Raiders of the Lost Ark with Brian Michael Bendis

Summary

Blank Check with Griffin & David: Raiders of the Lost Ark with Brian Michael Bendis

Release Date: February 9, 2025

In this engaging episode of Blank Check with Griffin & David, hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims delve deep into the iconic film Raiders of the Lost Ark, exploring its intricate layers with special guest Brian Michael Bendis, a renowned comic book writer. The episode offers a comprehensive analysis of the film's themes, character development, and its enduring legacy in both cinema and pop culture.

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Introduction and Guest Background

The episode kicks off with Griffin and David exchanging light-hearted banter before warmly welcoming Brian Michael Bendis. Bendis shares his enthusiasm for the podcast and expresses his excitement about discussing Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Brian Michael Bendis (01:02):

"Raiders is something I completely went through as a huge part of my childhood and how I understood storytelling."

Exploring RAIDERS’ Political Undertones

One of the initial discussions centers around the character Thunderbolt Ross and his political alignment within the Marvel Universe. Bendis provides insights into his portrayal and the broader political landscape of Marvel characters.

David (01:54):

"Does the Marvel universe have Democrats and Republicans? Or is it sort of like we don't."

Brian Michael Bendis (02:10):

"Mostly from a different universe than the one we live in now. So it's not even. I don't even know if people would refer to that in that way."

Deep Dive into Raiders of the Lost Ark

The core of the episode revolves around a detailed analysis of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Bendis draws parallels between his experiences with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and their influence on his storytelling techniques.

Character Analysis: Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood

The hosts and Bendis dissect the complexities of Indiana Jones, highlighting Harrison Ford's nuanced performance and the character's blend of intelligence, humor, and physical prowess.

Griffin (06:07):

"Indiana Jones will always be on, like, the Mount Rushmore to a certain extent. The tapestry of, like, what is this popular commercial art."

Brian Michael Bendis (07:45):

"What did they synthesize here? Total natural ease, humor, sexiness, you know, doesn't give a shit, but doesn't seem like he's trying hard."

Marion Ravenwood's character is also explored, with a focus on Karen Allen's impactful portrayal and the character's significance in balancing Indy’s dynamic.

Brian Michael Bendis (117:04):

"Marian's a good character. So the anti Marian to have fun with the flip side of it."

Filmmaking Techniques and Storytelling

The conversation delves into Spielberg's meticulous storyboard planning and editing, emphasizing how these techniques contribute to the film's seamless action sequences and compelling narrative flow.

Griffin (28:36):

"He just knew exactly how to get it really fast. The other part is Indy's struggle with realizing there's a lot about the world he doesn't understand."

David (55:35):

"The scene where Indy shoots the swordsman instead of engaging in a whip vs. sword duel was a masterstroke."

Behind the Scenes and Production Insights

Bendis shares anecdotes from the making of Raiders, including interactions between Spielberg, Lucas, and the creative team. He highlights the collaborative environment and the challenges faced during production.

Brian Michael Bendis (22:43):

"Having these collector cards is really all you have. Once the Raiders ones hit, they're like, they're like the encyclopedia of everything you're going to know."

Legacy and Cultural Impact

The episode concludes with a reflection on the film's lasting impact on both audiences and future filmmakers. Bendis underscores how Raiders of the Lost Ark set a benchmark for adventure films and influenced his own work in comics and storytelling.

Brian Michael Bendis (137:00):

"Wordless storytelling and how much that is not a wildly overstated sort of plot to the movie. It is kind of just like a minor thread running the whole time."

Griffin (94:04):

"It's astonishing how every shot is deliberate and moves the story forward in a specific way."

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Notable Quotes

• Brian Michael Bendis (01:17):

  "There's no other space. I'm in with Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and it just keeps building, building."

• David (05:10):

  "Indy makes sense as a grump in what."

• Griffin (175:48):

  "You're just like, this is like a complicated, like military operation."

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Conclusion

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin & David offers a rich and insightful exploration of Raiders of the Lost Ark, blending film analysis with personal anecdotes from Brian Michael Bendis. The discussion highlights the film’s intricate storytelling, character depth, and its influential role in shaping modern adventure narratives. For fans and newcomers alike, this summary encapsulates the essence of the conversation, providing a thorough understanding of why Raiders of the Lost Ark remains a monumental piece in cinematic history.

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Note: This summary focuses solely on the content-rich portions of the transcript, omitting advertisements and non-essential sections to maintain clarity and relevance.

Transcript

[David]

Blank check with Griffin and David. Blank check with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know is that the name of the shadow is Blackjack.

[Griffin]

Podcast. Why did have to be podcast?

[David]

Great.

[Griffin]

I don't think I nailed it. I've sometimes I'm able to pull surprising Harrison out of my pocket.

[David]

Needs to be growlier even at that age.

[Griffin]

Snakes. Snakes podcast. Fuck. It is tough now. I think I'm better at doing older Harrison.

[David]

Yeah, go ahead. It's tough when he's do Thunderbolt Ross seeing a snake.

[Griffin]

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

[David]

You know, my joke is that he's going to turn into Red Hulk when they're like, we have to make the military more woke. He'll be like, right. That'll be what it is. I don't even know. Is Thunderbolt Ross cross right wing? He is right.

[Griffin]

Look, we have a guest who can answer.

[David]

I want our guest to answer this.

[Griffin]

Not to put him on the spot.

[David]

Is Thunderbolt Roster Republican.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

You know, I love this podcast so much and I immediately went to I wonder what thing we're going to talk about that I couldn't predict. And right away, right away, Thunderbolt Ross right wing.

[Griffin]

Have you ever written for the Big Man? Have you ever written Thunderbolt Ross the best character in the Marvel universe?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I've never written. Actually, I have. I did a believe it or not, a weird little mini arc in Avengers with the great Walt Simonson with Red Hulk front and center. I had this. I wanted.

[David]

He like joins Simonson for a minute. Right. He's in the Avengers as Red Hulk. Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I forgot something. Yeah, Something was going on. But so yes, but no. I did not in my heart lock down the politics of the time. Just had him in mission. So I can't speak to the margins.

[David]

Does the Marvel universe have Democrats and Republicans? Does that come up? Or is it sort of like we don't.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well, kind of, but mostly from. From a different universe than the one we live in now. So it's not even. I don't even know if people would refer to that in that way. You know what I mean?

[Griffin]

That's why I'm so excited to see a Captain America movie that's about the President.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

If you see it as an Air Force One sequel, I think it is deeply exciting and a huge swing and I appreciate that kind of thing.

[Griffin]

And let's say just incredible weave on Thunderbolt Ross's ideology.

[David]

Yeah. We don't really know.

[Griffin]

We don't know.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

We were very, very Focused on where the mustache went when he transitioned. Well, so that was a much bigger issue for us as a group.

[David]

Where does it go?

[Griffin]

I'll say this. I guess brave. Brave New World's what it's called now.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

It's coming out right around the time of this episode. Maybe a little bit after.

[David]

That's right. It's coming out in February. Right.

[Griffin]

I was not to be like a pedantic nerd. I was very thrilled in the trailer where there's a line where Harrison Ford's like, they told me if I wanted to be president, I had to lose the mustache.

[David]

Oh, interesting. Right? We haven't had a mustachioed president since maybe Roosevelt.

[Griffin]

But that sort of solves the Red Hulk mustache issue, where they're just like, well, he just shaved before he ever became the Red Hulk.

[David]

Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I'm not joking. It was a large conversation in the Marvel retreats. Where does the mustache go?

[Griffin]

Where did you land on the logic?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I just went, listen, not every fight's my fight. And I moved on with my life. Like, there's. There's a lot going on.

[Griffin]

This is not for me to solve. Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I'm trying to get Miles morales into the 616. It's. I've got. I've got my. I've got my lane. I've got. I've got issues that I was dealing with at the time.

[David]

Red Hulk has a gun. Right. That was part of his thing. But it was like. It's like, you know the Hulk? And I'm like, yeah, I know the Hulk. He's incredibly strong. And they're like, yeah. But he also has a big gun that he shoots someone with.

[Griffin]

But there are other Hulks that had guns, I guess.

[David]

I guess in the 90s fix it.

[Griffin]

Would carry on a Tommy gun.

[David]

In the 90s, it got.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

For Hulk to happen.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

See, when I saw the trailer, I was much more. I've been. As we are going to discuss. I have lived with the Harrison Ford's energy as an actor my whole life, which has varied from the most excited bull. Most Movie star. Movie star. To his middle ages, which were. And that went on for a very long time.

[David]

Yes.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And then we've entered the. This era, which. Which started around Force Awakens, where he's just enjoying being Harrison Ford.

[Griffin]

All right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Solo and I. And. And I never saw this coming. I thought we were going to be stuck with cranky Harrison Ford for the rest of our lives.

[David]

Yeah. When does. That's actually a great point. When does cranky Ford begin? Where it Becomes like, do you even want to be here? Like Harrison.

[Griffin]

I would say it starts with Hollywood Homicide.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I think Hollywood Homicide is a reflection of what was going on at the time.

[Griffin]

Yes. But I think that's sort of the. The fulcrum point.

[David]

Well, I'm going to argue that in the 90s, you know, when he's Jack Ryan and Richard Kimball, he's gruff, but he's not totally grumpy all the way up to Air Force One. Right.

[Griffin]

That's honed movie star Persona.

[David]

Rough, not grumpy. And then post Air Force, when you have six days, seven nights, random hearts, K19, what lies beneath Hollywood Homicide. We're getting quite grumpy there.

[Griffin]

Yeah. But here's okay. I mean, look, this is what we're here to do on this episode.

[David]

He's. He makes sense as a grump in what.

[Griffin]

Let me introduce the podcast because I want to get into this very deeply. This is a very interesting conversation.

[David]

Go ahead.

[Griffin]

In an episode about one of a.

[David]

Very famous movie, but also, like, one.

[Griffin]

Of the most definitive movie star performances of all time.

[David]

No. No question.

[Griffin]

Right. Like, this is obviously, inarguably one of the totemic creations of the American cinema. Indiana Jones will always be on, like, the Mount Rushmore to a certain extent. The tapestry of, like, what is this popular commercial art. But this one in particular for a guy who had already created an insanely iconic character.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

In a wild blockbuster franchise and had.

[David]

Been in two of them already. Right.

[Griffin]

I feel like this is one of those performances kind of like Bruce Willis in Die Hard, like John Wayne and Stagecoach. Right. Where people just study and go, like, what did they fucking synthesize here?

[David]

Total natural ease, humor, sexiness, you know, doesn't gives a shit, but doesn't seem like he's trying hard, you know, like, you can't. You can't fake it. Can't fake what he's doing.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

Pictures of him.

[Griffin]

Just like we can't fake the fact that this is blank. Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

[David]

I suppose we could fake it. I'm David.

[Griffin]

I know. Refused.

[David]

Just like some AI that goes, what do you want from me? Every two minutes, cranky David phase.

[Griffin]

David's entering his early 2000s.

[David]

What if I become the red David in 2025?

[Griffin]

We might need that.

[David]

You think so? You think I need to red Hulk to R out.

[Griffin]

That's a maybe. That's a year 15 arc.

[David]

Have they done any other color hulks since red?

[Griffin]

Well, there's composite Hulk. Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

All of them. Have they really They've done a lot of Hulk.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah.

[David]

Is there like a purple Hulk?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And the. And the red Hulk famously debuted on the TV show. Like, that was. That was. They even referenced it in Wild Card.

[David]

My daughter recently was watching an episode of Spidey and his Friends or whatever the cartoon is, or there's small Spideys that Hulk was in. And Hulk's just walking through the carnival with Spider man, by the way. And I was kind of like, this is not what Hulk's supposed to be like. He's just a green man. But apart from that, the same as any. Right. And she just looked at him. She was like, he doesn't have any clothes on. And I was like, you're not wrong. And that's the only takeaway she could have from this childhood Hulk. Because he didn't seem angry.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

So he was just a man with no clothes.

[Griffin]

Bigger than the other kids.

[David]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

He's like.

[Griffin]

But he's not, like, huge. He's like a big.

[David]

He's. He's large. He's muscle bound. I don't know. The whole thing's weird. Some of these guys don't translate well as kid form. Like Spider man does.

[Griffin]

Does she like Miles Morales?

[David]

Yeah, she likes all three of them.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

He's. Yeah, he's right there in the front.

[Griffin]

Just saying.

[David]

The creator of. Please introduce our guests.

[Griffin]

Blank Jack with Griffin David. I'm. Griffin, I'm. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their career, such as making Jaws.

[David]

Sure.

[Griffin]

And are given a series of blank checks. Make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear. Like Raiders of the Lost Ark in the wake of a bounce. Like 1941. 41, absolutely. This is another thing to talk about here. This is like one of the greatest comeback movies in Hollywood history.

[David]

Comeback. And probably one that doesn't. It's not like he was like, Ah, 1941 doesn't work. I guess I'll do my sort of throwback Alan Quarterman thing, you know, like. And everyone was like, oh, sure. Retreat to safe ground with that, Steve. Like, it's risky.

[Griffin]

It's risky. And this is also a movie that is imbued with the energy of I need to not fuck up.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Like, you feel a certain. In a weird way. It doesn't. It's only positive. But Spielberg being in his head about, like, I need to get over the hump of being a wunderkind and not be a flash in the pan. David's pulling up a really weird Poster. Can you turn this around?

[David]

A British poster? I mean, Ford just looks like 85 in this. Look at him. I don't know. Anyway, our guest today. Yes.

[Griffin]

As David was saying right before we recorded arguably the most important impactful comic book writer of our generation, of our lifetime, you were very much the guy that I feel like we grew up on and grew up with and activated through. Brian Michael Bandis, unbelievably, is on the show.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well, that's awfully nice. Thank you for having me. I am thrilled to be here. I am a huge fan of this podcast, as I reveal over time, including knowing that I could jump in early and without being introduced.

[Griffin]

It's a pro move. Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

My obligation. But I'm thrilled to be here. And I will say for the few people I know, you like to keep it on the download, what you're doing. But when I said I was doing the show and they go, hey, what movie? And I said, raiders. The reverence in which I was shown, like, oh, they gave you Raiders? It was like, literally an omnor amongst us blankies. I'm on the Patreon. I am a huge, huge fan.

[David]

So you've listened to us blather on about Marvel movies. Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But also think about this the funniest thing, because, like, yeah, I've listened to you blab around about the mummy. I've listened to you blab around about Austin Powers. I've listened to you. It is a very, very excellent space for my head to be in when I'm doing laundry and other things, like driving my kids around like an Uber. But I will say it is very funny that part of the magic of this podcast is that often you will venture into other subjects with no warning. And when I'm listening to a Marvel podcast, I'm like, hey, you might bring up some secret invasion stuff. Sure, it might come up. But it's always amazing when you're talking about Austin Powers, man and mystery, and all of a sudden you get into a Dark Avengers rant, and I'm like, oh, that's hilarious.

[Griffin]

I would never have guessed that A tremendous amount of your work looms very large in both of our minds.

[David]

Absolutely.

[Griffin]

I feel like, to some degree, one of the connection points we found early on when we became friends was Bendis comics.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

I think, like, you know, early sort of like courtship, but then also, like, finding, like, we have the same, like, oh, these arcs were as big for you as they were.

[David]

I just had to move my bookshelf from one side of the room to the other. I had to take all the comic trade paperbacks off, put them all back on. I put Faithfully had my, my, my Bendis shelf. All the daredevils, all the Avengers, all the power, you know, all the Jessica Jones. Anyway, Ultimate Spider Man. I have all of your ultimate Spider mans.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Thank you, man.

[David]

That means a lot.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It's really cool.

[David]

Okay, fine. Well, you should hear it then. I have them all. I have like 16 of those things. They're heavy.

[Griffin]

See, I believe I have every single issue of the original run, but that was transferred Spider man to. Yes. A basement that my father oversees that I am very concerned about the status of.

[David]

Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

[Griffin]

Yeah, that's tough, right? So I've almost been too scared to check. But at one point, for a very long time, I had all of them as single issues. Buying in real time.

[David]

What if I came, like, just brought you on to drag you about killing some character? And now I'm trying to think of what character I'd be mad about.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I would be very happy to have that conversation with you. But I will say, to pivot into our subject. I don't think there's any movie that I could refer to as more important to the DNA of how old I was when it came out and what the world was like and what the culture was like and how everything about my life at this stage that wasn't Marvel was Lucas and Spielberg. And I was giving a great amount of thought in some of the links I sent you, Griffin, about why do I know all of this? Why do I know all of this by heart? I knew every single magic trick that Lucas and Spielberg did from Star wars through Temple of Doom. And there really was this amazing time where these two wunderkins were doing magic tricks and then couldn't wait to show us how they did the magic trick. Here's how the good point. And I'm 10 to 15 years old and I'm being showed the magic trick and then being showed how it's done and mind blown constantly. There's no other space. I'm in with Star wars and Indiana Jones and it just keeps building, building. Star wars comes out in 1977. I'm 10 years old. I see it in the theater. One of my favorite things you guys talk about is how old you are when you see certain things and the experience of what that was. And here I am right at this. I see Star wars in theaters. And also Star wars stays in theaters for two and a half years.

[Griffin]

Right. So you see it multiple times.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It's just a Thing you can do constantly my entire childhood and see Star wars up until Empire Strikes Back comes out. One of my favorite moments as a movie theater going child was my mom took me to Sampire Strikes Back. This is giant cliffhanger. I never experienced a cliffhanger outside of a comic book. With a comic book. It's always coming. Next month, Spider Man's gonna die. We'll figure out how in a month from now you'll find out. He's not dead. This one. I literally, I just sat there in, in stunned silence and my mom just let me watch it again. We just never left the theater. We just like, oh.

[David]

She's like, there go. They're whirling again. If nothing else.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. 40 minutes later they're going to show.

[Griffin]

You're not going to get the resolution you want, but at least you can just watch the same movie a second time immediately.

[David]

That's so.

[Griffin]

That's like methadone.

[David]

That's an experience I didn't have. Right. I didn't get to watch an Empire Strikes Back and then have to wait three years for Return of the Jedi. Do you remember being happy with Empire Strikes Back? Like forgetting the cliffhanger just generally, were you satisfied or were you like, I don't know what to make of that.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes. Also you're very aware. Oh, they're not repeating it. They're continuing it. Oh, it's a snow planet. And everything that we celebrate about it. The initial feeling was complete celebration. It's everything better. It's everything elevated. And they're doing it.

[Griffin]

It's broadening out. Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

The only thing we didn't have is and I have a lot of kids, so I get to funnel my pop culture memories through how they're processing their pop culture memories right now. My son knows when the next four Marvel movies are coming out. We have no idea when and if another Star wars was coming out. Unless maybe you had a subscription to Starlog. Maybe you caught something on some weird Entertainment Tonight thing. But other than that, unless you caught it live, unless you caught it in the moment, you really didn't know what's going to happen. Right?

[Griffin]

Yeah. I mean, my. I talk about my little cousin George a lot who's now someone I'm like giving your trades to. As he's like digging deeper and deeper into Marvel. But he is very much a kid who's like aware of what the upcoming Marvel slate is.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

It's weird, you know, and he's like talking about the moves of like, so what does it mean that Downey Jr. Is coming back, but he's a different character. Like, he's like, fully in on that. I mean, I've said this. It's just the quote that is the most fascinating to me was he was like, what? Marvel movies are still coming out? This was whatever a year or two ago. You know, he always asks me, like, so what are the next three Marvel movies? And he was like, what's coming out? And I was like, well, the Marvels comes out in three months. And he goes, I hear the buzz isn't good in that. And I'm like, you're eight.

[David]

Who's giving you the buzz?

[Griffin]

You don't have a cell phone. You're not on social media. What is this? But, like, he's very tapped into all this stuff in a way that's just like, this is the monoculture. Like, the monoculture is, in a weird way, the discussion of the industry and all of that. Whereas I think, you know, David and I always felt like weird kids where we were paying attention to this at a time when, like, people were not.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Where most adults were not.

[David]

You would have one friend. I had one friend who I shared, like, the comics thing with. Or maybe two, you know, like, where we. That was it. And then maybe. Right. Maybe you, like, read wizard magazine. So then you know a little bit about, like, what's in the future. But yeah, you do not watch entire, like, presentations of slates on YouTube at, you know, press conferences and things like that.

[Griffin]

The entire cottage industry of trying to guess what will happen next. Like, you talking about that experience of, like, Spielberg and Lucas being so pioneering and kind of serializing legitimate A level filmmaking. Right. That they were sort of like, bridging this gap between, like, the old serials that they grew up with and the comics that they grew up with and the TV shows and the radio plays and all of that that were always seen as low art, you know, or children's art or, like pop trash or whatever it was. And then elevating this to, like, a level craft, but getting people roped into the story in that way. Listen, I'm forgetting what the original connection point was, but if it was you messaging me or someone telling me, do you know that Brian Michael Bendis is a listener? At some point it got relayed to me, and then we started messaging. And then you did the George Lucas talk show, I guess about a year ago, maybe.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, eight months. I loved it. I absolutely adored that experience.

[Griffin]

You were wonderful on the show, but you. We had already been messaging back and forth a little bit. At that point of like, we gotta find something for you to be on for. And we will keep potential guests in the hopper for a long time sometimes to wait to find the right fit. And there were a couple things we were throwing out and going back and forth on. Then you come to George Lucas talk show, and you came with, like, 10 Indiana Jones prop replicas. I don't think I've told you this. No, but Brian comes with, like, a hat, but he comes with, like, a grail diary replica. He comes with, like, maps. Like, he comes with, like, all the paperwork. And, like, you really look right there.

[David]

Hey, there you go.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

A little Jewish boy with the cup of Christ there. A little.

[David]

A little chalice there.

[Griffin]

Is this thing that's very nice about doing the show is that sometimes we will have people like yourself, where George Lucas was so important to them in their development as an artist or whatever, and they basically use Connor as, like, a surrogate to say those things too.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

You were very earnestly talking through the value of what this stuff means to you, to Connor, who is very good at receiving that stuff, because he can.

[David]

Go kind of like, yeah, yeah, well, of course. It's perfect movie or whatever.

[Griffin]

Right. And I like that lodged in my brain. And then a couple months after that, we were like, let's do it. Let's fucking do early Spielberg. And I feel like you were the first message I sent of just like, raiders.

[David]

That's awesome.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well, actually, you said, hey, we're doing early Spielberg, which I could have done any of them. And. And. And I. And I think I said to you temple of Doom, because I will. As I will describe to you, I'm now in high school, learning story. And Temple of Doom is playing at my local theater across the street from my house the entire summer. I saw it every day. I went to it every day. So it was like, even though Raiders is obviously the better film, the Temple of Doom things were unlocking.

[David]

It met you at a pivotal moment in your life. Yes, yes, yes.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And even the. Oh, this is darker. This is different.

[Griffin]

Why.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Why am feeling differently about this? Like, every choice that's being made was interesting to me. So. And then you. And you. You literally said, no, Raiders. And I was like, oh, of course I will. I will set Raiders. But I.

[Griffin]

But I was like, it would be a mitzvah to us if you came on and did this one. And that gives you an opportunity to talk about Indiana Jones as a whole and Lucas and Spielberg and all of this. It feels like you saying that, like, you know It's. It's a big deal that we let you do this one. I was like, that will make our lives easier if we have Brian talk about Raiders and like kick off this Indiana Jones run. I think it's one of the things that David and I talk about a lot with your work and how important it was for us at a sort of developmental age. Like what you're talking about, of learning how story works through the stuff you're absorbing and seeing what works and what doesn't is that I feel like we will often cite you as someone who is incredibly good at understanding the format in which you are doing the storytelling in the sense that you are telling long form serialized stories. But there was a thing, I think a trend that started to bum me out. And I feel like we've complained about David. That started in the 2000s. That has only gotten more and more extreme over time where I would be reading single issues and feel like this is just a graphic novel that is being split up into six parts that I'm just now having to wait a month to read. Chapters. You know, very similar. A lot of our complaints about streaming television now where people are like, well, this is really just a 12 hour movie. And that balance of like doing something that has integrity as the one piece you're engaging with at that moment, but can also amount to something larger. You write great arcs, but I also think you understand the value of like, this issue needs to be satisfying. There's like a big picture and a small picture of what's going on there. And like Indiana Jones is this basically, it feels like storytelling experiment for Lucas and Spielberg to be like, can we make a movie that is just that, Right? There are all these famous lines of what if it was just the good parts and none of the boring parts? What if it was a republic serial that never ended? At every 10 minutes there's like another huge moment, another big cliffhanger and where does it go from here? And then, yeah, I guess leaving you probably with the same feeling as Star wars of like, so what happens to Indiana Jones now?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So a few things are going on here. Number one, both Lucas and Spielberg are eager to let us in on the magic trick and to take us in. And as a youngin, I'm all in. And so when I sent you that network special on Raiders Lost Ark that aired on CBS as a document, right? But if you only can only see the movie in theaters, there's no other way to experience it. And all of a sudden there's showing you an hour Long behind the scenes was genuine, interesting, and also honest storytelling. There's one bit in that special I sent you where Spielberg literally is exhausted in Morocco going, I'm in the middle of desert with all my friends. I'm completely embarrassing myself. This is not working. He's having complete imposter syndrome. And I was thinking how. I wonder if this would air today. I wonder if, if, if, if, like, the director of Wicked was staring and having just a moment, like, we all have going, you know, so. So this honesty that they're sharing with us. And on top of. All right, so Lucas is Star Wars. Spielberg did the same thing with Close Encounters and Jaws. All right, so now. And also we have the. In the John Williams documentary, which is out right now at Disney, which really does a good job illustrating this, is that in lieu of DVD and vhs, we have the soundtrack to just sit in our room, stare at the ceiling and relive the movie in our mind's eye with whatever top, you know, trading cards we have. Like, we're absorbing it and remembering it and recontextualizing it in ways that are just different than what happens today. No, no better or worse.

[David]

You had, like, novelizations, I guess, or adaptations. Right. Like, that's about as close as it got, I guess.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Right. But that was a big one, too, because even the Close Encounters of novelization written by Steven Spielberg, whether it is or isn't, but it says written by Steven Spielberg, it internalizes the story for a young person who's only seeing. Externalizing it. And now you're. Now I feel like I know Roy Neary. Like, I'm like, I. I know.

[David]

You're hearing his internal monologue. Yes.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. So that's. For a young creator, all this is new. So all this is happening, including, whatever, 1941, but all of it is very. Also connected loudly to the comic book space. Star wars and Indiana Jones are also comic books. And the Star wars series is drawn by Howard Chaykin to start with, which is one of the greats of all time. You had Walt Simonson doing the Close Encounters adaptation, and it is wonderful. It is not just. Well, they're very much like, you know, the short version of a story, like the Cliff Notes version of it, but visually spectacular. And there's a great. Like, how they made it of the Close Encounters comic book that showed the differences of how something's directed versus how something is shown on the page. First time I'd ever seen that talked about anywhere. So this is a huge moment for a young comic book creator. Right. So all I have is how to make comics the Marvel way by Stan Lee and everything George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are telling us. And Spielberg is loud on graphic novels for Close Encounters makes a huge National Lampoon's heavy metal version of 1941 that is loud and naughty and completely inappropriate by today's standards. And then the Raiders of the Lost Ark is a two issue miniseries. Cliff Notes by the Amazing Claus Jansen. So these are all world class comic creators that are stopping what they're doing to adapt or to take what might have been a weekend gig for them adapting these movies. But I remember The Raiders lost Arkansas. 2 issue Cliff notes came out and I was livid. I was. This is not enough of an adaptation. I mean, they skipped the well of the Souls. I mean there's just like major pieces missing because they just don't have the thing.

[David]

I'm looking at it though. It's Harold Chaykin. Yeah, like you said, he's the coolest. Damn.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, no, he's looks pretty good. Yeah, the art is fucking cool. Look at Blade Runner comic adaptation by Al Williamson. You're about to be level like these things because I.

[David]

Right. Because I was too, you know, I was too old for this stuff, right? Yeah. Like by the time I was watching these movies, like you could, you know, rent them or, you know, like I could just watch the movie.

[Griffin]

I mean that the moment you're talking about in the John Williams doc hit me really hard and kind of unlocked a thing that I don't think I'd ever like verbalized in such a specific way. And, and some of the talking heads say to your point of like, the movie's out of theaters at some point. You have the soundtrack, you look at the liner notes, you play it in your head. And I feel like so much of my childhood I would listen to CDs of film scores and try to reconstruct the sequences in my mind. I mean, literally listen to the beats and go, oh, that's where that happens. That's when that moment happens.

[David]

This little swell here is that if.

[Griffin]

You have the same kind of demented brain that the three of us clearly have, you're trying to like deconstruct these things to understand how they were made.

[David]

You're also trying to remember the sort of pure emotion you felt the first time that relive some form of it.

[Griffin]

Yeah, but the, this notion I don't think I've really thought about before of like Lucas and Spielberg kind of being the first major open source filmmakers that like I was Rewatching recently, a thing I watch recently, multiple times a year, but that like Peter Bogdanovich attempting to interview John Ford. And John Ford just giving him like the steeliest non answers of all time to everything.

[David]

Okay.

[Griffin]

And that whole generation of movie star, movie directors, movie makers, like, I don't know, right, who either were just like very sort of like aloof and. And Tony and their sort of attitude about everything or would try to just be like, oh no, I just shoot movies. They're trash, whatever. Like try to sort of hide their emotions. Lucas and Spielberg were kind of the first enthusiasts who reached that level of success and wanted to like, as you're saying, kind of tell everyone what they did, share the process. I think a lot of it was based off of giddiness of like, can you believe we get to do this? More than them consciously trying to educate another generation? But it is why those two guys and their movies across these like 15 years primarily are so influential. Were so activating for so many artists in different mediums because you were getting the pieces in that kind of way and you were getting the supplemental material, all the merchandising and all the stuff, the adaptations, all that helps keep the movie alive in your mind. But they're also doing interviews. Fan culture is rising. There are places like, you know, Starlog and whatever that they can like talk to where these things can be distributed and then lodge into heads forever.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So. And the same thing was going on in comics where there's a lot of our. A lot of our masters were not giving. Like Jack Kirby often refers to, when there's a job, I have to make, sales, I have to make.

[Griffin]

Jack Kirby was the John Ford of comics.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, but he's never cranky like John Ford, but certainly would not give up. I am an artist. Until his much later years when enough people were yelling at him, you're an artist. That he finally said, okay, okay, I'm an artist. But. So there was like, like getting any kind of information about how to do any of this was really, if you. You felt like an archeologist, you felt like you had to like really sift through, you know, issues of Comics Buyer's Guide and Comic Scene magazine and Starlog looking for just any kind of information about how to tell a story or what, you know. So anytime someone like Lucas and Spielberg particularly really couldn't wait to tell you how the magic trick worked, it was deeply exciting. I am also interested in that. They kind of stopped doing that after a while. Like there was a window well into the. But by the time they get to the third Indiana Jones, they have stopped sharing. He doesn't do directors commentaries. And if you think of anyone's doing directors commentaries, it's him, it's Spielberg. Because it feels like all directors commentary is beholden to him and he didn't do them. And it was strange and appealing at the same time that he stopped sharing. I found that deeply fascinating.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Yeah, what do we got?

[Griffin]

The Monkey actually called the Monkey. New film from Oz Perkins, whose Long Legs I loved last year, starring another one of our friends, past and future guests, Tatiana Maslany.

[David]

That's right. And looks very, very funny and cool and scary. Also very intrigued by this Martin Campbell action or cleaner with Daisy Ridley starring.

[Griffin]

Daisy Ridley, someone I have always had very, very calm opinions about on this podcast. I'm very excited for. It feels like she's kind of ramping up her movie career again.

[David]

Here's the thing. Oh, and then there's the Day the Earth blew up.

[Griffin]

I was gonna say, if that weren't enough, February ending with the first original feature length animated Looney Tunes movie ever that I have heard is excellent.

[David]

And here's the thing, the Day the.

[Griffin]

Blew up in a Looney Tunes movie.

[David]

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

[Griffin]

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

[David]

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

[Griffin]

I have three free hours. That's what's nice.

[David]

You do it more.

[Griffin]

You do it more.

[David]

Go see the movies.

[Griffin]

Go see the movies.

[David]

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

[Griffin]

Get free popcorns and sodas.

[David]

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

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Right?

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Sure.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

I want to swivel back to your child. So 1980, you see Empire Strikes Back. You have this experience with the cliffhanger. 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark comes out.

[Griffin]

So you're 14, is that right?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So I'm 13. Yeah.

[Griffin]

13.

[David]

How.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I'm 13, 14 years old.

[David]

How aware are you of this coming down the pike? Like, what's this all in? Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Okay, that's the thing. How it was sold to us. And it's funny, when I was talking to people about doing this, a couple of people said, what could you possibly say about Raiders Lost Ark that hasn't been said?

[Griffin]

This is the issue we get into.

[David]

Sometimes challenge of these.

[Griffin]

When we do the most totemic movies of all time. Like, you're like, it is kind of impossible to overstate the impact of Raiders of the Lost Ark. When you're like, oh, it was one of the most successful movies of all time. It launched one of the most enduring franchises in history. It is like, key movie star text, key filmmaking text. It is like a movie that everyone is still kind of ripping off or trying to, like, chase. And then you're also like, it was fucking nominated for best picture. Like, it just kind of did everything.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, everything. Right. Everything that could be. So here. Here's what I came up. They go, what? What? What is there left to discuss with Raiders? A lot that hasn't been discussed. And I go, I honestly don't think I've heard a serious conversation about this movie post Fabelman's. Which to me completely changed my perspective on some of the elements of this movie and what he was doing and why he was doing it, including the fact that he lived with the monkey. He lived with the monkey. I never in the 57 years I've been alive on this planet knew that young Steven Spielberg lived with this little monkey. My kids are growing up with a little Chihuahua. My wife has a Chihuahua. Our pandemic dog. And I wonder which one of my kids will make art out of the Chihuahua like Spielberg had to with the monkey. So just. So there's that. And Also, I have a very deep memory of how we were sold. Steven Spielberg of the time. And it was all keeping it light and keeping it compared to Fabelman's. But I remember my mom going, you know, Steven Spielberg gave his mother a Bloomingdale's card with no limit. Like, she can go into Bloomingdale's, buy whatever she wants, whenever she wants.

[Griffin]

Right. Brian, if you like telling stories, this is what you need to aspire to be, and then how you need to handle that level of success.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So that was always like. And I'm sitting there, well, I'm gonna be a comic creator, so that would be no problem at all for me to accomplish that goal. But it's so interesting that it was such a. It was my mom really trying to share with me, like, some kind of information about this thing that I won't shut up about. Right. So she heard something, she shared it with me, but it did still with me. Oh, like the mother relationship. And then you see it for real laid out later in his later work and in Fable mentioned like, oh, took him a long time to get there.

[Griffin]

Yes, well. And it took us a long time in our history to get around to the balance due of early Spielberg. I'm so fucking happy we waited to do it post Fabelman's.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Because it does really make all of.

[David]

These movies make a little bit more sense or whatever.

[Griffin]

I mean, we're just interesting from different. Yeah.

[David]

More engrossing.

[Griffin]

Now when I watch a movie like this, which I've seen a number of times, you know, I'll just. I feel like I talked about this a little bit when we did our crystal skull episode 8 million years ago, an episode that wasn't controversial at all.

[David]

Good movie.

[Griffin]

But like, Indiana Jones was a weird blind spot for me. I was.

[David]

Yeah, I do remember you talking about this. It's not your franchise in the way that say Star Wars.

[Griffin]

Well, it just wasn't. And like, I had the baby version of what you're describing with Star wars, which is, I didn't see them until the special editions came out. So I had that thing of the movies being released one month apart and feeling like, oh, there's a kid at school who says he has a VHS of Empire Strikes Back, but that's cheating. I need to wait three weeks until Empire comes out in February, you know, and like, people at school being like, you know, Darth Vader's their dad. Right? And I'm like, that's impossible. What the fuck are you talking about? But having this mini three Month arc of needing to wait to see the next one. I just never seen Indiana Jones and I feel like it was a movie that most kids I know were like shown when they were five.

[David]

I don't know if I was the.

[Griffin]

Thing that like parents just passed down to people very early. I feel like it was a thing I knew through osmosis. I saw 8,000 parodies of the boulder rolling. I knew what the theme song was. I could make jokes about Indiana Jones, but like, I just never got around to watching them. And then when Crystal Skull was coming out, my roommate at the time, Spike, was like, how have you never seen these? Gave me his DVD box set. I watched all three of them, I think in the week leading up to Crystal Skull. So a lot of my opinion of Crystal Skull is also like shifted by. I didn't have decades of living with this thing in expectation before I saw the one that everyone got angry about. You know, like those four movies all were seen for the first time in the same week for me.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I can't even imagine what that feels like. Exactly. Yeah.

[Griffin]

And I have in whatever it's been the 15 years since then, more 18. Gone back to watch Raiders a lot. And every time I do, I try to sort of like remove layers of my awareness and try to get myself into the headspace of just watching this as a pure object.

[David]

Right? You're just sitting in the theater, you know, Harrison Ford's in it, but that's all you know. And you just watch this extremely fun rip roaring adventure. Right?

[Griffin]

The thing I cannot even imagine is for, for you being your age, your generation already invested in this, the mere news of, hey, Spielberg and Lucas are going to make a movie together. Must have been fucking mind blowing that these two guys are like, you know, neck and neck chasing each other, you know, that they're friends. That's part of the mythology that these guys are buddies. They kind of come out of the same soup. They're two sides of like the same coin. You know, here's like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones inspiring each other. And then it's like they're. They're doing. They're unifying their powers. Here's like the mega project.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And I remember and that was like, how interesting is, yes, he's the director of the films, but I remember it growing up as it's a Steven Spielberg joint that Lucas is part of. Right? But when you read the transcripts, which is part of what I was excited to bring to the George Lucas talk show, that you read the transcripts and it is shocking how much Lucas had this locked down. Like he really had this figured out from the get go in a way that's even stronger than the way he had Star wars lockdown. Star wars was always building and building and building until it became what it was, including the scroll. Everything was stuck onto it as it went. But he really sat down with those guys and goes, here's what we're doing. And had major parts of it locked down. I love this transcript. For those who don't know, online you can find literally the transcript and the recording of Spielberg, Lucas and Kasdan just working it out, just doing a little mini writer's room and figuring it out. And it is glorious for someone like me who always sat there and going, why is it so hard for me to figure out how to create things? And then when you see the three masters in a room, also not figuring it out right away. I mean, my favorite moment in the transcript is when someone says, maybe Marion's the villain. And I'm like, oh my God. Because you're sitting there going, that's not a bad story. That's not a bad way to go with this. But oh my God, I'm so glad they didn't. And oh my God, I'm so glad they shared this with just the idea. The multiverse of madness that could have come out of that room is so brilliant to me, but I just was so impressed with George Lucas in those transcripts. So you really get to see the magic that is him at full blast anyway, right?

[Griffin]

It's the whole thing about him that is so fascinating and maddening at the same time, where you're like this guy who just had this incredible flow state period and a weird lack of self awareness where he was either so right or so wrong. And there is like a pretty dramatic moment where the pendulum kind of swings and it's so easy now. I feel like in a modern context, people sort of write him off and go like, oh, he's like a broken clock that was right twice a day, you know, but everyone else around him made really good decisions and people saved him from his worst instincts. And Raiders is like, as you said, this thing he basically brings to Spielberg and is like, I'm hiring you to direct this. Like, this is a for hire job for you to execute my vision of this thing I've mapped out. And this is a movie that has like four primary authors in Spielberg, Lucas, Kasdan and Ford, where the movie doesn't work if you're missing any one of those four Guys. But I do think they all, in a lot of ways, contribute equally to the. The soup of the thing, even if.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Oh, absolutely.

[Griffin]

Lucas is Primarily the first 25%. It's also, I mean, good moment to crack open the dossier. But talk about this as a comeback movie. This is a movie that, like, largely stems out of two failures, which are like, the miss of 1941 and Spielberg being like, have I fucked up? Combined with all his movies up until then had gone over budget, over schedule, were lauded, were successful. You know, he had the Jaws, Close Encounters thing, like, as feathers in his cap. But the second 1941 bombs, it's like, well, now we can acknowledge that this guy is. Is not infallible, and maybe it's not worth putting up with his shit if sometimes he's going to make something like.

[David]

That that costs us a lot of money along with everything else.

[Griffin]

And then the other big thing is Spielberg desperately wanting to be the first American to direct a James Bond movie. A thing that he keeps getting fucking rejected from doing. He's made two of the biggest movies of all time, and they will not let him through the door.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I like that. Rejection at this level hits him so hard that even decades later, he still brings it up. Like, he's still kind of mad he didn't get to direct the James Bond, right?

[Griffin]

That he was like, I mean, fucking Jaws. Like, what more do you want out of somebody?

[David]

So the dossier, I am opening it. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Steven Spielberg, they are admirers before they're friends, we should say, right? Like, George is a little older than Spielberg. Is that right? Or at least he's a little more. He's creatively further along than Spielberg, right? Like, George Lucas is already established by the time that Spielberg is emerging as a filmmaker. Spielberg.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well, Lucas is also part of Coppola's.

[David]

Situation for a long time. Like, there's all these stories of, yeah, Lucas is three years older than him.

[Griffin]

Okay? But the other interesting thing is that, like, Lucas goes to film school, right? Like, links up with all these people, comes out with a better reputation faster in a certain way than Spielberg, who is the wunderkind who skips straight to a studio contract.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

But is not getting that sort of prestige around him. Whereas Lucas. It's like you have Coppola and everyone's saying, like, this guy's a genius, but yeah.

[David]

So Coppola and Lucas et al, notice Spielberg when Duel comes out on tv and after American Graffiti comes out, George Lucas starts to daydream of like, let's Make a sort of B picture at an A picture scale, right? Like an old Republic film serial from the 30s and 40s, your Flash Gordons and all that. But how he has this idea of like a 1930s style supernatural, grave robber, archaeologist type thing, right? Which is. That's the Indiana Smith is the character.

[Griffin]

He comes up with no notes, perfect name.

[David]

And he does. I mean, his original. This is George Lucas's original conception. Does sound about right. Which is like college professor goes off on adventures. Also can be found at a nightclub with 30s ladies on his arms. Right. He brings in Philip Kaufman, who is. Well, where's Philip Kaufman at this point? Again, already an established filmmaker to sort of flesh it out. Kaufman is like, eh, drop the nightclub and the ladies for now. Like, you don't really need that. You more want this to be like this kind of like intellectual slash adventurer thing. Like, he's a professor, but he's also fighting the Nazis. He's, he's, you know, smart, but he also is finding like magic shit. Right? Because that's the thing about Nina Jones. We're like, he's like this smart professor. He's like, yeah, that's that magic box from God. And you're like, what? And he's like, you know, who knows? Or maybe it's just a box, I don't know. But might be like, have like Jewish magic inside of it. Don't open it.

[Griffin]

That all these movies are like, about the meeting place between like, hard facts and science and history and like inexplicable religious phenomena.

[David]

So as Lucas is developing this, his other passion project, Star wars, takes off.

[Griffin]

So how did that turn out?

[David]

I don't know. I can't check right now. I think it did. Okay.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But in the theme of your podcast, it does seem that Raiders lost Ark is his blank check.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah.

[David]

Yes, a little bit.

[Griffin]

Right. Because I mean, obviously Empire and Jedi, it's like, well, he now owns the rights. He gets to like, turn this into like an industry and map out where Star wars goes. But there's a certain extent of like, they're not an obligation, but it's like, well, of course I have to keep doing Star Wars. This feels like the second major new thing he is creating.

[David]

Well, the other thing that happens right after Star wars comes out and begins to conquer the world is that Steven Spielberg goes on vacation with George Lucas.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

They go to Hawaii. Spielberg is wrapping up on Close Encounters, which also comes out in 1977, of course. And Spielberg mentions offhandedly, like a dream of mine is to Make a James Bond movie. And George Lucas is like, I have that beat.

[Griffin]

I have something better than that, right?

[David]

I have the same basic idea, but better. And it's this Raiders of the Lost Ark idea. And as Spielberg says, on hearing it, he said, I felt like I was eating a barrel of popcorn at a noon matinee. Like, because it's basically just like you can do a James Bond movie but with a more fun aesthetic, a more you aesthetic in a way, right? Not this British spy aesthetic.

[Griffin]

What is the American James Bond, right?

[David]

And it can be a globetrotting adventure that's fun. Like, you know, and all that. And Spielberg had been says he had called Cubby Broccoli after Jaws came out, being like, hello, do you want to hire me? Like, like begging him for Bond. And that's not how Broccoli did business, right? Like he, you know, he had his like three British guys who did the, you know, John Glenn and Guy Hamilton. Those gu. Like, he's not going to hire this American wunderkind, so he's not going to make James Bond.

[Griffin]

I feel like it's part of the fascinating mythology of this movie that like even. And I imagine this was the case with you, Brian, like the George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, like Hawaii beach conversations have taken on this mythical quality over time where there were all these kind of regular powwows they would do at these sort of like check ins at like the parallel moments in their career. There's the infamous story of before Close Encounters and Star wars come out. And they're both absolutely terrified about how their movies are going to do and they consider making a deal to swap profit participation. Like each one thinks the other guy's movie is gonna work.

[David]

Both like, ah, God, yeah, right.

[Griffin]

And the fascinating thing of you're just like, it boggles the mind that there was space for both Star wars and Close Encounters to exist at that level in the same year. It feels like a case where the audience would vote on which version of a sci fi movie they wanted. And both of them working to that extent is insane.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I believe Aaron Sorkin will one day write a movie about three vacations of Lucas and Spielberg at their different ages.

[David]

That would be fun. So Philip Kaufman nominally is the first choice to direct the movie because he had worked with Lucas on at a certain point. But Phil Kaufman loses interest, so Lucas brings it back to Spielberg more officially. Are you interested? Yes, I am. And so then they look for a screenplay, a writer to actually write a full screenplay. They really just have a story sketched out and they Read this script called Continental Divide that had been written by Larry Kasdan, who had only written another script called the Bodyguard, which had not yet taken a while to get made.

[Griffin]

And Continental Divide is the one that ends up being the Belushi movie.

[David]

Yes. But they like these scripts, so they think he has a Howard Hawksian sensibility. Very fun. And so they're just basically like, you know, will you turn this into a proper screenplay for us?

[Griffin]

It's wild that they kind of take a flyer on him. It's wild that he was so firmly the right choice when neither of those scripts seem to be obvious indicators.

[David]

Right. Speak to a Raiders thing.

[Griffin]

Right. And then he obviously has his, like, time in the Lucasfilm trenches, but then you look at what his career becomes once he goes off as his own director. And it does feel weird to be like, wait, right, Raiders was written by the guy who did Mumford.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Sure. Or even Body Heat. Like, you're like, did you pitch Spielberg Body Heat? Like, yeah, that's right.

[Griffin]

Right, yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Which was at the time for people to know the sexiest thing that ever been.

[David]

It's a whole movie.

[Griffin]

It's one of Connor's favorite things to bring up.

[David]

Which Body Heat. No.

[Griffin]

Well, no. That Lucas produced Body Heat but had his name removed from it because he thought that people would be turned off of the movie being sexy with his name attached. It's like the Mel Brooks Elephant man thing where it's like, they'll think it's a comedy. He's like, if my name is on it, it will not be taken seriously as an erotic word.

[David]

Fair.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Wow. I did not know that one. That's a great one. That's fantastic.

[David]

So Lucas and Spielberg, they do fight a little bit. As Spielberg puts it. Like, George loves logic. And sometimes you'll get sort of swallowed up by the logic. Right. Like trying to make a fun story. But George will back off when you are like, no, I want to do this, and I. I'm gonna go shoot my movie. He says, george is a bit like Disney. He does put a vision out there that's so attractive. You'd be a fool or a slave to your own ego if you denied it just because it didn't come from you. Interesting. Their biggest dispute was thoth. You know, the evil German guy, Ronald Lacey's character. Spielberg wanted to have a prosthetic hand that was like a machine gun and a flamethrower. And they have, like, concept art that they had built up with this. And George Lucas was like, that's the wrong genre. Like, that's sci fi, right? Like, I don't care how cool that sounds. Right?

[Griffin]

Like that's fucking James Bond shit.

[David]

Yeah, that's too much. Like we're not having a robot armed Nazi.

[Griffin]

Right, Right.

[David]

You know, and in my opinion, George Lucas, as metal as that sounds like George Lucas. Completely correct. Like, these guys are all the scarier because they're just three fucking guys in hats who are like, maybe Hitler would like this coffin.

[Griffin]

But it is fascinating when the James Bond franchise is so based on technology. Right. That the cornerstone of the gadget is that Hugh is showing you the 10 new objects and what the car can do and all of that. That they are making this movie where they're like, technology's not the thing, but also magic exists.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

No, Like, Star wars changed James Bond. They went into outer space. James Bond went to the moon because of Star Wars.

[Griffin]

He raped that moon. Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes, he did.

[David]

So Indiana Smith, There's a Steve McQueen movie called Nevada Smith. So Spielberg's like, what do we do about that? And they're like, Indiana Jones. So there you go. That's how that happened. And yes, there is the famous transcript that Brian was referencing that does have the infamous moment where they reference how young should Marian have been when they had this?

[Griffin]

Tris.

[David]

That when you read it now, you're like a little skeeved out by. But they are sort of playing with how shocking or transgressive can they make it? The movie is very vague about it. It has the kind of like, I was old. I was old enough, you know, like. But like, it does not throw down any numbers.

[Griffin]

No, I mean, I think an incredibly wise decision. I think it's like a perfect kind of Spielberg. What. What are at this point in time, his judgment, 1941 aside, is sort of so impeccable about, like, what is the information you need to give the audience and what do they not need to be concerned with? Like, he just knows how to portion out the exact right amount of visual information, narrative information, backstory and whatever. If. If that. If numbers are left out only because he thought it was like excess fat. It is a decision that has greatly helped the legacy of the movie.

[David]

Definitely long term. So Kasdan, you know, he writes the script, takes six months, he said he basically never checked in with them, just went off and did it himself. Stephen's working on 1941. George is working on Empire Strikes Back. They give him a researcher named Debbie Fine who brings him all this research about like Hitler and the occult and Egypt at the time. And all that stuff. He delivers the script. And George is like, let's take lunch. And they sit down and George is like, do you want to write Empire Strikes Back? I'm, like, working on this sequel. And Larry Kasdan's like, do you want to read this script first? And he was like, I'll read it, but you have the job. I'll call you tomorrow if I hate this script. And, you know, he didn't have to.

[Griffin]

Relate, but, like, Lucas had basically become his own studio at this point. Like, this is the weird thing of he's insulating these guys from, like, studio notes. And perhaps there are early signs of things that will plague later Lucas productions in this attitude where it's like, guess what? Like, Larry Kasdan was the right horse to bet on.

[David]

Yes. And he had a feeling about him, and he was right.

[Griffin]

It might be a little insane to just be like, I'm not reading this draft. I'm hiring you to write another thing.

[David]

Yeah. To write the Empire Strikes Back. Like, once again, like a thing where it's like, you weren't even in with the last Star wars movie, but I don't care. I want you to write this. Some stuff that got cut, though. There was somewhat of a love attract, a love triangle between Marian and Belak, and indeed they got rid of that. Just a lot of the stuff they cut was just like, this thing needs to move. Like, you know, just. Just pare it down. Pare it down. They go to now. So now they have this package. Lucas producing, Spielberg's directing, Kasdan wrote it. Frank Marshall is also producing it. Right. And they take it to Hollywood, essentially, and they're like, let's make the greatest deal in the history of Hollywood. Like, I think they. They truly were like, I guess 1941 hadn't come out yet, too. So they are like big swinging dicks.

[Griffin]

Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But that's the big difference if 1941's got like a. Like a tale to it. But at the time, even though it was a big, loud thing, that wasn't Close Encounters, but it didn't fail. It was like, on cable forever.

[David]

You're right, it wasn't. Yes.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Like, it wasn't sat on Showtime. There were certain movies that just lived on Showtime and became part of our consciousness. Not all good, like. No, of course not.

[David]

Right. It's somewhat of a long tail cult thing. I mean. Yes, it failed at the lofty expectations of a Steven Spielberg follow up.

[Griffin]

There's this infamous story about in, I guess the early 2000s, when Eisner was overseeing Michael Eisner, who's also involved in this film. But Eisner was overseeing the Pixar rollout of the five film deal that he had made around Toy Story. Right? And the movies were getting bigger and bigger and more and more lauded. And other Disney execs were like, we need to come up with a plan for how we continue our relationship with Pixar because our contract with them is going to run out and their value is going up so much, they're going to have all the negotiating leverage. And Eisner said to them, they're going to have a flop. And when they have a flop, they'll come back to us. We hold the cards and we pass. And then the next movie that came out was Finding Nemo was the highest grossing animated film of all time. And they were like, you fucked up, right?

[David]

You could have had this. Yeah, they bet on the wrong way.

[Griffin]

You could have had it. And it's one of the things that leads to Eisner's downfall. Right. I think within the industry there was a similar thing going on with Spielberg where, like, Eisner was scared at that moment. With Pixar, they are never going to be able to receive any oversight because they've done so well without our interference up till this point that they're not scared of us. And I think Spielberg's success was so meteoric just on like Jaws and Close Encounters back to back, that I think the industry probably was excited for 1941 to not work, because it's like, maybe this guy's come down to earth, maybe he can be controlled now. But the fact that he has already set up this deal with Lucas, that Lucas is the one who basically is putting himself in the position to have oversight over him. And that on top of that, he himself now has this chip on his shoulder of like, I want to prove them wrong and become responsible.

[David]

The deal they're offering to these studios, to be clear, is like, we own the movie, George. Onto the negative, you get action for distributing it. Like, you get some money. Universal says no. Fox and Disney and Warner Brothers say no. Paramount is like, okay, even though this is going to make like. Need to make like $60 million domestic before we even, you know, see any money. We'll take the risk. Obviously, it was a good gamble by them. But this is right. This is before the days of like, well, no, we need to own the intellectual property because the whole point is we can then create whole universes around the television, video games, action figures and all that.

[Griffin]

But it's the legendary Lucas deal where he gives up his salary and his points as a director on Star wars to retain the control and the merch. And like the deal that, you know, people say like the last time that will ever fucking happen. The studios made that mistake one time, but they gave Lucas the power to be able to just demand that as his terms from here on out.

[David]

So, yeah, Eisner is the guy at Paramount who makes it happen, just FYI. And they get 60, 40 grosses until the grosses reach $35 million and then it goes to 50. 50. All merchandising and franchise rights remain with George Lucas. Sequels are planned by the. Planned from the jump, but you know, they have approval and all that. Harrison Ford is not the first choice to play Indiana Jones, as I feel like Tom Selleck is often listed as the famous first choice that like passed on it. And I think it's like that is kind of true. He was committed to a tv, to Magnum PI and they definitely like screen tested him and they liked that he looked like Jim Steranko, the famous comic book illustrator had done some concept art that kind of looked like.

[Griffin]

He certainly looks like a classic square jawed Paul Pirro.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Even a little more than Harrison Ford, who's obviously maybe the hottest man who ever lived.

[David]

Harrison Ford's so handsome.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

But have you seen these, this concept art?

[Griffin]

Has he seen that?

[David]

I'm just, I'm just making sure.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Can I just show you the cup for Christ? Anyway, so. Yes, but here. So Jim Steranko, for those who don't know, is kind of like one of our Orson Welles in comics, like was. He was at the time miles ahead of what everything that was going on in the mainstream comics and most famous for like kind of like creating the Nick Fury that people would refer to as Nick Fury up until Samuel L. Jackson, like that, the cigar chopping.

[David]

But when you see his Nick Fury stuff like his, like it feels like it's from 80 years in the future, right? You're like, I can't believe this is from the 60s or whenever it was, you know, like, it feels so modern.

[Griffin]

But like Nick Fury, his Nick Fury looks like Tom Selleck, right? Like Tom Selleck looks like the sort of archetypical handsome action star of comics of the 60s and 70s and 80s in just kind of the impossible. Jawline, cheekbones, chin.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. And so the look, what you refer to as Indiana Jones is right there, right up front in these storyboards and concept art pieces as Sterenko did sometimes. He is very, very Credited with this sometimes not in a weird way I'm always interested in because one of my favorite things about Steven Spielberg that will repeat for sure during this whole run that you're doing now is how generous he is about giving people credit for really big things in Steven Spielberg's career. Like oh, the boulder was this person's idea. He'll never take credit for something that was someone else's idea. Which as we know in Hollywood is his unicorn behavior. And I, I. And certainly something that I even like, I will aspire to that. Like I looked at that as. That's someone I want to grow up to be like someone who always can give credit where credit is due.

[Griffin]

Beyond that, I feel like he often will frame it as here was my bad first idea and thank God this other person came in with the intervention. Like he's in talking about this sort of like open source way of understanding how these things are made through the way he tells you about their. He's explaining to you what the bad draft was and then crediting the person who had the spark of inspiration. Which. This is a, this is a deeply collaborative movie, right? It is the Selleck thing. You know, there's the infamous kind of like American Graffiti. Carrie shared casting sessions or. No, it's Carrie and Star Wars. Carrie, yeah, sure, I think.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

But then American Graffiti has its own casting session. This sort of like generation. Am I wrong about this, Brian?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I thought it was carrying American Graffiti begat Star Wars.

[Griffin]

You're right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Like that was okay.

[Griffin]

Yes. There's all that like pooled casting pot though. Of all the kind of young actors in the 70s who like read for all of these movies kept on going in. Lucas had this like very specific kind of bugbear of like I don't want to reuse actors.

[David]

He. That's part. Yeah. He's the one who's like eh. Harrison in another thing. Like let's not like you know, they also. Peter Coyote and Tim Matheson are two names. They.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well when you, when you watch the, the screen test you get, you get. You got your, you got your Magnum PI&I. It feels like they did give it to him. But when you watch the screen test even you're like, yeah, yeah, no it's. It's Harrison Ford. But. But the one that's closest in the screen test is Tim Matheson. Looks like. Well, if, if I was seriously looking at that footage and I had to make a choice that Tim Matheson is interesting but not Harrison Ford. It's just not there in that Also the Sean Young of it all.

[Griffin]

Well, yes, but the kind of like American Graffiti, Animal House, all these movies that are kind of these incubators of like here's the next wave of people who's gonna pop and who's going to be a movie star. Harrison Ford infamously had to fight really hard to get Lucas to consider him from Star wars because he had found all these young actors for American Graffiti and then was like, I don't want to repeat the same cast, I need new faces. That's why he's doing this like pulled casting session and trying to find new people. And Harrison Ford's the reader. And finally he's like, I guess I can't deny this fucking guy. But I think going into Raiders he feels even more so like I can't do this a third time.

[David]

Well, he had famously Ford refused to sign a three picture deal for to play Han Solo. Which is why he kind of has them over a barrel when they're doing the other movies where he's like, please kill me off and like no, no, no, you know, so George is like, he's going to do that again. Harrison Ford reads the script to raise the Lost Ark and immediately signs a three picture deal. So he's like very, very on board in a way that I guess he, he's more enthusiastic and he, you know, Spielberg is like the initial concept of this character was like two fisted lover cad hellion. Right. You know, like Harrison takes him out of that mold a little bit. Like makes him feel a little like more like one foot in each world. Right. Like you know, a little, a little more academic but also a little more like gritty and grounded. I mean how to describe what Harrison.

[Griffin]

Ford is doing especially when like Han Solo is like kind of the ultimate finesse character and you obviously have your big moments where like his guard comes down.

[David]

Well, the whole magic of Han Solo is that he's full of shit.

[Griffin]

Exactly.

[David]

In Star Wars.

[Griffin]

Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I do have a hot take here. Go ahead if you will join me on this and if not that's okay. But having grown up with this, part of my perspective of Harrison Ford is altered a little bit by the existence of a movie called the Frisco Kid.

[Griffin]

Uh huh.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes. So in Cleveland where I grew up.

[David]

It comes out in between Star wars and Empire, right? Or maybe. Yeah, it's like 17.

[Griffin]

It's one of his like first follow up. What do I do now that I'm a movie star? Movie. Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes. It's a western comedy starring a very, very into it Gene Wilder playing a very loud rabbi and Harrison Ford playing a gunslinger of Harrison Ford energy. And it's basically a road picture where Han Solo was taking a rabbi across the thing. And eventually they get to meet each other's cultures and kind of figure out stuff. This was the most Jewish movie I had ever seen in my life at this age. And in Cleveland, it played in a theater in the Jewish neighborhood in the Senator Mayfield Theater in Cleveland, Ohio, every Saturday for years.

[Griffin]

Oh, wow.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And it played like fucking Rocky Horror pictures, though. I mean, I play. After Shabbos, the Jewists would come and watch Han Solo, give us representation. And then, of course, people would whisper, you know, he's Jewish. Like, this is now made famous by Harrison Ford.

[Griffin]

A quarter Jewish. Not too shabby.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, yeah. Made famous by Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song. But as Jews, we would. We'd call them. At least the Jews I knew had to call them.

[David]

Don't you forget he is Jewish. He's Jewish.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So watching Raiders in particular, and it codes very Jewish, like Indiana Jones codes. Han Solo doesn't code Jewish, but Indiana Jones absolutely does code as a Jewish action hero. And Marian also codes Jewish. And for me, at the time, I could feel it like, oh, Spielberg's bringing it right to the table. And that was part of also how we got to know him as a little Jewish boy done. Right, Right.

[Griffin]

But the whole aspect of this movie being this Nazi revenge movie, right. It goes beyond just being an adventure film in which the Nazis are. Are easy villains, because we all know who to root for in that situation, or at least hope that one would know who to root for in that situation is heightened by it being all about, like, basically the intervention of God. And this sort of, like, course correction that possibly, arguably creates an alternate timeline.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

You know, I have a very strong memory of, like, when the move where we're seeing the movie and then the. The arc is in the. You know, in the basement of the submarine not being attended to. And then God kind of like, blocks out the. The Nazi symbol with kind of an amorphous shape that kind of looks like a mug and dovet. It's got, like, six stars, like, almost. And. And my mom, like, elbowed me and went mugging dove it. And I'm like, oh, my God. Like, it's like. It was like, oh, my God, is. Is God just got like, it's. Everything about it was like, like, are we gonna. Like, it's a Ten Commandments sequel. Like, it was just. Everything about it was strange. And I didn't know what was happening. Like my.

[Griffin]

But that's what's so fascinating about this coming fairly formed from Lucas first, is that he's, like a hyper wasp. And then he, like, assigns Larry Kasdan and Spielberg to be the ones who actually realize this thing. And through some combination of, like, conscious effort and just their own mentality and their history and their background, all this stuff gets coded into it. But, like, Lucas is the one who's designing this around the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets and all of that, right?

[David]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well, let me ask you, having watched all four of them in a weekend, did any of this click with you?

[Griffin]

No, absolutely not. When I was watching them for the first time, I remember. Here's a very distinctive memory I have watching the first one. This was in the worst apartment I ever lived in, where my bedroom was the living room where the TV was, and I slept. Slept on two mattresses behind a couch, and I watched the movie. And I came out and I knocked on Spike's bedroom, and he said, so, what do you think? And I went, yeah, it's a lot of fun. And he was like, a lot of fun? What are you talking about? It's the best movie ever made. And I was like, no, it's like a fun movie. And then I. I don't like Temple of Doom very much. I'm excited to rewatch it.

[David]

Yeah. But it's a. It's a flawed movie.

[Griffin]

I have always struggled with it.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And like, Last Crusade has always been the one that is my favorite.

[David]

Yeah. It's a very griffy.

[Griffin]

It's a very griffy movie, and I feel like is a very Buster Kidney movie. There was something that clicked for me in watching that one of, like. Oh, that's a huge part of the DNA of these movies is silent comedy and not just the adventure serials. That one brings it to the forefront. So that's when I sort of really locked in and I saw Crystal Skull and was like, half of that works for me, half of it doesn't. It doesn't feel sacrilegious because I haven't lived with this my whole life.

[David]

I mean. Right. I mean, for me, I always had locked into the three movies before Crystal Skull existed. They're all religious in a different way. Like, this is about Jewish mysticism. Temple of Doom is about Hindu mysticism. Last Crusades about Christian, you know, sort of folk. Right. Mysticism. And it's sort of annoying that Crystal Skull doesn't have any of that crystal skulls doing the thing where it's like, well, now it's the 50s. So we're. What was the genre of the 50s is, you know, it's more like sci fi. We're gonna do aliens and I just wish it had picked Elaine. But we can talk about it.

[Griffin]

We devoted a whole episode to it. Yeah. I think that movie.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

The Jewish. Yes. Find a way to put the Jewish.

[David]

Mystic undertones of Raiders of the Lost Ark are fun to me because I think this movie is dark and scary and weird in a way that I love. Temple of Doom, you know, presses on that pedal a little too hard and I kind of enjoy how nasty it is. But it's a, it's a mean spirited movie in a way this isn't. But this movie is sort of haunted, like and scary and, and it's fun, but it's also like, yeah, it's kind of terrifying to consider what's going on.

[Griffin]

There was also a lightning in a bott with this movie. I mean, let's dig into actually like talking about the movie itself as it plays out. David People like to say that one should stop and smell the roses. Today I'm doing something different. I'm imploring our listeners to stop and listen to the ad read because the ad read is going to sell you flowers that you can then smell.

[David]

Valentine's Day is coming up.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

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

[Griffin]

You got to show your wife that you love her and that you care.

[David]

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

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Look. And they.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

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

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

1-800-Flowers. It always delivers.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

And who's that at the door?

[Griffin]

We should check quickly, right? I mean, I know we're almost, we're getting through this ad read.

[David]

Okay, but I'LL tell you that I got a great bouquet from 1-800-Flowers. It arrived right away.

[Griffin]

I'm just gonna walk to the door quickly.

[David]

It's really nice. And I didn't get roses. I got a sort of double blue. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin]

Hand outreached.

[David]

I was in a really, really nice container. Yes.

[Griffin]

Who can plant a rose bud?

[David]

My God.

[Griffin]

Dan Luck Petunias, too.

[David]

It's been a while. How are you?

[Griffin]

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

[David]

No one invited you.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Wow. Dan Candyman, you look like crap.

[Griffin]

It's been a rough couple years.

[David]

Why? What's going on, Dan?

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Oh, okay.

[Griffin]

Well, I'll buy some candy to raise money for my high school's basketball team.

[David]

Okay, cool. How much?

[Griffin]

You're not gonna ask any questions about that?

[David]

What are M and M?

[Griffin]

Well, you know, these are just gray shells.

[David]

There's not a color in sight.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Okay, what's going on?

[Griffin]

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

[David]

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

[Griffin]

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

[David]

I don't.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

I hate all your lore.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Well, you better get on it because bouquets are selling fast. Lock in your today. And of course, if you do order a dozen roses, they'll double the rose bouquet for free. That's a great value. To claim your double roses offer, go to 1-800flowers.com check that's 1 800flowers.com check to get get your double your roses offer 100flowers.com check.

[Griffin]

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

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Sure.

[David]

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

[Griffin]

That'll be $25.

[David]

Wait a second.

[Griffin]

I have to raise money.

[David]

1,800Followers.Com Check.

[Griffin]

David?

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

Busy weekdays. I just had it. Busy weekdays.

[Griffin]

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

[David]

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

[Griffin]

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

[David]

I Yes, I have to feed my family.

[Griffin]

You have more mouths to feed.

[David]

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

[Griffin]

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

[David]

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

[Griffin]

Right. Podcasting has ended 15 minutes before that.

[David]

That's.

[Griffin]

That is why be honest.

[David]

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[Griffin]

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[David]

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[Griffin]

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[David]

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[Griffin]

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

[Brian Michael Bendis]

They will.

[David]

They will.

[Griffin]

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[David]

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[Griffin]

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

[David]

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

[Griffin]

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[David]

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[Griffin]

You know, you start with one of the most infamous opening sequences of all time. That is you're just dropped right into the action of the most like thrilling series of incidents imaginable. As you watch this guy basically do his side gig, which is being the coolest movie hero in history and avoiding slings and arrows.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And as someone who was there, I can tell you that the thrill ride that is the first 10, 15 minutes of that movie is overwhelming. Experiencing it for the first time, it is incredible. These are Spielberg pulling out tricks we have not seen him do before, stuff he would master and everything. But all of this is just working, working, working. And by the time he goes, I hate snakes. You are just, your breath is just gone in a way that so few movies can achieve. It's. It's an incredible experience.

[Griffin]

I want to unpack it more fully. But like the, the back to back of that and then him in the university. Right. And to this point of my experience watching them for the first time. Time, this is a movie that I've now, like, re. Watched maybe every two years. Because I'm really, like, I should study this more as a thing. Not that I need to deepen my appreciation, but I'm like, there's a. There's a. An element of ketchup to a certain extent. Ketchup Entertainment, of course, our finest distributor. But even though I, like, prefer Last Crusade, I almost never rewatch it because I'm like, I know. I think that movie's fun, but there's something in the codex of this movie that is so, like, distributed.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Prefer Last Crusaders.

[Griffin]

It's just my sensibility, I think. I mean. But we'll see how the rewatch goes.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

No, it's deeply. That's fast. I. I make no judgment. I just.

[Griffin]

Yeah, I wouldn't say it was better by. By any argument. Yeah. But it's. I think a lot of it's the comedy of it, but the. The immediate, like, thrill ride, you're saying, followed by the university. And just the feeling of, oh, this is just this guy's life. What we just saw wasn't the craziest thing that's ever happened to him. That's another adventure. And then he just flies back and teaches a class. Right. There's a lighting in a bottle thing in this movie that the other movies can't totally recapture in the same way. And I think Temple of Doom being a prequel makes this even more of an issue, to your point, which is all the weird, spooky mysticism of it is really fascinating when you're like, this is the first time this guy is challenged in this way. Which isn't to say it's the greatest challenge of his life, but it's like the greatest ideological challenge of his life, which is. I don't believe in this shit.

[David]

No. Yeah, yeah, right, right, right. He is kind of a Mulder and Scully together. Like, he's like, look, I believe that this object may be the quote unquote, Lost Ark or whatever, but I'm not sure. I believe that that means it's gonna have magic inside of it. I just sort of, you know, I.

[Griffin]

Do scary shit for a living.

[David]

Yeah, right.

[Griffin]

I'm constantly encountering weird shit. It is all explainable.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

There's a certain, like, power this movie has to being the one film that is him having to realize that there's a lot about the world he doesn't understand and a tremendous amount of skill and how much that is not a wildly overstated sort of plot to the movie. It is kind of just like a minor thread running the whole time.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes. To everything you're saying. It also, it's the game of expectation. Like, you see the, the poster, you know who Han Solo is, you know who Harrison Ford is, you know the credits, you're obsessing over that you're looking at the tops trading cards ahead of the movie's release, trying to figure out what you think the movie is. And I can't express you enough. Having these collector cards is really all you have. And Star wars has made them like statements of fact and looks inside that you're only going to get from these top trading cards. So once the Raiders ones hit, they're like, they're like the encyclopedia of everything you're going to know. And then the movie comes and you're 10 minutes in and expectations met, exceeded, and now completely surprising you. Oh, not who you thought he was. He is a nerdy professor. And also, I think that the reason that none of us tripped on the Marian's age thing when we saw it in the theater was because that scene when the, the, the student blinks and has written love you on his eyes and he reacts maturely like, like, like there's no, no skeevy reaction to it. So he's not a skeevy piece of shit. Like, he's not. Like, there's, there was an excuse there for him to like, wink or do something gross. And he did not. Like, that is not who he is. So when Marion says I was a child, you just. I did not think she was an actual child. I thought this is, she's saying, you.

[David]

You know, I was too young. And he's, you know, you're, you're older than me, which he is.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But like, yeah, no, but I, I, I remember when Twitter hit that a few years ago with, wait, what? And I was like, oh, yeah, that does ring badly. But, but I, I never thought it the whole time.

[Griffin]

It's a fascinating thing of like, that line is a vestige of clearly the development of being like, what if she was literally a child? And it plays in the context of the finished movie more like, like, I was young, you know, like the way we talk about, like, I was like my brain wasn't fully formed yet. You know, these things where there, like, was a power dynamic. But they're also close enough in age, the two actors, in a way where you're just like, okay, so they were like on opposite sides of a narrow developmental line. Maybe, but you're right. Like, all. Every one of those characterization choices is so impactful. It's the other we've talked about before, how much Harrison Ford loves Indiana Jones. Right.

[David]

He's always felt more enthusiastic about the sort of legacy and importance of the character versus Han Solo, where he's kind of been in and out on loving Han Solo.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Yeah. And it makes sense because Harrison. How would I put this? He talks so much about, like, how he approaches acting like a craftsman that he's not very, like, precious about it. Even though I think he has a tremendous amount of technique. And people who work with him are like, he cares a lot more about it than he wants to let on. He tries to play, like, gruff. I don't give a. Harrison. But he's like a very thoughtful, intentional person.

[David]

Sort of Red Hooky.

[Griffin]

Right? And, you know, he has talked about how he had his period of brief frustration, I think, post Star wars and Indian Jones, where he's like, great, now I can do anything. I can do Mosquito coast and I can do whatever. And very quickly, it was like, audiences want to see you be Harrison Ford.

[David]

Yes. You better not stray too much from the now very established star Persona you have right inside.

[Griffin]

The Actors Studio is incredible. And James Lipton kind of, like, pokes him on that and he says to the effect of, like, what am I gonna do? Like, cry about the fact that I'm Harrison Ford? I, like, tried doing other stuff. I very quickly realized, like, audiences don't love seeing me in that kind of movie or that kind of movie starring me. It doesn't appeal to either audience. I, like, have peace with where I am. He'll make these jokes about, like, I get paid money to fall down. Well, I get it. Right? There's that part of it kind of blood, right? But when he talks about the craftsman aspect of it, he's like, my job is to, like, fulfill the needs. Is to, like, look at the story and go, like, what needs to be accomplished in this shot, in this moment, in this line. He thinks about it not in a technical way, but really tied to narrative. You know, it's not about, like, what is in my heart that I need to get out of my system or what? Like, you know, sort of prism of the human psychology. Am I trying to, like, capture here as much as he gets down to the brass tacks of, like, this is storytelling. It's visual storytelling. What is conveyed by me, like tilting my head three degrees, you know, or raising my eyebrows. Here it is this. In that sense, this franchise is so perfectly built for him because it is this, like, episodic, serialized, trying to game out how this guy is making decisions in real time and narrowly just surviving. It is like a structure for a movie and a series that is perfectly suited to the way he thinks as an actor, which is, what do I need to do to get the audience to lock into this moment? And what are we trying to convey here? And in that sense, Spielberg is such a good match for him, and it remains so weird that they never work together outside of these movies.

[David]

Well, Harrison Ford made a lot of weird choices. I mean, like, I feel like the choices he makes that are like, making a good movie within his star Persona are like Witness, Working Girl, and then the Jack Ryan movies, things like that, where it's like, it's doing a slightly different thing in the Fugitive. Slightly different thing. He's still Harrison Ford. He's the Harrison Ford we know and love. These movies are giant hits. And then there's stuff like Mosquito coast or Presumed Innocent or Frantic or whatever where it's like, what if I showed you a darker side? And the audience is usually like, like, we don't really want to see that. Like, and you watch those movies later and you're like, there's a lot. Lot that's interesting about this. And he's really good at darker side stuff, in my opinion.

[Griffin]

Well, and to close the loop on a thing we set up 90 minutes ago, but, like, what Lies Beneath is the first time he weaponizes people. Don't expect me to be that dark. Right.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

And that movie is a big hit and feels like it gets a lot of juice from, like, holy. You've never seen Harrison Ford like this.

[David]

This.

[Griffin]

And then right after that movie is when you start the era of him feeling like a grump.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Is he tired? Is he bored? Is he too grumpy? Are the movies written around his grumpiness? Is his Persona now that he's, like, at odds with everything. And I think you're right, Brian. That's not until Force Awakens, where he kind of owns being elder.

[David]

There's that glint in his eye with Force Awakens that there just isn't with so many movies.

[Griffin]

And I think, like, we were living through that era. Every time there was a new big Harrison Ford movie being like, is the magic going to be back this time? Because there's just shit like the opening of this movie where you have this, like, beautifully deliberately designed series of shots. The build of the sort of mystery of what's going on, even just down to The. The. The. The Paramount logo transition, right? Like, this movie just, like, sets you on its course so beautifully. And this sense of like, we're not hiding this guy in shadows, but why are you not showing me his face when he's Harrison Ford? And it's not because there's some twists coming. It's because Spielberg knows he has one chance to make a first impression. And Harrison Ford knows how to step exactly, correctly into the right at the right timing, at the right angle and look like $20 million. And suddenly, having.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Having experienced that walk into the light, it was, yes, we know it's Harrison Ford, but, like, what? By the time he walks into light, it's Indiana Jones. It really is a perfectly crafted sequence where you're kind of like shedding Han Solo, which is an enormous thing over this character is that he's literally played the most iconic character of our lifetime already.

[Griffin]

And the reason you're hiding his face is because you need to be introduced to this character through action before you're thinking of him primarily as Harrison Ford. Everyone knows what they bought a ticket for, right?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

His name is on the poster. His face is on the poster. I'm seeing the Harrison Ford movie. But he's, like, forcing you to engage with Indiana Jones as an abstract idea before he then has Harrison Ford step into the light and it's like, and this is who he is now. And you're thinking about this character and not Han Solo. And then you just have this, like, perfect Rube Goldberg machine sequence of just like the most classical Spielberg introduction of information in ways that feel charming and effortless but stick in your brain so that he's setting up the perfect payoffs to come later. The way you build the entrance into the temple versus what the escape's going to be of repeating the things like the Gulf and needing to swing over and the arrows and all that shit. It's like just incredible set of payoff shit.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And because it's so. Yeah, Melina. And because it's so thrillingly dark and scary and spiders and shadows and, you know, literally, you know, wet skulls. We not, like, at this age that I'm at, like, this is like, I'm feeling very, like, challenged and seen. Like, oh, you're not talking down to me. And then I would learn as I got older, that was kind of Stan Lee's magic too. It's like, I'm not going to talk down yet. You come here and that was just. You feel respected almost as an audience member. Like, oh. And so all the way through Temple of Doom. They keep pushing it and pushing and pushing it in the frame they're at. So when people were complaining about Temple of Doom being too dark, I was like, what?

[Griffin]

That's what this is? Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

This is what this is. Yeah.

[David]

I like the opening sequence to this film. I think it's.

[Griffin]

That's a bold take.

[David]

Yeah, I think it's really, really thrilling. Yeah.

[Griffin]

Molina, so fucking good. This is his first performance ever. But there's, like, it's.

[David]

He's already got the character actorized.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

He's directorized.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But if you watch the behind the scenes, you can't believe he made another movie because they literally put him in the set and dumped a bunch of spiders.

[Griffin]

Right. Just tortured him.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And then famously, the spiders wouldn't move. They were just sitting on it. So they go, what you got to do is you got to put a female spider on there, and all the spiders will start getting all excited. And that's what you see when you see the spider.

[Griffin]

Spider meat market. Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. And you're sitting in. He's never made a movie before. Like, I don't know. I just feels like the worst Hollywood experience.

[Griffin]

The exact right energy and such, like, skillful control of the dial of, like, when he's playing scared, when he's playing.

[David]

Cocky, you just are like, maybe he's actually not gonna screw Indy over. And then dust. He's like, yeah, I could see him screwing.

[Griffin]

But also you're like, is this guy competent enough that Indy's in trouble, that he's gonna get away with it? Is he overstepping?

[David]

It's a lot of. Right. What you're saying. Like, you know, like a lot of stuff being communicated through basically nothing. And you get it all. Like, who are these people and what are they doing? You just understand everything without really anyone having to say much. And you know, Harrison Ford, he's a very confident on screen presence. Again, it's a struggle to talk about movies like this.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

My passion for this movie and my frustration with the comic book adaptation was so high that I spent the year of 1983 at my Passover vacation. I got a VHS copy of the movie, and I sat on my couch with a big thing of, like, chocolate pudding, the cheapest junk food I could find at the time. And I sat there and I drew every single edited shot of the movie because I was going to do the real adaptation of Raiders Lost Ark. I was going to send it to Marvel, and then they were going to stop publishing what they were publishing, and they were going to stop the Presses and publish mine now. I can't express to you enough how much I am not good and I'm a little child, and I literally, every time there's an edit, I pause the movie and draw what's on screen. I drew 45 pages of comic book art. I never got out of the jungle. I don't think I even got into the cave because it's just like, yeah, Indiana Jones walking through the jungle. But that's how formative it was to.

[David]

Me to have this art somewhere.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes, I absolutely do.

[Griffin]

Belongs in a museum.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It absolutely doesn't.

[Griffin]

You. You saying you're talking about the things like the trading cards and. And the comics adaptation, like them taking this movie and splitting it only into two issues. You're like, this opening sequence is an entire issue. Things like the trading cards. You're like, it would take 100 sequential trading cards to get through the beats of just the opening. It is like an entire movie. It's a mini movie in and of itself. It has. I mean, like, how many shots are in the first 10 minutes of this.

[David]

Like, indelible history of cinema?

[Griffin]

But I'm saying the pure number of shots.

[David]

No, no, no, you're right. You're right. It's.

[Griffin]

It's both. It's that every shot is like a deliberate, like, diamond cut. Perfect, evocative, communicative, exciting, thrilling, kind of meaningful image with, like, these perfectly timed edits. You know, you watch a big action sequence in a movie today, you might have as many shots and as many cuts, but it's just 20 meaningless kind of setups of, like, multiple cameras filming the action from multiple angles. And then it's sort of edited in whatever mishmash way. And you're like, no, these are, like, 60 deliberate, different setups that all are, like, telling you something very specific from where the camera is relative to the action and where the action is and the screen direction and all of this fucking shit. It is like a sequence. The whole movie is like this. But this sequence in particular is like every single shot is moving the story forward in a very deliberate way and in a way you could not have done in the previous shot. Even sometimes when it feels like the shift of angle is marginal when the action plays out, you're like, that's why the camera had to be here rather than there.

[David]

He's good at that stuff.

[Griffin]

He. He's pretty fucking good at it. He has the best innate brain for that, maybe, of anyone who's ever lived.

[David]

Yes, he does.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

The one influence I was not aware of at the time, but I came aware of more recently was how important Chuck Jones was to Steven Spielberg at the time. And it's clearly all over 1941 that is a Chuck Jones cartoon trying to come to life, whereas this one has the influence of Chuck Jones's mousetrap life storytelling being produced towards a narrative that deserves it. It's quite an interesting kind of magic trick on its own, that. That would be amongst all the John Ford and other influences. There's like a Chuck Jones bit of business every time he's kind of setting up his shots or laying out how he's gonna make his action.

[David]

Who's Chuck Jones?

[Griffin]

Chuck Jones?

[David]

Yeah. Sorry, I'm just asking. Oh, of course. I'm just asking, though, again, again, on behalf of the audience who may not.

[Griffin]

Yes, he's kind of.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well, I appreciate that, Ben. And also, if there's a book that came out recently called Spielberg the first 10 years, and in it they. They dive a little harder than I'd ever seen about what, like how Spielberg and Chuck Jones are just hanging out together. They were having lunch, I feel like.

[Griffin]

Right. Spielberg was one of the people who was really working hard to elevate Chuck Jones in the public's eye to, like, this is living legend, like, master of the form for the last couple decades of his life.

[David]

Yeah, the thing. And speaking to what you were saying, Griffin is like, he's. Spielberg proudly says they shot this film in 73 days, which is, you know, very, very short shooting schedule for a movie this epic. They would shoot just three or four takes, like, not like 40 takes, because he storyboarded, you know, very precisely, which is a Spielberg trademark. But really, he's like, really. For this one, I would. I, you know, they were the fallbacks in my previous movies, but for this movie, it was like, really to stay on schedule and to like, you know, stay to exactly what I.

[Griffin]

It was an exercise in self discipline for him. Like, he needed to prove to himself that he could do it.

[David]

So it's kind of a live action animated vibe. Right. Like, it's like we've already drawn what's supposed to happen now. There are things, of course, that change, such as the famous fight with the swordsman, which just turns into Indy shooting him versus, like the whip versus sword duel. Because everyone had diarrhea, because everyone had, you know, these are the stories where it's like they became, you know, IMDb Lord.

[Griffin]

Perfect combination of things being so perfectly worked out in advance and then inspiration hitting and things changing and evolving on the fly. Chuck Jones, Ben I feel like is kind of credited as being, like, the real father of Bugs Bunny, but also was, like, the main architect of the Roadrunner Wile E. Coyote shorts, which I feel like, have a lot of influence on this. And the philosophy that's talked about a lot about with the animation, but in particular, all the Termite Terrace Looney Tunes animators, was the importance of anticipation and how to visually sort of indicate to the audience what the character thinks is going to happen, what they're thinking, what they're trying to do, so that you can subvert the expectation and have the comedy of what goes wrong. You know, Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff, staying suspended in the air, looking down, recognizing he's standing in the air, and then he, like, falls. You know, things like that, where it's like. That's being conveyed wordlessly. That's why the, like, Wile E. Coyote thing, I feel like, is very. Has a big influence on this, where so often, despite the fact that Indiana Jones has, like, 40 of the most quotable lines in film history, in this one movie, many of his biggest sequences, he's kind of moving wordlessly.

[David]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Griffin]

It needs to play out in his face. It needs to play on his action. It's the beauty of even. Just, like, the power of the sandbag thing, right? Of just this moment of him, like, relishing the idol, walking towards it, the golden glow on his face, taking out the sandbag, holding the two in his hand, weighing it, pouring a little bit after. And you're like, that's a kind of complicated idea that is being conveyed to us in, like, 15 seconds. Okay? This is like a pressure trap. It's a weight trap. He needs to substitute it with something of equal weight. He does it. He thinks he gets away. It's wrong. The thing starts to slide down, the ground shakes.

[David]

It's all such beautiful nonsense.

[Griffin]

Yes, but that's like. This is where I'm very jealous of you, Brian, is. I'm just like. Like, I probably knew Indiana Jones as the guy who runs away from the boulder.

[David]

Boulder you.

[Griffin]

That was how it was introduced to me. I cannot imagine sitting in the theater and being like, already, this movie's done so much. The. The temple idol pedestal starts to go down. You're like, what's going to go wrong now? No one could have anticipated. It was the biggest boulder you've ever seen.

[David]

Perfectly round boulder, right?

[Griffin]

A thing that must have felt, like, impossible that this could even be depicted on camera.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And, like, these things are so cliche now. And so part of Film history. But like, even, like snakes, I hate them. Like screaming laughter in the theater. Like the first time that joke is told, the first time you see him lose his shit. Like, like losing. He loses his cool because he's kept.

[Griffin]

His shit together through all this insane shit for like 10 minutes. And then the snake and now he's.

[David]

Causing him to have a panic attack by snake.

[Griffin]

Yeah, it's.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

The delight is through the roof. It's. It's incredible to even. And you know, you're, we're feeling it. Fifty years later, you can still like feel the, the, the, the embers of the joke. Hey. Hey, Ben. I'm a big fan of Ben and his taste. Ben, what, what was your relation? Have you seen this before?

[David]

And that's a true, that's a true. Good guess. Bringing Ben in.

[Griffin]

Oh, yeah.

[David]

Specifically.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

No, no, I, I was really curious what your relationship to all of this is.

[David]

I am a big fan of Indiana Jones. Have you always been since childhood? Yep. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it was, you know, it was something I, I feel like I'd catch middle of the day on the weekend playing on cable tv. I had to watch it, you know. Also I played the video games. The computer games. Yeah. In particular, I love that game.

[Griffin]

Also, he's dusty, he dresses well.

[David]

He goes into. He's finding bones, he's getting. Stealing treasure. He's just like, he's such an amalgamation of all of these characteristics in this incredible way. Yeah, he's like kind of a bad boy, but he's smart.

[Griffin]

He gets. He's also an egghead. Right. Like, that's the weird. I just can't get over it every time I rewatch this.

[David]

You love the cut to the universe. Yeah.

[Griffin]

You're just like, this is when the movie should fall apart. You almost feel like the legacy of this movie should be greatest opening sequence of all time. And then they. It up, up.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It's literally the greatest exposition scene in the history.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Exposition scenes. It's an incredible scene, but it's such.

[Griffin]

An insane like, change of pitch that it's wild that it keeps the momentum.

[David]

But I would say for me, origin wise, this is like major bone core.

[Griffin]

Oh, sure. Yes.

[David]

There's just bones all over this franchise. You're right. It's a bonehead heavy world and he uses it as a torch. It's a, it's a comedic device when, you know, a bunch of brattling bones come out of nowhere. I, I just, I, I love that. That's such a fun element. It's just so fun to consider this, like, academic being, like, well, I'm gonna go find this Peruvian idol. Where is it? It's in this video game level, right? Cave, you know, where it's like, you have to do eight traps and dodge the spikes and, like, you know, solve the puzzle and all that. And as a kid watching this movie, I'm just like, yeah, the people who.

[Griffin]

Build this, of course.

[David]

Of course, this is part of ancient lore.

[Griffin]

But also, like, we were.

[David]

Because I playing Super Mario my whole life.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

You know, like.

[Griffin]

But also we were born into a post Indiana Jones world where you're like, oh, I get it. He's like an Indiana Jones type, you.

[David]

Know, true versus, like, this movie.

[Griffin]

Creating a thing that is, like, when you break it down into the elements of. Even how Lucas pitched it to him. Him. It's wild that it was so fully formed, because it is an odd idea. And it's odd that it's not like there's. There's such an obvious instinct, I would imagine, to make it into a Clark Kent Superman thing that you're like, oh, Professor Jones is the COVID Is his boring sort of, like, front for his real, like, adventuring.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Or.

[David]

But instead, it's.

[Griffin]

He's a nervous professor who gets thrown into these situations, and he's in over his head, and he doesn't like exploring.

[David]

No. Instead, it's like, you know, us. You know, intelligence comes to him and is like, look, Hitler wants the Ark of the Covenant. We figure you're the guy to figure that one out. Like, you know, like, there. He's. He's a known adventurer.

[Griffin]

But to your point about being the greatest exposition in cinematic history, right? The fact that you watch him spin that blackboard and start to break down and chalk the history, giving them the fucking backstory, right? Like, just dropping his bona fides and his theories, and he gets his rocks off as much doing that as he does successfully outrunning a boulder. They are both equally exciting to him. He plays them differently.

[David]

But then. So he goes. All right. To move the story along, then he goes to Nepal in search of really moving along. No, I am not really Shin.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

What?

[David]

What?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Belloc?

[David]

No, he's. We haven't met him yet.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Excuse me.

[Griffin]

He's the one who tells me. Oh.

[David]

Oh, Bellock.

[Griffin]

Sorry.

[David]

Sorry, not Bellock. I. I thought you meant. Solid.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

Belloc's there.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

We'll get back to Bell.

[Griffin]

Ryan's laughing.

[David]

I mean, if you.

[Griffin]

He's happy that he got to see.

[David]

If you want us to tell you who they wanted for the part of Belloc.

[Griffin]

Sure.

[David]

Spielberg wanted Jacques Dutron, who's a French actor. He really wanted this guy's prince. Well, let me tell you. Do you think this guy looks French to you? Jacques?

[Griffin]

I'm seeing here his second choice for the role was Croc, Monsieur Croissant, a French. These are real names. These were beloved actors at the time.

[David]

But I guess he had played Van Happy. Anyway, he's busy.

[Griffin]

But he was busy smoking a cigarette.

[David]

Right. Spielberg really wanted a character to be played by a Frenchman.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

Paul Freeman enters late. They've already thought about Giancarlo Giannini, which is a fun idea.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And Spielberg just liked his eyes. Said he has the champagne villain from a film noir vibe.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Right. Like, it's like, this isn't a tough guy. Exactly. He's like a smart, mean guy. And like, what? Whatever. Good, good.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I also like the villain. That's handsome in his own way. Like, he's equally handsome. Different kind of handsome, if that's your type.

[Griffin]

Yeah. He could be a leading man in a different movie. I also. It's funny, I always go like, it's wild that he's still alive because he plays so much older in my mind, watching this movie than he actually was at the time, where I think Ford is two years older than him.

[David]

They're. They're roughly the same age, and it.

[Griffin]

Feels like is like 15 years older than indie.

[David]

He does feel a little bit patronizing, I guess that's why.

[Griffin]

Which is something he successfully sung as an actor. I think it's also the fact that Belloc's a little more hands off. Right.

[David]

Yeah. And Bellock is. It's a perfect villain because he's like, yeah, he's smart. Like, indie smart, but he sells to the highest bidder.

[Griffin]

Clearly, he has no scruples.

[David]

Well, he's unscrupulous. Yes, that's very true. And he, like you say, like, doesn't get his hands dirty like Indy does. Indy. Indy's got, you know, dirt under his.

[Griffin]

Fingers, but is that's what's so frustrating, is Indiana Jones can go through this whole fucking adventure, roll out by the skin of his teeth, hat intact. Right, right. And be like, oh, my God, what a thrilling set piece. And Belloq is just standing there and he's like, I'll take that, thank you. Right. That Belloq just is able to stay one step ahead of him while avoiding the trials and tribulations that Indy had to go through.

[David]

He's also wearing the uniform of an explorer. Belloq but he's not dirty at all. Not dirty.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Right, right.

[David]

Like, it's like, clearly he's like, he looks good.

[Griffin]

An immaculate, like, white suit. Yes. Cream.

[David]

It's like he's trying too hard to fit the part. Whereas Indy is just fashion wise, I mean, one of the best looks of all time. It's really, it's really interesting how the villains. Simple too. Like, I feel like the villains of every indie movie are not merely famous actors until I guess you get to like Cate Blanchett. By the time we're doing the new ones, where it's like, well, everyone wants to be.

[Griffin]

When they announced that Cate Blanchett was playing was. Was going to be in Crystal Skull, right. I was like, well, she must be playing the new love interest.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Because it feels weird for a franchise that never has out and out movie stars as well. Like, even Mads Mikkelsen feels too well known in that type.

[David]

Well, God, I love Madge Mikkelsen. I'm just lazy casting as a villain these days. But right. Like Amrish Perie and then like Les Crusade. Who would you. You know who's the biggest? Like Allison Doody and.

[Griffin]

No, but it's. Why am I forgetting his name now? Now your favorite.

[David]

I do love him. Julian Glover.

[Griffin]

Julian Glover is the main villain of that movie.

[David]

These are character actor guys.

[Griffin]

One is a guy who Lucas liked was like, you're a good stuff shirt. Like, right, right. But.

[David]

And that's what Paul Freeman is. And he's. He's excellent. Like you're.

[Griffin]

But it's also part of the Indiana Jones structure where it's like you have these secondary, like third villains. You have like, you know, boss level villains. There's an overarching guy who you're fighting against in sort of like, like almost a conceptual battle, but the actual action sequences don't happen with that person. Which is, I feel like another mistake modern movies tend to make is like they want the Belloq to also be the best fighter in the world. And you're like, no, that's two separate guys. Belloq sends someone else out to punch Indy and we.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

In. In the, in this timeframe of James Bond, jaw is Richard Keel. Right. That's the actor's name is Jaws. And that is an iconic villain that is referenced in every variety show of the time. That's also part of the Lucas and Spielberg is that there's always these weird variety hours that would do sketches about Star wars or Indiana Jones and James Bond. And so Richard Kidd would show up, up as Jaws. So when you're watching Raiders and the, the, the big, the, the, the burly Nazis are, they're boxing outside the. Right outside the plane. That, that's a Jaws scene. Like that's, that's a flat out James Bond Jaws scene.

[Griffin]

Right. But it's like, I mean I, it's always the example I throw out. But like that's a, a clear thing they lifted from James Bond very wisely. Right?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Of like there's a guy who they're trying to track down who is the man in the lair who is going to monologue.

[David]

The guy who'll talk to them and wear a suit and pour.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

You know, serve.

[Griffin]

I will give like an A class performance and then you're going to have some weird looking guys with gimmicks who create like different sort of like battle puzzles for Indiana Jones to get through. Versus I always think of Quantum of Solace where at the end James Bond has to fight Matthew Almarique and I'm like, well this fight is over.

[David]

Well, there is a big general guy that he fights. Well, no, it's Olga Ko fights. And we'll look, we'll do Quantum of Solace one day. Very interesting movie. I defend it. I will, I will. Brian, thank you. Do you like Quantum of Solace or are you anti Quantum of Solace?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I am such a big Casino Royale fan that it's hard to wrap my head fully around Quantum. But it is a part of Casino Royale so it's hard to let it go as well.

[David]

Yes, it's like a nasty little.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I don't hate it but you know, much like nothing's Force Awakens except for Force Awakens. Same thing with Casino Royale.

[David]

I, I think of it as the Temple of Doom to Casino Royale's Raiders of the Lost Ark in, in like.

[Griffin]

Sort of complimentary on them in similar ways for similar reasons. But.

[David]

Okay, so then they go to meet Marion.

[Griffin]

Let's.

[David]

We have to talk about Mar. Played by Karen Allen.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

Obviously they're looking for Arthur Ravenwood or what the. His name is. What's the dad's name?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Abner Raven.

[David]

Abner Ravenwood, right. But he's dead and his daughter is running the bar in his stead in Nepal and she's got this medallion and you know, off we go. But what do we think of Karen Allen?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

This is an incredible performance of the highest order. It doesn't get enough credit to this day. It just.

[David]

Even though the franchise eventually acknowledged like yeah, she was always the one with these later movies.

[Griffin]

Right?

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

We were kind of get enough credit for trying to do anything else.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Right, Right. And I get the. That's the James Bond lesson they did wrong, I think, which is he gets a new lady friend every thing. And also, a lot of people feel like, you know, Marin Ravenwood is one of the great characters of cinema. And then followed by Willie Scott, who isn't. I would scream and yelling, just screaming at the top of her lungs the whole movie. Which is not anywhere near as interesting as what Marian brings to the table.

[Griffin]

Well, it's like they wanted to make the anti Marian to have fun with the flip side of it. But the anti Marian means you're doing the opposite of what works, right?

[David]

Exactly. Marian's a good character. So the anti bad switch.

[Griffin]

And they made one bad choice.

[David]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So watching the making of that I sent you that aired on television, there was two takeaways that were amazing. A number one bad that she basically says. I think she's one of the first people to say. She says as nicely as you could possibly say, but she's basically saying, I'm doing everything he's doing, but in heels and backwards. Right. And she absolutely is. And also that she would come to Spielberg with bigger ideas that he would take very seriously, including, I don't think I knew until recently that the scene between her and Bella, you know, drinking each other under the table was improv. They went off to the side, improv the scene, put it together, and gave it to Spielberg, like, here's what we worked out, because I want to wear this dress and, like, I want to do this for the rest of the movie. And they went off and improv and came back and he accepted it and changed the course of the movie in a positive way. So she has authored her character in a way that few actors, particularly in a movie like this, get to do. And that's amazing.

[Griffin]

It's a thing with Spielberg I find so fascinating, is most filmmakers who are this precise in their craft have a tendency to go towards the sort of, like, Hitchcock, like, you are a model. I am telling you what to do. You have to hit. Especially because it's just like with Spielberg, it's like if you step an inch off, the shot's not going to work right. The timing needs to be like hair, precise. And yet it feels like he's very collaborative. It never feels like he is boxing his actors in. There's this weird dance between the visual language feeling so rigid in a certain sense, and yet the performance is feeling very fluid and organic. Panic in between and Even like Marion's introduction, this long oner of the drinking contest in the bar in Nepal where the camera is just kind of slowly moving back and forth between the two of them. It's really unshowy. The unconscious effect of it is knowing that you're watching this in real time without cuts, that you're seeing these shots being taken, even though it's probably fucking water or whatever, right? But it's like such a perfect, wordless, like, drinking this guy under the table, walking off, kicking everyone out of the bar, and immediately being like. She's not even, like, tipsy, right?

[David]

And she's also. I mean, she's a tiny little firecracker.

[Griffin]

So this is the other part of this character, is that it feels like her first fight with Indiana Jones is also like, how dare you did this to me? And then you walk out of my life and then you come back like nothing happened and you want my fucking help on one of your stupid fucking adventures. You and my dad, right? There is this whole feeling of this woman who is like, yeah, look, I'm this, like, cool, badass lady who, like, beats tough guys in drinking contests and runs a bar and doesn't take any guff. It's like, not by choice. It's on affectation. I was basically deprived of having a normal child.

[David]

I was. I was raised this way.

[Griffin]

I mean, I was raised this way. My, like, first romance was a guy who was my father, mother's protege, who was trying to be my dad and pulled me even deeper into this.

[David]

To give you some Karen Allen News, please.

[Griffin]

News.

[David]

No, you got dossier stuff. You know, background. She. Spielberg had noticed her in Animal House where she's Peter Wright.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

We all did.

[David]

Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

She really stood out in a. In a great way as. As. You're better than all of this.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Like, she. He was like. She's like a Carol Lombard. She's like an Irene Dunn, like one of these sort of like 30s, like, heroines with, like a big chip on her shoulder. Right, right. Natural fit. Karen Allen says some of the people who tested that she heard about Deborah Winger, Sean Young, as previously mentioned, Barbara Hershey. Karen Allen auditioned with John Shea, Lex Luther himself from the 90s, Lois and Clark, and he was in Mutant X. Remember John Shea.

[Griffin]

Remember? Yeah.

[David]

And then she did a screen test with Tim Matheson, and it was always the bar. It was always the bar. Like, that was the. That's what she's doing. Doing. And she said she just loved the character. Reminded her again of all those firecracker, you know, broads from the 30s and 40s. Right. And a character that she felt had kind of vanished from movies. Right. Like. Like, that's an old kind of female lead. Like, in the 50s and 60s, that kind of character had gone away. I guess you have, like, Katherine Hepburn.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, the very Katherine Hepburn.

[Griffin]

She plays the sadness of the character. Like, it's the thing, I think, that causes people to, like, get up in arms and, like, cancel indie.

[David]

No, I was trying to say.

[Griffin]

I was going to say when people complain about, like, Mary sue characters, when they push back on this idea of, like, oh, so now I'm supposed to believe that this woman who's smaller than everyone is tougher and a better fighter and smarter and funnier and prettier and all this sort of stuff. I think a lot of it is, like, people trying to recapture this character and Karen Allen correctly, I think, figures out how to dramatize all of her behavior. Being a bit of a defensive posture and, like, learned survival instincts rather than it feeling like, I don't know, just a show, you know?

[David]

She says she went to Spielberg and said, I have a whole history for this character. I think. Think I was in this romance with Indy when she was 16 years old. Like, she also is doing this stuff. And Spielberg apparently looked at her and was like, that's an entirely different movie. We're not doing that. Like. Like, clearly, like, Lucas and her are both kind of like, what if there's this twisted backstory? Spielberg's like, I'm making an adventure movie. It doesn't matter. Like, stop.

[Griffin]

It's under the hood.

[David]

It's a little bit under.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

The perfect amount of spice, though. It's a perfect Karen Allen, exactly what he needs.

[David]

Right. Her ultimate take is like, I think she had a crush on him. Like, you know, maybe there was a flirtation or whatever when she was, like, essentially teenager. I don't think this was some major romance. Like, that's. She thinks that's, like, the movie sort of take on Marian and. And indie, not something, like, more darker and.

[Griffin]

But there's, like, this version of. It's obviously far less tragic. Right. But, like, I think about the end of True Grit where, like, the poignancy of that story is like, oh, this girl kind of never gets over this. Right? Like, she's this tough, flinty little girl, and everyone thinks it's kind of cute and funny. She goes on this wild adventure.

[David]

Right. It's clear that she's very tough to interact with because she's such a tough, flinty woman.

[Griffin]

And Marian's Got like a version of that where you're like, how many fucking adventures was she dragged along to between these two men in her life who were such like important figures in her development?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But if you want to see Spielberg direct the scene in the bar, it's in the, in the, in the docket I put on my social media because it's an incredible bit of watching him direct. Just the wonder of her putting the shot glasses down and what. And him getting the crowd to do what they need to do and the like and react accordingly. That was another wonderful direction.

[Griffin]

I was looking at Juror Number two, a film that we both love. Have you seen Brian?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Have not seen it, but I will.

[Griffin]

It's very good. Clint Eastwood, famous for doing maybe half.

[David]

A take, one and a half takes. Right. Is him having a long day.

[Griffin]

Right. A thing. I noticed watching this movie that I want to be clear, I like a tremendous amount. But now Clint Eastwood filming digitally, it's a little brighter. You can see everything. I kept in multiple sequences noticing how bad the background actors were. And it is a thing that I'm not putting on the background actors.

[David]

No, but it's the problem of these Clint movies, these late Clint movies, where it's like people really had to come, have to come correct because that doesn't take very long.

[Griffin]

And I think the principal cast of this entire movie of juror is doing that. But like background actors are a thing that are hard to dial in because it's like a complicated machinery. They haven't read the story script, they're showing up. A first AD is like, so basically what's going on in this scene? They're wearing costumes that they got five minutes ago. It's hard to get everyone synchronized on the same page. That drinking contest where there's like 10 people over each of their shoulders and you can tell it's a combination of like stunt guys, character actors, and people who seem like non professional actors. And all of them are immaculate. And there's no editing. Wiggle, wiggle room. This whole thing has to play out in one shot. When the camera pans over from one to the other, the people in the background need to be doing the right thing. And I like rewound it five times. And I was like, no one's doing too much and no one's doing too little. There isn't anyone who looks checked out or distracted. But there's also the opposite of people being like, yeah, Marion. Go Marion. And making like huge faces. And this whole movie is like that. And that's the shit that's, like, astonishing for me, me is he's just able to get everything in the frame. Correct. You know, and even down to, like, the. The Indiana Jones silhouette, you know, appearing on the wall after Marion kicks everyone out of the bar. I feel like the story with that is that. Because the shadow would actually be going in the opposite direction. Logically.

[David]

Sure. But it doesn't. Okay. Like, they're messing with fit that he's, like, walking backwards.

[Griffin]

He's starting closer to her back and then moving further away.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Sure.

[Griffin]

Because if you get closer and closer to a shadow, your shadow gets small.

[David]

Shrinks. Yes. Right, right.

[Griffin]

Or the opposite way.

[David]

Well, it depends on where the lights. Yeah, yeah, whatever.

[Griffin]

But it's like that's a moment where Spielberg has this idea of this clear, like, impactful, iconic shot. A lot of filmmakers would get so caught up with trying to capture that image that the Karen Allen performance part of it would be secondary. But that's the most important part is how beautifully she plays that moment of dropping the glasses and immediately being kind of like, astonished, emotionally overwhelmed, furious, and then going up to him and slapping him in the face. And it's like, here's the whole dynamic already.

[David]

That's true. It's all you need. You're on board with it right away. And he never really gets it with any other character in the sequels. Yeah. The romantic.

[Griffin]

Well, I think Willy Scott doesn't work. And Allison Doody is kind of like a Mr. Correct.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Allison duties. No, I think she's good, but I think that character is like a kind of thing. Wrong footing. And I think the thing that Last Crusade gets right is that, like, Indiana Jones needs a sparring partner. They just make it his dad instead of a love interest. Because I think they know they're not going to beat Marion on the third one. It's not worth trying a third woman.

[David]

And.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And the winning thing for Crystal Skull for me is when she comes back into it. It. She comes in as an as. Clearly, this woman has never had a break and is now has a glorious agent of chaos. She is we. And to get to the Jewish coding again, I feel with Marian as well. But there is. In Crystal Skull, she definitely has that Jewish mother energy of get in the car, we're leaving. Like, this is like. And I just adore it tremendously. And there's a joy of her performance in Crystal Skull. Like, she is deeply happy to be back and deeply happy to revisit this character at this age. And it just. She's shining with it. It's Just. It just makes the movie a lot of fun to watch.

[Griffin]

I feel like we adore her. Animal House was a movie I was shown way too young for how overprotective my parents were. My dad basically, like, at like, maybe six, showed it to me as if it was Talmud. Dick was like, you must understand this. So she, like, loomed very large in my childhood of. I feel like one of my first on screen crushes. And as you said, I think generationally, especially for people who are alive at that time. That character, like, even though she's not in that much of the movie, she is just, like, kind of so captivating, and there is just some sort of, like, inner life and sort of like, there's a sense of self she has that is very fixed. And her, like, weird balance of, like, how much bullshit she will tolerate versus when she puts her foot down, which is the stuff that they're, like, really weaponizing very well in this film. You know, the Willie Scott problem is, like, Indiana Jones can't have a sidekick who doesn't want to be in the movie. And they try this with Mutt Wombat as well, which is like, he needs someone who is as equal but has a different thought process on how they should be handling things. They both need to be trying to drive the story, but with different approaches. And Marian's just the perfect example of that where, like. And it's just structurally very beautifully built about when she falls out of the movie and when she comes back when he thinks she's dead, when he finds her in Belloq's tent but leaves her there. The sort of, like, anytime she's not on screen, you're going, where's Marian? When's Marian coming back, by the way?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Opening weekend. Thirteen years old, Marian dies. Totally believed it. Oh, my God, they killed her. I feel like I will. Yeah, Totally fell for it. Also, when you watch the documentaries, which I rewatched everything in preparation for this, Spielberg is so head over heels in love with Kate Capshaw, as he should be in the making of that. It is distracting them. It is 100%. He Literally, the end of that documentary, he goes, indiana Jones didn't get the girl. I did. He literally looks in the camera and says those words. So that's where his head is at with this movie is being made.

[David]

So Maran and Indie go to Cairo. They meet Salah. It's something you probably know.

[Griffin]

We have your introduction of.

[David]

Of Toad, who I will say, oh, in the mar. Yeah, who rocks.

[Griffin]

Is my favorite character.

[David]

Of course it is.

[Griffin]

He feels Ideologically, I like his Ronald.

[David]

Lacy in this movie especially. Just looks like a puppet to me. It looks like they made him. Now, obviously, maybe that's partly because his face melts at the end in this way that you're like, yeah, he was always a puppet.

[Griffin]

They melted him created by Ardman. He is a plastic man.

[David]

It just there's. He's so good in every scene, but he always. You're just kind of like, this is like a fake person.

[Griffin]

There's something uncanny.

[David]

There's an alien in his head working.

[Griffin]

I find it very captivating. Spielberg infamously wanted Clouse Kinsky and couldn't get him to agree that would completely have unbalanced.

[David]

Might be fun.

[Griffin]

I mean beyond like, this sounds like a production that didn't have the room for error to allow a Clouse Kinski into the ecosystem. The damage he would have wrought behind.

[David]

Everyone'S pooping their guts out already.

[Griffin]

But I'm also like, his performance would have been very over cranked. I imagine that would have been fun in its own way. But there's something about Ronald Lacy kind of like never tipping over.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But instead of the documentary airing on CBS on primetime where they aired a con.

[Griffin]

Yes, yes.

[David]

He. Spielberg said, you know, I thought he had Peter Laurie vibes, which I think is right. And just like kind of perfect weird look. And you know, the three guys who get melted at the end, right. It is this perfect triumvirate of villainy of like, you know, Belloq. This sort of cool aite. It's not even ideology for him. He's really just in it for the money, right? Then the big lack of ideology. The big statuesque Nazi guy. You're just like, can't wait just to watch this. And then the weird little creep Nazi guy who's like, I'm reading maps. I want Hitler to have arc power.

[Griffin]

And seems to maybe have some weird psychosexual thing going on. But much, much like a lot of other areas of the movie, it's done just the right amount. Not really like delved into.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

So yeah, totally meet him. But yeah, okay. We go to Cairo. Salah, you know, you know who is supposed to play solid, right?

[Griffin]

Danny DeVito.

[David]

Danny DeVito. He was supposed to basically be like a cantina creature from. From Star wars, right. Like this fun little guy. And DeVito drops out late. I'm not sure why.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And because we kind of get to see him play the character in Romancing the Stone. It's weird to like how we can see it. I still can't see it. I'm a huge Danny DeVito fan, a huge fan and grew up with him my whole life, and I cannot see that.

[Griffin]

It's another thing that feels like it would unbalance the movie, I think.

[David]

So where you're like, work.

[Griffin]

I don't think the movie benefits from Salah being funnier. I'm sure if Dan Vito were in this movie, every single second on screen would be funny. But does that help the film holistically, which is this sort of balanced thing that Spielberg has such good instincts for at this point in time? I think especially after 1941, where he is like, maybe I don't have the handle on comedy I thought I did. Maybe I really need to, like, be deliberate about this. It's just so funny that, like. Like in the same way that it's weird that Paul Freeman plays Belloc, whose thing is like hoity toity Frenchman. You cast John Reese Davies as Salah.

[David]

Well, this is the thing. They send him the script. And John. John Reese Davis is like, I am not a 5:2 Egyptian guy. Right. What are you thinking here? And Spielberg is basically like, I loved you. In Shogun, he plays, you know, the drunk Portuguese guy in Spanish guy in Shogun, the Nestor Carnell played him in the new version. Beautiful, Beautifully. I want you to do something like that mixed with, like, false staff or whatever. And John Reese Davis is like, well, of course I can do that.

[Griffin]

You know, which I think it's just like, even if that. It doesn't make sense as casting on paper, Spielberg understands what that character needs to accomplish, which is exposition. Sounds pretty good coming out of his mouth, right? Like just the actual register of his voice. This sort of like classically trained. He can make anything sound like, like poetry.

[David]

Absolutely.

[Griffin]

And he needs to be this sort of like, high impact support with this sense of joy and this sort of like devilish, you know, sort of like mischievous quality. But also it's like he needs to be able to relay the three lines that explain what's gonna happen for the next 10 minutes of the movie and keep you interested.

[David]

Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. And there. And from the time he's there, helping, every joke lands, every line read is perfect. In fact, when I was trying to imagine how you were going to open this episode, I thought you were. I literally thought it was podcast. Very dangerous. You go first is where I thought you were going.

[Griffin]

Oh, I probably would have done an even worse job with that impression. His voice is just astonishing.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It's incredible. It's incredible. In Dial for Dial of Destiny as well. It hasn't lost the beat.

[David]

It's another thing that Temple of Doom has been missing is Salah. But, yeah, we meet.

[Griffin]

We brushed over Brody entirely, bro.

[David]

We brushed over bro. Yeah, you're right, because Brody's there from the beginning and he's so good. Yeah.

[Griffin]

And Denim Elliot was nominated for Best at the baftas, Right.

[David]

He probably partly a, you know, the Brits love this guy kind of thing.

[Griffin]

I was just looking at this. Deno Elliott won three consecutive supporting a actor BAFTAs.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

So there you go after this.

[David]

Okay.

[Griffin]

I think he maybe had one nomination before this. He wins for Trading Places.

[David]

Wow. Yeah.

[Griffin]

And then he wins for two other movies, British movies I didn't even know of.

[David]

Okay, let me see. Dan Holm, Elliot B.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well, just while you're looking it up, if. If I can be professorial for a second, there's some things in the screenplay that are just undeniably perfect, and one of them is the fact that Denholm. Elliot, like, the only time we're ever in Indiana Jones's house for 25 years is the scene where he comes over and goes, hey, don't do this. This is everything wrong, everything bad. I'm getting the creeps. And then you get to see Indiana Jones just blow him off. And it's one of a series of scenes where people keep pulling him aside. And we, the audience, are the only person that also knows that everyone has warned him, don't. The good guys, the bad guys. Everyone's saying, don't go down this road. And he can't help himself, Which I found. It's an incredible bit of business. So. And that's following that great exposition scene where not only are we getting all the information we need for the movie, but we're getting Indiana Jones perception of it and his take on it and his relationship to it. And that's what's often missing from exposition scenes in any kind of storytelling. Telling is, okay, we need this information, of course, please. But what's your hot take on it? Why you? Why. Why am I hearing this from you? And what. And what. What are you not telling me? Or what are you. What are you blowing off? And all of that is just exceptional.

[Griffin]

Writing, characterization, getting lost in exposition, which is what leads to scenes that feel like homework, where you're like, okay, and when does the movie start? Versus having the perspective in the exposition of the character reacting to what they're finding out out. And it's telling you things about them that are going to come in helpful later in your processing of the movie. Because I Mean, Brody, it's like, okay, here's this weird, like, guy who finances his expeditions. Clearly has this kind of like boyish glee at the idea that not only are they acquiring these objects and like protecting them in the right context where they should belong, putting them in a museum, whatever. Right? But also that he kind of loves hearing Indiana Jones report back and tell him the crazy shit he got up up to. He never wants to do that. He loves that. That's part of the equation.

[David]

He's not about to fly to Peru and whatever.

[Griffin]

But you have like this really beautiful, very quick, sort of like three scene arc of Brody being excited to hear what his expedition was like. Oh, no. Belloc took it from you at the last second. That's a bummer. Right?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Then the only friend Indiana Jones has that could really appreciate all that went into this is his. Is his.

[Griffin]

His friend Brody, who he can really share this with. Then you have like Porkins and his partner show up, Right? Here's a new potential assignment. You're watching Brody process the information as well at the same time. And then as you said, followed by him visiting Indiana Jones at home and being like, okay, but seriously, don't do.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

This, Jack Porkins also, you can pack a gun. Back in those days, you couldn't pack a gun in your shoes.

[Griffin]

Yeah, you could get through tsa. Now you can't even pack toothpaste.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But also, Porkins, his relationship to. They literally come to Indiana Jones and go, hey, what do you know? And he goes, well, I know this exact information. And the guy goes, whoa, Jesus Christ. And like, like that. I never seen that in a movie before. Like, well, why are you asking him if you're not going to believe him? Yeah, it's. Everything about the scene is wonderful.

[David]

He lost the BAFTA to Ian Holm for Chariots of Fire, which of course is the best picture winner that year.

[Griffin]

Makes sense.

[David]

And then he gets BAFTA wins after this for Trading Places, which he's incredibly funny and obviously. And then, yes, A Private Function, which is like an Alan Bennett, a famous British dramatist, like dramedy with Michael Palin and Defense of the Realm, which is this kind of like dark British political thriller with Gabriel Byrne. Don't know what? I should watch them.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Bet you he rocks in them. But he's crazy that he won three.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

That's a good movie.

[Griffin]

One, three, three consecutive. It's 84, 85, 86 is nominated for.

[David]

Rumor the View in 87, which one.

[Griffin]

Oscar nomination, which is also amazing in this is a thing you look through old bafta Years. And now the BAFTA is like a mirror of the Oscars too closely, where it's kind of boring. They used to just have such pride in their guys.

[David]

And it was. It was a more British. There was not a lot of American movies, Mickey. And if there is, it's like Denholm, Elliot and Raiders where they're like, well, we like the British guy, right? We like that British guy in that movie.

[Griffin]

But then they also like Jamie Lee Curtis wins for Trading Places.

[David]

That places.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

It's kind of farsy in the way they probably did.

[Griffin]

They just had interesting zags. But yes, to your point, like, the fact that we're seeing the introduction of the arc as an idea through Brody as well as through indie means that when Brody says, you shouldn't do this, that hits differently for the audience, where you're like, this is the guy who likes Indiana Jones doing Indiana Jones. He's bankrolling it. He thinks it's fun. He likes hearing the stories. He's in favor. And he's saying, this is one step too far. Which is basically the introduction of, like, there are forces at play. There may be beyond your comprehension. This is like touching on mystical shit that's a little scary. Maybe, Maybe. Which Indy is just like, what the fuck are you talking about?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, but he literally goes, the wrath of God or some shit, right? So you're. And by. You know, by Billy Wilder rules, you are promising that we're going to see some wrath of God at the end of this movie. Or they put it there, you don't really think about it again. And then when the wrath of God starts coming. Oh, shit, we're going, oh, we're there. We're going to the. God's coming. This is super exciting because once you hit it, you're like, what am I looking at? And you remember, oh, they told us wrath of God. Oh, shit. So it's deeply exciting.

[Griffin]

David.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

That's gotta hurt. That's a quip. That's a quip that people make. Or like, do not go in there. That's like another quip. But if they're saying that's gotta hurt, maybe they're saying it about root canals. And if they're saying, do not go in there, maybe they're saying it about a mouth with a bunch of plaque buildup. My point here is if you want to avoid being the subject of quips like that, maybe you should use our spirit sponsor today quip.

[David]

Yeah. So why don't you get yourself quip? 360. It's an oscillating toothbrush. Griffin, that's literally going to revolve around you.

[Griffin]

That's what I like.

[David]

I've been using quip for a long time, but the, the, the, the 360 is the, you know, you know, the kind of like round brush. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin]

So the whole thing with, with quip, it's an electric toothbrush that doesn't over complicate the most basic daily ritual. I feel like quip just exists to make this as easy as plaques.

[David]

Very simple designs, ultra quiet, super clean, you know, easy to maintain and is scientifically, according to the American Dental association, scientifically proven to remove up to 11 times more plaque between teeth compared to a manual toothbrush and provide up to two times more whitening on day one. And if you don't like it, return it for free within 30 days.

[Griffin]

It's fine. It's, it's easy to travel with, it is convenient, it's easy to clean. And if you do love it, you can brush easy knowing you get a free lifetime warranty for purchasing on get quip. That's quip.com and the opportunity to subscribe to refill heads by mail every three months. So you never have to go to the store. This is a part I like. That's the kind of thing I forget.

[David]

You don't have to go to the store. It just happens. They just send it, it shows up.

[Griffin]

And you go, oh, I get time to change you.

[David]

I got a bunch of quick stuff sent to me every, you know, few months. It's really, really helpful. They've got 25,000 five star reviews and you know, people love quip and they.

[Griffin]

Got a perks program. You know, I love perks programs.

[David]

You do love quip perks.

[Griffin]

Quip Quip puts Quip Perks is a little hard to say. I'm going to say that's just for me. Quip puts their money where their mouth is. When you subscribe to Auto Ship, you'll be enrolled in Quip Perks to earn credit back over time.

[David]

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[Griffin]

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[David]

Quip.Com check quip quip. I mean, obviously, right? But the, the weird thing about Indiana Jones that a zillion people have Remarked on is right. He probably didn't need to do anything. Right.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

They were always going to open the ark and I'll get murdered by it.

[Griffin]

Do you have thoughts on this?

[David]

And like this. Had this became right. The sort of galaxy brain nerd take of like Indy doesn't really even do much.

[Griffin]

Well, it's like we watched this movie of Indiana Jones doing a bunch of. But the big question is, if you remove him from the narrative, does the outcome change at all? All.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Well, our perspective of the narrative changes very much in itself changes the narrative.

[Griffin]

Which I would say is kind of like the defining element of what makes an interesting lead character. This is what people get wrong is they're like, oh, an interesting lead character is a character who does a lot of shit. They're impactful because they're high functioning and capable.

[David]

He makes the right kind of moral choice at the end of each of his movies. Like, you know. Right. Like Indy does.

[Griffin]

But I think it's beyond that. Where it's like the lesson is, is you want to watch the movie that Indiana Jones is in. The movie where he's not in it wouldn't be fun. You could watch these same events play out even if they were unaffected, without.

[David]

This guy doing his treasure hunters. Yeah, no, it probably wouldn't be very fun.

[Griffin]

But you see so many blockbuster movies that can't answer why the main character is the main character. Right. Where you're like, they're the main character because they decided that's the main character at the center of the story. Story. It's not interesting to be telling that story from that character's perspective.

[David]

Isn't there also the argument that it's like they. Oh, when they open the ark, some kind of ancient magic creatures, whatever comes out, and they look upon these Nazis and turn into demons and destroy them. And they do not destroy Indiana or Marian. Is this. It's not just because Indiana's closed his eyes. Isn't it? Also, it's just like they know these spirits. Spirits have rendered judgment and they know that Indy and Marion are not, you know, evil of heart, as everyone else gathered is.

[Griffin]

Well, that's the low level, sort of like inglorious bastards version of like. This is me creating an alternate history where there is like some modicum of like a microcosm representation of a course correction of like there being a cosmic.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Balance that's in perfect reference. Is that like we're taking. Making history and we're just little, little tweaks so we can have some fun with it. If you I'll answer a question with a question. If you were tied to a poll with David and there was the wrath of God was swirling around you and David said, griffin, keep your eyes shut, would you be able to.

[David]

It's actually a good question.

[Griffin]

This is what's tough. Okay. I think I'm capable of keeping my eyes shut shut if yelling and.

[David]

But I'm. Now I'm commanding you.

[Griffin]

If David's the one telling me to do it, the tone of voice is really going to make a difference.

[David]

Craven, close your eyes.

[Griffin]

There's a version of it in which I keep my eyes open just to rile him up.

[David]

I'm gonna look.

[Griffin]

There is. There was an essay by a guy, Matt Pomroy, for Esquire, that was sort of like expanding on this whole. How is the movie's outcome affecting? Did what changes if you remove Indiana Jones from Raiders? And I'm just gonna read the. The quick sort of summary of this, but he says, like, the argument is if the major things that change if Indiana Jones is not in the movie is that Tote kills Marion probably right away.

[David]

Yes. Right, right. She won't survive.

[Griffin]

Right. Just at the bar.

[David]

At the bar.

[Griffin]

The Ark would have been flown to Germany on the plane because Indiana Jones wouldn't have stopped the German mechanic. And that means that the Ark goes straight to Hitler, opens up and burns his face.

[David]

So maybe we lose some good pieces, you know, we lose some heroes.

[Griffin]

This is the interesting thing.

[David]

Burned up.

[Griffin]

You're like, the main thing that Indiana Jones stops is the Ark from getting straight to Hitler, who probably wanted first. Right. Refusal and cracking that bad boy open.

[David]

Right, right, right, right, right, right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It's an interesting perspective. And also there's a lot of talk about, like, you know, when we heard the line in Lashkar's State of. It belongs to the museum, the ongoing joke. It was a great line of dialogue. And then years later, you go, wait, no, it doesn't. It does not belong in museum. It belongs exactly where you're stealing it from. From. But in most of these movies, he is keeping it from bad guys who are taking it. Like they. They are going to take it. So that's. That's it. He's. He's like, better a museum or in a warehouse than in. Than in Hitler's.

[Griffin]

That's the better part of the argument is that the thing he stops from happening, is it getting to Germany?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, right.

[Griffin]

It's that, like, it never ends up in complete Nazi control.

[David]

Right. And Lord knows, whatever. Maybe they could have done something bad. With it.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And Lucas had this thing about that the MacGuffin always has to go back where it was or disappear. He said this out loud. And I always wrestle with that back and forth from a storytelling point of view. And I'm like, okay, perfect ending for Raiders, and I do believe a perfect ending for Temple of Doom, because he returns them to the village, he does not bring them to the museum. And you gotta get a sense that young Indiana Jones has learned a lesson, right? On some level. And then by the third one, it's the Grail, and the Grail's just gonna go and fall into the pit. So even though the joke of it belongs in a museum and there's a comic book out right now called the Horizon Experiment by the guys that did the good Asian, where it's like a flip side of Indiana Jones, whereas she's literally taking things out of museums and bringing them back to great adventure. It's a great idea.

[Griffin]

I wish I thought that's a good idea.

[David]

So.

[Griffin]

But yeah, Streets of Cairo, right?

[David]

Right. To fill in the several action sequences in between the denouement and the bar. Which one is which? There's the car chase, which rocks. There's the.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

In the documentary, my favorite stuff about Cairo is these beautiful wide shots. Shots that look like. That's timeless shots. And then you cut to Robert Watts, the famous producer, when I had to go down and yank every one of those TV antennas off of every rooftop. And I'm like, oh, those poor people. It's just. I didn't. I just thought they didn't have antennas.

[David]

Television, right?

[Griffin]

But it's so much part of the lore of this movie, too, that it's, like, 120 degrees and they all get, like, dysentery.

[David]

There's someone who didn't. I think it might be Spielberg, who, like, wasn't drinking the water. There's some. Anyway, yes, yes.

[Griffin]

But like, a movie that is already him trying to keep himself on rails, be controlled, be precise, starts getting, like, more and more. He's basically, like, throwing dead weight off of a plane with a dying engine going. Like, how do we save, like, 10 minutes here?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Right?

[David]

And obviously, that's how you get the sword versus Gun one fight.

[Griffin]

You know the story, right, Ben?

[David]

You know when Indy shoots the guy, right? The guy's, like, got the sword and he's swinging around and just shoots him. It's like the most badass moment in the. But that was supposed to be a big fight. Oh.

[Griffin]

And there was a choreographed, like, extended set piece. Indy fighting this guy. With a whip versus his sword. And they get there on the day and everyone is like, their pants. And Harrison Ford's like, what if I just shot him? What if he does his big, like, show and then I just shoot him dead? Because, of course he's got a gun. Why would he use the whip if he doesn't have to?

[David]

That's incredible.

[Griffin]

Yeah. And it's like, it's incredible. It is this iconic moment that I feel like people try to replicate a lot. And a lot of times when other movies do something like this, it feels like it is an unsatisfying subversion that you are avoiding us. Avoiding showing us the thing we want to see. I think there's something weirdly just in the, like, DNA of it being created in an organic way versus it being something that is reverse engineered. This is the problem with a lot of movies that try to be Indiana Jones is they're looking at the end result and going, we need something like this. You need the swordsman moment. You need a character like Marion. And you're starting from, like, the final result surface level elements.

[David]

Indiana Jones also just has so much action that you don't miss whatever you're missing there because it's on to the next thing. And we're running and we're running. It's like Indiana Jones is 70% set pieces anyway, so it's fine.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And if you want to accuse Indiana Jones of doing anything wrong in the movie is he has caused chaos throughout this village. I mean, he's just like, he has tipped over everyone's business. These are small businesses, and he is just causing chaos.

[David]

He is an unhelpful presence. That's true. And it's also that he can find treasure. Like, as much as I love Indiana Jones, he is looking for treasure.

[Griffin]

But, like, talking about Chuck Jones influence, like Marianne hiding in the barrels and it, like, having this, like, sequence of it almost becoming like Three Card Monty of, like, where is she? Feels like a thing that Bugs Bunny does to, like, avoid Elmer Fudd, you know? Like, I feel like there are 10 shorts where he does a similar thing where he's, like, hiding in different jars and peeking his head out and the.

[David]

Monke giving her away. Giving her up.

[Griffin]

Yes, Very funny.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

The monkey Steven Spielberg grew up with in his house.

[Griffin]

Right? And then you're just like, the relationship Marianne has with the monkey in that brief amount of screen time feels so mirrored to his mother's relationship with the monkey. Which also kind of makes sense in terms of, like, what you're saying about part of the Willie Scott problem being that Spielberg was so taken with Kate Capshaw that to a certain degree maybe his judgment is out the window. Right. I'm not saying that he wasn't noting her more because he was in love with her, but there are other considerations going on in his mind. He is so sort of like entranced by this woman's existence. Versus I think what helps Marion avoid ever feeling like some weird kind of like idealized little boy's fantasy of a tough girl girl who's also pretty and is cool and is funny is that it does feel like to some degree she's like his mom. Right. That like everything we now know about Spielberg's real mother from the failments, but also the way he's talked about her, written about her and being this sort of person who like refused to be boxed in in life flowy poetic spirit.

[David]

Who was being boxed in but was.

[Griffin]

And was like constantly pushing against it and acting out and causing trouble and all of that. That it feels like he's pulling from a very personal experience of a woman he had a non sexual relationship with who.

[David]

You know who she had a sexual relationship with. Seth Rogen.

[Griffin]

She did in real life. Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

The Salah of his family. But, but, but, but also like I know they. It's just like little clips and stuff. It's almost not fair to even judge the whole relationships on the four seconds they show us in the documentary. But you can see in the, in the Raiders doc, the ones made like the serious docs made about this is that you can see them, Karen Allen and Spielberg really working, really challenging each other in the best way possible. Whereas every clip of him and Cade Capshaw is very flirty and they're having a blast and there's nothing creepy or weird going on. But they are amazing. Absolutely. Falling in love with each other. And it's just a different vibe. It just is. Yeah. And the best part in this stuff with Kate capture is that she won't do the snake.

[Griffin]

Right. That she's so scared of everything. Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But you'll do the bugs, right? Okay, I'll do the bugs. And it cuts to the bug scene because you promised me bugs. Like they are very much in that space as a couple right now.

[David]

I would not do the bugs. I would do the snake.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I was surprised by her choice as well. I think she was just trying to get out of the.

[David]

Today, the well of Souls, as you mentioned, is cut out of what the comic book or the novelization? The comic book did not have the.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I believe. Yeah. There's like that kind of chunk is cut out of it. But you, I, I don't want the.

[David]

Slowest chunk of the movie. It's the least, you know, kinetic part. But it's fun, it's fun puzzle stuff. I like puzzle stuff.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

You like puzzle stuff?

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Yes, yes. And this is where it helps to have Salah in this part of the movie too that you have this like bon vivant guy who, when Indy is getting more academic, you can have Salah be big.

[David]

Right, right, right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But even like Salah like trying to pull the, like, like when they're really trying to lift the lid off the well of souls, like they're both. There's some tremendous shots there, one of which I've never seen someone strain that hard on camera before. Like I just like Salas like really looks like he's going to pop something. And then there's a shot of Harrison Ford in an almost wild eyed like mania, like he hasn't slept. It's gonna happen. And it's a very rare shot of him just almost like spiritually out of control like I must. And it's what not to rewind on you but you know, Belloq hits him with, you and I are the same guy. Which is by the way for writers out there. Never write that scene. It's been written. You don't have to write it. Please don't write, write it. Please, please, please. Even if you really feel like your villain and hero are two sides of.

[David]

The same coin, you don't need someone to say it.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Don't have anyone look at the camera and say it. But in this time he does. He goes, yeah, you and I are the same guy. I don't even know why we're fighting. We're both looking for the same shit. We both feel the same way about this stuff. And then in that moment where Harrison Ford is wild eyed to open the well of souls, you see that the villain is, is right. The villain that he is right. That Harrison Ford is built of the same stuff as this guy here. And when the moment's happening he cannot stop himself. And that's great character stuff, particularly for an action movie.

[Griffin]

There are movies like Sorcerer and the Abyss and the Thing, two of which we've covered. Probably do one day where you're like part of the magic of this movie is you telling how difficult it was to show shoot.

[David]

Sure.

[Griffin]

That those are movies that like they're successfully raining.

[David]

You can feel it. Yeah, right.

[Griffin]

And they successfully represent the extreme environmental conditions that the characters are in. Which you also know the cast and crew were put through as well and that it's not faked and that like the tone of Kurt Russell's skin is a legitimate reaction to him actually being like in a arctic environment for that long. It is wild to me that Raiders in particular does not have that kind of weight to it. Where I like, if I. When I watch this movie, every. Quite effortless, it feels light and breezy and then every 10 minutes I think like, Jesus Christ, they. This just must have been the most exhausting gauntlet in the world. It is non stop action in like very inhospitable climates and terrains and just all the things, you know about like how rushed they were and everything.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It is like that's the magic of Michael Kahn, the editor.

[Griffin]

That's true.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

One of the magic of this collaboration is this lifelong, you know, relationship between him and his editor and him. And he does it. He makes things look effortless. And sometimes that doesn't work towards like, like, like a hook. It doesn't. It has that same effortless. It should look like a little harder. And with this, I don't know, there's just like, there's so much grit and dust on screen. Yeah. Ben. It's a very dusty movie, Ben.

[David]

So dusty.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So dusty.

[David]

And Hook is exactly the movie to bring up though. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

[Griffin]

But there's a difficult balance of like, you also don't want this movie being too weighed down by. By it feeling like too much of a struggle. There is like no right hook. There's like no tension. Right.

[David]

I mean, I know people love Hook and we're going to talk about Hook and there's fans of that movie, you know, a whole generation.

[Griffin]

We will have a defender on the episode.

[David]

It's a clunky movie.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Say it or we'll tell you off.

[David]

Mike don't tell you off. M. But like it's a very, it's. It's a movie that sometimes really feels like it's plotting and it's. Even though these sets are large and these actors are here to have fun or whatever.

[Griffin]

That's what I'm saying.

[David]

You're like training.

[Griffin]

You're like, oh, this movie was like filmed on air conditioned sets. Everyone's trailers were close by. The catering must have been great. You know, like you feel that lack.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Of like Glenn Close stopped by the.

[David]

She sure did.

[Griffin]

Like, I'm sure that that movie had its own struggles in its making. But like Raiders, they're like, this is like a, like complicated, like military operation.

[David]

Yeah, I mean, I think that they're.

[Griffin]

Like willing into existence distance.

[David]

Spielberg has said with Hook. And again, we'll talk about like where he's like, I didn't have a lot of faith in the meat of the movie and I cover for it by being like, make this sets bigger, more colors more, more, you know, like.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And that's how that movie feels to me. It's like, it's just kind of like trying to distract you from not much.

[Griffin]

I. I think you're right about Michael Kahn deserving a lot of credit. I also think like, John Williams score is so much lighter than you would think.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

It is so much jauntier than you would think.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

There are obviously like so many different leitmotifs in Indiana Jones that are iconic beyond just the obvious. Bump, a bump bump where you're like, it's wild that Indiana Jones has 10 perfect themes that alternate. And most of them feel like they're more like they would be more place in like a screwball comedy or like a classic Hollywood romance. You know who lost you in 1981? It lost to red things.

[David]

Chariots of Fire.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Oh, well, of course, Chariots of Fire. There you go.

[David]

And obviously John Williams had various. He had like three Oscars at that point. But you're like, how did it lose. Oh, Chariots of Fire. Well, it's pretty famous.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I'm sure it'll be brought up numerous times throughout this wave of your podcast. But the John Williams doc on Disney does a really excellent job giving you an overview of what was something I grew up in. Going back to the world I grew up in. Is John Williams delivering a banger? Like it's a world class, career defining banger of a SoundTrack about every four months? Yes, it is. On one, Jaws, Close Encounters, all the Star wars and then Superman and things in between. It's incredible. And then as expressed in the documentary, he may be one of the greatest, biggest pop stars of all time and certainly of that age era. Like there was, who was, who was a bigger musician. Who, who did you. I. I knew who he was at 11 years old. I knew his name and I knew that, that, that, that if his name was attached to the movie, I was in good hands.

[Griffin]

But also like Marion's theme is like the fifth most important theme in this film musically. Like, that's the quality of like his number five, you know, it's not just like, oh, he came up with a perfect theme for Indiana Jones, the character. And then the rest of the score is just riffing in Variations on that one thing.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It's just incredible and to the point where John Williams would then take me to other filmmakers. I literally feel like how I met Brian De Palma and other people was through John Williams works with him. Then he must be equal to Spielberg. I will then go there.

[Griffin]

Well, it's almost like the famous Roger Ebert, like Emmet Walsh, Harry Dean Stanton rule, where you're like, no movie with those guys in it can be entirely bad because those guys are always going to do something interesting. You're like, there is no entirely bad movie with a John Williams score.

[David]

It's an interesting question.

[Griffin]

There are certainly there are movies I don't like that he did the score for.

[David]

Yeah, but no, you're arguing like, does his score make even the most bland have some value?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I mean, probably argue 1941 is among his very, very best. Like right here. Right, John? I've written whole graphic novels just to the 1941.

[Griffin]

Wow.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It's just an incredible soundtrack.

[David]

You did this score to heart.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Fun. Yeah.

[Griffin]

I remember the Heartbeat score being good.

[David]

There you go.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Andy Kaufman. Andy Kaufman. I never heard that.

[Griffin]

Andy Kaufman, Heartbeats. I feel like I brought up a lot on this podcast, but as like an Andy Kaufman weirdo comedy obsessed kid, I would see photos of that movie in magazines. And as like, this was one of the first best makeup novels nominees. And I'm like, there's a Bernadette Peters, Andy Kaufman, robot love Story movie. How is this not my favorite movie of all time? It felt very hard to see for a very long time. They finally put it out on DVD at some point in the mid 2000s, and I was like, I get to see Heartbeat, which is about to become my number one favorite movie in history. And it just so definitively doesn't work in a way that is astounding.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

That was another one of those movies that played for a window show on Showtime all the time in the earliest days of cable when there was only like six movies. And they just played constantly. Like the movie Scavenger Hunt would play, like, constantly. Right. So, yeah, so I did see that. And as a fellow comedy nerd of an age, I was. Oh, please. Of course. It just. You guys don't understand it. It's brilliant. And you people don't understand it. And you watch it for four minutes, you go, oh, no. Okay, that's all right.

[Griffin]

Catskills is the least funny character in the history of movies. The cigar smoking robot.

[David]

I hate that to cut you off, but we must finish our discussion.

[Griffin]

You don't want to Hear me rant about Catskills for the fifth time in the arc of our podcast.

[David]

Exactly right. I do not as simply because we.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Have as much as he doesn't. I do, but I appreciate it. There's other episodes for that very.

[David]

Are there action sequences? We have not gotten into enough of the many, many action sequences in this movie. I think that. I do think the car chase is the best constructed. You know, the whole.

[Griffin]

The truck chase.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And also opening weekend and opening experiences. By the time we're at the car chase, it is. You are truly a breathless audience member. You are. You just cannot believe how much movie you're getting.

[David]

Uses every part of the truck. Go on top. Go in the hood. Go. You know, right. Like, you know, I like anything that, you know, maximizes a small space.

[Griffin]

This is more movie than you thought was previously possible.

[David]

Right, Right.

[Griffin]

Like, David and I talk about when we did the Raimi series. Watch those Spider man movies, which were so pivotal for us because they come at a time parallel with your work and all of that. But you watch those and there was an expectation of superhero movies where for so long it was like, you can't make these. They're too expensive. The effects aren't there. And then it finally got to the threshold point. Computers can make Spider man swing through the air, but you'd watch these movies and be like, he's going to have like two fight scenes, right? That's just not cost effective. He will have like one fight scene in the movie.

[David]

I mean, God bless. That's what the first X Men movie movie is totally. Where you're like, oh, they're out of action money. Like, you know, like, there's two really. Two to three really fun. And I love. Very soft spot for that movie. But.

[Griffin]

Yeah, but I. I do as well. But like on Heavy, the final battle between the Green Goblin and Spider man at the end of the first Raimi movie is like four minutes.

[David]

Right.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

You know, it's like I'm physically incapable of not saying out loud that I saw that movie for the first time sitting on a couch next to Stan Lee in Sam Raimi's office on an AV cart that fucking. They rolled in an AV cart. And I. I was not told what I was doing there. And then that's when I found out I was doing there. And I'm now supposed to watch the movie when Stan, who I don't know, is sitting right next to me.

[David]

You must be very early.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Having a lifetime of emotions about the special effects. Catching up to that, which he's been trying to make this movie since he thought of it.

[David]

Because you must have only been in the Marvel fold for like a couple years at that point, right?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, no, I was early Goans. I did not know I was there. Sam Raimi smartly figured out that he and I had the same job to reintroduce Spider Man. And we're interested in the things that we did that were similar and the things that we did that were different and had us come in as the first test audience. And it was genuinely an incredible moment in my life because I'm literally just a Sam Raimi fan. Just the Evil Dead guys here. And then all the sudden Stan walks in, hey, do you believe us? Sits down and we're watching a movie.

[Griffin]

It was good Raimi impression, by the way.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Thank you.

[David]

Did he like it?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

He was. I literally. He got emotional at the end. There was like. He wasn't. He wasn't bawling, but he was, he was, you know, he was misty eyed and took us down memory lane for a while. It was quite wonderful. And then they asked us, you'll like this. They asked us if we wanted to stay and help like rewrite work some of the dialogue situations out. And Dan grabbed his windbreaker and he goes, oh, Well, I wrote 126 issues of Spider Man. They're all yours. Goodbye. And he was gone. And I, as a younger creator just stayed and immediately realized that he was smart and I should have ran out.

[David]

Right. And you're not talk to, you know, execs all night.

[Griffin]

Yeah. But what an experience.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It was an incredible day. I'm sorry. Tired of it.

[David]

No, it's a pretty good anecdote. Yode, you're allowed.

[Griffin]

The reason I brought all this up is that I. I have, I think, I imagine this is what it would have felt like to watch Raiders in the theater at the time. But seeing Spider Man 2 opening night, when the subway chase sequence goes on for like 15 minutes, it keeps happening. And I kept feeling like, this is impossible. How is this still going? The projector should be breaking down. I don't think the infrastructure exists to let Spider man exist doing Spider man shit for this long. And that's not even the final sequence of the movie where it's like by the time you get to the truck chase and you're like, this is like the fifth, like absolute, like balls to the wall, like jam extended set piece that he has constructed now in this.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Movie and also set it up with one of the greatest lines in history, which is I don't know. I'm making up as I go, which is such a ballsy line of dialogue for any action movie, let alone this. I don't know. Just like you're like, oh, oh, I don't know what's happening.

[Griffin]

It's a mission statement, right? It's a mission statement. It's the thing that so many of the imposters get wrong. And it's the same thing that works about John McClane in the first Die Hard is it's fun to watch a hero who is capable but doesn't totally have it figured out out that we need to watch them work it out. If someone is too in control of a situation, it gets pretty boring. And you want to see the struggle, the pain, them doing the math in their head.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, he's smart, he's passionate, he can do it. He's not going to stop. How far will he go? This is where we are in the movie in our headset. Like, how. How far is this going to go? And then also, didn't you find out from the making of that? It's mostly second unit that Spielberg gave over that sequence, a very storyboarded sequence to the second unit. And they talk about it in great length in the documentary. And so you're like watching a stunt team being given free rein. It's almost a valentine to them. Here's everything we know how to do and we're going to have the blast doing it. And no one's telling us no because the director's not here and. And you're getting all their best stuff.

[David]

George Lucas also did a lot of the second unit.

[Griffin]

Yeah, he basically had to do that. Like that was how to get the movie finished.

[David]

But it's also. I think it's a self imposed. Spielberg's like, I'm not doing 1941 again. Will not go over schedule. I will not get this reputation.

[Griffin]

Right. The way to keep this movie on rails is to understand what needs to be delegated to other people. Right, Right.

[David]

So at least the shirtless Chungus Nazi, I love that guy. He's so huge. Again, you love his ideology. No, no.

[Griffin]

Can I do just like David?

[David]

No.

[Griffin]

This is not quite a merchandise spotlight. But here's the thing I want to say. Kenner gets the Star wars license in 1977. Right. And starts making all the figures. And some of them, they come up with these names like the Walrus man, you know, an elephant head and whatever that later. Then Lucas is like, no, no, we need to give them canonical names. This is moma Nidon. This is whoever ever this Ponda Baba. Right? But the whole, like, Lucasy thing of, like, we're gonna come up with a backstory and a name and a species and a planet for every background character, any object you see in any shot, even if it's never explained, there's an answer for it. I love that. Across now four plus decades, the history of Indiana Jones merchandise, none of these characters are ever named.

[David]

He's named German McKinnon.

[Griffin]

Correct. When those toys are sold in 1981 1, they are German mechanic monkey man. You know, like, those are their names.

[David]

Cairo Swordsman.

[Griffin]

Right, Exactly.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Wow.

[Griffin]

And then like Lucasfilm loves to backfill and be like, never mind. We finally landed on a name for that Star wars character. Never does that with Indiana Jones. None of them are ever named. Like, any character who isn't given a name on screen has no canon name.

[David]

Yeah, it is a lucid world, which is fine. It's good, right?

[Griffin]

But also you're like, who's that character? He's a German mechanic.

[David]

Big guy. Big man.

[Griffin]

He's got a fucking Raleigh Fingers mustache.

[David]

He does. How do you know about Raleigh fingers?

[Griffin]

How do I know about Raleigh Fingers?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I just my age. Like, when that guy punches Harrison Ford right in the fucking face, you're like, oh, he falls down like. Like he's literally his, his, his, his, his, his knees go to jelly. And I don't think I'd ever seen that in a movie. I'm sure Burt Reynolds did it and stuff in the. In the Smoking the Bandit movies and stuff like that, but I just, I had not seen. Seen it. And I was, oh, my God, he might die.

[Griffin]

Comparing. Not comparing everything to modern day, but like the infamous, like, Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, contractual. How many punches they can take and how they can never lose a fight and whatever. You got two movie stars who both look like the German mechanic and refuse to ever look uncool or weak for half a second. And Harrison Ford's like, no, this guy should. I have no ego about this. I beat him in the end.

[David]

Everything should be harder for me, right? Yeah, yeah, things are hard.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And in the movie, the great scene where we. The quiet moment on the submarine where you get to see how beat the fuck up he is. Like, oh, everything hurts. I mean, like, that's still to this day, not something you see in movies really.

[David]

From then to the end, he doesn't do much. Like, he's really out of commission and he's tied to a pole. Like, it's like that's right. Once they're on the U boat and stuff, it's really just a matter of Jones being like, I think Belloc wants to test the arc, you know, and that's sort of going to be the weakness here. Right. Rather than this going. Right.

[Griffin]

But you're right. From that moment on, you have like the moment of intimacy that comes only when he's acknowledging his own wounds and scars. The years, not the mileage. Right. This moment. That. Right. And the. Just when you think it's gonna lead to like an ecstatic love scene, it leads like he's getting knocked out. You know, like he. He just is barely keeping his together together.

[David]

I mean. And to be the end of Indiana Jones where Jewish ghosts melt Nazis is awesome.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

But it's a passive ending for Indy in a way. So it's a bold choice.

[Griffin]

The boat, basically, everything he tries is kind of a non starter.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

You're like, oh, he's gonna put on like a German soldier Alfred. He's gonna infiltrate them. This will be an exciting last 30 minutes where he's amongst them. Almost immediately they catch like, we busted you. You're right up there with a bazooka. What do you think you're doing? You look like Harrison Ford.

[David]

It's just surprising in a way that they. Whatever. Like, it just feels like a Hollywood studio now, I guess would be like, well, come on. No indie has to, you know, use the ghosts against them or what, you know, like there. Indy has to be more involved in this. But it's their thing and they get to do what they want.

[Griffin]

And who is the Hollywood studio in this case?

[David]

That's no, but George Lucas. That's what I'm saying. Right. Like, you know, they don't have.

[Griffin]

It's like a. Notes I think were less bad than. Than they are now. But on top of that, you basically have this movie bankrolled by another artist.

[David]

Yeah. And so they get to.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And also, like, there's some shots in the doc about like Spielberg looking at like the models for the ghost, you know, the angel of Death that's coming at the end. And they look very space alien, very Close Encounters. Ish. And he's delighted. He's like, oh, this is perfect. I'm like, oh, I would not be able to see what he sees. It's kind of amazing that he does see what it actually is going to look like on screen because you cannot tell with even perspective that that's what it's going to look like. The other thing I want you to said, I Think about the action heroes of the time. So when I was growing up, when Harrison Ford got into shape for Temple of Doom, it was international headlines about how buffed out Harrison for he is jacked to the gills. He got in shape and then you see it today, he is just in very good, normal man shape.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Justin Long in comedies is as buff as Harrison Ford is in Temple of Doom.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So this summer, I had a good summer with the kids showing them stuff they wanted to see they hadn't seen before, like Terminator 2 and the Martian. Just stuff that they were too young for when they came out. Yes, the Martian. And looking at Arnold schwarzenegger in Terminator 2, which is not him at his biggest, but him at his most iconic. And he is the exact same shape as Paul Rudd in Ant Man.

[Griffin]

Yeah, yeah, basically.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I mean, look, the biggest man in the world at that time. The biggest man in the world. And that is mid Marvel by today's standards.

[Griffin]

Yes. I'm not throwing out the Justin Long thing wantonly.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

No.

[David]

I remember exactly what you're talking about. I know, exactly.

[Griffin]

I had a very specific moment. I think probably around that time that he's just not that into you came out when I was like trying to kickstart my acting career in whatever way. And I was waiting at a stoplight to cross the street in New York and I looked over and he was standing next to me. And the first thing I clocked was, wow, he's got like guns. And I was like, this isn't just in long trying to campaign for some superhero role. Like our whole body image of people in movies has become so distorted that the guy who plays the skinny, gawky guy in comedies is actually cut in real life.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Like cheating in the Good Place. But I remember Harrison Ford working out made me go work out. I was like, you can do it. I should get some definition. But I guess I also saw it as obtainable. He had worked out and he'll feel good, you know?

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Also, we haven't mentioned Harrison Ford gets hurt a lot in movies in real life, like watching all the documentaries in a row. He gets hurt on every single one, almost every movie gets shut down.

[David]

He's always breaking limbs and crashing up until.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Including Force Awakens. Like, like, like he's.

[David]

He like broke his arm or leg in the hydraulic.

[Griffin]

Okay. So the, the. I'm just making it up as a go along thing, I think works because in some ways that is an admission of Spielberg talking about. About his own creative process. Right. That is the side of Indiana Jones, that is Spielberg himself, who's looking around at the elements and gaming out, what is the most fun way to construct this? How do I get out of this? Right. Yeah. It's not even how most fun way to construct it. It's what people talk about. Where he gets to set and goes, like, what is the fewest number of shots I can get this in? If this person walks from here to here on this line, then suddenly, that's a oner. And we can cover half a page in, like, five minutes or whatever it is.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

He's the most famous for it. And it gets talked about endlessly by film nerds. But you guys will reference it. Often it is to watch him construct this. Like, when the dock cameras are on him, watching him in real time construct a scene either from this or from Lincoln with the same amount of.

[David]

Just.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

He's so good at it. It's just. He really may be the best at that. That ever lived.

[Griffin]

I. I think he is. And I. It's like, you watch that footage and it's almost like he's, like, speaking in tongues, where it's like he's channeling something from, like, another dimension where he's just like, oh, wait a second, duh. And he just, like, calls out five chess moves, and he's not doing it in a bossy or demanding way. It feels like it's just coming to him suddenly. And then the thing comes together so quickly, and he just, like, knows exactly how to get it really fast. The other part of it is the Indiana Jones thing of talk about the fallibility of him as a hero. Right. That he isn't worried about looking weak or failing or whatever it is. There's something unified there in the fact that Harrison Ford himself hurts himself a lot. And it's not just like, oh, he gets injured on set because he's not good at doing stunts. He gets into planes and crashes them. And then people go, hey, Harrison, maybe time to stop flying planes. And he's, like, off. And it gets in another plane. Like, there is something he's playing that speaks to something very real in him, which is this guy who just keeps doing the shit. Even when he gets, like, knocked out, he just gets back up and walks off. Like the crash site.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, like. But pre Indiana Jones, you remember a scene where there was just a moment where the. The hero licked his wounds on camera? I can't think of it. Yeah.

[Griffin]

No. And, like, thinking about, like, comparable, like, 70s stars, you know, I know this is an 80s movie, but, like, you know, who are the sort of 70s towering figures of like 70s action cinema. Right. A They're largely a lot older. Like you still have like, you know, Lee Marvin movies and like Charles Bronson movies and those things where those guys are a lot steelier and a lot more humorless. Burt Reynolds is way more humor. He does not want to show that he cares. He's never going to get his hands that messy. Right. Like, he's more the Han Solo type of wanting to be a little bit above him. It. And then you have like Dirty Harry who is similarly just like Dirty Harry is never going to show vulnerability.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, I was like, like wondered like when I was thinking back on this, like, how did I as a kid know that Bert Reynolds didn't give a.

[David]

Like, was it from him, like going on the Tonight Show?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I mean, I message to be just like, he doesn't. He's not giving it. That was the product.

[Griffin]

Like that's what he was selling. It was like he was like the pet rock. And people were like, so what do I do? And they're like, you just put the rock on your desk and you pretend it's a pet. And you're like, I gotta do the work. He's just gonna sit there and flub his fucking lines.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Also you were talking about the costuming. It's also how he's wearing the costume that the costumer talks in the documentary about how. How Harrison wears clothes. And he's not just wearing the jacket, he's kind of wearing the jacket like almost off his shoulders half the time. Time, like it's barely on him. It's very unique. And when he buttons up his tie and puts the jacket, there's a more respectful Indiana Jones in the costume. But most of the time the jacket's almost not on his shoulder.

[Griffin]

But that's the craftsman side of it, which is he's doing things that are unnatural. But he understands that he is in the business of making iconography. And the tough thing to do is to do that and not have. Have it play as self conscious that he is able to give this very natural behavioral performance with that kind of self awareness.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. And again, you said before, the other thing with Spielberg is every single one of these supporting performers and or stunt people and. Or just presence on the screen just really feels right and exciting and surprising. Like it's just everywhere you turn there's something really interesting to look at. There's someone who's bringing their whole story to this one line of dialogue that they're reading. Even the Nazis, you know, Also, I. I know we're heading towards the end here with. With the Nazis, but it was very interesting to me when they were talking about making Crystal Skull and he said, no, Nazis. I'm not like. Like, he literally. The only RA rules Spielberg put out, there's. I'm not going back to doing cartoon Nazis. Post Schindler's List.

[David]

Yes, he refused to.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And that arc of just maturity as a storyteller, I have made a statement so powerful, I can't go back to the Bugs Bunny Nazi. I can't do that. And him knowing he can't do it.

[Griffin]

I find that very fascinating. But it also feels like an admission that he shouldn't have made another Indiana Jones movie movie. That's the problem. It. It is what is so interesting about him. That, like, you know, I. I feel like it's. It's been said that part of the calculation of making Temple of Doom a prequel was that he didn't want to just do the Nazis again. And if you were setting it right after World War II isn't resolved, you don't want to go too far in the future. It felt like you could put it earlier and put it in a different timeline. And then Last Crusade, he's like, why am I trying to, like, perfect something? He's never going to be better than Indiana Jones fighting the Nazis. But if you get to a point where you don't want to make Indiana Jones fight the Nazis anymore, then maybe it's like, not the time to make an Indiana Jones movie. But.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And also you get that. That great line in Last Crusade out of the famous Nazis. I hate these guys. Like, he's the only one that hates them. Like this. This is something about me. You should know. I don't like Nazis. Is very. It's a great. Yes, it's a great line.

[Griffin]

One of his defining characteristics.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

You gotta wait a decade for it, too, which is great.

[Griffin]

All three face meltings.

[David]

So good, so different. I mean, obviously, Tonk is the best one. Yes, but they're all fun.

[Griffin]

But it's like three of the best practical visual effects of all time, all happening right next to each other. And as you said, what's great about it is that they're three different bites at the apple. That they're different philosophical approaches.

[David]

The practical effects are good. I think also the individual fruits. Freaks are, you know, like, I. Paul Freeman is the best. I mean, not Paul Freeman, sorry. Toad is the best. Ronald Lacey, the way he just goes like. Like, you know, he. He hits the scream. The best. But, yeah, Just one is sort of shrinking, right? Like a sort of drying fruit tote. The Nazi guy tote melts.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And Belloc blows up.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

The behind the scenes of the Toad Head, where, like, it was this incredibly, like, complicated, immaculately built layer by layer. Basically, like, candle head makes sense, because.

[David]

That'S exactly what it looks like. It looks like this thing is truly, like, being melted layer by layer.

[Griffin]

Right. And they had, like, 40 hair dryers on it. And then we're speeding it up even further, but you're like, it's a thing they could only do one time successfully.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

And a lot of it is, like, theoretical, where they're like, we think this will work.

[David]

It worked. It's cool.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And it still works. I'm here in Port Portland, where Raiders and Jaws plays on theaters at least once a summer. So I got to take the kids to, like, my Sonshaw. Jaws for the first time, completely works, even through modern eyes. And Raiders also works. And the head melting completely. Like, I always wonder, like, does this read at all, or is this just something I grew up. Up with? So I love it. Right. It's decades old. Does this just look like an old, like, Three Stooges cartoon to my kids? You know what I mean? And they come. Nope, it works. Completely rattled them. And to the point, like, even watching it now, I remember thinking, did they find an actor that looks like this model they built? Because they look like this. It's so perfectly right.

[Griffin]

That's part of what helps sell the illusion. You're right. Is that he himself looks like a model model.

[David]

Right, Right. That's why he looks like a little robot. Like I said, like a little alien. It also just very satisfying in that sort of careful what you wish for way. It's Nazis getting what they deserve. But it's also just right. You're like. You're like, yeah, I. I know now, maybe in the. In the moment, I would not know this, but the viewer has the kind of confidence of like, I wouldn't open that box, Ben. You don't open the box. If I open the box, I think God's hand would come out and pound me. Be like, what's up, brother? Like, hey, keep it up. And then just turn into a bunch of coins. Yeah.

[Griffin]

He wouldn't beat your ass. He dap you.

[David]

Oh, yeah. Good job.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But it does. It does feel exactly like Inglourious Bastards, where, like, oh, this is much farther along than I thought we were going with this storyline. Like, we are well past what I thought was the line. So that Very. And also, I don't know where this is going to end. Is God going to show up with the voice of Gene Hackman and give us the business? I don't know what's going to happen.

[Griffin]

God. Gene Hackman never played God, did he?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes, he did. I just. I just tipped my hat. He. It's a movie with the movie that isn't Grease starring two of a kind.

[David]

He is the voice of God in the John Travolta, Olivia Newton wild. Yes. Oliver Reed plays the devil.

[Griffin]

Is that movie good?

[David]

Probably not. That was a notorious film.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Another one I saw in theaters. So just from my experience.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Watching Greece, of course. This must be. Even if it's half Greece.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It is a truly terrible movie. It's a heart speaking too, by the way, I rewatched the Siskel and Ebert of this movie because also I'm of an age where everything Siskel Ebert did affected me greatly. They were my film school for all of my childhood, and everyone they championed, I immediately took notice of. And, and, and so you watch this clip and they are just giddy with excitement over this movie. They just can't believe they experience this movie in a way that they rarely show on camera.

[David]

That's awesome.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And it really is. And, and, and Siskel says to Ebert, you know, I was thinking, is this movie. Is this year movie such shit that I'm just loving every second of this. Like, because we haven't seen. He goes, honestly, Robert, we haven't seen a good movie movie in like six months. Like a really good movie. He goes, is it that or is this just a really good movie? And they agreed that it's just a. It's a really good movie. And this was a terrible movie, the year for the cinema.

[Griffin]

Like, it's kind of surprising that it got nominated not just for best Picture, but best Director when they had snubbed Spielberg for Jaws.

[David]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

But it did just like this movie, I think, was just fucking undeniable.

[David]

Yeah. And it was obviously the biggest hit of the year. But you're right, of course, the Jaws have been as well now. But it's treated like these Spielberg movies pre Shameless is treated where it gets the noms, wins a bunch of tech awards and does not touch. Like, there's no acting attention. And it loses to Chariots of Fire and Reds, respectively, for picture and director, which are. Reds is this big egotistical passion project.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I love that movie, but I love that movie dearly. It is. It is one of my favorite movies of all my. I covered it in great length on Scott Aukerman. Scott.

[Griffin]

Oh, yes.

[David]

Oh, that's right. Great episode of sky doesn't seem.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Oh, thank you.

[David]

And then Chariots of Fire is the little movie that could. That year. That's the movie, everyone. It's the coda of its year, everyone. You know, I really loved that movie.

[Griffin]

Those are serious movies about serious things. Coming out of a 70s where New Hollywood was like, we gotta fucking engage with shit politically. And, like, Spielberg is making these, like, fun, like, gumball rally movies.

[David]

Yeah. It's just not right. The Oscars have not caught up to what he's doing.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

And they.

[Griffin]

And yet they couldn't ignore him. There's a weird balance of them being like, come here. But not too close, right? Yeah.

[David]

To be clear, I love reds.

[Griffin]

I love reds.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It's a weird public narrative that goes on for the 80s, like when Spielberg getting his due. Like, this is. This is the narrative through every movie, including Color Purple and all the way. All the way up to Chanel Hunters list.

[David]

Let's play the box office game.

[Griffin]

Okay. Any final things you want to say? I mean, the final moment, you sort of teed this up, but it's like, it is the one most satisfying resolution to what do they do with the relics that the movie. The sequels can't ever replicate of just putting it in a crate and it's just, like, stacked up. And then this incredible shot of this warehouse and being like, every single crate.

[David]

In this place is an ark of the Covenant.

[Griffin]

Some thing in there that caused some crazy adventure.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. Anyone with a little story brain just explodes. Like, every one of these is an adventure. Every one of these is a comic book I have to read. Yes.

[Griffin]

It's also kind of like. It's this weirdly bittersweet note of. In all that for what it gets stacked up.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And then you get the shot of Karen Allen in full wardrobe and makeup, like a woman about town, which we had not seen because we've only seen. Met her. We met her at her lowest and walked her through an adventure. So here she is in full makeup, and you're like, holy shit. Like. Like, I don't know. It just. It was like at the end of the movie, the last thing you think is, oh, my God, is. Is. Is a. Is a fun thing to think of. And also thinking of it like, if it was today, I wonder if Karen Allen would have more of like a Jennifer Lawrence career. You know what I mean? More of like, I know she had shots where she got.

[David]

We talk about it on the Starman Episode.

[Griffin]

I mean, I think we both said that. That we think she should have won the Oscar that year. And she wasn't even nominated. And it does feel bizarre for, like, either, either or. If it was just Animal House or Indiana Jones, you'd be like, either one of those should have set her up to have a dominant career for 15 years. The fact that she did both, it's just kind of bizarre that she didn't have a bad career, but it's like she should have been like one of the top five female stars in America.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

For all of these. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin]

And yes, she was clearly capable of doing anything and everything and still is. Yeah.

[David]

Film was the biggest film of the year.

[Griffin]

It was successful.

[David]

Very successful. Made 220 million domestic, $20 million budget. Comes out June 12, 1981. Brian was there, I was there. Opens number one at the box office. We're in this stage where we, you know, wide release, we're beginning to have. Right. Opening weekends. Number two is another what it opened to.

[Griffin]

Do you think?

[David]

$4 million.

[Griffin]

Robust.

[David]

Yeah.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

But also interesting. I reading this morning was not tracking well prior to release. They were worried about it. There was a Superman 2 without tracking it by a mile.

[David]

Interesting.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

So that is. Yeah, I know. I. Superman II is one of the.

[David]

Big hits of the year, but not.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

As big, but as a child, I was all. I was all in on Raiders. Like, we were.

[Griffin]

We were.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

We could. Couldn't wait. So that's weird to hear that it.

[David]

Is opening against another new movie that is a big adventure movie, epic fantasy movie that is not as well remembered in 1981.

[Griffin]

It's a big epic. It's not Excalibur, is it?

[David]

No, no. Even more ancient than that in terms.

[Griffin]

Of when it's set.

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Is it biblical?

[David]

No. A little forward, maybe a little bit. I don't know. No, it's a. No. Ancient myth.

[Griffin]

Ancient myth?

[David]

Yes.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Of the titans.

[David]

There you go. Oh. With Harry Hamlin and Laurence Olivier and, you know, release the Kraken Mode, obviously later remade with Sam Worthington.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[David]

The last Work, of course, really is.

[Griffin]

Kind of our generations. Harry Hamlin. Yes. No, I mean, that's. That's the big thing is it was.

[David]

It was the end of the. Harry.

[Griffin]

Right. And look, it's a throwback. We're letting Harryhausen do one last, Last. Yeah.

[David]

Here's another new movie that week.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

A comedy one that we also. Epic one that we will, I'm sure cover on this show one day.

[Griffin]

We will cover this someday. We'll cover this direct One epic comedy. Is it a. Is it a genre mashup? It's a comedy epic.

[David]

It.

[Griffin]

He's struggling to think how he would describe epic movie. Is it History of the World Moses?

[David]

Oh, History of the World, Part one from Mel Brooks.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I was gonna pull out a Holy Moses, which is pretty.

[David]

That would have been good.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Okay. But not a film I've maybe only seen once. Not ML Brooks, I really know very well.

[Griffin]

It's not one of my favorites, but I. It's. It is good stuff. Consistently funny. It's got great stuff in it.

[David]

Yeah, but. So all three of those movies are opening against each other.

[Griffin]

That's wild.

[David]

Very weird that Raiders and Clash of the Tit. Like, those feel like way too much overlap there, but they were now number four at the box office. Ben, you might be interested by this movie. It is.

[Griffin]

It's called Bone Dirt River.

[David]

It is the third of, I mean, I don't know, six or seven films that this comedy duo made that you might be interested by.

[Griffin]

Is it a Prior and Wilder? I know you were pitching this to Ben. Okay. Oh, I think I know who it is. I don't want to guess.

[David]

These guys like to, you know, take it easy. Oh, you're talking about Cheech and Chong. That's right. My boys. What is the third Cheech and Chong movie?

[Griffin]

Big proponents of the jazz cigarettes, those two.

[David]

Yeah. Is it the weird one where they're.

[Griffin]

It's like the Brothers Corskin Brothers, I think is the last.

[David]

That is their.

[Griffin]

Okay, yeah.

[David]

Way off. Okay.

[Griffin]

The second one is Cheech and Chong's next movie. Is that correct?

[David]

That is the second one. The first one is up in Smoke, obviously.

[Griffin]

Is this.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Oh, first one's up in Smoke. Okay.

[Griffin]

Is this Sweet Dreams?

[David]

It's called Nice Dreams.

[Griffin]

Okay.

[David]

In which they sell drugs out of an ice cream truck. And Stacy Keech is a DEA guy who's trying to catch him.

[Griffin]

Should we do the Cheech and Chong movies?

[David]

We've mentioned it. We've had him on Patreon. Brackets. I gotta say this. I've seen. I don't know if I've seen all six, but I've definitely have seen a lot of them, and I don't remember anything about.

[Griffin]

About them. That's weird because he must have been dead sober while watching.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Would you include Yellow Beard and After Hours?

[Griffin]

No, I feel like. Because we'd want to. We'd want to save that for Martin Scorsese and Mel Damsky series. Any credit for pulling Mel Damsky director of Yellow Beard?

[David]

No, I Think it's no lookup. It's up in Smoke. Next movie. Nice dreams. Things are tough all over. Still smoking. And Corsican Brothers is sort of their last live action film together in how many years? They did them very close together. Like. Like up in smoke is 78 and Corsican brothers is 84. Like they did them all back to back to back to back to back. And then they stopped.

[Griffin]

Was there a later, more recent movie where they teamed up again? Animated.

[David]

Straight to dvd.

[Griffin]

It was straight to dvd.

[David]

Oh, no, it wasn't actually. It did have a limited theatrical release. The Cheech and Chong's animated movie.

[Griffin]

But I was also thinking, because I know they've both done animated roles, I was like, was there a thing where they cast them like brother bear style to play animals? Well, Chong is in Zootopia is what I'm saying. And Cheech is in Lion King.

[David]

Right. They're all in. You know, they're reliable.

[Griffin]

He's of course, Ramon in Cars.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Of course.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I'm sure there's a Nash Bridges special episode.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

Number Five is a romantic comedy directed by and starring it's star. Written, directed by and starring this man.

[Griffin]

Is it an Alan Aldo?

[David]

It's an Alan Aldo.

[Griffin]

I got that right?

[David]

You did.

[Griffin]

Okay. Is it the one with Carol Burnett?

[David]

It's the one with Carol Burnett and Len. Carry you, Rita Moreno, Sandy Dennis.

[Griffin]

Do you know this title, Brian?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

I know it's not Sweet Liberty. Sweet Liberty is young Michelle Pfeiffer.

[David]

Sweet Liberty is his second film.

[Griffin]

Okay. And there's the. The. The Joe Tynan one is a different one. Right. There's the one where he plays the politician. Is that what it's called?

[David]

I don't fucking.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. The Seduction of Joe. Ty.

[Griffin]

Thank you. Okay, this one is called. This isn't the Four Seasons, is it?

[David]

It's the Four Seasons, his debut, which.

[Griffin]

Is now being remade with Tina Fey and Jon Hamm, maybe.

[David]

Really?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

That's not a Neil Simon. That feels like a Neil Sim.

[David]

It feels like a Neil Simon California Suite type thing.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Ah, that's it.

[David]

And it has a four part structure.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Sure.

[David]

You know, season by season. But I. It is not. It is. Alan Alda written and directed by him. Never seen it.

[Griffin]

I never have either. I'm trying to find this thing. There was. There was an announced Tina Fey four seasons.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, you're right. There is some kind of Netflix show, I think, like.

[Griffin]

But I'm trying to remember who the other person is.

[David]

It can't be John Hamm. He's in every TV show. Now, like it can camp.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It might have been Corell.

[Griffin]

Steve Corell. It's a date night ream.

[David]

Yeah, I could see that.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Colman Domingo.

[David]

Sure. Also in the top 10, you've got and I wonder if you saw any of these movies, Brian. You got Busting Loose, the Richard Prior.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Film that was on cable constantly all the time.

[David]

Uh, never seen that one. Uh, Cicely Tyson is in it. I don't know. It looks like he's busting loose, I guess. You've got the Sean Connery movie Outland, which is a Peter Himes films that's.

[Griffin]

Like him with a shotgun, but it's.

[David]

Like set on Jupiter.

[Griffin]

Right.

[David]

It's like a space western. I've never seen it, but it seems very cool. And my guess is it's not as cool as I want it to be because it's not that famous. But you're saying it's pretty cool.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

It is not that cool. There is a comma, believe it or not, there is a graphic novel adaptation by Steranko. Wow. Well, full circle on this puppy. And it's one of his great mid career moments as a comic creator. And the comic book is so well done and so innovative and Sterenko kind of thing that you go see the movie thinking you're seeing something similar and it's just not there. It's very, you know, like there's certain sci fi movies of that era that just all vibe like black holes hole. They're just depressing and dark and weird and not Star Wars. It's that it's not alien. It's not as bad as the black hole, but it's trying to be alien and it's just not connecting.

[Griffin]

The tagline is on Jupiter's moon, he's the only law. That sounds like the best movie of all time.

[David]

Exactly.

[Griffin]

Put in the Heartbeats canon.

[David]

It's set on IO, the volcanic moon. Not a Deborah.

[Griffin]

Oh, okay.

[David]

You've also got an action film called Kill and Kill Again.

[Griffin]

Good title. Yep.

[David]

Don't know much about that one. You've got something called the Legend of the Lone Ranger.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah, that was a big movie. That was one of those very marketed movies. It was marketed with Star wars energy.

[David]

And it's with a young Michael Horse as Tonto. Michael Horse from Twin Peaks. And then you've got the Gary Coleman comedy on the right track. I can kind of see what Siskel and Ebert were talking about of like, do movies just suck right now or does this rock? Yeah, because History of the World part one is good. I Guess pretty much every other movie I described seems mixed to bad.

[Griffin]

Yeah. I also feel like History of the World was a hit, but not on the level of his previous movies. I think it was seen as a little bit of a. Like sometimes we just. Mel repeating himself. Yeah.

[David]

We do these old box office games and there's sort of like seven masterpieces in the movie multiplex. Instead you've got on the right track, which was the.

[Griffin]

Yeah, and by the way, we'll like get to that. Like ET Summer is notorious for like wall to wall bangers. You know, like a lot of the other Spielberg movies. These box office games are coming out in like peak blockbuster years. 81 feels a little thin.

[David]

Gary Coleman plays an orphan who lives in a locker at Union Station in Chicago. Then he like wins lottery or something.

[Griffin]

Okay, there's the Gary Coleman cartoon.

[David]

Like on some snot that a guy sneezed like he didn't even have a tissue. He was just like.

[Griffin]

Do you remember the Gary Coleman cartoon show, Brian? Where he was like an angel?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Yeah. And it was called the Gary Coleman show, which was confusing because I'm like, is it supposed. It's supposed to be Gary again.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Kids, this is a time where you. There was things on TV and either you watched them or there was nothing else to watch. Or you stared at the wall. This is your choice. You have a choice. Choice. Go read or watch this. And there's no Disney on Demand or every Star wars or every Marvel movie available at every second of the day.

[Griffin]

I'm not sure you got a stick in a hoop you could chase.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

This is, I will say, David, a perfect example of what you refer to as not really movies. Like the movies that don't really exist, except they do. They were in theater.

[David]

On the right track.

[Griffin]

On the right track.

[David]

Y. Well, it was a financial success. I made $13 million.

[Griffin]

Wow.

[David]

I think, you know, back then it.

[Griffin]

Was like double the opening of Raiders.

[David]

Yeah. Nice work if you can get it.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

So. Yeah, so it does. It does. Looking at that box office, it is interesting. It does feel like 1981 was a bit of an odd year. After years of Star Wars. Superman, you know, like, you know, right.

[Griffin]

These Titan Adventure.

[David]

Oh my God. Where it's like the big hits of 1981 or like Raider, Superman, 2, Arthur Stripes. Like it's like movies that do have some legacy, but it's not blockbustery in the same way. It's a bit of an odd moment before the 80s really ramp up and we start getting a lot of sequels and big action. Movies and Arnie and Sly and all that stuff.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Some of these movies, their tale is fully on home video cable. Like Stripes played constantly when I was a kid to the point where all of my friends knew it, but by heart. Like every line.

[Griffin]

Except no one's ever seen the second half of Stripes. My favorite thing.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

No one's ever seen it.

[Griffin]

No one's ever seen it. It's the most watched first half in history.

[David]

Too long. That movie is actually too long, too. That movie should be 82 minutes long. It's like 110 minutes long.

[Griffin]

Oh, you watched the shorter cut.

[David]

We got to be done, Griff. We've been talking for so long. I'm not complaining.

[Griffin]

Yeah, well, I'm just looking. I'm checking my notes here. It's an episode on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[David]

Yes. Well, this is a problem we have on these Spielberg episodes. Yes, they're all to talk about. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

You know what's interesting? Harrison ford got like 6 million for this. I just saw this. 5 million each for the two sequels and then $65 million for Crystal Skull.

[Griffin]

Well, if I'm not mistaken, I believe his deal for crystal skull was 20% of first dollar money growth.

[David]

Right.

[Griffin]

Not profit. Like that. Was the deal elevated by Crystal Skull that Lucas, Spielberg and Ford were like, it's 20% to each of us right off the top.

[David]

Probably partly why it took so long to make it.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Do you think this movie is Harrison Ford's best performance?

[David]

Oh, boy. Oh, come on now.

[Griffin]

I think it's his most important performance. And I think it's the greatest distillation of what he is uniquely great at as a movie star, if that makes sense. Han Solo will always be my favorite Harrison Ford character. It's just the one. And probably a lot of it was. I saw it at the right age.

[David]

Single performance, maybe. Yeah, I mean, I think that might.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Be what that reaction you had was. Was. What was that reaction?

[Griffin]

You're weighing Witness in your mind.

[David]

I feel so much. But I think it would be a little, you know, know, anorak of me to be like, you can get to Witness.

[Griffin]

Yeah. Morning Glory. Obviously contentious. Gotten an Oscar nomination for fr.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

He's also very good and Presumed Innocent.

[David]

I love him in all of those sweaty late 80s early 90s thrillers that he made and I. And witnessed sort of the start of that. And I love him in Air Force One and I love him in, you know, many, many things. But I think. Yeah, I think Indy is probably a good argument.

[Griffin]

You're posing a good question because it is an interesting case of Oliver. Lot of stars like him. You'd be like, well, there's the most iconic performance, what will clearly be the first line in their obituary. They're never going to surpass that. And yet, actually their best performance is X, Y or Z. Right. You're like, well, that's their most famous performance. But their best actual work as an actor was this other thing. This might be one of the rare cases where they're the same answer.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

They're the same thing. Yeah.

[Griffin]

Yeah.

[David]

I think, given the kind of statistics.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

4. The greatest thing he ever put on film was on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the sketch where he confronts Chewbacca for sleeping with his wife. It is an incredible comic performance which he does not break. And every line he delivers is near perfection. And if you think I'm joking, Google it later. It is an incredible, incredible live performance where he just kills.

[Griffin]

That sketch was written by Jeff Loves, who later wrote Antman and the Lost Quantumania.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Oh, no, I didn't even know that. That's fantastic.

[Griffin]

He had done, like, viral videos, got hired onto Kimmel. That was the first thing he wrote. We had him on the George Lucas talk show talking about this. That was him on Kimmel, I think, the Monday or Tuesday after Cowboys and Aliens had came out. And he, during the interview, cannot stop smarting from the fact that the Smurfs beat them at the box office. Like it was the mistake of him not going on to promote the movie in advance. They booked it as a victory lap, assuming the movie would be a blockbuster. And then he's just like, yo, I guess we're not as good as the Smurfs. But the. The show opens with that Chewbacca sketch, which is incredible and lives in my mind forever because he's yelling at Chewbacca and he goes, I don't need you anymore.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

More.

[Griffin]

I'm in a movie with Daniel Craig now, and he says, craig. And I think about it all the time. Is it?

[David]

Yes.

[Griffin]

Was he right?

[David]

He's right, America. Say it wrong.

[Griffin]

I'm in movies with Daniel Craig, Craig.

[David]

But it's not Craig.

[Griffin]

It's Craig Craig.

[David]

We will link to that clip in the episode description.

[Griffin]

Chewbacca.

[David]

And I think we should also wrap up the episode. It's time to be done.

[Griffin]

Brian, anything you want to plug?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Oh, yeah. Listen, head over to jinxworld.com where you can see. You can sign up for my newsletter and all my books that are [e-mail] including Powers and the Brand New released masterpiece. And for fans of this podcast, I have a graphic novel coming out in January called Fortune and the Musical, which tells the very true story about how I was the writer of the Spider Man Broadway musical Turn off the Dark for a week in a half. I think people will enjoy that true Hollywood disaster story. Yeah.

[Griffin]

Wow.

[David]

Oh, I cannot wait to read that. Are you kidding me? Brian, please come to New York sometime so I can pick your brain about all kinds of things. I have so many nerdy questions for you about the early 2000s in Marvel especially.

[Griffin]

But yeah, the Thunderbolt Ross mustache conversation with the tip of the iceberg.

[David]

That was nothing. I have lots to ask you.

[Griffin]

That's the coolest question, David.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

All right, well, Ben, I know you want to go, but I just want to take a minute and say that I really do love you guys in this podcast a great deal. It is not to be weird. I do think you guys are the spiritual successors of Siskel Niebuhrt in the best way possible. I just think it's. It's elevated conversation that makes everyone I talk to about it think better about their work and make smarter choices. So I just. Just really wanted to say thanks.

[Griffin]

Ben is sitting behind the wall, victory lapping. Well, no, because he of course, want to call the podcast Griffin Simsburg. And he's gesturing like, what was I telling you guys?

[David]

He was right. I was right all along.

[Griffin]

He was right all along.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

And every time you give Ben a nickname, I consider it for myself as well. Like Dirt Bike Bendis. Just sounds like something I could have pulled off in my younger days. So I do appreciate you guys test marketing these Ben related nicknames.

[Griffin]

Hey, happy to do it. Thank you so much for being here. It truly is an honor as the show's gone on for years. Every once in a while we hear about someone who's a listener and it flips us out and we're like, that fucking person listens to us make fart jokes. But you are one that is truly humbling because of how large you loom in our development of how we understood stories for both of us personally and much the way you talk about the Lucas and Spielberg's stuff that you grew up with.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Thank you.

[Griffin]

And thank you all for listening.

[David]

Yes. Join us next week for Should I double Check?

[Griffin]

I believe it's a movie called E.T. the Extraterrestrial.

[David]

Just making sure that nothing. Yep, yep. E.T. the extraterrestrial.

[Griffin]

So I'm just gonna check my notes here. The next weekend banger.

[David]

Yeah, another good one.

[Griffin]

Yeah. E.T. the extra terrestrial. Fairly large.

[David]

He made it one year later.

[Griffin]

Yes.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yeah. That's amazing. And by the way, and after E.T. that's it. He's. He never goes back to. There's no doubt if Spielberg's.

[David]

No.

[Griffin]

I mean, no.

[David]

When he makes three movies that don't go over as much, but it doesn't matter. Yeah. He's.

[Griffin]

He's unquestionably minted from the moment of Raiders on, they're like, we. We can't. It's. It's not a fluke.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

How far does this Spielberg run with.

[Griffin]

You up to Schindler?

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Oh, okay. That's farther than I thought.

[Griffin]

Oh, yeah. It gets to him winning his Oscar. And then we'll win our Oscar for best podcast, a category I assume they're including in the next year's ceremony, along with most cheer worthy moments, most dollars for CEOs collected.

[David]

Coming up in a few days over on the Patreon, we're doing a Spielberg bonus covering something evil and savage.

[Griffin]

Oh, yeah. His two major TV movies in between Duel and Sugar Land Express. And as always, Bendis, you got me thinking drafting already in my head. Ben's nickname for this hassle to be Bandiana Bones. Right.

[David]

There you go. There you go.

[Brian Michael Bendis]

Yes.