Loser with Chandler Levack

Summary

Blank Check with Griffin & David - Episode: "Loser with Chandler Levick" Released on June 15, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Blank Check with Griffin & David, hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims delve deep into the convoluted world of Amy Heckerling's lesser-known film, "Loser", with special guest Chandler Levick, director of "I Like Movies". Produced by Ben Hosley, the discussion navigates the film's troubled production, its reception, and its place within Heckerling's filmography.

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Deep Dive into "Loser"

Plot Overview

"Loser" stars Jason Biggs as a hardworking college student who, despite his decency and dedication, is labeled a "loser" by his peers. Mina Suvari co-stars as a cocktail waitress entangled in his life, while Greg Kinnear plays a morally ambiguous professor whose actions drive much of the film's tension. The movie attempts to blend dark comedy with social commentary but struggles to find its footing.

Character Analysis

• Jason Biggs' Portrayal: Biggs embodies the archetypal "nice guy," always aiming to do the right thing. However, his character lacks depth, often appearing too flawless to be relatable. Griffin remarks, "He's pretty good," yet acknowledges the character's shortcomings in eliciting genuine audience connection.

• Mina Suvari's Role: Suvari's character is depicted as level-headed and strong, contrasting with the shallow personalities around her. David notes, "She's much odder in 'Loser' than in her other roles," highlighting a disconnect between character depth and performance.

• Greg Kinnear as the Professor: Intended to be a charismatic yet flawed mentor, Kinnear's performance falls flat. Griffin comments, "He looks like he's getting these roles a lot by this point," suggesting typecasting issues.

Comparison to "The Apartment"

The hosts draw parallels between "Loser" and Billy Wilder's classic, "The Apartment." Both films explore themes of ambition and moral compromise within institutional settings. However, while "The Apartment" is lauded for its nuanced storytelling, "Loser" is criticized for its disjointed narrative and underdeveloped characters. David muses, "It's meant to be rated R and it's PG-13 instead. That's the only problem anyone could have with this movie," indicating a tonal mismatch that hampers the film's effectiveness.

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Amy Heckerling's Career Trajectory

From "Clueless" to "Loser"

Amy Heckerling, renowned for her breakout hit "Clueless", found herself navigating the treacherous waters of Hollywood's "blank check" system—where early success grants auteurs significant creative freedom. However, following "Clueless," Heckerling struggled to replicate its success. "Loser" became a symbol of her creative struggles, receiving negative reviews and underperforming at the box office.

Production Challenges

"Loser" faced numerous production issues, including drastic script changes imposed by the studio demanding a PG-13 rating. Heckerling contends that these alterations diluted the film's original intent, making it less impactful. David highlights, "Heckerling has said since that it was written, designed, shot, greenlit as an R-rated movie," pointing to studio interference as a major factor in the film's downfall.

Post-"Loser" Projects

Following "Loser," Heckerling attempted projects like "I Could Never Be Your Woman" and "Vamps", both of which received mixed to negative responses. The hosts discuss how these films reflect a decline in her ability to craft cohesive narratives, often veering into personal vendettas rather than universally relatable stories.

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Impact and Legacy of "Loser"

Box Office Performance

Upon its June 21, 2000 release, "Loser" opened at number eight, grossing approximately $15 million domestically—a disappointing figure compared to expectations set by Heckerling's previous success with "Clueless."

Critical Reception

Critics lambasted "Loser" for its inconsistent tone and lackluster performances. The film is now primarily remembered for launching the hit song "Teenage Dirtbag", which ironically gained more popularity than the movie itself.

Cultural Influence

Despite its failures, "Loser" has garnered a cult following over the years. Discussions around its themes of societal labeling and the struggle to maintain personal integrity resonate with certain audiences, albeit in a niche capacity.

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Guest Insights: Chandler Levick

Perspective on "I Like Movies"

Chandler Levick brings his expertise as the director of "I Like Movies", offering a comparative lens through which to view "Loser." He appreciates the film's attempt to critique superficiality but criticizes its execution and character development.

Views on Heckerling's Direction

Levick commends Heckerling's earlier work but expresses confusion over her creative choices in "Loser." "She should have been making 'Winner'," he asserts, suggesting that the film's themes were misaligned with the characters' motivations and personalities.

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a consensus that "Loser" serves as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of Hollywood's blank check system. While Amy Heckerling's intentions to craft a meaningful narrative were evident, external pressures and creative missteps led to a film that failed to connect with audiences and critics alike. Griffin, David, and Chandler reflect on the broader implications for female directors in the industry, emphasizing the delicate balance between artistic vision and commercial viability.

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Notable Quotes

• David Sims ([04:24]): "There was something off here. Heckerling has said it was meant to be an R-rated movie, but the PG-13 cut ruined the tone."

• Griffin Newman ([02:01]): "This was not like Weedus had been around. This was their debut."

• Chandler Levick ([15:09]): "I love Amy Heckerling deeply. She deserves better after 'Loser'."

• David Sims ([33:09]): "We are responding to your demand. Ben, can you drop some of the details here?"

• Griffin Newman ([35:11]): "Ryan doesn't really have a personality in 'Loser.' His character is basically just a nice person who's like, 'Yeah, I don't know.'"

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This summary was crafted based on the full transcript of the episode, focusing on the substantive discussions about the film "Loser" and its place within Amy Heckerling's career, while omitting advertisements and unrelated banter for clarity and coherence.

Transcript

[Griffin Newman]

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

[David Sims]

Don't know what to say or to expect.

[Griffin Newman]

All you need to know is that the name of the Shadow is Blackjack.

[David Sims]

I got two tickets to Griffin and David. Baby, come with me Friday. Don't say maybe.

[Griffin Newman]

Keep going.

[David Sims]

I'm just. I'm just a teenage podcast baby, like you. I got in over my head.

[Griffin Newman]

Can you name the.

[David Sims]

What?

[Griffin Newman]

The lead singer of Wheatus to me?

[David Sims]

No. Do you think there's anything I could have done to get people to turn off this episode faster? I was sort of stuck halfway. Brendan Brown doing his voice, and I feel like that's the one where they have, like, the female vocalist come in for that one part.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Chandler Levick]

Come with me Friday.

[David Sims]

It.

[Griffin Newman]

You're definitely.

[David Sims]

I'm off on both.

[Griffin Newman]

I was about to say, like. And I'm not here to, like, defend Weeda's honor, but I do think you're doing the. It's not that bad.

[David Sims]

No, I'm making it terrible. Hey, look, I enjoy that song quite a bit.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, I. I had put it to bed.

[David Sims]

You had.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, it was. It was in the ground, so.

[David Sims]

You're very good at putting things to bed. You got to put three kids to bed at night.

[Griffin Newman]

I just did it.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And I hear it right over the. The credits of this film.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And of course, I'm like. Then I'm immediately saying to Forky, I'm watching this movie with my wife.

[David Sims]

Your wife? Forking my poor wife. Utensil wife.

[Griffin Newman]

We wanted to finish andor. But no, no, no. Loser has to take precedence. And I'm like, right, you remember this song? This was. This song is from this movie. No one remembers that. It's from this movie. This song was, like, 10 times more popular than this movie. But the video does have clips from.

[David Sims]

This movie in it. Not only that, it has new footage. It has both. It has clips from the Amy Heckerling film Loser, and it has Jason Biggs and Mina Savari acting out the plot of the song Teenage Dirtbag, which is quite different from the plot of Loser. It has a double dose of Biggs and Suvari and.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, right.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And. And then I was just sort of like, so what's the deal with Weedus? Because were they new? This was like. It's not like Weedus had been around. This was their debut.

[David Sims]

Wow. Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Is it the movie that broke the band?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

Or is it the band that broke the movie?

[David Sims]

Well, the movie didn't break, so the movie broke nothing.

[Griffin Newman]

So that's my question. It's like, how did this actually sort of surpass the movie?

[David Sims]

Well, just let me say this, okay? The reason I mangled that song is because to your point, I'm looking at this movie, I'm looking at the Quotes page on IMDb. I'm like, huh? All of these quotes are very hostile. These are not fun things to recite, I think.

[Chandler Levick]

Is it because they're all about Rohypno?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, this is kind of like a rancid movie. Like not in even like a quality way.

[David Sims]

Ben and I just a Tony watched this together and like 30 minutes in, I turned to him and I went, is she trying to do salons?

[Griffin Newman]

Kind of.

[David Sims]

Kind of.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, that's interesting, right?

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, like, supposedly she's trying to do the Apartment, right?

[Chandler Levick]

Which I totally see.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, which, like the sort of basic.

[David Sims]

Hook is By Way of Happiness, but.

[Griffin Newman]

It'S with this 90s. I mean, my whole thing is like, at a certain point it kind of.

[Chandler Levick]

Has a bad Woody Allen movie quality.

[David Sims]

It's got a lot of different bad qualities.

[Griffin Newman]

Sorry, sorry.

[Chandler Levick]

As bad as anything else. The Woody Allen movie that Jason Biggs is in, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, very. I have not seen that movie. I mean, we'll talk about Biggs, but no, no, just as around half hour. And I think for me too, me and my wife are yelling at each other. And not in a way where we're angry at each other. We are both so thrown by the tone of this movie and the plot of this.

[David Sims]

But she's also Googling divorce on grounds of making me watch. Loser.

[Chandler Levick]

My husband is a loser.

[Griffin Newman]

We're just like, I don't understand. I don't. We're just both like kind of like having a bit of a panicky, like, why is it like this? And then we see that quote that's on the wikipedia page from 20 years later where heckling's like, well, they wanted. I want to be an R rated movie.

[David Sims]

Right?

[Griffin Newman]

And that sort of settled us down truly. We were like, okay, okay, maybe that helps.

[David Sims]

There's something off here. Heckerley has said since that it was written, designed, shot, greenlit as an R rated movie. And then at some point the studio panicked and insisted it had to be PG 13. And she said that is the one mistake of that movie. That the.

[Griffin Newman]

That's not the only mistake. But certainly if you're like, oh, this is an R rated movie that they dialed down just enough to get a rating on it, but she said, didn't lose the tone.

[David Sims]

I agree with this. In the abstract, she said audience can tell when a movie is not what it's trying to be. And that there was just like a rejection of something's broken in this. And yet I think even in an R rated cut, I would still probably have all the same larger questions. Notes. I have a lot of questions on story and characterization. Okay. Quotes. I'm like, nothing here. What's the tagline for this movie?

[Griffin Newman]

Okay, we're back.

[David Sims]

Dare to be different Loser. And that's terrible. This movie isn't remembered. The only thing it's remembered for is launching Teenage Dirt Bag. So I might as well quote the song from the soundtrack poorly over anything that's actually.

[Griffin Newman]

It's funny.

[David Sims]

The movie itself.

[Griffin Newman]

That Teenage Dirt bag did like 10 times better than this movie. Teenage Dirt Bag is absolutely just a one hit wonder. And they totally solved after. But we're gonna.

[David Sims]

I mean this. There are things to discuss in the culture around this movie and that is one of them. On this podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm David.

[David Sims]

It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers. You start out your fucking career with Fast Times at Richmond High.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

And are given a series of blank checks. Whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear like Clueless and sometimes they bounce. Like her direct follow up to Clueless. Tough loser.

[Griffin Newman]

Tough.

[David Sims]

Our guest today, we were talking about this last night and was flummoxed when I told her that this is the direct.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. That there's nothing in between except the Clueless TV show.

[Chandler Levick]

I must have had some kind of cultural amnesia.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

We'll.

[Chandler Levick]

I mean, there's the Clueless TV show.

[Griffin Newman]

There's the Clueless TV show.

[David Sims]

But I will say. And we were recording a little bit out of order. Wow. So this is the last heckerling we're recording. But there are obviously two more that will come out after this.

[Griffin Newman]

Very normal movies.

[David Sims]

Two of the most normal movies we've ever covered on this show. And a fact that I got wrong, that JJ is now corrected in the Loser dossier is that she basically stepped back during the first season of Clueless and by the time it jumps over upn, she's basically out.

[Griffin Newman]

So that I believe I said that.

[David Sims]

Makes even less sense. But we're going to talk about it.

[Griffin Newman]

Who's our guest?

[David Sims]

This is a miniseries on the films of Amy Ackerlin. Whatever. It's called Pod Times at Richmond Cast.

[Griffin Newman]

True.

[David Sims]

It's not called Cast Times at Richmond Pod because that would break the cardinal rule of the show, which is that pod has to go before cast.

[Griffin Newman]

Is that a cardinal rule?

[David Sims]

In my mind, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't think it's ever come up before.

[David Sims]

Run it by the cardinal.

[Griffin Newman]

They just had their conclave. Give them a break.

[David Sims]

Okay, so then get them all back together.

[Griffin Newman]

Just pick the Lumonati guy.

[David Sims]

Pizza pope, the deep dish, the beef sandwich.

[Griffin Newman]

It's so funny that everyone's like, hey, a Chicago Pope. And it's like this serene man who lived in Peru for decades. He's like, hello, how are you? And everyone's like, oh, white socks, baby.

[David Sims]

Because it's announced that everyone's like, God, the fact that we didn't get a smiggle sketch about this in 96. Right. That Chris Farley couldn't have played Chicago Pope in a. Like a Paramount picture.

[Ben Hosley]

Like a duh pope.

[David Sims]

Right, Exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

Itself.

[David Sims]

And then you see the real guy and you're like, this is the almost American. I have seen it in decades. He has no over the top characteristics. I'm like, this guy seems balanced as hell.

[Griffin Newman]

Like they did 10 years. Like he would. They exercised the Chicago from him or whatever. Right.

[David Sims]

Today we were talking about Loser.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Not even her curling's last film, but her last studio picture.

[Griffin Newman]

I guess that's right. Yeah. Wow.

[David Sims]

It's the 25th anniversary of Loser. Everyone can't stop talking about it. And today, joining us for the first.

[Griffin Newman]

Time on the show, we have broken the cardinal rule. I'm. I had to check this.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Cast of the Pothicans.

[David Sims]

I was. Might be it because listeners have been like, why the wouldn't he do cast times when ast is right there in the title.

[Griffin Newman]

A fair question.

[David Sims]

And I was like, the rule must be upheld. But now I'm realizing it was all for naught.

[Griffin Newman]

We've only cast. We've only done it once.

[David Sims]

That was an ast. I had to fucking.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. What can I tell you?

[David Sims]

Decade of nightmares.

[Griffin Newman]

Who's our guest, please?

[David Sims]

Our guest today is the great Chandler Levick, director of I Like Movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Say your name louder.

[David Sims]

I didn't get the last name incorrect, did I?

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, you did.

[Griffin Newman]

I knew you were gonna get it wrong.

[Chandler Levick]

It's okay. You brought the biggest loser of them all.

[David Sims]

Not true. Chandler Levac.

[Chandler Levick]

Thank you.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

Hard act like the Kathy.

[Griffin Newman]

Right? Kathy Mars Attacks.

[David Sims]

Yes. Director of I Like Movies. One of my favorite films last couple of years, which I've called, I've shouted out a lot.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, thanks, Griff. Yeah. Thank you for the supporting actress nomination.

[David Sims]

At the Blankies deserved incredible performance. Another name I believe I mispronounced in that episode. Romina Dugo.

[Chandler Levick]

Dugo. You're doing great.

[David Sims]

I'm not. I'm a mess.

[Griffin Newman]

Nothing throws you more than Canadian names, apparently. Yeah, I don't know if Romina's Canadian. There you go.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Dan, I'm checking my notes here, AKA Roydi.

[Griffin Newman]

He is in this movie, I don't know if you noticed.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah, he's a very doting dad. Midwestern father.

[Griffin Newman]

He kind of brings the thunder for a couple scenes. I'm gonna say it. He's pretty good.

[David Sims]

We're gonna talk about it.

[Chandler Levick]

Jamie Simpson, though. That's my guy.

[David Sims]

Chandler.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, there's guys. And I am.

[Chandler Levick]

And Zach Orth, who I love.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

I love Zach Horse. There's a lot.

[David Sims]

Tom Sadowski.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the one where. Brain aneurysm. I was sent to the hospital for 50 weeks, and then I came out of it, and I was like, you're sure that's Thomas, right?

[David Sims]

I was like, this guy. I was certain. Tom Sadowski was born at the age of 37, straight into the second stage rep company again.

[Griffin Newman]

My wife had to witness it when I was, you know. Oh, Jimmy Simpson. And then, because I guess I wasn't paying attention during the credits, and then I see Sadosky and I'm like, who is that? Yeah, like, she's going to know. And I'm like, who? Who is that?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And then when I find out it's him, I was like, he looks like this now. I was like, okay. And I was like, you don't understand. This is so far from what this guy settled on.

[David Sims]

Right. One of the great normal guy, quote, unquote character.

[Griffin Newman]

You know what I love Sadosky. And what? Sadoski blocked me on Twitter, by the way.

[David Sims]

For what?

[Griffin Newman]

I have no idea.

[David Sims]

I think you were going to review Loser, the premise of the podcast. He's like, they'll get to heck early. Within a decade.

[Griffin Newman]

I just remember that he blocked me on Twitter. I love him. And John Wick, he never comes back. Yeah, he just shows up for that one scene, being like, hey, John, how you doing?

[David Sims]

Yeah, are. Chandler. Ben? Are you familiar with who? Tom Sadowski. Do you know who we're talking about?

[Chandler Levick]

I know.

[Griffin Newman]

He's one of the three bad guys.

[David Sims]

He's the sort of gothy painted nail.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, Possibly. Possibly the most evil of the three.

[David Sims]

Yes, he's the most aggressively evil.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, he's the most evil. And then Zakorth, who's the kind of bigger One is kind of. He's evil. And then Jimmy Simpson is sort of stupid.

[David Sims]

And he's become this great character actor who kind of plays like slightly offbeat, normal guy types.

[Chandler Levick]

Wow.

[David Sims]

And is the ultimate. Just kind of looks like a dude. He was on the Newsroom. He does a ton of theater.

[Ben Hosley]

He was, wasn't he, in Always Sunny as a recurring part?

[David Sims]

No, that's Jimmy Simpson, who's one of the McPoyle twins.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, right.

[David Sims]

This is the guy with the darker hair and he's like, really a pretty boy. And he's got the painted nails and the sort of stud bracelet and whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

He's the one who's fully nude. I think in one scene we were.

[Ben Hosley]

Trying to parse what, like. Or his dick was out or something.

[Griffin Newman]

I think, again, this is an R.

[Chandler Levick]

That's what Amy Heckerling wants. She gets to get her fast times retribution.

[Griffin Newman]

My, my, my. Under what I could sort of gauge.

[David Sims]

His shirt is open and his nips are out.

[Griffin Newman]

I think he's wearing essentially like a sort of G string maybe or something. You know what I mean?

[David Sims]

Like, I think he's wearing a sort of G string.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe the thing with Sadowski.

[David Sims]

Syllable for syllable. Perfect.

[Griffin Newman]

It was great.

[David Sims]

He worded it in a way to the song perfectly.

[Griffin Newman]

It looks like this.

[David Sims]

I just couldn't sing it.

[Ben Hosley]

It looks normal.

[Griffin Newman]

He's the guy in who tells the. The pilot on plane that they got Osama in one of those clip that.

[David Sims]

Recalculates all from the newsroom. The point is he is. He is such an evil pretty boy in this. That's very incongruous with who he turned out to be. But also, he is married to Amanda Seyfried. Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

Wow.

[David Sims]

They have two children together and live in upstate New York. She plays her harpsichord.

[Griffin Newman]

Go off. She does, yeah. Plays the harpsichord.

[David Sims]

She plays funky instruments.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah, I saw her. Joni Mitchell. Beautiful.

[Griffin Newman]

She plays the dulcimer.

[David Sims]

There we go.

[Chandler Levick]

That's a nice line here.

[Griffin Newman]

Amanda Seyfried play enchanting Joni Mitchell song on the dulcimer. But like, what? On the Tonight Show. On the fucking Tonight Show. Fallon's just like, this is great. While she's working the dulcimer.

[David Sims]

Chandler, you are a writer. Director.

[Chandler Levick]

Yes.

[David Sims]

You are a Torontonian.

[Griffin Newman]

Sorry, this is a late night episode, so I'm a little jacked up.

[David Sims]

We should say this. So you are. We can't say what it is, but.

[Griffin Newman]

You are working on something.

[David Sims]

Tri state area, prepping a new movie. And because of the. The absolute opposite Schedules of someone who is prepping a motion picture and a podcaster who has three children. The only time we could make this work was 8pm on Memorial Day.

[Chandler Levick]

That's right.

[David Sims]

This is our first evening record since, like, deepest, darkest since Pandemic. I think there was a window where David Forkey was pregnant and there was construction in my building that would run every day.

[Griffin Newman]

Had to do it at night from.

[David Sims]

Like 8 until 3. And then by the time instruction stopped, your wife was off from work. Yeah, Zoom. Work. And you were like, I have to take care of her until she falls asleep. I can't start recording until she's asleep.

[Griffin Newman]

Nine o' clock.

[David Sims]

There were four months of episodes that would start at nine. I mean, we didn't have a lot.

[Griffin Newman]

Else going on in our lives.

[David Sims]

No. I would actually say it was quite a bad period of time.

[Griffin Newman]

What?

[David Sims]

You sure. But it does feel like the energy. This is an energy we haven't tapped into in a while.

[Griffin Newman]

Not drinking anything but lemonade, soda pop.

[David Sims]

Oh, lemonade.

[Griffin Newman]

But I am a little jacked up.

[David Sims]

You are. You are a filmmaker. You're a Torontonian. You're here prepping a movie.

[Griffin Newman]

The best city in the world experience.

[David Sims]

Both filming in Toronto and now getting ready to film in the Tri State area. You told me last night that the Apartment is basically your favorite movie of all time.

[Chandler Levick]

It is, yeah.

[David Sims]

And.

[Chandler Levick]

And I love Amy Heckerling, like, deeply.

[David Sims]

I heard you had, God, this job and you were going to be in town. And I reached out and it just felt like Loser was a good fit.

[Chandler Levick]

And.

[David Sims]

And you were like, isn't that one of the big Toronto pretending to be New York movies? I think I can weigh in on this very soon.

[Griffin Newman]

I can tell you the metro there.

[Chandler Levick]

I can tell you every single location and what it actually is.

[Griffin Newman]

But like, when he. It's so jarring because there is some New York location stuff.

[Chandler Levick]

There is, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And then he'll be on a subway platform or there'll be an insert shot of a subway of a New York. And then they'll cut to the Toronto Metro.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, it's 100% the Toronto. Well, it's Union Station. Masquerad is Grand Central Station.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Right.

[Chandler Levick]

And then I think is one.

[Griffin Newman]

No, but there's one scene that's in Grand Central when she falls asleep that's.

[David Sims]

Grand Central in the sort of information area.

[Chandler Levick]

And I think they're using like a sliver of Union Station as like an NYU classroom or library.

[Griffin Newman]

The library. When there. There's like big chairs.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. With like the Big bus of heads and stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, absolutely.

[David Sims]

Location.

[Chandler Levick]

And then you can see, like, they're in a Timothy's one. And you can see the. A great Canadian bagel sign, which was like a 90s Toronto chain. The movie store they go to is the Review. It's an old movie theater on the Old Spade. Yeah, it's an old movie video store that a lot of my friends worked at.

[David Sims]

Okay, so here's a question.

[Griffin Newman]

David Spade work there. Would you like, pop out and be.

[David Sims]

Like, hey, buddy, aren't you on Just Shoot me Now?

[Griffin Newman]

Like, not going on. I can't do Spade.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

And they walk past Lee's palace, which is a, you know, famous, like, rock venue, of course.

[David Sims]

Shooting on the Danforth, but they say it's Webster Hall. Like, that's the weird thing is they're picking very specific Canadian places, Toronto locations. And then just like doing 5% of effort to be like, no, it's actually this different.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm going to give them credit. I think they do 10% of effort.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

I was. I was. Apart from the subway, which you kind of can't fake. It is if you're using a different subway, it's going to.

[David Sims]

Look, I know you're obviously a big. You have such a bullshit detector for this kind of thing, but when you're watching him on a subway car and you're like, there has never been an MTA car that looks like this.

[Griffin Newman]

I recognize the Toronto, of course.

[David Sims]

But then they bother to put up the New York MTA map behind him. There's always that sort of like, my brain is short circuiting of like, you're.

[Griffin Newman]

Putting I'm in a dream.

[David Sims]

One real detail on the fake thing for sure. That video story you said it's called.

[Chandler Levick]

It's called Review Cinema.

[Griffin Newman]

Is it gone?

[Chandler Levick]

It's sadly gone. Yeah. But a lot of great Canadian filmmakers work there, like Kazakh Redmonsky.

[David Sims]

Oh, cool.

[Chandler Levick]

And my friend Simon Ennis.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Did they do the organized by director thing?

[Chandler Levick]

They did. I think I heard they had to actually reorganize the cinema for Loser to make it more mainstream. Wild. Because it was too art house and they didn't. But he does try to rent the Piano.

[David Sims]

Yes. He's between two blank check movies. The Piano and When Harry Met Sally.

[Griffin Newman]

That's true.

[David Sims]

And when David Spade is recommending Simon Birch to him, which Ben noticed is blurred out.

[Griffin Newman]

They blurred out. Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

And I couldn't get the rights if.

[David Sims]

They blurred it out in post or they blurred out the. The prop.

[Griffin Newman]

I couldn't tell either. But No, I think it's an actual Simon Birch case.

[David Sims]

And then fuzzy.

[Griffin Newman]

But. But no, then I think probably someone's like, hey, we didn't clear that because there's another thing in this movie.

[David Sims]

The Columbia picture. Yeah, sure.

[Griffin Newman]

The. The coda. I can't believe you bought a Blu Ray for this thing. That's.

[David Sims]

This is the hardest I have ever so demand work to track down a physical copy of a movie ever on this show.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh my God.

[David Sims]

It's an Australian only release. It doesn't have special features, it doesn't have subtitles. The menu has one button which is just play. It doesn't even have scene selection. And it was like I had to set up like so many fucking search alert, Google alert, ebay alerts, because these things never fucking go on sale. But I got it.

[Chandler Levick]

Wow.

[Griffin Newman]

He got it. Oh, the. You know, the. Not to cut to the code of this film, but there's a little post ending. You know, infos on like, what happened to everybody. Right. There's two typos.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And I was just like, did nobody or was the vibe just kind of like, whatever, man, just get the fucking movie out.

[David Sims]

Dakota on this has big mission impossible final reckoning energy where you're like, was this typed five minutes before I started watching the movie anyway?

[Griffin Newman]

Loser.

[David Sims]

Loser.

[Griffin Newman]

I didn't. I can't believe I didn't see this film in theaters though. Kind of saying because, like, I loved Amy Heckerling. I loved Clueless, and I went to see anything back in 2000.

[Chandler Levick]

I remember being really excited for it.

[Griffin Newman]

I was excited too. And it got such horrible reviews.

[Chandler Levick]

I think I was hooked into the weedest, like marketing, like, I think we just got you. It really did. It got me through the door.

[David Sims]

Well, asking like, why did the weed a song pop when this movie didn't? Right. I do think it is that thing of like having the double force of energy of like a record label that's trying to launch the Weedus album and Columbia Pictures also putting their muscle behind it to try to use the song to promote the movie. It felt like there were two forces pushing what is admittedly a very catchy song out there.

[Ben Hosley]

It has Dirt bag in the title.

[David Sims]

Totally. I'm just a teenager.

[Ben Hosley]

It was scary to be a hit. You get a good catching melody, you.

[Griffin Newman]

Throw the word dirt bag in there. But it is such a weird song.

[David Sims]

And her boyfriend brings a gun to school. It's.

[Griffin Newman]

It's him. Yeah, it's him relating some story from his past.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

But then. Right. And then they just Go. But everyone's like, yeah. That's the part we like.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

But if you've seen that in a karaoke bar today, everyone will pop off. It's like lighting in bottles.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Are they. I always bring this up. Like, Semisonic is the example I always think of. Are they a band that has to open and close with Teenage Turpin? Yeah. It's my favorite thing to think about.

[Chandler Levick]

Absolutely.

[Griffin Newman]

People, they come out and people are.

[David Sims]

Like, fucking do it right now.

[Griffin Newman]

They're like, okay, okay, okay. And then at the end, they're like, you better do it again. I'm not walking out of here without it again.

[David Sims]

It feels like the song.

[Chandler Levick]

I saw Hanson recently.

[Griffin Newman]

Did they do improv twice?

[Chandler Levick]

They did do I Am Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And Hanson has at least a few.

[Chandler Levick]

Song between seven Bill Withers covers. Like, I was like, see Hanson do Bill Withers songs.

[Griffin Newman]

Hanson rocks.

[David Sims]

Good for you. Redone their whole vibe. Right. But they also know they can't do a show without playing.

[Chandler Levick]

They're actually very depressing. And one of the. The brother, he drummed and ate a sandwich at the.

[David Sims]

That. That does rule. What? I misremembering. No, there isn't a Hanson song in this this time around.

[Chandler Levick]

It's like everything else.

[David Sims]

The later Hanson song I heard in something the other day where it almost, like, knocked my socks off.

[Griffin Newman]

This soundtrack includes Pretty Fry for a White Guy by the Officer Blue by Eiffel65, what's My Age Again by Blink182.

[David Sims]

Bad Touch by the Bloodhound Game, two Bloodhound Gang songs. Wow.

[Griffin Newman]

Aurora by the Foo Fighters. Of course, a performance from Everclear for us.

[Ben Hosley]

Right out of my head. Fastball. Another One Hit Wonder.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. And. And. And I don't remember this, but apparently the British boy band Five have a song.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah, that's. That's in. When he has the graduation party.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay. Okay.

[Chandler Levick]

Because I was like, what is like, five fake NSync song, you know?

[David Sims]

Also like an SAT question.

[Griffin Newman]

Five were fake NSync to a T.

[David Sims]

Finished the pattern, of course. Two further songs on this soundtrack. Scarborough Fair.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yes.

[David Sims]

Garfunkel and Sonata and C Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Modes. Not the cd.

[Chandler Levick]

If you talk about the Long Graduate homage, that happens for no reason.

[David Sims]

There's a Long Graduate homage. You see a bit of Cabaret performed. You see.

[Griffin Newman]

Literally, like. Right. It's an artifact. You're watching Cabaret as the original.

[David Sims]

I turned to Ben. I'm like, I'm kind of glad they captured this.

[Griffin Newman]

It's wonderful.

[Chandler Levick]

That's one of the best.

[Griffin Newman]

It is. Yeah. I think without a doubt the best scene in the movie. There's not even anything that comes close.

[David Sims]

Here's my favorite part of that scene. When the camera pans away from Jason Biggs and Mina Savari and then just watches Alan Cumming tear up. Cabaret just for four.

[Griffin Newman]

And then you're just like, fuck, Fuck this.

[Chandler Levick]

I watch this like, I wish this was it.

[Griffin Newman]

The whole. The. The thing also thing with this movie is again, I'm watching with my wife, Nina Suvari pops up and I'm like, this is Mina Suvari. You know Mina Suvarian? She's like, no. I mean, no. And I'm like, right. I guess it was basically like a two year wind. Like Minu Suvari's fame was brief.

[David Sims]

It's so quick.

[Chandler Levick]

Three movies. American Pie, American Beauty, American Virgin.

[David Sims]

They all come out within 18 months of each other.

[Griffin Newman]

Correct. I mean, American version, of course, had Robert Logan, Bob Hoskins, two guys you definitely want in a movie called American Virgin.

[David Sims]

But then I was. I was digging in and she has like three further American titles later.

[Griffin Newman]

She's got American Fight too. Let's not forget that.

[David Sims]

And American Reunion.

[Griffin Newman]

Is she in that one?

[David Sims]

Yeah, I think she's not in Wedding. She's back for Reunion. Every.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, everyone was.

[David Sims]

Everyone's back.

[Griffin Newman]

I forgot what Reunion was. I thought Reunion was Wedding. No, I forgot that they did a four.

[David Sims]

No, no. Like 60 of the cast is cut from Wedding. Right. Everyone's brought back for Reunion at a bargain price. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

What was she gonna be like when Mina Savari.

[David Sims]

It's a great question. What I was thinking while watching it, because there was certainly a two year period where we were all the right age to be like, I guess she's important. And you step back now and you're like, what was the. What was the roadmap people thought was gonna play out ahead of her?

[Griffin Newman]

I don't.

[David Sims]

For her career.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. Like, who's, like, best case scenario, there's.

[David Sims]

Not really a comp.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

And it's also as a star. No. And I also think like, if you.

[Chandler Levick]

Go like, like Cybil shepherd, maybe.

[Griffin Newman]

That's incredibly generous. I'm sorry.

[Chandler Levick]

Well, I'm just thinking about, like, Shepherd's.

[Griffin Newman]

Had a great career.

[Chandler Levick]

That is true. But I'm thinking Last Picture show, it kind of being this like breakout.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Like a young engineer. Yeah. In like a coming of age.

[David Sims]

She's a much odder version of that in American Beauty. Like, she's not the conventional. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

When you watch American Beauty, it's not like she's bad in American Beauty. She's totally appropriate for the role. Like, she gets it, but she's like the. She's not as good as Thor Birch or Wes Bentley anyway. No, no, they're giving better performances. I mean, whatever you think about that.

[Chandler Levick]

Movie, like, it's probably the least compelling performance in the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it is.

[David Sims]

Well, also, the movie writes her character very unintelligently. It is a very ungenerous characterization.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, but she plays the big scene in that movie really well, which is her, like, you know, dropping the pedals.

[Chandler Levick]

When he realized that she's arrive on her boobs.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. When the petals arrive on her boobs, I guess. You know what? Gryffind the boat. That's what it was, though. It wasn't. It was American Beauty. She was the image of American Beauty. She's the tummy. Yes, I know. It's not actually her touch tummy, but, you know, but like. And she's the rose. Yeah. Garnet woman, whatever.

[David Sims]

But American time in America. American Pie comes out that same year.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, but that's the worst part of that movie.

[David Sims]

I disagree with that.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, you defend the Chris. What the is his name?

[David Sims]

Chris Klein.

[Griffin Newman]

Klein. Mina Suvari, part of American Pie, which is.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, that's very sweet.

[David Sims]

Thank you.

[Chandler Levick]

I like it.

[David Sims]

Thank you.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, I like when they sing all those show choir songs.

[Griffin Newman]

They're fine.

[David Sims]

The worst part of the movie is inarguably, Tara Reid and Thomas Ian Nicholas completely disagree.

[Griffin Newman]

That part of the movie rocks because, well, they're not very.

[Chandler Levick]

They're so boring.

[Griffin Newman]

No offense to the misforformers, but I agree that they're not top notch, But I just love that their storyline resolves with. They have sex and it's bad. It's so good. It's one of my favorite parts of the movie. They just are on top of each other awkwardly and they're like, yeah, that was okay. Everyone else obviously has, like, insane, you know, shit happen to them.

[David Sims]

Well, of course Mia Savari and Chris Klein don't have sex, which is what makes them a little different.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, just have sex.

[David Sims]

David's doing a motion, right?

[Griffin Newman]

It's like, you know, oh, what's his pants Bank. Stifler's mom adjacent. Biggs. A pie. You know those two. It's just like, yeah, we had sex. It sucked. We're 18 years old. We don't know what we're doing.

[David Sims]

And dismissive about two most important things that ever happened in American cinema.

[Griffin Newman]

What was that?

[David Sims]

Oh, the pie and Stifler's mom and Jason Bigg's dessert pastry.

[Chandler Levick]

It is weird to think about this movie getting financed on those two actors.

[Griffin Newman]

100% that. It's like, okay, American Pie. Got some American Pies in it. Great. It's a movie. Cool. You want some money?

[David Sims]

So we were talking about this a little.

[Griffin Newman]

Can we make Union Station look like nyu?

[David Sims]

Chandler and I hung out last night. We were talking about this.

[Griffin Newman]

What's the weight? Budget? $1. $1 Beasley dollar.

[David Sims]

The Suvari conversation's interesting. Right. And the Biggs conversation is interesting. But you zoom out and it's like. It's hard to actually think of an analog of what happened after American Pieces where that movie was such a big hit and it had such an ensemble cast. Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Biggs kind of default lead of young, cute American actors in this kind of.

[David Sims]

American Graffiti sort of way. Yeah, right. And. And Hollywood was just like math would. Would tell us that at least two of these people are going to end up being major lasting movie stars. Right. And no one could figure out who it was. And none of them were long term.

[Chandler Levick]

We said we decided that Natasha Leone is the only one.

[Griffin Newman]

She is the obvious.

[David Sims]

26 years later. No question that Natasha Leone is, in present moment, the most successful American Pie alum number.

[Chandler Levick]

Aside from Jennifer Coolidge.

[Griffin Newman]

Not number. Let's leave Coolidge aside. Okay. And let's not talk about the Sherminator.

[David Sims]

But I was going to say last.

[Griffin Newman]

Night was that Hannigan is two.

[David Sims]

I think number two is true.

[Griffin Newman]

No, Hannigan is two. We're talking about who's on the on the post on it poster of American Pop.

[David Sims]

Okay. So number two is Hannigan.

[Griffin Newman]

But let's talk about bit parts.

[David Sims]

Hannigan is kind of semi retired nonetheless.

[Griffin Newman]

Hannison Hannigan is in two gigantic TV shows.

[David Sims]

Queen of residuals. She also hosted like eight seasons of Penn and Teller CW show. Okay. Where she show up like two days a year and probably get millions.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben is making the appropriate.

[Chandler Levick]

Who cares?

[Griffin Newman]

That's like a zero point.

[David Sims]

It's indication. I'm saying she is three syndication series.

[Griffin Newman]

Leon.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Hannigan.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Number three is Sean William Scott. Right. No question.

[David Sims]

But also a guy who's slow way down. I don't know.

[Ben Hosley]

What about just flutes?

[Griffin Newman]

Flutes. They're back.

[Chandler Levick]

And pies.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay. And pies, too.

[Griffin Newman]

In fact, foreign exchange students. Keep this going.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm doing the whole poster.

[David Sims]

Do the whole post.

[Griffin Newman]

Because this is actually because, like, I do think it's like Leon Hannigan. Sean Williams Scott is Number three for sure. He's had a career. He's been above the title.

[David Sims]

I'm just saying. I'm just saying that Lyon's the best right now. And Hannigan and Williams had the best careers after the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Should I rank everyone like Natasha Leone?

[David Sims]

Leon had a bad period in between.

[Griffin Newman]

I had a bad period in between.

[David Sims]

And now she's doing great.

[Griffin Newman]

Did I get that.

[David Sims]

Term? I'm just trying to explore storytelling opportunities. I think four.

[Griffin Newman]

I think four is big.

[David Sims]

That's sadly true.

[Griffin Newman]

Fix is four.

[David Sims]

I think you're right. I think Biggs is four, which feels wrong, but I think you're right.

[Chandler Levick]

He's a gentleman's four.

[David Sims]

He's around. He's a gentleman's four.

[Griffin Newman]

I think now it's tough.

[David Sims]

It gets tough.

[Griffin Newman]

Now I'm between Klein and Suvari.

[Chandler Levick]

I think Clyde, because he had the. The election bump.

[Griffin Newman]

I gotta go for Suvari. She's in a Best Picture winner.

[Chandler Levick]

That's fair.

[Griffin Newman]

And she's in Loser, a film we're discussing today.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

We're not discussing the Chris Klein ue.

[David Sims]

Right, right. Which we have done before. We'll do again.

[Griffin Newman]

We'll do it again. Yeah.

[David Sims]

You'll talk about.

[Griffin Newman]

Chris has got a ton of credit.

[David Sims]

She does.

[Griffin Newman]

She keeps working.

[David Sims]

But yet I was looking at her Wikipedia and I was so ready to.

[Griffin Newman]

Discover she played Jane Wyman in the Reagan movie last year.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

Wow.

[Griffin Newman]

She's working.

[David Sims]

She did some TV show in the last couple of years that also had American in the title.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. You're really hooked on the American women.

[David Sims]

Or American Woman or whatever the fuck.

[Griffin Newman]

American Woman it was called.

[David Sims]

Example of. I'm pulling up her Wikipedia and I'm like, I'm about to find out that Mina Savari has quietly been on.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure. Like a coffee.

[David Sims]

FBI Seattle.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah.

[David Sims]

For nine seasons. Right. And she has FBI Spokane. She has worked consistently, but there is no thing like that.

[Griffin Newman]

No, but she has worked.

[David Sims]

She's worked consistently. Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Do you think she works in this movie? You think she's miscast. Would it be better with Alison Hannigan?

[David Sims]

I kind of like her.

[Griffin Newman]

I think she.

[Chandler Levick]

Natasha Leone would be a much better.

[Griffin Newman]

Hey, I'd make a lot of sense.

[Chandler Levick]

I would watch.

[David Sims]

Well, yes. It kind of feels like it was built for Leona.

[Griffin Newman]

I've kind of been, you know.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

But I was kind of having a tough time then.

[David Sims]

David.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

We did a live show.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

On stage.

[Griffin Newman]

You're right.

[David Sims]

I swear to you, it's true.

[Griffin Newman]

Wow.

[Ben Hosley]

We celebrated King Ralph.

[David Sims]

An audience with His Majesty Two fans.

[Griffin Newman]

Two people who are like I was okay, spoiler alert for the show.

[David Sims]

But it was fun, it was a good show. Let's be clear. You were doing an impression of people reacting to the movie King Ralph, not to our show. Because here's my impression of the audience reacting to our show in real time. Good. And right now, you, the listener. Here's my impression of you. Fomo. Fomo.

[Griffin Newman]

Wish I could have been there bent over in pain. Fomo.

[David Sims]

My ribs untickled. We have news for you.

[Griffin Newman]

Me dickling.

[David Sims]

It sounded like you said dickling. My news for you, the fomoer y is that we we filmed this show.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, we did.

[David Sims]

Professional crew, multi cameras running around, edited.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah. We're working with the new company called Stage pilot and I think we've really upped our game as far as production value goes.

[David Sims]

I think this is going to be a good video that we are offering up up as a vod.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, that's a video that has been demanded.

[David Sims]

It has. We are responding to your demand. Ben, can you drop some of the details here?

[Ben Hosley]

VOD will be premiering on June 26th at 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time.

[Griffin Newman]

And that folks is a Thursday.

[David Sims]

It is indeed the devil's day.

[Ben Hosley]

The cost will be $15.

[David Sims]

But Ben, is this a one night only streaming event?

[Ben Hosley]

No, of course not. It will be available, available to view and purchase for two months.

[David Sims]

You got two month window.

[Ben Hosley]

So closes out on August 24th. Can watch it unlimited times within that window.

[David Sims]

Absolutely. You can goon. Goon our live show until your heart's content.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

Put on multiple devices. Goon it.

[Ben Hosley]

So you just can go to stream.blankcheckpod.com indeed. To get your tickets.

[David Sims]

Some exclusive merch offers available there as well. You can get some bundles or some a la carte items.

[Ben Hosley]

We have some limited edition King Ralph inspired merch.

[David Sims]

Might resemble a certain Regal hamburger logo.

[Griffin Newman]

How dare you.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, we have a poster designed by Nakatomi. Yes. As well as some Joe Bowen design hats, T shirts and stickers.

[David Sims]

It's great stuff. And let's say honestly, I think we were very proud of how the show turned out. It was a lot of fun music, dare I admit it. Big bits. Including one prominent bit that was perhaps unretired for one night only.

[Griffin Newman]

One night.

[Ben Hosley]

We are a family once again. The VOD premiere is June 26th at 8pm Eastern Standard Time. And actually Griffin Newman will be live in the chat.

[David Sims]

Did I agree to that?

[Ben Hosley]

You sure did.

[David Sims]

Well, well, well.

[Ben Hosley]

So you can watch along with Griffin Newman and maybe some surprise Guests. Yes, I might join.

[Griffin Newman]

Not me. Maybe I will. I don't know.

[Ben Hosley]

Please get your tickets now and enjoy.

[David Sims]

Please enjoy.

[Griffin Newman]

But I think she works in this movie. I think the character is written a little tough for pretty much anyone to totally. She's playing it. Look, my whole problem with this movie, which really, really kind of threw me for a loop.

[David Sims]

It's meant to be rated R and it's PG13 instead. That's the only problem anyone could have with this mov laptop shot, is like.

[Griffin Newman]

Both Biggs and Suvari are quite saintly and good in this movie.

[Chandler Levick]

Yes, that was my problem at the beginning of the movie. He saves the cat, like 16 times.

[Griffin Newman]

And they never really introduce flaws. So with Biggs, you're kind of like, bitch, you're clearly smart and nice. Like, just go meet some people. What the fuck is the matter with you? And cut your hair. And then with Suvari, you're like, you are too smart to be behaving this way. And I know people, you know, get in bad relationships and do toxic things and, like, you know. Yeah, but you're just kind of like, you're not written well enough for any of this to really make sense. She's kind of too level headed.

[Chandler Levick]

No. And you have no context of who she is outside of Jason Biggs. Who is she calling on the phone? Like, her mother's just like, okay, get the train when you can.

[Griffin Newman]

Her bedrooms wouldn't tell if that was her mom or, like, a grandma. The way she talked about her parents, the emancipation. There's so many questions I have about this mom.

[Chandler Levick]

I'm really upset. A key point of the Apartment is when. When, like, her. When Shirley Mlan's like, what? Like, who is the brother in law? I haven't seen it comes in and, like, rescues her. And you get like this really interesting snapshot into that character's life going on with her, but she just only exists, like, as a.

[David Sims]

We should just directly say that this movie is an unofficial kind of retelling of the Apartment. It has too much in common to be accidental.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's inspired by. But then it's got other stuff going on too.

[David Sims]

It's inspired by. It's not legally a remake of the Apartment. And yet there are things that are legally remakes of other movies that have less in common with the original film.

[Ben Hosley]

What concert do they go to in the apartment?

[Griffin Newman]

No, they go to an Everclear concert. Same band. Same band.

[David Sims]

Big band. Everclear.

[Chandler Levick]

It's at Webster hall, too.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Yeah, right? Oh, fuck, I wish I could do Lemon saying, like, hey, do you want to go see Everclean? I wish I could do Lemon. Do Lemon.

[Chandler Levick]

No, but that's a beat in the audience.

[David Sims]

You like AM radio.

[Chandler Levick]

They're supposed to go to see the Broadway play.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, right, right.

[Chandler Levick]

It's the same thing. Supposed to see the Music Man.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, but of course, in the Apartment, you're like, this is incredibly, like, risque and subversive for the time. And also, it's about grownups, like, you know, and it's about guys cheating on their girlfriends and wives and stuff. Right. Whereas in Loser, it's like they're freshmen in college. This device doesn't make as much sense.

[David Sims]

So I just want to say, okay, Ben has never seen the Apartment. Apartment. We're watching this together. We come to the office, we watch Loser together. A couple cool guys watching Loser jacking off.

[Chandler Levick]

I'm so sad that you had to see Loser before. You get to see the Apartment.

[Ben Hosley]

It is.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. You'll watch the Apartment now. And you're like, no, Loser. No. No ever. Clear. Where's Alan? Coming. I don't see him.

[David Sims]

As I said, I brought over some pizza and some Mountain Dew. We had a chill in and watched Loser in the Office. And I, like. Ben was like, what is this plot? And I was like, well, it's the Apartment. And then he gave me a blank stare, and I was like, oh, have you never seen the Apartment? Here's the basic shape of the Apartment, a film that, by the way, won.

[Griffin Newman]

Best and is a good movie.

[Chandler Levick]

It is, like, a masterpiece.

[David Sims]

It is kind of considered one of the, like, crown jewels of, like, Hollywood filmmaker.

[Griffin Newman]

But it wasn't just the Best Picture winner. It endures because it was, for the time, a very adult movie. Like, that was, you know, like. Like ahead of its time.

[David Sims]

It is one of the only comedies to ever win Best Picture. So it's talked about a lot in that context of, like, how few have won. And one of the reason it won, and I guess it was sort of seen as a surprise, is that it is this movie that does this very deft balancing act of tones where it gets into some really dark and heavy shit and doesn't feel glib about it, but also feels like it gives it an appropriate amount of weight. The basic side of that movie is that Jack Lemmon is, dare I say it, a bit of a loser. Cece Baxter, he's kind of like an underling at sort of just like a clock in and clocking out. Desk Job and all the other guys at the Firm are always kind of taking advantage of him, much like this trio of truly sadistic doormates that Jason Biggs has. Right? But this guy's thing he does to get in good with the other guys who don't like him is he offers up his apartment. He will give them the keys so they can use his apartment to sleep with their mistresses before they go home to their wives. And so everyone kind of uses this guy as a doormat. And he thinks eventually this will be rewarded with people giving me the promotion, giving me respect, whatever it is. He has a massive Crush on Shirley MacLaine, who's kind of like the original.

[Ben Hosley]

I get it.

[Griffin Newman]

Right?

[David Sims]

And it's like her in, like, pixie haircut. She's got a sparky attitude.

[Chandler Levick]

She's an elevator.

[David Sims]

She's an elevator operator. He's in love with her. She's very sweet to him, but feels like, I don't know, he lacks the edge or whatever, Right? And his boss says that he will give him the promotion he wants if he lets him use the apartment as well. And he slowly puts together that the boss is using the apartment to sleep with Shirley MacLaine.

[Griffin Newman]

Damn. Just to speak to the apartment's best picture. When I realized this is a tangent. The 1960 Oscars, it was the only choice. The other nominees are the Alamo, which is terrible. Elmer Gantry, Sons and Lovers, and the Sundowners, all of which were like, Jesus. But none are movies that really endure. Yeah, but the movie that the Oscars didn't have the balls. I'm gonna say it.

[David Sims]

It's 1960 or 1961 to nominate in.

[Griffin Newman]

1960 is Psycho, which gets a best Director nomination out of kind of a, like, good job with that.

[David Sims]

And it gets both supportings. Did they not nominate Perkins?

[Griffin Newman]

No, they. They. No, they didn't nominate Perkins. They only nominated Janet Lee for Dying.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Why? Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Spoiler for Psycho.

[David Sims]

Yeah, she dies. She does.

[Griffin Newman]

But Psycho, I imagine, was the actual other big smash of the year, but it was a little too lurid for them. Yes, but the Apartment's a masterpiece.

[David Sims]

It is now. Like, something like Guess who, right? Is like in terms of actual structure of contracts, an actual remake of Guess who's Coming to Dinner that, like, does not mirror the plot at all, whereas this mirrors it in, like, such weird ways. But then the ways in which it diverts are so much stranger.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. I'm just thinking about Greg Canary character and how he's supposed to be like the Fred McMurray, you know, but, you know, in the Apartment that character is first seems like an upstanding guy, like a really good principal actor.

[Griffin Newman]

Greg Kinnear is pure fucking evil in this movie, in this way that I think I will say it. And I love Amy Heckerling. I love a lot of her movies. I've criticized some of them on this podcast. Horribly written because, like the movie begins with him basically being like, I'm just such a. For teen love. I love you, I'm your professor. Like, he's saying everything out loud. He's just being disgusting at her. And you're just like, this guy's completely charmless. Like, no one would be interested in this guy. The fact that Mina Suvari is interested in him, Greg Kinnear as a smart English college professor, you can make that work for me.

[Chandler Levick]

Totally.

[Griffin Newman]

Like him playing a slime ball is a little obvious. And I'm sure Greg Kinnear kind of sighed when he got the script because he was kind of getting these roles a lot by this point.

[David Sims]

But it's like, you want this slime, but he's charming.

[Griffin Newman]

He's so nasty to her from the get go from the first scene.

[Chandler Levick]

It's the same role he plays in youn've Got Mail.

[Griffin Newman]

But like in you've Got Mail, I mean he's pretty annoying, but you can kind of see it. And he's a good looking guy. Again, you know, it's like Greg. That's what Greg Kinnear was good at. And he's awful in this, but I don't think it's his fault because the character is horrible.

[David Sims]

Well, like to Chandler's point, like in the Apartment, right. The whole thing that makes the dynamic interesting is it's breaking his heart that he is letting his boss, who. He is played by Fred McMurray who was like a fucking Disney stock company actor.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. He had never done anything like. I think it was pre Double Indemnities. So it was like very subversive.

[David Sims]

A wonderful actor, a guy who kind of was like a little bit of a Greg Kinnear equivalent where it's just like there's. It feels like something subversive about this guy who looks kind of like a Ken doll revealing this kind of slime. Right. But like this guy is having this like, is dying inside at the notion that he's letting his boss take advantage of the girl that he truly has feelings for in order to sort of like help his career. Right. That he is sort of complicit in this.

[Griffin Newman]

We have to drop the apartment after this because comparing this one to the apartment is just gonna make us crazy.

[Chandler Levick]

That's so true.

[David Sims]

Sure. But I'm like, having never seen this movie before, I was like, huh? Doing college apartment isn't a terrible idea. Using a dorm room in that way. A teacher sleeping with a student where there's something that needs to be kept secret.

[Griffin Newman]

I guess.

[David Sims]

But teachers kind of makes sense in that casting. Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Like I just said, he did. I mean, yes, he does. But teacher sleeping with student is a much bigger violation. So you're already kind of like.

[David Sims]

Absolutely.

[Griffin Newman]

But again, it's more just that he just is mean to her and not mean in like a cute way.

[David Sims]

No.

[Ben Hosley]

And he seems boring.

[David Sims]

They don't even do anything.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. And they have no sexual chemistry. There's no sex in this movie. Excuse me.

[David Sims]

He lies next to her in bed reading the New York Times book review. They do a lot of things together.

[Chandler Levick]

He has that weird library. He's like, I think my whole body just relaxed.

[Griffin Newman]

He's. It's fucking Daniel Brule getting asked to play a fifth Nazi. Kinnier's like, who am I? Oh, I'm another slime ball. Great. That's great. I'll do it. Yeah, that's fine. Like, it's like, you've got mail. Mystery Men.

[David Sims]

Yep.

[Griffin Newman]

Nurse Betty.

[David Sims]

Mystery Men. Another film with the sort of loser status of all star becomes a hit while the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

While the movie's forgotten.

[Chandler Levick]

That was a great time.

[David Sims]

Incredible time.

[Griffin Newman]

His role in Nurse Betty is exactly. Exactly that too. Right. He's a. Look, everyone thinks he's cute, but he's an one right around gift.

[David Sims]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, where it's just all he. Someone like you. Which is the next year. The Ashley Judd movie where it's like, I guess I'll be with, you know, Greg Kinnear who sucks. And Hugh Jackman's like, how you doing, Mike? I know.

[David Sims]

He doesn't have all of his movies for a while were, I'm a nice guy, wink.

[Griffin Newman]

And then in like 2002, he's like, give me an Oscar movie. And it's like, great. Do you want to play Bob Crane? He's like, isn't that guy who jacked off with his friend? It's like, yeah, sorry.

[Chandler Levick]

What about as good as it gets. At least he got.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, that's before.

[Ben Hosley]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And like, he's awesome in that movie. I think it's a wonderful performance. That was his launch.

[David Sims]

Here's this guy who's like a talk show host. And it was like, no one's ever going to take him seriously. As an actor because he's like a lightweight talk show.

[Griffin Newman]

He's the talk soup guy.

[David Sims]

He's the talk soup guy. And then they cast him in Sabrina that flops. Everyone's like, see, that's what you get for casting a talk show host.

[Griffin Newman]

No, Sabrina's. Oh, oh, sure, right. Sabrina's before.

[David Sims]

And then as good as it gets is the moment of, like, he proved everyone wrong. Wrong. Greg Kinnear's got the goods. And then what you've just outlined is basically the post as everything after.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Like, it felt like he had won the argument, in theory, of, you deserve to be in movies. We take you seriously. And then he got pigeonholed into this sort of thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you think anyone remembers that he's in Little Miss Sunshine?

[David Sims]

I think he's incredibly.

[Griffin Newman]

He's totally good in it. But it's like, is that the most forgotten performance in that movie?

[David Sims]

Even weirdly more than Toni Collette, whose character. Character actually was not written. Every live dialogue she has in the script just says tbd.

[Chandler Levick]

She's just kind of.

[Griffin Newman]

She's good at that. Right?

[Chandler Levick]

You go, yeah, do it.

[David Sims]

The reason I'm bringing up the apartment thing for Ben's perspective, and I know you don't want to harp on this, is just. It is fascinating to me that in the basic setup of this movie, it's not about him working out a deal with the professor. It's about his, like, doormates just hazing him for 90 minutes again and then, like, date drugging the girl and then him having to, like, save her. Versus, like, in the apartment, where it's like, everything's a lot tighter.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. They had the apartment right there.

[David Sims]

Right there.

[Griffin Newman]

We're going to officially close this discussion with the verdict. You're going to close Apartment is better than Loser.

[Chandler Levick]

Controversial, but I can accept it.

[Griffin Newman]

The thing about Loser, here's what I knew about Loser, apart from.

[David Sims]

Yeah, you knew that her name is Noel.

[Griffin Newman]

Is it, though?

[David Sims]

No, it's not.

[Griffin Newman]

I was like, okay, Jason Biggs plays a loser. He's got a silly hat.

[David Sims]

Shape of nail on his forehead.

[Griffin Newman]

He falls down the stairs a lot.

[David Sims]

A lot.

[Griffin Newman]

But there's the big fall down the stairs because that was in, like, the trailer, right?

[David Sims]

And what does he say? He call. He makes some joke about, like, Jerry Lewis, ladies and gentlemen.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah, that's what Greg Kinnear says.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, he's got silly hair.

[David Sims]

He. Boy, does he.

[Griffin Newman]

Boy, does he. Another thing my wife was freaking out about where she was just like, I don't understand the way Big, right?

[David Sims]

Watching this movie makes you want to take a pair of scissors and, like, try to cut through the TV screen.

[Griffin Newman]

Just stop.

[Chandler Levick]

It's so insane.

[Griffin Newman]

His hair is so much better than this.

[David Sims]

His hair is finally cut in the last scene of the movie, and it's clearly just Jason Big's natural hair versus this insane wig of death they're giving him the whole time. And he shows up with the real hair. And I turn to Ben and I go. I'm immediately 5% less annoyed with this movie. Why couldn't it have been this 5% whole time?

[Chandler Levick]

There's a whole makeover montage. And they don't.

[Griffin Newman]

That in the middle of the movie.

[Chandler Levick]

Like, it's actually, like, unconscionable for, like, an audience to have to look at that hair for a whole.

[Griffin Newman]

I agree, it's a terrible wig. And, like, yes, and I will talk about it, but all I knew going in was like, he's a loser. He goes to college, people are mean to him. He struggles to fit in. He figures it out, I assume, sure, right? Like, that's all I knew. And instead it starts with, like, right, he meets three Nazi war criminals.

[David Sims]

To live with that cruelty in the heart of all men dressed in racist movie.

[Griffin Newman]

They're like, moving a speaker into his room. And I'm like, right, he has annoying roommates. And then quickly you're like, oh, these are like irredeemable monsters.

[David Sims]

These are like Columbine killers, right?

[Griffin Newman]

And then the joke gets elevated. Escalated so insanely where it's like, not only that, like, they dress like Zoolander's friends, right? Like, they're in these insane outfits and it's, like, kind of funny, but the movie's almost too realistic for it to work.

[David Sims]

Chandler, you and I were talking last night about the Wedding Singer, which we both love.

[Griffin Newman]

Great movie.

[Chandler Levick]

Love it.

[David Sims]

And how good in particular, the art direction is in the Wedding Singer.

[Griffin Newman]

Obviously, it's a period film and it's.

[David Sims]

A period Blake, the great Perry Blake. But that's what we were saying is, like, at the time when they greenlit it, people were like, is it too soon to make an 80s movie? And they were correct in that. Like, it feels like it has just been enough time. And Perry Blake, like, recreates the 80s in a way that it's just, like, a little accentuated, but it doesn't feel over the top. And it feels like American Graffiti esque evocation. Whatever I say to Ben, 15 minutes into us watching this, this doesn't feel like we're watching a movie. From the year 2000. It feels like we're watching a film from 2025 set in the year 2000. It feels like such a fake, weird recreation, misremembering of the style of.

[Griffin Newman]

There's moments that charm.

[Chandler Levick]

So true.

[David Sims]

Maybe it's just Alan coming completely against it.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

But there's something about. In this moment where she is capturing that year. Something is so over the top in, as you said, like, the dorm mates dressing like the Zoolander.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Roommates. And, like, the soundtrack and all this stuff feels like this is, like, forced. And Ben's said, well, what it is is someone still making movies about teenagers who is increasingly only getting older.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

And it's kind of out of touch.

[Griffin Newman]

But it's so weird because she's nails Clueless so hard.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. I mean, Clueless is like every element of Clueless is, like, pristine and, like, classic forever. And like, you watch that movie now and you want all the clothes in the movie Clueless about it, even though it's so effective.

[David Sims]

But that's the difference, is that Clueless, by her own admission, is sort of like, I'm gonna make up slang words that are even more insane than what the kids say. I'm gonna accentuate the fact it's the.

[Chandler Levick]

Same costume designer and collaborators on this one, like Mona Mae and Twin Kaplan, her producer.

[Griffin Newman]

And I do think Ben's right that she has no grasp on actual, like, youth.

[Chandler Levick]

Maybe she doesn't know men. Like, maybe that's part of it because it's the world of men.

[Griffin Newman]

Women can't write men. You know, that's. That's my lesson. I've learned from this. They should be ashamed of themselves. Try to write. No.

[David Sims]

Maybe the female gaze in this movie is insane. The way her camera leers over babes is all.

[Chandler Levick]

All of his bad toupee, the track marks of his.

[Griffin Newman]

But his window wouldn't even get a handle on. And I don't think she ever had a handle on. Like, what is he like, what kind of bumpkin is he supposed to be?

[David Sims]

Especially with a title like Loser? You're like, you're gonna present to me a very specifically realized version of an outcast.

[Griffin Newman]

He's from the Midwest. He has a hat. I don't know. He's nice.

[Ben Hosley]

I was Pennsylvania yokel.

[Chandler Levick]

I think she loves. I think Amy Heckerling, like, really reveres classic Hollywood and kind of in that. So I bet. I feel like he's like a Frank Capra kind of character. Like, Mr. Deeds goes to Washington.

[Griffin Newman]

He's a step away. From a character I think about too much. Norbit.

[David Sims]

We all think about from the film.

[Griffin Newman]

Norbit, who is an insane character in a movie filled with insane characters, who's just like, I'm just a nice guy. Like, it's like Eddie Murphy kind of forgot to do Norbit when he was. He's like, he works on everything else. Right. And then he's like, o, who's Norbit?

[David Sims]

But that movie is also almost about like biblical trials.

[Griffin Newman]

Exactly. So then you're like, can you just do something else? You're stressing me out. Just kind of being like, all right, guys, like, while this is happening to him.

[David Sims]

That's what's so weird though, is as you said, like having it just be like small town kid moves to the city. Right. Scholarship kid.

[Griffin Newman]

That's a premise.

[David Sims]

All these shitty rich kids and he's just a little too pure and they all dislike him for that reason. Reason. But this movie's also trying to be like, he's so bizarre and weird that they can't make sense of him. Hat he wears right outside of him just sort of being like fresh off the bus.

[Griffin Newman]

This reminds me, I need to open the dossier. So let me open the dossier. 1997, MGM buys a spec script called Molly.

[David Sims]

Yep.

[Griffin Newman]

Amy Heckerling gets attached to direct and produce.

[David Sims]

I clocked this movie recently as her only producing credit on a film she didn't direct. And I was like, huh, what is this? Why'd she end up in this? And then watch this trailer, which is a nightmare.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure. It stars Elizabeth Shu. The it does eventually get made. Not by her. Yes, it's a fact based comedy about a man who has to take care of his sister when she's released from an institution. She's autistic and medical treatment has cured her and turned her into a genius.

[David Sims]

This sounds like a Flowers for Algernon from hell. Yeah, it looks so bad.

[Griffin Newman]

But she didn't make that.

[David Sims]

She didn't.

[Griffin Newman]

In that case, she made Loser she gets attached to. She and Twinkle Kaplan are attached to produce a feature film adaptation of the Prometheus and Bob shorts.

[David Sims]

Now, would it surprise you to hear that?

[Griffin Newman]

You loved that.

[David Sims]

And Ben. You gotta rise out of Ben. Right? You remember that?

[Ben Hosley]

Of course.

[David Sims]

I also remember you're about to lose your mind when you hear the other detail of what this movie to.

[Griffin Newman]

For listeners who may not remember, Kam Nickelodeon anthology show.

[David Sims]

It was broken up.

[Griffin Newman]

Caveman.

[Ben Hosley]

What were some of the other other recurring shorts?

[David Sims]

Well, of course there was actually the Flesh Stinky Driver. Melt Man.

[Griffin Newman]

He has the power to melt just. This is good. Thunder girl. She flies like thunder.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

I always thought that was such a good show.

[David Sims]

It was so good. Henry and June hosted the show. It took place in between the pages of a comic book. I believe Angela Anaconda started on Kabula.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, my God, I love it.

[David Sims]

Which then splashes into a very big Canadian show.

[Griffin Newman]

They also had a few things came out of it, but, yeah, it was very fun. But Prometheus and Bob was a Anaconda was so weird.

[David Sims]

It was good as hell.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it was pretty good.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Do you know that Noah Segan was the voice of Henry? Uncle Blam.

[Griffin Newman]

Let's keep going.

[David Sims]

Okay. So Prometheus and Bob was a series of claymation short films that were, in theory, the discovered tapes of UFOs first encounters with human life. And it was like aliens landed on Earth in the prehistoric age and this alien tries to teach a caveman how to do stuff. And they were really funny.

[Griffin Newman]

Molly, her daughter, got her into the shorts, so that was how she got interested.

[David Sims]

I loved these. I vividly remember my dad being like, I just read. They're making a Prometheus and Bob movie.

[Griffin Newman]

To star Chris Farley and David Spade.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, my God.

[Griffin Newman]

Then Chris Farley died, unfortunately.

[Ben Hosley]

That would have been incredible.

[Griffin Newman]

I know. But the project stayed in development. Now, the creator of Prometheus and Bob, Coach Zellers, did say that the first draft of the film, which is not written by him, was, quote, the worst thing he ever read.

[David Sims]

Did they say who wrote the first draft?

[Griffin Newman]

No. I don't know.

[David Sims]

And then he tried to rewrite it and he said a lot of those ideas ended up getting repurposed for the Jack Black Gulliver's Travels. I don't know what that means.

[Griffin Newman]

That is true. I don't know. The writers were Nick Stoller and Joe Stillman.

[David Sims]

Well, they did Gulliver. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay, so what does Heckerling actually do rather than these things? She does, of course, work on the Clueless TV show briefly. The other things she work was a night at the Roxbury, which she develops and produces. Now, we address this more on the next episode, don't we?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

I won't speak of it.

[Griffin Newman]

Silence.

[David Sims]

I mean, it is just a thing, right? The whole accounting of the night, the Roxbury thing is very confusing. And there are a lot of, like, story pieces that don't fit together.

[Griffin Newman]

Who's in that film says that she made a pass at him and that Lauren said that he was supposed to to have sex with her. You can read all of this.

[David Sims]

At one point supposed to direct the movie. She doesn't end up directing the movie, but does end up producing it. But I've also heard that she kind of did take over. That makes sense at some point in production. And Chris Kattan says that he was pressured to have an affair with her by Lorne Michaels in order to help secure her on the movie. But Chris Kattan was sleeping with three different women in the movie at the same time.

[Griffin Newman]

She was Amy Heckerling's response. And I believe we also talk about this next week was GH he's a nut. Essentially. Like, I don't want to know what dumb he came up with. I have nothing to say about him or his idiot book.

[David Sims]

And Molly Israel's talked about this was all when he was selling a baby. Don't hurt me. But. But yes. Another thing that takes up a year plus of her life and has only led to drama and tragedy. Yeah. Certainly bad feelings. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Hackerling. So why did she make Loser? JJ Couldn't find. Find out.

[David Sims]

Great. I mean, it does feel as simple as her being like, I love the apartment. I want to make something like the apartment.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't think that's quite.

[David Sims]

You don't think that's it?

[Griffin Newman]

Well, this here's a quote from her what it's called Loser. And it stars Jason Biggs, Mina Savari and Greg Kinnear. Jason plays a guy in college who's hardworking, decent and has a big heart. So naturally think people think he's a loser. Wackiness ensues. There's a crazy twist ending and no one's allowed to leave the theater during the last 10, 10 minutes.

[Chandler Levick]

What's the crazy twist?

[Griffin Newman]

She may kind of be joking because there's obviously possibly.

[David Sims]

But also Biggs having the haircut at the end of the movie. I'm like, what's the ending? A reshoot. The coda certainly feels like a last minute thing. In response to audiences being like, we want to see these assholes get punished.

[Griffin Newman]

I want to see Greg Kinnear get fed into a wood chipper. And they're just like, he went to prison. I'm like, not good enough.

[David Sims]

There is an American Graffiti style punisher to kill him. Text what happened to the four most evil characters after the movie ending? That truly feels like it's only to satisfy that thing of like audiences needing to see blood.

[Griffin Newman]

So Heckling is asked, why? Why are you always making films about young people? She says, I guess I'm always attracted to that age group. Because everything is so intense and new, and that's dramatic and appealing to me. Yeah.

[David Sims]

As is the case with a lot.

[Griffin Newman]

Of filmmakers from her where she's really kind of, you know, explaining why she made this.

[David Sims]

But I think also as the case with a lot of filmmakers we talk about, they get so stuck in the thing. They've had the most success doing that. Certainly, JJ has dug up the project she sets up or gets attached to in between each of her films that mostly end up being films about this is something. Give it to me.

[Griffin Newman]

When she made Clueless, she was forthright that she was basing it on the novel Emma by Jane Austen.

[David Sims]

Y.

[Griffin Newman]

But when Variety in 2000 reached out to Heckerling's writer reps for comment on whether she'd use the Apartment while crafting Loser, CAA said she did not base Loser on the apartment. Any similarities are coincidental.

[David Sims]

Well, here's what I would say to that.

[Chandler Levick]

Interesting.

[David Sims]

The novel Emma is public domain.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, no, I know.

[David Sims]

And the motion picture at the apartment is not.

[Griffin Newman]

So the studio wanted Chris Klein to be the star of this movie.

[Chandler Levick]

Whoa.

[Griffin Newman]

So the studio is basically just. Just like, we need some of these guys.

[David Sims]

Pick two p Cast members, and you got a green light. Any two. It could be Reed and Nichols.

[Chandler Levick]

That's a very different movie. And. And not. I don't think Chris Klein could play a loser.

[David Sims]

Well, no, he.

[Griffin Newman]

But yes, he could. He would be doing the election thing again.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

Playing, like, lovably Steven, which it feels.

[David Sims]

Like is what this movie wants. This character, he's smart.

[Griffin Newman]

He went to. He got a scholarship.

[David Sims]

That's the problem though, right? Like, their conception of why he's uncool.

[Griffin Newman]

I think Chandler's right that it's kind of a Frank Capper thing. And he's just like, oh, I have to live at the vet. Guess I'll be really good at helping animals now too. Right? He's just, like, kind of always good at shit.

[David Sims]

I think that requires him to be a level of rube that goes against how smart this character is. Right. Like, that's the problem.

[Griffin Newman]

It certainly doesn't make sense.

[Chandler Levick]

That's why the scholarship. That's why bribing the professor, blackmailing that you need to have something. You have to have something on the teacher to make the apartment arrangement.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Exactly. Yes. And it also just feels like they're not leaning into the level of kind of like G Shuck's idealism that that kind of character needs.

[Chandler Levick]

It also needed, like, more New York in it. Like, the apartment is an incredible New York film.

[Griffin Newman]

I think that is very true. And I think it's a failing with the three villain boys. None of them are very New York. I mean, they're rich kids. Sure.

[David Sims]

But this movie is, like, set on Mars. Like, in the way where you're like, what are these fashions?

[Griffin Newman]

Vilka Bienvenud.

[David Sims]

Like, the movie is called Loser. The big thing it's asking us to buy is, like, pointing over at Jason Biggs and be like, this guy cannot fit in. Right. He obviously does not look cool in this movie, and yet everyone in this movie looks insane. So I'm like, which hair is crazy? And his hat's crazy?

[Griffin Newman]

But everyone looks crazy.

[David Sims]

But I don't get everyone pointing at him and being like, what's up with this?

[Griffin Newman]

And I get that it's a joke. Like, it's heightened, but you're right. Like, they don't make sense because he.

[David Sims]

Doesn'T look like any stereotype of nerd I have ever seen.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Really? No, I don't know that.

[David Sims]

Describe this guy that he trades up.

[Ben Hosley]

To is so bad.

[Chandler Levick]

Well, when she makes him wear the fedora from the.

[Griffin Newman]

When he starts dressing like evil Spider.

[David Sims]

Man, it's truly one of those movies very few people have seen. Right. But if you were trying to describe it to people and you said Amy Heckerling's Loser, they most likely respond with, oh, the teenage dirtbag movie. And number two would be the movie with the hat, because the poster is. His face is cut off below the eye.

[Griffin Newman]

Eyebrow.

[David Sims]

Eyeballs. It's eyeballs. L on forehead. Hat. Loser. As if this movie was like, this summer. Get ready to love this hat.

[Chandler Levick]

Wait, so do you think when the hat was the hook, did Wheatus add the line in the shape? No way. Sorry, I'm getting confused with Smash Mouth. Shape of the L on her forehead. Smash Mouth. Not Weedus. But it feels like it could be part of.

[David Sims]

Maybe it was a shot.

[Griffin Newman]

Smash Mouth should have done a pass on Loser.

[David Sims]

On the sound on the move.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, movie too. Anyone should have done a pass on the movie. Anyway, this movie resists Klein. She wants Biggs. When she meets Biggs, she clicks with him.

[Chandler Levick]

She's like, of all the American podcast members.

[Griffin Newman]

Biggs loves Fast Times of Ridge on High. He says it's his favorite teen movie. He's very excited to be the lead of a movie too, rather than American Pie. He's which is more of an ensemble.

[David Sims]

Shooting boys and girls warning, sex ruins everything concurrent with this. This movie never seen flying back and forth.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, well, that is Insane.

[David Sims]

That's a terrible movie.

[Chandler Levick]

And he has his own hair in that movie. So he had to wear the wig for Loser.

[Griffin Newman]

Every time Biggs left Loser to go film Boys and Girls, he had to have his hair extensions burned off.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, my God.

[David Sims]

It's insane. Why?

[Chandler Levick]

Wait, so it's not even a full wig. It's hair extensions.

[David Sims]

Why wouldn't they just give him a. Or let him have his normal hair? I say this out of complete respect, right? Jason Biggs shows up with his real hair. No one's going, God, that guy looks too cool to buy as a loser, right? Like, this is Jason Biggs. That's his stock in trade.

[Ben Hosley]

I mean, it just looks like he has Chris Klein hair.

[David Sims]

He's got goofball face.

[Ben Hosley]

You know what I mean, though? That middle part, it's like the exact.

[David Sims]

Hair he's got the curse.

[Griffin Newman]

So just. We'll talk about the rest of the plot of Loser in a second. But just.

[Ben Hosley]

Did you have that haircut? Did anyone. Did anyone have a middle part here in this room?

[Griffin Newman]

I have an insane cowlick side part. I cannot middle part my hair at all. Yeah, I have crazy hair.

[David Sims]

And I wanted Cool Guy, Lars, Eric, Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible to sweat back hair. And I didn't realize that my hair was curly and thought that at some point it would just start looking.

[Griffin Newman]

Have maybe done a pass on your hair too.

[David Sims]

Yeah, also on my brain.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Right. So Heckerling and her agent Ken Stovit's claim the movie was ruined in post. It was really. According to Ken Stovitz, the movie was really good until the studio said, no, you have to make a PG 13. And it ruined the movie. Of course, now only R rated comedy. The irony being. Ah, but R rated comedies became king shit. And it's like, well, they already had.

[David Sims]

That's my fucking.

[Chandler Levick]

I want to know what the R rated things were because there's. There's a pretty blue language in Loser already really dark.

[David Sims]

And I can't imagine, like, is there.

[Chandler Levick]

More nudity or something?

[David Sims]

Right? Like, come drinking.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, I'm about to tell you something completely bananas. That certainly doesn't make Loser sound like it was really good in the R.

[David Sims]

Okay, share it with me.

[Griffin Newman]

In the version in theaters, Biggs's three obnoxious college roommates tricks Minisavari's character into drinking. They roofie her.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

What audiences won't see is a subsequent shot of Dora awaking on an operating table as the three men use veterinary equipment to remove her clothing.

[David Sims]

God, if only that scene had been in the movie Biggs, the comedy comes.

[Griffin Newman]

From the perspective of the three guys who think slipping a roofie into a young girl's trink is humorous. But then you have me and Mina counteracting that by taking it all very seriously. I don't think we approach in a light manner at all, Ben. It's just one of these things where I'm like, okay, well, I don't think that made or ruined the movie.

[Chandler Levick]

Want more context about Loser? Because what female director wants to do that scene?

[David Sims]

Here's what's odd about it.

[Griffin Newman]

Amy says, I didn't want to deal with it a preachy way. Look, I'm the mom of a teenage girl. The fact is, this is something that's going on, and I wanted to make these characters as vile as possible. So, you know, the disgusting guys. By the time they're roofing her, you already hate the three guys. The roofie scene is just insane because the movie kind of skates by it. Not for any other reason.

[David Sims]

And right.

[Griffin Newman]

It. It happening. You're like, whoa, what the. But then also then they're just kind of like, get. They get.

[David Sims]

I mean, odd function for him to have to take out four days.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, and he swaps out their medicine.

[Chandler Levick]

Another, like, save the cat kind of moment.

[Griffin Newman]

Right?

[David Sims]

I mean, this guy literally saves so many cats in a way where I'm like, I get it.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. Like when the grandpa gives him the money and then he, like, puts it back in his pants.

[David Sims]

David, Grant me this. Just a. A quick ref reprieve and spoiler alert. But in the apartment, in the fallout of being devastated by the boss not wanting to have a serious relationship with her and leave his wife, she attempts suicide. And you have this same thing of the last act of the movie. Lemon kind of nursing her back to health and this sort of vulnerability and whatever. And it's so weird that this is the choice she makes of how to put the Sy character in the same position sleeping on his couch. Basically. Basically is she is drugged and, like, assaulted.

[Griffin Newman]

So just to just to pull.

[Ben Hosley]

And yet she wakes up and is like, oh, how long have I sleep in?

[Griffin Newman]

Two days.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay, cool.

[David Sims]

Is unrelated from the fucking Kinnier thing. Like, the Kinnier factor is just like a whole other part of the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

This is not a part of the movie. It just happens and then is basically not addressed. And then, you know, Right. We just sort of move on.

[David Sims]

And there's so many, like, bad teen sex comedies where there are, like, boys will be boys behavior that you now look at and you're like, this is revolting. Right. This movie knows that these guys are evil. And yet, as Ben said while watching it, they are so horrible, I cannot laugh.

[Chandler Levick]

Well, I just want to say, like, I think it's weird because it doesn't feel like this is necessarily, like, a feminist movie when I'm watching it. No, it's not. Like, it's, like, a commentary on these guys. And there's some. Like, Clueless is so smart.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

And it, like, understands, like, the scene where, you know, Cher. Like, when Elton is trying to basically assault Cher. Like, that's a very interesting, fascinating scene.

[Griffin Newman]

It is, because that actually feels real.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Where it's like, he's being aggressive. He's an asshole. It's not comical. And it's like, she handles it, and it's not great, but it's also not, like, kind of this pure evil shit either. Right.

[Chandler Levick]

And, like, I mean, obviously, the ceiling shot in fast times, the Richmond High is, like, one of the greatest, like, most interesting interpretations of, like, what it's like to have sex and lose your virginity. Like, she's, like, a very incredible, like, feminist filmmaker when it comes to sexuality, especially. And then in this movie, it's just like, these horrible, like, cartoon. They're not really redeemed except, like, these actions, they don't really face any consequences. Except in the Chiron.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Except in the post credits. Right.

[Chandler Levick]

And, like, I just don't understand is she's so much smarter and more clever and more interesting as a director and a writer than this movie is. So is that a result of, like, kind of getting boxed out after Clueless?

[David Sims]

Like, I don't fucking know.

[Griffin Newman]

She should have some leeway. She made Clueless.

[Chandler Levick]

It was a big fan.

[Griffin Newman]

She wrote and directed this film. She based it on a famous movie. Oh, wait, I'm saying your CAA says.

[Chandler Levick]

That didn't happen, but she has movie stars.

[David Sims]

She is.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Stars. She has actors. I. She doesn't have a lot of places to hide on this one.

[David Sims]

That's. I was going to say. I think it is why the failure of this movie stuck to her so hard. For a movie that was not incredibly expensive and is largely forgotten, but it does feel like Hollywood went like, thanks, you're done. Right. Like, after this. And a lot of it is that I think they were like, we let you do what you want, and this is what you made.

[Chandler Levick]

But I don't know if it doesn't seem like the product of someone who got to do what they wanted either.

[Griffin Newman]

It doesn't.

[Chandler Levick]

Because, like, why do you have to film in Toronto for like 20 of your 25 day shoot.

[Griffin Newman]

Why did it have to be, you know, why did they change the rating thing on Clueless?

[Chandler Levick]

God, that's like one of the greatest films of all time. And it made so much money and culturally sized. Again, why do you have to make Loser if you make Clueless?

[Ben Hosley]

Right?

[Griffin Newman]

I'm mad if someone says to her, hey, no, this can't be R rated. She can't be. Be like the American Pie guys are in it.

[David Sims]

You told me was our have to hire two American Pie people.

[Griffin Newman]

Basically, like, what are you talking about?

[David Sims]

And just like point back there. Like it just doesn't make sense.

[Ben Hosley]

She should have been making winner.

[David Sims]

Okay, Ben, go on. All right. Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

And, and, and would that be popular bakery in Park Slope that has multiple place called Winner, Ben. Like winner, winner, chicken dinner. This is.

[David Sims]

Oh, this is why he's not setting up studio pictures. Give me your pitch on Winner.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay, my pitch is who in American.

[Chandler Levick]

Pie is in it?

[David Sims]

Yeah, you got to pick.

[Ben Hosley]

Stifler's bomb.

[David Sims]

Cool. She's hot. No, she's hot right now.

[Chandler Levick]

She's hot right now.

[David Sims]

She's got the juice.

[Griffin Newman]

Right? Emmy winner and she goes back to.

[Ben Hosley]

School and everyone loves her.

[Griffin Newman]

So far this is just Rodney Datri back to school with Jennifer. But it's kind of a new take.

[David Sims]

It's Melissa McCarthy's wife of the Party, but with Jennifer Cor Coolidge. Which is a better film than which?

[Chandler Levick]

Than Life of the Party. Like better than Life of the Party.

[Griffin Newman]

Probably worse than Back to School.

[David Sims]

Yes, yes.

[Ben Hosley]

And then her roommates are. Are also awful, but they eventually get their comeuppance.

[David Sims]

She has them sent to Guantanamo.

[Ben Hosley]

Exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Ben Hosley]

And they're waterboarded. And you see it and it's an extended.

[Griffin Newman]

It's like 28 minutes.

[David Sims]

Like the ultimate example of a movie that needs to end with these three guys being hit by a truck.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

In order for audiences to walk out.

[Griffin Newman]

Not feel they need some Final Destination Chemical bags. It just sweep across the screen.

[Chandler Levick]

It makes me so sad to think of Amy Heckerling in her like Upper west side apartment, like writing dialogue for these guys at like 4 in the morning. Like handwriting it. Like, why would she even spend her time doing this?

[Griffin Newman]

Well, the two films she makes after Loser, I Could Never Be a Woman and Vamps are both very messy. They're better than this film, in my opinion.

[David Sims]

You put this dead last.

[Griffin Newman]

No, I put this above two other movies I she made.

[David Sims]

I put this above I could never be your woman.

[Griffin Newman]

Really? I Find I could never be your Mormon more interesting. And it has Saoirse Ronin in it and Paul Rudd and Michelle Feifer. This movie has Minu Suvari and Greg Kinnear. Sorry to the sorry.

[David Sims]

I'll say this like, my three favorite actors in the movie are probably the three demons like Zach Orth.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And Jimmy Simpson I always love. And they actually do what they're asked to do in this very well. What they're asked to do is just sort of like following Hitler's orders.

[Griffin Newman]

I liked Colleen Camp is the hobo who answers the phone.

[David Sims]

Ben does turn to me and go, why was that the best performance I've seen In the first 20 minutes of this movie?

[Ben Hosley]

Like the only thing that's popped so far.

[Griffin Newman]

Funny. And even Wright asking for pantyhose. That worked for me.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

He's Taylor Negron.

[David Sims]

Spade.

[Griffin Newman]

There he is. Spade. Brian Backers back again.

[David Sims]

Backers back again. Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Andrea Martin having like one lunch of.

[Griffin Newman]

Dialogue that kind of felt rude to Andrew Martin. The others, I was sort of like, this is part of her ensemble. I mean, Andrea Martin's busy. Show up for this.

[Ben Hosley]

Griffin. David.

[Griffin Newman]

What?

[Ben Hosley]

I have news, Ben.

[David Sims]

What's the news?

[Ben Hosley]

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[David Sims]

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[David Sims]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[David Sims]

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[David Sims]

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[Ben Hosley]

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[David Sims]

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[Ben Hosley]

Thank you. I agree.

[David Sims]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[David Sims]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[David Sims]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[David Sims]

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Now, are we talking hot tub in room? Like. Like kind of comically shaped hot tub Heart. A big. A big martini glass. Is that what you want in room?

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[Ben Hosley]

And what's great about booking.com is it gives you all of these different filters and options when you're searching for a place to stay. Yes. Where you can, you know, say, I would like to have the largest bed.

[David Sims]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[David Sims]

Book today on the site or in the app. I Could Never Be youe Woman has this energy we will talk about next week. But there are elements of that movie, which is so clearly autobiographical in so many ways. There are elements of the movie that feel so ax grindy of specific grudges that she has that it feels uncomfortable to watch and also isn't funny. And I like, I have the same question of, like, why design this movie to put, like, elements that are this unpleasant in it in a way that is like, not just, oh, a scene that's rough to, like, balance out the comedy with some heaviness or whatever, but like a consistent streak of, like, moral morass in this film where the only logic I can apply to it is her being like. You know, there are a lot of teen sex comedies where, like, boys do horrible things and treat it as a joke. Do I want to try to show these people for what they really are? But then that also feels like a spiteful way to make a movie. Do you know what I'm saying? And like, to your point, I'm like, why invest this much energy. Energy doing it? I'm not saying you can't put bad people in a movie, but you cannot overstate how much, like 40% of the runtime of this movie is these guys with people in a way that actually feels like, satanic.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. And. And for. For someone who just proved that, you know, like, young female characters can make like, a shitload of money at the box office.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

And that, like, people are willing to, like people, all kinds of people are to willing. Willing to, like, show up and. And, you know, like, share. Horowitz became a cultural icon.

[David Sims]

She also talks about this, like, there's.

[Griffin Newman]

This battle, you know, the Loser became a cultural. Hey, Mr. Loser.

[David Sims]

The forehead. We also.

[Griffin Newman]

What's his name? What's his name?

[David Sims]

Paul something.

[Chandler Levick]

I don't even know.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm amazed you got Paul.

[David Sims]

The only reason I remember, A, I finished it an hour ago. B, I. I remember that there's a part because Kinir's character's name, Peter. And they go, peter, Paul. And I'm like, that's weird of her.

[Griffin Newman]

His name's Edward.

[David Sims]

So I don't know really. Oh, then I think the joke is that he can't remember what his name is. Okay. That's the only reason I remember.

[Griffin Newman]

Great joke from.

[Chandler Levick]

Kind of reminds me of, like, that you must remember this series on Polly Platt.

[David Sims]

Oh, yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

And how, like, in some ways, Heckerling story is, like, very sad. And the more I hear about it from this podcast, the more I'm like, she had a secret baby with Harold Ramis.

[Griffin Newman]

No, it's true.

[Chandler Levick]

She had to make Loser.

[Griffin Newman]

Karina, honestly, dig in, because I feel like Amy will talk. Right. She's. She's in a sort of retrospect, respective phase of her career anyway.

[Chandler Levick]

But it's like so many ways I feel like film, female filmmakers, like, they're always kind of set up to fail.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

And even when you have a huge success like Clueless, it almost. You get double penalized or something. Like you're a victim of your own success.

[David Sims]

Absolutely.

[Chandler Levick]

You. Even when you build a franchise, like, who's talking? You know, that just makes it so that the cards are stacked more for the next thing you do to be kind of more invalidated.

[David Sims]

Yeah. I mean, it's just there's like, Hillary Weston. Criterion did a great interview with Heckerling. There's the Ringer interview we referenced recently. There was a New York Times profile in 2019. Like, she's done a couple of these sit downs and it's not like she like, minces words. And yet I'm like, in all the very good research that JJ's done, he does keep admitting us. Like, it's. It's hard to pull out stuff on.

[Griffin Newman]

A lot because nobody cares about this movie. So it's like no one's ever really done the like, like, okay, can you explain to me what went on with Loser, apart from like, her agent being like, hey, us.

[David Sims]

I don't know how much of it is, like, the vet scene self protection. Right. Like, survival. And how much of it is, like, the weird lawsuits around look who's Talking and things she can't talk about. But it does feel like, even with us, like, spending months, like, you know, studying her in this way, it's like there are just kind of of like narrative jumps that are inexplicable to me of just like, how does she lose the heat that severely where, like, the look who's talking movies were so big. Right. The first one is ginormous. And yet it was like, such an uphill battle for her to get Clueless made and off of Clueless. It should have been like, you know what? Who are we to question this woman? Right?

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, it's the literal concept of your podcast.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Chandler Levick]

Open up your.

[Griffin Newman]

It should be the blank check. And she got 20 whole million dollars to make it, which is not nothing but.

[Chandler Levick]

But she didn't even get to make it in the city that it's set in.

[David Sims]

And the failure of this movie hit her as if it was Town and Country, as if she had lost $100 million.

[Griffin Newman]

But at the same time, the movie's kind of repetitive. This movie's not very good. And it is. Again, it is. It's her movie. Like she wr Directed it. Like, I mean, there's only. Like I said, there's just not a lot of places for her to hide. And with. Then you could never be your woman. Which is the next movie. Like you say? Yes, it is kind of weird and personal and axe grindy in an indie movie way. It's not a commercial film.

[David Sims]

No, I get it.

[Griffin Newman]

Like it has movie stars in it. So it, you know, people were fooled. We'll talk about the production of that film into putting up money for a movie they thought could be releasable. But it turned out it wasn't.

[David Sims]

Feels like one strike that was processed by the industry as three stars strikes, I guess.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Where they were like, well, you're on a cold streak. And it was like, you made one bad movie.

[Griffin Newman]

She should have made more movies. I think the other thing with Heckerling is she is more an ot so like. Like there's probably like boring projects she could have done that she didn't want to do.

[David Sims]

She talks about that. Yeah, Right. And I think. And I think a lot of the things she really wanted to do, they wouldn't greenlight because they'd say, that doesn't sound like an Amy Heckerling movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. And Right. She was always a little boxed in.

[Chandler Levick]

She kind of reminds me of Amy Sherman Palace Palladino.

[David Sims]

Interesting.

[Chandler Levick]

Kind of like brassy New Yorkers that are in love with like old timey Hollywood things. And they've like managed to funnel that into kind of like personal art that's a little bit off center but like beautiful.

[Griffin Newman]

And I am someone who is obsessed with Amy Sherman Powell.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

I cannot deny Gilmore Girls is obviously the most important TV show of my life or whatever.

[David Sims]

And are you sashaying. What's that show called?

[Griffin Newman]

The whole thing that's so weird about her is she worked on Roseanne, which makes total sense that like, she like vibed on Roseanne. Right. That's where she meets Daniel Palladino. I'm sorry. To do an Amy Sherman Paladin I have to do it.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And then she, you know, she works on other sitcoms that she gets Gilmore Girls, it's a WB show. But obviously she's like an insane otur and you can tell from any interview and every commentary she's ever done. You listen to those commentaries, there's nothing very many. She's a tough customer. She is intense and she must have been. You always hear stories about just how intense she was. And she's writing these 120 page scripts. Gilmore Girls with all the dialogue, right. And the studios are like, this show is so, so insane to make considering that it's a small town comedy. Like, what the fuck? And they fire her off her own show. And the seventh season of Gilmore Girls is insane because she's not writing it. And it's one of the most. It's like Dan Harmon, it's the exact same thing.

[David Sims]

Everything is, fire her because the show can't run with her. And then they kick her off and then it's like it runs even less now. It doesn't work without the crazy person at the center.

[Griffin Newman]

But then what's so weird about her is like, so her whole career she's kind of, you know, churning to stay afloat and then she makes a fucking show about like a Jewish housewife becoming a comedian in the 60s. Wins Emmys and Amazon's like, whatever you want to do for life. It doesn't, I don't care how niche it is, the budget is yours.

[David Sims]

You and your top hat have a blank check.

[Griffin Newman]

Exactly. Like now she's living in luxury. Like, I mean, whatever.

[Chandler Levick]

And that's what Amy Heckerling should have had.

[Griffin Newman]

Amy Heckerling should have. Maybe she was just a little young for prestige tv. Like, maybe she should have gotten.

[David Sims]

I mean she's obviously, she, she's done a lot of TV directing in the time, but post looser, right?

[Griffin Newman]

And she's done some. Like, she worked on Red Oaks.

[David Sims]

She directed a lot of Red Oaks.

[Griffin Newman]

Like she's done like genuine prestige TV show.

[David Sims]

I remember when I was working on the Ticket and I would talk to the Amazon people about the shows they were working on and they were like, in Red Oaks, we're going to our fourth season, third season, whatever the fuck it was, right? And someone said to me, like, you know, people don't know this, but like, Amy, Amy, they were like, Amy Heckerling, like quietly has been directing most of Red Oak. She's like kind of taken over it. It kind of rules. And I'm just like, you guys know this is cool. Why are you not then saying, hey, Amy, do you have a show you want to pitch us? Yeah, like maybe they did. But I'm like, shouldn't that have led to being. Being like.

[Griffin Newman]

Did you ever watch Red Oaks? No, I never watched Red Oaks. Anyone? It's like, it's Heckerling, Hal Hartley and was created by Greg Jacobs, David Gordon Green.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah.

[David Sims]

And Soderbergh, I think also maybe produced it.

[Griffin Newman]

It's like three kind of unbelievable directors, two of whom like Hal Hartley and Heckerling are like these like comedy auteurs.

[David Sims]

And the dude from Submarine who's now become a director in his own right, who did the Phantom of the open or whatever it's called All. Do you know that the kid from Submarine directed the. David, don't give me that look.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I do know that.

[David Sims]

You do know that. You know that. You know that deep in your heart you know that his name is Craig Roberts and he directed Phantom in the open with Mark Rylance which won your potters and warmers award. And you know that. And you can't deny that.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't did it. I haven't seen that movie.

[David Sims]

Really?

[Griffin Newman]

I probably just shouted it out as like a movie Mark Rylance was in.

[David Sims]

You gave putters and murmurs to Rylance and something does.

[Griffin Newman]

He probably puts.

[David Sims]

He definitely.

[Chandler Levick]

Was it like bones and all or something?

[David Sims]

Well, I gave it for Bones and all.

[Griffin Newman]

He's definitely puttering.

[David Sims]

You were against that performance, so you picked a different rlance from that first that same year. But what would it have been?

[Griffin Newman]

I don't know. It's late.

[Chandler Levick]

Look, it was probably the. That horrible movie that. About the disaster that the guy who made anchorman did.

[David Sims]

It wasn't that one. But he does Parlor and murmur in that where he plays like, don't look up weird Bezos. Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

He was kind of funny. And don't look up. I guess here's.

[David Sims]

Here's some Heckerling, like some larger thoughts I've been having trying to get my head around her career. Right. One is the miracle of look who's talking for me is that she figured out such a commercial hook to be able to basically smuggle a personal story into. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

We talked about that extensively.

[David Sims]

Right. And like, that was a thing she kind of didn't figure out how to do again.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, think Ben is right. I think this is Occam's. She's getting too old for this shit. And then she does it. She does a personal story with I could never be your woman, but it's Harder to relate to the plight of a TV showrunner.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Well.

[David Sims]

Well, no, this is this.

[Chandler Levick]

And also, I think people didn't. Didn't studios tell her that Michelle Pfeiffer, like, was too old to be interesting as a viable character?

[Griffin Newman]

The film was not released, which was an issue that really hampered that movie.

[David Sims]

Couldn't get commercial prospect. No one wants a movie about. Yes. No, My. My point here is right.

[Griffin Newman]

What is. What is it that.

[David Sims]

Look who's talking. Was her not making way by teenager. Was her making a movie about a woman ostensibly the same age as her? Sure. And being able to, like, chart what's going on in her life at her moment, but couple it with this high concept hook. I could never be your woman. The hook is, here's how I felt making the TV show of Clueless. And studios were like, why would audiences want to go see.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, studios are also like, where's the Talk 2007?

[David Sims]

Right. Anyway, but, you know, there's, like, no thing. She figured out how to package the story within that made it more, like, palatable to people.

[Chandler Levick]

But I guess losers are trying to do that. Right?

[David Sims]

I guess.

[Chandler Levick]

Jason Biggs is like her Trojan horse. He's like a likable white male that has no flaws.

[Griffin Newman]

And he's a new star, much like Alicia Silverstone was, but also based on her.

[David Sims]

What we've read about her experience at NYU and AFI and her coming up with, like, Stuart Blumberg.

[Griffin Newman]

And I don't think this is based on her life in any way.

[David Sims]

I don't think it's based on her life in incidental. I think it's based on the apartment. But I do feel like the Mina Savari character is kind of based on her.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, that's a good point.

[David Sims]

As. As a personality. May.

[Griffin Newman]

What? Really, as a personality. Minis doesn't really have a personality in.

[David Sims]

This movie, I think. Well, I think Mina Savari's character at least has more detail than the Big's character does, which is such a blank slate. Nice guy.

[Griffin Newman]

Mina Sarn's character. We haven't talked about this. Right. She's like cocktail waitress, bottle service waitress at, like, a strip joint or strip.

[David Sims]

Joint where no one takes their clothes off.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

It's like a fancy, trashy club run.

[Chandler Levick]

By Bobby Slayton with Twink Kaplan is her mentor.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Who is kind of. Kind of serving Twink. Hot.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, she's hot.

[David Sims]

Realize at some point, I mean, it's.

[Griffin Newman]

Not news to me that Twink Kaplan's hot, but, like, she's banging in this.

[Chandler Levick]

Movie I did Misguist. No, more.

[Griffin Newman]

Exactly.

[David Sims]

But I also put together, like, Twink and Mia Sivari kind of look similar.

[Griffin Newman]

Twink Kaplan, Mina Savari's mom.

[David Sims]

They got a similar vibe. Right?

[Chandler Levick]

You're right, sure.

[Griffin Newman]

But the hook of the character. Although things are sort of missing, or context is missing, the two main characters.

[David Sims]

Of the film are both struggling to survive at a very expensive university, surrounded by privileged kids.

[Griffin Newman]

So she's trying to pay her bills. She's committed to commuting home because her mom doesn't approve of her living in sin, essentially. Right. It's not. Her mom certainly doesn't know that she's a cocktail waitress. But the implication is her mom doesn't even know that, like, she would, like, be partying. Right. Because that's what the scene with the hobo is.

[David Sims]

But I think money is also part of the equation.

[Griffin Newman]

But the mom calls being like, would any men come into this women's boarding house? Like, it's like the mom is acting like it's 1963.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay. Right. So she's commuting home. So she's lying about that. So then she decides to get emancipated, which makes no sense because she is an adult.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

How did she get emancipated? She's over 18 years old.

[David Sims]

That's what confused me as I was like, is this character supposed to be, like a 15 year old who went to college early? In which case Kir's criminality has gone through the roof.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it's trying to sort of say, like, she's. She wants to be, like, financially emancipated for her parents so that she can be, like, legally poor and then get financial aid, I guess.

[Chandler Levick]

And Andy Dick is.

[Griffin Newman]

Andy Dick shows up for a scene where he's kind of doing Jamie Lee Curtis and everything everywhere all at once.

[David Sims]

And he also won an Oscar for this.

[Griffin Newman]

You're gonna need some forms.

[David Sims]

You know, he, like, spits on her or some shit. Like, spit on.

[Ben Hosley]

Prune on her.

[David Sims]

Spits a prune.

[Griffin Newman]

It's. And it's one of those things where I'm like, this is too complicated. I don't know what this is.

[David Sims]

Is Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And she's. Then she's got to quit the waitress job. So, like, all of those things are sort of interesting at the same time. She's trying to shack up with Greg Kinnear because she's like, I need somewhere to sleep.

[David Sims]

Right? They are. They have been in a relationship for a while. The key.

[Griffin Newman]

Weird little creep. You know.

[David Sims]

Right. I don't want to get comfortable. Right. I don't want to get domestic.

[Griffin Newman]

All of these are concepts of a character. These are things that would motivate a character.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't see it motivating the actual character on screen. Screen much. Who's basically just kind of like a nice person who's like, yeah, I don't know.

[David Sims]

She's just.

[Chandler Levick]

She just has eyes and fishnets.

[Griffin Newman]

She's got big eyes.

[David Sims]

She's got big ass eyes.

[Griffin Newman]

She does have fishnets. She kinir cannot. She can't breathe near being like. And by the way, you're dressed like a crazy goth.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Chandler Levick]

Everything. He's like, and you're stupid and you're. I'd never want to be with you. Seriously.

[Griffin Newman]

He's so horrible.

[David Sims]

And she says something to the effect of. I know that that's what he says. But, you know, guys don't know what's best for them. And Figgs has the line where he's like, sometimes when people are trying to tell you, or sometimes when people tell you something, they're actually trying to tell you something.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, sort of being like, she's sort of a good.

[David Sims]

This guy's not even hiding that he doesn't have respect for you. And she's just like, I'm going to break him down eventually.

[Chandler Levick]

That was actually a good scene.

[Griffin Newman]

That scene's okay. Because he's kind of. When he's okay. This is the big question I have to throw to you guys, please. Is Jason Biggs any good in this movie? And in general, I.

[David Sims]

In general, I think.

[Chandler Levick]

Great question.

[David Sims]

I. I do like him.

[Chandler Levick]

Is American Pie his best part?

[Griffin Newman]

That's a. It has to blob that question out, too.

[David Sims]

It like, has to.

[Chandler Levick]

I think that's his best performance.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, it's sort of like, where do you fall on American. Sorry. Anything else. Right. Which is such a weird movie.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, I feel like Richie is sort of like the big part in that movie. Right. He's just kind of.

[David Sims]

He was another in that run of. Just like, this guy seems like an obvious Woody Allen analog. And you're like, getting that assignment is almost always a. It's like a.

[Chandler Levick]

For a while, he had kind of like a zany sidekick run, like, in like, Saving Silverman and Boys and Girls.

[Griffin Newman]

But those are bad.

[Chandler Levick]

No, they're really bad.

[Griffin Newman]

Saving Silverman is good.

[David Sims]

Saving Silverman is good.

[Griffin Newman]

Are you sure?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

I remember it being pretty bad.

[Chandler Levick]

Did you get roofied?

[Griffin Newman]

I. I have not seen it since 2001.

[David Sims]

I may need to rewatch it to see if I can back up this statement, but I think it is good. It is Dennis Dugan.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

It is sort of his blank check for making so many successful Sandler movies.

[Griffin Newman]

It's tough when your blank check is saving Silverman.

[David Sims]

Yeah. But it is kind of a movie that is just like unbridled chaos.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. It's kind of crazy. I remember Amanda Pete is really insane in it.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Is.

[Chandler Levick]

What is Jenna Elfman in that?

[Griffin Newman]

It's.

[David Sims]

Amanda Pete is in the role that you probably imagine Jenna Elfman playing.

[Griffin Newman]

Elfman was circled.

[David Sims]

Yes, but Z and Black are really good in it. Arley Ermie, I believe, shits in a mailbox, maybe, or he shits on a lawn.

[Griffin Newman]

She's in it.

[David Sims]

Neil Diamond's in it.

[Griffin Newman]

He's listed.

[Chandler Levick]

I think you're right. I think Biggs had like two modes. He could either be like zany sidekick or like Woody Allen surrogate.

[David Sims]

Well, saving Silverman and he didn't really.

[Chandler Levick]

Fit in either of them.

[David Sims]

See, saving Silverman's a weird one because he is ostensibly the lead and is the romantic lead of that movie. But that is a movie that basically is like. And we don't care about this guy. It's really about the zany sidekicks. So Zahn and Black, who are the zany sidekicks? Kind of just run the movie.

[Chandler Levick]

Do you, do you think that Jason Bakes can carry a movie?

[David Sims]

I. You know, I watched all four American American movies at some point. In Lockdown, you were doing great. I. I was doing horrible. I couldn't have been doing worse. And I do think he's got a pretty steady hand on those things. I think the sequels do not work. And I think, like, the only thing that kind of works is that he is kind of fairly sensitively showing the stages of this guy's life as a real person. Like, he's trying so hard to keep it grounded in some level of like, relatable human behavior. As, like the set pieces of those movies become so convoluted.

[Griffin Newman]

First, second one, he gets hand stuck to dick with glue.

[David Sims]

That's one of the things.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, does. Do other things happen? I don't remember.

[David Sims]

Yeah, but that's the big one.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the big one that happens.

[David Sims]

He jerks off with Crazy glue.

[Griffin Newman]

Remember that?

[David Sims]

Right. In the third one, he.

[Griffin Newman]

He does the craziest thing of all. He gets married.

[David Sims]

The ultimate gross out gang.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't. I think I've seen.

[David Sims]

He shaves his pubes and he throws the pube shavings out the wind and they land on the wedding cake.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yes, I have seen that.

[David Sims]

That's.

[Griffin Newman]

That really seems like a. They don't have anything.

[David Sims]

Okay. Correct. Right.

[Chandler Levick]

What haven't we done, cuz?

[David Sims]

Stifler drinks the cum beer in the first one. Stifler also Jim's grandma in the third one.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh my God.

[David Sims]

They start to become like saw traps. What is the weirdest way that a thing could end up in a place.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, Right. What happens in American Reunion?

[David Sims]

American Reunion is trying to like.

[Griffin Newman]

She's kind of like the big chill. They're all just like sitting around.

[David Sims]

That's the weird thing. American Reunion is trying to be like. We're trying to get back to the original movie, which was a lot like smaller and more like sensitively drawn than people remember.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

But it doesn't quite get there. There's. There's a whole thing with a young babysitter where he is. She. He keeps looking like he's taking advantage of her, but he's not. That's kind of the runner in that movie, which is not super fun. He keeps getting caught in compromising situations that are actually a perception issue. I already barely remember this movie I watched in the last three or four years.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, anyway, I do think we've decided that I guess American Pie has to be his best performance.

[David Sims]

Or is it Loser saving Silverman? No, I think he is miscast in this. I think he's trying his hardest. I don't think he's bad. I think he's missing miscast. And I think the character is just.

[Griffin Newman]

Like not the person you cast. I don't think they. I don't think it's Chris Klein. It doesn't have to be someone in American Pie.

[David Sims]

But I will say this. I think Eddie K. Thomas would have done this better than Jason Biggs would have. No, you're thinking of Thomas. Ian Nichols. Eddie K. Thomas's Finch, who I always thought was the secret MVP of the franchise.

[Griffin Newman]

He's very funny in. In American Pie.

[David Sims]

I think he.

[Griffin Newman]

I remember him in the other ones. The first one.

[David Sims]

Who are you going to say? Chandler?

[Chandler Levick]

Well, okay. Does it have to be someone from confuse this or can it be like.

[Griffin Newman]

No, it can be anybody. Anybody.

[Chandler Levick]

Because my initial thought was Jason Schwarzman.

[Griffin Newman]

So Rush was just two years earlier. So Jason Schwartzman is basically like a. A. A thousand dollar Jason. Right. Like it's like similar vibe.

[Chandler Levick]

Like a Jesse Eisenberg. Like, is it someone who needs to.

[Griffin Newman]

Be more like Roger Dodger is two years later? It's maybe A little early for Eisen.

[David Sims]

But Schwarzman's interesting to me because I'm like sliding door. What if Schwarzman is in Loser rather than Slackers?

[Griffin Newman]

Sure, that's it. And Slackers is tough.

[David Sims]

And Slackers is similarly like being like, we're ready to feed this guy into the studio comedy system.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, or Joseph Gordon Levit. That would have been good.

[Griffin Newman]

Levit wouldn't have been done it. He was kind of doing that thing. Nerd.

[David Sims]

Schwarzman does feel like the best.

[Griffin Newman]

Schwarman's interesting.

[David Sims]

The question is, would they have green lit it with him?

[Chandler Levick]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm trying to think like, who, who, who's like a TV star? Like a Topher Grace, but not Topher Grace. You know what I mean?

[Chandler Levick]

Like, because you got the third rock from the sun and you got the heat off 10 things. I hate about you that 10 things.

[Griffin Newman]

Heat.

[David Sims]

But Topher would have been better than Biggs too.

[Griffin Newman]

Topher would have been better.

[David Sims]

Topher hadn't made the jumper.

[Griffin Newman]

Biggs unfortunately is taking a beating here because I think pretty much anyone is maybe better than Biggs, but he's not like horrible.

[Chandler Levick]

I mean, he's better than Chris. Chris Clyde, though. He's better than Chris Klein of the American Pie people. He's probably.

[David Sims]

I'm gonna put forward Eddie K. Thomas.

[Griffin Newman]

I, I. What did Eddie K. Thomas end up doing?

[David Sims]

This is what we were talking about last night, we don't know, is that Thomas Ian Nichols had a bigger child career before American Pie. Right. He was probably the most established going into that movie. And he talks about how that movie was designed to be him as the lead. And everyone else started popping that in the edit.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

It got miscalibrated, which is why those characters are boring. Because they're meant to just be like the center characters who don't really have that much conflict.

[Chandler Levick]

He does get to get that book out of the library that teaches him how to have sex.

[David Sims]

But that's the whole point though. It's like he gets the book cuz he's supposed to be the guy. Yeah, he gets the book of love. Eddie K. Thomas did a TV show.

[Griffin Newman]

He's doing a lot of stuff. I mean, he was on Scorpion. Remember Scorpion?

[David Sims]

Of course. We all remember Scorpion.

[Griffin Newman]

He was the third lead.

[David Sims]

Don't get stung.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, what about Ethan Embry?

[David Sims]

Embry.

[Griffin Newman]

I love Ethan Embry.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, two hunky.

[David Sims]

No, I don't think he's kind of dorky, but I think any of these also require her taking another pass at the script, like casting the right person. And then tailoring the part a little more to that guy. I also think. Here's my bigger question question. Why is this movie not basically told from her perspective?

[Griffin Newman]

Why is she certainly a more dynamic.

[David Sims]

In this character, period? And if you're going to retell the apartment, many would argue a perfect movie. Right. Isn't like, part of the reason to try to do a riff on it or something interesting?

[Chandler Levick]

Because that's a much more interesting movie. Like a girl that, like, can't. Has to commute, can't afford to be at school.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Is like sleeping with the guys so she doesn't have to sleep at the train station, basically. He's horrible.

[David Sims]

This Big's comic.

[Griffin Newman]

All of this feels more like an indie movie, though.

[Chandler Levick]

Give a nice guy a chance for once.

[Griffin Newman]

Right? Give the nice guy a chance. He's got the hat. Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

You'll fix it with a different hat soon enough.

[David Sims]

But we said this, that the next two movies she makes are indie movies. And they both clearly have the problem of her only knowing how to make things in a studio mode where they're. You feel like she didn't have enough approximations of a studio studio movie. Like she didn't know how to throttle into a different kind of.

[Chandler Levick]

I think she's like. Because she sort of caught between two places. Like, you know, they. She sort of is on the mode to becoming like. She kind of could have the career of Penny Marshall.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Chandler Levick]

But she has the sensibility of like, Elaine May.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

So she like, doesn't fit in the studio filmmaker box because she's gonna, like, fight and make her own choices that are weird.

[David Sims]

And Elaine May was so antagonistic towards the studio and was like, fuck em. I don't care. Right. If they don't want me making things my way, then I won't make movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Where she could also get, you know, Warren.

[David Sims]

Be the biggest stars in Hollywood. Heckerling wanted to play ball more. I think Heckerling liked trying to figure out how do I concede just enough. For example, perhaps I never shoot in the city where my movie is. Almost every film I've made is shot in a fake place outside of her two California high school movies and European vacation.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, you're right. Shot in Europe, sure.

[David Sims]

But, like, what's the balance? Right. I want to try to get these big things, these things made at these big companies.

[Griffin Newman]

Make something commercial that people watch.

[David Sims]

I also think there is this thing and all these, like, quotes we read of her of her talking about her, like, innate status as a pessimist and someone who has this very cynical outlook on the world and that she likes when she gets to make movies about positive characters. And she feels like she can find this kind of balance in a Spicoli or Cher Horowitz or whatever it is. And probably her creating those characters coming from a cynical person helps prevent them from feeling too silly. She finds some grounding for them. But I feel like this. I could never be your woman and European vacation all of the same thing where it's like. It feels like the dark darkness took over. And they are movies that are all just sort of like, I hate everybody. I think everyone is stupid and insincere and a piece of. Right. Like, these movies all have this very, like, defensive worldview.

[Griffin Newman]

And then when you hear things like the. Oh, yeah, we took out this, like, further degradation scene.

[David Sims]

Right?

[Griffin Newman]

You're like, we already got that. The characters are bad. But she's like, I want to hammer that home. Doesn't suggest to me a nuanced outlook.

[David Sims]

No, but it's odd. She, like, needs to find that tension in her subject, too.

[Griffin Newman]

Nice. He's got to do one mean thing.

[David Sims]

The loser.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

He changes their medication for Ginko Pills.

[Griffin Newman]

But that's, like, incredibly nice.

[Chandler Levick]

I know. I'm just kidding.

[Ben Hosley]

He forges a note from Kinir's character, right?

[David Sims]

He, like, does Kir's character favors, basically. I know he's doing it to make her feel better. He likes the girl, but he's also helping this guy.

[Griffin Newman]

And then when Kinnear's like, I'll give you an A on the paper, he won't take the A, which is in character for him. He wouldn't want to.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

But even then, you're just like, jesus, this guy is so fucking holy.

[David Sims]

Can we say that? Aykroyd, I do think, is very good in this movie, only has two scenes. He's in the very beginning, and I was like, I'm so excited for this movie to check in with Ackroyd every 20 minutes.

[Griffin Newman]

It checks it with him once.

[David Sims]

A phone call at the end that she already. But I just kind of a crucial.

[Griffin Newman]

Moment, I guess, for her realizing Biggs ain't so bad.

[David Sims]

It just made me remember how much I always kind of love character actor Aykroyd.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. No, this was a good era for Aykroyd because this is the gross playing era, where, yeah, he's a very reliable two, three scenes.

[David Sims]

I also. I take a look at him because it's very easy to make fun of Dan Ackroyd. And then I'VE seen lists be like, why does Griffin hate Dan Aykroyd so much? And I'm like, I love Dan Aykroyd. Dan Aykroyd means so much to me. It is so easy to make fun of all of the various weird things about him.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't think Dan Aykroyd would even be like, he knows he's. No.

[David Sims]

When we did our Ghostbusters commentary, people were, like, getting defensive and accurate, as if I was, like, not giving him enough credit. But even like, you and I talked about it when we saw Frozen Empire, and you're like, there are, like, a couple scenes in the middle of that where Ackroyd makes you feel like it's a real movie movie.

[Griffin Newman]

I like that movie.

[David Sims]

Just because you're like, this guy cares about Ghostbusters so much.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a good movie.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I just like it. Him and this Ghostbusters, Frozen Empire. Speak on this. You probably.

[David Sims]

Have you seen.

[Chandler Levick]

I haven't seen it.

[David Sims]

It's a kind of fun garbage.

[Griffin Newman]

It's kind of good.

[Chandler Levick]

I like Carrie Coon, though. Glad she's in the Ghostbusters.

[David Sims]

I will say this. I'm glad she's in the Ghostbusters franchise.

[Griffin Newman]

Fuego in that first one.

[David Sims]

Yes. Here's what she does in Ghostbusters, Frozen Empire folds laundry.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. She's kind of out of the action.

[David Sims]

He goes, guys, come on, On.

[Griffin Newman]

Can I tell you that this film got one award nomination in total?

[David Sims]

Was it the Teen Choice Awards?

[Griffin Newman]

It was a Teen Choice Award nomination. Okay, but what was it for?

[Chandler Levick]

Best wig?

[David Sims]

Best song.

[Griffin Newman]

That both would. Best wig would be an outrage. Best Song actually does make sense. No, it was nominated in one of my favorite categories. Wipeout Scene of the Summer. You got to love the T. Joyce Awards. Which scene? Well, I'm assuming it doesn't say, but I'm assuming it's.

[David Sims]

Oh. Oh, the literal wipeout.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Taking a head down the stairs or whatever. Did it win? No, it did not.

[David Sims]

What did it lose to in the year?

[Griffin Newman]

Let me tell you the other nominees, and we're gonna just have to figure out what the Wipeouts. Wait, no.

[Ben Hosley]

Griffin, do you want to guess?

[David Sims]

Well, I'm trying to think, because Blue Crush was 2001, not Blue Crush. Right. I'm saying it wouldn't have qualified Blue Crusher film.

[Griffin Newman]

That is shouted out in Chandler's film, I believe. Oh, yeah, I remember.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Because Chandler's film, really? Really. It's like 2001. 2000. Right. It's like, you're right there.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. Loser could have been one of these.

[Griffin Newman]

Loser is one of these movies.

[David Sims]

If you're. If you're a blank check lister and you have watched I like movies.

[Griffin Newman]

If you want to see a movie about Griffin Newman.

[David Sims]

Well, yeah. There's a reason I like this film a lot.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Cuz it indicts me in the way that all movies should. But also I'm just like just filled with catnip for people with our kinds of brains and grew up in. In lovely film culture.

[Chandler Levick]

That's very sweet.

[Griffin Newman]

The feeling of a video store at that time as well. Anyway, but not Blue Crush. One is a. Another. There's another. I'm not going to get to the winner. Yeah, there's another out andout. Big broad comedy was a huge hit.

[David Sims]

Unlike Loser in the year 2000. The Nutty professor to the clumps.

[Griffin Newman]

You're so close.

[David Sims]

I'm so close. Is it a two?

[Griffin Newman]

No, but it's a. A popular black comedian dresses as a woman movie.

[David Sims]

Big Mama's House.

[Griffin Newman]

The other is an action movie.

[David Sims]

A Nights 2.

[Griffin Newman]

No, a full on serious action movie.

[David Sims]

It's full on serious action from the year two. It's not the perfect Storm. That's a pretty big wipeout.

[Griffin Newman]

That would be funny if they were like Bigs falling down the stairs and then it's like Clooney being like this is it.

[Chandler Levick]

It's like a wave demolishes or like Pearl Harbor.

[David Sims]

Fitzlow.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not those two films. It is a film that the sequel is in the theater theaters right now.

[David Sims]

It's a film where the sequel is in theaters. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean the many parts.

[David Sims]

Is it Mission Impossible 2?

[Griffin Newman]

Mission Impossible 2? I. I don't know what the wipeout is. Yeah, it's not telling me.

[Chandler Levick]

These are kind of adult movies for the Teen Choice awards.

[Griffin Newman]

Good point.

[Chandler Levick]

Well, the winner watching Big Mama's House.

[Griffin Newman]

Speaking of R rated comedies. The winner is an R rated comedy that was not as big a hit as I think they wanted it to be. Was still a bigger hit than Loser.

[David Sims]

Okay. There's an R rated comedy. Comedy. It's bigger hit than Loser. Perhaps was a little disappointed. Was it me, myself and Irene.

[Griffin Newman]

There you go.

[David Sims]

There we go.

[Chandler Levick]

I knew.

[Griffin Newman]

You get it right from that.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Now again, I don't remember the wipeouts in that movie.

[David Sims]

I don't either. There's a part where he throws himself down a hill which I have to.

[Griffin Newman]

Something Carrie would do.

[David Sims]

That movie is not my cup of tea.

[Griffin Newman]

That movie is awful.

[David Sims]

I am. You know, I really try to be a fairly Brothers apologist. And there are a lot of them I can't even make a apologies for. That movie makes me like uncomfortable.

[Griffin Newman]

It does.

[David Sims]

It makes me incredibly like.

[Griffin Newman]

Nasty movie.

[Ben Hosley]

What's the premise again?

[Griffin Newman]

It's. Jim Perry is a cop, a nice.

[David Sims]

Guy, one of the most cucked men in America. Basically the premise is that this guy's been cucked so long and so hard and has suppressed all of his rage and just goes like, well, okay.

[Griffin Newman]

He has three giant black sons because his wife kept cheating on him with Tony Cox. So it's Anthony Anderson. And I can't remember who else I remember.

[David Sims]

The Jensen Miller might be one of the things.

[Griffin Newman]

There is a very funny scene I remember where he loves his kids, which I do like. Like he just. He's a very loving father. Giant boys good in it where they're all watching Chris Rock and Jim Carrey goes, this is what funny?

[David Sims]

But he says it like, this is one funny. He's this really nice guy who everyone pushes over and he basically experiences psychotic break and this split personality takes over. Who's his bad side?

[Griffin Newman]

Who's evil, right?

[David Sims]

And he's got a.

[Griffin Newman]

He kind of switches between.

[David Sims]

Zellweger is a witness in a crime and he's. Or she's out on bail. Whatever.

[Ben Hosley]

Fuck, I'm sorry I asked.

[David Sims]

He's got to bring her back. It's a road trip movie and he's switching between the two guys.

[Griffin Newman]

But it's like a nasty R rated movie. Like it's like them going for another. There's something about Mary, but it's very like acidic and mean.

[David Sims]

Gerard Mixon, who's weensy and old school cool. That's who I was thinking of.

[Griffin Newman]

I just remember the only other scene is when he's staring at a boy drinking a milkshake and he switches into the evil mode and he goes, what are you looking at? And the boy drops the milkshake. Seared in my brain.

[David Sims]

There's also a scene where he sees a. A woman nursing a baby. And then Rene Zauger like walks out and goes like, what? And then it cuts and he's there sucking on her breast. It's like, this is the. The movie is like, really?

[Griffin Newman]

That's the kind of thing where I'm like, that can't have been in like a studio comedy. But yes, it was.

[Chandler Levick]

But that's also the kind of domain that Heckerling's trying to play in. Like she. She has to be part.

[David Sims]

But that feels like. Well, we're just talking about the American Pie sequel thing where the Fairley brothers are just like, fuck, how do we top ourselves? Right? Like we just made something about Mary and we had the zipper and we had the hair gel and we had the dog. Like we had these moments that people couldn't stop talking about. And there are these moments in that movie that are so over overly conceived but also like aren't funny and make you feel sick.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Loser. I was gonna say the reason I guessed it was a Teen Choice Award nominee is I feel like the Teen Choice Awards would often nominate movies that came out that same summer.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. It was like arrange with the studios.

[David Sims]

But also clear that they were like nominating from the trailer.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And being like, we hope that by the time the ceremony happens, this movie will have been a hit.

[Griffin Newman]

And they're watching the trailer. Like, I guess there's a choice Wipeout. I don't know. I mean, Choice Wipeout must have been one of those things where they were like, we need categories. Jennifer Love Hewitt has to introduce her new show. What can she present? Get me some Wipeouts.

[David Sims]

Time of my life.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

The film made 8, $15 million domestically.

[David Sims]

Not great.

[Griffin Newman]

Got negative reviews.

[David Sims]

Came out in July.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Came out in late July. July 21st.

[David Sims]

Give it a pretty. Pretty trying.

[Griffin Newman]

Not a bad slot.

[Ben Hosley]

Wait, are we. We're done talking about the movie?

[Griffin Newman]

No, not necessarily. What do you want to say about the movie?

[Ben Hosley]

I'm just, I'm checking in. I mean, I'm fine with it.

[David Sims]

Here's the thing I want to say.

[Griffin Newman]

It just seemed like you were.

[Ben Hosley]

You were like, you know, getting off the. The highway.

[David Sims]

There are a couple things I want to say. Thank you for reminding me, Ben.

[Griffin Newman]

Jesus, Ben, we were almost off the highway.

[David Sims]

Get back with you, David. Get back on the. Rerouting any movie that has people being nice to animals Ben loves, Right?

[Chandler Levick]

Yes, true. That's so nice.

[David Sims]

We're watching this together. They set up this insane conceit, right? What you think is going to be the apartment esque thing of like, how does this guy have a room that has some value? It's like these three guys fuck with him so hard and then they want him kicked out of their room. So they bring him to like the dorm.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, he gets like the only room available, which is, I guess, I think it's supposed to be like the room a vet student would get. I guess it's in an animal hospital.

[David Sims]

I'm watching this knowing it's riffing on the apartment and I go, oh, this is a pretty smart way to justify why a Character has a solo room, right? These guys with him. And he smartly goes like, I'll own it. I'll say that the things they're accusing me of doing are true. So I can get out of here and these guys can be gone from the movie, right? And I think he's just going to get a small solo room that everyone's going to take advantage of. Instead, they put him in a room in the back of a vet's office that is fully operational. Operational.

[Griffin Newman]

Not only operational, they're like. And you have to, like, give the dogs medicine.

[Ben Hosley]

There's cages in his room.

[Chandler Levick]

He becomes, like a full veterinarian by the end of the movie. He knows how to, like, remove a membrane from a newborn kid, right?

[Griffin Newman]

That he, like, knows how. And he's like, no, that's like, Sally, she needs her pills or what? You know, like there's like a snake or whatever.

[Chandler Levick]

There's not even any other vets working there. By the end of the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Make a lot.

[Chandler Levick]

When he is operating the whole clinic.

[David Sims]

When he first walks in there, it's like animal hospital. And there's like a thousand things happening. And then every other time, for the rest of the movie, the place is empty.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a.

[Chandler Levick]

You got this, right? Just like 20 cats and dogs that live here.

[David Sims]

They're giving him the walk through. And Ben goes, oh, what the. And I go, what? What just happened, Ben? And he goes, they're just in the background of the shot, you see someone doing surgery on a hat and their hands are all beautiful bloody.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And Ben's like. Like, wriggling in his chair. And he's like, I can't watch this.

[Griffin Newman]

Right? It's like he's watching, like, eye surgery or something.

[David Sims]

He's freaking out and he's basically like, if this keeps happening and they don't justify it, it doesn't pay off in some way. I'm going to be so against this movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

And then I see him pick up the cat. I'm like, ben, what if he adopts the cat? What if he becomes a nice cat dad? That would start to win you over. And Ben's sort of smiling and you're like, what they decided instead is he becomes the best cat Doula.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, he's right. He's good with animals, but he doesn't really adopt one.

[David Sims]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

But I think it's a thing, too, that Mina Savari likes having all those kittens around.

[David Sims]

She does. But also she's not adopting them. She's just sort of like, how Are they doing.

[Chandler Levick]

She doesn't have a home, so, yeah, she can't bring one to Greg Kinnear. This already.

[Griffin Newman]

I just had this moment where I said to my wife, like. And I was like. Where I was like, I hate that I have to say this out loud. Loud. But I don't think this would happen. But I just. Like, there was just a thought of me where I was like, I had to express, like, this isn't a thing that would happen.

[David Sims]

No. And there was like, a certain kind of, like.

[Griffin Newman]

Such a spoil sport.

[David Sims]

Yes. There's a certain kind of, like, 80s New York. Like, when I first moved here, I paid $40 a month and I slept in a cot in the back of a vet's office.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. I had to sleep like a bat.

[David Sims]

I do not believe. To the ceiling that NYU says, you know where we can put you?

[Griffin Newman]

90S NYU, right?

[David Sims]

That just doesn't fucking happen. And what I believe even, even less is that the three demons come up behind him and they're like, hey, so.

[Griffin Newman]

Good point.

[David Sims]

Run of luck. I don't know if you heard, but one guy died in our dorm of alcohol poisoning. He had a hemorrhage, I think they say.

[Griffin Newman]

They say he fell into a coma. But then there's a joke that he jumped out of a window. And Jimmy Simpson's like, yeah, he fell into a como.

[David Sims]

Simpson's good.

[Griffin Newman]

Jim Sim's funny.

[David Sims]

Yeah. And so he's your guy, Chan.

[Chandler Levick]

I love him.

[Griffin Newman]

Said he was your guy.

[Chandler Levick]

I love him.

[David Sims]

He rules.

[Chandler Levick]

I love him in Zodiac.

[David Sims]

So good in Zodiac. Debs. He's good in Debs. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Debs.

[David Sims]

We never talk about Debs. Let's talk about. But he. These guys are like, we can't party in our dorm anymore because of this inconvenient death.

[Griffin Newman]

Right?

[David Sims]

So they convince Jason and Bigs to let them throw parties in an active vet.

[Griffin Newman]

Doesn't make any sense that they would.

[David Sims]

Want to a. I'm just like, he would never talk to these guys ever again. Sadowski's like, well, we didn't tell you. This was all. We were all in on this together. We thought you knew. This is so we could have more party space. By the way, we're hanging up lights and you're like, you know, like. Like, animals have to be operated on here in a daily basis. And then he just has to clean all of it up. And then that's where Mina Safari starts living with him. It's so bizarre.

[Griffin Newman]

This movie is 95 minutes long.

[David Sims]

Give him a room.

[Griffin Newman]

I realize that's Describing it makes it sound like the sorrow and the pity. Like, it's like it's got a lot of stuff happening.

[David Sims]

It does, it does.

[Chandler Levick]

And yet does it.

[Griffin Newman]

It lacks connective tissue. So the stuff kind of just happens one after the other. And yes, you let. And then, as we reference it ends with like. And then Biggs and Suvari got together and you're like, okay, what happened to everyone else? They're like, oh, Kinir went to jail. Three guys. Don't worry, they're all fucked up. You know, like, it tries to, like, do jokey Legally Blonde style, like post credits.

[David Sims]

The awful fates befell all of them.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

And then it has. It ends on a horrible joke about Mia Savari no longer needs to sell her eggs. Oh, yeah, she's saving them for Paul, right?

[Griffin Newman]

He is. Dibs.

[David Sims]

They're all Paul. Jesus.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, Jesus. A little bit.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

This is a little bit of an oh, Jesus.

[David Sims]

Ben.

[Ben Hosley]

What's up, man?

[David Sims]

You're getting into fashion all the time.

[Ben Hosley]

Yep.

[David Sims]

You know me.

[Ben Hosley]

It's been for years.

[David Sims]

For years you've been getting in. Yes, Media res. I'm not big on trends, as you know. I'm big on clothes that feel good and last.

[Ben Hosley]

Right. You're about comfort.

[David Sims]

I'm about comfort. And I'm about ease. And that's why I keep going back to quints. Their lightweight layers and high quality staples have become my everyday essentials. They make me feel like a grown up, Ben. Dressing like a grown up. I'm dressing like a grown up man. You know what I'm saying?

[Ben Hosley]

Yep.

[David Sims]

Ding dong.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay, hold on, Creek.

[David Sims]

Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle.

[Ben Hosley]

You seem to be shaking something in your hand.

[David Sims]

Hey, what's going on here?

[Griffin Newman]

What is this place? Who?

[Ben Hosley]

I'm sorry? Who? Who. Who are you?

[David Sims]

Baby Mikey.

[Ben Hosley]

Baby Mikey.

[David Sims]

Look who's talking.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, sure.

[Ben Hosley]

Hey, what's up, baby?

[David Sims]

Mike, you're.

[Ben Hosley]

It's a little weird because your mouth isn't moving.

[David Sims]

That's not what I do.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay.

[David Sims]

That's not really the style.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay.

[David Sims]

Yeah. I just like, say the things the babies are thinking, you know?

[Ben Hosley]

Sure, sure, sure.

[David Sims]

But I don't really say them out loud. I convey them, I guess via aura.

[Ben Hosley]

I'm hearing you. So. Yeah. Come on in.

[David Sims]

Look who's listening.

[Ben Hosley]

Hey. Hey, Ben.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

What are you here for?

[David Sims]

Well, when I grow up, I want to dress like a man.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, right. Well, there's this great service. Quint. We're actually in the middle of doing a ad read for them.

[David Sims]

What a Quinn's giving.

[Ben Hosley]

They have all the things that you would want to wear this summer. And I guess something for you little baby to aspire.

[David Sims]

Aspire to in summer's future. Now you. You say all the things. Let me do a little test here to see if they have exactly what I want. Okay, you tell me. They sell Italian swim trunks in various colors. Yes. Men's recycled polyester stretch tech blazers.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Okay, but I'm gonna stump you on this one. There is zero chance that Quint sells 100% European linen relaxed long sleeve shirts.

[Ben Hosley]

You are gonna be in for a great surprise. Surprised they do.

[David Sims]

They don't sell them in chambray stripe and two xl, do they?

[Ben Hosley]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Well, that's the thing to aspire to.

[Griffin Newman]

Hey.

[David Sims]

What? Do you mind passing the milk?

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

Here you go, baby. Sounds.

[Ben Hosley]

The best part about quints is everything that they make is half the cost of similar brands.

[David Sims]

Oh, that's great. And let me. Let me guess. They work directly with top artisans and cut out the middle. Middleman. So Quince gives you luxury prices without the markups.

[Ben Hosley]

How did you guess that?

[David Sims]

I got a sort of sixth sense for these things.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, you seem like you got maybe a sense for business.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, I am the child of an accountant. Listen, Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. Even I know that. And I'm a baby. Hey, Ben.

[Ben Hosley]

What's up, Mikey?

[David Sims]

Gaga Goo Goo? I happen to notice you're looking for pretty fly today.

[Ben Hosley]

Thank you, man. Yeah, I gotta say, I've been wearing Quint a lot lately. I really love their stuff. It was really nice to just like, get a bunch of new, fresh stuff for the warmer season.

[David Sims]

Well, tell me about those new fits you're throwing, Ben.

[Ben Hosley]

Right now I'm rocking the Men's ultimate commuter seven inch short. So, yeah, I'm showing a lot of gams, as you can see. But I just. I feel comfortable. And I just think that they're really flattering. And, you know, I like to show leg. What can I say?

[David Sims]

Hey, man, I'd show them if I had them. My legs are like 3 inches total.

[Ben Hosley]

You'll get there someday.

[David Sims]

I'm a baby.

[Ben Hosley]

You'll get there someday, baby.

[David Sims]

I might have the streetwise savoir fair of an adult man. But let's remember, I am a baby.

[Ben Hosley]

And I got to tell you, to like with this polo that I'm wearing from them.

[David Sims]

Yeah, it just.

[Ben Hosley]

It feels like luxury quality, but it's just not breaking the bank.

[David Sims]

These are clothes you're not going to want to feed to Mr. Toilet Man. Let's put it that way.

[Ben Hosley]

That is exactly, exactly the way I would describe how I feel about quints.

[David Sims]

Can't think of a better way to put it. Hey, Mikey, this is Griffin again. Do you mind if I just close out the ad with a quick call to action? Basically, we're telling our listeners to stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from quince. Go to quince.com/check for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's full year. That's quince.com/check. Quincom/check to get free shipping, 365 day returns. Quince.com/check. Hey, one more thing over here.

[Ben Hosley]

What's up, Mikey?

[David Sims]

I got something I need you to order from me.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep.

[David Sims]

A free fresh diaper.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, no, I'm sorry.

[David Sims]

I'm still a baby Chandler. We've, we've been talking about how it is a kind of a forgotten thing that the 90s and the early 2000s were quietly a better time for female directors in the studio system.

[Chandler Levick]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Than now or basically any other other era. It was not a great time, but there was this odd wave of like 10 female directors who would get to make. There were more comedies with a list comedians and like launch careers and got healthy budgets. And you had like Tamara Davis and Betty Thomas and Amy Heckerling and Nora Efron. Efron Efron and like Myers kicking off. But even like Martha Coolidge still doing.

[Chandler Levick]

Like all Penny Marshall.

[David Sims]

Penny Marshall was, I mean, as you said, is the example of like, was able to level up, was able to like have her high concept movie that got an Oscar nomination that let her make more serious films and everything.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, I think snl, like, especially there, that was like a great breeding ground for a lot of female filmmakers.

[David Sims]

Well, Tamara Davis basically made this thing. Penelope Spheres, obviously the big one. But a lot of those, like SNL comedy pipeline people, those movies were made by women. And Tamara Davis, like had this thing where it's like, oh, she's known at helping comedians establish their movie star Persona in the transition from TV to film. And she's making like CB4 and Billy Madison. And it's like these are the people who like get to, you know. And in a lot of these cases, I feel like, what was it? Well, she makes Crossroads.

[Griffin Newman]

She made Crossroads. She made Half Baked, let's not forget.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah, she made Half Baked.

[David Sims]

It's also the same thing. It's them being like, can you figure out how to make.

[Griffin Newman]

Here's some comedians who were kind of Right. Known and made a masterpiece. I mean, it's pretty good.

[David Sims]

It did feel like what would often happen was when those people swung and were like, I want to make something a little more dramatic. They were like, your career is kind of over now. Right. Like Betty Thomas makes 28 days. And they're like, no one wanted to see your drunk Sandra Bullock movie. If you want to work again, you have to make the squeakle. Like all those people kind of just had their careers like taper off. But they did have, have like 15 year runs of getting to make.

[Griffin Newman]

Mimi Leader is the biggest example too.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Like Mimi Leader is like a, a huge enough filmmaker or TV person. Right. That she gets the two big action movies and they both do okay.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

But Deep Impact just underperforming, I guess compared to Armageddon was a big hit.

[David Sims]

Was Armageddon outgrossed and then she makes.

[Griffin Newman]

Pay it Forward, which is the same thing of like, okay, I'm going to make a serious drama now. To be fair, if Forward is bad, but then it is just kind of like. Right. Like you're saying strike 1, 2 and 3 all just happened to you.

[David Sims]

It all happened. I, I do think if a female director makes a mistake, it is three strikes and more.

[Griffin Newman]

Karen Kusama is another one. Obviously.

[David Sims]

I mean we were talking, we were talking about like the, the sort of like last eight years. Like the future of film is female. Look at these women making big movies again. Most of the examples are people who were actresses first.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And their careers kind of like hit a wall after two.

[Chandler Levick]

You mean like like Elizabeth Banks and.

[Griffin Newman]

Olivia Wilder hall or. Yeah, sure, yeah.

[David Sims]

I mean Maggie Gyllenhaal is getting to make a big movie now, but already there's so much hand wringing of like, why did they give her money to make this?

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. It's also like those $20 million studio comedies just do not exist anymore.

[Griffin Newman]

That's what it is. There were more movies. There was. Right. There was, there was more of a middle ground movie that you could make. And so. Right. There was more space to make a comic comedy or a half baked.

[David Sims]

I also think there's like a really insipid thing going on, which is for a while it was like, well, we don't make low or mid budget movies anymore. We're only making 200 million dollar movies. We can't hire women to direct those because they don't have experience making movies like this. Then there started being pushed Back to that, they started hiring very selectively, sure and infrequently women to make those movies. And then when they wouldn't work, they'd be like, well, that's why you can't hire women to direct correct these things. And it's like you set up this person to fail and it's like.

[Chandler Levick]

Because it's like the Nomad land to totally whatever that. What was the Eternals pipeline, where it's like, wow, she got to choose an actual sky. She's a realtor in the Marvel universe.

[David Sims]

Natural Light on our Reddit recently called out. They were re listening to our Wonder Woman 1984 episode. And I said, thank you. There is something kind of encouraging about the fact that this movie is hated and yet Patty Jenkins has three big movies set up and it feels like no one's holding it against her as like a career ruiner. And yet we are now, five years later, all three of those movies are dead.

[Griffin Newman]

She did.

[David Sims]

She has nothing new set up.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. I mean, she did make the mistake, of course, of trying to make a Star wars movie, the hardest kind of movie to make.

[David Sims]

Now look, I'll say this.

[Griffin Newman]

If you don't, the Cleopatra movie, which is also historically the hardest kind of.

[Chandler Levick]

Movie that movie's never gonna get.

[David Sims]

The goal is to never direct a film.

[Griffin Newman]

A Star Wars Cleopatra.

[David Sims]

Yes. If directing a movie sounds like a nightmare, please go in and meet on Cleopatra and Untitled Star Wars.

[Griffin Newman]

What's the third thing she was attached to?

[David Sims]

Wonder Woman 3.

[Griffin Newman]

That's coming, right? Very soon. I see it on the horizon.

[David Sims]

What were you gonna say, Chandler?

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, I was gonna ask about Netflix and like streaming services and if kind of like a loser loser would now just be like a Netflix original or like straight to Tubi.

[Griffin Newman]

Like you're talking.

[David Sims]

I do think that is the of like a lot of YA movies or like sort of low budget streaming comedies.

[Griffin Newman]

Kiernan Shifka, America's most like working, hardest working actress. She's everything. She had some age. I haven't watched it yet. What was it called? I'm looking up Sweethearts. That's like some rom com. I haven't seen it yet. Where Shit's Hair, her and Some guy. There you go.

[Chandler Levick]

That movie with Caitlyn Dieffer and Book Smart. There you go.

[David Sims]

Oh, there we go.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay. And it was directed by a woman. Written and directed by a woman.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

I haven't seen it.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

A couple people have sort of said to me like, hey, that movie was kind of fun. And I'm like, oh, well, when did it come out? They're like straight to Max, you know, at Thanksgiving last year. They all just go straight to Max now or straight to Hulu or straight to. You know.

[David Sims]

And a lot of them get a little lost. Get a little lost. Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. It's not like you're become like a tentpole studio comedy director and you work with, like, the comedian comedians of, like, your generation. No, you kind of like. It's like fifth build on Stranger Things, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Who is.

[Chandler Levick]

You get the eight generation.

[David Sims]

Who is the comedian of our generation?

[Griffin Newman]

Like, who are the comedians who are not getting that?

[David Sims]

We were talking about this the other.

[Griffin Newman]

Day, I guess, like brigads.

[David Sims]

He's like, he's got a Sony movie set up with a good supporting cast, and we're all sort of like, is that it? You figure it out. And he did this interview where he's like, I might, like, if I can make movies work, I might, like, wind down on Stand up and start moving over to movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Although he's also like, I'm gonna have a theme park.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

I guess Apatow is doing it.

[Griffin Newman]

He was doing it.

[Chandler Levick]

He was like his own pipeline. He was like train wreck king of Staten Island.

[David Sims]

But he basically. He had built the, like, Apatow industrial complex, which I talk about so much, basically was like a proto comedy version of the MCU thing where he would, like, test supporting actors out in movies to, like, see the idea of them being the lead. The next thing totally where you were like, introducing in each movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Did you enjoy seth Rogen in 40 year old?

[David Sims]

You're going to be the next waves of people. And then he just, like, slowed way down, started doing more tv.

[Chandler Levick]

One of his great movies. Zero women in that universe. Like, in terms of directing, like, it's like Paul Feig, Nick Stoller, whatever. Other guys. I mean, he made. Made Girls.

[David Sims]

He did. But this is a good question. Did he ever produce a movie directed by a woman, period?

[Griffin Newman]

Probably he Bruce. So many. Maybe not, though.

[David Sims]

Maybe not.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

You know what?

[David Sims]

Dunham was his big one. But it was on tv. Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

It's kind of at the behest of, like, a lot of criticism after, like, the fallout of Knocked Up. Right?

[David Sims]

Yeah. Yeah. And. And I mean, I think Bridesmaids was as well of just like. Okay. Not. Note taken. Yeah. I'm just scanning through now to look at the.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a lot of movies.

[David Sims]

Movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Some good.

[David Sims]

Quite a few I like quite a bit. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Not all of them, though.

[David Sims]

I don't. I don't think there's one feature film directed by a woman.

[Chandler Levick]

Is that true? Oh, my God.

[David Sims]

I'm just like double checking here, right?

[Chandler Levick]

Because Big Sick, that's Showalter.

[Griffin Newman]

Look, what's important is.

[Chandler Levick]

Please hire me.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, exactly.

[David Sims]

Yep. That's what's important.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

What's important is that the Bubble is a transient work about a difficult time in American history.

[Griffin Newman]

The Bubble might be the most unwatchable, like, comedy ever made because of what it's about. Chandler asked me, also in not being.

[David Sims]

Very good, Chandler asked me, have you guys ever talked about doing Apatow? And I say we talk about all the time. We think it'd be fun. The problem is, I feel confident saying that if we cover him, the Bubble will be the worst movie we've ever talked about on this podcast.

[Griffin Newman]

It's down there.

[David Sims]

It's down there, way down in the pits of hell. And I would like to see him make I just.

[Griffin Newman]

Anything else.

[David Sims]

Any. Literally anything else.

[Griffin Newman]

Working on something, Right.

[Chandler Levick]

You get to end with all the nice Gary Shandling documentaries, though.

[David Sims]

His eight hour. What was the thing he just announced? Because they had announced he was going to do the Coke versus Pepsi movie. But then there's what, Something else that superseded that. That sounded a little more interesting maybe.

[Chandler Levick]

It sounds like the Pop Tarts movie.

[Griffin Newman]

What was interesting about Coke versus Pepsi? They both are fine. They make soda. Right?

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben just woke up.

[David Sims]

The announcement was that he and Glen Powell are working on something that's fun. That they are writing something together that Powell would star in and Apatow would direct.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay, what if Glen Powell is in Loser? Hey, guys. He's a little, you know, country boy.

[David Sims]

Well, you'd also buy this kid is getting picked on so much if it were, what, 11 year old Glen. I don't think he was in the year 2000. Glenn Powell would have been 14.

[Griffin Newman]

He would have been 12.

[David Sims]

Okay. Okay.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, so sweet.

[David Sims]

Wow.

[Griffin Newman]

Glen Powell's like, basically my age.

[David Sims]

I know.

[Griffin Newman]

It's one of those things where I look at him like, that's a grown man. Not like me.

[David Sims]

God. I had one of those recently that flipped me out. I mean, I had the experience watching Old School where there's a scene where Luke Wilson is like, we can't start a fraternity. I'm 30, for God's sake. And I was like, oh, my.

[Griffin Newman]

So much younger than me.

[Chandler Levick]

Isn't that terrible? Like, when I watch, like, old Sex and the City episodes and Carrie Bradshaw is like 34 and they're like, your life is over.

[David Sims]

And I'm like, oh, I Know, the math doesn't add up, but I watch old school and I'm like, yeah, Vince Vaughn is 67 in this.

[Griffin Newman]

It is how I am. I mean, it's high in with athletes too, where like, like a, a famous athlete. I'm still like, well, that person's older than me. And it's like, no, they're not. They're like 25. Like they're, they're so much younger than me. But I'm like, yeah, no, but look at them succeed and achieve on a grand scale. That's what grownups do. Not me, you know?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Loser came out on July 21st in the year 2000. It was a pre 911 time.

[David Sims]

I hit that note better than the fucking teenage dirtbag.

[Griffin Newman]

It opened at number eight, which I imagine was disappointing.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Now you said we've done this.

[Griffin Newman]

We've done this one before.

[David Sims]

Main feed or Patreon?

[Griffin Newman]

Main feed. The number one at the box office opening to 20, $59 million is a thriller with movie stars.

[David Sims]

Is it the movie we covered?

[Griffin Newman]

It is.

[David Sims]

It is called what Lies Beneath.

[Griffin Newman]

What's beneath? Seen Robert Zemeckis's what Lies Beneath?

[Chandler Levick]

I have.

[Griffin Newman]

And what do you think of it?

[Chandler Levick]

I was, I was really scared when I watched it in the back room of Blockbuster.

[David Sims]

That's pretty scary.

[Griffin Newman]

Or it's intense.

[David Sims]

It's not a film.

[Chandler Levick]

Good Harrison Ford performance.

[Griffin Newman]

Great. Great to see Ford playing a grump.

[David Sims]

You were telling me it's not quite the castaway thing, but you, you're like in the late stages of post production on a movie you just shot.

[Chandler Levick]

Yes.

[David Sims]

And active last minute of pre production on a movie that is going to start shooting in two weeks. You're in that kind of cool Zemecka Spielberg.

[Chandler Levick]

I'm in my Schindler list. Jurassic Park.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah. I do have a George Lucas that needs to help me finish my color corrects tomorrow.

[David Sims]

You know who you should asked to do that? George Lucas.

[Griffin Newman]

He's chilling out. Yeah, I'm. I'm in. I am in such a Star Wars. You've been.

[David Sims]

You've been back in love with Star Wars.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm back in love because of Andor. It's so good. And it so understands like what is good about Star wars in a way that some recent Star wars properties maybe have struggled to tap. And so I'm just thinking about Star wars all the time and I'm. I'm just back to thinking about George Lucas being a crazy guy.

[David Sims]

You still haven't watched that new ILM doc?

[Griffin Newman]

No, I Gotta watch that.

[David Sims]

It's so good. Watchon directed it. So he's the one doing all the interviews, right? It rules. And he got a lot of good time with George. And he has such a history with George.

[Griffin Newman]

And George actually knows George.

[David Sims]

So he's talking 25 years later about the response to Jar Jar. Right? An episode that, like, has a lot of Ahmed Best and him talking about his suicide attempt and is, like, the most bracing version of, like, trying to.

[Griffin Newman]

Jar Jar response running at that. Truly.

[David Sims]

Right. And Ahmed was sort of like, I didn't really feel like anyone knew how to protect or support me during that. Right. And they cut to George and they're sort of like, didn't you try to help him at this time? And he was like, I just told him, you know, I mean, when the original film came out, everyone hated it. And 25 years, they all like it. Look, see, I was right. And Joe Johnson's like, but this was kind of different. And he. Yeah, George's right response is when. When the original film came out, everyone felt the same way about C3PO and Joe Johnson. This is the value of him directing. He's like, immediately pushes back from behind camera and goes, george, I don't think anyone reacted that way to C3PO. And he goes, oh, really? Okay, well, here's an example. And then he says, the Ewoks teddy bear, which is closer. Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But the difference here is that Amabest is, like, a guy who people kept showing talking like, no one was attacking Warwick Davis on the same level anyway.

[Griffin Newman]

It was 11 years old. Warwick Davis.

[David Sims]

That thing's amazing. You know who's good Warwick Davis?

[Griffin Newman]

Wicket.

[David Sims]

Wicket's one of my best friends.

[Griffin Newman]

I think Wicked's great. And I'm gonna watch all the Star wars movies again. I'm just telling you guys this 10, 15 at night or whatever, you're gonna.

[David Sims]

You gonna try it with your daughter?

[Griffin Newman]

I don't think so. I don't know. I think she's too young for it.

[David Sims]

I don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

But I'm just gonna watch them all again.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

And I'm just excited to meet Wicked. I've just been thinking about Wicked.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Yeah. Know who else I love? Chief Chirpa.

[Griffin Newman]

He's all right. I'm really focused on Wicked's got this little butt.

[David Sims]

What about tba?

[Griffin Newman]

Do you care about Star Wars?

[Chandler Levick]

I like the Empire Strikes Back.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a good movie.

[David Sims]

Do you have a pitch on what your canceled Star wars movie would be?

[Griffin Newman]

Would it be about Wicket's little butt?

[Chandler Levick]

What do you. What do you mean? What's it canceled?

[David Sims]

Well, I'm saying now everyone's got a Star wars project. 99 out of 100 announced Star wars projects are guaranteed to never be made.

[Griffin Newman]

They like bring people out and they're like, star, what are you making? They're like, I know it's going to.

[David Sims]

Have ships or you know, who's.

[Chandler Levick]

Or something a little cutie.

[David Sims]

BB8.

[Griffin Newman]

Bring him back.

[David Sims]

I honestly think out. I think.

[Chandler Levick]

Or Baby Yoda. Come on.

[David Sims]

Well, he's got. He's got a movie coming.

[Chandler Levick]

Didn't he go to Hawaii?

[David Sims]

He's got a three picture. Oh, Grogu Goes Hawaiian.

[Griffin Newman]

That sounds great.

[David Sims]

Really good.

[Griffin Newman]

Grogu's got a little cocktail with umbrella.

[David Sims]

I feel like BB Is getting a little forgotten.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, bring him back out. Everything from those movies is getting forgotten.

[David Sims]

You know what? He kind of had a Mina Savari moment where everyone was like, this guy's going to be working forever.

[Griffin Newman]

You like the.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what people forget about? You got to keep, what is it called?

[Griffin Newman]

The coaxium.

[David Sims]

Coaxium Cold.

[Ben Hosley]

People forget that you need. Keep it really cold.

[David Sims]

Are you going to get that Quaxium water bottle?

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

Put it in the freezer.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, I was just, you know, about qu.

[Ben Hosley]

If you remember about keeping Quaxium.

[Chandler Levick]

I'm a woman, so women, Women don't.

[Griffin Newman]

Don't touch. Women don't pick up the check. They don't open doors and they don't handle coaxing.

[David Sims]

Those are the rules.

[Chandler Levick]

My gentleman callers can handle the coax.

[Griffin Newman]

Exactly.

[David Sims]

The MacGuffin in Solo A Star Wars Story is a substance called coaxium that has to be kept very cold. And it was David's favorite bit for a while because it's the intensity of you need to keep it cold. Assuming that it was a thing that was going to be forgotten, gotten by everyone else. And then they open this like 500 million dollar Millennium Falcon ride at Disney World. And the whole ride is based around coaxi.

[Chandler Levick]

Really?

[David Sims]

The rides of flop. They keep saying you gotta get the coax. And now they're making Coaxium merchandise. Ben, there's literally a newly released Coaxium water bottle. So you can keep your beverages cold. Like Coaxium keep it cold.

[Chandler Levick]

That's dope.

[Griffin Newman]

Number two at the box office.

[David Sims]

Office. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a film that I'm sure you saw in theaters. I sure did.

[David Sims]

Chicken Run.

[Griffin Newman]

No, that's number nine at the box office.

[David Sims]

Okay. Right. That was more of a June, maybe May release.

[Griffin Newman]

It is it's made $100 million in two weeks.

[David Sims]

Was it the motion picture X Men? X Men, Yeah. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Check that one out.

[David Sims]

That was my personality for the year leading up to and following its release.

[Griffin Newman]

You ever seen Bryan Singer X Men?

[Chandler Levick]

Of course.

[David Sims]

Normal movie made by normal man.

[Chandler Levick]

This is amazing to watch in person after hearing it for so long after the listeners. It's electrifying.

[David Sims]

People always say this, right, That. I think people who have listened to the show assume, oh, they must be cutting parts out in between the clue and the guess. You do just see my eyes roll back and then the answer comes out.

[Griffin Newman]

Mentat mode.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

It's like Leonard Molten movie whatever. You know what I'm saying?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

It's the whole. I meet with book people sometimes, like, what do you want to write? And I'm like, I really just want to write Leonard Malton's movie guide. And they're like, there's no purpose for those books to exist anymore. And I'm like, I know.

[David Sims]

Then let's maybe investigate what went wrong in our culture. When and how and why to make that the case.

[Griffin Newman]

Stupid Internet. X Men doing great.

[David Sims]

Yeah. It was a big hu.

[Griffin Newman]

It was a big, big hit. Bigger hits were to follow, of course.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

But it's the start of something. Here's a question.

[David Sims]

Would unite.

[Griffin Newman]

They would. Is Greg Kinnear more evil than Magneto and. Or Harrison Ford and what lies beneath? I would say yes.

[Chandler Levick]

I would say yes. He's more pretentious and annoying, and yet.

[David Sims]

He'S the fourth most evil character in the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Right?

[Chandler Levick]

Exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

He's not even right. He's probably below the fucking dweebs.

[David Sims]

Right? Like, he's maybe equivalent to Magneto, but the dweebs are equivalent to Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister and Holocaust.

[Griffin Newman]

There you go. Remember Holocaust?

[David Sims]

I knew you were going to be happy with the Holocaust.

[Griffin Newman]

What do they ret? They retell Nemesis. I think they. They introduced a character in the mid-90s called Holocaust.

[David Sims]

And then they were like.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, you can't call a villain Holocaust, dude.

[David Sims]

They just backtracked it. It's always been Nemesis.

[Griffin Newman]

Nemesis number three. The box office is another film. I was there. I was there opening weekend in theaters. I was buying a ticket for this film. It's a sequel.

[David Sims]

Was this the opening weekend?

[Griffin Newman]

It sure is. It's new this week. It's $.5 million.

[David Sims]

Well, it's not Nutty professor to the Clumps.

[Griffin Newman]

No, it's an animated film. It's a sequel.

[David Sims]

Animated sequel in the year 2000?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Yes.

[David Sims]

And it opened 20. It's not a Disney picture.

[Griffin Newman]

No, no.

[David Sims]

Is it from the fine folks at Fox?

[Griffin Newman]

It's being distributed by Warner Brothers, but I think it was.

[David Sims]

This is a movie you definitely saw opening weekend and I did not. No. It is called Pokemon the movie 2000.

[Griffin Newman]

That's correct. I believe the actual title is Pokemon the power of one, but for audiences, they called it Pokemon the Movie 2000, in case you didn't know what year it was.

[David Sims]

So you were there opening weekend to get the trading card?

[Griffin Newman]

I certainly was. For the first two. I didn't see Pokemon 3 in theaters.

[David Sims]

There was forever. I think by three, they go to Mirror Max.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

Maybe Warner Brothers release the first. They go to a meeting.

[Griffin Newman]

Pikachu attacks Harvey Weinstein.

[David Sims]

Charizard.

[Griffin Newman]

Thunderbolt.

[David Sims]

Flame Broils Bob Weinstein's ass.

[Griffin Newman]

My daughter has a pair of Pokemon pajamas. I don't know where they even came from. I think they're hand me downs from someone, maybe Asa. Honestly.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

And so now she will keep being like, who's this?

[David Sims]

And I'm like, are there multiple different.

[Griffin Newman]

There's six. Poke. There's six Pokemon on her PJ's name.

[David Sims]

Name the big six.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, obviously the. The big three.

[David Sims]

Okay. Pikachu.

[Griffin Newman]

No, no, not Pikachu. Char.

[David Sims]

The starters. Bulbasaur, Squirtle.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, and then Pikachu's there, obviously.

[David Sims]

Is Psy Duck in the mix?

[Griffin Newman]

No, we've got Jigglypuff.

[David Sims]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Who's very amusing, of course, to say.

[David Sims]

And her recent album is really good, too. I don't know.

[Chandler Levick]

It's a cardi B Collab.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, she's kind of filling that Lana Del Rey space. And Eevee Cutie. Who's a cutie pie?

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Wait. Who's your favorite favorite Pokemon?

[Griffin Newman]

My favorite Pokemon. Big question. It is. My favorite, classically, is the Poliwag Evolutions. I love Polywhirl. Polywhirl and Poliwrath.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't talk about Poly Toad. No, no, no. But I like a lot.

[Ben Hosley]

I like Mime.

[Griffin Newman]

Mr. Mime. Yeah. He's in that weird category of Pokemon where you're like, so this is a guy. There's like four Pokemon that are human. So I have. And you're like, what's that?

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

The rest are animals.

[David Sims]

You know what my favorite.

[Griffin Newman]

Who.

[David Sims]

Ditto.

[Chandler Levick]

Ditto.

[Griffin Newman]

Ditto's pretty cool.

[David Sims]

I would just play Ditto non stop because I'd be like, who's gonna give me. Who's gonna put up something I can't copy?

[Griffin Newman]

Who's your favorite Pokemon channel.

[Chandler Levick]

It's my favorite word in the English language. Snorlax.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a great name.

[David Sims]

It's a great word.

[Griffin Newman]

Snorlax is good.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Raising a Snorlax is impressive, too. All right. Number four at the box office is we'll do the Pokemon Pokemon someday. People have been pushing for us to do theatrical Pokemon because that compresses it by a lot. Then it's just like the first four and Detective Pikachu or something.

[David Sims]

Well, I want to say congrats to our listeners because apparently this show is going to run 25 years. If we're getting a theatrical Pokemon, it'd be.

[Griffin Newman]

It would be pretty funny.

[Chandler Levick]

Imagine you do theatrical Pokemon before Hal Hartley.

[David Sims]

Well, we treat the Pokemon as a director series. Yeah, I think.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it's. I think four was the. The final. That was forever correct to make it to US Theaters.

[David Sims]

I feel like five.

[Griffin Newman]

Five might have. I remember the five might have gotten Cinema Village release.

[David Sims]

I remember one of them making like tens of thousands of dollars in theaters being kind of astounding before they just started putting them all in dvd.

[Griffin Newman]

Number four, the box office is a huge hit from this summer. It is a comedy, a spoof film.

[David Sims]

Oh, it's called Scary Movie.

[Griffin Newman]

That's right.

[David Sims]

Humongous.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep. Is it good?

[David Sims]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

No. I don't remember it being actually good. No. But important in a weird sort of a way.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

I think it's getting a reclamation these days.

[David Sims]

Yeah, it does on Twitter. I just. I don't love it. And I like some of the Wayne's Brothers work a lot, but I'm not crazy about that movie. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Number five of the box.

[David Sims]

As much as I love Emma Ferris.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. And she's funny.

[David Sims]

En you.

[Griffin Newman]

You can say her name slower.

[David Sims]

I love Anna and Regina.

[Griffin Newman]

There you go.

[David Sims]

I don't know who that guy is.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I liked him.

[David Sims]

Okay. He might come back.

[Griffin Newman]

The lounge singer. Griffin's new character. Lounge guy. Number five of the box office of film we've invoked on this episode. It is a huge hit. It's based on a bestseller. It's got movie stars.

[David Sims]

Is it the General's daughter?

[Griffin Newman]

Nope.

[David Sims]

We booked in this episode. Okay. It's a big out for a month.

[Griffin Newman]

It's made $145 million.

[David Sims]

Perfect storm. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

A totally good movie. Like a totally solid, like, true story movie where everyone's got a sweater on and they all get killed by a wave.

[David Sims]

Sweater core.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep. You see the Perfect Storm? I believe I have Wolfgang Peterson film. Did you know that Mark Wahlberg, he's there.

[Chandler Levick]

There's a big wave.

[David Sims]

Clooney, John C. Riley.

[Chandler Levick]

Everyone's w. It's.

[David Sims]

It's like Mary.

[Griffin Newman]

Mary Elizabeth, Master Antonio.

[David Sims]

Basically her last movie, though Mary Elizabeth.

[Griffin Newman]

Disappears after Mary and Diane are both, like, on radio. This storm seems pretty bad. And then the boat is Clooney, Wahlberg, Riley, Fickner, and, like, Bob Gunton, maybe. Like, it's a great. It's a great group of guys.

[David Sims]

Is. Is Master.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, John Hawks, too.

[David Sims]

There we go. John Hawks is Master Antonio. Like, another. On a different boat.

[Griffin Newman]

She's on a different boat.

[David Sims]

And Diane Lane is.

[Griffin Newman]

Diane Lane is on shore and she's like. Yeah, she's. No, she's Wahlberg's girlfriend. All right, Diane. Get it. That movie's great, though. And it is just kind of like. I would like more movies like that.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Where they were, like, there was a really weird, crazy storm.

[Chandler Levick]

Bring him back, you know?

[David Sims]

Yeah, bring him back. Also talked about in the ILM doc. There's some really interesting intel on that one.

[Griffin Newman]

It is an incredible movie from a visual effect. They were like.

[David Sims]

That was a real breakthrough movie.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't think, like, movies look better than that now in terms of, like, doing water. Like, it's, like, kind of still.

[David Sims]

But it was like the one where they finally cracked the code on, like, Physics Sims and getting it right. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Number six at the box office is the Kid, the Bruce Willis movie.

[David Sims]

I don't think that's the proper title. There we go. Disney was sued at the last second, and they had to call it Disney's the Kid to differentiate it from the Charlie Chaplin movie.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, my God.

[David Sims]

That is true.

[Griffin Newman]

What is that about? It is about Spencer Breslin is like, baby Bruce Willis, who's, like, a vision.

[David Sims]

It's like a weird time travel thing where somehow I've never heard of this. Child version of Bruce Willis, played by Spencer Breslin and a nerd is now in the present with cool businessman Bruce Willis, and he has to learn to love his younger self.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a turtle top.

[David Sims]

It is indeed.

[Chandler Levick]

Is it a body switching?

[David Sims]

No, it's like he's an adult man in the present day, and what is presumably like 1960s child version of him suddenly just, like, appears at his front door.

[Griffin Newman]

That's terrible.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, wow.

[David Sims]

I remember it not working.

[Griffin Newman]

Number seven of the box office is the Patriot.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, bad movie with Hugh. With Heath Ledger.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Heath Ledger. Yep. That's a. Oh, what's his name? Randall Wallace movie.

[David Sims]

Correct. Well, I think Randall Wallace wrote It. Roland Emmerich directed it.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, that's right.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. A guy with a really good grasp on American history. As we also saw with STONEWALL, the.

[David Sims]

Year 2000, Mel Gibson had the Patriot, Chicken Run and what Women Want. And it was the first time, I believe, a movie star had $300 million grocers and one one year. And not only that, Patriot had broken the record for the highest an actor had been paid upfront for a movie, period.

[Griffin Newman]

He's a patriot.

[David Sims]

Could not have been more dominant.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep. And then he has, what, like right after that, he's got Signs.

[David Sims]

He makes signs two years later. And then two years after that. Oh, we. We were soldiers at the following year.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

Signs is two years later is humongous. Or three years, whatever it was. And then he basically soft retires and makes a passion the Christmas that thing do.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

I think he took a bath on it. Dumb.

[Griffin Newman]

8 is loser. 9 is chicken run. 10 is me, myself and Irene.

[Chandler Levick]

Wow. What are your friends? You're at the pictures.

[Griffin Newman]

Number 12 at the box office. New this week is a film called the In Crowd.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

What would you do to get in with the In Crowd?

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, my God, that poster. I just had like a full Pran.

[David Sims]

Mer who's the Line lineup in that one Blurt.

[Griffin Newman]

Blue Baby. It just made up people.

[Chandler Levick]

Is it like the people from like. Like Brendan Fair or something? Like Smallville actors.

[David Sims]

Like one of those movies that had a like, Valentine urban legend style poster with eight actors faces.

[Griffin Newman]

Eight faces. And it's like all of these people didn't get parts on Melrose Place, but for some reason. Susan Ward.

[Chandler Levick]

Susan Ward?

[David Sims]

Yes, Lori, you know Susan Ward.

[Chandler Levick]

She's in like 10 things I hate about you or like Never Been Kissed. She's in one of those.

[Griffin Newman]

She's in Shallow. How?

[David Sims]

Talk about fairlies.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Not a great career.

[Chandler Levick]

It's like a sad face.

[Griffin Newman]

Susan Ward. Laurie. Hearing Matthew settle.

[David Sims]

This was directed by Mary Lambert, who I like. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, it is.

[Chandler Levick]

Wait, did. Pet Cemetery.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Crazy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Kind of a legend.

[Chandler Levick]

There you go.

[David Sims]

Wow.

[Chandler Levick]

That's the. The Amy Heckerling trajectory.

[David Sims]

Yeah, but man, this thing was flopping hard.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, yeah. What the. Nathan Bexton, Tess Harper.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, these sound like made up.

[Griffin Newman]

It just. You know what I mean? And that's how I felt watching Final Destination, Bloodlines, which I said to you, Griff, Like, I don't know a single one of these, Mother.

[David Sims]

There's something kind of refreshing about it.

[Griffin Newman]

And then when they're gonna bring in the grandma, I'm like, okay. Who'd they get for the grandma camera? And they're like, surprise, nobody.

[David Sims]

Some respectable working actor. But here's the other thing.

[Griffin Newman]

They're all good.

[David Sims]

Everyone's good.

[Griffin Newman]

They're all totally good.

[David Sims]

Like, having just rewatched all the Final.

[Griffin Newman]

Destination movies, did not know who they were.

[David Sims]

That is often the Achilles heel of those movies where there will be someone who is like the third lead. And you're like, did this guy win a contest? He got guys shooting the lens that's also tripping over cables.

[Griffin Newman]

Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Three is so good in it that you're like, this is almost overwhelming the movie.

[David Sims]

She's actually the lead woman in two is very good as well. She's good.

[Griffin Newman]

A.J. cook. She's. She's. She's more. I would say, in the right zone.

[David Sims]

But bloodlines. Everyone is.

[Griffin Newman]

Everyone's great.

[David Sims]

Have you seen that movie yet?

[Chandler Levick]

No.

[David Sims]

Chandler. It rules.

[Griffin Newman]

It kind of rules.

[Chandler Levick]

This is. I. I love. I love the. The franchise. I'm back.

[Griffin Newman]

If you love the franchise, you will like this.

[David Sims]

You will watch this one and you'll be like, oh, this is what all of these movies have been trying to be. They finally cracked it. 100%.

[Chandler Levick]

Is Devin Sawa in the first one.

[Griffin Newman]

Devon saw was in the first one.

[Chandler Levick]

I just remember there's a thing about putting something in the microwave. And there was the Mentos in, like, coke or whatever.

[David Sims]

Yep.

[Griffin Newman]

And there's the tanning bed. And look, we've had a lot of great kills over the years.

[Chandler Levick]

That was the first movie I snuck into, like, that was R rated. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

How'd you get in?

[Chandler Levick]

I think I, like, went to another movie and. And got in. Yeah, listen.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, loser. We discussed it.

[David Sims]

We discussed it.

[Griffin Newman]

Jesus Christ. Bedtime.

[David Sims]

We had to do it, remember? Remember, like, 45 minutes ago when David was like, so I think I'm ending this episode. And we go, no, no, no, no. That's not how things work here on the show.

[Griffin Newman]

We talk much more about the movie.

[David Sims]

We talked about a lot of really great stuff, and I think this was a really important episode.

[Chandler Levick]

I just want to say to Amy Heckerling or any of the associates, if they're listening, I love you and you're an incredible filmmaker and inspiration for many. And please put Clueless on the crowd. Criterion Collection.

[David Sims]

There is a 4K 30th anniversary coming out from Paramount.

[Griffin Newman]

Not a loser. To be clear.

[David Sims]

Let me double check my notes here. Yes, it would be nice if it got that kind of respect on it. But it does. Everyone's sort of like, crossing their fingers to see this new restoration because I think they're also putting it back in theaters this summer.

[Griffin Newman]

Really should.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, that's so cool.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Look, I don't even hate this movie because it's so weird.

[David Sims]

I agree.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, it's one of those things where I'm like, I was kind of engaged by it.

[David Sims]

Your letterboxd log was like, this movie is vile. But I'm not sure I'm saying that as a totally bad thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Letterboxd, Deeply bizarre and kinda evil. Brackets. Somewhat complimentary, right? Yes. Kind of an evil movie, though. It felt evil to me. There was an evil in this movie.

[David Sims]

There is.

[Chandler Levick]

It taught me a lot about wigs and how you shouldn't make anybody wear them.

[David Sims]

Wigs and bags, Wigs and Bigs.

[Griffin Newman]

Never put a wig on Jason Biggs, ever, ever.

[Chandler Levick]

Big can't wear wigs. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

She really only wears the hat for like five minutes.

[Chandler Levick]

He has that a lot.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe he's in it more than I.

[David Sims]

Remember, but I'm like, if that's the wig, then he should never take that. I was so relieved anytime the hat came back and going in, I was like, I hope he doesn't wear this fucking hat too much.

[Chandler Levick]

They must have done camera tests. Like, no one during the camera test was like, you know, it's kind of an unflattering haircut.

[David Sims]

Even beyond that. Like, the lens didn't show shatter when they tried to point it at the wig.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, that's why the movie cost so much. $20 million. Yes.

[Chandler Levick]

But her hair is bad too.

[David Sims]

It's so spiky, catching on fire.

[Chandler Levick]

Like, who is the hairstylist?

[David Sims]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

Chandler, thank you for joining us.

[David Sims]

Chandler. I. I like movies. Is pretty thoroughly rentable by this point.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, it's. It played for six months in Japan.

[David Sims]

Hell yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Had a very successful Japanese release.

[David Sims]

That rules.

[Griffin Newman]

I can see. I can understand. Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

It seems like it spoke to people. Hideo Kojima loved the movie.

[David Sims]

Really?

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

He tweeted about it, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[David Sims]

That's how it got on my radar for the first time. Was Sarah Pauly kept, like waxing poetic about it after seeing it at tiff.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's been unbelievable considering it caused, you know, the price of Jason Big's wig.

[Griffin Newman]

Negative $1 million.

[David Sims]

For free. But be careful. It comes with a price.

[Chandler Levick]

Is the price.

[Griffin Newman]

Your movie will suck.

[Chandler Levick]

It will ruin your career.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, my God. Oh, man.

[David Sims]

But yes, rentable. And then the. The film you're finishing now.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah, it's Called My Myelin Kicks. It's. It's an in. It's my indie sleaze movie.

[David Sims]

Hell yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Mile End Kicks.

[Chandler Levick]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Hell yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

Stars Barbie Ferreira from Euphoria.

[Griffin Newman]

Hell yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

And Jay Bearshell.

[David Sims]

Hey.

[Griffin Newman]

Canadian legend.

[Chandler Levick]

And Devin Bostick, Canadian legend Rodriguez. And Stanley Simons from the Iron Claw.

[David Sims]

Hell yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

And Juliet Garrett P From Red Rooms.

[David Sims]

This is. It's a great cast.

[Griffin Newman]

Red Rooms, which, by the way, I mean, that movie rocks.

[Chandler Levick]

It's the best movie ever.

[Griffin Newman]

That movie is putting Canada on the map. It's a country of freaks.

[Chandler Levick]

David Fincher movie. He never made yet.

[David Sims]

Not since Maple Syrup.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben. I think it would freak you out, but wow, it's a cool movie. Red Rooms, it's called, Is Scary.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, okay.

[David Sims]

Yeah. It's a movie about how the Internet is good and normal.

[Ben Hosley]

An indie sleaze movie is such an exciting opportunity for a soundtrack.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, tell me about it.

[Griffin Newman]

And some hair.

[Ben Hosley]

It must be like. It's almost intimidating.

[Chandler Levick]

It feels like it's a curse and a joy because it's very expensive and a lot of negotiating and stuff. But we do have a Peaches song. Fuck the pain Away.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, you got it.

[Chandler Levick]

She's generous. I wrote her a very loving letter and she gave us an amazing deal on it.

[Ben Hosley]

That's incredible.

[David Sims]

Can I make some soundtrack suggestions quickly?

[Chandler Levick]

Of course.

[David Sims]

A teenage dirtbag. Pretty fly for a white guy. Blue Da da Get down tonight.

[Chandler Levick]

How about she's so High.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levick]

By D. Bachman. That's in this movie.

[David Sims]

Oh, yeah. What's my age again? Thank you for being here, Chandler.

[Chandler Levick]

Oh, my God. It's an honor and a privilege.

[David Sims]

A rare blank check After Dark. And thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Tune in next week for one of the most normal movies we've ever covered. I could never be your woman. With the great Karen Chi record returning to the show.

[Griffin Newman]

Hush. That's not true. Next week.

[David Sims]

Is there a new release 28 years later? That's what's happening. I forgot.

[Griffin Newman]

And then I could never be a woman with Karen Chi. Which. Which is great.

[David Sims]

Obviously. I'm excited to see those zombies.

[Griffin Newman]

Me, too. What are they up to?

[David Sims]

I don't know. But whatever they're doing, it's going to be fast.

[Griffin Newman]

Visiting Miramax, maybe? Much like the Pokemon?

[David Sims]

No. We want to send all destructive forces to the Miracle Met offices. But tune in for that.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep.

[David Sims]

Yeah. And as always, goodbye. And as always, of the many things that got Ben's ire up while watching this film, I think nothing pissed him off. More than seeing several rows of beautifully shiny gold plush velvet seats and saying, is that supposed to be wedding Webster Hall.

[Ben Hosley]

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our Executive producer is me, Ben Hosley, 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 J. JJ Burch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in 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.