Disclosure Day

Summary

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Episode: Disclosure Day (June 14, 2026)

Podcast Summary by an Expert Podcast Summarizer

---

Overview:

On this special episode, hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims are joined by producer Ben Hosley and creative producer Marie Barty Salinas to review Steven Spielberg’s highly anticipated new film, Disclosure Day. As longtime Spielberg observers and connoisseurs of auteur-driven Hollywood, they dissect the film’s return to classic Spielbergian science fiction while exploring its contemporary emotional and thematic undercurrents. The conversation is a hilarious, deeply detailed journey through the film’s structure, performances, spiritual implications, and Spielberg’s evolving career—and, as always, is punctuated by lively tangents, inside jokes, and affectionate bickering.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Spielberg, Aliens, and The Blank Check

• Spielberg’s New Era:
  • "There’s definitely like a post-Fablemans reading and then a pre-Fablemans reading, in my opinion." – Marie [10:03]
  • The hosts contextualize Disclosure Day as Spielberg both returning to his alien-movie roots and channeling his post-Fablemans introspection.
• Filmography Milestone:
  • This is Spielberg’s 35th feature (not counting his early student work).
  • ”It was framed as: guys, Spielberg is going to do the Spielberg thing again for the first time in a while.” — Griffin [20:26]
  • His name is the only one above the title on the poster—a rare occurrence signifying the director's brand power.

2. Comparing Past and Present Spielberg

• Modes of Spielberg:
  • The team distinguishes Spielberg’s “classicist”/adult drama mode (Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, The Post) from his attempts to recapture blockbuster magic (Ready Player One, Indiana Jones, Tintin, The BFG).
• Blockbuster Context:
  • “This feels like him making a '70s movie… it doesn’t feel like him being like, ‘fuck, what do the kids like today?’” — Griffin [29:05]
• Aging & Legacy:
  • Griffin notes the poignancy of Spielberg, now 79, slowing his output and working primarily with long-standing collaborators, many also nearing retirement. [19:36]

3. Disclosure Day: Film Analysis

Opening & Structure

• Immediate Immersion:
  • The movie “drops you in media res and then you’re on the run the whole time.” — Marie [31:02]
  • Fast opening that throws the viewer into chaos, reminiscent of Minority Report and Close Encounters.

Narrative and World

• High-Concept Premise:
  • Two people, each gifted by aliens—one with advanced math and one with super-empathy—become the linchpins of humanity’s “Disclosure Day.”
  • Spiritual and government forces collide around hidden alien technology and a global revelation.
• Contemporary Setting, Classic Spielbergian Execution:
  • “So few people get to do an original big movie like this. So it’s awesome that he wants to.” — David [26:01]

Emotional Core & Themes

• Empathy as the Superpower:
  • “The language of empathy is what the film is actually selling, more than aliens or God.” — Griffin [43:37]
  • Religion & Unity: Discussion of the film’s handling of faith (“Nun being like, ‘aliens are also God’s children.’” — Ben [40:34]), the merging of religious and scientific worldviews, and Spielberg's approach to spirituality.
  • “This movie’s about… is there any way that empathy could win again? That we could all just get on the same page…” — Griffin [45:42]
  • “The last word of this movie, I believe, is ‘listen.’” — Marie [45:42]

Character and Performances

• Emily Blunt:
  • Widely agreed to be one of her best roles (rivaling Edge of Tomorrow and My Summer of Love)
  • “She totally blew me away... this is Edge of Tomorrow level." — Marie [60:48]
  • Blunt’s newscaster character is “the most empathetic connector,” even as her appearance evokes contemporary debates about actors’ ability to emote post-cosmetic procedures.
  • The piano car/train set piece and the panic attack aftermath is especially highlighted for its realism.
• Josh O’Connor, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, Colin Firth:
  • O’Connor’s mathematician: “the most sensitive bedside manner guy” [64:19], carefully juxtaposed to Blunt’s character.
  • Firth’s villain is “curdled… Colonel Kurtz-died-in-his-beliefs.” Domingo is highlighted for his empathetic portrayal as the government handler.

Set Pieces and Style

• Spielbergian Classicism:
  • “It’s got some proper, you know, like blockbuster stuff — but they’re not super-long... it feels really classical.” — Griffin [71:01]
  • Invisible car sequence, animal/alien imagery, and setpieces are “fun, brief, and focused.”
• Climax & Broadcast Sequence:
  • The thrilling final set piece (the live news broadcast) is called “a tribute to live switchboard editors” and reminiscent of SNL behind-the-scenes, a Spielberg obsession. [91:24]
  • Montage of real and fictional alien footage, slowing the film into “real time”—provoking audience and in-film emotional release and unity.

4. Cultural & Critical Reaction, Skepticism

• Will the ‘Disclosure’ Work?
  • Debate over whether the movie’s big reveal would actually bring humanity together, both in the film and in reality:
    • “I needed a little more skepticism… I generally have this problem with alien or monster movies that anytime I see it, the thing — the creature — it feels fake, it gets deflated.” — Marie [129:08]
  • The film’s hopeful, unironic tone is likened to Shyamalan and anticipated as possibly divisive.
  • “It’s going to be quite polarizing. And then, as with almost all the movies he makes, a few years later, people are going to be like, people are kind of cooked on that one, huh?” — David [134:45]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Unifying Power of Empathy and Storytelling:
  • "Is there any way that empathy could win again? That we could all… get on the same page about anything?" — Griffin [45:42]
  • "The last word of this movie, I believe, is 'listen.'" — Marie [45:42]
  • "The answer to weird isn't aliens or God—you know, it can be both..." — David [42:03]
• On Spielberg’s Brand:
  • "It's as if it's Schwarzenegger..." — Griffin [21:01], on Spielberg being billed above the title.
• On Emily Blunt’s Performance:
  • "She totally blew me away... this is Edge of Tomorrow level." — Marie [60:48]
  • "There's something affecting about having someone who looks kind of plasticky end up being the most empathetic connector." — Marie [62:12]
• On the Oddity of Cultural Zeitgeist:
  • "Back in my day, kids were using ChatGPT to do their homework. Nowadays they're using One Wish Willows." — Griffin [33:18]
  • "If something happens during the Trump administration, then I don't believe it." — Griffin [97:36]

---

Important Timestamps

• Spielberg’s Career Arc – [10:02 – 21:09]
• Framing the Film: Returning to Blockbuster Sci-Fi – [20:26 – 31:02]
• Empathy, Spirituality, and Spielbergian Unity – [40:21 – 47:05]
• Plot Run-Through & Analysis – [64:55 – 116:13]
• The Broadcast Sequence and Climax – [123:08 – 130:15]
• Cultural Impact, Skepticism & Box Office Predictions – [129:38 – End]

---

Tone & Language

Consistent with Blank Check’s signature style:

• Enthusiastic, Analytical, Irreverent
  Plenty of bits, asides, and inside-jokes—benign tangents about Journey 2, ginger stereotypes, and Halloween/“Disclosure Day” overlap.
• Warm & Personal
  Discussions of the emotional impact of empathy, religion, and nostalgia are balanced with deep-dive film nerdery and friendly, unfiltered banter.
• Critical Yet Earnest
  Skepticism about the real-world believability and effectiveness of the movie’s central premise is voiced, but never in a dismissive way.

---

Final Verdict

• Marie & Ben: Moderately positive; emotionally affected by parts but express some skepticism about the climax’s broad optimism.
• Griffin & David: Huge fans, especially of Spielberg’s craftsmanship and the film’s emotional and thematic ambitions.
  “It’s great… the kind of the one time he’s fully nailed the ending for me since Jurassic Park.” — Griffin [136:02]

---

For First-Time Listeners

This episode is a masterclass in how to blend genuine cinephile discussion with comedic asides and honest, vulnerable reflection. Even if you haven’t seen Disclosure Day, you’ll learn exactly what makes it a fascinating and risky late-era Spielberg project and why the Blank Check hosts have so much fun dissecting it.

Transcript

[David Sims]

Blank Check with Griffin and David.

[Griffin Newman]

Blankjack with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know is that the name of the shy was Blank Jack. Podcast. Podcast. Podcast.

[David Sims]

Very good.

[Griffin Newman]

Very good.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And what did that mean?

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, you knew that I understood all of it, Everything out there. Yeah. I was speaking mathematics, David. It's easy. You couldn't hear that. That didn't sound like anything to you?

[David Sims]

So crazy.

[Griffin Newman]

That was me saying, 2 plus 2 plus 10 minus 1 equals. This is. And get a lot of sleep last night. I lost the track. 2 plus 2 plus 10, 14 minus 1 is 13. And then I was gonna add one more thing to it. I was gonna do times zero. Tricky. This is my bit I do with Asa Erlich, son of David Erlich. I did it one time.

[David Sims]

He loves math.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm now three years into him insisting I do it every single time. He loves math. He thinks math is the best thing and the funniest thing. And my bit is that I take out the calculator on my phone and I come up with the biggest number I can, and then I go, watch how big this is going to be. And then I times it by zero, and then when the number disappears, I go, what are you doing? You using some kind of prank calculator?

[David Sims]

Right?

[Griffin Newman]

You spoofing and goofing me?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He hasn't caught on yet.

[Griffin Newman]

He likes pointing at me and saying, you're so bad at math.

[David Sims]

Right?

[Griffin Newman]

That's what he likes.

[David Sims]

Kind of like roast.

[Griffin Newman]

He likes that I become the fool, right. I'm hoisted by my petard.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I will say in the. In the film Disclosure Day, yeah. You have the reveal that there are two people that have been gifted, you know, the knowledge from extraterrestrials, and one of them got math, and the other person got empathy. I was just like, fuck. If I was the math person, oh, I'd just, like, kill myself.

[David Sims]

But. But. But wouldn't. I feel like you're. You're thinking of this as a. Because I'm bad at math and you're an empathy person. Well, true, but it's like. But then you'd be good at math.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, I don't want to be good at math.

[David Sims]

Well, but you're already empathetic.

[Griffin Newman]

I actually do want to be good at math. There are a lot of things I'm not good at that I don't care about. It would be great to be good at math.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

For me, that's dancing.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, I'd love to be great at this.

[David Sims]

My number one Thing is languages. Like, if I could, like, snap my finger and suddenly be able to speak like 50 languages, that would be so.

[Griffin Newman]

Which Emily Blunt can do in this movie.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So I was like, she definitely. And also I'm nosy as hell. The fact that she like. And be like David Sims. Tonight's your wife's birthday. You're gonna take her to a musical, apologize.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, you know, all of that's actually true for me.

[Ben Hoskins]

Play all the instruments.

[Griffin Newman]

You want a one man band.

[Ben Hoskins]

I can just like, grab a violin.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

Grab a guitar. Pick up. Well, I could play a tuba, but

[David Sims]

you know what I'm saying?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I'm sorry, what? Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben Wales on the tube.

[Ben Hoskins]

I. I was a band kid in middle school.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I feel like I might have known this, but I forgot that it was the tuba guy.

[David Sims]

No. Yeah, Ben, big tuba.

[Griffin Newman]

You've never seen the picture of his school band where he looks like a little porcelain Christmas ornament? He does.

[David Sims]

He's Rudy face. He's very ruddy faced. And we love that about him.

[Griffin Newman]

We love that about him.

[David Sims]

You're not really a ruddy guy now, but.

[Ben Hoskins]

No, thank God.

[David Sims]

I mean, I suppose if you get a few beers in you, few pints in you, you might get a little

[Ben Hoskins]

ruddy if the Irish whiskey starts flowing

[Griffin Newman]

when the emotions kick in. I feel like if you're. You're laughing really hard, you're proud of a joke, you're getting emotional.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

It'll happen.

[Griffin Newman]

I referred to you as a ginger recently and you took umbrage.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It's not a ginger.

[Ben Hoskins]

I'm not a ginger.

[Griffin Newman]

I thought he was.

[Ben Hoskins]

I feel like I've got some like, little.

[David Sims]

You're not like a proper. As the Brits would call it, ginger, but you've got reddish hair.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

What?

[Griffin Newman]

It really sounds.

[Ben Hoskins]

That sounds offensive.

[David Sims]

It sounds violent in, like, in a weird way.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Because it's like, are you.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I don't believe you.

[David Sims]

You don't believe me.

[Griffin Newman]

Real. It is real.

[David Sims]

That is totally real.

[Griffin Newman]

And we're closing all of Dirty gang.

[David Sims]

They call them dirty and like, so I'm sure I've said this on the podcast before. I came home from school when I was like 10 and I was like. To my mom, I'm like, they're so mean. Everyone is so mean to this kid who has red hair, you know? And she's like, that's what he deserves. Yes. She was like, you listen to me. That's what you call him. And no, no, no. She was like, it's 1,000 years of hating Irish And Scottish people, like, she was just like.

[Ben Hoskins]

That makes sense.

[David Sims]

Because I was like, why do they. And she was like, they don't even know it. But it's just, you know, decades. Centuries of like, well, those are the. You know, the Gallic. You know, we don't want them.

[Griffin Newman]

It all traces back to a couple missing pots of gold that they just. No one has ever gotten over. I'm trying to be empathetic and explain

[David Sims]

this so shocking to me as a child of, like, the fuck? He's just got red hair. You're all. Yeah, you're all pasty English people.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I don't think it's just the red hair. It's the red hair and the freckles.

[David Sims]

It's the freckles. It's the. That you look a little different. You know, I mean, what. What do children's do? Children's. What do children's. Do they make fun of people who look different. It's not nice. They shouldn't do it.

[Griffin Newman]

I think.

[David Sims]

Do it.

[Griffin Newman]

They're.

[David Sims]

They're out.

[Griffin Newman]

They're obviously not playing literal siblings in this. And I think they're both very good at American accents. But does it not kind of help that Josh o' Connor and Emily Blunt are both British in this movie?

[David Sims]

A bit little removed from that.

[Griffin Newman]

They both have the same exact kind of, like, pitch of their performance.

[David Sims]

I think that's very fair. I'm trying to think of. I feel like there's a lot of other examples recently of this of the, like, two Brits in the lead, both doing.

[Griffin Newman]

You want two fake Americans, like, paired. Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I feel like I just watched a movie.

[David Sims]

Like, I mean, obviously everyone's always complaining about the Brits getting the. The plum rolls, but sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

There something on that. I mean, the one that's crazy that I think about all the time, of course, is Daisy Ridley not doing an American accent and John Boyega doing an American accent in Star wars, which is not set on Earth.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

But they decided, like, only one of you can do your own voice tribute to Carrie Fisher.

[Griffin Newman]

They were like, what if this doesn't line up? I think what you were thinking of actually was the Mandalorian and Grogu, because Pedro Pascal is not actually a Mandalorian

[David Sims]

or acting or in it, but Grogu

[Griffin Newman]

is a Yoda's species. Talk about nice work if you can get it.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Okay, so I'm looking through.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

My. I'm looking through my letterbox diary.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Back rooms.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Although Renata is.

[David Sims]

She's not a Euro.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She's not British, but she's also not

[Griffin Newman]

really doing something with another good example

[David Sims]

of a movie where it's like, they should feel a little off. Everything about this movie's a little off. Like. Right. And it's sort of set in like, before.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But, like, we're not going to get too into, like, you know, those kinds of details.

[Griffin Newman]

Very old in that way.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

You're just like, both of them a little strange.

[David Sims]

And with the original, it was originally someone else.

[Griffin Newman]

It was Crista. Milliot Milioti.

[David Sims]

It was Crista Milioti. And Renata was going to be in Weapons. I just think, like, all the shuffling of the sort of, you know, intriguing.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Was she going to be the Julia Garner part?

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Interesting.

[David Sims]

Which I'm sure she would have crushed.

[Griffin Newman]

But Julia's great. Tyree Henry was going to be Benedict Wong.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

And why am I forgetting his name now? The original cast of Weapons was going to be Alden Harrik, which, like, I

[David Sims]

mean, these are all good actors. And then.

[Griffin Newman]

And then, yes, Pascal is gonna be.

[David Sims]

He probably would have been pretty good. But Brolin's really good in Weapons because Brolin's really good at playing a masculine guy who's neutered. Like, he's really good with that.

[Griffin Newman]

And also he's good at playing a tough guy, too.

[David Sims]

But, like, he's better if you kind of neuter him.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Can I ask you a Brolin related question?

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

This is an installment of Brolin with the Homies.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Brolin with the Homies. I have not watched the trailer for Whale Fall.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, I haven't yet.

[David Sims]

What if there was a whale?

[Griffin Newman]

But I'm hearing great things.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That's what I wanted to ask if anyone has seen the trailer.

[David Sims]

I have. Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Does a whale fall?

[David Sims]

Yes. Thank you.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

From where?

[Griffin Newman]

Higher up in the water.

[David Sims]

Correct.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

To just deeper in the water.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Like, what if a whale came up, went, oh. And then, like, you know, starts going back down and you're inside of it.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, how do you get out there?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So they're Jonah's.

[David Sims]

Yeah, very much so.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a drone.

[David Sims]

Austin Abrams is looking for Brolin, I think is what's inside. He's looking for inside a whale in the ocean.

[Griffin Newman]

He doesn't know.

[David Sims]

And then whale get him.

[Griffin Newman]

You don't know.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And then they both deep in the whale.

[Griffin Newman]

They both in whale.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And then they got to get out of the whale.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, my God.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's Brian Duffield deep in Whale. Got to get out of a whale movie.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Aren't on sale yet.

[David Sims]

Yeah. You have to. You have to go to a whale. Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Marie, Marie. It's really easy to get the tickets. Just go down the bottom of the ocean and nothing bad will happen.

[David Sims]

Get really close to whale, like that guy's last movie. No one will save you. Brian Delfield, which was a movie that I was on, that was on Hulu, where I was just like, this should be in a movie theater.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And so I'm glad that his next movie is in a movie theater.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, sure. I mean, you're thinking in a very traditional, kind of elitist way. Hulu was merely trying to wish you a happy Hulu Ween and you were not appreciative. And a happy Halloween to you all.

[David Sims]

Happy it is, of course, disclosure day.

[Griffin Newman]

But I want to wish all of you a happy Halloween.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, boy. Disclosure day.

[Griffin Newman]

Disclosure day. There's a new film by Steve Steven Spielberg, who we've covered on the podcast twice. One plus one equals one in this case.

[David Sims]

Should we do it?

[Griffin Newman]

We've now covered one complete filmography.

[David Sims]

Should we do two episodes of this just because we've actually covered Spielberg on two separate miniseries?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Cover it once through the prism of early Spielberg and once through the prism of late Spielberg.

[David Sims]

Indeed.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Because there's definitely like a post Fableman's reading and then a pre Fableman's reading, in my opinion.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. True.

[David Sims]

Of almost anything he ever made. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

David, this thing. Great.

[David Sims]

More work.

[Griffin Newman]

You love it. You keep going. Add more. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Let me clear my schedule and like, it's like me trying to find new spots in my schedule now. It's just like fucking like, you know, like my shovel hitting rock. Like I dug to the bottom of Minecraft. Do you know there's another Minecraft movie coming out next year?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You know what it does in it?

[David Sims]

Minecraft movie squared.

[Griffin Newman]

Pretty, pretty.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, I love that.

[Griffin Newman]

That's actually pretty clever.

[David Sims]

The next one can be cubed, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. You get that, Ben?

[Ben Hoskins]

Hahaha.

[David Sims]

I was just building out my first 2017 list

[Griffin Newman]

of.

[David Sims]

Sorry, 2020?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[David Sims]

You know, of like, all right, let me. What doesn't really matter, but what's gonna be coming out? And yeah, I was, I was like, oh, they. They got that done quickly.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, they're filming it right now with Kirsten Dunst, who's about to start a kind of historic. Finally getting that bag run.

[David Sims]

Yeah, give her the bag.

[Griffin Newman]

She's got housemaid.

[David Sims]

Yeah, Housemaid secret.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

So like, that's another one where they were like, roll this back as fast

[Griffin Newman]

as I feel like she's got three sneaky sequels of things that weren't obvious slam dunks.

[David Sims]

So she's doing kind of the rock in, like, 2010.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, except she's not like franchise Viagra, which is what he, of course, loved.

[David Sims]

The rock was in GI Joe 2. Journey to the Mysterious Island. There's another one. He kept being in sequels to movies that he was not in.

[Griffin Newman]

And there was one. What was the other one? You're right.

[David Sims]

Journey to the Mysterious island, of course, is the one where he's like, you know, the. The. The Twitter joke was like, hey, we got a part for you. Journey. The Mysterious island is like, I'm not interested. It's like, okay, well, how can we sweeten the deal? I want to ride a bee.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Why?

[Griffin Newman]

The poster was him riding a giant bee. Michael Caine.

[David Sims]

What a ride. A B.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Sorry.

[Griffin Newman]

This is one of those classic Dwayne Johnson, Michael Kane, Josh vehicles. The big three.

[David Sims]

Hold on.

[Griffin Newman]

And plus a B. The big three. Plus a B. It was a B movie.

[David Sims]

It was a B movie.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I'm not seeing him riding a B. I'm running away from a lizard creature.

[David Sims]

Oh, I got the.

[Griffin Newman]

Found it. You found it.

[David Sims]

Oh, wow. People say my daughter was reading her rock book just last night. People said he couldn't. He couldn't ride a bee. Brad does it.

[Griffin Newman]

Vanessa Hudgins, too.

[David Sims]

Of course.

[Griffin Newman]

The billing order is.

[David Sims]

He was like, get Hudgins. Get a B. Then I'm interested.

[Griffin Newman]

The billing order is Dwayne Johnson, Michael Kane's second build. I assumed he'd be the Ant, but he's second build.

[David Sims]

I want second build.

[Griffin Newman]

Josh Hutcherson returning from the first film.

[David Sims]

Yeah. He's like, hi, guys. And everyone's like, what is the first film called? Vanessa Fraser was in it.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe returning.

[David Sims]

I don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

Luis Guman and Kristen Davis. She got the Ant.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Kristen Davis.

[Griffin Newman]

Kristen Davis.

[David Sims]

Charlotte herself.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Good for her. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Journey to the Mysterious Island.

[David Sims]

Vanessa Hudgins is not in Journey to the center of the Earth.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Brendan Fraser. Yes. So did she replace Brendan Free?

[David Sims]

Yes, she's replaced the Rock. Is actually replacing Seth Meyers, who's also in that movie. No. Journey, as I've I'm sure said on this podcast before, has one of my favorite trailer jokes, which is the pecs. No, no, no. With Brendan Fraser.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, oh, oh. How are we still falling?

[David Sims]

No, it's just. They fall.

[Griffin Newman]

Ah.

[David Sims]

Then stop. And then Britain Fisher goes, we're still falling. It's so funny.

[Griffin Newman]

Both of those movies made a hundred million.

[David Sims]

Yeah, we should.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Next time we're looking for, like, end of year. Like, what's a fun. Like a 2 slot? Like, you guys should just Journey to.

[David Sims]

There must be an original, like, because it's the H.G. wells. Like, was there like a 50s journey to the center of the Earth or whatever?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Probably.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, oh, sure.

[David Sims]

So you could fold that in because

[Griffin Newman]

Journey 2 is adapting a different H.G. wells book, Retrofitting it, or very faithfully. I think there's an H.G. wells book called the Mysterious Island.

[David Sims]

I'm just saying. I don't know if they really even opened the book.

[Griffin Newman]

The book opened. The opening line of the book is, Dwayne Johnson was riding a bumblebee. And at the time, audiences were very confused. They went, I don't get what this means. Is this a foreign language? Is he speaking in tongues? Like Emily Blunt and Disclosure Day. And then decades later, it became clear what.

[David Sims]

It's not H.G. wells. Of course. I'm sorry. It's Jules Verne. What if we did a. A Jules Verne Patreon series? What are some film adaptations?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

The 2000 Leagues under the Sea. Around the World. 20,000.

[David Sims]

20,000. 18,000 whole leagues.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So you're so like the whale started at 2000 and then it dropped and then he fell to 20,000 leagues under the sun.

[Griffin Newman]

There are too many hunchbacks.

[David Sims]

OK, you guys are out of control. Okay, so 20,000 leagues under the Sea, you got the Kirk Douglas James Mason movie. So there. You got that. Okay. There was also a James Mason Journey to the center of the Earth in 1959.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Okay, do any of you guys have like a James Mason?

[David Sims]

I'm sure I could work on one, yes.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm thinking we do.

[David Sims]

Then there's. Oh, this is a problem. We have a huge problem. There's a huge problem. Now that we're doing this miniseries. We have committed.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

We've been. Have been Einstein serious.

[David Sims]

We've been having in serious problem. There are two works. Two. Two versions of another work of his, around the world in 80 days. So there's the interminable best picture winner

[Griffin Newman]

and then the horrendous Steve Cecil defran. Another big three. When's the last time those three made a movie together? Cogan fan and Defrance

[David Sims]

Defense is great.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Who is.

[David Sims]

She's a French actress.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you ever see D?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

No, I like skipped over all of the French horror from the new French French extremity.

[Griffin Newman]

She was the barbed wire lady.

[David Sims]

And there's also a Ray Harry house in Mysterious island along with the, you know, and then there's a Joseph Cotton from the Earth to the moon from 1958.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

That could be fun.

[Griffin Newman]

That could be fun. So this sounds like a really quick 12 movie series.

[David Sims]

It's like nine.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think we're over complicated.

[David Sims]

Premier to the Moon is the one in the book where they just get in a bullet and shoot it at the moon, which I've always thought is pretty cool.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. That's what happens in the mele.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, so maybe we break.

[David Sims]

We throw that into.

[Griffin Newman]

We break these into sub franchises. We go from the earth to the moon. We go journey. We go to leagues. We go days.

[David Sims]

Maybe save time.

[Ben Hoskins]

We can play them at 2x.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Or 4x. Or just play them on simultaneous screens. Just be like, I see. I think there's a be over there. Okay. We're moving on.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm going to ride this bait. I can't. How would he say it? Supposed to ride the bait. The bloody bait.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I don't know if Michael Kane actually rides the bee because he's not riding a bee on.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm sorry, there's a character poster right here.

[David Sims]

Yeah, he does.

[Griffin Newman]

Look at his face. He's got heavy.

[David Sims]

I'm on a bee.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm riding them by. He doesn't talk like that. Usually the bee doesn't talk like that. We're talking about Disclosure Day.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yes. Directed by Steven Spielberg.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Decided to jump a little out of his comfort zone and make a movie about our relationship to aliens. This time he's blowing the doors wide open on this thing.

[David Sims]

This film is called Disclosure Day. It is directed by Steven Spielberg.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

It is written by David Kep, his frequent collaborator. Story by Steven Spielberg.

[Griffin Newman]

Pretty rare that he takes a story credit. He's been doing it more lately.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Getting really excited when they saw that credit.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

They're like, ooh, Spielberg, Spielberg, Alien story.

[Griffin Newman]

But this has been a real mystery box movie. It was just sort of announced Spielberg cap, Alien film. It was untitled for a while. Then it was called the Dish, which was a terrible title. The cast was known. Everything else was kind of a mystery for a while.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Wasn't there like another project that was also announced and like we weren't sure which one was going to come first. There was like the more historical drama about like Lindbergh plot against America type folks in New York.

[Griffin Newman]

There was the bullet. Yeah. But it felt like he was unconventionally slow to land on a new project post Fableman. Usually he.

[David Sims]

That's true. The four year gap is long for him these days.

[Griffin Newman]

Really long.

[David Sims]

Really. For any days, I guess.

[Griffin Newman]

But usually he has. I Mean, I think he said this in an interview that basically the longest gap he had taken previously was the one in between his crazy 93 and his crazy 97. Because even in the Pandemic, he had a movie come out, and Fabelman's came out quickly after. And that was Both him building DreamWorks and building a family. There was that feeling of like, usually he's got, like, 10 movies in development, and the second he's promoting one movie, you hear that he's already starting the next one.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

We're never going to see that Kid Pope kidnapping movie.

[David Sims]

No, he dropped that. That got made.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, it got made.

[David Sims]

There's like, an Italian movie that came out about that story. I feel like he just kind of let it, you know, he was like, forget it. Now he's supposedly working on a list.

[Griffin Newman]

Now he's saying he's working on a Western. But it doesn't feel as. It feels like he slowed his clip down. And I think it's getting into a little bit more of a. I don't want to work for the sake of working. I want to make a thing. I feel an overriding desire to do. He's 79 years old. It is crazy how old all our young guys are getting.

[David Sims]

I have a correction for you. He's 79 years young.

[Griffin Newman]

You are right.

[David Sims]

And you're a pretty sprightly fella.

[Griffin Newman]

He just moved to New York. He's a New Yorker.

[David Sims]

He's a New Yorker now. I'm sure he's living 42nd street and 8th Avenue. No, I don't know. I don't know where he's at.

[Griffin Newman]

My old stomping grounds. I don't think.

[David Sims]

It's pretty crazy that all the boomers are old. I mean, that's. That's life.

[Griffin Newman]

No, it's life. It just does feel wrong to me. I think of them as being the whippersnappers, even though they. I was born into a world that they had already claimed.

[David Sims]

Right. They're the movie brats or whatever, where they had grown up by the time you were watching movies. Stevie Spielberg, he's 79. He'll be 80 in December.

[Griffin Newman]

Is this his 40th feature film? What number are we looking at here?

[David Sims]

Oh, he's gonna make me count. Let's see now. We're not counting Firelight.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

But we are counting Duel.

[Griffin Newman]

This is very much a return to. I wouldn't say return to form, but it was framed as a. Guys, Spielberg is going to do the Spielberg thing again for the first a while. Down to A thing I saw our redditors post about, which was a good point. The poster for this movie is Spielberg last name only above the title.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It is hard to think of another case where the director's name is above the title. Not yet as a Steven Spielberg film. And there's also not an actor name above the title. He is. It's as if it's Schwarzenegger.

[David Sims]

You're, you're, you're totally right. I mean, no one is that. But he, he loves the film by

[Griffin Newman]

Christopher Nolan and a big long building block.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Although.

[David Sims]

But the Odyssey's teaser poster is just a film by Christopher Nolan.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not that, you know, other people couldn't do that, but there's a few rare. That there's a marketing campaign that is just Spielberg, Spielberg. I, I mean, there's closure day.

[David Sims]

Look, there's the number one Lee Cronin. We all know.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. He can't be touched, but that's not a billing issue. It's his mummy. David.

[David Sims]

What if he revealed. I found this mummy. That's why it's called Lee Curtin's the Mummy. It's my mumm. I didn't direct the film.

[Griffin Newman]

I was so scared during that movie. I was screaming, I was shaking, I was convulsing. And then someone pointed out to me, don't worry, Griffin, it's Lee Cronin's mommy. And I went, oh, my God. I didn't know who it belonged to. Oh my God.

[David Sims]

Waiting for the HBO Max drop.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, so worried. I didn't know whose mommy it was.

[David Sims]

Whatever. It's going to be on.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. I feel bad for Lee Cronin. That was, that was a tough.

[David Sims]

Maybe it is his fault. Maybe he was like, my name has to be about the title.

[Griffin Newman]

Feels like a real Daffy Duck shirt thing.

[David Sims]

But I think more. I mean, what I heard was essentially they were like, they want to make it clear instead of not the Brendan. Brendan Fraser.

[Griffin Newman]

And I'm like, I would do anything else to make that clear. Rather than making the public.

[David Sims]

They should have just called it Haunted Child.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Just call it something else. We found a fud up thing in the desert.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

We found a fudge ed up thing. There are like the focus features or whatever, like Twitter account kept like they tweeted like once a day for two weeks.

[Griffin Newman]

It was new line, I think or whatever it was.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Brendan Fraser is not in Lee Cronin the Mummy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And I thought they were doing a bit where they were leading up to like a surprise cameo.

[David Sims]

Right. I think they were not initially. They were initially going to tweet that once. Then they were like, let's make it a bit. And then it was kind of a classic. Like, well, you made it a bit. And that's kind of like, now there's smoke and people think there will be fun.

[Griffin Newman]

Classic. Just to be clear, this is not a movie based on the toys.

[David Sims]

My T shirt that says Brendan Fraser is not in the Mummy.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

They did it, like in all caps. I was like, come on.

[David Sims]

You're like, they did.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You're. You're asking for it.

[David Sims]

They were asking for it. Lee. Steven Spielberg. Lee Cronin has made, I think, three films. Steven Spielberg has made. 35. 36 if you count Twilight's on the movie, which I don't.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. If you're nasty.

[David Sims]

But this is his 35th feature from my count.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Pretty good, right? It was. There was the. Just sort of. He's doing a UFO movie. He's doing some sort of alien movie. Why is Spielberg going back to this? Well, we were debating this with our editor, Alan Smithy. How many Alien films does Spielberg count? If you include Crystal Skull, which you have to. It's five. So the five are Close Encounters, Close

[David Sims]

Encounters of the Third Kind, etv, Extraterrestrial,

[Griffin Newman]

War of the Worlds, then Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Original Skull and Disclose. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Remember Gayety? Bring him back.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. It's kind of crazy. We did like 45 hours of bits about Gayet and we never landed on lgbt.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Sometimes if something's like right in front of you.

[Griffin Newman]

It was right there.

[David Sims]

Well, also we did. But we definitely did say that he was the extra. Extraterrestrial. We did say that. Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. And we won many awards for that.

[David Sims]

A thing I also noted when I was writing my review is this is his first contemporary film since War of the Worlds. And then I saw. So then I started thinking about that a little bit more. So you do have the Terminal. That's a contemporary, fully contemporary film by him with no funny business.

[Griffin Newman]

It takes place in an alternate reality

[David Sims]

in which Tom Hanks is funny. No, he's.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It does have an alien.

[Griffin Newman]

It does. It has an illegal immigrant.

[David Sims]

That's so true. That is so true.

[Griffin Newman]

From Krakosha.

[Ben Hoskins]

Ah.

[David Sims]

And normal voice, normal accent on that.

[Griffin Newman]

Victor Novorisky.

[David Sims]

Because a lot of his, when I was thinking about it, a lot of his contemporary set films. So here we, you know, Disclosure Day, War of the Worlds. Let's set aside Terminal for a second here. The Jurassic park movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep.

[David Sims]

I mean, is always contemporary, I guess.

[Griffin Newman]

It is always is contemporary.

[David Sims]

It's obviously very old fashioned, but it is set, I think, in the present day.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Sugarland Express and ET so it's like. And dual sure but. And Jaws.

[Griffin Newman]

And Jaws.

[David Sims]

But like if you know things like Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, Disclosure Day, it's like, yeah, they're set in the present day, sort of. But Disclosure Day is kind of set in a slightly different world from our own. It's got alien tech and kind of, you know, like it feels Jurassic Park's a little bit the same where it's like, yeah, yeah, this is our time. But you're like, yeah, but it's not. We got a fucking made dinosaurs in it. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

I think that was part of the pitch on this movie is Spielberg's going to talk about our times, this thing that we all love. That Spielberg could make these very emotional, character driven blockbusters that felt like they were in conversation with our world.

[David Sims]

It's also just the thing, like, hey, so few people get to do an original big movie like this. So it's awesome that he wants to.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Like when he was like, I might remake Bullet, I was like, I bet you will do a good job if you do that. I don't really want you to do that. I'd rather you took a weirder swing.

[Griffin Newman]

I also, I think.

[David Sims]

And now I'm so emotional about it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, you're. You're going to burp. There are, I would say, two modes that Spielberg has been operating in since this century started. One is him sort of trying to become a classicist. Right. Trying to become like a Hawks or a Hughes or a Ford and to focus on maybe sort of neglected genres or more classical filmmaking styles and making kind of grown up movies. And this whole feeling that he and George Lucas are complaining about IP culture and franchise blockbuster movies, but there's some guilt about maybe what they created. And Steven is trying to actively put the opposite type of movie into the system, which for so long his name was so big that no matter what, basically anything he did became a massive success. And that has fallen off the last 15 years a little bit. He's still Steven Spielberg, but there's no longer a guarantee. Like Lincoln Made Lincoln was humongous.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Like $300 million or something.

[Griffin Newman]

Like it was like 180 domestic.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, but that's like crazy.

[Griffin Newman]

That's. That's when he still was like anything he does becomes a blockbuster, obviously.

[David Sims]

Right. West side Story and Fableman's were not blockbusters. West side Story was very much the COVID Hangover. Fableman's was one of those things where it's like, it. I think that movie should have done better.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Because it did quite like nothing, but it was right. And it was still, you know, 2022. And it was that thing where Universal put it on.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

The schedule was bad after 17 days and they were like, well, this is what we do with all our movies now. And it was just like, guys, shut the fuck up. Steven Spielberg made this.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Like, have a little.

[Griffin Newman]

It's running for Oscars.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

What was the other one I was going to throw out? I mean, the post and Bridge of Spies both did well. Well. But sort of like. Well, for adult dramas. They Both did like 60, 70 domestic, 100 worldwide.

[David Sims]

Oh, well, you know what? I'm going to look this up on a website where it's easy to look it up. Just kidding. They don't exist.

[Griffin Newman]

Great. There are two modes. There's that, and then the second mode is for the last 25 years, he's constantly tempted by. Can I go back and do a classic Spielberg family blockbuster? And varying levels.

[David Sims]

81. Bridge did 72.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay. Those are both good numbers.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

There have been varying levels of success and people disagree about which ones work better than others. But I would say, like, Tintin, Crystal Skull. Ready? Player one. These are sort of g. The bfg. These are like, he's trying to go back home again and also trying to find a new, modern mode of how can I be in conversation with what's happening right now in blockbuster movies, but, like, return for my crown. And this feels like him making a 70s movie. It's. What's fascinating about it.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Is that it doesn't feel like him being like, fuck, what did the kids like today?

[David Sims]

No, totally. He's not ready. Player one was a little bit more of him being like, let me get in the current sandbox and see.

[Griffin Newman]

What I want to do 10 is I want to use these new tools. Indiana Jones is. What does this look like in a modern context?

[David Sims]

This is. You're right. This is more like Close Encounters. It is a blockbuster, adult, you know, drama.

[Griffin Newman]

Now the other. The other sort of qualifier here, as we talked about when we did our original series, is that when he does the two, I just got an insane text message. When he does the two, would you believe it's about my grandmother? When he does the two Tom Cruise movies where it's like the biggest director and the biggest star in all of Hollywood are doing something together. They make these two very haunted, dark movies. They're awesome. But they're not traditional audience pleasing blockbusters. Right. He makes haunted films. So this is like the promise of kind of Spielberg face, wonder, humanity driven, character driven, performance driven. Classic Amblin blockbuster was. Was from the moment they start actually putting out trailers, posters. The promise of what this movie was. David, I think you and I pretty unabashedly loved this.

[David Sims]

Huge fan of this movie. I think it's fantastic.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm curious to see it a second time because it is a movie that is, you know, like 80% slow burn. And I was loving the unravel.

[David Sims]

I don't agree on slow burn. Yeah, very fast.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I thought it was. It drops. First of all, the craziest opening shot of any fucking Spielberg movie.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a true. You could bet a billion dollars. What do you think the opening frame of this movie is?

[David Sims]

Dick. It's just.

[Griffin Newman]

I would sooner bet that than.

[David Sims]

I would sooner bet is.

[Griffin Newman]

I would sooner bet that than that it is. The opening shot is a. Like an aw wrestler kicking the camera.

[David Sims]

It really is so fun.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

But it's. It drops you in media res and then you're on the run the whole time.

[Griffin Newman]

You're on the run.

[David Sims]

Yeah. That reminded me of Minority, of course. Yeah. And like an upgrade, obviously. It has that Minority Report vibe also of like. I want to talk about what I'm thinking about right now, but with a sci fi lens.

[Griffin Newman]

But it's got the Twilight Zone thing of where is this going? Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

[David Sims]

We're in the middle of the story. We'll tell you stuff as we're moving.

[Griffin Newman]

How are these things connected?

[David Sims]

But we gotta keep moving, right? Gotta keep moving.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, that's what's smart about the construction of the movie, is that it's able to play both sides of the coin.

[David Sims]

It does the thing that I'm sure, you know, people don't like where no, you know, everyone's like, so what's going on? And the guy's like, I'm gonna tell you, we gotta get to this house. And then I'm gonna tell you one more sentence.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It's also.

[David Sims]

And then we gotta do another thing. But it does.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Comparing the characters themselves, who, yes. Don't actually know why they're being compelled to go somewhere.

[Griffin Newman]

What you're describing, David, usually pisses me off. And in this movie, why it works me off too, is that no one has the complete picture. Everyone has pieces of it. And they're trying to strategically use what they know to get the support and the allegiance of the others. But no one has the full view of everything. Not even Colin Firth.

[David Sims]

Not even Colin Firth.

[Griffin Newman]

Gritted teeth, holding on to stick.

[David Sims]

I'm grumpy today.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you think Spielberg's jealous that he's probably only going to end up being the second most powerful stick of the summer movie season?

[David Sims]

Go ahead.

[Griffin Newman]

One Wish Willow Fucking whipping. The disclosure.

[David Sims]

That's a bundle of sticks.

[Griffin Newman]

It's one.

[David Sims]

No, it's One Wish willow. It's got like the little kind of.

[Griffin Newman]

It's got some bundle. It's got thorns.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It's got a little thorns.

[Griffin Newman]

One Wish Willow it. Kiss these. These kids are obsessed with these.

[David Sims]

That movie, I saw it with no hype beyond, like, fantasy. Being like, it's pretty, it's good. Like, you should check it out.

[Griffin Newman]

You licked your finger, you walked out of the screen and you held up to the wind and you went, I

[Marie Barty Salinas]

think 340 domestic more than Baby Yoda.

[David Sims]

I just walked out being like that. That was very, like, unpleasant and effective. That was like a pretty. Yeah, yeah, sure. I. I get it. I get it. Right. I did not walk out being like,

[Griffin Newman]

well, the world just changed generationally. Everything is changing.

[David Sims]

But I'll submit it's not my vibe of a movie. I suppose so I was maybe never going to feel that way.

[Griffin Newman]

Back in my day, kids were using ChatGPT to do their homework. Nowadays they're using One Wish Willows. One Wish Willow. And they say, my one wish is to write my next paper for me. Just one paper.

[Ben Hoskins]

Ok. So Trump administration, heard of him, is actually like releasing UFO files.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, they love releasing files. That's all they do is release files. Every file that anyone would want to see, they're releasing.

[Ben Hoskins]

So if you go to war.gov UFOs

[Marie Barty Salinas]

war.gov

[Griffin Newman]

we live on stupid Earth. It's so Dumbest planet.

[Ben Hoskins]

So he just actually did a second release on May 8th of, like, a bunch of stuff. I haven't gotten through it. And all of the, like, images and video, it's, you know, what the fuck

[David Sims]

is the thing we need to talk about right away? Because people have been like, there's already been a disclosure day. And like, no one cared. And I'm like, well, the images are basically just like some blobs where they're like, I don't know. These blobs were weird.

[Ben Hoskins]

It's so weird how people have not

[David Sims]

cared because there's nothing to look at.

[Ben Hoskins]

I know, but still, they're acknowledging weird phenomena.

[David Sims]

It's why that's not the same as we aliens crashed.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

We took the aliens who were alive. We Tortured them. They stole their spaceships to make technology,

[Griffin Newman]

cell phones and sorry, we didn't tell anyone. We used it all.

[David Sims]

Versus like, yeah, a plane was flying in the air and it's all blob. And the blob was weird.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And the blob kind of moved in a weird way. And we do have a video of that if you'd like to see, which is sort of currently.

[Griffin Newman]

This is why I think the ending of this movie has to go as hard as it does. Because it needs to be like, what if all networks were co opted by 15 minutes of just decades of footage? You know, so much of it looks

[Marie Barty Salinas]

like little guys and little alien costumes.

[Griffin Newman]

There was the moment in the film where you start to see. And we're. We're getting into spoilers and all this, but there was the moment in the film where you start to see the aliens for the first time. I forget what the first image is. You've seen it more recently than us. Marie.

[David Sims]

The first image is for like the torture.

[Griffin Newman]

It's the torture, you know, sequence I started. Pump. Right, Right. It's Josh o' Connor showing Eve Houston on the laptop. Right?

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And I started pumping my fist and I was like. So he's just doing it. He's just putting a gray almond eyed.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Like a classic man.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Alien.

[David Sims]

Alien.

[Griffin Newman]

He's not overthinking this at all. The aliens are looking like everyone's default cultural cartoon alien. And he's just rendering them realistically and is like, yeah, you know, aliens. David.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Quick question and be honest.

[David Sims]

I solemnly swear I will tell the truth and nothing but it.

[Griffin Newman]

Thank you. When did you last actually think about how much fiber you're eating?

[David Sims]

Can't say. I can't say I think about it enough, actually.

[Griffin Newman]

Think about it.

[David Sims]

I don't know. I. Not. Not recently enough.

[Griffin Newman]

Protein. I'm not talking calories. Fiber. Fiber. It's important fiber. In the US fewer than 1 in 10 adults hit their daily recommended intake. And fiber isn't a bonus nutrient. It's foundational fullness, gut health. Something certainly affects me. Energy, blood sugar. It touches all of it. And as someone who struggles with.

[David Sims]

I'd say I do too.

[Griffin Newman]

Digestion issues. Sometimes I try to be mindful of fiber. And that's where Huel comes in. Sponsor of the podcast H U E L you Huelhauser. Here's what Huel actually is. It's not Huell Howser, who was himself California Gold. Huel is nutritionally complete food. One bottle or one scoop gives you everything. A Real meal is supposed to give you protein, fiber, carbs, 27 essential vitamins and minerals. This is like the cast of Oceans 11 in terms of how star studded it is in the digestive world. It's designed by nutritionists to be a full, full meal, not a protein shake. You have fuel instead of food when you don't have time for a healthy meal. As someone who's not good at scheduling and structuring his life, I will admit they sent over a big box the chocolate peanut butter flavor. And I have a couple times realized, oh, I forgot to eat a meal. Grab a bottle of this out of the fridge. It hits just right. Some days I'm locked in. I go to the gym, I meal prep. For me, those days are called never. It literally never happens other days. And I call these days every day. I look up and realize it's 2pm and I've had coffee and nothing healthy. That actually is a little bit too accurate. Fuel is the first thing that's actually helped me stay consistent instead of falling off every time my schedule blows up in the way I just said the ready to drink. I grab on the way out the door. 35 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners under 5 bucks. And don Cheadle, uncredited. Cheaper than a latte and it fills me up so I'm not back in the fridge five minutes later. And David, the powder, the powder is also super easy. It's 40 grams of protein, same complete nutrition. You shake it with water and it's a meal ready in under a minute. I wish there was some kind of limited time offer. I wish there was an offer with a ticking clock.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Wait a second. You can get Huel today with our exclusive offer of 15% off online with the code [e-mail] check. That's h u e l.com c h e c k new customers only. Thank you to Huell for partnering and supporting our show.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So disclosure day, you're saying that you both are, you know, fully on board.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like you and Ben are moderate, positive.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And it was not per I. I was not like, holy, this is like a perfect movie. There were moments of it where I was like really emotionally affected and like very enraptured. And there were other moments where a like nurse asks Emily Blunt, did the trauma that happened in your childhood, did you ever seek help for that? Or like the last, you know, 15 minutes of the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

The last 15 minutes, I, I was on the edge of my seat. I mean, I. This is the thing we saw with a bunch of people, you know, the great. The king. The king of tick tock himself, Reese. I was there sitting next to us. Alan Smithy was there, a lot of our critic friends, Esther and her soon to be husband, Bob. So we were all talking after the movie, and it was one of these things where, like, I really think this boils down to the last 15 minutes. Either you're 100 on board and that wins you over, or you push back on it a little bit. Because it's Spielberg going full Spielberg. It's. It's him going hard. Not in Spectacle, but in his emotionality, in his worldview.

[Ben Hoskins]

And we'll get into it, but I just want to say the religious stuff at the end.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And the.

[Ben Hoskins]

And the.

[David Sims]

The nuns.

[Ben Hoskins]

Nun being like, aliens are also God's children.

[David Sims]

I was like, boo, that stinks.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I loved that part.

[Griffin Newman]

And I usually. That's usually a thing I bristle at in movies because I'm a dirty, leftist, coastal elite heathen. But like, like, that's the thing on Shyamalan movies where they get too spiritual. And I'm like, this stopped being my language. I just. This is not an in for me. I feel like I'm being recruited in this. I. I bought it as a storytelling thing. It didn't feel like being like it was being pushed on me.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

They also got me, like, when Elizabeth Marvel is like, she's so good in Genesis. The line is, you know, God, God's greatest creation on earth.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I'm like, in the theater, I'm going like, oh, shit. Like, I never thought about.

[Griffin Newman]

It was right there in the text.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, fuck.

[Griffin Newman]

God was writing about aliens. God was like, fucking aliens as fudgeing crazy. That's what God was like.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think the movie, like, what religion is supposed to do historically, it has not, but it's supposed to make you love your fellow human and have respect for humanity and other people. To, like, believe that there. There is some sort of higher power out there that is governing all of us and bringing us together. I think it's even like, yes, the aliens in this film are used as a device, as a. This is now the thing that is bringing everyone together.

[David Sims]

And I love that unity. That's totally true. I think it's also just kind of like he's running at the idea of, like, the answer to weird isn't aliens or God. You know, it can be both. You know what I mean? It's sort of like they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Like, we could find out that. I mean, sure, that. Right. The aliens exist on Earth. And that doesn't mean, like, you have to abandon your belief system or like, the way you think the world was ordered or whatever like that. Like, you know, God can fit into that however you like.

[Griffin Newman]

I think this movie's about. Can fit into a lot of stuff in my reading. This movie is about two things primarily. So, Marie, what you were saying about, like what. What religion in theory serves to do.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

I think even beyond that, it serves to give us a language, a shared language of understanding for how to be alive. Right. That is the basic underlying purpose of any organized religion is a set of codes and ethics and morals and values through which to understand human existence that gets distorted and weaponized in a million different ways. Which is why I get really uneasy with religion. And when movies feel like they're pushing religious text on me. I don't think this film is pushing a theological reading of the universe. I think it is using characters with theology to explore what it's actually saying. Which to me is two things. Right? There's a kind of personal story in this of what Spielberg's going through in his life. And then there's a sort of larger. This is what Steven wants to say about the current state of the world. The personal story is Spielberg has always said that he doesn't like therapy or that rather he went to one therapy session, didn't find it useful.

[David Sims]

And.

[Griffin Newman]

And that for him, working through his issues, through his movies is always what felt productive to him. And that's why you got these movies where people went like, huh, Steven Spielberg still seems really hung up about this divorce thing because it was basically, men will become the most successful director in the history of Hollywood to avoid going to therapy all this time. He's avoiding making the movie about the real thing, which is the Fabelmans. He gets that out of his system. He makes the movie where everyone who works on that is like, he was crying on set all the time. It was a really difficult process. He exercised something from his system, and he's promoting that movie. And he's like, I actually don't know what I make next. To a certain degree. I've been avoiding making this movie my whole career, and I don't know what I have to say. And this is a movie about two people processing trauma. It is a movie about two characters who end up being the ones who can serve to create a catharsis for people at large through reckoning with their own Trauma and their own history. Things that they have pointedly just been saying, like, I don't want to fucking think about that shit anymore. I don't need that. I'm fine. I'm functional. That's thing one. Thing two in this movie is Spielberg talks a lot about having his existential crisis during the pandemic, as many of us did. What do I do now? I've just been work, work, work, work, work. And now I'm slowed down. I can't make movies if I only make one movie. Again, what is it? What's the one movie I have to make? Fable Mints. But also really reckoning with the world. He said he would leave his home and just drive around for hours because he didn't know what to do with himself. And I think what this movie is commenting on is we are living in, obviously, a very fractured world in which people live in alternate realities, and it's very impossible to get any agreement on anything. Religion is one of these things that's supposed to unify people. It has only pushed people further apart. It has only made things more violent. And we went through this collective trauma of this horrible global pandemic that affected literally everyone on the planet to some degree, and it fractured us even further. And I think he's creating a simulation of, is there anything that could happen? A form of communication that actually unified all of humanity for a minute. And I think this movie builds to a note of. And what happens now? The last word of this movie, I believe, is listen.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's sort of like the next step is, what do we say now that we have everyone's attention? Because for one brief moment, for 15 minutes, we have collectively gotten everyone onto the exact same page. There is now a reality that has just adjusted that we all have to understand. And I think it's basically saying there's now something new that's like replacing religion. Not that the aliens will become their own religion, but that part of it is that the Elizabeth Marvel character is someone who's not fighting this is saying, like, this doesn't negate my worldview, because my worldview is less about the dogmatic text here than it is about the ideas of what we're trying to get at, which is a unification of empathy, which this movie is about. Like, is there any way that empathy could win again? Right. Way that we could all just get on the same page about every sort

[David Sims]

of fantasy from a lot of movies of, like, if we learned about, you know, extraterrestrials, would that somehow unite us? Because I Think Spielberg is a sorta. I mean, is he religious? Is he spiritual? He talks about this like, spiritual.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He's also not Catholic. He is famously Jewish, but he was

[David Sims]

raised, you know, a little more religious than he was. And he says he kind of reconnected with it and you know, like, there's a lot of spiritual thought in his movie and kind of like, how do we reconcile, you know, spirituality with, you know, science and modernity. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, so it's, it's the dynamic of his parents. You know, a computer programmer, the artist.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

There's that incredible blunt in the Josh Okon.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, truly, it's one of them. It's. It's a communicator and a mathematician in this movie. Right.

[David Sims]

And it's as he's confronting or thinking about what you're talking about of like, could empathy triumph and how could this, you know, go over today? And he's picking a. Whatever, DOD subcontract or whatever. Josh o' Connor is basically someone who got sucked into the deep state because he's good at math, because he was

[Griffin Newman]

a hacker and it was the one way he was going to get his prison sentence.

[David Sims]

Hack the planet. Obviously, we all agree.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And then, and then she's. What is she? She's a weather girl. She's. Yeah. Local meteorologist. But yes, she's a meteorologist, of course. But you know, like she's, you know, she's a media figure, she's a TV person. It's almost old fashioned at this point. But like, I don't need Spielberg making a movie about like an influencer anyway, you know what I mean? Like, I'm fine with him alighting on like she's this kind of mainstream tv.

[Griffin Newman]

We're going right to the end in certain ways. But I think one of those moves that movie makes that is so smart and is a move indicative of a Spielberg level of conf. And intelligence is that she breaks the story and very quickly it gets transferred over to the actual, like national network news.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, that was something. I'm sorry. A lot of my issues with this movie were like, yes, I am aware that I am watching a movie about aliens. So already there's a level of suspension of disbelief. But there were other things where I was just like, you know, like kind of squinting and screaming, like, is something doesn't pass this the smell test? Like, I haven't watched local news in years.

[Griffin Newman]

Same.

[David Sims]

I can't say I watch a lot of local news.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Sure do, do. Like the news people in Kansas City report on what's going on in North Korea?

[David Sims]

I mean, if nuclear war was about to break out. Possibly. Yeah, I would think so.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

They don't just hand it over to.

[David Sims]

To the National.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

The National? No.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, they're. They're competitive.

[David Sims]

I think it's both.

[Griffin Newman]

And I. I think. I think this movie, you know, it's this other fascinating thing that you hear for years. And it's been more and more open secret lately that, like, Steven Spielberg is obsessed with SNL and attends most tapings of SNL and now has moved to New York. He is a New York resident.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That was my first thought of why he was like, I can't keep doing the, like, weekly flight.

[Griffin Newman]

I would hear that from people that he would fly in just. And he sit behind the monitor with. You know, the people who, like, work on SNL are like, it's weird. Spielberg's just always.

[David Sims]

It means he said like the words doja cat or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

You know what I mean? Like, if he's having to watch like, current SNL also, why isn't he hosting? He's been like, I love, you know, Anita or whoever.

[Griffin Newman]

Steve, as Domingo's dad or some shit.

[David Sims]

Didn't call. Didn't Domingo host SNL this year? He did an snl, didn't he?

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, Coleman Domingo. I meant Domingo, the great character of Domingo. Yes.

[David Sims]

Wait, did they address that on the Coleman Domingo episode?

[Griffin Newman]

They didn't. Coleman Domingo was great in that episode.

[David Sims]

I believe it.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, Coleman Domingo was a cast member of the big gay sketch show on Logo.

[David Sims]

I did know that. Of course. I know every single thing about the Big Gate. No, I didn't.

[Griffin Newman]

Colman Domingo is like, cool player.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I didn't know he had a comedy background.

[Griffin Newman]

Every kind of experience you could possibly

[David Sims]

have done it all.

[Griffin Newman]

And it took him like 40 years to hit as one of our undeniable guys.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I love him.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. McKinnon. Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I love him in this movie.

[Griffin Newman]

I think he's great in this film.

[David Sims]

He's great. Of course he's in Lincoln. I'm trying to think if he's got

[Griffin Newman]

small part in that.

[David Sims]

He's like. He's like the first thing you see in Lincoln.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Is it David Oyellow too?

[Griffin Newman]

He's also. Yeah. In that opening battle.

[David Sims]

I don't think he's worked with Spielberg since then.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't think so. And since then he has been nominated twice for best actor.

[David Sims]

Yes, once, I think, you know, I think he kind of snuck in there. He's a great actor.

[Griffin Newman]

The other one, wildly Deserving. Very good performance.

[David Sims]

Very good in Sing Sing. I did not love Rustin.

[Griffin Newman]

I didn't either. That felt like. It felt like a kind of Richie Jenkins, the visitor.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah. Kind of, you know, better performance with Colin Firth in A Single man back in the day, where it's like, you know what, you've been around for a long time.

[Griffin Newman]

You're great at.

[David Sims]

Here's a nom. And then the next year they're like, oh, you were even better in this thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Here you go.

[Griffin Newman]

Colin Firth was the opposite. Opposite, arguably. But he's good in both of those films.

[David Sims]

I think the Single Man's a silly movie.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it's a silly movie. I think it's incredible performance.

[David Sims]

He's good.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I like that movie a lot.

[David Sims]

So bad. Oh, my God. Tom Ford. He's got a new one coming.

[Griffin Newman]

He does, right?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Very much looking forward to word about,

[Griffin Newman]

like a guy who wears pants or something.

[David Sims]

God.

[Griffin Newman]

Remember he was gonna make the Whale with James Corden?

[David Sims]

I do remember that. What? Yes. Yep, Yep.

[Griffin Newman]

He had the rights option.

[David Sims]

Intervened on that one. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Honestly, I went full disclosure on that one.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I might have preferred that possibly.

[David Sims]

You know what? I'll see it.

[Griffin Newman]

I'll see it.

[David Sims]

I'll evaluate. Could it be better?

[Griffin Newman]

Can I ask, please, what do you think that would look like?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Wait, can you do it towards me so I can capture

[David Sims]

trying to do like a sort of accord in face?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

His new movie is called Cry for To Heaven and it's an adaptation of an Anne Rice book.

[Griffin Newman]

Great.

[David Sims]

So I imagine it'll be rather sumptuous.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Amazing fun.

[Griffin Newman]

Nicholas Holt.

[David Sims]

Aaron Taylor Johnson. So, so far, former collaborators don't sound

[Griffin Newman]

like his kind of guys.

[David Sims]

Adele.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, okay.

[David Sims]

Kieran hines.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

George McKay, who I always like.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Mark Strong.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Okay.

[David Sims]

Colin Firth.

[Griffin Newman]

Colin Firth.

[David Sims]

Grabbing the.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, the stick.

[David Sims]

Paul Bettany.

[Griffin Newman]

Our guy.

[David Sims]

Hunter Schaefer.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure love her.

[David Sims]

Julianne Moore.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, my God.

[David Sims]

A lot of his guys.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Love that. I. This is. I didn't know that you were anti Tom Ford. David. I sucks. That is because maybe you're not gay enough.

[David Sims]

I don't think that's true. Going to be honest with you. I really don't think that's the problem here. I'm pretty.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm gonna.

[David Sims]

Pretty sure that's why I don't like his movies.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm gonna throw it.

[David Sims]

He's a pretentious.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm gonna throw out a counter argument. Here's my counter take. His movies are not. Not bad enough.

[David Sims]

Yeah, I, I. Both of his movies, they look pretty good, and I. I kind of respect that about them, but they're pretty stupid. A single man is like, Firth kind of really convinces you it's a good movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

And then when you kind of lay out the plot, you're like, this was

[Griffin Newman]

a little silly, but it's so much just the first performance, it gets a lot further.

[David Sims]

Nocturnal animals truly was one of those not dangerous animals. Like, one of those things where I'm like, so he took a script written by an 11 year old, right. And then he cast, like, really good actors and, you know, got like, you know, got it looking really slick and fancy. But, like, that is a really, really silly movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Every time I bring this up, there are always nocturnal animal defenders who get mad at me. But when I. I think I saw that movie with Joe Reed reading Rango, and when I realized, oh, the structure of this movie is just going to be Amy Adams, where reads a chapter of a manuscript while wearing a cocktail dress. And then it cuts to her going like, w. She makes a phone call. She gets a voicemail. She's like, hey, I read this crazy chapter. I just want to talk to you. Anyway, call me back. Reading glasses back on time for another chapter.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Sounds great. We love. We love women who read.

[David Sims]

That's true. We do support.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Just to get us a little bit back on the rails here, giving me the thumbs up. Can I throw out a take? And I want to get your read on it. I'm currently holding the photo of Mike Myers naked and Austin Powers looking pretty cut, actually. Looking pretty cut.

[Ben Hoskins]

Deep V. And we're getting back on track.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

We are getting back on track.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. This is about disclosure day.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

My first thought when I see Colin Firth in disclosure day with the beard, with the turtleneck, I'm like, is this kind of the hottest he's ever been on screen?

[Griffin Newman]

It's a good look.

[David Sims]

I'm gonna go with no. When do you. Because I think Colin Farrell's been very handsome.

[Griffin Newman]

First. First. First.

[David Sims]

I think Colin Ferrell's been very handsome in a lot of movies. I think he's very handsome. And I guess we can't count Pride and prejudice because that's not a movie.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And I'm like, okay, maybe not ever,

[Griffin Newman]

but, like, it's a great look.

[David Sims]

Of late.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Of late.

[David Sims]

Well, I was honestly kind of thinking, like, where's Firth been? Because he's obviously very good in this movie because he's good at this kind of shit.

[Griffin Newman]

And this is an installment of first things first.

[David Sims]

And I was just. And I was like, I know If I look it up, it's not like there'll be gaps. Like, I'm sure he works consistently, and I'm sure there's some weird TV and stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

I was gonna say there is some weird TV in there.

[David Sims]

And, like, forgive me for forgetting about Empire of Light, you know, which was only a couple years ago. And, like, you know, he does a lot of British that barely makes it over here. Like, movies called, like, Mothering Sunday or, you know, where you're kind of like. Well, I assume that was fine.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a real title. Just so people know that's not a thing that David made up. Yeah, please.

[David Sims]

But I feel like we've not been, you know, using our first well enough.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a great take. I mean, just looking here, it's like, God. Yeah. I mean, like Kingsman 2. He is, you know, kind of the lead, but then you're like, he's in five movies in 2018.

[David Sims]

The Happy Prince, in which he played Oscar Wilde's friend. That's Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde.

[Griffin Newman]

The Mercy.

[David Sims]

The Mercy, where he's on a boat that was directed by James Marsh, who did Theory of Everything. Mommy. Here we go again. Obviously, you know, smaller part.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Have you. Have you guys seen Rylan?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Rylan's.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, Rylan's good.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He has a cameo in Rylene.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

As a tortilla chef at a Mexican restaurant called Love Guac.

[Griffin Newman]

They Crater. They credit him. Crater him. They credit him as Burrito Maker. Yes.

[David Sims]

It's very funny. That movie's really cute if you want to see a picture of him in it.

[Griffin Newman]

But, like, Mary Poppins Returns, he's the villain that's kind of thankless. 1917 is like an extended cameo.

[David Sims]

I mean, this is kind of a better version of his Mary Poppins thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Of kind of like, can you just come in and kind of go like. Well, I don't know about that.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You know, it's just very specifically, it's the amount of gray in his hair.

[David Sims]

Operation Mincemeat was good fun. Yeah, that one's good fun. Oh, no, no. I was just.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

This is what I'm talking about. When he's not on.

[David Sims]

I mean. Wait, he's not on hot. He looks. He looks lovely.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

But I'm. Is he saying the turtleneck, the beautiful line of his shoulder in the last grooming.

[Griffin Newman]

No, I think it's a great look. The last Bridget Jones. Was he a ghost?

[David Sims]

He's dead. He gets eaten by.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Spoiler alert.

[Griffin Newman]

Basically, if you're not considering he fell inside a.

[David Sims]

Do you think he's hot. And Fever Pitch, way back when, a movie that was very formative for me as a child.

[Griffin Newman]

I think he looks pretty doofy.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

He's got this sort of like, puffy hair.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I mean, Dominic there, but without the interesting bone structure.

[David Sims]

Well, yeah, I was going to say be still, my heart. I mean, Cessa.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I mean, yes, we're big Sassa fans, but again, he's got, like, striking features. And the.

[David Sims]

The idea of him in Fever Pitch was kind of like, yeah, he's a bit of a dork. Like, he needs to clean up his act. Like, you know who's next in there in Fever.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Mark Strong.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

The great from the way back, if

[Griffin Newman]

you discount what are basically cameos. Rylane, he's credited for Barbie, where they reused footage. There's a documentary he narrated. And Bridget Jones. He doesn't make a movie in between Empire of Light and Disclosure Day. What he does do in that time, some TV shows. The Staircase. I forgot about the Antonio Campos.

[David Sims]

Pretty fun.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I liked it. I thought it was. He was good in it.

[Griffin Newman]

Never watched it. Obsessed with the documentary. He did something called Locker Be a Search for Truth.

[David Sims]

That was a British. You know, Locker B is a very famous British. You know, a plane was blown up over Scotland. Okay.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Over the town of Lockerby.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And then. This is really important. Plays Mycroft's employer, Sir Bulus, I believe, Cephalus Hodge in Young Sherlock, a Guy Ritchie Amazon prime original series that has no connection to the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes franchise. Guy Ritchie has two different. Sherlock Holmes. Yes.

[David Sims]

In which there's boxing in both, I think. And hero finds Tiffin played young Sherlock.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I thought you were gonna say that. He shows up in Watson.

[Griffin Newman]

No Watson, unfortunately.

[David Sims]

He's placed his boss. Yeah. Watson's been canceled.

[Griffin Newman]

It's been axed. But now young Sherlock is here to pick up

[David Sims]

Dr. Who's been ax. Like. I'm like, britain's got it. Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I thought they just were like, oh, we're just not bringing back and shooting. Got one. We're gonna start over.

[Griffin Newman]

It's back to the starting board.

[David Sims]

It's back to even. Right. You know, the. The last episode ended with him turning into Billy Piper. And then when everyone asks like, oh, so what's the plan there? They're like, yeah, we don't know. We just kind of filmed that and figured out placeholder. Figure that out.

[Griffin Newman]

Later next year, he the next Doctor.

[David Sims]

And they're like, like, maybe we're. Maybe it's possible.

[Griffin Newman]

And Russell T. Davies was supposed to Stay on for many more years.

[David Sims]

100. And the fan backlash to that moment was so intense.

[Griffin Newman]

They also clearly just didn't have anything.

[David Sims]

And. And then, of course. Right. The lack of a plan was so apparent. And finally BBC was just like, I think we're gonna just, like, blank slate this. Like, Doctor who's sort of out to pasture right now. And if someone's got a pitch, let us know.

[Griffin Newman]

Can we talk about the most important thing here?

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Are we gonna get back to disclosure day?

[Griffin Newman]

Is this Emily Blunt's best performance ever?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Ever, ever?

[Griffin Newman]

Possible. It's conversation.

[David Sims]

She's very good in the film.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She's phenomenal. I would. I immediately was like, okay, this is Edge of Tomorrow level.

[Griffin Newman]

It's. I mean, that's the conversation for me.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It's like, I haven't seen my Summer of Love.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the other one. Those are the three.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Apparently, she's quite amazing in. But I haven't seen it, so.

[Griffin Newman]

And she's obviously, like, unbelievably good in Devil Wears Prada. But I'm giving those other three movies the advantage because she has more screen time.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She.

[David Sims]

For me, it's all about pain. Hustlers. No, I don't.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She totally blew me away.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, she's really, really incredible in the movie.

[David Sims]

A little bit of a we take her for granted moment.

[Griffin Newman]

It is.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I have to address the elephant in the room, which is she's one of those actors who comes up a lot when you're talking about how everyone looks

[Griffin Newman]

like a member of the Durasal family.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Now, lots of cosmetic procedures have made actors, specifically actresses, struggle to emote because they don't have. They are less expressive.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

More and more leading men these days.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That's why I was like, you know what? It's happening. It's happening to God.

[David Sims]

You know. Rosie o'. Donnell. When she was like, everyone see my facelift? I'm like, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I haven't seen her. She's looking good.

[David Sims]

She's looking great.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She looks great.

[David Sims]

Congress.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

But I think one. It works for the character.

[Griffin Newman]

I agree. I was.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That she is a meteorologist.

[Griffin Newman]

She's someone on television.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

When I saw.

[David Sims]

Really fits the kind of, like, local news. Famous. I.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Something so, like, affecting about having someone who looks kind of plasticky.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

End up being the most empathetic.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Connector.

[Griffin Newman]

And that you see her face. Ultimately her. Her emotions transferred to her muscles break through all of the work she's had

[Marie Barty Salinas]

done in this movie. That took my breath away. And that is after a pretty crazy action set Piece where they are in a car where Emily blunt and Josh OConnor in a car chase. And then the car ends up hitting the side of a train, and then they get pulled along in the train, and then another train is coming in the opposite direction, and they have to, like, get. They have to survive. And they end up, like, climbing inside a train car at the last minute. And it is a train car full of, like, pianos being delivered.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And she has a panic attack.

[Griffin Newman]

It's really good.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Which it was crazy to see a character have a really understandable human reaction to surviving an action set piece.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You never get that. And as she's. As Josh o' Connor is, like, helping her breathe. And she's like, I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my hands. He's rubbing her hands against piano wires.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I was like, I. I was like on the edge of my seat, like, when I'm like, I've had panic attacks me too many times. And I'm like, this is the most accurate.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, it's a really hard thing to perform and not look hammy as hell. It's hard to not make it just feel like a ton of business.

[David Sims]

What I also liked about that scene before, it's just like the first minute of it, you're like, okay, what's happening now?

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Like, you had that thought. Like, well, she's got magic power. Right. Another communication coming in, and then you sort of start to settle down with Josh.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

You know, as the viewer. And you're kind of like, no, no, Right. She's just having a human reaction. Right. As Marie said, it also helps that

[Griffin Newman]

the guy he hired to play the mathematician is naturally one of the most empathetic actors alive. He's like the most sensitive bedside manner guy.

[David Sims]

He's doing that Spielberg thing of like, he's the co lead, but he's very much like, I am very happily the second lead. Kind of the off ball, like, you know. Right. The emotional support character. Because it starts with him and the actions invested in him. He stole the data. He's on the run. Oh, he's the hero. And then as Emily Blunt story unfolds, you're like, oh, she's kind of right.

[Griffin Newman]

He's the alpha here. Right.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Should we start. Should we start to talk about the plot?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. So an aw wrestler kicks in the camera. We see Josh o' Connor is at a match. He's with a backpack. He's trying to negotiate a handoff, but he's surrounded by government agents. Colin Firth does show up here, or is it all his underlings?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Colin Firth shows up there. He shows up in, like, the alley.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Eve Houston, who, if you don't know, is Bono's daughter.

[David Sims]

She sure is. Oh, okay. I told you, Ben, but you didn't listen.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't remember.

[David Sims]

I talk about YouTube. This is what you hear.

[Griffin Newman]

You know what's funny? Yeah. You know what's funny, Ben? Is she actually, she's biologically Bono's daughter, but she wasn't conceived in the traditional sense. One day she just showed up on an ipod.

[David Sims]

That's a pretty good joke. That is pretty darn good.

[Griffin Newman]

I started thinking about it, and I was like, I better not trip over this wording because I'm sitting on a hot hand. Suddenly, I got a royal flush. I got. Just got to slap this thing down on the table, you know, She's.

[David Sims]

She's been acting for a while.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She's phenomenal in the nick, which was, I think, most people's first.

[David Sims]

That's what I knew her.

[Griffin Newman]

Bridge of Spies. She's worked with Spielberg before.

[David Sims]

She's one of the daughters being like,

[Griffin Newman]

she's the one who's got the boyfriend.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She's recently. Well, she was on Bad Sisters on Apple tv. She was in Flora and Son, which is half.

[Griffin Newman]

Everyone liked her in that.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She's great in it. It's half a good movie. All the parts with Joseph Gordon Levitt in it made me want to throw something at my screen.

[Griffin Newman]

But she's Marie. You don't want to hear me play music. I just want to share my music with you.

[David Sims]

I liked her.

[Griffin Newman]

I wrote a song and want to have a conversation about AI.

[David Sims]

When did I like her?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Wow. Your. Your joke. O Love is really good.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. My one good impression.

[David Sims]

I don't really remember her. And Jake Kelly, she plays the woman, the actress.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Flashback.

[Griffin Newman]

She's the one they fought over. Yeah, she's the one who left up. She's good in it. She's got that one big scene.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think she's a good. She's definitely like a mother of.

[Griffin Newman]

Of the daughters.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it's implied that she's the mother of the daughters, or at least one of them. I think they. I like Jake.

[David Sims]

My guy. Yeah, He's a good movie. Jk, Remember who.

[Griffin Newman]

That's a movie that.

[David Sims]

Bring him back. What if Neph is like Jake Kelly, too? It's on the schedule.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not a perfect film, but I think that film's a lot darker and mean than people think it is.

[David Sims]

100% the movie ends with him crying, saying, up, but I enjoyed it.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Okay, so back, back to disclosure. Eve Houston plays Jane, the girlfriend of Daniel, played by Josh o'. Connor. And she has been held hostage. She uses a bargaining chip.

[David Sims]

Yes. Because he's stolen some.

[Griffin Newman]

He's got an alien stick.

[David Sims]

Right. He's stolen a.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

We don't know what any. At this point in the movie. We don't know what the hell's going on. We just know that he's got a stick. He's got a stick with bare hands.

[Griffin Newman]

He's got to use a glove. They all go, you don't know how to operate that thing.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And he tries to do this handoff and get her back to safety. And she basically is like, I just had to survive being kidnapped because of you. I'm not leaving your side. It is such a great Spielberg kind of setup to be like, here's a relationship that's at a bit of a crux point of is this about to get really serious or not? And now they're being tested in like a world altering event and they're trying to use this event to establish better lines of communication. Right. Like, it's basically a young couple being like, are we really going to make this work or not?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

They also, you realize that they don't really know anything about each other.

[Griffin Newman]

Totally.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So she did not know that he was. She doesn't know any. Why any of this is happening. She also didn't know that he was previously in jail, didn't know that she

[Griffin Newman]

knew he had a mysterious government job.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He didn't know that she was. Was a novitiate. So she had spent the time to potentially become a nun.

[David Sims]

What would you think if you're dating someone and they dropped that info? Like, I actually. Almost. None. I almost went none.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think it's kind of hot. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it depends on like, what's. What's your relationship to all of that today? Yeah, true. Would be my first question.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

But every single one, you know, it's like, oh, most people who I know, like, are. No, the whole like, oh, I lost the calling thing. I'm like, now you wanted to have sex.

[David Sims]

She says, we've had sex.

[Griffin Newman]

It just, it's a brutal. They're never going to overcome that in the marketing. Right. The vow of chastity thing, it's just a horrible sell.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, sure.

[David Sims]

Well, I mean, but like, I mean, I really liked when Regina Hall. Yes. Regina Hall. Yes. Was on Amy Polish podcast and she talked about how she almost became a nun.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Regina hall almost became a nun.

[David Sims]

I really recommend it. It's really funny.

[Griffin Newman]

Amazing.

[David Sims]

And talks about how, like, a lot of convents, not every convent, but a lot of convents, they guard against the, like, we're not your backup. So if you're like, 38, they sniff you out of, like, hey, just because you're not happy with, like, however things have gone, you don't get to just, like, be a nun now. Like, you know, just kind of be like, well, I want to just live with you guys and who cares about dating? Or, like, you know, having a job or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

It's kind of like a Saving Silverman situation, if that helps trans translate it. You know, where. Where the nuns can kind of sniff out, oh, you. You're not. You're avoiding something.

[David Sims]

And then at one point, Regina's like. And some of them, like, if you've had more than three sexual partners, which I don't know about you, Amy, but. And Amy's like, oh, I've. You know, and it's very funny.

[Griffin Newman]

There's that moment where Amy Poehler goes, what was it like working with Leonardo DiCaprio? And she, like, scratches her eyelid and she goes, you know, the problem is he's just very green.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, Yeah, I did see that clip.

[Griffin Newman]

He doesn't have a lot of experience.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Speaking of Regina hall and Leonardo DiCaprio, I was thinking about one battle after another a lot during this movie.

[Griffin Newman]

On the run nature.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Beyond the run nature. The alien sticks kind of look like the device. The music devices. There's a lot of. They hide out with nuns. There's a lot of, like, dodge, like, car chases.

[Griffin Newman]

This is true.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And so I was like, oh, okay.

[David Sims]

It's cool.

[Griffin Newman]

Because this movie.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I know our Spielberg liked one battle so much.

[Griffin Newman]

This movie has, like, four or five kind of classical set pieces that are, like, beautifully Spielberg.

[David Sims]

It's got some proper, you know. Right. Like Blockbuster stuff, but they're not super

[Griffin Newman]

long in a way where we've gotten so used to a creep of if a sequence starts, it's got to be like 20 minutes.

[David Sims]

20. Yeah, truly.

[Griffin Newman]

And I kept thinking, like, I know your big takeaway. David was like, it's so tender. I was surprised by how tender it was, I think was the word you

[David Sims]

used to Cinderella movie.

[Griffin Newman]

And I was just like, it's. It's really, like, classical. It feels like really kind of like simple and focused in its own weird way down to like, oh, they're trying to, like, cross. This train comes. It's clipping them. The train is being the Car is being dragged by the train and you're like, this is fun. Is it going to be 15 minutes? And you're like, no, it's four.

[David Sims]

It's. It's pretty brief. It's.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, they.

[David Sims]

They handle it in a way that regular people at their absolute adrenaline limit might be able to handle it. And then they're really freaked out after there's a secret. They're not like, oh, that was crazy. Anyway, you know, like a car turns

[Griffin Newman]

invisible and you're seeing the effects of water and stepping down really like that too.

[David Sims]

But I was like, 50.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, so is he gonna do 15 minutes of invisible car chase now? You're like, no. 3.

[David Sims]

Another day, did another day. It's so funny.

[Ben Hoskins]

To the physical comedy of it where they keep running into the invisible stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

I really enjoyed that guy falling into the window.

[Ben Hoskins]

Oh, I loved it.

[Griffin Newman]

It's that. But that's Spielberg. Tonal management.

[David Sims]

Can I tell you, please, just derailing the pod here, but I just want to tell you, the four winners of this year's honorary Oscars.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, were they just announced?

[David Sims]

Just announced.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Did Harrison Ford get it?

[David Sims]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

Can you give us the. Can you give us the categories of profession first?

[David Sims]

Okay. She just guessed one of them. Wow.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Glenn Close finally giv up.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a little rude to Glenn.

[David Sims]

It's actually show up in the November.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe the meanest thing anyone has ever done to her.

[David Sims]

She's not going to win a competitive Oscar. Or she will in the classic, like. Well, now that we gave you an honorary the Paul Newman I threw out

[Griffin Newman]

to Marie, is there any chance that there's a stealth candidate in Sunrise on the Reaping?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah. And I was like, I don't think she's probably in it enough.

[David Sims]

And my whole thing is like, she was really good in the Wake Up Dead Man. You know, they didn't even try. It's kind of like, all right, so Glenn Close is one. Another is a producing team.

[Griffin Newman]

Is it Kennedy and Marshall?

[David Sims]

No, you probably won't get indie producers. Legendary indie producers.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Christine Vachon.

[David Sims]

There you go. Oh, and Pamela.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, that's awesome. Oh, that makes me so happy.

[David Sims]

Another is a very, very esteemed workaholic director who's still working even though he's old and he's a bit of a grump. And he has no competitive Oscar. Similar. Similar to Glenn Close.

[Griffin Newman]

But a lot of nominations believe he

[David Sims]

doesn't have an Oscar. Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Ridley Scott.

[David Sims]

Ridley Scott.

[Griffin Newman]

There we go.

[David Sims]

And I'm sure his speech will be sunshiny.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, the problem is they're gonna have Grover present the award to him and get his order wrong. David's doing the face.

[David Sims]

The fourth, I think might excite you. Griffin Newman. Because it's an animator.

[Griffin Newman]

It's an animator.

[David Sims]

An animator. He makes the cartoons.

[Griffin Newman]

Feature films.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Don Bluth.

[Griffin Newman]

No, Don Bluth. What's. What medium of animation is this?

[David Sims]

He worked at Disney for very many years, and he's worked at Hanna Barbera.

[Griffin Newman]

And is it Glenn Keane?

[David Sims]

Pixar. Nope. He's also a pioneer in his field. An African American animator. Oh.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, it's Floyd Norman. Floyd Norman, a legend.

[David Sims]

90 years old.

[Griffin Newman]

A legend. Worked on Toy Story 2.

[David Sims]

Yes. But also worked on, like, you know, Sleeping Beauty or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

He's a bit of a Forrest Gump in animation. That's a very cool. That's a very cool four. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Or. Or five.

[Griffin Newman]

Marie just had a really funny reaction, which is I pulled the name Floyd Norman and she looked stunned that I could know a name of someone that obscure. And then I saw her face settle into, like, if he doesn't know that, then who is he?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, Kind. That.

[Griffin Newman]

That was the arc. You were like, how did you pull that? Well, right. You're. You. That's the. In your brain. Floyd Norman.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That's also really excited to learn about this guy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, he's a really cool guy. I think he's written a book. He might have been the first African American animator.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He was a cleanup sleep.

[Griffin Newman]

He's worked on. He's. He's. He's been everywhere.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

But he also, like Alvin and the chipmunks in the 80s. Like, and robot Chicken. That's so cool.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it was like when they. When Pixar got big enough that they needed to hire more animators, it was such a big deal that it was like, we can get Floyd Norman. And I think he worked on like, two or three at that point in time.

[Ben Hoskins]

Disclosure day.

[Griffin Newman]

Disclosure day. Okay. So this trade off happens and Eve.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yes. And then we got to talk about our introduction to Emily Blunt.

[Griffin Newman]

That's.

[Ben Hoskins]

That's where I was trying to take, you know. So they escape and they hide out in a convent. We now jump over to meeting Emily Blunt.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So her and her boyfriend, played by Wyatt Russell, David's boyfriend.

[David Sims]

Wait, I see my. I mean, I do love you.

[Griffin Newman]

Love him.

[David Sims]

Yeah, he's great.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He's great. They're hanging out in their cool loft in Kansas City, Missouri.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And she is.

[David Sims]

I'd be a royal season ticket holder. Would be fun.

[Griffin Newman]

That sounds like it makes the movie a lot more. I'm gonna say if you were this character and you had.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Has anyone here been to Kansas?

[David Sims]

No, never been to Kansas nor been to Kansas City of Missouri.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

My. My aunt on uncle. Uncle Ken moved out there for a bit and I went to visit them as a child. A lot of fun, like art museums and stuff for kids there. Kind of like an underrated art city.

[David Sims]

I'd like to go. I want to go to Kaufman Stadium before it closes. I want to get some of that bbq. I think they got a big old zoo and aquarium. Like, I think they got some cool.

[Ben Hoskins]

Oh, that's right. Because they have their own. Which is it?

[David Sims]

Like, it's a rub. Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

Base left, saucy based. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Friend of the show, past and future guest Heidi Gardner from there. But. But invests a lot into the community and. And has a lot of cool projects in particular coming up.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Shout out to Kansas.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

But Emily Blunt.

[David Sims]

Why didn't you ask him? He's the barbecue guy, right?

[Ben Hoskins]

Oh, how did you not? What's your school?

[Griffin Newman]

What's my school? Low and. David.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

They say that the eyes are the window to the soul.

[David Sims]

They do say that.

[Griffin Newman]

What does that make our glasses?

[David Sims]

The windows?

[Griffin Newman]

The window frames?

[David Sims]

I don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

The curtains.

[David Sims]

Yeah, the curtains.

[Griffin Newman]

The point is, if you are a glasses wearer like I am, or like our own producer Ben is true. It's a big decision.

[Ben Hoskins]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Because this is how you introduce yourself to the world. This engage with other people. You make eye contact through the frames. Sometimes it's just time for a refresh.

[David Sims]

Totally agree. All right, well, so what about Zenny Optical? Oh, you got some Zenny glasses.

[Griffin Newman]

Glasses, the eyewear, they got fun shapes, sizes, and colors. They got a lot of colors, Right. Statement pieces. Bold statement pieces, they call them.

[David Sims]

And. And they're inexpensive.

[Griffin Newman]

I would say they're an online eyewear shop with prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light lenses, all starting at under $30.

[David Sims]

That's crazy.

[Griffin Newman]

That is very low.

[David Sims]

I feel like glasses often cost more than $30.

[Griffin Newman]

Way more.

[David Sims]

But you go to Zendi.com, you pick a frame, you upload your prescription, they ship it to your door. No appointment, no store, no upsell at the counter.

[Griffin Newman]

Easy.

[David Sims]

At that price?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Something kind of shifts. You're not like, do I need new glasses? You're like, why don't I try something fun? Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Sometimes you got an old pair, they got a scratch on them. It's annoying. But you're like, am I gonna go through the hassle?

[Ben Hoskins]

And what's so nice, too, about the glasses? I got is just the price point. I feel so good, so good that I'm not overpaying for a great quality pair of sunglasses.

[David Sims]

Exactly. They've got 150,000 five star reviews.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And if you've never run glasses on online before, they have a virtual try on so you can see how it's gonna look on your face before you commit. If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, now's the time. Go to zenny.com podcast and use code podcast15 for 15% off your first order. The style sell out so don't sit on it. That's Z-N-N I.com podcast promo code PODCAST15.

[Griffin Newman]

David?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

My name is Griffin Newman and I love movies.

[David Sims]

What?

[Griffin Newman]

That's not what you say.

[David Sims]

You say, oh, my name is David Sims and I love movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Blanket.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Thank it.

[Griffin Newman]

If you love movies like us, you should be listening to the Eye of the Duck podcast named after the eye of the duck scene. Do you know about this?

[David Sims]

Isn't it David Lynch?

[Griffin Newman]

He said every movie has a scene that defines the whole. The way the eye of the duck represents the duck. Every time we do an ad review for our friends, I try to remember this anecdote. I do. But on each episode of their podcast they explain the anecdote well and host Dom Nero and Adam Volrich, friends of the show, friends of my life, explore a movie by finding its most essential scene. And right now, Dom and Adam are celebrating the films of Studio Ghibli. You ever hear of them, David?

[David Sims]

I love those movies and obviously we've covered some of them on our show, but not all.

[Griffin Newman]

Not all. And in fact, I will be going on their show soon to cover a film that was not covered in our series that I have never seen before. I'll be watching Pom Poco for the first time.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

One of the most testicle driven animated films ever made is that. What do you say?

[David Sims]

It's got a lot of balls in it.

[Griffin Newman]

It's couple.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

We will. I guess maybe, maybe one day we'll cover Takahata, but who knows? So it'll be very exciting to listen to that.

[Griffin Newman]

This is their first series devoted completely to animation. I love that. And the work of a single studio. So join them as they enter the studio of dreams and madness. They're going along on masterpieces like Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies and do you want to take this one?

[David Sims]

Yoshifumu Kondo's Whisper of the Heart, which covered way way back when we did we did movie Country Roads, take Me Home, etc. Begins this series beginning with the 1984 classic Gnostica in the Valley of the Wind continues through through all the way through Miyazaki's final question mark film the Boy and the Heron. Who knows, maybe he'll make another one. And for listeners who want to go even deeper, Adam and Dom are expanding on that lineup over on Patreon. Eye of the Duck After Hours. Five bucks a month. You can get exclusive coverage of Pre Ghibli. Works like Lupin the Third Castle of Cagliostro, hidden gems like Hiroyuki Morita's the Cat Returns. Great movie that I have seen 100 times. My daughter really likes it. My and studio Ponok's Mary and the

[Griffin Newman]

Witch's Flower not as good.

[David Sims]

It's a pretty interesting movie. That's from a Miyazaki acolyte, you know, from a trainee, whatever. Like an apprentice. That's all you get from subscribing to after hours. You also hear weekly analysis of industry news, thoughts on new releases in film and television, recommendations for what to watch or play. Yes, even video games.

[Griffin Newman]

I've been on the show several times over the last five years. They've explored a lot of franchises that we've covered on the show. I gone on specifically to cover some movies that we haven't in those franchises. So when they did Toy Story, I did a light year episode. For people who ask why no Lightyear on Blank Check, you can listen to that Dial of Destiny I did with Connor Ratliff. They've also done the Alien franchise, Mission Impossible, Evil Dead, Jurassic park. And they also will catalog movements, things like 80s dark fantasy, cyberpunk space films and movies about UFOs. Yes. So you can explore the scenes at the heart of your favorite movies and follow Eye of the Duck wherever you get your podcast. New episodes drop every Monday. Brought to you by the Morbid Network. I like saying morbid network in such a uplifting way. Brought to you by the Morbid Network the Morbid Work.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Emily Blunt. She is a meteorologist. She wants to be a serious news reporter.

[Griffin Newman]

She's trying to get that break. I like this couple.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, he's. He seems to be Wyatt Russell seems to be like a little laid back younger dude. She witnesses a cardinal lands on their

[Griffin Newman]

open window, comes in the room and

[Marie Barty Salinas]

then all of a sudden she starts speaking in Russian.

[Griffin Newman]

This scene rules.

[David Sims]

It's a really cool scene.

[Griffin Newman]

Our buddy Sean Fantasy was Talking on Big Picture about the end of Oak street coming out.

[David Sims]

Yeah. The David Robert Mitchell Dino.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think that looks good.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it looks awesome. Okay, cool. And he was talking about his optimism for that movie. And he put his finger on a thing that I've. I've felt for a long time and I've never been able to verbalize, but, like, he's like, my single favorite thing in the movies. The best feeling I can have is that sort of extended Twilight Zone thing of, where is this going? Like, pieces are being laid out and I don't understand how they fit together. And even if a movie sticks the landing and satisfies me with the answers, he was like, there's no feeling I like more than being in the middle of a movie like that.

[David Sims]

Totally.

[Griffin Newman]

And this movie is so good at doing this. We're like, why is suddenly everyone reacting really weird to this bird? The movie gets really quiet. The John Williams score in this film is excellent.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Barely kicks in until the second hour,

[David Sims]

but it is a very good score.

[Griffin Newman]

The first score is kind of silent,

[David Sims]

you know, after, you know, like, his post score is so minimal. Right. And it's sort of like. And didn't he not do, obviously, west side Story?

[Griffin Newman]

Like, he did Dial of Destiny, which

[David Sims]

that score got, as I've said.

[Griffin Newman]

Br.

[David Sims]

But that wasn't for Spielberg. But I'm like, did he do. I mean, his Fableman score? I just kind of remember being, like, lovely. I think it's really lovely, but not like, I don't. Like, I can't summon any themes for it. Or like, you know, not like sticky in my head. And I was like, I wonder if he's just kind of moved to things, you know. Right. Like. Like, he does softer, quieter stuff. This requires a little more felt.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It felt like the. I felt the jazz slash atonal.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Sort of stuff come. Which totally Johnny Music always appreciated about. About him.

[Griffin Newman]

But this moment with the Cardinal Landing, you could imagine a version of it in which the Williams score starts swelling already and the camera pushes in on her face of wonder. And instead everything is just kind of slow and eerie and quiet. And then this moment of her speaking Russian goes on way longer than you'd think.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

They also like. Okay, so to talk a little bit about the trailers for this movie, they reveal that she does the speaking in a weird alien dialogue.

[Griffin Newman]

That was the first trailer, which was otherwise pretty vague, but was built around the set piece of Did I had.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That might have been the only trailer I saw. Did they show her speaking other languages?

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Like that to me, I was like, oh, totally.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And you know that. That the scene of her speaking in the alien language while live on air recalls so many videos that tend to go viral now of, like, local newscaster has stroke.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

That are always so strange, right?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, right.

[David Sims]

We found there's an odd. And it's like. It's not even so much that you're watching someone suffer, but it's kind of like, watch reality break.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, right.

[David Sims]

Like, watch everything just be normal and then not normal. You know, like. Yes, I think compelling.

[Griffin Newman]

Inspired by that. And I even wonder if that was the starting point for this character being a broadcaster. But the things that are so strange about those moments is not just that reality is breaking, but it's people who are so trained and polished and composed, and you see their survival instincts kicking in where they're still kind of like, carrying themselves correctly, but what they're saying no longer makes sense. And so we know that moment's coming because it's in the trailer. She starts speaking in Russian, which is this other thing you hear that sometimes people have these bizarre medical side effects where they wake up and they're fluent in another language or they start speaking tongues or whatever it is. And the scene's just very odd. She gets in her car to drive to work. She's running behind. A cop pulls her over, and then she does this fucking emotional reading of him. You're. You're trying to arrest me because you got in a fight with her. And she knows every specific detail. And for a second you're like. Like, is this. This character sort of, like, party trick that she's learned how to read people and she doesn't know.

[David Sims]

It's sort of a mentalist thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, right. But she's getting close enough, right? Yes. And instead she, like, is shaken by it. What just came out of me? And then she goes into her workplace and starts the broadcast and.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And, well, first she starts speaking to someone in Korean.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, right, right. There's. There's a Korean War that. That's. We're on the brink of. And they have a Korean guest who's speaking as an expert, and they're having trouble with the translator. And she jumps in and like, clarifies everything, and everyone's like, since when do you know Korean? She's like, what are you talking about? I don't know Korean. All this is fascinating where you're like. You're watching Emily Blunt pivot so fast to do things hyper competently and then immediately have no memory of what she Just did. Or understanding of how it came off.

[Ben Hoskins]

Well, I think it's not that she's hearing it as English.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, Right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She doesn't know.

[David Sims]

She's.

[Griffin Newman]

Not that she's doing anything weird. Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

She's not forgetting.

[David Sims]

It's similar to later when Josh o' Connor is like, I know what she said. And everyone's like, no one knows what she said.

[Griffin Newman]

They've been given the codex.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

The way that information is revealed in the movies, I think is really cool, because we don't learn that Josh o' Connor is someone who has also had an alien encounter until further in the film. We don't learn that he was able to understand her alien language on the TV broadcast until a little later. And we also. The way that they reveal that this stuff. Like, I think I assumed that Emily Blunt always had this power, especially when she's, like, talking to the police officer. But then to realize that it just came out.

[Griffin Newman]

I think the cardinal activated it.

[David Sims]

Oh, totally.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

The cardinal sleeper thing.

[David Sims]

I mean, the. I had really avoided any advertising for this movie. I didn't watch the full trailer, but I'd obviously seen the teaser a couple times.

[Griffin Newman]

The full trailer also literally dropped while we were in the screening. And I watched it afterwards, and I was like, there are 10 things in this trailer that I never would have put in the marketing in a way that bummed me out. The early stuff was vague.

[David Sims]

You're trying to get people in.

[Griffin Newman]

I get it.

[David Sims]

And that early trailer was heavy on the animal stuff, almost to the point of abstraction, where you're just kind of like, is this movie about. I mean, I get that it's aliens or something, but, like, is this deal with animals being in league with aliens or something?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It's not just the animals. It's the shot of the. The home that looks like a Thomas Kincaid painting.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And everyone's like, the. Is this.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, there were CGI complaints?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It makes sense in the context of the movie, the way the scene plays out. But it's somewhere around this. Concurrently, we've set up up that Colin Firth is the head of the agency. Everyone's gone into sort of crisis War Decks.

[David Sims]

War Decks is in crisis mode because stuff's been stolen and people who work for it are missing.

[Griffin Newman]

And in particular, Colman Domingo, who's high up, is missing. Here you go. And he's a guy on a headset. He is. Basically has the air of a stage manager.

[David Sims]

Right. He's literally in a warehouse and they're making something.

[Griffin Newman]

They're building a set around him. And he's sort of talking to Josh o' Connor and saying, like, you know, follow the plan.

[David Sims]

Okay? Everything's going to be okay.

[Griffin Newman]

I love this guy.

[David Sims]

It's going to be all right. You're just gonna make it happen.

[Griffin Newman]

You'll know where to go.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Subversion. To have his character be so, like, warm and chill versus, like, we need you here asap.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, you have to go so often.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Man ON PHONE is like, really, like, kind of riling up the tension. And this every time he's like, like, it's okay.

[Griffin Newman]

This is the first place I felt the manifestation of 50 years of Steven Spielberg studying SNL because, like, Heidi is one of the people who would tell me about him coming to visit, and I'd go, like, so what does he do? And she said, he just is obsessed with how the show gets made. He loves just watching it come together. And the stuff you can't see unless you're in the studio during the commercial breaks, how calmly people construct a set out of nowhere. Right. All these sets are, like, in slats that have to be rebuilt and dressed in, like, 90 seconds.

[David Sims]

No. Obviously, it's been much covered over the years, but the way that SNL is

[Griffin Newman]

made is crazy insane. And he loves the dance of that, and he loves the hyper professionalism of that. And it certainly manifests in the final, final sequence, which we'll get to. But I. Everything about Hugo felt very. This is like SNL ad, you know, this is floor manager. This is just watching the team just do everything very calmly and be like, it'll get done.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And, like, at this time, Hugo and Daniel are in contact with each other, but Emily Blunt is kind of on her own.

[Griffin Newman]

You don't know how she's connected.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And then. So Hugo and his employees get Josh and Eve to a safe house, which is like a farmhouse. And then we learn what the stick, the alien stick, does sort of.

[David Sims]

I feel like the impression is it actually probably does more stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

This is just a thing they figured out.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But it seems to. All the alien stuff seems to kind of amount to sort of an empathic power of, like, they can kind of see in your head or talk to you in your head. Right. This sort of classic gray, big head thing of, like, maybe they're telepathic, like. Right. You know. Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

It's psychic abilities.

[David Sims]

Right, Right.

[Griffin Newman]

But that's what makes them more powerful than us, is that they've cracked empathy.

[David Sims]

May.

[Griffin Newman]

At a time where we've become more divided.

[David Sims]

And, like, the stick is maybe like an Amplifier, like a radio antenna that just kind of like zaps your brain to a thousand.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Colin Firth will hold the stick and he'll look at a photo of someone,

[David Sims]

they call it diving.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And then he can kind of present in their, like personal space and talk to them, but no one else can see them. So it's kind of like, I guess it's just like they're. You're. He's in their head heads.

[Griffin Newman]

They also make it clear that Colman Domingo was the main one who operated this. That it's like a high skill level thing.

[David Sims]

And Coleman Ringo, probably you sort of get the idea is like, is a more empathetic person. So he's probably better at it.

[Griffin Newman]

He's a native more empathetic. But also by wielding this, he has now learned more. He has absorbed their feelings, their message has gotten through to him. And that's why he has basically become radicalized of we gotta open the doors, we gotta let everyone know.

[Ben Hoskins]

So they're explaining the stick, but they're also setting up, up with the videos of really why they're forming this resistance, which is that this company, this private company, has been torturing aliens.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

And look, a thing I think David Kep and Spielberg are sparring about is like, we're gonna do the classic conspiracy theory. It's gonna be the basics that even an audience member who doesn't care about this stuff might know just to sort of lay out what we kind of learn. It's like there's definitely was like a crash. Area 51 definitely is a place where alien stuff is.

[Griffin Newman]

Richard Nixon brought fucking Jackie Gleason there.

[David Sims]

Yeah, Nixon maybe brought Jackie Gleason there to see an alien because he was drunk and was like, want to see an alien?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That like, that's a conspiracy theory. Really?

[David Sims]

Yeah, totally. That Nixon would get drunk and be like, get the alien box out. I want to look at it, you know, or whatever that and that like there's a company or a subcontractor in the Dodge that has basically Men in Black style, moved beyond governmental control by making money off of like patenting tech.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Sorry, right.

[David Sims]

Like that's how they do it the first thing. So no one can even tell them what they're, you know, what to do anymore.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

When I googled Nixon, Jackie Gleason UFO is a clip from the Joe Rogan experience.

[Griffin Newman]

Good. Yep, good. I thought Joe Rogan was very good in this movie, by the way. And no one's really used him as an actor this well since Zuki Keeper maybe. Is he in that yeah, he is. He plays the villain. He's actually incredibly bad. It feels like he won a contest or lost a contest and was forced to be in the movie.

[David Sims]

When you look up what's called the disclosure movement, which is people who believe, you know, this is government covering up for aliens. I. I sent this to the big, you know, to the news and deals thread.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

You know, this is the first guy pictured.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

On Wikipedia.

[Griffin Newman]

And I believe Chris Ryan said, this looks like a guy who runs a boutique physical media website out of his garage. And I think I said, blood discs dot shop app.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I don't know. I think he looks more like a Pawn Stars kind of guy.

[David Sims]

Right, right. Kind of like, I could give you 22, 000, you know, like, yeah, these

[Griffin Newman]

things aren't mutually exclusive, Marie. Guys, guys buying pallets of discs from Europe. And also he's doing some pawning on the side.

[David Sims]

And, and you know, and Sean and Chris or Sean and Alex are. We're like, oh, yeah, that guy's like the star of the documentary which got

[Griffin Newman]

very big on Amazon a year or two ago.

[David Sims]

He's a guy who worked at the DoD and is pretty basically like, well, I know people who knew things.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Because as much again, as everyone's like, well, stuff's been disclosed. It's like the big hearing that Congress had, a couple people testified where they're like, well, someone I worked with told me that they saw an alien. You know, there was never the compelling thing. It was more just hearsay kind of indirect testimony. Nobody sat down and was like, I worked at the Department of Defense and my job was cover up aliens. And I'm going to admit it now.

[Ben Hoskins]

And I wrapped up an alien and it was chill as hell.

[David Sims]

And when I touched his skin, I got powers and I saw rainbows Reticuli or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

I, I think another thing this movie is doing.

[David Sims]

Yes, I think, yes, this movie's playing in that pool.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

And it's a bit of a pool where when you. Yeah, it's a Joe Rogany pool.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a joke.

[David Sims]

Loves that.

[Griffin Newman]

If what, is there too much money at stake? And then you have, have what feels very Spielbergian for some people, might be a little too corny. And I bought that because I felt like they did just the right amount. The idea that this, all of this behavior was justified by a sense of self preservation or defensiveness that then has sort of justified perhaps advanced interrogation techniques and such. But also there's so much money at stake that they're continuing to justify all of their reasoning while also hiding behind this. It's for the good of the people.

[David Sims]

That's the thing. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

People are dumb, panicky animals.

[David Sims]

Others would just kind of be like,

[Griffin Newman]

okay, I dap them. And I'd say, thanks, God.

[Ben Hoskins]

I'd be like, oh, my God, this is incredible. Life is magical.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

The universe is incredible.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Think of, like, what it would take for me to believe it. I'd either have to, like.

[David Sims]

So this is the big question, right? Would it work on you? You the.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I'd have to, like, meet an alien face to face.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Or it would have to be like a, like, legitimate press conference. Like Obama saying we killed Osama, but just not Trump. Someone else walking out.

[Griffin Newman]

Any of it happens during the Trump administration, then I don't believe it. Here's, here's what it would take for me.

[David Sims]

Ok, go ahead. And then I have a thought.

[Griffin Newman]

Lgbt. Absolutely. Eating its Snatch Game. Like, he comes out like whaling flowers and at the Tony.

[David Sims]

Yeah, right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You know, like, I thought Pink did a great job.

[Griffin Newman]

I didn't watch.

[David Sims]

I, I also. It was one of those things where one minute. And I was like, why is Pink hosting that? And I was like, well, you know what? She's a born entertainer.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben and I were seeing Zodiac with a friend of the show, Leslie Hadland. We were hooting and hollowing. We were having a grand old time.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Think we will. We will find the Zodiac killer or, like, believable evidence of aliens.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, it was Arthur Lee Allen, and we all know this.

[David Sims]

Those knives in his car were for a chicken he killed for dinner.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Doesn't the, the, the, the DNA not match on the post?

[Ben Hoskins]

What were you gonna say?

[David Sims]

So I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but. Right. Like the end of the movie, which will, you know, we'll, we'll discuss things we're missing. But, you know, like, yes, they show a bunch of clips and you could kind of explain away clips, but then the movie is ending with them pointing a camera at an alien who is then looking down the lens going, listen to me, I am an alien. I think that would really, would start to move the needle a little bit.

[Griffin Newman]

There's just so much footage that is ultimately.

[David Sims]

That's the other thing. Think. But then, right, I've, I've already debated this with some people where they're like, oh, I don't think, you know, in this age of no one believes anything in AI and Trump. And I'm like, right. But people believe that things are getting covered up. Like, why would they not believe that? It's like, hey, it's true.

[Griffin Newman]

This is one of the. You know what I mean, Is, like, setting for himself as a challenge is what could you do that actually would grab everyone's attention.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And hold everyone together.

[David Sims]

Make a movie about a guy who snaps a twig to have a girl.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, one wish. Willow.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, is there. Is there something happening where Emily Blunt is using her, like, her powers, empathy, to then make everyone, like, to connect with everyone over there.

[David Sims]

A little metaphorical, I think.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not like she's sending the vibes through the team.

[David Sims]

She can definitely, like, read the alien, you know, and kind of translate.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It's just the thing where I'm like, oh, this is a moment where every. Like, he shows, like, people on the. The subway, phones, people. They've stopped walking. They are all glued. And I'm like, I don't know. No, I don't know.

[David Sims]

Aliens.

[Ben Hoskins]

You don't know what.

[Griffin Newman]

I buy it, but this is the

[Marie Barty Salinas]

moment I'd be like, oh, there's someone on, like, a Kansas City news channel who's talking about aliens.

[Griffin Newman]

The movie's going to live or die on this. I 100% believe that if I was on the subway and, like, I. I could see the moment where, like, someone's phone pings and another person's phone pings, and then everyone in the car is like, are you seeing this? This? There have been moments like this, and this would be the biggest one that had ever happened in the history of humanity, definitely. I. By the way, it plays out down to even just the transferring of, like, oh, no, this is getting bumped up to the nightly news. This is no longer Emily Blunt's broadcast. She breaks the story. This woman, I think, is so good, who plays the newscaster at the end.

[David Sims]

Yeah, she is really good. The one. The newscaster. She's having to play, like, I don't know what's going on.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Would you cry?

[David Sims]

Yeah, maybe.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't kind of think so. I got hooked up watching this film.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I got choked. I didn't get choke up. Choked up during the disclosure part. I got choked up during the.

[Griffin Newman]

When they're in the house, which. Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

What happens?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So it's. Oh, wait. Before we get there, we just have to acknowledge another thing, which is that Eve Houston has been, at one point, is taken over by Colin Firth's directives to. She needs to eliminate.

[Griffin Newman]

He's trying to jump in her brain.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah. And get her to basically kill her boyfriend Joshua.

[Griffin Newman]

And she's. She's. She is. This is. This is why I wasn't bumping on this is that there's. The movie's a dangerous risk of getting into can Faith overcome All? But I think you can read it more literally that it's not that like the power of Jesus is stopping the alien technology from being used in a bad way. It's that like the way she is squeezing the. The cross necklace and causing like, you know, pain in her hand and actual like lacerations is like the. The literalization of how she applies her beliefs to be able to guide her through situations, not the inherent power of those beliefs, if that makes any sense. That was the distinction for me. And it's down to the fact that she's causing herself pain. Right. That it's not a self punishment thing as a sacrifice. It's that, like, the idea of the cross doesn't really do anything. It's what you apply it to that is made manifest then. But she basically, yes, is like using a tremendous amount of willpower to stop Colin Firth from making her kill him.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And there are a lot of cool shots with like reflections and a knife

[Griffin Newman]

and it gets into then, right. Them needing to like, evolve their level of communication, their relationship where she's like, I don't trust me. Tie me up. I should be withheld or. Yeah. Restrained. And I. I love the bit of him and the. They go to like a random motel and he immediately tries to find single item in the hotel that has the name or the address. Because he's like, her eyes are a transmission device, right? Yeah.

[David Sims]

It's really cool. How does he. Eventually he like, moves something.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It's. He's holding the stick. The. The One Wish Willow, the diving stick. Oh, no. He's holding a piece of paper that he wrote down his. Because he is able to. He sees the clip of Emily Blunt speaking alien language and it's like, oh, that's a mathematical whole equation. He starts translating it by hand on a piece of paper from the hotel notepad.

[Griffin Newman]

While he thinks she's sleeping, he's holding

[Marie Barty Salinas]

it in his hand and he drops it. And so she can see immediately. Immediately the.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, this was the thing I forgot to finish setting up. But this notion that the Colin Firth character is so completely curdled, that he is so kind of like Colonel Kurtz died in his beliefs largely in the wake of his wife's death. This man's completely corrupted now. And. And the way Colman Domingo tries to relate to him of like, you used to actually think about things and now you're so concerned with losing your Position, your money, your status, your power. These people who just then, you know, the. The desire for security, even when you become a billionaire, just completely rots your fucking brain. And you'll do anything to make sure that no one takes a dollar from you anymore. Basically, yeah.

[David Sims]

And I think Spielberg's commenting obviously on like. Like, people who crave power in government. And then we'll do anything to keep it working for, say, Donald Trump, sorry to say his name. You heard of this guy?

[Griffin Newman]

If you say it too loudly, Robert De Niro is gonna break into this studio. He's no good Kool Aid man style, throwing up his middle fingers.

[David Sims]

But I also. The implication I sort of got is like, you know, maybe back in the day, Hugo and confer Scott, Noah, you know, know, we're like, we're gonna one

[Griffin Newman]

day figure out trying to get the

[David Sims]

public how to finesse this out. And then at some point, Hugo realized, like, oh, no, you're never right.

[Griffin Newman]

Your plan is they will never be

[David Sims]

making money on this.

[Ben Hoskins]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Keep operating in the background, but never actually let people know about it because, like, that you're just too scared of, like.

[Griffin Newman]

He argues strongly that this is. I. I am correct. It will destroy society if we allow them.

[David Sims]

One of my favorite things at the. Is at the end. End when he's finally cooked, he was like, who plays the underling?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I don't know, but he looks.

[Griffin Newman]

That guy was very good.

[David Sims]

Okay. His name, I think is Henry Lloyd Hughes. You know, he's just like the guy who. With the gun, right? Like the guy who's kind of his, his, his. Yeah. But like, there's just that moment where finally when the broadcast is starting, where Firth just sits in the chair and he's like, fine.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He's British too.

[David Sims]

It's over.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Silver respects. Respects the Brit.

[Griffin Newman]

Where was this filmed? Primarily New Jersey.

[David Sims]

Was filmed well. New Jersey. Well, shout out Huntington, N.J. ben. Also a little Atlanta, a little New York City. But yeah, like, the Cape May Seashore line railroad was used for the railway

[Marie Barty Salinas]

shout out to the Jersey shore.

[David Sims]

So there you go.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Did that in a little accent.

[David Sims]

You did. Yanush obviously shot it.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, ye Shot the soon Seoulberg motor.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I did.

[David Sims]

Did you know that?

[Griffin Newman]

I did, yeah.

[David Sims]

Edited by Sarah Brother, who directed. Who edited like the last bunch of Spielberg movies with Michael Khan, but is getting the solo credit here.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, Michael Khan is like 96.

[David Sims]

Michael Khan is 95 years young.

[Griffin Newman]

95 years young. John Williams is 94. Like, there was something striking looking at the credits of this movie and realizing, like, the Guys that Spielberg has been with for decades. And Janos is a little younger than Steve.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah. Yanish is still out there, but when

[Griffin Newman]

he started, he found a bunch of bunch. Steve was the young guy, and he found a bunch of collaborators who had 10 years experience on him.

[Ben Hoskins]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And these guys are getting really. They're dancing around retirement.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

These are sort of the final laps around for a lot of them.

[Ben Hoskins]

They get captured in the hotel, or at least Daniel does.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Ben Hoskins]

Jane escapes with the stick. We cut back to Margaret, who has left the hospital, ditched her freaking

[Griffin Newman]

boy, tried to sell her down the river. Yeah.

[David Sims]

I mean, he's sort of of, you know, you sort of. It's a good Spielberg character because you empathize that. He's like, well, I think my girlfriend's having a mental episode.

[Griffin Newman]

It also starts, and it feels like this couple's gonna break up in six weeks.

[David Sims]

Yeah, definitely. They're already kind of weird because she's like, I think we should move again. And he's like, but I want to, like, sell guitars in Kansas City or whatever it is he seems to do. It's unclear, but, you know, the thing we've sort of mentioned, but it's, you know, like, it's like when they're in the gas station, it's pandemonium because everyone's prepping for what seems to be maybe not the end of the world, but some kind of escalation in a. In a foreign war like the North Korea that might be like a nuclear exchange or something. Like something crazy is happening. None of our main characters care.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

Ever.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

You know, so it's all backgrounded. And I love that it's all kind of just like, you know, North Korea. You kind of just hear this sort of vague, like, you know. Yeah. The situation continues to escalate.

[Griffin Newman]

It's also, if anything. And they make it. It, you know, textual at one point. But there's a concern of will anything we do even be able to cut through the noise?

[David Sims]

It's like there's already such a big story happening. Yeah, but so, yeah, so like, when Wyatt Russell is finally kind of clearly like, I think I need to, you know, hand Emily off to the authorities. They're in a gas station where it's all popping off.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

So she can kind of sneak out

[Griffin Newman]

calls and reports her.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Emily and Josh link up.

[David Sims]

Wait, do we. I'm sorry, one more. Do we like the scene where it takes him three times to run over the phone with the car?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, I love that. I love that.

[David Sims]

She's like you didn't it. The wheels didn't even get it drive forward. And like I was watching it being like I also would struggle. It's like I don't know exactly where the wheel is when I'm sitting in the car.

[Griffin Newman]

It's really good. She's really funny.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah. At this point, they establish. You kind of see what the other people are seeing as they're talking to Emily Blunt. Where there's like that shot in the trailer where you see like an old woman turn into Emily Blunt when the camera passes a guy's.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

The back of a guy's head. And without any context, you're like, oh, is she a shape shifter? But really that is just like the visual way to represent that. Every time she is connecting with someone, she is. They are seeing her as. See someone.

[Griffin Newman]

I read it as. It's one of her powers. Much like the language thing. It's like when that. That's what she needs to do. That's what it is. Because you have the scene later where she gets out of custody and she does it by looking at 15 consecutive people.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And to each of those people, she is different.

[David Sims]

The.

[Griffin Newman]

The one person who. A silent look from.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Would make them stop in there.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I thought that sequence was insane.

[Griffin Newman]

I thought that sequence was incredible.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That's another time when I started to like kind of tear up a bit.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, my God. So beautiful.

[Ben Hoskins]

That's how she frees Josh.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And then they are like, we just got to get back to Kansas. She started off leaving Kansas, but now she's got to get back to Kansas.

[Griffin Newman]

They just find each other in the way. Hugo said of like, you'll know where to go. She'll know how to reach you. There were always two.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah. When they get to Hugo in his little warehouse where he is, we find out that he has been reconstructing her home from childhood. And it is important that they reconstruct the circumstances.

[David Sims]

Circumcision.

[Griffin Newman]

Nope. In fact, David, I have to push back here. They do not reconstruct even Spielberg circumstances.

[David Sims]

Right. What if Spielberg's like, like, the problem is the aliens have been circumcised. And then you're like, wait, what's he worried about? This was his problem.

[Griffin Newman]

It's an anti circumcision street.

[David Sims]

And he starts going on like weird TikTok interviews, you know, like with like circumcision influencers.

[Griffin Newman]

I must. I must call out who else recently reconstructed their childhood home in exacting detail to then restage the events of primal trauma?

[David Sims]

Huh?

[Ben Hoskins]

Wait, who?

[Griffin Newman]

Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Fableman.

[David Sims]

Yes. Yeah. I wonder if. Because, like, I feel like this movie was entirely built post Fable. Right. If he's, like. Right. Reckoning with, like, what a strange emotional experience that was for him to reenact these things, to build these things. Right. Like, you know, because, like, so much of the magic trick of the movie. And what I love also is that when Emily Blunt is confronted with her home, she's not just like, wow. She's like, all right, so it's my house. What's going on?

[Griffin Newman]

Why is this my house?

[David Sims]

I know this is my house.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

She's, like, totally overwhelmed. And, yes, I. I am the exact age that, like, I got. They say that she's 38, which. Emily blunt is not 38.

[David Sims]

How old do you think she is, though?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think she's, like, 43.

[David Sims]

Yeah, she's not that much older, but

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I. I am 37 and a half.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm 37 and a half as well. Marie and I are very close.

[David Sims]

How old I am?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You're 40.

[David Sims]

40.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And Ben's about to turn 41. But just like that, the. The way that the house looked, the tv, the stacked vhs. And then when you got to her bedroom, I was just like, oh. I started thinking, like, how I would react if someone reconstructed because my home was torn down. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

My. I might. I. There's. My parents gave up where I grew up. Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So I can never go back.

[David Sims]

All my homes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah. And I just. I. I started to think about what an overwhelming experience.

[David Sims]

No, totally. I know. Like, I could. Could. And I always visit my house in London, which.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I visited your house in London? I stood outside and took a picture for you.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, it's in Disneyton, right?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yes, it's in Disneyland. And there's a little. There's a little. There's a little blue plaque outside saying David Sims.

[David Sims]

My street does have a blue plaque

[Marie Barty Salinas]

on it, but it did my road.

[David Sims]

It's a. I think it's Kwame Kruna. It's a very interesting person.

[Griffin Newman]

The dog lived here.

[David Sims]

Maybe one day there will be a blue plaque, maybe famous podcaster Davidson's, and people will go like. Like another new low for blue plaque. God, I didn't think they could get any stupider. Caster Jesus Christ used to just be like Charles Dickens. Now it's this guy, co creator of

[Griffin Newman]

Gay ET David Sims.

[David Sims]

And then someone's like, oh, actually, that's pretty funny. He's like, all right, all right. Maybe it's funny.

[Griffin Newman]

They didn't even land on lgbt. And they're like. He caught up with it, like, two years later.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Does Ben. Does your dad live in the home that you grew up in?

[David Sims]

He does that. Not only does he live in the home he grew up in, he lives in, like, a family home.

[Griffin Newman]

That's generations.

[Ben Hoskins]

It was my great grand grandmother's home.

[Griffin Newman]

And that's where the jeans were buried.

[David Sims]

That's.

[Griffin Newman]

That's a. That's a home built. Hollowed ground built by Hosley.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Is your. Is your bedroom still your bedroom or has it been converted like Ninja Turtles posters and.

[Ben Hoskins]

No, it. That all has been taken down. Functions as a guest room.

[Griffin Newman]

What happens next? You basically. You get the chase the train, and

[Marie Barty Salinas]

then they're in the house, and they both are. You know, they're holding the stick and they have. Have to, like, they have to kind of go back to the moment of what we learned to be their first alien encounter.

[Griffin Newman]

Colman Domingo has been focused on her. We're trying to find her. He knows that there was a human, a child that was abducted by an alien. What he realizes when Joshua Connor calls him and tells him that he can understand what she said on the broadcast. There were two. There were always two. Of course there were. That they were abducted together as children.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

By a bunch of woodland critters in their Thomas Kincaid Christmas cottage. That's how they visualized it to them so that the children would not be terrified, which is why it looks so artificial. And they were imbued with these powers of communication to hopefully be able to someday. Maria, are you about to cry at this idea?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I know. I'm thinking about, like, this movie's incredible. I'm thinking about how, because they're animals, it's often brought up as kind of like a failure of humanity, that we have more empathy for animals than we do for other human. That people get more upset when they see animals being hurt in movies than

[David Sims]

they do, like, the classic, like, Hurricane Katrina. People are more freaked out when they saw a dog on a roof. You know, even though they've been watching suffering.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And there. There is something purposeful. Yes. That. That the aliens have chosen to present themselves as, like. I know, just if there's, like, a scene where you see the way the fox is looking at.

[Griffin Newman]

I like that they stack up on top of each other. I like that they make a little. Kind of like there's like a little.

[David Sims]

I mean, interesting. The animal stuff. Animal stuff never really works on me, which probably means I'm a monster. But although, I mean, like, I can find an animal cute and not want to see an animal be in peril. But, like, for me, I was much more just like, the kid stuff gets to me of just like, the idea of a kid not knowing what's happening and all, you know, like, now that just like, freaks me out so much.

[Griffin Newman]

You're right, Marie, that there's the thing of, like, if they presented to us as aliens, would we be terrified and they presented as humans, Would we be distrusting only by presenting as a magical deer, cardinal and raccoon who all stack up on top of each other and are good friends? The big three, Dear raccoon.

[David Sims]

Sure, of course.

[Griffin Newman]

Would. Would we feel safe and comfortable enough? Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

I want to share because I've said on this podcast many times that I am jealous of people who've been abducted by aliens. You have said that, and that is something that I've always wanted. Friend of the show, Chris Perubay, the great Crisper producer and sometimes host of 99 Invisible.

[Griffin Newman]

Great podcast person who is so nice he makes you feel like an asshole.

[David Sims]

The. Yeah, I was about to say the friendliest man in the world.

[Griffin Newman]

There's no more genuine, friendly person than Crispr.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Was he abducted by an alien?

[Griffin Newman]

Probably. No.

[Ben Hoskins]

But I was talking to him about this movie and my relationship with aliens, and he did challenge me. He where he said, wouldn't that be really scary?

[David Sims]

Obviously, like, huh. Obviously. Maybe you are more talking about, like, kind of again, like, I feel like we're all nostalgic for the 90s aesthetic around alien abductions, which bright light. Right. Which also bled a little bit into. And I'm not going to call you out here, Ben, but you know, drug subcultures, right? Of kind of like, you know, T shirts where there's a gray alien and maybe he has a joint and he's got his fingers up and he's coming in peace.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, movie is that guy.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

There's also like the snl, the SNL skit. The Alien and Kevin, where it's like three of them had had a. Like, it. I was bathed in a warm blood and I felt held and cared for, and it was magical. And then you have Cape kid being like, actually, they stuck stuff up my butt.

[Griffin Newman]

I was Donald Ducking it.

[Ben Hoskins]

Like, I guess in my mind I'm like, I'm going to show them Sega Genesis and we're gonna have a blast.

[Griffin Newman]

They'd love it, right? To Jam and Earl. They love.

[David Sims]

Yeah, Dud. They would.

[Griffin Newman]

Those are their kind of guys.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

New markdowns, up to 70% off are at Nordstrom Rack Stores now stock up and save big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories and more must haves for summer. Join the nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop newer rivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Okay, yeah. Disclosure day. Little kids getting abducted by aliens. And yes, that seems very effective. It's very effective.

[Griffin Newman]

They remember everything.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

They remember everything. Colin Firth is still trying to fudgeing fudge with their shit. They have to, like, make themselves invisible, which is another thing you can do with the alien stick.

[Griffin Newman]

Invisible car. And that.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

We discussed that sequence. That. That was really fun.

[Griffin Newman]

House.

[Ben Hoskins]

A bunch of guys get bonked.

[Griffin Newman]

Good.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

A lot of guys get bonked. I do want to say, and this is like, if we're talking about, like, empathy in cinema, one of the guys that plays one of Hugo's assistants, I think his name is, like, Brandon Wilson. The entire movie, every time they showed him, I was like, I know this guy from somewhere, but I don't think that he's an actor. I think he's someone that I know who, like, happens to be in a movie. Like, I just felt like I had some sort of different connection with him. No. Brandon Wilson.

[David Sims]

Well, I don't know. Who. Brando. He's not showing up.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

All right, maybe his name's wrong.

[Ben Hoskins]

No, you're.

[David Sims]

You're gonna. You're right. Brandon Wilson. Here he is. Yeah, he's in Nickel Boys.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That's the whole thing where I thought

[David Sims]

I knew him, because that movie.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And so the whole time. Well, you're placing the other guy's head. Yep, for most of the movie. And that guy's your friend. And then only after the movie, when I looked it up and I was like, oh, it's the guy from Nickel Boys. I was like, God, that's a crazy reaction.

[Griffin Newman]

Thank you for solving.

[David Sims]

That's a really good movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

You know, no shit. Like, you know, good movie that I have not felt the need to rewatch or felt the desire to rewatch because it's so emotionally demanding and all that.

[Griffin Newman]

Such a complete experience.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

But just throw it on.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

If you're listening to this and you've never seen Nickel Boys, you should watch Nickel boys, nickel boys 40x.

[Griffin Newman]

If we can get it back in theaters for a little 40x, make it even more of an empathetic experience.

[David Sims]

Funny how interested you are in ruining movies with 40x.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm sorry, you pronounced preserving the art of theatrical movie going. In a very strange way, Hoppers is

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Now on Disney plus. And I was watching it with my. My like a three and a half year old nephew. Nephew who loved it.

[Griffin Newman]

Sitting in a still chair the whole time.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I was having like PTSD flashbacks to like being jostled around.

[Griffin Newman]

We had a great time. We were hop.

[David Sims]

You guys saw Hoppers in.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, with the ear.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Still to this date, my only 4 dx experience. Both Erlich and I were like, I don't. We don't know how you do this.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm going tonight. And I went last night.

[David Sims]

What are you.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm doing.

[David Sims]

What did you see last night?

[Griffin Newman]

I. I took. I took my little cousin to see he man Masters of the Universe last night. And then tonight I'm going to see scary movie in 40th. Yeah, 100. They better. And I'm going to laugh. I'm going to laugh.

[David Sims]

That's pretty funny.

[Griffin Newman]

Thank you.

[Ben Hoskins]

One of the other people in Hugo's crew, Noah Robbins.

[Griffin Newman]

Her name, sorry?

[Ben Hoskins]

Gabby Beans. It's a great name.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, yes, yes. She's a very good actor.

[David Sims]

Yeah, Yeah, I like her. I was just looking her up. Gabby Beans. We've also got because like it is the classic Spielberg. Like, he's so famous, he doesn't have to worry too much about star power thing. Hetty and park, who I really like, who plays this, who plays this character a lot, plays the kind of like

[Griffin Newman]

Colin first, number four, right?

[David Sims]

The like person next to the boss on the phone being like, okay, get it done, get it done. Right? You know, like, but you know, she's really good.

[Griffin Newman]

You're saying that he doesn't need to cast major star.

[David Sims]

But Jeremy, Seamus, Gabby Beans, of course,

[Griffin Newman]

was Honey Don't's personal assistant. Honey Don't Secretary. You don't get more famous and they

[David Sims]

have like bits about coffee or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

They do the coffee bit. Spider. Her secretary, Jeremy Shamos, you know, who's

[David Sims]

a great theater actor. I mean, he's done tv. Great local New York, incredible New York theater actor. He's like, what is. I mean, he's in charge of the local broadcast. You know, he's like Emily Blunt's boss or whatever. He's so good.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And because I like when he like doesn't want to, he's like, why am I going to get off the air right now?

[David Sims]

Right? Like, because he has basically two scenes and scene one is him being like, why are you late? And like this is so stressful, you know, and then scene two is her returning and being like, oh, you're talking

[Marie Barty Salinas]

about the, the like manager. The guy Anchor.

[David Sims]

Oh, well, he's.

[Griffin Newman]

He is. Yeah.

[David Sims]

But no, no. And her returning and being like, this is what we're gonna do. And he's like, I don't really get it, but okay. And you watch him snap in action. He's so good.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, agree, don't you think?

[Ben Hoskins]

Yeah, but he's also reacting to her suggestive power.

[David Sims]

She's working on him.

[Griffin Newman]

She's working on him.

[David Sims]

But that's okay.

[Griffin Newman]

But that's where you realize this movie is going to build to a final set piece of. They just have to get on the news and they have to show everyone everything. And this is the real SNL thing because this becomes a sequence that's a tribute to live switchboard editors.

[David Sims]

Totally. So that's.

[Ben Hoskins]

Oh, I found that so thrilling, so cool.

[David Sims]

And like, look, I'm someone. SNL for sure. I love sports. Like, it's something where sometimes in sports you'll see a behind the scenes. Look at that of like. And here's how that play was, you know, called Live in the. In the broadcast where you see the guy, you know, ready 10. 10. Yeah, yeah. Like the Oscars.

[Griffin Newman]

Perfect Junior speech where he's in real time directing. Right.

[David Sims]

Get a camera over to her right now. You know, I want to see the mom. I want to see the, you know, like, you know, like, and then cruise. Right. But just the whole, like, ready three. Three. You know, like just the way they have some kind of internal metrum. So cool.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm going to invoke it. Oh, it reminded me of Sully, where you will cut to a sequence where the hero of the sequence is a guy you met 30 seconds ago, not the lead character. You know, where it's like, suddenly, who's pulling this off? People were just meeting for the first time. Our characters have taken us to this point, but this is new.

[David Sims]

But you know who else pulled it off?

[Griffin Newman]

So Sully.

[David Sims]

Sully. 100 Chesley Sully.

[Griffin Newman]

167 songs.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I thought when they cut to the, like, NBC headquarters in New York. I thought we were going to get like a cameo from.

[Griffin Newman]

From Lauren or Domingo.

[David Sims]

Can I do my impression of Lord at the Tony?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Okay. Marie, phone out, phone out. Marie, get a picture.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Okay, wait, Sorry.

[Griffin Newman]

He was sitting low. Low and slow, barbecue style.

[David Sims]

When she Schm. Say, you know they announced schmigadoon.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And for some reason he accepted. I mean, I know he's a producer, but I, like, I don't think he's the lead. No, but it just cuts to him. Radio City just like. And it's just like, Lauren, like, really, like, I love Lauren. Like, I was fine with Lauren. Lauren's cool.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It was a very anticlimactic final award.

[David Sims]

That was just one of those Tonys. I love the Tonys. But every year there's this strain to the Tonys. Even more of the Oscars of, like, we're really trying to sell mainstream America on the things we have on offer right now. Right on. Like, what Broadway's got for you. And some years it rocks. Like, they're like, look at all this cool shit. And you're like, yeah, this rocks. And some years it's like, schmigadoon's the best musical. And unfortunately, we must also contractually, because it was nominated. Present, present. Like a number from Titanic or whatever.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You're Titanic. Hate so bad.

[Griffin Newman]

Dude, have you seen it?

[David Sims]

It's the most epic bacon. Millennial. Like, loser. Throw it in the ocean.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Titanic, like, four years ago. Old UCB thing.

[David Sims]

That's where it belongs. That's where it must stay. Not on Broadway.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

What do you say?

[Griffin Newman]

But what is Frankie Grande supposed to do if we don't give him the space?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You don't like the fact that the character is named Victor Garber? That's so funny to me.

[Griffin Newman]

That sounds like a funny.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So funny.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm laughing. Listen to me laugh.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

You guys suck.

[Griffin Newman]

No. Sound kind of funny. I haven't seen it. Romley texted me that she was watching it the other day and said it was terrible.

[David Sims]

It's one of those things that, you know, it broke containment. Like it belonged, you know, on. Off, off, off. You know, like Broadway. Did you know that? Yeah. Lorne Michaels has two Tonys. He also produced Leopold Stat. So he's got two Tonys.

[Griffin Newman]

Wild.

[Ben Hoskins]

So we see a montage.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. It's really long.

[Ben Hoskins]

The whole history of. Of aliens.

[Griffin Newman]

Different stuff that is quality. Different formats.

[Ben Hoskins]

Large and other stuff I'm not familiar with. I feel like if you're a real head, you're probably really recognizing a lot of this stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

Joe Rogan would have a lot to say about it.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah. I was telling you.

[Ben Hoskins]

I would prefer to shout out Tom DeLonge.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, sure. Yes.

[Ben Hoskins]

Tom would have a lot to say about.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And I. I did say this before we started recording, but I watched a documentary by James Fox last night to prepare for this.

[David Sims]

And it was called.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I. I don't remember the name of it. I'm gonna have to look it up again.

[Griffin Newman]

And what did the Fox.

[David Sims]

And it was not Griffin got a different joke out before I was gonna say. And it was not the star of Rey and Collateral Jamie.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Go see the kingdom.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So what I watched, James Fox was called Phenomenon, but it was not. It was narrated by Peter Coyote.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And I was like, there really is something crazy about the guy who Nominate who, Excuse me, Narrates. Ken Burns. Like historical docs narrating a thing about like, you know, New Mexico. New Mexico, like alien encounters or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

It's more crazy that it's key man from E.T. being like, this is real now. Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Griff said this to Marie and she.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I went, yeah. But he's mostly a Ken Burns guy.

[Griffin Newman]

I was applauded for. Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Is he also Bitter Moon?

[Griffin Newman]

I think so.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He's the other guy in Bitter Moon.

[Griffin Newman]

Checking long sequence. It just. What I like is that I like that it goes into real time, basically, that the movie slows. They're not even showing you this, really, from the perspective of our characters. You're seeing people see it, but you're also just seeing it. And you're seeing ships, you're seeing cell phone videos, you're seeing Super 8 footage. You're seeing like bad DV camera footage. You're seeing everything. You're seeing the aliens. You're seeing the torture. And then they start to wheel in

[Marie Barty Salinas]

to the television, old alien in a wheelchair.

[Griffin Newman]

And I did kind of grab Rhys, the king of Tick Tock, and go like, is he gonna do it?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

This is. So when I said the ending didn't really work for me, I just had trouble buying all of it.

[Griffin Newman]

That people are affected by it.

[David Sims]

What that would work? That it would go.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

That it would work. There's like a moment where like someone at NBC News is like, I put the footage through our AI filter and they confirmed it's 99, not AI or whatever. And I'm like, okay, like that.

[Griffin Newman]

You think people wouldn't believe it?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Somewhat. I needed a little more skepticism.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, but the whole movie is built to this idea.

[David Sims]

We have to, you know, we have to like, just think about like the ensuing minutes and hours.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

You know what I mean? Like, it's not like that all flashes and they're like. Anyway, that was your one look at it. You know, it's like this is just the start of all of this is now just out.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think it. I think I have this problem generally with alien or monster movies that anytime I see it, the.

[Griffin Newman]

The thing, the creature. Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Then it is like it feels fake. It gets deflated.

[David Sims]

For me, the. What is it? Night of the Demon, the classic old movie where they show the demon. And you're like, ah, fuck. You didn't have enough money for the demon. Like, there's some great movie where it's like, the atmosphere is so good. This movie's incredible. And they're like, and now behold the demon. And I'm just like, oh, it looks okay.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Something, like, under the skin really works for me because, like. Like, it's. We spend most of the time aliens, like a human but acting weird. And I'm like, yeah, man, who fell to Earth? Like, those sorts of things work better.

[David Sims]

I mean, I'm looking at it now. It looks pretty good. I don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, that looks awesome. I don't know.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Pretty good demon. Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

I think that Steve knocked it out of the park with this alien design.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it looks great, the design. And I like the ships. I like the weird kind of X ships. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

The ships are really cool. Cool.

[Ben Hoskins]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

You get glimpses of it.

[Griffin Newman]

I love this. But we walked out and, like, half of our friends were like, he really went full Spielberg at the end, huh? And I'm like, he went full Spielberg at the end.

[David Sims]

It's truly like, yeah. My review is Spielberg, face the movie. Because the end of the movie is everyone watching. And it's just every single face. Mouth a jar kind of. Right. You know, just. Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

There is a line that I really liked from the movie. Elizabeth Marvel says when she's talking to Eve Hewson about. About how she lost her calling or whatever, and she tells her, like, you didn't lose faith in God. You lost faith in humanity. And that is what caused you to turn away from your faith and believing in something. I think I unfortunately, am just so cynical right now about.

[David Sims]

Gotta get less cynical, my friend, that

[Griffin Newman]

I. I don't disagree with that. But this movie successfully made me buy in the world the reality of the film, that it would work. I don't believe it would work. No, in life. And I don't feel good about anything. But I did buy it within the context of the movie.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think once we got to, like, once I actually saw, like, NBC News, and then I was like, okay, now it, like, that's when it started to feel a little more.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, their programming is totally lost, so they wouldn't know what to do.

[Ben Hoskins]

So what do you think happens? People are just like, whatever, we don't know. And then they just go back into film Twitter and just start posting.

[David Sims]

Like, well, I mean, film Twitter's pretty good. Let them post.

[Griffin Newman]

Let them post through it.

[David Sims]

You know, like, what if there's a gif. Okay.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

What if I am having. I don't know if I believe that a broadcast in Kansas City would get picked up right away.

[David Sims]

You got, you got to roll with this.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I know.

[David Sims]

You just gotta roll with this a little bit. Move fast.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, they really would. Especially in an Internet age where people can communicate with each other this much. It's. It. It just.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I can see it showing up on the Internet before it gets.

[Griffin Newman]

But I. I think about. I mean, you invoked it. But I think about, like the night that they.

[David Sims]

I think about which is. Is one of the last times that I was like, I think I have to turn the news on.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. I'm hearing.

[David Sims]

And that will happen between the. When something crazy happens, which we won't

[Marie Barty Salinas]

say because we don't want anyone coming after us to investigate us. When it happens.

[David Sims]

When it happens.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, when it happens.

[David Sims]

Okay, well, the box office game, I really. Closure day.

[Griffin Newman]

I would guess right now that it's going to open to 40, which feels like in the middle of where the projections are, but I really have no idea and I don't know how it's going to play. I've had friends for the last couple weeks because we got to see this early. And thank you to the kind folks at Universal for helping us with podcast scheduling. But people have asked me what I think about it, and then it's followed by, do you think it's going to work?

[David Sims]

Work?

[Griffin Newman]

Is it going to work as an Oscar movie? Is it going to work as a box office movie? And I went, I don't know. It's really classical, it's really old fashioned. It's classic Steve. But it doesn't feel in conversation with this moment in a way that maybe is what people want. Because this feels like a moment of everyone rejecting the traditional blockbuster model the last 20 years. Now they're mostly rejecting it for 20 somethings with one wish. Willows and back rooms. And this is literally the elder statesman.

[David Sims]

I was so excited when Spielberg was unrewatchables. He's like, I'm about to go see back rooms excited.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And then he gave like a red carpet interview where he like shouted Kane Parsons and Curry Barker out and was like, they're young guys and I was young. And I think it's so great. And I'm like, you know what? Good for you, Steve.

[Griffin Newman]

One of the greatest moments in the history of podcasting is on the 2001 Rewatchables where Bill Simmons is like, Joyce, she's pretty good. Check it out. No, the moment for Me, that's the best where he goes but, but 70 millimeters back now. Do you know about this? As if Steven Spielberg isn't.

[David Sims]

I think Phil's, I think Bill's happened

[Griffin Newman]

a little fun when he says, I don't know. I think it's a great moment either way.

[David Sims]

The part of the magic of Bill Simmons in my opinion though is you're always kind of like, does he know he's doing a better job? Half the time he does.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I, I, I compared, I said this movie felt like a Shamalan movie to me, which I am a Shamalan fan.

[Griffin Newman]

It does feel sh.

[David Sims]

Very Shyamalan.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Very Shyamalan.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

And, but I also think that it's going to run into the Shyamalan thing of it being so open hearted and earnest. It's brilliant to rub people the wrong way.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I think it's going to be divisive. Divisive.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. I really, I really don't know.

[David Sims]

It's gonna, No, I think so. It's gonna be quite polarizing. And then as with almost all the movies he makes few years later, people are gonna be like. People are kind of cooked on that one, huh? I'm re watching it. It's like it's got a few sequences that are really hit. It's just what's happened with all of these movies of his even Ready Player one, the most hated of them.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I like

[Griffin Newman]

telling me I'm wrong about it.

[David Sims]

Fierce defenders, like and yeah, it's just, you know, it's just every man's doing

[Marie Barty Salinas]

post last night and I remember being like, ah, sure on it when it came out. The ending is still, I think somewhat disastrous.

[Griffin Newman]

I agree with that.

[David Sims]

I don't really even

[Marie Barty Salinas]

know. It's like they're setting up the like Nixon extended universe and they start with like the water gate cliffhanger that he

[Griffin Newman]

never made good on with the sequel. You have no idea what's going to happen.

[David Sims]

Well, what do you mean what happened? He went to see an alien with Jackie Gleason. He's picking up the thread here. Here.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah, there are just some really good shots in it. And I'm like, oh man, this is

[David Sims]

like, you know who's in that movie?

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Tracy.

[Griffin Newman]

Let's, let's see. Yep.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Carrie Coon.

[Griffin Newman]

I have felt even in the Spielberg movies I have loved in the last 20 years that he's had a bit of a running ending problem that he doesn't know how to leave well enough alone.

[David Sims]

That's true.

[Ben Hoskins]

Right.

[David Sims]

This is a full stop ending for Him.

[Griffin Newman]

It's great.

[David Sims]

That's rare because usually he likes to nap a lot.

[Griffin Newman]

Like the disclosure is big, but then it just ends at the exact moment. And I was just like, he hasn't done that. That the kind of the one time he's fully nailed the ending for me since Jurassic Park.

[David Sims]

One more thing with him where like, I do truly love that he was like, I made ready player one because I loved to end them. Like, I. Because of the ending where he's like, by the way, it's closed a few days a week. Outside, please. He's like, that's why I made that.

[Griffin Newman]

He also was like, my kids hated me for that one.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Hell yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Tell them be.

[Griffin Newman]

So we think League Obsession is going to be number two at the box office again.

[David Sims]

Oh, right. Yeah. I think possibly. I think Scary Movie and Masters of the Universe will likely drop quite a bit. And so I would put Obsession at two. I'd put those at like three and four. You were maybe Back Rooms is kicking around at five. I don't think there's any other big release this week.

[Griffin Newman]

You were asking, do you think Scary Movie is going to have a big drop? That franchise maybe traditionally has the biggest second weekend drops of any franchise ever.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

My all time favorite is that scary movie 4 made a quarter of its domestic total on its opening day. It made like 20 on Friday and then it went to like 10 to 5, I will say. And ended up at 60.

[David Sims]

Some other movies coming out this week. Stop that Train, which was not made with AI I. Well, not no AI.

[Griffin Newman]

Nope.

[David Sims]

It wasn't made by hand. Saying this. People will believe me. And a movie that Allison Wilmore told me rocks. The Furious Hong Kong

[Marie Barty Salinas]

go to David Erlich. Oh, cool.

[Griffin Newman]

Gotta see that.

[David Sims]

Mandalorian and Grogu. Oh, oh. I'm actually predicting that to Quintuplet's person. Jump back up.

[Griffin Newman]

Everyone's realizing it's good now.

[David Sims]

That is the next present my daughter is going to get for continuing to stay in bed.

[Griffin Newman]

Galactic Snack and Grogu.

[David Sims]

Correct. Which. Which she's very excited to receive, of course. What do you think? The first of the bag of toys I brought back from that are swag from people who give us nice mostly Reese the King.

[Griffin Newman]

The wonderful Reese King gave you a lot of Nintendo swag. And I gave you Galactic Snack and Grou.

[David Sims]

Exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

What was the first? Bowser Jr. Bingo. He's an all star.

[David Sims]

She's just like Bowser.

[Griffin Newman]

He's got the pink.

[David Sims]

The best guy in the world.

[Griffin Newman]

What was your joke? You made a joke about someone else's son having a magical paintbrush.

[David Sims]

Can't remember.

[Griffin Newman]

I just like this as a joke structure that anyone's son has a magic paintbrush.

[David Sims]

It was the name Junior that activated me, but I can't remember remember, you know? Yeah. So Mando and Grogu does exist. Oh, Wayne Gro Jr. Was my joke.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, right.

[David Sims]

The Heat too will have Wayne Gro Jr. And he has a paintbrush.

[Griffin Newman]

We were saying. We were saying that Tim Simons should read for Wayne Grow Jr right.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Wait, that's so good.

[Griffin Newman]

And my sim said Wayne Grove Jr. And his magic paintbrush got a magic paint.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

But I don't. I haven't read he too. So I'm very confused about out the time.

[David Sims]

Don't worry. When you read Heat too. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It won't make anything more clear.

[David Sims]

It rocks to be clear.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But you don't read Heat too. And go. I definitely see how this is a movie. You're like, whoa, okay.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

All right. You know what, Mikey, man, I trust you.

[David Sims]

But yeah, that. I mean, I. There's nothing else big this week, so. Yeah, I do think it'll be mostly these holdovers.

[Griffin Newman]

I do. I just. I got the hard number. So I just want to share this Toy Story 5, which I do think is going to roll this summer. I do think Odyssey being R rated kind of solidifies. Unless Spider man is way better than we're guessing. It does feel like Toy Story 5 kind of has the Runway now.

[David Sims]

I, I mean, I know what you mean. But the Odyssey pre sale stuff is completely unprecedented and insane. Like, it's just kind of insane.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Also, Oppenheimer is more ostensibly more boring and also rated R. Yes.

[David Sims]

And three hours like the could be

[Griffin Newman]

Barbie and make Barbie members.

[David Sims]

It might. The family movie thing, it's just like people, you know, are like, yeah, it'll have legs for. For, you know, for years because of, you know, family movie stuff. And it's like, that can be true. But then oddly, sometimes it's not. Like Disclosure Day is also hoping for its second weekend is a Father's Day weekend. Oh, it's hoping for a nice hold,

[Griffin Newman]

I think because of that dad movie.

[David Sims]

Because. Right. It's going for dad. But obviously it will be up against Toy Story 5. I don't think Leviticus or the death of Robin Hood are really too threatening there. Then the next week you got Supergirl. And I think now with these superhero movies, it seems like it's just kind of like they. They open okay.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

It's Supergirl's not going to get the blank check bump. So I think that's really going to hurt it. And I.

[David Sims]

And also, there's another thing standing in Toy Story 5's way.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

My most anticipated movie. The summer Minions versus monsters.

[David Sims]

Minions and Monsters.

[Griffin Newman]

It's got some time before Minions swings around.

[David Sims]

It's got two weeks.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

But beyond that, every time I see a Minions and Monsters trailer, I'm like, am I into the Minions?

[Griffin Newman]

It looks this strange. I just want to read because I got the. The actual numbers here. Scary Movie 4 open to 44 million and ended up at 90. It was a straight double. And the first four days it opened on Easter weekend, it went from 19 to 13 to 7 to 33 on four consecutive. These movies perform. Yes, but in 40x smoke.

[David Sims]

So you saw. Okay, so you saw scary movie 4 and 4. I thought you already saw it, though.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

No, he's.

[Griffin Newman]

I this.

[David Sims]

You're going back in time in 40x.

[Griffin Newman]

Look, it's the promises made to friends.

[David Sims]

You saw it for the first time with Mitchie.

[Griffin Newman]

I saw it with Mitch and Zach. Cherry, right? Annabella Cherry. Yeah, it was great. And Micus.

[David Sims]

And Micus.

[Griffin Newman]

The great Micus. Yeah.

[David Sims]

And what's the, what's the other thing you saw in 40x yesterday?

[Griffin Newman]

I saw Heman, which I've also seen twice. Both movies I kind of like.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Two movies. You didn't write really recommend movies. No, look, I'm pro movies.

[Griffin Newman]

There's stuff in he man I like. It's just, it's. They fixed half of the script and if they had another year, I probably would fully like it as a movie.

[David Sims]

I'm going to watch it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But I will say the initial reaction had me push it down the sort

[Griffin Newman]

of priority list, especially with it not being based on things you care about at all.

[David Sims]

I don't care about these things. I. It's true. He man is not one of my. One of my fellas.

[Griffin Newman]

I do. I just. I, I.

[David Sims]

No, no. You never know.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm really, I'm smarting from what they did to my boy Oro.

[David Sims]

They.

[Griffin Newman]

They did not.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

He not in it at all.

[Griffin Newman]

Or is it a credit thing that I think is worse than. Than if he hadn't been in it, period.

[Ben Hoskins]

Now, if there was a Thundercats, then I'd be in.

[Griffin Newman]

I believe I watched something Guard is supposed to do.

[David Sims]

Thundercats. The one for me is if Matt Johnson really is making a magic the Gathering movie serious about. Is the like sleeper code activated? Do you know what I did the other day?

[Griffin Newman]

And then this has to Be the end of the day.

[David Sims]

You can go. Yeah, so I went to a baseball card store because I'm obsessed with baseball cards again. So I went to a card store. Yeah, but I'm looking for baseball.

[Griffin Newman]

David now just spends so much time buying toys and trading cards. I want to call out the context than me. For your wife, for your daughter.

[David Sims]

For my wife. For your wife. Well, mostly I'm getting free toys for my daughter. But yeah, sure, I buy lot.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm just. I'm not saying you're collecting for yourself. I'm just saying suddenly with the car, baseball cards.

[David Sims]

Love the baseball. I'm in the store, I'm like, hey, do you have this? And they're like, I know it doesn't drop. You know, series two of the 20, 26 tops. You know, like doesn't drop till next week. And physically okay, like, oh, that's fine. I'm walking around and I see Magic the Gathering, which has gone all in much like Lego back in the day on like they just do like, like you know, Lord of the Rings cards now. Right. Like they just, they just let license them out. And I loved that game when I was a kid they had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magic the Gathering cards. So I bought a box of them.

[Ben Hoskins]

Cuz we did a role playing game years ago and that was kind of a fun format.

[David Sims]

Magic is a little. Cuz it's like a strategy game though it's a little less fun like to. To maybe record.

[Griffin Newman]

Got it.

[David Sims]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Ben Hoskins]

I've never played.

[David Sims]

Cool. All right, well, we get it, you're cool. No, it's fine.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben, can you do me a favor as we wrap this episode up? Yeah. Can you turn the printer on so I can print the sides for the audition? I'm gonna run to go do. Yes, thank you.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

We have a printer here?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, we do. It's right there.

[David Sims]

Oh, I mean, thank God we have some things that are useful in this office.

[Griffin Newman]

Hey, what an office full of useful things. So next week we start Andrew Stanton.

[David Sims]

Yeah, that's right.

[Griffin Newman]

The toy story called Finding Nemo will be coming out.

[David Sims]

Hopefully we cut out the part where I basically threatened to murder you about 3 hours 15 minutes.

[Griffin Newman]

I also we cut that out in

[Marie Barty Salinas]

the Finding Nemo episode.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, just cuz if we don't, it'll be really more fuel for the fire

[David Sims]

of like, oh, David wants to murder Griffin Newman.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, it's also just like I'm not going to agree to license it out to the Netflix doc in five Years.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Right.

[David Sims]

Wait, no.

[Griffin Newman]

My family, my estate.

[David Sims]

Excuse me.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Murder. So you're going to murder him?

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

That's what he claims in the Nemo episode.

[David Sims]

I don't see.

[Griffin Newman]

And look, we'll cut all of it out, but he gets like, detailed.

[David Sims]

That sounds like a Doughboys episode where Mike starts talk. M starts like you're like, wait, Mitch, have you planned something?

[Griffin Newman]

That's when they talk about having.

[David Sims]

That's true.

[Griffin Newman]

Don't Voice is the best podcast in the world.

[David Sims]

Stanton. Starting with Finding Nemo, a little known film, a small one by him.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. One of the most successful movies with

[David Sims]

the great Rebecca Alter from Vulture.

[Griffin Newman]

We got Becca.

[David Sims]

And then, yes, we will discuss, you know, some very successful films. And also in the blink of an eye.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

I mean successful. I mean financially successful.

[Griffin Newman]

And John Carter. What the. The definitive, definitive Hollywood bounce of the last 25 years.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

I'm really excited to reread that New Yorker article.

[Griffin Newman]

One of the best.

[David Sims]

And, you know, somewhere in the middle there, we will, of course, discuss Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey, as previously mentioned.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. And that series will end with Toy Story 5, which will obviously be late, but it means to see it two times.

[David Sims]

Yeah. You'll have percolated on it because we're recording it next week because. Yeah, he's off.

[Griffin Newman]

I have tickets. I'm going, what's work? I'm. I'm seeing it a third time after we record the episode. That is the actual fact.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So you. Have you already seen it?

[Griffin Newman]

No, we're all seeing it together.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And then I'm seeing it the night before we record.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

Oh, okay.

[Griffin Newman]

And then I'm seeing it again the night after we record. So I get three in before I go to insert Forward country here. Wow. The printer's running, which means everything's working and I'm going to run out of here. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Tune in next week for Pop odc, a miniseries on the films of Andrew Stan. That has to be said that way or else it doesn't make any sense.

[Ben Hoskins]

You can also check out our patreon [e-mail] blank check.

[Griffin Newman]

That's so true. It's so true.

[David Sims]

And we are currently covering. I want to say we just recently

[Ben Hoskins]

released the Billy Eilish Hit Me Hard and Soft. I don't remember the exact title.

[Griffin Newman]

The concert tour 3D/ our trip to Wisconsin. Yeah.

[Ben Hoskins]

As well as paired with a live discussion at the Wisconsin Film Festival we

[Griffin Newman]

did about Babe Tube in the city. I mean, no, offense when I tell you that's what the episode is.

[David Sims]

I appreciate that.

[Griffin Newman]

Of course. And then yes, we're we're running through RoboCop Robert Cop.

[David Sims]

Yes, that's right. Robert Cop movie with one really good one and then some bump.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it's one of the one of the types of commentary series we do two.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Failure to ever make one good follow

[David Sims]

up and frustration mounting.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, yes. But I think they're all fun episodes. I certainly go Griff mode on several areas.

[Marie Barty Salinas]

So does that mean that David threatens to murder you again?

[Griffin Newman]

No. I feel like we actually had good

[David Sims]

times on those generally. I think our our frustrations are with the Robert Cop franchise.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, we start to get a little

[Ben Hoskins]

Grumpy on the 2014 one is so bad. So bad that I just remember being really mad.

[Griffin Newman]

You got worked up. You got Ben got really worked up. Anyway, tune in for that. And as always,

[Ben Hoskins]

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hoskins. Lastly, our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our Associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithee. Research by JJ Burch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell, artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at blankcheckpod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.