored in creative writing, the New School. Um, watching it this time around, what really struck me is he's saying he's this like, voice of the people.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

And yet is.

[David Sims]

Is not actually comfortable interacting or being.

[Chris Weitz]

In the space with these type of.

[David Sims]

He seems to hate people with anybody.

[Griffin Newman]

He cannot handle talking to anyone and then.

[David Sims]

And then is incapable of writing a piece of work that is for those people.

[Griffin Newman]

Correct.

[David Sims]

He's. He's so abundant above writing the wrestling movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

He wants to read the whole time that he is like, you know, has the. The audience who would want to interact with that work in mind.

[Griffin Newman]

His is so funny to write what he thinks the people need rather than.

[David Sims]

Kind of dick, you know, this is.

[Chris Weitz]

The President Sturgis thing. This, this is like. This is Sullivan's Travels, right?

[David Sims]

Where it's the best moment in film history. But certainly in Sullivan's Travels is when they, Right. When they, they interact with simple, quote, unquote art. And it moves them beyond anything, you know?

[Griffin Newman]

And press and Surges is like one of the single biggest influences throughout the entire Coen Brothers filmography. Down to a brother. Yes.

[David Sims]

Yeah, but no, but wait. Did you.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh, that's it.

[David Sims]

Get out of here. Hey, hey, hey.

[Chris Weitz]

Come on. A palette cleanser. Actually, I want to tell you, this is. Because this is getting pretty heavy. Did I ever tell you my story about meeting Brad Pitt the first time?

[David Sims]

Brad Pitt? Bradley Pitt, who you've never directed in a film?

[Chris Weitz]

Never directed in a film. Okay, so my girlfriend at the time.

[David Sims]

You didn't direct Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas?

[Chris Weitz]

I wish. Okay. Carry on Seven Seas. In that picture, my girlfriend at the time was cast as one of the neighbors in Mr. And Mrs. Smith.

[David Sims]

Okay, sure. A film with many a neighbor.

[Griffin Newman]

You are in that film as an actor.

[Chris Weitz]

I'm in that film as an actor. And here's how that happened. The cast, Asian, thought, oh, it would be funny if Chris. This is my girlfriend Heather at the time, who's going out with Heather, played her husband. And then she, Heather took. Was like, I don't think I want to be, like, playing second fiddle to the Angelina Jolie part. So I'm out of here. She dropped out, right? And I was like, so who replaces her? I forget her name. Lovely, lovely actor.

[David Sims]

Rachel Huntley.

[Chris Weitz]

What are you.

[David Sims]

Not a name.

[Griffin Newman]

I know, but you still end up playing.

[Chris Weitz]

I'm not leaving. I gotta wait for them to fire me.

[David Sims]

Brad Pitt as Angelina.

[Chris Weitz]

Come on.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

So then, wow.

[David Sims]

This is the only movie that actor was ever in. Weird.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh, really?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Credit.

[Chris Weitz]

So, so then, so there I am, right on this set, and there's Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. And I, I, I, I'm playing their neighbor. So I have a couple of scenes with Brad, which is pretty freaking funny, man.

[David Sims]

I need to rewatch this movie because I didn't know. I haven't seen it since.

[Chris Weitz]

It's really funny.

[Griffin Newman]

It speaks to how much I have always been me that I remember seeing that movie opening weekend and going, oh, weird. That's Chris White's.

[Chris Weitz]

That is really.

[Griffin Newman]

I immediately clocked, oh, wow, that's the writer and director of About a Boy.

[David Sims]

Well, I would have known. I did see Chuck And Buck, not to bring up all your acting credits, which you are a big deal.

[Chris Weitz]

You've now covered all your actors.

[Griffin Newman]

A titular character.

[Chris Weitz]

I was.

[David Sims]

Okay. All right, so you're in a. You're a couple scenes with Brady.

[Chris Weitz]

So we're starting this scene. I'm starting to shoot this scene with Brad. And of course, it's like. It's fucking surreal. Right. And I want to make it clear to him that I'm not going to be very good in this scene, because I'm not an actor. I'm a director.

[David Sims]

Temper your expectations.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. So I go to Brad. You know, we were just shaking hands, and I said, look, I just want you to know I'm not actually an actor. I'm actually a director. And I can see him take it the wrong way. And the way that he is taking it is, oh, my God, this guy is some kind of freaking lunatic who wants to give me his script. Right, right, right, right.

[David Sims]

You're like, really? What I want to do is directly, I am an established director with credits to my name, and I see his.

[Chris Weitz]

Soul retreat into the back of his head. Like it's clearly something that he has done before. And I realize that I have lost this moment with Brad Pitt completely. I am now just a lunatic to him. And then we do our scenes. He shakes my hand and ever. Actually, I see him one more time. I see him one more time. Which is. Is the. The year that Demian Bashir is nominated for Best Actor for a Better Life. And he should have won. But. And. And he's. He's hang. He's. He's, like, telling me what a great time he has. He's like, oh, I'm hanging out with George and. And. And Brad. And.

[Griffin Newman]

Is that the descendant Moneyball artist?

[Chris Weitz]

Correct. Okay, that is. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Both George and Brad were nominated for best actor that year, but of course, we had to make room for Jean Dujard.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. And his big leading man career since then has proven that he deserved it. And so demeon, we're at the SAG Awards, and demeon brings Brad by and introduces us. And I see the penny drop the flicker. Brad Pitt, he's like, oh, okay, okay.

[David Sims]

Six years later, he's like, oh, that guy wasn't full of shit.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. To his credit, he was, like, somehow remembered. And he was like, oh, yes, we've worked before. And I was like, oh, God, Thank God.

[Griffin Newman]

What's so funny, too, is that you're like, function. Mrs. Mr. Mrs. Smith is basically to be like, look how poorly these guys fit in with normal suburban couples.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And my memory is that you're sort of like talking at him, trying to make like, neighborhood small talk.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. We're talking about golf.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. And he's just like, not really locking in.

[Chris Weitz]

All right. That was the palate cleanser.

[David Sims]

That's fascinating. Your co star kind of has a Christina Applegate sort of styling and look to her, but I guess he's not Christina Applegate.

[Chris Weitz]

No, but I think that's. That.

[David Sims]

That was.

[Chris Weitz]

They're going to that trope of like, married children. Yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

Interesting goofballs.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Let's pick up back with the plot, though.

[Griffin Newman]

He's been. He goes to the producer, Lerner basically just monologues to him. Says so much. He's like, walks out of their reeling. Doesn't even know really what to do. It's not really until Shalhoub pulls him in.

[David Sims]

Yes. That he even knows what to do. But then we go to. I've got the movie running. Go to the hotel. Him struggling to write. He just has the ambient sound of traffic. Intro to his screenplay.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

The sort of the streets of New York. He's also writing the same thing. He just writes.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. The sound of the streets. But here's the interesting thing. There's a really bad translate in the back of this set. Right. It's not believable. And there is no traffic noise. Right. So it's like. That's another weird thing about, like, horror. Ish thing about the movie is that the hotel itself isn't set in any proper atmosphere.

[David Sims]

When you say translate just for our listeners, that's a translucent light backlight.

[Chris Weitz]

That is semi translucent, so that you feel as though like, light is hitting it properly. But it's a purposely bad one, I think.

[David Sims]

Odd, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And then Goodman appears.

[Griffin Newman]

And so Goodman appears for the first time after the learner meeting.

[David Sims]

And it's almost like, you know, it almost could be like planes, trains, an automobile or whatever. It's this kind of like, garous working guy. He's an insurance salesman and he's got that kind of like, oh, a writer. Like, oh, you know, I wouldn't know about that. Right. Like, you know. And Barton thinks of himself as like, well, I'm here to, you know, stir your soul and to understand doing this for you.

[Griffin Newman]

And then it's just perfect characterization of just immediately. He's not listening to this guy.

[David Sims]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

He's explaining to this guy why he cares about. About him while ignoring everything he's actually trying to say.

[David Sims]

And he's talking about how hard his job is.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

And then. Good.

[Chris Weitz]

The life of the mind. How, how painful the life of the mind is.

[David Sims]

It calls him a working stiff. Yeah, yeah, that's so rude.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. And he thinks he's saying it with respect, as I see. You don't think it goes ignored that you live a life of misery. There's an innate condescension to everything he does. And yet, like, not to jump ahead, but there's such a good detail for, for me in him extending to Goodman, if you're ever in New York City, reach out to my parents, they'll give you a meal. Which is basically his one act of unambiguous kindness to this guy. Even if it's a little self serving of like, I want to be the kind of guy who offers this up. And once again, I'm not offering hospitality. I'm extending my parents to you for hospitality. But I do feel like it's like.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, it's like you'll have some kind of welcome.

[David Sims]

Right. I think it's also him being like, I have cred. I have like working class parents that you can.

[Griffin Newman]

But that also feels like him saying that in that one moment is maybe the thing that stops Goodman from murdering him.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, but, but, but he may have murdered the parents by the end of which is kind of interesting. Right, which, which to me, like tie. Links up with no country for, for old men. Right, yeah. Which is that, you know, Anton Chigurh goes and, and, and, and kills the, the wife of the protagonist. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Is that all real, though? Well, we can talk about it.

[Griffin Newman]

We can talk about it. It's the roller coaster of Goodman's performance where he's just vacillating so quickly between charm and sadness and menace and emptiness and gregariousness and all this sort of shit. But I do think the way he plays that moment of Barton Fick extending that to him, Goodman really slows down for an instant. You see him really process that and it's like he clocks. Like, I have to remember he's one of the good ones. Obviously he's going to turn on him by the end of it. But I think so much the way Goodman plays this is this kind of like Son of Sam. This is a guy who is like answering to higher voices. He is hearing right. Of what he feels like he needs to do. And there are sort of these like moral tests he's imposing on people, which you hear about from these sorts of like serial killers where they're sort of like, this is the moment that made me realize I Had to kill this person versus this is the moment that made me realize I couldn't do it.

[David Sims]

Of course, my favorite serial killer is Hannibal Lecter.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, we love him.

[David Sims]

The late Great, as Mr. President Trump would call him.

[Griffin Newman]

But you know what? Very kindly. Many other countries are sending all of their Hannibal Lectors to us.

[David Sims]

But what I love every day about Hannibal Lecter is that it is canonical. And as the movie, the books go on more and more clear that he kills people if he thinks they're rude.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, the free range roots, right?

[David Sims]

He just kind of like, you're rude. I'm gonna serve you up for dinner.

[Griffin Newman]

When you dig down, like, fucking serial killer rabbit holes, there's a lot of.

[David Sims]

That, like, to do that.

[Griffin Newman]

They're looking for the excuse of someone doing something that they perceive as a social faux pas or rudeness and then saying, like, now I have permission to kill you.

[David Sims]

But I don't think he's a serial killer. I think that's all fantasy or whatever. We can talk about it. A crucial image after Goodman leaves is the wallpaper peeling. The weird red kind of like flesh, like wall beneath it, behind it, like, membrane.

[Griffin Newman]

And the thick sort of.

[David Sims]

Right. Everything's too gooey and thick. Like, the hotel's alive, which rocks. The next thing is Shalhoub, who is the producer type guy. My favorite thing about Shalhoub, apart from everything because he's so funny, is that when they have lunch, he's got whiskey and milk, and he keeps forgetting which one to drink from first at the time.

[Griffin Newman]

It speaks to how on fire this movie is. And this E era of, like, Right.

[David Sims]

That Shaloob's, like, the seventh best performance in it. Right. He's rocks.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's almost undeniably. And Shalom's one of my favorite actors in the world. And this is one of his best performances. And yet every time I'm like, right.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, he's in this movie. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And he's great. But it. There's. I feel like this era of, like, PTA was doing this and the Cohens were doing this, where there was like, a wave of filmmakers who all recognized, like, holy. There is an incredible class of character as actors who have been doing good, like, supporting work in studio films. And what if you just start building entire movies out of just these guys?

[David Sims]

Right, right. Not just use one of them. Right. Have Mahoney, Shalhoub, Buscemi, you know, Judy Davis. Well, Judy Davis, a little Michael Lerner, even Goodman. Yeah, 100%. The next scene is the bathroom where he meets Mahoney, who is a William Faulkner or whatever type, a sort of effete Southern. Not a. But a sort of, like, genteel Southern man with the bow tie and the handkerchief.

[Griffin Newman]

He meets him, like, puking and like.

[David Sims]

Writhing pain, but had the worst puking noises maybe in cinema history.

[Griffin Newman]

Amazing puking noises set up, like, the chaos of the sounds of the people on other sides of his room in the hotel. The constant, like, speaking of the haunted hotel thing, but just that weird thing. And you can feel this in apartment buildings as well, where you're just like, I'm hearing noises that are both too specific and too abstract.

[David Sims]

The line that gets me right first is that he's puking into the toilet, and then you see him pick up the handkerchief from the floor. But it's not that he says, sorry about the noise, but he says, sorry about the odor.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

And you're just like, what the fuck came out of him?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

So bad. But then, of course. Right. Barton recognizes him as this esteemed novelist.

[Chris Weitz]

I'm always very distressed when people vomit in the movies and then. Then speak closely to someone else.

[David Sims]

I feel like vomiting in the movies is one of the hardest things to get right. It happens all the time. And there's the classic kind of, you know, tube.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Next in the mouth, which has become almost like. It's like we accept that fake feeling as real because you can't do it real.

[Griffin Newman]

I've had to do it multiple times, and it is.

[David Sims]

Have you always done the tube or.

[Chris Weitz]

Have you also put stuff in your.

[David Sims]

Mouth and you kind of get.

[Griffin Newman]

I've done in three different ways. I have had three different big vomit scenes. I've had, like, fully rigged up. I've had. We're going to comp this in later with cgi. And I've had. You're holding stuff in your mouth and you have to expel it, which I.

[Chris Weitz]

Would imagine holding stuff in the mouth is the best.

[David Sims]

You can't get much out. Then whenever that. Whenever you see that version of it, you're like, yeah, he had, like.

[Griffin Newman]

The easiest to play. Releasing the thing. It is the hardest to play everything leading up to that, which to me is almost more important of, like, how do you play the build? I don't know. Always ask me to puke on screen.

[David Sims]

Well, you look sickly. You look like you're on the.

[Griffin Newman]

You know what?

[David Sims]

You know what? I'll call you out. You have vomited on blank Ch.

[Griffin Newman]

This is true.

[David Sims]

I have yet to do it, but. Decade of dreams. Like, who knows what the next 10.

[Chris Weitz]

Years hold during an actual recording or.

[David Sims]

You made it to in the Patreon car ride episode.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben did it on Mike in a car.

[David Sims]

No, I think Ben actually did. I turned the recorder off right before it happened.

[Griffin Newman]

The only reason it wasn't on mic was cuz Ben was fixing it from the inside. I went to the bathroom. I didn't.

[David Sims]

Griffin exited and then returned with. I just barfed. You know, I threw up in Alex Ross Perry's car. Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Decade of dreams. The episode I vomited on in the car.

[Chris Weitz]

Sorry, sorry. That's like. Was it. Was it cleaned up like this?

[Griffin Newman]

Like a loose shopping Ben? No, no, no. We had gotten Dunkin Donuts.

[David Sims]

I was not in this car.

[Griffin Newman]

You finished your iced coffee, then you removed the lid and puked into the cup and then put the lid back on and acted like you were gonna get away with it. None of us would notice. And I called you out even though.

[David Sims]

There were like four to five of you in the car.

[Chris Weitz]

That's pretty smooth, actually.

[David Sims]

I was definitely. I was resourceful and I was knocking.

[Chris Weitz]

To be like doopy doopy doo. I was going to be like, we need to pull over you.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben Griffin, you puked entirely in the cup. Your aim was good.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

You made no other mess.

[Chris Weitz]

Was it like a venti. I mean, like, or whatever. Dun. Big dun.

[Griffin Newman]

And then I saw you kind of go like this and turn the recorders back on. And I immediately said, ben, I need to acknowledge what just happened. I called it out.

[David Sims]

You know what? Ben just. He knew to be on Mike. He knew what? You know. Exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

I just want to connect a dot here.

[David Sims]

Everything is copy.

[Griffin Newman]

The episode where I puked, I said, hold on, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I got up, I went to the bathroom, I came back and I went. I just vomited.

[David Sims]

You did.

[Griffin Newman]

That was our Starship Troopers episode.

[David Sims]

And that was the episode which was the episode which.

[Chris Weitz]

After which we met.

[Griffin Newman]

Exactly.

[Chris Weitz]

Because I. I loved that episode, tweeted.

[Griffin Newman]

About it and said, this is a great episode about a great movie. And we were like, holy. Chris Whites listens to this podcast. And we messaged you. If I hadn't puked in that episode, we never would have met.

[Chris Weitz]

That's beautiful.

[Griffin Newman]

Full circle.

[David Sims]

After that, he meets Judy Davis, who was kind of. I. I feel like sort of her peak acclaim. Like this is when she's just becoming such like, she's not an actor people talk enough about anymore. No, because her peak was the sort of early 90s.

[Griffin Newman]

I also think she had a notoriously big Ego. And there was a little bit of a.

[David Sims]

So do I.

[Griffin Newman]

You know the great anecdote about her.

[Chris Weitz]

No. What is it?

[Griffin Newman]

It's one of my favorite Hollywood stories of all time that she's working on Passage to India.

[David Sims]

Right. Early in her career.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe her first film, certainly her first.

[David Sims]

Major, but her first big movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. And David lean's comeback after 20 years on the bench. And they're having an argument over the way to play a scene. Yeah. And she said, why should I listen to you? What have you done? Wow. And he said, lawrence of Arabia. And her response was, I mean, what have you done lately?

[David Sims]

Well, she had him there.

[Griffin Newman]

It's one of the greatest burns of all.

[David Sims]

I love the. She didn't take that lying down. She was like, I'm. Brief encounters old.

[Chris Weitz]

One of the worst lines I've ever heard in a movie is from Sex in the City 2. Great movie. Lawrence, I know what you're about to say.

[David Sims]

Please go ahead.

[Chris Weitz]

When I forget which character. Samantha. Samantha sees a hot guy and says, lawrence of my labia.

[David Sims]

What? You thought Carrie said that one? You thought Charlotte busted out Lawrence of my labia.

[Chris Weitz]

Fair enough.

[David Sims]

The thing about Ben, can you just.

[Griffin Newman]

Do a quick note just for the edit? Christmas spoke. He said one of the worst lines I've ever heard. I think he meant to say one of the best lines I've ever heard.

[David Sims]

The thing about.

[Griffin Newman]

We can just do a.

[David Sims]

You want to just toss me what the runtime on that movie is?

[Griffin Newman]

I believe that one is a tight 12 years. 145 minutes.

[David Sims]

You were off by one minute.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

It's 1:46, baby.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Because Michael Patrick King was like, no, they need another minute. Not to 25, 226.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

One of the worst movies I've had to, like, sit through in a theater is utilizing experience. Sex City 1 is not a particularly good movie, but, like, you're kind of like, yeah, you know, there's some stuff here for everybody. Whatever we're all having, we're all drinking cocktail. Sex City 2 is. Is a little bit of a sort of like. Like, yeah, slow cinema. Like, art house. Punishing.

[Chris Weitz]

Pushed me into a depression, actually, watching that movie Fair.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

That's thought.

[David Sims]

And you haven't exited. Have you seen Sex in the City, too?

[Griffin Newman]

I never have. Yeah.

[David Sims]

It's not very good.

[Griffin Newman]

I've only seen two episodes of Sex in the City ever.

[David Sims]

Well, then I think you shouldn't start with Sex in the city 2. If you want to return to the franchise.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm going to Start with two and I'm going to go backwards.

[David Sims]

You should know. You should start with and just like that.

[Chris Weitz]

And then.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, you're right. That's what I.

[David Sims]

The latest episode.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm going to wait for it and just like that to end and then I'm going to go memento style.

[David Sims]

So, yeah. Meets Judy Davis, who's his sort of.

[Griffin Newman]

She's phenomenal.

[David Sims]

Incredible in this movie.

[Griffin Newman]

She's just to be clear, I think she basically never misses as an actor.

[David Sims]

She kind of didn't miss. But it's this era. It's like Georgia Alice, Barton Fink, naked lunch, husbands and Wives. Like that's the ref. She's amazing in Husbands and Wives.

[Griffin Newman]

People kind of thought she was gonna win the Oscar.

[David Sims]

And then some stuff happened.

[Griffin Newman]

It is one of the most transformation transparent on camera. An actress clearly is just miserable that she's lost watching. Judy Davis's reaction in the telecast is amazing.

[David Sims]

But the worst performance, I think like the ref is kind of the end of Hollywood taking her very seriously, which maybe it's because she was tough to work with.

[Griffin Newman]

Show up in like two scenes in the breakup and be incredible where you're like, this is a nothing part. She's somehow making a full character.

[David Sims]

She's in Mary Antoinette. Oh, you know, like occasionally she'll still puff up. She's quite great in this. And she's the, you know, Mahoney's wife.

[Griffin Newman]

Or partner or whatever, assistant who's also his mistress.

[David Sims]

But he's eventually revealed to be kind of his muse. Slash she's kind of the. From the movie the wife.

[Griffin Newman]

What if there was exactly where she's.

[David Sims]

Kind of writing some of the stuff for him.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. I, I think part of what makes this performance so effective to me is the way the movie is set up. You're like, oh, here's the thing. Third lead, right? She's entered and I assume the rest of the movie is going to be him ping ponging between these two other.

[David Sims]

Characters will play out there.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. And then she dies so much more abruptly than you're expecting. But she somehow, within only like three scenes, gives a full enough performance that you feel like she's wedged in your mind as like an important character where it's that jarring when she's gone.

[David Sims]

Right. Her role is mostly her going like Mr. What's his name in the movie? Mr. Mayhew. Mr. Mayhew is indisposed while he's like in the background. Like he is the drunkest man ever.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Yeah. Number one.

[Chris Weitz]

I mean, I Scream for.

[David Sims]

For honey.

[Chris Weitz]

When I'm. When I'm drunk.

[David Sims]

At one point, he's sing. You know, the one where he goes and pees is. He's singing the song what's. You know, Old Black Joe, which is like a. You know, a folk song that's about being a slave. And, like, the joke is that he's. That's how he sees himself, right? Is that, like, that's. That's the sort of insane mental prison he's constructing. Like, I'm enslaved to Hollywood. I can't escape.

[Griffin Newman]

Lube yelling about him being a louse, and Barton continuing to say, like, he's one of our finest rises, one of our finest louses. It's the kind of Cohen dialogue.

[David Sims]

I like a Judy Davis, David Lean situation. He won't drop it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

And by the way. Yeah. I mean, these guys are, like, complaining about being enslaved to the system and everything that, like, as I complain about studio filmmaking, I'm also conscious of the fact, like, I should be. So, of course, okay.

[David Sims]

These guys are successful, I guess.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Not to turn it into a binary thing, but this is what I was trying to get at with the studio system thing of, like, it made perfect sense why it needed to be eradicated in the moment. And now you look back and you're like, was that better off? I understand everything that was broken about it, but it's right, this striving for. For, like, what would I give up in order to try to eke out a win in this world?

[David Sims]

What I am trying to say to you is that what you are really missing is an era where film was unchallenged as a visual.

[Griffin Newman]

That was a huge part of it.

[David Sims]

Yes. A huge part of it. It's not because the studios controlled everything. It's because there was no competition for movies.

[Chris Weitz]

None.

[David Sims]

Yes, none for 50 years. There's no competition in visual arts.

[Griffin Newman]

Here's the thing.

[David Sims]

Apart from a painting.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, I've heard. I've seen some good ones in my life.

[Chris Weitz]

They're not moving at all.

[David Sims]

Yeah, exactly. They don't move unless you kind of Mona Lisa style, kind of she looking at me.

[Griffin Newman]

Or carve out the holes, like, Scooby.

[David Sims]

Doo style and make the Hosley move. Of course, peep it is probably Paula.

[Griffin Newman]

Anna, Pollyanna of me.

[David Sims]

Right? To be like the great. The golden age of Hollywood was a truly golden age.

[Griffin Newman]

No. Where I'm like, specifically a thing I wish that happened. I'm not even saying this for me, Right. Is that Netflix would be like, we're gonna sign, like, 40 character actors to yearly contracts, tracks and just slot them into our projects, into these small roles.

[David Sims]

But then he would be stuck in making. No offense to Netflix. Maybe Chris wants to work in Netflix one day. Swill. No one watches.

[Chris Weitz]

David, how dare you. I've never worked for Netflix, but I personally, I take offense at that.

[David Sims]

I did watch a fragid on Netflix.

[Chris Weitz]

I will say I just keep inserting.

[David Sims]

Over Swill like, beautiful masterpiece, great films, best experienced on your phone or a smaller device, pocket sized your watch.

[Griffin Newman]

What you were saying is correct, Sims, but the reality is that people are begging to be cast in swill, of course. I mean, because they're like, understand. So if the system's based around swill, at least make a system that like benefits the people.

[Chris Weitz]

Spread.

[David Sims]

The thing I must point out about the golden age of Hollywood is that people who were not white were not allowed to make movies basically at all. And a movie that I like a lot is Babylon, which is louder and more obnoxious movie than Barton Fink. Yeah, you didn't, you didn't notice that it had a bit of a sort of heightened yelly tone. Babylon. I thought it was a silent picture, high energy. And that explores some of the interesting ways that Hollywood would try to make movies for black audiences back then. But there was so much racism in the, you know, the way it was presented and the way they treated people and all that. And that is a movie about sort of what you're talking about of like, man, it kind of rocked back then and we were all kind of in it, you know, like making these fucking movies. But also it was a poison rotting away, you know, our souls, I guess.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, right. Him watching Avatar at the end of the movie and being like, that's movies wrong.

[David Sims]

But industry, you know, some notes, mezzo, mezzo.

[Griffin Newman]

I think that hits me a little.

[Chris Weitz]

Barton Fink watch Avatar at the end of this movie?

[Griffin Newman]

No, but what's his name? Calvo watches it at the end of Babylon. Barton Fink should watch Avatar. Barnfinck would love Avatar. The light for the mind.

[David Sims]

I have a question because we're talking.

[Chris Weitz]

About work and you alluded to it earlier in the episode.

[David Sims]

I'd love to hear about how this portrays writer's block, the writing process. I feel like we haven't heard about that.

[Chris Weitz]

I mean, I think everybody's writer's block is different. It probably portrays it pretty realistically as sort of a form of torture. And all the stuff about the life of the mind. Mind is like, yeah, yeah, that's kind of the deal. But I wouldn't talk about it in that way.

[Griffin Newman]

You have also had a very interesting balance in your career of, like, getting to make personal things that are driven by your desire to tell this specific story and, like, doing assignment work. And I feel like when I talk to you, as much as you sometimes have frustrations of, I took this assignment job but tried to do the best version of it, and I'm unhappy with the final product. You do understand the difference in your relationship to the ownership and the emotional investment versus when it's your. Your thing versus I did a job and then it was out of my hands.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, I think it's. When it's. For another director. Like, I do feel like I can disengage to the degree that I feel like I. I owe it to that director as a director's medium. And so what they want kind of goes. That being said, I did have a modest proposal that, like, that I wanted to air on this podcast, which is that there's a little, like, QR code on the. On. On the poster of every movie. And if you. If you. If you click on it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

You get a PDF of the original script of the fucking movie that you just saw.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

So that you know what has happened in the interim. Not like anyone who would ever. You.

[Griffin Newman]

You a couple times have sent that to us.

[Chris Weitz]

Yes. I want to send it to the world.

[Griffin Newman]

And. And it is. It is very illuminating.

[Chris Weitz]

I want to force their eyes open with.

[Griffin Newman]

You've just been like. I just want you guys to know this was the last thing that I handed in.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

When my job was done. This is how it looked versus what you've seen.

[Chris Weitz]

But this is, like. So that it's perennial. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[Chris Weitz]

This is the same crap that. That. That, like, is. Is. Is that Barton Fink feeling why the.

[David Sims]

Movie resonates so beautifully?

[Griffin Newman]

Well, also, part of the beautiful pain of the shit is like, fuck, this movie sucks. And it's not what I wanted it to be, and I have no ownership of it, and my name is attached to it forever. And now people will hold me somewhat responsible for the sins of this film. On the other hand, what's worse? Not getting the credit.

[Chris Weitz]

Exactly.

[David Sims]

To move us through the plot a little bit. By all means. You know, there's another meeting with Goodman. There's another meeting with Shalhoub where he's like, still, I have no idea. Shalhoub has the hilarious idea of, like, go watch some dude dailies from a wrestling picture. That's getting me right now. So Barton F. Just watches, like, Endless takes of a guy going like, like.

[Chris Weitz]

Running around the rest.

[Griffin Newman]

Shal's innate hostility, immediate hostility to Barton Fink, which is like, it's a similar pitch to Michael Lerner, but it's coming from the exact opposite direction, which is, I'm so angry this guy's taking a liking to you. My job is to like, two guys like you out, right? And for some reason, he's gotten fixated on you.

[David Sims]

Right? You're allowed to be bulletproof proof for a minute, Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And you seem even worse as a starting point than most the guys that get handed to me.

[David Sims]

I love that. They're also at a New York themed restaurant. Yes, yes, right. They're at a. So these little things where it's like he's like losing his mind. And it's just, I love, like, obviously he's feeling homesick, feeling out of sorts and that. And now he's at this like really pretend looking version of.

[Griffin Newman]

Of home, right? And he thinks the Mahoney character is going to help give him guidance to sort of understanding, here's how someone else has balanced these two things. And what he realizes is this man.

[Chris Weitz]

Is he's in hell.

[Griffin Newman]

He's in hell. He's not functional. He's not producing good work. His life is in shambles. Everyone surrounding him views him with resentment. And perhaps he's not even really writing most of the work that Barton Fink attributes to him.

[David Sims]

He looks like shit too.

[Chris Weitz]

He really.

[David Sims]

They capture like he really is going downhill.

[Griffin Newman]

But it's what you're saying of like, right? It's a system that only allows a certain type of person to work on movies at all. Here's Judy Davis, whose life is like cleaning up this guy's vomit and not getting paid properly to write all of his work. You know, like, she has to basically like puppeteer this guy Weekend at Bernie style into getting anything published or produced. And then when Barton Fink realizes that and puts it together, he's angry at her. It's such a good choice from To Turo that he's like yelling at her in the hotel room.

[David Sims]

He's self righteous about it too, right?

[Griffin Newman]

That he's calling her up to think that she can help him, but also because he's clearly got a bit of a crush on her, right? And here's the scene where he needs something from her and wants something from her. And the second he starts to put together that maybe she's the mind behind his last 10 to 15 years of work, his response is, wait, admit it. You wrote all of it.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Like accusatory, as if she committed a crime.

[David Sims]

Right. As if she's stolen something from him or.

[Griffin Newman]

But then he's also like, why aren't you taking crimes credit? Like he's angry at her for not having pride.

[David Sims]

He's not understanding. Not wanting the credit, I guess.

[Griffin Newman]

And also not understanding the system.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

And not long after that is when she comes to his hotel.

[Griffin Newman]

That is the scene he yells at her in the hotel.

[David Sims]

Right, exactly.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

It's all.

[Griffin Newman]

It's right before they sleep together and.

[David Sims]

Then they make love and the camera does go into the drain. And Chris thought that was a little.

[Chris Weitz]

Maybe over the top, down the drain.

[Griffin Newman]

His life has gone down the drain.

[David Sims]

In a nightmarish moment. Wakes up and this is sort of where you can start to think about the movie entering a more surreal zone.

[Griffin Newman]

He calls her and begs her to come over. She says she can't because she has to do work with him. He falls asleep and then he wakes up to her knocking on the door and she's there. I think if you want to be like the movie didn't happen. It's in that moment that the transition.

[David Sims]

I would say just to talk about the whole of Barton Fink, the moment you can really point to is when the walls catch on fire and yet the hotel is not consumed. Where you can see. Start to be like me thinks reality is blurring. Think a bit, you know, like.

[Griffin Newman]

But I'd argue it's a. It's a build from there. Shows is where it begins. Him dies, dies.

[David Sims]

And then Goodman, you know, he gets Goodman to come in and get rid of the body. And Goodman is just alarmed, but also just does it.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And here's a.

[David Sims]

Another big puke.

[Chris Weitz]

Another off camera puke.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Here's another great detail of like weird snapshots of different eras of Hollywood culture. He says to Barton something to the effect of this is bad. Even if they eventually clear you in the court, you'll be ruined forever. Which is clearly an analog to Fatty Arbuckle.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

In this era. This is like the earliest days of Hollywood scandals where if you were accused of something, even if you won the case and cleared yourself in the court of law, the public wouldn't touch you ever again. You were forever soiled. And now I think it just an interesting counterpoint.

[Chris Weitz]

We're in this sort of an anti cancel culture.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. And basically anytime anyone there is like released documentation of their crimes, you immediately see 8,000 people in the comments go, well, what happened? Innocent until proven guilty. I'll Wait until I hear all the evidence. Like, you can. Someone can be found guilty and they're still like, well, but we all know the legal system gets things wrong. Whereas in that day there was this puritanical nature of like, we don't want to know too much of our stars, the veil cannot be pierced. And especially if any idea is implanted in our head of them doing something untoward, even if we find it's not the case, we're not getting that image out of our head. It's over.

[David Sims]

There is this moment again when we're talking about dreams where Barton opens the Bible to Daniel 2, where he reads a passage about Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Dream, you know, like it's not like as much as the Cohen's are like, I don't know, maybe like, you know, it's like, obviously there's a lot of illusions to things. The camera zooms in on a passage in the Bible about dreaming. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

And then the fir. The first verse is his.

[David Sims]

The joke becomes like, he goes to the top of Daniel 2 and it's faded on a tenement building, you know, like it's his stupid intro that he can't lose.

[Griffin Newman]

I think the Cohen are as good with sound as anyone in the history of movies.

[David Sims]

Without a doubt, it is. I mean, we did just cover, of course, David lynch, another master of that. More loud.

[Griffin Newman]

But I think part of their magic is they always know how to like, really put a focus on Foley work that is just 10% over cranked. It's just a little overstated and a little overly crisp, but every single movement and texture needs to have a specific sound associated with it, which is so, so powerful in terms of evoking specific feelings in you in a way that I think a lot of filmmakers undervalue in terms of going for realism or saying we don't need to hear every creak of the readjustment or whatever it is. But then they'll also, as you were saying, Chris, make these decisions of not hearing sound outside the window of the hotel. Where then when there is silence or an absence of something in a Coen's movie, it's that much more unsettling of why is this quiet?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, Everything has been thought through. Nothing is by default.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Versus being able to hear the wallpaper.

[David Sims]

This is also where Goodman's character leaves him a head in a box. Sorry, just a box with nothing. Just hold on to that box for me. And then not long after the two cops appear. Classic kind of Hollywood 30s, you know, like guys in hats and jacket, you know. Right. Like, who are like, that guy's not who he says he is. He's a serial killer called Madman Mund.

[Chris Weitz]

I also, I think we should even say though, that John Goodman basically does.

[David Sims]

All of the hard work.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Which is removes the body. He does all of the, like, manual work. Especially, like, Right. Like he gets rid of the body. But also important. Fink is not even really that, like, thankful about it. I feel like you don't like this guy. I feel like you got a problem with Barton Fink.

[Griffin Newman]

But also, Ben, he's the voice of the people.

[David Sims]

He is not. I think he's trying.

[Chris Weitz]

It's bad manners not to thank the person who's disposed of the corpse that you found in your bed.

[David Sims]

You should at least say at least verbal thanks, if not a tip.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

Like a crisp 20, you know, in a handshake.

[Griffin Newman]

But also, this is a key question of like, is he the one who murdered her? And is his helping apart and think. Helping to set him up.

[Chris Weitz]

That if you're going to take it.

[David Sims]

That'S the most straightforward.

[Griffin Newman]

Kind of like he's basically making a trap for him to incriminate him. Part of him. Part of which is him being that helpful.

[David Sims]

The way I sort of take Barton Fink. Not again. To be like, sort of like, this is what the movie means is I'm like, no, I mean like Charlie Sl. Carl is in his imagination. And it's like initially it's this patronizing vision of sort of like, yes, this is the kind of guy I'm writing for. The guy who's like, oh, well, you know, I. I'm an honest Joe and I'll your hair. And then as he starts to curdle in madness and get, you know, hate that he's writing this movie.

[Griffin Newman]

He starts. He villainizes that guy.

[David Sims]

Exactly. Like they're just like, they're just monsters.

[Griffin Newman]

And not only that, like, he's disgusting. He can't stop sweating.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Chris Weitz]

Exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

Before he literally becomes a serial killer and an embodiment of hell.

[David Sims]

And then. Right. First it's the serial killer thing and then he's. Right. He's a demon. Like he said, he's a demon.

[Chris Weitz]

I'm going to tie it to the kind of the film thing which is like he's imagining an audience or a potential audience, like, but a subject and an audience or. Right. And like, when you go to these marketing screenings, part of the reason, I think that that obviously they're asking the questions that they're asking of of the audience in order to try to maximize the profit that you make of it. But if you look at the questions, basically they're treating the audience like a bunch of fucking morons. Right, right. And they don't say it, but it's like, how can we get money out of these fucking morons?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, it is. It is kind of astonishing. I mean, it's a couple of times I've done it.

[David Sims]

This questions basically are like, did you get this?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Did this make sense? Did you track that this was happening.

[Chris Weitz]

In the end effect?

[Griffin Newman]

My experience in TV was almost always having these conversations with executives where they'd say, like, you try to argue for why you thought the integrity of a thing you wanted to convey a certain way, how you want to execute it, what you were trying to.

[Chris Weitz]

To say.

[Griffin Newman]

And then their response is always almost verbatim something to the effect of no, no, no, no, no, we get it, we love it. I'm just worried about them.

[David Sims]

I have been shown movies by studios early, like, well before they're screening for press in these screenings where they're essentially like, can you tell us if the people will get this? Yes, like, and we're not going to take your on fact here, but like we are, we're to trying. Trying to see we think people are not going to get this. They will usually show me a broadly appealing film that is not that hard to get. It's not like they're showing me something really weird.

[Griffin Newman]

The thing I find fascinating about the. No, no, no, of course we get it.

[David Sims]

And they always have. And we know what she's going for, we know what that guy wants. But like, does it make sense?

[Griffin Newman]

And my experience with TV executives while you're inside the belly of the beast. Right. Is like, either it is very clear that they assume everyone in the audience is an idiot and they're a genius.

[David Sims]

The assumption.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, right. And they can't be their own level because their level of intellect does not reflect the target audience of the product. Or they clearly don't get it. Like, they literally just don't understand. You get into these arguments sometimes where you're like, oh, you actually just didn't get. That's the same character.

[David Sims]

Yeah, I mean I. That's only happened to me once, but there was a movie. I don't know if I should say it. I probably will just say it. Which is the Little Stranger a good movie?

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, yes.

[David Sims]

Where I had a conversation with someone who worked. Worked for some. I forget if I honestly forget if it was a studio or for I Remember you being like where they were like, I had to explain the ending to them. Not no Patreon. I was like, no, but the ending was this.

[Chris Weitz]

And they were like.

[David Sims]

And I was like, oh, you don't know that. That's because the ending's kind of the whole movie.

[Griffin Newman]

That movie got totally dumped for someone who had just directed a best Picture nominee. And I remember you saying to me that like you had had that conversation with them and were like, I think it's good. They were like, really, it's good.

[Chris Weitz]

They were truly.

[David Sims]

No, it's not used.

[Griffin Newman]

This is news to me.

[David Sims]

After the disposal of the body and all that, there's a scene, I think f first Barton writes the script, he puts plugs in his ears and he writes a script.

[Griffin Newman]

He goes into a co incess flow state and just vomits it out.

[David Sims]

And then he. A scene that's kind of pivotal is that he goes to celebrate by dancing and he had gets in this fight with these guys who are about to ship out to the war. Right, right.

[Chris Weitz]

An impossibly square jawed man.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

Hilarious.

[David Sims]

Like action.

[Griffin Newman]

And so much of the movie scene.

[David Sims]

Where Barton is clearly like, I hate these, you know, jocks and you're like, the guy says like, hey, can I dance with her? I'm shipping out tomorrow. Like, you're like, oh, he's actually the.

[Griffin Newman]

Guy isn't at all.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

But then he starts, he's like, right. This contempt for the audience and then.

[David Sims]

That'S where he's like, I serve the common man. And they all start beating him up and they're like creative.

[Chris Weitz]

It's like the worst.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Worst thing to the other part of.

[Griffin Newman]

It is like throughout the movie there have been a bunch of like anti Semitic slurs thrown at Barton Fink, almost always by other Jewish characters.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

It's like the self loathing Jewish heart of the entertainment industry that is sort of like we are trash and we need to have contempt for ourselves as we make art that reflects the goyum what we want to be. Right. And yet when these guys attack him, the slur, as it were, that they are throwing at him is 4A.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Right?

[Chris Weitz]

No, 4, 4F.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm sorry that they're constantly mocking like you're, as you were saying, feeling that all the capable men are about to leave the culture and we're going to be left like with fucking self loathing weasels like this guy.

[David Sims]

And then, then the movie ends with its final, you know, long sequence of he returns to the hotel, the cops are There. They've read the script. One of them kind of likes it, one of them doesn't.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And then everyone reappears. The walls catch fire. Goodman shoots the cops and then monologues at Barton.

[Griffin Newman]

Can you pull up in the dossier? JJ had a good section about how they execute the hallway gag.

[Chris Weitz]

I can bring that up, but that was a dangerous.

[David Sims]

It was probably a pain in the.

[Griffin Newman]

They in 1991 were like, well, obviously we'll have to do this with cgi, which I can't imagine how bad it would have looked at the time. But they were just like, I don't know how we could safely execute this. And it's why I want you to pull this up, because it's just, like, astounding that they got it.

[Chris Weitz]

It looks like. I was wondering how no one died.

[David Sims]

Trying to find this. It's in the dossier.

[Chris Weitz]

Yep. So while you're looking up, he says, look upon me, right? I'm thinking about, like, bits that have been sort of taken, Magpie fashion, by other movies. It felt like, witness. Witness me a bit. Look upon me, and I'll show you the life of the mind. And then there's this weird moment where John Goodman's character says, heil Hitler, right before he shoots the second guy. But I do not think that this is the key that unlocks anything, actually.

[David Sims]

No, but it's like, that's what's happening in the moment is this monstrousness is creeping around the edges of the world. He also brings up the thing from their first meeting, which is that Barton complained about the noise.

[Chris Weitz]

Annoying. Yeah. Yeah.

[David Sims]

And like, he's, like, saying, like, that he's still wounded by this now. He did just shoot a bunch of people. His sympathies might be, you know, but like, that he's like, and you just complained about me making noise. Like I'm. You know, Right. Like, he. He starts to speak aloud and castigate.

[Chris Weitz]

Barton Goodman, you know, and he says, you don't listen. That. That. That's kind of cool.

[Griffin Newman]

And Goodman's a character whose, like, ears are literally, like, causing him pain.

[David Sims]

There's, like, goo, like, leaking out of.

[Griffin Newman]

His ears, and he's going to doctors. He's trying to get this thing figured out. And. And yet, like, he's still trying to listen to Barton. I mean, it's real, like, acting is reacting shit where the shifts between Goodman doing his sort of, like, verbose Cohen's runs, and then when he sort of pulls back, and you can just fucking watch Goodman process whatever flowery shit Barton Fink is going on. There's such a universe of reaction within him.

[Chris Weitz]

It's a freaking amazing performance. We said that at the beginning, but yes. Why can't find this.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay, where is it? Let me look it up.

[David Sims]

Yeah, maybe. I think you must have found it somewhere else. I think it's not in the dossier. No offense to jj.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe it's on America's most trusted news source.

[David Sims]

Wikipedia, possibly.

[Chris Weitz]

We skipped over the poolside scene.

[David Sims]

Yeah. The second learner scene where he's in the bathrobe and I wanted to shout out, john Poo. We love him. He's. He's like, has that guy ever had hair?

[Chris Weitz]

He was born to come over.

[Griffin Newman]

Here's the great thing. And so pin not to talk about this in the Miller's Crossing episode, but we'll just do it here because you.

[David Sims]

Asked question six con movies. John Peto. We're going to have a lot of wonderful time with Mr. Peto.

[Griffin Newman]

He did, I believe, a random roles with the A.V. club about 10 years ago before his. He's kind of what untimely passing subject for that. And he said that he had known the Cohen when he was younger. Maybe they had gone to see him in a play.

[Chris Weitz]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

And he read the Miller's Crossing script and was like, I got to play this guy. And have you seen Miller's Crossing before?

[David Sims]

No. That's sort of his biggest role.

[Griffin Newman]

You will have seen it last week. But he's playing more the learner type in that movie. Right.

[Chris Weitz]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

And he reads it and is like, I got to play this part. And had his agents submit him. And the Cohen's respond like, oh, he's not the right type. That's not what we're looking for. And to p. As Polito tells it, in five years he had gained a lot of weight and lost all of his hair. And he was like.

[David Sims]

The last headshot saw me was I.

[Griffin Newman]

Was of part a pretty boy. And they thought of me as this like Italian hunk.

[David Sims]

Oh, damn. He kind of was.

[Griffin Newman]

And he was just like, I have so comfortably transformed into this different type of performer that I'm owning and loving. And I have to sell the Coen brothers that I've become the perfect Coen brothers character actor, which he.

[David Sims]

He sure had.

[Griffin Newman]

But they were. They had him in their mind as like a pretty boy. So he did have that era. But yet the second he started looking like John Polito, that's when he really started working and never stopped.

[David Sims]

It is from Wikipedia, Griffin, but I'm. I'm sure this Is true. They. They built an alternate hallway in a airplane hangar. Putting gas jets behind the walls, obviously.

[Griffin Newman]

And sort of incrementally with each passing step. Following him.

[David Sims]

Correct. As Goodman's walking through the hall, running through someone on a catwalk is opening all the jets.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, just like precision timing every.

[David Sims]

They had to rebuild everything. They had a second hallway ready for pickups.

[Chris Weitz]

That is expensive. I. I was thinking about like the.

[David Sims]

Production, but my guess is like largely this production was not that expensive. Beyond like costuming. Like they're doing a lot of location stuff.

[Chris Weitz]

The hotel is. They chose their targets. I'm sure Dennis, the room is.

[Griffin Newman]

I think he just made the argument like it's worth spending the money on this. This is where to put the money.

[David Sims]

And it sure is.

[Griffin Newman]

Cuz this had into my memory fairly compelling CGI flames. The movie would fall apart in the cp.

[David Sims]

It would be a bit of a bummer. Yes. And so. Or whatever post production, kind of like optic. I don't know what you would do.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's not just that the imagery is so powerful, but it's also like watching Goodman crank his performance all the way up to the maximum volume while surrounded by real fire.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It feels so real because you're like, he's actually having to do this surrounded by this level of scene.

[Chris Weitz]

I'm sure it would have been a scary. It would have been. There would have been a long fucking safety meeting beforehand. Nobody would be quite sure if things were going to blow up or not. Is the set going to catch on fire? You'd be pretty. Pretty amped.

[Griffin Newman]

But like miracle of movies that they got it.

[David Sims]

After Goodman's incredible monologue, he does something that I think is really cool, which is he pulls the bed spring apart, you know, the bed frame apart. And the camera zooms in on his face in what's become sort of a meme almost. Right. Like sweaty red face screening. Yes, that particular image of him.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, you're right.

[David Sims]

Um, and then he does say, right, he visited the family in New York and the package isn't his. And he goes like this. And that's the end of him. Walks into the flames.

[Griffin Newman]

Last line. Isn't it Hail Hitler. Or it's right before.

[David Sims]

No, he says Hail Hitler before he shoots the guy.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, you're right.

[David Sims]

The second guy, the last thing is the package. I gave you a lied. It isn't mine. And then he just goes like this. Yeah, rocks. He should have won an Oscar. I think he's too scary. That's my assumption, is that the Oscars were like, I don't know what to make of this. It's too weird.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah, I do. I do just think the movie was a little too heady for them at the time.

[David Sims]

It's a weird.

[Griffin Newman]

It just feels like this guy was like. We. We talked about how quickly like Roseanne season one springboards to always springboards to the Flintstones. Like, America just immediately was like, we're buying anything with this guy. He was clearly so beloved within the industry. It still is. But what was right out of the gate, it just feels like an obvious kind of.

[David Sims]

But he only makes one movie next year, which is the Babe. But then I feel like by a couple years later and obviously he's making Roseanne his sort of like, he's in a lot of stuff. Career start. Right. Where it's like, Goodman's a pretty reliable, like, two, three, four movies a year.

[Griffin Newman]

This is the era where they were like, I guess he has to be a leading man. Right. I guess we have to construct vehicles around him. What's the right source material? What's the right projects? And. And then he, I think, like, transitions to an area of flexibility of like, I'll just do anything. I'm happy to play the lead. I'm happy to be in one scene. I'm happy to be the second guy.

[David Sims]

And the Cohen's always useful.

[Griffin Newman]

I'll do comedy and indie and drama and action. And. Yeah. He's just. He's fucking. Not only is he, you know, the classic Sims. When's he bad?

[David Sims]

When is he bad?

[Griffin Newman]

I was watching it last night and I was like, has this guy ever had a moment that is less than great? Genuinely.

[David Sims]

I saw him on Broadway in the front page, which was this sort of all star cast thing where it was like, fucking Nathan Lane and John Slattery and Goodman. Where you're like, jesus, any of these guys could headline a Broadway play. Right. You know, like, what the fuck is going on? And it was that weird sort of phase in his life where he suddenly lost a lot of weight.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

And his energy had gotten so big.

[Griffin Newman]

He got so rueful.

[David Sims]

And it's not like he was bad in it. But you were. I was remember being let down by, like, he was a little muted. And it was sort of like, that's weird. In a play that's mostly people, like, screaming at the top of their heads or top of their lungs. Sorry.

[Griffin Newman]

I just.

[David Sims]

I never. I have certainly never thought he was bad.

[Griffin Newman]

I have never. I've not seen every single thing he's done. But I Have not, in my mind, consciously witnessed a false moment from him.

[David Sims]

What about Lou's brother 2000?

[Griffin Newman]

I think he's good in it. I rewatched it recently.

[David Sims]

I believe you.

[Chris Weitz]

You guys see Everything.

[David Sims]

I want to.

[Griffin Newman]

Say twice in theaters.

[David Sims]

I've not seen Blues Brothers, and I.

[Griffin Newman]

Watched it, like, six months ago. I was like, I. It's time to reassess.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, to an extent, David, it's your. It's your job. Right? So I'm always. You always seem to see everything.

[David Sims]

Right now it is my job.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. I'm just sick.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, you're doing great. But it's hard is. It is hard to keep up with movies with children. And I sympathize, David.

[David Sims]

Well, that's true, but you just have to, in my opinion, when you're a parent, you do have space for kind of like one extracurricular thing, basically. It's kind of what it is that you pick. Right?

[Griffin Newman]

I don't know.

[David Sims]

The final two scenes, coda scenes, are so, so good. Michael Lerner in his, like, Mussolini costume, where he's, like, had a general costume rigged up for him, and that's when he's turned on Fink, where he's like, this is too arty farty.

[Chris Weitz]

Good side gag when he turns around because you think he's in a T. And then suddenly he's covered in metal.

[David Sims]

It's so funny. And in a daze after being chewed out for his. Whatever, terrible script. He goes to the beach. He sees the lady from the painting. He's got the box, and she goes like this. And that's it.

[Chris Weitz]

He says, you're very beautiful. Are you in the pictures? And she says, don't be silly. And I had a false memory that what you. She says is, don't be silly. Nothing good comes of the pictures.

[David Sims]

That would be way too obvious.

[Chris Weitz]

But that's what I took away, actually was like.

[Griffin Newman]

It is the takeaway.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

No, I think this movie is about how writing is fun and easy and pictures are easy breezy and.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

It's good.

[Chris Weitz]

Hollywood.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, they.

[Chris Weitz]

There's no business like show business.

[Griffin Newman]

There's no business like show business. They talk about it. A lot of the quotes that JJ pull up in the dossier is they're just like, a lot of this stuff just comes out of us organically. Like, it does feel like so much of their incubation process is they start to hone in on a couple things they find interesting. And it's like, huh, that's an interesting historical moment. This is an interesting place. What about a character like this? What if we wrote for this guy and then they get to a point where they have, like, eight elements they find compelling? And then they're just like, let's just see where it goes. And there's an episode of, of course, my favorite web series, the Russo Brothers Pizza Film School, in which they have Josh Brolin on this is. The Russo brothers have a show where they interview people who worked on movies and break down storytelling and screenplays. And they are guys who think about storytelling in a pretty formulaic way. Sure, they. They are.

[David Sims]

They've got a schematic of how much.

[Griffin Newman]

They feel like they have figured out the scheme of how to make stories.

[David Sims]

The first movie they ever made, welcome to Collinwood, is a, you know, very, very straightforward Coen Brothers e kind of.

[Griffin Newman]

Big deal on Madonna Street Rep. It's very Cohen's y, right? And they're talking to. They didn't. Unsurprisingly, the Coen brothers did not want to go on Pizza Film School, but Josh Brolin did. And they did a no country episode with them. And they were trying to apply their screenplay logic math, right? And being like, look, it doesn't seem like it, but if you actually break apart the script and you stopwatch it, there is this very deliberate construction. And Josh Brolin was just like, look, I've worked with them a couple times. I've about talked talk to them a lot. They do not think that way. They just, like. They start on page one and they get to the end and they write what's interesting to them. And they are not thinking about what it would take to keep the audience invested or how you're swinging their alliances or any of these sorts of things. I think so much of their magic is just they know how to make every single scene interesting. Even with these movies that are oddly shaped, does not feel like themes that are hard to identify, they're able to just always isolate and circle what is the inherent drama and comedy of this scene in a way that is really playable, that is surrounded by them working with the best craftspeople in the world, where you're just on board leading in trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, I agree. I think they're organically and multifariously excellent.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Phil film was at 91 can. Big competition there, I would say. Is Kieslowski's Double Life of Ronique. Also Lars Von Trier's Europa.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Is Homicide, the mammoth movie, which is really good. Jungle Fever, Bill Duke's Rage in Harlem. There's good movies.

[Griffin Newman]

There's not movies Boys in the Hood played out of competition.

[David Sims]

I mean, obviously there's other stuff like that. But like it was in certain regards.

[Griffin Newman]

Thumb and Louise was the closing film.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

It was a good year.

[David Sims]

But it's not a lineup where you're like, oh, damn. Like it's a lineup where you look at it. You're like, well, Barton Fink is the best movie of these.

[Griffin Newman]

Now we should acknowledge that Polanski was the head of the jury. And this is a very Polanski inspired film. And I think it's part of why there was this backlash.

[David Sims]

But it was a unanimous jury victory.

[Griffin Newman]

It was.

[David Sims]

And three categories Lars von Trier made said thanks very much to the midget and to the rest of the jury, insulting Polanski.

[Griffin Newman]

That's weird. That guy never says off the cuff stuff.

[David Sims]

At Cannes Film Festival film got made $6 million in America released by Fox, which means, of course Barton Fink will be in Avengers Doomsday. He's joining the cast.

[Chris Weitz]

He's going to be one of the Spider man villains.

[Griffin Newman]

You hear the strains of Carter Burwell's score as the camera pans over to the trailer.

[David Sims]

It got very good reviews and three Oscar nominations, but certainly was most more polarizing, I would say.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I mean, this is the rude era of Turturro kind of being snubbed for this. And then Quiz show really is what should have been his like makeup nomination. And in both cases of these movies, there's kind of like the surprise. Oh, they nominated this other guy instead. They nominated Michael Lerner instead of John Goodman. They nominated Paul Schofield instead of Turturro.

[David Sims]

Rosenbaum and Hoberman, two of the great critics of their era, both hated it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And sort of Hoberman sort of is like, they both have this kind of like, what are this is Cohen's health self hating Jew shit. You know, they're both like picking at that very early on. Which to me again, I'm like, get over it. And to be clear, I deeply respect those men and they inspired me to the work that I do.

[Chris Weitz]

But.

[David Sims]

And like, I think they're, they're, they're looking at it the wrong way.

[Griffin Newman]

The thing that always happens with sort of prodigiously talented filmmakers, which is like, oh, we get it. You know how to make a movie. The craft is impeccable. But is that all? This is some like, whiz bang contraption, some like, construction to impress us with your, like, knowledge of the medium. And I just, it still happens to this day it always happens when people come out of the gate hot and they have a couple successes in a row and there starts to be a dialogue of like, are these people starting to make the case for entering the pantheon? There is always a percentage of the critical question community, even more so now that it's just open to the Internet and social media who just go, like, I need to take this guy down. We cannot put this new person on the same tier as like it is established masters a lot this year. And yet to your point, when you're like, I feel like they are the greatest living filmmakers. Not you, because you have always been so open with us. But like increasingly over the last four or five years, years, we will hear about filmmakers we admire who listen to the podcast and we're like, holy shit, that person listens. That is crazy. And then we get in touch with them. And the way we get in touch with you, part of it's the show's gotten bigger. They're more worried about there being more ears on it. But people will say, like, I kind of feel uncomfortable coming on and talking about someone else's work.

[Chris Weitz]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't want to shit on stuff. And the flip side is I don't want to like call dibs on a big movie because I'm excited expecting your guests. Want to hear an Alex ross Perry style 20 page horror syllabus. And if I don't know the whole movie backwards and forward shirt, I come on, right. It has been interesting and who knows, this is early in the series and things can change. But we've like circled back to filmmakers who have been weary for the last couple of years and a lot of them are like, oh, I'll do the Cohens.

[Chris Weitz]

They want to jump in there is because they're unimpeachably great. You can't say like, I'm looking down on this movie.

[Griffin Newman]

They're endlessly talking, talkable movies open to like endless interpretations. And it also feels like even though they are still alive and still working, whether separately or together, they are on a different tier. It feels like they're basically accepted as like living masters now.

[Chris Weitz]

They're in the pantheon for sure, not.

[Griffin Newman]

Contemporaries in a way.

[David Sims]

Before we play the box office game, we must acknowledge that jokingly or not, the Cohen's did to Josh Horowitz bring up the idea of old fink.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

A sort of semi jokey scene sequel where they were kind of like, he's in his. It's the 60s. He's, you know, he's, he's teaching at.

[Griffin Newman]

A liberal arts college.

[David Sims]

Teaching at Berkeley. And he ratted on everyone to who.

[Griffin Newman]

It'S his post HUAC shame.

[David Sims]

And he like Turturro.

[Griffin Newman]

Turo seconded this.

[David Sims]

Like I'm down. I.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[David Sims]

We have talked about it at least.

[Griffin Newman]

Jokingly about 15 years ago. Both parties said we can't make it until he's a little older.

[David Sims]

Right now Turturro is having. Not that Turturro is never not having a moment, but he is having a bit of a moment from severance. The Cohen. It's time to get back together. There's multiple things where they've been like let's make a sequel. But they're kidding.

[Griffin Newman]

But this is the only one I'd actually want to see. Like Turo of course made his own weird Big Lebowski side call.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

That no one was asking for.

[David Sims]

Well but they used to. That also was one of those projects that they would of kind. Kind of joke about.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

And the answer was eh. We weren't really asking for this.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Think feels like a real movie. That doesn't feel like a dumb pitch. I think it's. It's why everyone goes like are they just with us because they have a tendency to with the public in that way.

[David Sims]

Right. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

So anyway that's out there.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Who knows?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But like I'm saying, tutorial's hot right now. Irv. We're all obsessed with Irv.

[Chris Weitz]

I mean they are very perverse. Right. That's another thing I love about them.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

Sort of don't want anything cold.

[David Sims]

They got sex stuff going on. I remember brains of theirs.

[Chris Weitz]

I remember before I really knew their work that well. Like reading a foreword to. Maybe it was that screenplay but written by their editor. And I didn't know that they worked together under an assumed name.

[Griffin Newman]

Roderick Jaynes.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. Rodrick James. And Roderick James was kind of dumping on like damning with faint praise.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Chris Weitz]

And being a bit anti Semitic. Semitic.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. They created this fake character. Don't. One of their movies. There's a commentary track where they hired an actor to play Roderick James. I think.

[David Sims]

And I think.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah. It was. I think it was the.

[Griffin Newman]

The blood Simple.

[Chris Weitz]

The director's cut of Blood simple. And. And James talks about how it's better because there's less boring stuff in it.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the rare director's cut that is shorter because they went back to their first film and were like we were idiots. We'd know how to make this better.

[David Sims]

Now they fail famously. Who knows if it's True or not, when they got nominated as Roderick James for Fargo, we might bring this up on the Fargo episode. They were like, what do we do? Yeah, like Roderick James has been nominated for an Oscar and they wanted to dress up Albert Finney in like a weird costume and have him be Roderick James. But then they didn't go through with it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But anyway, the box.

[Griffin Newman]

Remember when Adaptation was nominated and they were presenting the nominees and they actually showed two Charlie Kaufman's on the screen. They created a God bless.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh wait, that was my year.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you were nominated. Who'd you guys lose to?

[Chris Weitz]

The Piano, the Pianist. Sorry, the Pianist, not the Pianist. Yes, the Pianist.

[David Sims]

That's somewhat of a surprising win.

[Griffin Newman]

Funny to imagine though, in the same category there is like Chris and Paul Weitz showing two real brothers and Charlie and Donald Kaufman showing a fake brother.

[David Sims]

It's funny because, right. People thought the Hours or Chicago would.

[Chris Weitz]

Definitely thought the Hours. I tell you who thought the Hours was going to be David Hare about everything up until that point.

[Griffin Newman]

He had a Judy Davis moment.

[David Sims]

Right. And right. Adaptation and About a Boy. The two best nominees in that category are probably kind of a pleasure to be nominated or whatever. And then the Pianist won and that was the first sign of like, oh, this is. Oh, you know. And then it won two other big.

[Griffin Newman]

Odds that there was a wild energy to that night where for like three minutes you were like, the Pianist is winning best fiction. And it was shocking almost.

[David Sims]

And then they gave it Chicago to.

[Griffin Newman]

The presumed front, right.

[David Sims]

And the guy gets up there and he's like, hey, Chicago. And you're like, I mean, Chicago's a B. Let's go.

[Chris Weitz]

A bunch of people gyrating in lingerie.

[David Sims]

Dare you. Chicago is pretty good.

[Chris Weitz]

I think Adaptation should have won that that year.

[David Sims]

Well, it wasn't nominated, so that was the biggest thing.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh, first screenplay.

[David Sims]

It would be an amazing, obviously, but for best adapted screenplay Adaptation, winning would have been pretty cool.

[Chris Weitz]

They've given it freaking great.

[David Sims]

He wins two years later for Eternal Sunshine, another. Another good movie.

[Chris Weitz]

Also very good.

[David Sims]

No, that's also the year that El Motovar wins original screenplay, which was also.

[Griffin Newman]

Surprising because also Rock didn't give him.

[David Sims]

Spain didn't nominate, had not submitted him for foreign film because Spain gets in weird fights with him.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

And. But then he got the surprise writing and directing.

[Griffin Newman]

I was gonna say incredible movie.

[David Sims]

One of his best movies. But then him winning was still shocking. Yes, he did beat out Todd Haynes, which was a little sad because that was probably Haynes's Shot.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Are the other three Gangs of New York which was probably not going to win Cox Zelien Lenergan Most adaptation. Yeah. Ichimama Tambien which was like a great nom. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

I guess that was Gang was a original.

[David Sims]

This is original. This is what I'm saying. Gangs was classified as original because the book it's based on is a big fact book.

[Griffin Newman]

And I guess they pulled so much has from different.

[Chris Weitz]

They made a lot of read that book.

[David Sims]

My big fact requesting NEA Vardalis which I think there was some thought of like. Like will that. Will that get a win to acknowledge the like triumph of this movie. But then I think everyone was like let's not be crazy.

[Chris Weitz]

Like yes, take it easy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Not that this film came out August 23, 1991. Seasonally appropriate in terms of you want it to be muggy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

But not really when you want to release this movie. I don't know when you release this movie, but it's these days would probably.

[Griffin Newman]

Be more of a fall awards hot on off the cans heat. They were like let's strike while the iron's muggy.

[David Sims]

It's opening release obviously. So it's not in our top 10. Number one at the box office. I'm sure Ben's seen it. I'm sure Griffin's seen it. Perhaps Chris has seen it. It's a satirical film.

[Griffin Newman]

But you jump to Ben first. You think this is in the Hosley canon. Maybe satirical 1991.

[David Sims]

A spoof of of, you know, famous Hollywood. Hollywood movies of the time.

[Griffin Newman]

It Hotshots Part 2.

[David Sims]

It's Hot Shots.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, the first one.

[David Sims]

I've never seen the first one. That doesn't surprise me either. That much like Under Siege and you know, whatever. A lot where like you got the sequel a lot because it was on TV more.

[Griffin Newman]

I definitely watched Part two many, many times. And then I was like, I if this is part two, I can't imagine how good the first one is going to be.

[Chris Weitz]

1/2 as good.

[Griffin Newman]

I had not seen Top Gun.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

And Hot Shot's part two.

[David Sims]

Hot Shot doing just.

[Griffin Newman]

It's making fun of everything.

[David Sims]

Hot Shot's one is just a Top Gun.

[Griffin Newman]

And I was like, I don't get any of this.

[David Sims]

Oh sure, Hotshots. It's pretty funny.

[Griffin Newman]

I watched the first one recently. It's funny. But two is better.

[David Sims]

Yeah, well, two is a little more like let's just be ridiculous.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like it's a garbage plate.

[Chris Weitz]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

In a good way.

[David Sims]

Number two at the box office. So Chris, you don't care about Hot Shots.

[Chris Weitz]

I haven't seen it. I can see it.

[David Sims]

Number two is a romcom movie Star, I guess. Romcom. It's like. It's not a bad movie. It's all right.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a movie star.

[David Sims]

It's kind of a classic formula.

[Griffin Newman]

1991. It's a classic formula, you know, very.

[David Sims]

It's got a bit of a TV vibe to it.

[Griffin Newman]

It could. It could happen to you.

[David Sims]

No, but. Which is kind of an interesting movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it is kind of an interesting movie.

[David Sims]

No, you know, it's. What if a big shot kind of got taken down a peg? You know, big city, small town movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, it's not Doc Hollywood.

[David Sims]

It's Michael J. Fox and Doc Hollywood.

[Chris Weitz]

Wow.

[David Sims]

Doc Hollywood. A fun movie. It's just the classic like what if a big shots car broke down in a small town?

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

That's the best you could do it. Lawyer cars do it with anything. But this time it's big shot doctor.

[Griffin Newman]

10 years later and he's got to.

[David Sims]

Become like the community doctor to like earn his way out of.

[Griffin Newman]

10 years later. They cracked the code and they said wait, can't walk.

[David Sims]

I don't know. It doesn't. There's a. It makes sense. Don't worry. It's like cars is Doc Hollywood stepping on.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm sorry, the joke. I was going to tee up. I was going to say that 15 years later they finally cracked the formula and said get rid of the guy. Just make it. Car breaks down.

[David Sims]

It's like he crashes into a fence. And they're like, you have to be a doctor for 30 hours of community.

[Chris Weitz]

Service to make back the cost.

[Griffin Newman]

The first cars and then you know, so one to one doctor.

[David Sims]

You know what Ben, he kind of learns that like life at a slower pace with sort of like, you know, more sort of down to earth folk.

[Griffin Newman]

Some appeal because you know who plays.

[David Sims]

Before he was a guy in Hollywood who had sunglasses and he might kind of like look down the sunglasses perhaps of a lady.

[Chris Weitz]

And he's. He would be in a rush.

[David Sims]

He's in a rush. He's got a cell phone.

[Griffin Newman]

But this is why cars are so smart. Cuz what's faster than a race car? The ultimate rush. Woody Harrelson basically plays the mater in that movie.

[David Sims]

Yes. Woody Harrelson is the. The folks.

[Chris Weitz]

Who's the. Who's the love interest?

[Griffin Newman]

It's Julie Warner. Julie Warner who is playing sort of the Sally Carrera.

[David Sims]

Right. Did not have a gigantic career.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Who's the Doc Hudson in that picture.

[David Sims]

David OG and Sty.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, course.

[David Sims]

Who's fun? It's a fun movie.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a classic movie. Who would you say is the Sarge in the film?

[David Sims]

Moving on to the third film we covered, a very popular action film. Been out for two months.

[Griffin Newman]

It's equal.

[David Sims]

We certainly.

[Griffin Newman]

Is it Terminator 2, Judgment Day?

[Chris Weitz]

Correct.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Good movie. The highest grossing film.

[Chris Weitz]

That is a good movie.

[David Sims]

Number four at the box office is a movie I have vaguely heard of.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

It stars an Oscar winner. It's a drama. I think it's based loosely on, like, a real guy.

[Chris Weitz]

Recent one.

[David Sims]

He would have won in the 80s. Yeah. Probably in the last five or six years. But I think his career is starting to curdle.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

Famously a bit of a tough cookie, this actor.

[Griffin Newman]

This actor is a bit of a tough cookie.

[David Sims]

Oh, I feel like.

[Griffin Newman]

I know.

[David Sims]

What is it?

[Chris Weitz]

I know if you guess this movie. No, I can't guess the movie, but is it George C. Scott?

[David Sims]

No, no, George C. Scott.

[Chris Weitz]

He's already. No, he's with us.

[David Sims]

No, no, no. George C. Scott's still with us. I think Jerkey Scott.

[Griffin Newman]

His final film is Angus, which is later.

[David Sims]

He died in 1999. No, no, this is an actor. He was a huge asshole. I mean, but he was a big movie star.

[Griffin Newman]

Good actor.

[David Sims]

Not Dreyfus, but you're close. Who's the other one?

[Griffin Newman]

It's not Dreyfus. It's not John.

[David Sims]

He's the other Oscar winner from that era. Who is a huge asshole.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not Jon Voight.

[Chris Weitz]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, is it William Hurt?

[David Sims]

Yes. A man of the opportunity to play the Red Hulk by mortality. Poor Mr. Hurt. And that's right, I'm going to keep bringing up the red Hulk.

[Chris Weitz]

You.

[David Sims]

You can't stop me. The film is.

[Griffin Newman]

The film is Tell the listeners what I got you for your birthday.

[David Sims]

You got me a. It's sort of like a PEZ dispenser, but for lollipops in the shape of the red Hulk.

[Griffin Newman]

It's like a lollipop protector. It's a plastic red Hulk.

[David Sims]

I guess so it's. It's like you can do a little lollipop and then like. Right. Store it away.

[Griffin Newman]

Just mindful you love sucking on a lolly. But your least favorite part is that once you start, you can't stop. There's no pause points.

[David Sims]

So true.

[Griffin Newman]

And I said, what if the skull.

[David Sims]

Of the roll we've been recording for so long could protect lolly is called.

[Griffin Newman]

The doctor birthday present. You still haven't said thank you.

[David Sims]

Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. I definitely said thank you.

[Griffin Newman]

Came from the heart. Oh, no. I gave it to you during the day.

[David Sims]

Wasn't drunk. And I wasn't even that drunk at my birthday dress.

[Chris Weitz]

How long are we running, Ben? Like, are we. Are we heading for record charge?

[Griffin Newman]

Gentleman's 3. 10.

[David Sims]

It's a long time.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, we're getting. Yeah, we're getting.

[David Sims]

The film is called the Doctor. Has anyone heard of this film?

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

Like, a doctor?

[Griffin Newman]

I've never.

[Chris Weitz]

What's it about?

[Griffin Newman]

What if they're wrong?

[Chris Weitz]

Doctor.

[David Sims]

It's got William Hurt, Christine, Lottie Tinkin's there.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay. Perk.

[David Sims]

Ins, Elizabeth.

[Griffin Newman]

That is.

[David Sims]

Oh, Adam. Arin.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep.

[David Sims]

I don't know. Whatever. It's a movie. It's one of those things where it's like, the movie got fine reviews and made $40 million. And you're like, $40 million for a.

[Chris Weitz]

Movie I've never heard of that's clearly stupid in 1991. That's.

[Griffin Newman]

I've been going through this thing where, like, watched all the vacation movies because of doing your European vacation with heckling. Right. I didn't. I hadn't watched the Goldstein Daily when we had recorded that episode. Watched it after the fact.

[David Sims]

What'd you think?

[Griffin Newman]

I thought it was okay.

[David Sims]

I really think the first 20 minutes, you're like, hell, yeah, this is funny. And then you just kind of lose it.

[Griffin Newman]

There's stuff. It's wonky, and it's just emblematic of a crisis point for studio live action films. And I think of that movie as being seen as a big disappointment and, like, a big failure. Like, made a $150 million worldwide.

[David Sims]

Not bad.

[Griffin Newman]

People were, like, pulling their hair out of the fact it only ended up at, like, 67 domestic or whatever.

[David Sims]

Number five at the box office is a Neo noir thriller. It is a director who we could cover, but he's made a lot of movies at this point.

[Griffin Newman]

Friedkin.

[David Sims]

No, Friedkin's dead, so he's. He can't make any more movies. This guy's a lot more.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, oh, oh. Well, it's not Soderbergh.

[Chris Weitz]

No. Not Adrian Line.

[David Sims]

Not Adrian Line. The fact that it's a neonoir is a bit of a trick.

[Griffin Newman]

That's not his main turf.

[David Sims]

It's his second film.

[Griffin Newman]

Huh.

[David Sims]

And I do feel like it's him being like, hey, I got more in me than what you think I do. But he did make a lot of more epic, costumey stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

Interesting. But he.

[David Sims]

He's also an actor, and he's also the star of this film.

[Griffin Newman]

Not Ron Howard made too many films at this point. He's also the star of this movie.

[David Sims]

Sure is.

[Griffin Newman]

And he's made a lot of them. It's not a Clint Eastwood obviously. He's a. He's an Mel Gibson director who's made a lot of movies. That, that's interesting because a lot of these guys were throwing out direct infrequently.

[David Sims]

He in the 2000 and 20s has already made four movies and he's got another one coming.

[Griffin Newman]

And does he still star in most of them or does he most.

[David Sims]

He is pulling back on starring in all of them. He did recently make a franchise for himself.

[Griffin Newman]

He did recently.

[David Sims]

He is the star of. And he made three movies.

[Chris Weitz]

He recently made a His mind back.

[Griffin Newman]

And he directed all of those.

[David Sims]

Sure did.

[Griffin Newman]

Who is this guy?

[David Sims]

You know him, you love him. He recently won an Academy Award.

[Griffin Newman]

He recently won an Academy Award.

[David Sims]

Hollywood's highest honor.

[Griffin Newman]

Lead or support it Screenplay. It's Kenneth Branagh.

[David Sims]

Kenneth Branagh.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's Dead Again.

[David Sims]

The film is Dead Again with Emma Thompson.

[Griffin Newman]

This is a perfect example, really good movie.

[David Sims]

Like a really fun. I've never seen it fun, early 90s.

[Griffin Newman]

Thriller that is a perfect example of everything you just described. You're like, this is impossible. No one possibly fulfills.

[David Sims]

The craziest thing is that Bran is like I'm going to direct my ass off. And it's like. And by the way, I'm sneaking in those Poirot movies and guess who the star is. You're looking at him, right?

[Chris Weitz]

You're like very nice man. Incredible amount of energy as well.

[Griffin Newman]

He's always five movies.

[David Sims]

You see Tenant, him doing those monologues. He's great.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you know he was directing two pros while filming tennis like mid t.

[David Sims]

When he's doing phone calls, right?

[Chris Weitz]

He's like, he's got like a little denial of scenes.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Venice needs to be more haunted. I'll talk to you in 10 minutes. Dead again. Fun movie. Other movies in the top 10 we've got the John Claude Van Damme twin picture Double Impact which I've never seen.

[Griffin Newman]

Me neither.

[Chris Weitz]

Bet you it's good.

[David Sims]

We've got the, the Mickey Rourke sort of tail end of his movie star career. Harley Davidson and the Marboro Man.

[Griffin Newman]

He always cites that as the. The movie that single handedly killed his career. To which I would say I think you. There were a couple steps in that process.

[David Sims]

Yeah. There's a behavior as well that you might want to point to.

[Griffin Newman]

One Bad movie. And suddenly people stop picking up the phone and maybe you were like, also the punches you were throwing.

[David Sims]

There is Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, another big hit of that year. There's a comedy I've never heard of called Pure Luck, starring Martin Short and Danny CL Lover.

[Chris Weitz]

Yes. Wow.

[David Sims]

Like a cop.

[Griffin Newman]

French director, had a bit of a Barton Fink experience and has spent the last 25 years, 30 years being like, this is why Hollywood is bad. Relating everything back to her experience.

[Chris Weitz]

I make my film Pure Luck. No one understands.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. I believe it's a buddy cop movie.

[David Sims]

Yeah, looks like it.

[Griffin Newman]

Or. Or Glover's a cop.

[David Sims]

Glover's a cop.

[Griffin Newman]

And Martin Short's like, a suspect or a witness or whatever.

[David Sims]

He's a psychologist.

[Griffin Newman]

But the whole thing is that. That he's got, like, cosmically bad luck that, like, cartoonishly bad things keep happening.

[David Sims]

Oh. Number 10 at the box office is a film called Defenseless. What is that?

[Griffin Newman]

No idea.

[David Sims]

1991 film called Defenseless, directed by Martin Campbell, starring Barbara Hershey and Sam Shepard. Legal thriller.

[Chris Weitz]

Okay. I don't know.

[David Sims]

Got bad reviews.

[Chris Weitz]

Ah. Because you need a defense, legal defense.

[Griffin Newman]

If. If you are defensive, but if you're.

[Chris Weitz]

In love and if you're. You're defenseless against someone's charm, stakes are high. Yeah. Very good.

[David Sims]

All done. Because we've recorded for so long, I.

[Griffin Newman]

Need to pee as well. And I've just been holding it in, and I'm not looking for applause. I just want people to know that. Chris, anything else?

[Chris Weitz]

Let me see. Do I have. Do I have anything to add? No, I'm just really glad to be back on the main feed.

[Griffin Newman]

I just feel like you go through these cycles and, by the way, always happy to receive these texts and give you pep talks, which are often been just like, chris, you're a good guy and you do good work. This industry is frustrating. I don't think you should give up. But. But you will. You will go through these cycles, and it will both be in terms of, like, the nature of the industry and your experiences working on things, but also you. You have one of the strongest moral backbones of anyone I know. I truly mean that. And you often will just text and be like, I am just so disgusting by, like, this behavior I'm seeing or this attitude or this thing. And I just don't know if I want to be around these people.

[Chris Weitz]

I want to be in Hollywood, but not of it. If possible. But. Yeah. Let me see. What. Actually, you know, I think I've been in kind of a meta cycle of like 15 years. Ish. Kind of in the wilderness in a way of like trying to react to that, you know, kind of devastating experience of the Golden Compass and kind of over. Always sort of over hyper correcting in some other weird way. And I think the one movie that I really think like that is a good movie is a Better Life, the movie that Debbie Be sure starred in, which is unfortunately still relevant. And I'm like, okay, okay, that was a good one. That was a good one.

[Griffin Newman]

But I love Operation Finale.

[Chris Weitz]

Thank you very much.

[Griffin Newman]

It is part of what is so unique and fascinating about your exact position is, is you like have spent the last 15 years in a very successful wilderness funk. Right. Like, you know, but it's. It speaks to the weird reality of this industry of like you constantly are like looking in the mirror and going like, what am I doing? And yet from the outside, because I know you're a real person who just like the mere kind of credits or like box office numbers does not make you feel good. It's right you're striving for things and you have things you want to say and whatever. But it's like that. That this is an industry that can make you feel like a failure when you're a success.

[Chris Weitz]

It is kind of funny.

[Griffin Newman]

And that forces failures to pretend they're successes, you know?

[Chris Weitz]

Right. No, it is. It is kind of funny that way. And I.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Weitz]

It's very strange. I think. I think what I've come to is that in order to actually do the thing that I want to do, whatever that may be, it's probably going to be independent and very small scale. And actually, you know, I had a call with Alex Ross Perry the other day. He was very kind about this in terms of sort of who I only know via the. Via blank check. So there's this kind of blank check extended.

[David Sims]

I remember met when we did the big night commentary.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

You were leaving from doing the Rogue.

[Chris Weitz]

One commentary and I didn't get to play the. The keep role playing game, which was a bummer.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, someday.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah, someday we'll get it back together.

[Griffin Newman]

He's someone I'm also having these text conversations with all the time where we're just like, we feel like we missed the industry. Like it's like the supreme thing of like, you ever feel like you got in too late?

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Like the best of it was over. Right. And as well, you want to go.

[Chris Weitz]

Back to the studio system, clearly. Apparently. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I just want the trains running on time.

[Chris Weitz]

I'd like to go to the 70s.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe that's where I really want to be. That.

[David Sims]

I think that was a more exciting.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Balance between the two extreme poles of what the industry has been. And there was a little bit of the best of both worlds. But it is. I mean, I talk about this with, like, all of my friends of sort of my generation, where it's just like, we feel like we got in just in time to watch it all get gutted. That, like, the dream jobs we thought we were aspiring to, not even could we not get them, but they stopped existing.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, but, you know, I take a lot of energy from. From you guys and from this podcast. I gotta say that, like.

[David Sims]

All right, that's enough. We don't need any.

[Chris Weitz]

Pray you don't want to shift our heads.

[David Sims]

Need deflating.

[Chris Weitz]

No, but it's a decade of dreams. And, like, it's time for. It's time for the, you know, members. Members of your extended family to come back and, you know, and. And attest to.

[David Sims]

Well, you're welcome back any.

[Griffin Newman]

Anytime, truly.

[Chris Weitz]

Thank you very much.

[David Sims]

And hopefully you come back sooner.

[Chris Weitz]

I. I would like to very much.

[Griffin Newman]

Did you notice, by the way, that.

[Chris Weitz]

Oh, he's on the application to retire. Bit is up on the wall.

[Griffin Newman]

That's on the wall.

[David Sims]

Framed.

[Chris Weitz]

Although I do feel like. Still feel really guilty about that. But we had to. I think. I think I couldn't come up with any more cool shit for nida. I was. I was. I was dancing as fast as I could.

[Griffin Newman]

Might be going back. Redevelopment. Yeah. Yeah, we'll.

[Chris Weitz]

We'll see. You know, but I think it was a good time to put it down and we could always pick it back up when the time comes. Yeah, with the proper formalities.

[Griffin Newman]

Chris.

[Chris Weitz]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I believe by the time this episode comes out, the full season of Murderbot will be out. August 3rd.

[Chris Weitz]

August 3rd. It will have. Yeah, it will have already been seen. But. But binge. Binge away, please. I really like it. I think it's good.

[Griffin Newman]

You very kindly invited Ben and I to the premiere and David.

[Chris Weitz]

But I knew that he was, you.

[Griffin Newman]

Know, what's a crazy decade of dream thing? When we met you, you had three kids and David had zero. Now he's caught our chin up dead.

[Chris Weitz]

Well, I know David is really against the great replacement. You know, I had a dinner with.

[David Sims]

You and your wonderful wife and Griffin, like, the day that I. Or the day before I was getting sleep training my first child.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And it's a dinner that really lives in my memory because it was also.

[Chris Weitz]

No, I'm serious.

[David Sims]

Because it was also an early like Covid din. Like it's like I hadn't had dinner with people much. Like it was like we're just starting to.

[Griffin Newman]

That was maybe my first dinner after having my gallbladder surgery.

[Chris Weitz]

Yes, that's right. Like your gallbladder was at.

[Griffin Newman]

It was like the first night out, I remember where it's like I. I can eat a variety of foods again. And the other big thing I remember that night was I was waiting to get a message back from my doctor about whether or not I was allowed to drink alcohol yet.

[Chris Weitz]

And the word did. The word came come in.

[Griffin Newman]

It didn't. And I was like white knuckling. And I was like, I can't like four more days before my system can process it. Yeah. Look at. Look at all the decade dreams, memories. Look at the time. But people should watch My Other body. Ben and I got to see the first two episodes. It's very. I feel like it exists on a bit of Verhoeven.

[Chris Weitz]

Uh huh.

[Griffin Newman]

There's a bit of that Continuum, but with maybe a little bit of that Weitz Brothers feeling a little bit more of that heart.

[Chris Weitz]

It does have some heart. Scarzi is very good in it.

[Griffin Newman]

He's quite excellent in it. And I will say this, he's a pretty good looking guy.

[Chris Weitz]

He's fairly good looking guy.

[Griffin Newman]

It was pretty absurd to watch him on a big screen and then see him in person. Person and be like both make me feel like a piece of.

[Chris Weitz]

He is a specimen. Yeah.

[David Sims]

We must be done.

[Chris Weitz]

All right. Yeah. This is in the top 10 longest episodes.

[Griffin Newman]

Hell yeah.

[David Sims]

I don't like that. That's a naughty.

[Chris Weitz]

I'm so happy. I actually think that the fan. The fans appreciate it. No, I mean I love this. It's something I wanted and that's what.

[Griffin Newman]

We do it for. We do it for the common people Podcast for you, Don.

[Chris Weitz]

The working stiff out there.

[Griffin Newman]

Chris, thank you for being here.

[Chris Weitz]

Thank you.

[Griffin Newman]

Look forward to having you on again, everybody. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Tune in next week for Fargo or no, I'm sorry. The Hudsucker Proxy. My favorite with guest to be deep. Yeah. And as always, we're just looking for a little bit of that Blink check. Feeling.

[Chris Weitz]

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley.

[Griffin Newman]

Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our Associate producer is AJ McKeon.

[Chris Weitz]

This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy.

[Griffin Newman]

Research by JJ Burch.

[Chris Weitz]

Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery.

[David Sims]

And the Great American Novel with additional.

[Griffin Newman]

Music by Alan, Alex Mitchell, artwork by.

[Chris Weitz]

Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds.

[David Sims]

Our production assistant is Minick.

[Chris Weitz]

Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help.

[Griffin Newman]

Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

[Chris Weitz]

Join our Patreon Blank Check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

[Griffin Newman]

Follow us on social at Blank Checkpot.

[Chris Weitz]

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Checkbook on Substack.

[Griffin Newman]

This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.