Who's That Knocking at My Door / Boxcar Bertha

Summary

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Episode: Who's That Knocking at My Door / Boxcar Bertha
Date: August 9, 2026
Hosts: Griffin Newman, David Sims
Producer: Ben Hosley

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Overview

In this episode, the hosts kick off their long-awaited Martin Scorsese miniseries—jokingly titled Podcastfellas and, for this episode, "Podcar Birth Cast." They discuss Scorsese’s first two feature films: Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967) and Boxcar Bertha (1972). The episode dives into Scorsese's early life, influences, and the nascent beginnings of his style, examining how these primordial works set the stage for the breakthroughs that would follow ("Mean Streets" and beyond).

Throughout, the conversation is both affectionate and playfully irreverent toward Scorsese’s status as a living legend, and expands into film history, New York trivia, and the accidental reverence bestowed upon certain directors.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Blank Check Scorsese Miniseries

• [02:28] This marks the start of a multi-month Scorsese retrospective; the series is named after one of his earliest films, albeit facetiously.
• Griffin and David joke about the outsize legacies of Scorsese and Spielberg, noting, “These are living legends...we're talking about movies, six, seven decades of work.” (03:44)
• They note that the series will run through all Scorsese’s films in order, beginning with his “second first” film ("Mean Streets") after these early outliers.

2. Early Scorsese: Personal vs. Impersonal Filmmaking

• [11:17] Griffin lays out the types of Scorsese films:
  • Masterpieces
  • Risks or swing-for-the-fences passion projects
  • "Career move" or favor gigs, which still bear his personal stamp
  • Quote: “Boxcar Bertha is the last impersonal movie he makes. 'Who's That Knocking at My Door' is him making a deeply personal movie before he's figured out how to make an engaging film.”—Griffin (11:40)

3. Scorsese's Childhood & Influence (Deep-Dive Bio)

• [19:22] & onward David presents a “dossier” on Scorsese via research and anecdotes:
  • Born in Flushing, Queens; Sicilian-American heritage; asthmatic as a child, leading to a life spent observing from windows and becoming an early, avid cinephile.
  • Quote: “He was unknowingly trained into the act of being an observer, looking at everything through this frame..." —Griffin (25:19)
  • Frequented neighborhood picture houses and church—the two safe havens; faith and film are his central obsessions.
  • Quote (from Scorsese via JJ's research): “My whole life has been movies and religion. That’s it. Nothing else.” (31:46)
  • Early artistic promise: drawing storyboards at a young age, obsessed with Roman epics and visual cinema.

4. The Primacy of Mean Streets

• [09:40] The “second first film” phenomenon: "Mean Streets" is so distinctly “Scorsese” that it overshadows anything prior. These two films are prelude—one personal and rough, one a genre gig.

5. Discussion of "Who's That Knocking at My Door" (1967)

Production Backstory:

• Iterative, piecemeal production, shot over several years; originally titled "Bring on the Dancing Girls," then “I Call First” before settling on its final title.
• [56:27] Keitel was cast via an odd acting exercise/Jamie Kennedy Experiment–style “audition,” which annoyed him but landed him the role.
• Funded on a shoestring; 35mm, black-and-white, considered one of the first student films of its kind.
• Notably, after poor early test screenings, second round of shooting added Xenia Bethune as “the Girl,” giving the film its central relationship and themes.

Artistic Analysis:

• The film is a fragmented but fascinating “Rosetta Stone” of Scorsese themes—Catholic guilt, sexual repression, neighborhood masculinity.
• [64:57] "It is one of those movies where its failings and limitations actually kind of give it more power, because it's sort of about how unsettled it is with itself and all the things this guy has not yet worked through in himself. It's such a, like, pure primal scream of Scorsese." —Griffin
• [65:55] “[Scorsese] thinks that's a stretch. He's kind of like, I don’t get the emotions right. I dislike the movie. It’s a rough sketch.”—David, referring to Marty's own reservations.

Reception and Legacy:

• Premiered at Chicago Film Festival; Roger Ebert saw it and championed Scorsese from the start.
• Ebert’s review described it as "a marvelous evocation of American city life, announcing the arrival of an important new director" (60:54, paraphrased).
• The film's distribution was only secured after adding a nude (sexploitation) scene, as "every indie film needed a little nudity to get on screens" in those days.
• Xena Bethune’s character is only ever referred to as “The Girl”—a sore point indicative of the film’s rough edges.

Notable Quote:

• Griffin on the film’s ending (80:34): “I give [Scorsese] credit for understanding that the end of this movie, when [the protagonist] goes and tries to do the apologetic, I forgive you, that she's like, 'fudge you.'”

Segment with Notable Quotes & Humor

• [70:40] "I think this is the only time [Keitel has] played Marty this much. In all the scenes with the girl..." —Griffin
• Ongoing riff: The titular character has no name while male characters are all named; "Classic Marty, boys have different names, girl can be...Girl." (71:57)
• Digressions include a deep Star Trek and Doors joke thread, Classic Blank Check stuff.

6. Discussion of "Boxcar Bertha" (1972)

Production Story:

• Corman project, explicitly meant as a genre/drive-in flick, following the Bonnie and Clyde exploitation movie wave.
• Scorsese took the assignment after being fired from “The Honeymoon Killers” for being too artsy ("shooting master shots with no coverage").
• Shot for $600,000 in Arkansas, 24-day schedule.
• Corman, impressed as much by Marty's meticulous storyboarding as by his efficiency (“the first director who ever showed [Corman] an entire storyboarded film,” (101:44)), but otherwise hands-off.
• Barbara Hershey (at the time Barbara Seagull) and David Carradine star; Hershey gave Scorsese the “Last Temptation of Christ” novel onset, sparking his obsession with a future adaptation.

Artistic and Thematic Notes:

• Scorsese’s craft is evident, but it’s not a personal film—more "almost good" (Sam Arkoff) than vital.
• Notable moment: John Cassavetes told Scorsese: “You just spent your whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It's a good picture, but you're better than the people who make this kind of movie.” (106:08)
• The hosts agree the film is technically solid but lacks the personality or thematic complexity that make later Scorsese films essential.
• David on tone: "Because I think Scorsese is not suited to making this kind of movie...It’s not fun. The really good Corman movies are, like, fun and, like, wacky, with the kind of shaggy energy you want." (108:02)

Notable Quotes and Observations:

• “Boxcar Bertha is a flawed film...my problem with it has always been, like, because I think Scorsese is not suited to making this kind of movie...the artiness almost gets in the way.” —David (129:22)
• Ben’s “hobo” research, with a shoutout to "Mostly True: the West’s most popular hobo graffiti magazine" (113:32), adds comic color to the discussion of “train culture.”
• Barbara Hershey’s "hippie" phase dissected, including her changing her name to honor a dead seagull and a notorious Playboy shoot.

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Memorable Moments and Humor

• [08:29] Running Joke: Griffin mispronounces things (“Marty Scorcheesy”), and he asks listeners to always assume it’s a deliberate bit.
• [07:57] David’s Martin Scorsese impression: “I was born in Queens, you know...” (ongoing through episode)
• [28:09] The block-by-block tribal divisions of Little Italy are explained, hilariously and with rich local color.
• [41:09 & 41:27] David tours the "catacombs" under St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, revealing mundane but endearing local history vs. European grandeur ("ours are air-conditioned").
• [76:07 & following] Blank Check’s classic digressions—here, a primer on Star Trek's original Captain Pike and a side discussion of what is and isn’t "juicy" in actors/films.
• [75:35] “I don't think people should kiss in movies,” jokes David after several scenes of intense close-up kissing in "Who's That Knocking..."

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Important Timestamps

• [00:01]–[14:00] — Series intro, March Madness, Scorsese’s stature, “Blank Check” series context
• [19:22]–[46:33] — David’s deep-dive “dossier” on Scorsese’s upbringing, church, movies, and influences
• [56:27]–[62:11] — "Who's That Knocking" production, Harvey Keitel’s casting, Big Shave, and Ebert’s pivotal review
• [64:57]–[80:55] — Artistic evaluation and plot of "Who's That Knocking...", its climax, and the mature (for its time) ending
• [83:56]–[89:36] — Box office game for 1968; movie landscape at the time of Scorsese’s debut
• [94:05]–[109:41] — Boxcar Bertha production details, Corman's approach, and Barbara Hershey's "flower child" reputation
• [112:05]–[114:16] — Ben’s hobo book, graffiti, train-riding subculture
• [122:05]–[130:09] — Plot and character discussion of Boxcar Bertha, including David Carradine and Bernie Casey appreciation
• [140:03]–[143:59] — 1972 box office game, era movie trivia, and closing thoughts on how much better "Mean Streets" is

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Conclusion & Next Week Preview

• Both films are positioned as juvenilia—"Who's That Knocking" valuable for what it reveals about a young, uncertain Scorsese, and "Boxcar Bertha" notable mainly for showing what he isn't as a filmmaker.
• Next week’s episode on "Mean Streets" is hyped as the true emergence of Scorsese's voice; the hosts reflect on the huge leap taken in just one year.
• “Tune in for many, many months of Marty both here and on our Patreon!” —Griffin (145:51)

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Supplementary & Running Bits

• Frequent joking about the unlikeliness of new listeners surviving the tangents (“Sometimes we seed a bit”).
• Several meta-conversations about the podcast’s structure, length, and in-jokes.
• Recurring pop culture tangents: The Doors, Star Trek, hobo graffiti, 1970s-dorm-discussion flavor.
• Retroactive box office games, connecting cinematic context of ’68 and ’72 to the films discussed.

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Overall Tone:
Warm, irreverent, self-deprecating, deeply nerdy, and affectionate toward Scorsese as both a god and a “short King.” The hosts embody both sincere cinephilia and robust skepticism, always insisting the myth be examined alongside the art—and never missing a chance for a New York geography rant or an extended joke about The Doors.

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Notable Quotes:

• “Boxcar Bertha is the last impersonal movie he makes. 'Who's That Knocking at My Door' is him making a deeply personal movie before he's figured out how to make an engaging film.” —Griffin (11:40)
• “It's such a, like, pure primal scream of Scorsese… its failings and limitations actually give it more power.” —Griffin (64:57)
• “You just spent your whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It's a good picture, but you're better than the people who make this kind of movie.” —Cassavetes, relayed by David (106:08)
• “He was unknowingly trained into being an observer, looking at everything through this frame...” —Griffin (25:19)
• “My whole life has been movies and religion. That’s it. Nothing else.” —Scorsese, via Griffin quoting the Blu-ray (31:46)

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Endnotes:

• This episode is both informative and playful, excellent for first-time listeners as well as Scorsese-philes.
• The episode is chock-full, with plenty for both the academic and the casual film buff, and is balanced with the hosts’ trademark humor.
• Listen for film history, podcast self-mythology, and a great table-setting conversation for the Marty miniseries to come!

Transcript

[Griffin Newman]

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 shy was Blank Jack. A new podcast. A new podcast. Trying to put like a New York. A new podcast. Do you know what the tagline for who's that knocking at my door was? A new movie, a new classic. Ooh, that's bold. It's a bunch of pull quotes. Most notably Roger Ebert, who was an early champion of this movie and dined out on that for decades. As he should have.

[David Sims]

As he should have.

[Griffin Newman]

He gets credit for being like, I suspect this Martin Scorsese might be the most classic, important figure in the next half century of American movies.

[David Sims]

It's from Ebert. Yes, he said a new classic.

[Griffin Newman]

The poster, David, has a big quote. It says, a new classic. A great moment in American movies as a film. It has something to say to everyone. A stunning impact. The most evocative description of American life I have ever seen. And then it has a second pull quote. But then above the title itself, no quotes, it just says a new classic does say that. So it uses the pull quote. Well accredited to a film critic. And then it also just says like, we're gonna say it about ourselves. Now, of course, there's an alternate tagline here because this is a two movie episode. So excuse me while I reset. By the way, IMDb mentions one other tagline for who's that knocking at my door? Which I have to imagine was for a re release, which was mean Streets was just around the corner.

[David Sims]

Well, there's Streets have corners.

[Griffin Newman]

A tagline basically saying, this movie is maybe retroactively interesting if you know that this guy goes hunt.

[David Sims]

Exactly what it is.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. But excuse me, let me do hard reset here. Blank check in 2026 was a free podcast. Bera was just a little bit freer than most.

[David Sims]

Yes, I. I know that tagline.

[Griffin Newman]

America in the 30s was a free country.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And its bera was jes apostrophe a

[David Sims]

just a little bit freer than most. Yeah, yeah, it's a good. It's actually a good poster.

[Griffin Newman]

It is.

[David Sims]

It's got a train on it.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a great title. And of course, exploding. This miniseries is titled Podcar Birth Cast.

[David Sims]

No, no, no, no.

[Griffin Newman]

We're spending the next five and a half months talking about Martin Scorsese. And of course, we are naming the entire series after a second film, Podcar Birth Cast. David's eyebrows have hit. I'm just waiting.

[David Sims]

I'm waiting for You. To be done and to introduce our

[Griffin Newman]

podcast, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a little bit freer than most. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce, baby. Today, we're not talking about massive successes. We're talking about two early primordial films that set the stage for next week. A breakthrough the likes of which has rarely happened in American cinema that then sets us off in a wild career of what we're discussing. Amongst the biggest careers we've talked about, it's him and Spielberg. I mean, these are the biggest guys we've talked about in this podcast.

[David Sims]

I guess that's. Well, James Cameron.

[Griffin Newman]

He's the king of the world. Yeah, he is the king of the world.

[David Sims]

Christopher Nolan these days, I guess he's kind of making a run at that kind of a career.

[Griffin Newman]

I guess my. My distinction is that.

[David Sims]

No, you're right.

[Griffin Newman]

These. These are now elder statesmen. These are living legends.

[David Sims]

They've got the long body of work.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, we're talking about movies. Six decades of work now with these guys.

[David Sims]

This is from the 60s.

[Griffin Newman]

Who's that knocking on my door? 1967. There were a couple, I think, iterative releases on it.

[David Sims]

Seven decades.

[Griffin Newman]

He is in his seventh decade of making movies. He is currently filming. Yes, a film. He's filming a film, folks, in his seventh decade of being a picture.

[David Sims]

He's filming a film that we will cover on blank check in 2027, I assume, or 28.

[Griffin Newman]

You never know. Sometimes he takes his time in the edit.

[David Sims]

He be slow. Sometimes that's true.

[Griffin Newman]

If your movie is three and a half hours long, every test screening, this one's shorter, right? I don't know. Okay. I. I feel very strongly where I'm just like, he can do what he wants. He can do what he wants. He could do what he wants. Like, if he wanted to make these movies 82 minutes long and have 4 hours of deleted scenes on the Criterion Disc, I'd be fine with that. I'm just like, marty, show us everything you got.

[David Sims]

Now. I obviously would like him to do whatever he wants, but it's just the pitch of the new one just sounds a little more.

[Griffin Newman]

It does.

[David Sims]

Intimate. Smaller, maybe.

[Griffin Newman]

Right, right. It's Transformers versus GI Joe. It's a very simple battle between two forces.

[Ben Hosley]

It's predominantly featuring TikTok stars.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm assuming Chris Hemsworth leads a ragtag team of TikTok stars to be the mediators between the Transformers and the GI Joes. That is his next film, right, for Skydance.

[David Sims]

Yeah, Here. I'm just looking. I'm trying to find his last sub two hour movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Did Hugo Crack two? Right.

[David Sims]

It's two and six. Two hours, six minutes.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

That's probably a little over.

[Griffin Newman]

Is that his shortest film of the 21st century?

[David Sims]

Yes, it is.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Bringing out the Dead is two hours and one minute.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

So though it feels longer, compliment.

[Griffin Newman]

It moves fast. It's got a lot in there.

[David Sims]

Right. But I think After Hours. Oh, Color of Money is an even two hours.

[Griffin Newman]

And.

[David Sims]

And no After Hours, King of comedy. Those are both under two hours. Obviously, After Hours is very, very short. That's sort of the point.

[Griffin Newman]

80.

[David Sims]

It's not quite. That was like 90 something minutes. It's short. You know, come on. By his 97 minutes, by his standards, that's.

[Griffin Newman]

I'll take as much as you got. I'm not complaining about Alice is under.

[David Sims]

Mean Streets is under.

[Griffin Newman]

Today we're talking about two. Two ninety somethings and.

[David Sims]

Right. His first two films were about 86 minutes each.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, this is a humongous filmmaker.

[David Sims]

It's gonna be a lot of long boys for us.

[Griffin Newman]

It is. It's a humongous filmmaker, a humongous career, and a filmmaker who, you know, for how large he looms in the culture, his name is often mispronounced. And so we obviously just want to get ahead of this on this series and make sure we're communicating this correctly. We will be talking about the films of Marty Scorchese. Marty Scorchesi on main feed. Blank check in a series we're calling Podcast fellas.

[David Sims]

That's right.

[Griffin Newman]

Yay, Ben. Yay, producer Ben.

[David Sims]

Yay. Blank check. Doing Marty Scorsese. Look, Scorch.

[Griffin Newman]

Easy.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, I actually, I just am now remembering I have a new bit I want to debut on this first.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, yes. This is the perfect place to do it. Yep.

[Ben Hosley]

Hey, new listeners, welcome to the podcast.

[Griffin Newman]

The bit is pretending like this show is still accessible to people who haven't been in it for years.

[Ben Hosley]

I think what I'm going to try and do.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

Is I'm really going to try to do some work to engage with some new listeners to try and just make them feel like they've got somebody who's just like guiding their hand a little bit.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

We're not trying to push new listeners away. In fact, we welcome them. I just understand a conceit seem daunting. Yes, yes.

[Ben Hosley]

So guys, you're tuning in? Sometimes the episodes go a little long.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, okay.

[Ben Hosley]

Don't let that scare you.

[Griffin Newman]

No, it's like Martin Scorsese movies. It's rewarding.

[David Sims]

But maybe given that we've recorded two three hour plus episodes or like we've recorded, I think four three hour plus episodes in the last 10 days, there

[Griffin Newman]

were some big movies.

[David Sims]

Right. Maybe we can keep this one a little light. Oh, wait, we have to like talk about Martin Scorsese's entire like childhood and shit. Although you know what? He's done that plenty. You can just watch any of the documentaries. He's like, ah, it was born in Queens, you know.

[Griffin Newman]

Interesting impression.

[David Sims]

Yeah, I know. I. I gotta get there with him. Gotta get there with him. Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm gonna look like Rizzo the rat.

[David Sims]

Wait a second. They're not a million miles away from

[Ben Hosley]

Perfect example New listeners. Sometimes we go off on tangents.

[Griffin Newman]

Sometimes we go off on tangents. Here's another thing we should say to new listeners vis a vis my Marty Scorcheesy joke. The thing about Blank Check is sometimes I mispronounce things on purpose because it's funny. And sometimes I do it not on purpose because I don't know how to talk true. And I ask you to assume that it's always me doing it on purpose.

[David Sims]

It's always a hahaha.

[Griffin Newman]

Always.

[David Sims]

So yeah, here we are on Blank Check. You voted for him in March Madness

[Griffin Newman]

over Tony Scott, people's champion, the biggest loser in America. Martin Scorsese finally got his moment in the sun. He finally eked out a win.

[David Sims]

And we decided in the interest of, I mean, we can't impose brevity on Mr. Scorsese, but you know, where we can. We will try to make this miniseries, not take over a year of this show. So we are combining his first two efforts. The, I guess you would call it, it's sort of an independent film before such a thing really existed.

[Griffin Newman]

The early days. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Who's that knocking at my door?

[Griffin Newman]

Who's that knocking at my door? Yep.

[David Sims]

And then Boxcar Bertha for hire work. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

New World Pictures, Roger Corman. Or at this point it wasn't New World, it was American.

[David Sims]

It's aip American International.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And the, you know, the two films that are sort of the films before his, you know, real debut film of Mean Streets. Much as like the Sixth Sense is kind of M. Night Shyamalan, we use

[Griffin Newman]

the term in the Mean Street Episode the. The phenomenon of the second first film. A movie that crystallizes the director's thing so thoroughly that it basically, in everyone's mind, becomes the first movie because it's, quote, unquote, the first real one. And then there are few examples of a movie like Mean Streets early in someone's career where you're just like, there we go, there it is, it's fully realized. We're off to the races. He never makes a movie ever again that doesn't thoroughly feel like a Martin Scorsese movie. You can argue about the effectiveness of each of those as films on their own.

[David Sims]

I said to my wife, who sort of came in halfway into me watching Boxcar Bertha first. I said, yes, I'm jacking it. No, I didn't say that.

[Ben Hosley]

No.

[David Sims]

I said to my wife, like, this

[Griffin Newman]

movie does have a lot of trains in it. It's fair to assume that David's pants were around his ankles.

[David Sims]

Now. I said to my wife, like, this is kind of the last one I'm going to watch during this. That's like, arguably bad. And I don't even think Boxcar Bertha is like a. You know, you're more negative on it

[Griffin Newman]

than I am, but I'm not.

[David Sims]

But like, this is the last one where I think it's, in my opinion, you can kind of be like, that movie just, you know, didn't work. Or is that you could. If you're saying that about the other ones, I mean, of course you can say, like, I don't like New York, New York. You know, I get that. Like, I'm not complaining.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

But it's like the. The rest are interesting to masterpiece.

[Griffin Newman]

I would say you basically have three types of movies. For the rest of his career, you have masterpieces.

[David Sims]

Masterpieces.

[Griffin Newman]

You have movies that just work to some degree.

[David Sims]

Masterpieces, right? Yes. Then you have highly regarded films.

[Griffin Newman]

Really interesting, risky, personal swings. You have something that might not quite hit, but it's. It's something that's coming out of his soul, right? And is a very genuine effort and doing something very artistically daring. And then the third thing is what for most people would be a kind of strategic career move movie, a paycheck gig, you know, a favor gig. But all of those movies, I would argue, are defined by the fact that Martin Scorsese chose to make them. It's not just, well, he did this to get back in good graces. All of those movies become defined not just by the idea that he made it, but what he contributed to that movie. Anything that would Be impersonal. Ends up becoming very personal through him. Boxcar Bertha is the last impersonal movie he makes. Who's that knocking at my door? Is him making a deeply personal movie before he's figured out how to make an engaging film.

[David Sims]

Right. Where he's. Right. He's. He's just getting his hands on the toolbox. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

And Boxcar Bertha's got pretty good craft in it. But. But you feel that he. He doesn't have anything on the line he's not putting himself in. In the same way. And. And from next week on, that's not the case. Would you agree?

[David Sims]

I would agree, except I think Goodfellas sucks.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Well, of course, that's our take that we're working towards.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Five minutes of us going, goodfellas sucks.

[Griffin Newman]

Raging Bull, basic.

[David Sims]

What if we put him on the bracket?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Encouraged. Like. Like, yeah, yeah. No, of course. We. Yeah, we're excited to do Scorsese that we do. And we're like, oh, by the way, we. We think he stinks.

[Griffin Newman]

We all agree this guy's a phony.

[David Sims]

Every episode is us, like another stinker. What a jamuk f. Yeah. Also, I don't like his personality. I don't find him charming at all.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. And why are you so short, Marty? You even make me look tall.

[David Sims]

No, no. My contrarian take would be like, I actually think he's too tall. Yeah, he should shorten up.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, hunch up, Marty.

[David Sims]

Right. He should talk faster.

[Griffin Newman]

Stop snipping them brows, Marty.

[David Sims]

I think there should be less women in these movies. All right. Okay. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

[Griffin Newman]

Marty, bigger glasses, please. I can barely spot them on.

[David Sims]

Glasses should touch your cheeks. That's how big they are.

[Griffin Newman]

Ah, this guy, he draws on and on. Can't you speed up the conversation a bit, Marty? Get to the point faster and use your hands to express yourself. This loser. Today we're talking about. Who's that knocking on my door? Boxcar Bertha.

[David Sims]

Martin Scorsese.

[Griffin Newman]

JJ forgot to prepare Adasuke for this one.

[David Sims]

No. He worked really, really hard to get it to us in time.

[Griffin Newman]

Lack of interest, he said. Also, there's just not any information out there about this guy. I think we are the first podcast to talk about Martin Scorsese.

[David Sims]

What's the first Marty movie you guys all saw before I start this.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, wow.

[David Sims]

First one I saw in theaters must have been Gangs in New York.

[Griffin Newman]

Same. And I'm wondering if that theaters or

[Ben Hosley]

just saw period or.

[David Sims]

We can answer both. I mean, you can answer both because for Me, I know theaters. The answer is Gangs in New York.

[Griffin Newman]

Same. And I'm wondering if that was the first one I saw period.

[David Sims]

It was. I had definitely already seen Taxi Driver by then because I was such a normal and well adjusted kid. I'm trying to think if I would have seen much else. Like I don't think I had seen. I know, but I'd seen Goodfellas. I definitely saw Goodfellas when I was like an early teenager. Yeah, I guess that would be it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. No, I think that was the first one I saw because I understood the weight and importance with which that movie was being presented. And I knew Martin Scorsese by reputation as this is the guy everyone uses a shorthand for infamous filmmaker. Serious filmmaker. But I think I saw it and then said to my mom like, so where does that rank now? And then started seeing as a kid

[Ben Hosley]

growing up in North Jersey.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh yes.

[Ben Hosley]

This might surprise you that the first film of Marty Scorsese that I ever saw. It's good, fellas.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Now, Ben, we were talking about this the other night. You were saying you have a bit of an interesting relationship to Barnes Scorsese in his films across your life, but that there's a. There's an interesting opportunity, there's potential in this series. Do you want me to say it?

[Ben Hosley]

Remind me.

[Griffin Newman]

You were saying that you grew up with the most annoying people on earth.

[Ben Hosley]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Obsessively watching his most popular films. Yeah. And taking all the wrong lessons from them and reading them in the dumbest, most superficial way possible. 100. And that it did not cause you to resent those movies, but it did cause you to kind of push away from them.

[Ben Hosley]

Definitely. That you kind of reject a protective. And not. Not in the way that I think he's. Obviously it would be crazy to think he's a hack, but it's just, it's,

[David Sims]

you know, he was a loser.

[Ben Hosley]

I'll make. I thought he was a friggin loser. Now it's this kind of the same way with Bruce Springsteen for me, where it's like, obviously the guy's an incredible songwriter, you know, put out incredible albums. But it just was so jammed down my throat I was like, I can't now. Can't engage with it.

[David Sims]

I understand that New Jersey has a couple of Italian residents. Scorsese is not a Jersey guy.

[Griffin Newman]

He's not.

[David Sims]

So it's a little bit of like the classic Jersey thing of like. Yeah, but he's making movies about us MOOCs. So, you know, it's like they weren't

[Griffin Newman]

owning him, but they were loving his.

[David Sims]

It's like the Pope.

[Ben Hosley]

Frankson.

[David Sims]

No, I mean like with Springsteen at least. It's like that guy is jerseys from there.

[Griffin Newman]

And Ben, I don't know if you know this, but you know how most of us, we grow up in our childhood bedrooms. We have floor.

[Ben Hosley]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

You can stand on it.

[Ben Hosley]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Bruce didn't have that. There was a hole in the floor of his childhood bedroom.

[Ben Hosley]

Not right.

[Griffin Newman]

The thing we stand on, that we rely on. He didn't have that.

[Ben Hosley]

For me, it was about not fitting in with the community where I grew up. So I felt like I needed to differentiate myself from the pack. And so I was drawn to outsiders. Artists, musicians, filmmakers that felt worlds away than the culture that the people around me engaged in.

[Griffin Newman]

David.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Bark, bark, bark, bark.

[Ben Hosley]

What's going on?

[Griffin Newman]

Dog days of summer. True Augie doggy August.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

It's the perfect time to hit reset before the autumn rush begins. And honestly, I'm stroking my my chin here and I can't think of a better place to start than my closet.

[David Sims]

Uh huh.

[Griffin Newman]

That's where I want to reset. That's why I love shopping at Quint.

[David Sims]

Yeah, because they're about fewer better pieces. Their clothes are made with premium materials and they're built to last, designed to ones you reach for it day after day. So you don't need to overstuff your closet.

[Griffin Newman]

I hate overstuffing my closet.

[David Sims]

I think that's it's a fair thing

[Griffin Newman]

if you're still hanging on to the same worn out basics. And that's me unloathed. To reset and restart. Ben's now eyeballing my wardrobe. He's looking me up and down. These are some newer pieces from Quints because quints makes it easy to upgrade, which I need the encouragement to do. They have premium denim and tailored chinos from just $60 with the kind of perfect fit structure and high quality fabrics you'd expect from a luxury designer brand. Yep.

[David Sims]

I mean, I truly love quints.

[Griffin Newman]

You truly love them, you marry them.

[David Sims]

I've got like 15 polo shirts from from them. Upgrade your everyday. Download the Quint app for app exclusive offers or go to quint.com check. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N c e.com check.

[Griffin Newman]

David, crack open that dossier, please.

[David Sims]

Martin Charles Scorsese, the great American filmmaker was born.

[Griffin Newman]

Excuse me, we don't pay JJ to editorialize we will decide whether or not he's a great American filmmaker. Don't tell us that. Don't shove that down our throats.

[David Sims]

Was born November 17, 1942, in Flushing, Queens. Did you know that?

[Griffin Newman]

I knew he was a Queensboy.

[David Sims]

Parents are Charles and Catherine Scorsese, Sicilian. The children are Sicilian immigrants. So they are, you know, they are the first generation born here. Marty's the second. Both of Marty's parents were born on Elizabeth street in the Lower east side of Manhattan. Charles worked in shipyards and then pressed clothes, I think. Catherine. They both worked in the garment district for a long time. Marty has an older brother named Frank. You may have heard this before, Griffin, but Marty had a bit of a bad pair of lungs.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

He caught an illness when he was a tiny baby. Probably pertussis, like whooping cough or something. There was an epidemic. Nice doctor supposedly sort of, you know, saved his life when he was a tiny baby. But he thinks it basically like allergies, asthma, couple breathing out of infancy. His whole. But. But then it's like his whole childhood, he's got like a bad set of l. You know, like, he's a little, you know, whatever. He's. He's a little fragile still to this day.

[Griffin Newman]

It affects, I'm sure, the way he was raised. You know, if you come that close to losing a child that early on, your parents are going to do everything they can to really try to keep you safe. And that fragility, I think, gets into the head of the child.

[David Sims]

The great documentary that Rebecca Miller did last year, is it called Mr. Scorsese? I already forgot it was on Apple TV talks about this. He talks about it in the Richard Schickel book Conversations With Scorsese, which JJ Wanted me to shout out because he's using it a lot for this stuff. And also. But I should shout it out anyway because I've read it. It is fantastic. It is one of the great, like, critic director discourse, you know, works ever. But, like, he grew up in Corona in Queens. Like, you know, back. Back then, obviously. That part of Queens, I think, was very heavily Italian and was more suburban. It's suburban, like, there's no big buildings there and it's not like cramped like lower Manhattan was.

[Griffin Newman]

It's like front yards and.

[David Sims]

Yeah, two family house. They had a yard. They had a little tree. And they were forced to move back because Charles got in an argument to move back to the Lower east side. Move back to literally because Charles got an argument with the landlord. And I feel like in the documentary Score says he talks about like, what, you know, it was the classic kind of like, you know, was there maybe something shifty or was it just like, you know, ego, bravado kind of stuff? Right.

[Griffin Newman]

But something face could not be. Yes, right.

[David Sims]

And he talks about it as being like cast out of paradise.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, Paradise Lost. That he was taken out of a place he remembers feeling safe and comfortable and thrown into what felt like an unstable, scary environment.

[David Sims]

And it's a humiliation. They're moving back to essentially a tenement. This tiny two room apartment on 253 Elizabeth. Now of course you would have to be in charge of some sort of oil or aluminum deposit to afford an apartment on 253 Elizabeth.

[Ben Hosley]

You're like a creative director.

[David Sims]

I mean, I guess you could probably buy like a studio apartment for like $900,000 that has like a toilet in the middle of the room.

[Griffin Newman]

I was gonna say the walls are made of toilets that don't work but have unflushed in them.

[Ben Hosley]

You could maybe get the room that's portrayed in who's Knocking at My Door. That's just the room.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Like four, four again. It's still a very large amount of

[Griffin Newman]

money, but also you gotta live there with the room guys. The fuck room guys are still there. They can't kick them off the lease. So.

[David Sims]

253 Elizabeth. So I work in SoHo.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, you work for Blank Check Production.

[David Sims]

That is true. But I also work for the Atlantic and I work in soho and Elizabeth street between Prince and Houston, you know, is is where he grew up and like it's, you know, you know where Prince Street Pizza is. Of course, all this, all the tourists love to go there. Around the corner.

[Griffin Newman]

Square slices.

[David Sims]

We're talking around the corner from there.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Anyway, so his dad wasn't in the mob, but like definitely knew plenty of people who were and I feel like was sort of like often mixed up in the local kind of scenery.

[Griffin Newman]

It's hard not to be at that time entwined in these things. And even if you're trying to distance yourself away from them, there's a what do you think you're better than me? Kind of thing. I mean, it's part of what's interesting about the sort of mystery of them losing the house in Corona where you're like, was he too close or was he too far from these things?

[David Sims]

He tells this story about like the landlord maybe thought the dad was a little too mobbed up and there was like a fight, someone picked up an ax. The landlord Picked up an ax at some point. The dad is like this intense guy, according to Marty. And I feel like, you know, his parents are so present in his early work. Right. Like, he does Italian American, the documentary about them.

[Griffin Newman]

They look so much like him.

[David Sims]

They do.

[Griffin Newman]

They look like him in old age, right?

[David Sims]

Like, yes. And then. And his mother is just this, like, incredibly warm and interesting figure.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

His dad is definitely a little more unknowable, like. Or like a, you know, firm, kind of, like, soft spoken. Right. Anyway, seven people living in three rooms. Then they got some rooms down, like into the first. They were like 240. I don't know. He talks about all this, you know, like, we don't need to go through every single apartment that he lived in.

[Griffin Newman]

Has JJ included Zillow listings?

[David Sims]

Well, I could look them up again, I bet you these days. Pretty penny pricey. Lower east side was pretty rough, as he says. You know, kind of like the dead end kids in old movies. It's close to that. Kids running up and down the street. You had a garbage can, you would get piece of wood. Now you got a sword and a shield, you play around.

[Griffin Newman]

But also, Marty's spending a lot of time looking out his window at kids acting up.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Because his parents are so worried about his dang lungs. He. He talks about there being unknowingly trained into the act of being an observer, of being the watcher, of looking at everything through this frame. And also just like, doodling a lot, drawing what he sees, the things he can't engage in.

[David Sims]

The referencing you can see in the Scorsese doc, the storyboards he made. And it's crazy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

It's not like, oh, yeah, some stick figures. And you can see that this guy has, like, a visual sense. It's like these very, very complex, beautiful, like, drawings of, like, stories he's imagining and movies he wants to make or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it was Rebecca Miller being interviewed by her buddy Sean Fantasy on the big Picture. But she was saying, like, you know, I have a difficult relationship with the idea of genius, and I. I question the label. But when he showed me his storyboards as a child, I was like, this is a level of genius we're dealing with. It also takes effort and it takes craft and it takes intelligence. It's not like people are just gifted. But you look at the storyboards he was doing when he was like, 12, and he's like, drawing out full color Roman epic sequences. Yes.

[David Sims]

Yeah, right. There's a lot of Roman stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, because he was, like, obsessed With. Right. Those kind of epics.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

But oh, my gosh, this is really

[Griffin Newman]

impressive because it's not only is like his technical kind of mastery of illustration so strong, but you're like. He immediately just kind of got composition. He understood camera movements. He understood visual. Visual storytelling. And he's not just like drawing a comic book. He's specifically like, drawing out a movie to some degree. This guy just like completely absorbed and understood this language and was able to spit it back out perfectly.

[David Sims]

So Martin Scorsese, you know, hangs out with the kids. There's the rough kids, but he is often the kid with his back against the wall, trying not to get too much in the fight. Little back then is for real. Little Italy, basically like Houston down to Canal Elizabeth over to, like, Mulberry.

[Griffin Newman]

But like five foot six or under. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Sicilian, the way he puts it. Elizabeth street was mainly Sicilian. That's interesting to me. I wonder if it really did work that way where it's. Because literally is essentially three streets. It's Mott, Mulberry and Elizabeth, which are like. It's. Now you call. I mean, Little Lily barely exists. And you call some of it no Lita, which is a made up, you know, term. It is so offensive.

[Griffin Newman]

That sucks.

[David Sims]

But like, you know, architecturally and culturally now it's all kind of one thing. But imagine like just the, like ultra parochialism of like.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

You know, the Northern Italians, they were.

[Ben Hosley]

And then.

[David Sims]

Then the Neapolitans, they're on Mott. Sicilians, we're on Elizabeth. What I mean, like, that's what Kings

[Griffin Newman]

of New York is about. And that was what New York.

[David Sims]

Kings of New York is a hundred years.

[Griffin Newman]

My point, if you let me finish my sentence, is that New York was like that for well over a century, where it was like a little would immigrate and then they'd just be like, this is our block.

[David Sims]

Yes, A little bit.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, like, families would sort of mount. And there was this sense of this weird. Like, we know this is the great American melting pot, but there's also a sort of baked in defensive tribalism of like, this is where we come from and this is our family.

[Ben Hosley]

I think that that continues, though.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it's a little new neighborhoods.

[David Sims]

But the block by block thing is what fascinating. And I think there's a little less of that now because there's less tenements.

[Griffin Newman]

It used to be also you're not packing people. Stronghold. It was like the neighborhoods were really sectioned off.

[David Sims]

No, but I mean. I mean, like, when I worked As a labor reporter, you would? I would. You know, that's where I was sort of like, all right. The Guyanese community is like, you know, this little pocket here and Ozone park or whatever, you know, like you would find. Yes, it's all so fascinating to me. I'm a geography nerd. I'm a New York nerd. I love all this stuff. But mostly he would live in Little Italy. But he does say, sometimes you go to Staten island or Queens, see other Italian community people. Sometimes you go to 42nd street, catch a picture.

[Griffin Newman]

A picture. You go to the picture houses. Oh, I like the sound.

[David Sims]

So I don't know if you guys know this, but Martin Scorsese likes movies.

[Griffin Newman]

This is going to be a recurring thing we discuss on this miniseries about the films of Martin Scorsese, how much he likes films.

[David Sims]

Movies. He says around the age of three, his asthma is not great, and his father would just take him to see lots and lots of movies. His father liked movies. His father had been a film Buff in the 30s, so he's passing it down. The first image he remembers seeing. A true color trailer for a Roy Rogers movie in which he was wearing fringes and jumped from a tree onto his horse. His father says, do you know who Trigger is? And then. And he went like. Scorsese goes like this.

[Griffin Newman]

It's biting the trigger finger.

[David Sims]

And he's like, no, it's the horse's name, and I'll take you to see it next week.

[Griffin Newman]

You know how much that horse makes? He's got a studio contract.

[David Sims]

He gets a bucket of apples every day.

[Griffin Newman]

And then he gets 10% of the apples they bring in at the box office.

[David Sims]

I'll read some of this quote that JJ Says is important, but it's like half of it's like, so long. So I was made to think I couldn't do anything physical. I had to be very careful and was sort of coddled in a way. So the ritual of going to the movies with your father, it didn't matter what film you saw, became important to me. It was a matter of going to Lowe's Commodore on Sixth street and Second Avenue, which is now part of New York University. The Fillmore east in between those two, the Academy of Music, which is gone now, on 14th Street. We were always walking into the middle of a film. There was a sense of peace there, too. There really was. He had faith when he went into the church, and he had faith when he went into the movie theater, too. Imagine Griffin. That's what it should be. There should Be a movie theater every 10 blocks in New York City, Griffin. And it should be playing movies all the time. And you just walk in.

[Griffin Newman]

I agree.

[David Sims]

Walking in the middle of fucking what's out right now. Project Hail Mary.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, there we go.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

It is funny, you know, for how much Martin Scorsese now represents like the sanctity of cinema. Right. And the purity of it. He talks about that every time he fudgeing walked into a movie theater, it was like an insane asylum. Like he was like in those days, I think it was just a bunch of like latchkey kids.

[David Sims]

Especially if it's like a kid thing, like. Right, yeah, right.

[Griffin Newman]

But he's just like. People just walk in and out at random moments. It's basically running movies all day. And you have like shorts and newsreels and whatever. And so people just like buy a ticket, show up whenever, sit down for like five hours, leave at any point, people are screaming and throwing popcorn. There's the moment matinee I love so much, the Joe Dante movie where you. You see them go into the movie palace for the first time and they open the doors and it's just like mayhem. It's like Altamont. I also, just to your point, I want to throw out, I imported this lovely Blu Ray box set from the fine folks at imprint in Australia. Martin Scorsese films of faith, which is Last Temptation, Kundun and Silence put together. But I found it very funny just how blunt this is. On the back of the box, it has an image from Condone and then a quote from Martin Scorsese. My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.

[David Sims]

I mean, I think he eats a meal once in a while.

[Griffin Newman]

According to him, he eats faith and he watches movies.

[David Sims]

I know very reliably that he loves the dumplings of the town downtown. So some of the early movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Bad.

[David Sims]

And the beautiful first movie he sees about the process of filmmaking. He loved Westerns, Day the Earth Stood still, the sci fi film. One of his first great theater experiences at the Academy of Music. A couple thousand people reacting to it. The Howard Hawks thing, that was an amazing experience. The shock, the humor, the overlapping dialogue. The monster, 2,000 people jumping at once. What an amazing experience. Now his mother is responsible for one of his formative memories. She takes him to see Duel in the sun, which had been condemned by the church. The. That's a King Vidor movie. I don't remember why they condemned it, but who knows? They were condemning everybody because you're supposed

[Griffin Newman]

to duel under the moon.

[David Sims]

Of course, and he was. It was too scary for him. I mean, like, if that's a 46 movie, he must have been. He was like 4 years old. What you do would take it.

[Griffin Newman]

This is what I'm saying. People would just bring a baby.

[David Sims]

I know, I know. She couldn't. He couldn't watch the end. It was also frightening, you know, and my mother kept yelling, look at it. You took me here to see it. Now watch it. So I guess even at 4, he's like marching up to his mother and being like, I want to see Duel in the Sun.

[Griffin Newman]

I love movies. I'm sorry, Brief side tangent. Ben, I have some terrible news. I hadn't even told you this, but I just got a text that we had a cancellation for an upcoming George Lucas talk show date. We were going to have Doug Bradley as a guest. Pinhead himself.

[David Sims]

Love Pinhead.

[Griffin Newman]

And I was planning to get him to sign your Lament Configuration.

[David Sims]

Why is he cancelling?

[Griffin Newman]

Apparently Pinhead booked a movie.

[David Sims]

You know what?

[Ben Hosley]

But it's good that he's getting work.

[David Sims]

Good job, Pinhead. The whole fucking thing that rocks about him is he's a Scouser. He's from Liverpool.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And like when you hear him in like a podcast where he's like, you know, he has a Scouse accent and like, the idea of like, oh, I would, I would. I would get in trouble. I can try, I'll try. But like, the idea of Pinhead being Scouse is just really funny. Anyway, 1948 score says he gets a television set. One of the first families on that block. A 16 inch RCA Victor. So now he starts seeing even more movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Perfect.

[Ben Hosley]

Good.

[David Sims]

This was the problem, old movies, I guess, like, I mean, whatever. On television. I think they show a lot of British cinema. He says, like Alexander Korda, Beef of Baghdad, you know, and then some Italian film on Friday nights they would show things like Bicycle Thieves or Romeofin City, like these, you know, more challenging neorealist Italian film.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like filmmakers of his generation. This. Come up in other series, talk about this. That also, you know, far fewer channels. Very few. But movies would replay, of course. Right. He says a lot of these guys are studying one movie for like four weeks as a child. That's the thing.

[David Sims]

He says. Million dollar movie, which is like a million dollar in the 50s.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Would just show the same film like five times a week.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And he would just watch it again and again. It would be. The movie would be like, turn it off and be like, no. Tales of Hoffman, the Powell Press Burger film, which Is so beautiful.

[Griffin Newman]

One of the most beautiful movies ever made.

[David Sims]

Now, of course, he saw it in black and white on a 16 inch RCA Victor TV with commercial breaks, and it still mesmerized him. But obviously, like a lot, pal. And Pressburger is maybe the one single most obvious influence visually on the work of Martin Scorsese. Like, you know, like. And obviously there's a million other things in the soup. There's. But like, you watch New York, New York, you're like, he's trying to make a Palin press burger, like style. Like, he's making this.

[Griffin Newman]

The use of color throughout his movies and how important he talks about color being and how he conceives of things comes from them in so many ways. One of our favorite filmmakers filmmaking teams ever. A series we're always threatening to do.

[David Sims]

Yeah, we'll do them right now, actually. Yeah. Series canceled.

[Griffin Newman]

Marty hit the bricks.

[David Sims]

He didn't see Citizen Kane until he was 14 or 15.

[Griffin Newman]

Loser. Gotta get those letter rock stats up, Marty. Basic ass taste.

[David Sims]

He remembers seeing it at the Thalia Theater. Or Thalia. Thalia, I think, on 96th street, along with John Ford's the Informer, Another good movie. Look, he likes a lot of movies also. He write. He. Right, he draws those storyboards, as we know. So we referenced that already. He was very obsessed with like biblical epics, war movies. But his father is not seeing this and going, ah, an artistic streak. Perhaps I should foster this.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm so excited.

[David Sims]

We have said.

[Griffin Newman]

He's like, this is embarrassing.

[David Sims]

I'm throwing these away.

[Griffin Newman]

The fuck is this? Who do you think you are, Martin Scorsese? It is funny to just be the guy that gets used as shorthand for

[David Sims]

great director for decades and imagine you're no Marty Scorsese. Marty Scorsese.

[Griffin Newman]

Imagine his dad being like Martin Scorsese.

[David Sims]

Why, why, why?

[Griffin Newman]

Why would you ever have to say about movies? No one cares.

[David Sims]

So I guess his parents are not deeply religious, he says, but he lives in Little Italy. And so he gets sent to Catholic school. He went to St. Patrick's elementary, which used to be it. It existed until. I think I looked it up recently. Like until 2015 maybe. But, like, it's. So this is what I want to talk about. All right, so I don't know if you guys know this, but there's St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. New York has St. Patrick's Cathedral. Like the big ass fuck off cathedral. It's up, you know, mid 10, right? Yeah, exactly. But that was the second St. Patrick's Cathedral, guys. The first, St. Patrick's Cathedral is in Little Italy. It's on Prince between Mot and Mulberry.

[Griffin Newman]

Is this the thing you said you had to reveal in this episode? David said he was sitting on a hot scoop. Yes.

[David Sims]

And you guys have definitely seen this. You know, maybe you haven't been in the church, but it's right there.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

You know, in the middle of Soho, you're like, whoa, there's a big old church.

[Ben Hosley]

It very much sticks out.

[David Sims]

It's a very old church. Like, it was built, I mean, by American standards, not by European standard. By European standards, It's like a 12 year old, but, you know, it's like 250 years old or whatever. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Impressive.

[David Sims]

Yeah. It's called now St Patrick's Old Cathedral, which is a little rude. I think It's a technically St. Patrick's Basilica, but, you know, that's. That's Pope language. Let's see, when was it built? 1815. So, yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

You know, it's so funny because of the neighborhood where it's like, you pass the Louisville, right?

[David Sims]

You're. You're like, yes, where can I buy a belt for $800? And it's like, yes, but once this was like the seat of, you know, working class Catholic power. So it's like. So there used to be a school across the street. Now it's condos. But on Prince street was the Catholic school across the street. That's where he went. He was an altar boy at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay, where are we going with this, David? You said this was exciting,

[David Sims]

and we all know that always works out for everyone. Just fine. I, the other day, toured St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. You can tour it. There's catacombs underneath.

[Ben Hosley]

Cool.

[David Sims]

And you can tour them.

[Ben Hosley]

Bones.

[David Sims]

Now on this tour guide, which was with my friend Blythe, my friend Blythe was like, hey, you wanted to get dinner or drink? And I'm like, oh, sure. And she's like, or we could do something cool. And I'm like, what's cool? I'm trying to do fun New York experience.

[Griffin Newman]

Catacombs, much?

[David Sims]

And she was like, catacombs? And I'm like, there are catacombs. We go on this tour, first we go around the graveyard. There's an ancient graveyard there. Again, by American standards, like, you know, hundreds of years old. Very cool. He's, you know. Our tour guide was. Imagine, like sort of an Irish guy from Brooklyn. Can you imagine this? No, no, no, not an Irish guy from Ireland.

[Griffin Newman]

Little. Little green tin.

[David Sims]

Hey, I don't know what you're talking about, but you know. You know that kind of guy, right? And at one point, he's like, who here's toured, like, catacombs in Europe? And I'm like, I've. You know, I've been to, like, the ones in Paris, right, With the bones.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And he's like, all right, all right. So ours are air conditioned. Okay. There's no skeletons down here. What?

[Griffin Newman]

No skeleton.

[David Sims]

I mean, there are skeletons hidden away, but, you know, there's no, like, random bones. Have you ever been American?

[Ben Hosley]

That there's air conditioned.

[David Sims]

Air conditioned.

[Griffin Newman]

Have you ever been to the.

[Ben Hosley]

No. I tried going the last time I was there, and I didn't make a reservation enough out from when we were in town.

[Griffin Newman]

It is as extreme as you would imagine it to be, where you're just like, let me go through a tunnel. Oh, it's just an endless walk lined with bones.

[Ben Hosley]

So cool.

[David Sims]

And the other thing with the Paris ones especially is you're like, right, if there was not someone with me, I would get lost immediately and die down here.

[Griffin Newman]

It feels like a maze. It feels like a labyrinth. It goes on forever. It's so many skulls. Like, so many. And they're not, like, behind glass. You're just walking through and being like, that skull.

[David Sims]

And they're like, don't touch the skull. Hundreds of years old anyway, and. But on this tour, he was like, hey, anyone know Martin Scorsese? And I was like, yeah, I've heard.

[Griffin Newman]

You know?

[David Sims]

Yes. And he's like, it was an altar boy here. And I was like, of course he was.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

This was the church. This is the Little Italy church. Even though it's one of those New York things that you walk into, like this grand cathedral. I mean, look, I took a fucking picture. You know, you just can't believe, like, that this is just sitting here in the middle of New York because, like,

[Griffin Newman]

he'd do his prayers and then walk right across the street to Rice to Riches.

[David Sims]

Like, look at that. It's gorgeous.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Is pretty.

[Ben Hosley]

So nice.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like a thing he talked about, and we're getting it.

[David Sims]

I love Catholicism. Guys, what if that's my review?

[Griffin Newman]

Now this is a trad podcast.

[David Sims]

I'm. I'm into Catholicism in that weird J.D. vance way.

[Griffin Newman]

We all know Blank Shack has always been a deeply spiritual podcast. I was going to say, I feel like it's a thing that came up in the Rebecca Miller doc becomes up in a lot of his talks of just like, he was a fragile boy. He was nervous probably an extension of his physical fragility. He had an anxiety. He was in a rowdy neighborhood and the picture house and the church were the two places he felt safe.

[David Sims]

They're the calm places. And the other. The thing about the church especially is the. The rougher types, the mob, whatever, they're not messing with the church. No one's going to be mean to a priest.

[Griffin Newman]

It's the one place that's basically safe.

[David Sims]

He had a very influential man named Father Principe who is like a young priest mentor for him.

[Griffin Newman]

Kind of a hip priest.

[David Sims]

I think so. I mean, he says like he played the guitar.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you really?

[David Sims]

Yeah, I think so.

[Griffin Newman]

My joke's not funny. It was just accurate.

[David Sims]

He felt that the. He was a big fan of on the Waterfront. Introduced Martin to say he loves the Carl Malden character.

[Griffin Newman]

Carl Malden's so fucking good in that movie.

[David Sims]

Carl Malden, I'll say it, pretty good actor.

[Griffin Newman]

The original kind of is cromwelled in the original.

[David Sims]

Karen's Boy, definitely, because Chromalin's like a good looking guy, but he's got that like big nose.

[Ben Hosley]

Huge.

[David Sims]

And like, it kind of just makes him sort of like, you know, like.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Affable and interesting and whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

But I feel like he's a definitional kind of formative archetype of the kind of guy that you and I lose our minds over. Right. I have loved for decades.

[Ben Hosley]

My guy's got a honker.

[Griffin Newman]

He's got a honker. You really do feel like you could squeeze it in a noise and it

[David Sims]

would go ok. Like, yes. Father Prince Bay finally saw Taxi Driver and said to Marty, I've always told you too much Good Friday, not enough Easter Sunday. And Marty's like, he nailed me anyway. So all very formative for him. He doesn't totally fit in. He wants to be a priest. He enrolls in seminary school, but he just can't take his studies seriously enough. Like you need to like fucking learn Latin and shit. And I just feel like all Marty wants to do is watch movies.

[Griffin Newman]

It's funny when he talks about how close he feels like he came to becoming a man of the cloth. And then you hear from like his family and his childhood friends and they were like, he was never gonna fucking be able to pull this off. I know he feels like he was being pulled between these things, but it was just like.

[David Sims]

It's pretty short lived. At 14, he enrolls in a junior seminary called Cathedral College, which is on the Upper west side. He's expelled after a year. He Says he didn't have his mind on his work and he'd fall in love with a young lady. These are not going. You will not be a priest with this kind of behavior, my friend. But thank God the cinema claimed him. As he says, he's basically like, my parents were not religious. I liked Father Principe and I liked, you know, the neighborhood priest, kind of the neighborhood church thing.

[Griffin Newman]

But like, this was not pushed on me.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Like I probably just didn't have quite enough of the drive, you know. So he gets kicked out of that. He goes to Cardinal Hayes, which is a high school in the Bronx. He's still thinking about maybe going to like Jesuit University of Fordham up in the Bronx. Fordham's a Catholic university. That's where his friends are. But bad grades. He was interested in he. In English literature and read lots of books and stuff like that. But he says it wasn't easy for him to read. Says it wasn't part of our cultural makeup. But I was ready to delve further. I don't know, I just feel like he's, you know, he's, he's not academic. Right. Like he, he figures this all out later. Like he's just not right.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, he comes from a working class family.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not even that. There was a lot of working class

[David Sims]

kids who were, you know, climbing, you know, rapidly shooting up the. Right. You know, this is what happens.

[Ben Hosley]

But he's not seeing it in his day to day.

[David Sims]

That's what he says. Like, it's like there it was, there wasn't a culture of it in his family. Right, right. Of like, you should read fucking Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens or whatever. And he loved, and he loved movies. Number one thing he loves is movies, not, not books. He makes a short film called Vesuvius 6, an 8 millimeter thing which he shot on the roofs of Mott street with white sheets. I'm going to guess he didn't completely recreate Mount Vesuvius.

[Griffin Newman]

Show clips of this in the Rebecca Miller thing, but it's him doing his. Yeah.

[David Sims]

He says he basically like learn some things about camera angles. You know what I mean?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And then he gets a catalog from the New York University, Washington Square College. It's not even called NYU back then and they have a department called tmr. Television, Motion pictures, Radio. And he thinks, I'm going to go into radio. Just kidding. But. But you know, it's in the Village. It's right where he grew up. It's just, you know, one neighborhood up.

[Griffin Newman]

What if we Found out that the, the great. The great pain of Martin Scorsese's life is that he wanted to be a drive time radio guy and he couldn't hack.

[David Sims]

Would be so funny if he wanted to be like, right on Howard Stern.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And he's still. Do you think he's ever been on Howard Stern?

[Griffin Newman]

I'm going to look it up. Keep digging through the dossier. I'm sure he has.

[David Sims]

So ha. Manoogian.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, yes, yes.

[David Sims]

Very influential early teacher for him. Armenian American professor. He's in who's that knocking at my Door? I think briefly. So he shows him Lumiere movies. He shows him Great Train Robbery, Greed, maybe all the way up to like early Fellini. Like, these are the kinds of movies he's showing him Scorsese. They had to do a report on a movie he liked. He wrote a report on the Third man and he gave me a B plus because he said, remember, this is only a thriller. We were opposite ends of the poll in a way. He preferred like Open City. I liked everything. And this is important to Marty and all the new brats. I feel like the movie brats are like, we love westerns, we love noir, we love fucking Hitchcock. Whereas, like the older guard are quality. That's, that's, those are that serious problem. That's entertainment. Right. You know, I mean, sure, it's fun.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

It's funny to say about the Third man too.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. What were you about to ask Ben,

[Ben Hosley]

I wonder, does it maybe has something to do with TV growing up with having access to all of these different kinds of genres?

[David Sims]

Maybe. But I think TVs so, so new. It's more the picture house thing of those movies would just show the, like the trashier movie.

[Ben Hosley]

You could just sit there and just watch.

[Griffin Newman]

I think that's a lot of it that these guys really dug in and studied the kind of form and construction of these things. And there's like, there's artistry here. While. While not presenting themselves as serious. Does not seem he has ever been a guest on the Howard Stern Show. There are many clips of other people talking about Coward. Coward. He has done Adam Friedland.

[David Sims]

Should you do hot ones that might kill him?

[Griffin Newman]

Would he die if he.

[David Sims]

Let's, let's, let's be careful. I don't know what Marty's diet is.

[Griffin Newman]

Just sniffing those hot sauces might be dangerous.

[David Sims]

French new wave is happening while he's in film school. It's very, very liberating for him. He says, Hiroshima, mon amor.

[Ben Hosley]

Jules. Jim.

[David Sims]

Viva Savi.

[Griffin Newman]

My Opinion is that those are good movies.

[David Sims]

They're good movies. He just thinks about things like Anna Karina's reading a letter and then there's a jump cut to a man folding it up. He's gone up and taken out of her hand. You're breaking narrative. Right. You know, I mean, obviously this is the whole thing with the French new wave where you show people now and they're like, I don't get it.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

And you're like, yeah, but dude literally hadn't done. Right. And then, you know, Cassavetes is out there.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Shadows has been released.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

By that.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. And this is happening in New York

[David Sims]

and he made that on a 16 millimeter camera in New York City. So it can be done.

[Griffin Newman]

And it was a scrappy iterative movie.

[David Sims]

He shot it right over a bunch of years and.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. It's like this guy just kind of eked it out. Yeah.

[David Sims]

So he works on some shooting student stuff. He's a cinematographer or the photographer for a short called Iniesta. And then his first short is called what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?

[Griffin Newman]

Now we're going title.

[David Sims]

We're going to talk about these early shorts, including this one, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

We're going to do a short kind of box set, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, that's on there. Italian American, Big shave. Yeah.

[David Sims]

In 65. He also marriages. His marriages.

[Griffin Newman]

He marriages.

[David Sims]

He marries his college girlfriend, Lorraine Brennan. They have a daughter, Catherine, his oldest daughter, who is very present in his life, but clearly has a complicated relationship with him when she's young because he's like, divorces her mother and then they divorce in 71. And then he's like, you know, being really regular through all of the 70s.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a big thing that who's that Knocking on my Door Is about. But he still talks about how much shame there was associated with the idea of even like socializing with women and how kind of sinful it was unless you were immediately just going to make an honest woman out of her and. And get married and start a family, you know. And I think Marty was always a little bit horny and felt the need to be like, well, then I guess I just got to get married again.

[David Sims]

He got married a bunch. There's some marriages.

[Griffin Newman]

There are some marriages.

[Ben Hosley]

How old was he when he became a dad?

[David Sims]

Well, of his. Of the first child, early 20s. Yeah. I mean, geez. Yeah, he would have been like 23, 24, I think.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

So pretty young. Not like insane, but.

[Griffin Newman]

And he still talks about like when he was like, you know, if I want to date someone, I felt like I had to marry them.

[David Sims]

Who's that knocking at the door? It was actually written as the 7 second part of a series of films meant to explore his adolescence. The first was going to be called Jerusalem Jerusalem. It's a sort of half finished screenplay he wrote where his protagonist called J.R. later called Charlie. It's you know, Mean Streets. His main character is called Charlie. In which they like spend three human boys, spend some days in a religious retreat. You know, Sounds a little less exciting. Haig Manoogian is his first producer, you know, helps him make this movie. His father raises $6,000 for him from a student loan. He thinks it's the first student film shot in black and white, 35 millimeters on the East Coast.

[Griffin Newman]

Interesting. That's. It is wild to think about. It's that early things being that nascent. Yeah. Because even just like film school is a new thing. Part of the idea of training people. Of course.

[David Sims]

And I think it was mostly technical, like it was mostly like, yes, well we now make film and television and stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Here's how to do that.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Because then it'd be like the new wave is happening. So like the art is so exciting and there's challenging. It's different.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Not to, not to generalize, but it used to be more like joining the circus. Like you would just like get on a fucking bus to Hollywood and get off and be like, what can I do? And then you just learn everything, you know, from like carrying crates and shit.

[Ben Hosley]

But even though the technology has been around for at that point 50 years,

[Griffin Newman]

but it's not very accessible.

[David Sims]

I think basically we're very early in like you could get your hands on a 16 millimeter camera, maybe that's more portable and you could maybe like make a movie for not as much money. Right? Yeah. Like develop a film yourself. It's still going to be harder. You're going to have to cut it with scissors and shit.

[Griffin Newman]

A 35 millimeter camera is still a thing that's like kind of locked behind gates. You know, it's. It's really hard to get an opportunity to work with something like that.

[David Sims]

They're smaller.

[Griffin Newman]

They're very few film schools. They're all very new and it's so expensive.

[Ben Hosley]

There's a barrier of entry and you gotta buy.

[David Sims]

Yeah, but it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, yes. And it's a complicated process. But these things had basically been built around like institutional knowledge. Like there wasn't really a pipeline and it Also was. And it speaks to what we're saying of like the sort of snobbishness against commercial cinema. There was this battle of like, is this a fucking serious thing? You know, do we need to be like training people in how to make movies? Is that like an intellectual exercise or is that like learning how to work an auto plant? David.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Bark, bark, bark, bark.

[David Sims]

What's going on?

[Griffin Newman]

Dog days of summer.

[David Sims]

True.

[Griffin Newman]

Augie doggy August.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

It's the perfect time to hit reset before the autumn rush begins. And honestly, I'm stroking my chin here and I can't think of a better place to start than my closet.

[David Sims]

Uh huh.

[Griffin Newman]

That's where I want to reset. That's why I love shopping at Quint.

[David Sims]

Yeah, because they're about fewer better pieces. Their clothes are made with premium materials and they're built to last. Designed to ones. You reach for it day after day. So you don't need to over overstuff your closet.

[Griffin Newman]

I hate overstuffing my closet.

[David Sims]

I think that's it's a fair thing

[Griffin Newman]

if you're still hanging on to the same worn out basics. And that's me. I'm loathe to reset and restart. Ben's now eyeballing my wardrobe. He's looking me up and down. These are some newer pieces from Quints because quince makes it easy to upgrade, which I need the encouragement to do. They have premium denim and tailored chinos from just $60 with the kind of perfect fit structure and high quality fabrics you'd expect from a luxury designer brand. Yep.

[David Sims]

I mean I truly love quints.

[Griffin Newman]

You truly love them, you marry them. I've got like a ring on it.

[David Sims]

Polo shirts from them. Upgrade your everyday. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com check. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q U I N C E.com/check. Introducing Meta glasses.

[Griffin Newman]

You have questions. They've got answers.

[David Sims]

Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru? Lima.

[Griffin Newman]

How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish? Donde esta Alvano? Hey, Meta, Is a hot dog a sandwich?

[David Sims]

Technically, no. Spiritually, yes. Hey Meta, what should I do with my life? That's one of life's biggest questions.

[Griffin Newman]

What do you think? Ask anything with the new Meta glasses.

[David Sims]

Harvey Keitel. Harvey Keitel answers an ad they put in a publication called Show Business and he comes in and Marty has a friend called Bill Minken who's A comedian sit behind a desk for this. Harvey comes in and Bill Minkin's like, Marty has coached him to be like, what are you doing here? Harvey's like, I answered an ad. And he's like, there's no ad. And basically goad him into an argument. And then they, like, watch the argument. And then Marty is like, that was great. And Harvey's like, why didn't you fucking tell me? Like, to improv something. I can do that. Like, why. Why are you doing fucking Jamie Kennedy experiment on me?

[Griffin Newman]

Marty did X him. Marty did. Sounds like he X the hell out of Keitel.

[David Sims]

Keitel was working as a court stenographer. So I think that that tends to be kind of a 9 to 5 job. So I think making this movie was really annoying.

[Griffin Newman]

Harvey kind of tells the kind of guy just his. His vibe, his look, his. His generation, where I'm like, you could tell me he was doing any job before he became an actor, and I would believe.

[David Sims]

Yeah, right.

[Griffin Newman]

There was no job.

[David Sims]

Sea captain. I'm like, sure, yeah, of course.

[Griffin Newman]

And then he. He docked and he started acting in movies. Lion tamer.

[David Sims]

They shot of many months, right? Like, they had so much trouble matching scenes. They said they would shoot in a building. They blow the lights. They'd have to wait for hours to, like, reset everything. They didn't know what they were doing. The first version is 65 minutes long. It's called Bring on the Dancing Girls.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

They screen it for people. It's terrible, right?

[Griffin Newman]

And this was just. I want to make a film about, like, male camaraderie. I want to try to capture what I see in the guys I grew up with in my generation and all of that.

[David Sims]

So we got to make a movie

[Ben Hosley]

out of this, man.

[Griffin Newman]

But, Ben, it's. It is basically that. It is basically Marty going like, this is the web series, this conversation we're having right now. None of the girl stuff is in it.

[David Sims]

Yeah, it doesn't have the girl stuff. It's just guys.

[Griffin Newman]

None of it's written. She's not cast. It's not shot. That's not part of the conception of the movie.

[David Sims]

It's. I mean, there's, like, a girl in it, but there's no confrontation.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm saying the character of the girl, all of that is a secondary shoot later. This movie is just guys being dudes.

[David Sims]

It's just guys being dudes. So in 66, people don't like it. He says he has no money. His marriage is already falling apart.

[Griffin Newman]

He's got 50 minutes of a Dude, hangout movie that no one wants.

[David Sims]

Right. He teams up with Marduk Martin, who's an early collaborator of his and works on Mean Streets and other things. They neither of them have any money, but they start thinking about things, and Somehow they get $37,000 from Haig and from Joe Weil, another student who was a lawyer, to finance the rest of the picture, which involved scenes with a girl. They needed an actress. They needed a 16 millimeter camera. They were going to cut that in with the. Some 35 millimeter stuff they had shot, and they start shooting in some real locations. The way he puts it is, I realized I was in the process of combining two styles, let's say Cassavetes with Ford, because it's like these two movies essentially get turned into one movie, are very differently made because he's learning. Previously tried to shoot sequences without dialogue, tell the stories through images, but it didn't work. They find this actress, Xena Bethune, they call Harvey Keitel back.

[Griffin Newman]

Her mother was like a big actress of the early American theater and radio. She was on the original Superman radio show. Eva Bethune was also a dancer.

[David Sims]

I'm sorry, no, I'm saying Ivy was the mother.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. And Eva Bathoom was also a dancer. She later started her own acting school company that sort of became her legacy, but didn't have many acting roles.

[David Sims]

No, she's only got a few film credits. Keitel's, like, back to working as a court stenographer. They cut his hair and stuff, and he's like, I, you. This is annoying.

[Griffin Newman]

You also have to imagine this is like, What, a year, 18 months later, and it's like, I got to do more of that with the guy who exed me. Right.

[David Sims]

This is around the time he also makes the Big Shave.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

That wins his breakthrough. Right. That wins a prize at a festival of American experimental cinema.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

So that gets him a little bit of attention.

[Griffin Newman]

We. We will cover it, Ben. But it's. It's a. A true short dialogue, free film that is pretty experimental and. And allegorical, metaphorical, but it has, like, a really big impact. It is talked about as, like a calling card thing, as there's sort of a rising, like, film intelligentsia, you know, and the sort of critical community of New York City. He's immediately kind of propped up as, like, this guy's interesting.

[David Sims]

Now he has a new cut. He calls it I Call First. He screens it at the Chicago Film Festival. Roger Ebert of the Sun Times gives it a great review.

[Griffin Newman]

Am I wrong in thinking it is literally Roger Ebert's first published review.

[David Sims]

Not sure about that.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

But I can tell you that he said he called it a marvelous evocation of American city life, announcing the arrival of an important new director. He did kind of nail it from the house with that one.

[Griffin Newman]

Roger. Roger Ebert dines out on this for the rest of his life. He has many accomplishments, but being able to brag about, like, I fucking called it. I saw this at the earliest possible showing, and I was like, I put my money down on Martin Scorsese having a good career as a film director. And script says. He also says that it, like, kind of made him or at the very least, empowered him.

[Ben Hosley]

David, do you have your own version of that?

[David Sims]

Oh, like the movie. I. I called my shot. Or. I don't. I don't think so.

[Griffin Newman]

I think I was the first person to say, hojo. Transylvania is good. Right. That was. That was a risky position at that time.

[Ben Hosley]

I wasn't actually literally asking. It was. I was.

[David Sims]

You were being fun.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah. I was hoping that you would come up with. With, like, I don't know, something dumb. There's still a chance. Later and new listeners. We do this sometimes.

[Griffin Newman]

We do this sometimes. Sometimes we seed a bit.

[David Sims]

So he tries to get in the New York Film Festival. He claim, he says, they told me I was living aesthetically beyond my means. Which is funny. He goes to Europe, you know, takes it around. There he meets a Italian direct. Sorry, Italian. Joseph Brenner Associates, a softcore porn distributor, says, if you add a nude scene, we'll distribute this. It was the nude scene.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. It was not Ebert's first review, but it was the first review Scorsese got. It was the first review that movie got. Yes. But this is very illustrative of this era of filmmaking, of if you were making an independent film, you could screen it for someone and they just go, like, if you can find a way to throw, like, five tits in this, I can get it on, like, five screens. Right.

[David Sims]

Like, truly.

[Griffin Newman]

They'd be like, they'll give you $20,000, find a couple of boobs, edit them into the movie, and that's like, I can make my money back on that.

[David Sims]

They're in Amsterdam. They fly Harvey Keitel, who I assume is in the middle of, like, you know, your honor, I have. Yeah, right. To Amsterdam. They got, as he puts it, a bunch of girls and did the crazy nude scene to get that in there. And, you know, they. He looks back on the film and sees its flaws, but, you know, it's part of he. In. In the context of the late 60s. Free love, the sexual revolution. And here's this guy who can't, like, fuck a girl because he likes her and, like, is too afraid of sex. He's like, it's. It's like. It's out of sync, but in a good way. Right. You know what I mean?

[Griffin Newman]

I think this movie's fascinating. I actually like it a lot. I think it is one of those movies where its failings and its limitations actually kind of give it more power, because it's sort of about how unsettled it is with itself and all the things this guy has not yet worked through in himself. It's such a, like, pure primal scream of Scorsese. And I also think past Mean Streets, his movies stop being about him. They become about his obsessions and his worldview, and they're all very personal.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

And Mean Streets is about him, but it's about him.

[David Sims]

He did live in a train station in Paris and meet a robot.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, those are his best friends, the automatons. They write all of his favorite things. Mean Streets, as we'll talk about next week, is this fascinating sort of pivot point where he has a self insert character played by Cattel, but then it feels like he goes like, wait, what if I build the whole movie out of the De Niro guys? The guys I know, not me, at the center of the story? And who's that knocking on my door? Is, like, a movie about him. It is like Scorsese, like. Like almost as a therapy session of a film, working through all of his concerns and, like, spilling them out. And the form of the movie, even in its weird, like, you know, segmented production, and it's like, development across years, and all this sort of, like, wedged in pieces feels like it. It's a representation of what he's battling inside of himself in that way, you know, like, it's messiness to me, is not me saying it's a perfect film or that's a masterpiece, but that I think it's a really engaging thing to watch. I like this.

[David Sims]

I think it's. It is mostly interesting as a movie made by Martin Scorsese. You know what I mean? Like, it's just an interesting blueprint for him. And the music is good and the camera work is interesting, but it is not a good movie. Like, in terms of, like, if you just showed it to someone who'd never seen a Martin Scorsese movie, they would be like, I loved that. It's an interesting first work.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

It's got some Stuff in it. And because, you know, of the. Who made it and, like, you know, where it's leading. Like, it has all this fascinating, like, blueprint material.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, right.

[David Sims]

You know, like, which is. Which is interesting.

[Griffin Newman]

One could call it a bit of a Rosetta Stone.

[David Sims]

I think that's almost a stretch. He thinks that's a stretch. He's kind of like. I don't. I don't know. Like, you know, he's like, I didn't get the emotions right. I dislike the movie. It's a rough sketch. But, you know, Keitel's good. I think Xena Bethune is good. I think the camera work is good. I like what I. You know, music style.

[Griffin Newman]

He's got Thelma editing this one. And then they don't re team again for another couple pictures.

[David Sims]

No, for more than a couple. Yeah, for a little while.

[Griffin Newman]

But especially knowing that he gave her such a weird batch of footage, you know, shot across years in different formats in different eras. She's doing really interesting stuff in the

[David Sims]

construction, this stuff with the boys hanging out. You know, like, some of that is fun, but, like, you have Mean Streets, which does it a lot better. So, like, you can always just obviously see Mean Streets in a little bit. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, this is a movie where those things are, like, fighting each other. It's not even like, well, here's a rough version of this and a rough version of that. Like, the nature of how it was made means that you have these scenes that are just. Just the uncut form of Guy's roughhousing and then cutting to, like, an entirely different mode of filmmaking. With these, like, more intimate dialogue scenes shot in an entirely different film format. And the two sides of the movie, like, clashing against each other. Because Thelma's actually using New wave editing rather than, like, invisible editing. And. And making something out of the juxtaposition between the two.

[David Sims]

I love Thelma. You guess who else likes this movie?

[Griffin Newman]

Roger Ebert.

[David Sims]

No. Guess who else?

[Griffin Newman]

Who?

[David Sims]

Castavetes.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, yes, he digs it. He notices at least. Or at least he notices the town Senpa notices.

[David Sims]

So that is. Who's that knocking on my door? Before we move on to Boxcar Bro,

[Griffin Newman]

that's all we're gonna say about who's.

[David Sims]

No, I'm saying that's the end of the dossier on. Who's that?

[Griffin Newman]

Do you think we should talk about the movie a little more and then do the Boxcar dossier section?

[David Sims]

We should also. We can do a box office game.

[Griffin Newman]

I think we should do a little. Yes.

[David Sims]

And but no, no, no. I'm not saying we're done with talking about the movie. Although it is. It's a slight movie in terms of narrative, obviously. But no, it's. You know, I saw it years ago when I was like, I'm going to watch every single Scorsese movie. Right. You know, like, so then I was like, let me clear it. Clear it out. And I found it very interesting this time. I was a little. Kind of like I had just watched Mean Streets because we did just record that episode.

[Griffin Newman]

We've only one other. The only. We just take one leapfrog.

[David Sims]

And I was just the whole time being a little bit like, right, well, there's Mean Streets.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, but that's okay. That's maybe. That's maybe you problem that Mean Streets is fresh and, you know, three years later. I know. So you know how good it's gonna get, right?

[David Sims]

Ben, what did. Had you seen this film before? I'd never seen it before. What did you make of who's that knocking at my Door?

[Ben Hosley]

Well, the boys reminded me of a lot of characters I grew up with. In particular, Smart Joey reminds me of a bunch of guys where they're always mad, but seem. And, like, seemingly don't want people to be around, but also want people around. It's really interesting that now I know the process of how this film was made because it did feel really disconnected.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. You kind of have to know that it was made that way to get any enjoyment out of it. Because otherwise you're like, what are the swings this thing is doing?

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, right.

[David Sims]

Because it's just kind of. I mean, it almost feels like someone made a parody of a Scorsese movie with no money, right? Where they're like, let's do some music. And then it's like a bunch of guys going, hey, walk out.

[Ben Hosley]

What are you doing?

[David Sims]

You know? And you're like, right. This is like, what these movies are like, the parody. And then the guy's like, but I love Jesus.

[Ben Hosley]

You know, the violence being so corny.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Ben Hosley]

And not well thought out. And yet it looks like they're kind of really hitting each other in an amateur way.

[Griffin Newman]

It's also like every piece of the puzzle, though, you know, Like, I mean,

[David Sims]

like, one of the first scenes is him, a guy just talking to a girl about the Searchers for, like, so long. But you're like, you have her attention. You're losing her, buddy.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, there's that. There's, you know, that thing of, like, the theory that filmmakers are always just remaking the Same movie over and over again. Hopefully they're refining it and stretching it and, you know, morphing it, whatever it is. And it's like, this isn't like the. The model for In Final form, what his movies will be from here on out, but it is him identifying every single thing he's going to do, what the sensibility is, what the style is like. Just dumping all the puzzle pieces out on the floor is kind of fascinating to me.

[David Sims]

Yeah, totally. It's a very interesting thing to watch. And, yeah, I mean, Harvey's good in it. I mean, obviously, again, it's the building blocks of better Harvey stuff. But, like, he's so compelling.

[Griffin Newman]

It's also. This is the only time he's playing Marty this much in all the scenes with the girl. Sure.

[David Sims]

He's doing a little bit more like Marty than where it feels like he's

[Griffin Newman]

like, I get it. I'm. This is based on him.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, which I think is a common thing. You hear about this all the time. Lead actors who are kind of sort of mirroring their director. Even in cases where the character isn't an evident kind of self insert. And this is the only time where I feel like I've seen Keitel take on the qualities of Scorsese.

[David Sims]

Right. Because the Mean Streets character is more thought through, a little quieter, more reserved, whatever.

[Ben Hosley]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

It feels like he's building a character based on the thing that Scorsese wrote.

[David Sims]

I do miss a De Niro type. Like, he doesn't have a good guy to push against.

[Griffin Newman]

No, as. As you said, the kind of rough guys are all a little generic. You know, it is it. The moment he finds De Niro, it changes the entire course of his career. You know, like, that guy walking into the bar is just like, oh, wait a second. If I have something like this in the mix, my movies can suddenly. Like, it's gasoline in the tank.

[Ben Hosley]

I like Xena Bethune a lot. I think she plays the character with some depth and agency. Even though, again, I don't feel like she's been given very much.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, let's say with this down,

[Ben Hosley]

to not give it a character name.

[Griffin Newman]

She is the girl.

[David Sims]

She's girl.

[Griffin Newman]

They give her. They give her a proper title. She's the girl.

[David Sims]

Oh, no, I think she's just girl. I mean, I'm seeing your girl.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, maybe I thought I saw the girl.

[David Sims]

It's also the kind of classic thing of Marty's, like, well, we need. The boys need different names because there are multiple male characters. The girl could just be called Girl.

[Griffin Newman]

Excuse me. There's a second female character.

[David Sims]

His mommy.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, I'm sorry. In the. In the sort of sex scene.

[David Sims]

Yeah, well, that's.

[Griffin Newman]

There are multiple girls, but they're not even numbered.

[David Sims]

They are not. They are just Girl in dream.

[Griffin Newman]

There is also a couple girl at party.

[David Sims]

There you go.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. This is the only Scorsese movie that's only on DVD and even, like, on itunes. It's a standard deaf version.

[David Sims]

I don't know that he's ever cared to, like, re. You know, refurbish it.

[Griffin Newman]

No, there was. There was an early 2000s, like, Warner Brothers Scorsese box set where this was an exclusive DVD for a while. And it was like, that's the one way we're getting that film back in circulation. And it basically feels like that DVD master is what is still rentable.

[David Sims]

They never, like, thought to, like, put it on a Blu Ray with Mean Streets or something. You know what I mean?

[Griffin Newman]

Kind of move they do, like, right.

[David Sims]

Like, you just kind of throw it in.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, we'll. We'll talk about, you know, Boxcar Bertha, which was the other sort of, like, abandoned one for a while. Just got this big cinematograph.

[David Sims]

I bought it, I watched it.

[Griffin Newman]

Same. But that feels like. Well, that has more of a curio aspect of being a Corman movie and fitting into that era of genre pictures and whatever. It feels like, inevitably someone's got to put out a better version of who's that Knocking? I'm sure it's just an important American film history.

[David Sims]

I agree with you, but I think that is largely how it's regarded. Right? Like, no one's. I don't know. I mean, even Shyamalan told me he's remastered and worked on Train with Anger.

[Griffin Newman]

It's still not available anyway.

[Ben Hosley]

Well.

[David Sims]

Because I was like, are you gonna release it? And he was like, I'm kind of embarrassed. Yeah. He was like, I wanted to show it to my kids in, like, that format. I have no idea if I want to do anything more. And I'm like, I get it. Because it's like, it's a very amateurish movie in so many ways.

[Griffin Newman]

I was looking up. I was like, what, are there other holes? I need to plug in my, like, blank check disc collection of the main feed episodes. And I was like, am I wrong about this? And I double checked, like, praying. Anger never got any.

[David Sims]

It didn't get even, like, a vhs?

[Griffin Newman]

I don't believe. So. It certainly never got any DVD or anything.

[David Sims]

I certainly don't there's no way it got a dvd. Right?

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

You can watch it on the Internet archive.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean that's where we watched it, I believe. Pretty sure. 10, 11 years.

[David Sims]

Long time ago.

[Griffin Newman]

10 years ago, yeah. Now I want to see if there is a VHS and do I need to buy the vhs. And is Praying with Anger a porch movie? These are important questions that will be settled later. It does seem like there was a vhs maybe.

[Ben Hosley]

Are you really encouraging him right now?

[Griffin Newman]

Sound insulation.

[David Sims]

I think I need to encourage him.

[Griffin Newman]

He's.

[David Sims]

It's true. He's snowballing down the hill. Long ago.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

He's not even bidding. He's just buying now.

[Griffin Newman]

What will be, will be.

[David Sims]

Oh yeah, he buys it now.

[Griffin Newman]

Excuse me. The thrill of the hunts. Yeah, I was gonna say I don't buy it now.

[David Sims]

I'm actually kind of lazy enough. I'm more the buyer now. Griff is kind of the like best offer, 8 cents lower. What do you think?

[Griffin Newman]

You don't understand how much time I waste a week trying to like put

[David Sims]

that in your cart. They'll notice and then they'll contact you.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, that's my real strategy. And it does it all the time. Yeah, I saved dollars this week. At least six.

[David Sims]

Fantastic. So what else? Yeah, there's, there's a nude scene.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh yeah, what else?

[David Sims]

So that's like again, the camera stuff is fun. He's doing camera stuff. Like there's moments where he's like doing like bird's eye view shit where you're like, I mean it's the kind of first film stuff where you're like, you didn't need to do that. You know, it's not, it's not really suggesting anything but clearly you just wanted to see what would like what that would look like.

[Ben Hosley]

Some close up kissing.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, the eyeball close ups.

[David Sims]

I don't think people should kiss in movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Can we say this movie does have a lot kidding. The story of this movie. Yes. Is a guy who J R, you could say, is trying very hard to, to fit in with the boys. Right. There seems to be something a little more thoughtful, a little more sensitive within him. He likes just sitting in nature and taking it in. But he knows that's, you know, maybe that's not, it's not cool. Right.

[David Sims]

Sally Gaga is not going to like that.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. So he goes out and he gets drunk and they punch each other and they talk about whoas and he meets a girl that he likes.

[David Sims]

Yes. He's going to go on the Staten island ferry and he's talking to her like he's about to, you know, go to. You are Antarctica. He's like, yeah. I mean Jesus. But he meets her at the, like at the ferry station. I feel like that's where he talks her ear off about the Searchers. They, they mentioned Geoffrey Hunter. Does you know who, do you know who he is?

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, I don't.

[David Sims]

Jeffrey Hunter's in the Searchers. He's also Captain Christopher Pike. It's his other famous role.

[Griffin Newman]

Captain Christopher pike was the captain of the Enterprise on the original pilot of Star Trek. And they recast him because they thought he didn't have the juice and they replaced him with William Shatner.

[David Sims]

Who did have the juice?

[Griffin Newman]

He did. Captain Kirk has the juice.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

He is almost like Mr. Juicy Juice in terms of how much juice he had.

[David Sims]

But it is basically.

[Griffin Newman]

And they re cut the pilot footage into a later two part episode that is true. Where Captain pike was the kind of rejected and scorned. Well, he canonically made him the captain that Kirk had replaced.

[David Sims]

Right. And he got burned up in an

[Griffin Newman]

accident and he's in a big kind of robot body wheelchair.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Pretty cool actually.

[Griffin Newman]

He's actually a really cool guy. And Bruce Greenwood plays him in the JJ movies. Excellent performance. Steady Hand who plays him?

[David Sims]

He's really, really good. But it's just funny that in Martin Scorsese's first movie someone says Jeffrey Hunter.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh sure.

[David Sims]

I'm like Captain Pike.

[Griffin Newman]

Captain Pike.

[David Sims]

Anyway, yeah, he meets a girl and he likes her.

[Griffin Newman]

He's having kind of a secret romance with her and it feels like he both is trying to shield from his boyfriends that he has feelings that he has a romantic attachment to a woman who he wants to talk to, whose brain he is interested in. And also his overwhelming Catholic guilt.

[Ben Hosley]

Well, because also at that time he's still living at home. We talked about this a little bit on our Mean Streets episode and he's, he. You can't bring your, your, your, this girl around. Your mom.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[Ben Hosley]

You get in trouble.

[Griffin Newman]

No. And, and people who live alone at this age are seen as deviants. The only reason you could possibly want to do that is so you could have premarital sex. The worst thing in the world.

[David Sims]

I actually love it. Big fan.

[Griffin Newman]

Wild coming from the two married guys in the room.

[David Sims]

You guys. So what was I gonna say?

[Griffin Newman]

They have this attachment and then you

[David Sims]

won't have sex with her. Yes, because he doesn't want to spoil,

[Griffin Newman]

he doesn't want to spoil her. And she reveals to him.

[David Sims]

A bit retrograde.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, yes. That she is a survivor of sexual assault.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And he has a very negative response to it.

[David Sims]

He is not mature enough to grapple with that in a good way.

[Griffin Newman]

That she feels dirty and tarnished. What did you do to encourage that? Why were you even with that guy in the first place?

[Ben Hosley]

He's so selfish and has no empathy. It makes me very mad.

[David Sims]

He just doesn't. He's not mature enough. He cannot handle it. It's all about. There's a part of him that could have empathy, but he cannot access it.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. If we can parse this for a second, right? I mean, this is the whole kind of like tit wound, catholic guilt, ball of wax is like, all I want is to have sex. I am told that if I have sex, that's the worst thing I could possibly do. So there's this, you know, the, the Madonna and the horror bifurcation, right, of like, I can go rent out an apartment and have my own fucking, like, boom, boom, sex orgy. Because that's the way I get my rocks off without tarnishing the sanctity of a woman I actually care about. And then the notion that she has had sex in any form when he feels like he cannot allow himself to have sex with her even if the sex she had was a rape, was violent, was not of her own agency, is a thing that he can't process because all he wants is to have like intimate relations with her, which he feels like he cannot do without ruining her.

[Ben Hosley]

It's.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, it is a movie about his immaturity. This is not a plot driven movie. This is the closest thing the movie has to, like an emotional arc or a story. And it's basically not developed into over halfway through. And I think, like, the note of maturity in this film, the thing that shows a little bit of understanding from Scorsese, who at this point has just not processed his own shit enough to be able to make a film with enough objective distance. I give him credit for understanding that the end of this movie when he goes and tries to do the like, you know what? I apologize, I forgive you. That she's like, fudge you.

[David Sims]

That's what I like, right? He's like, I'll marry you anyway. And she's like, you clearly cannot handle, like, what has happened to me and do not have like the right feelings for this.

[Griffin Newman]

You watch movie from the 1960s and you're worried that the guy is going to be rewarded for saying, I will accept you even though you are tarnished.

[Ben Hosley]

Good.

[David Sims]

The thing you told me and I have will. Yeah, right.

[Griffin Newman]

I accept you.

[David Sims]

No, instead, she's like, fuck off. And he goes to the church and doesn't know what to do with himself. His classic Scorsese. Right, what's up, Ben? Let's play the box office.

[Ben Hosley]

Well, yeah. Thankfully, we've gotten to the end.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Ben Hosley]

And we're not talking about the end, which is the needle drop.

[David Sims]

Oh, sure.

[Ben Hosley]

And it's a song that stinks by a group that also stinks.

[David Sims]

Go on. The Doors.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, it's just.

[Ben Hosley]

I had this note where I'm just like, ah, good, the Doors are in this movie.

[David Sims]

Just what I mean, they were. They were hot stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

This was. Right. He was at the tip of the spear on this one. You do have to give him credit. Like, people were pointing out they're only

[David Sims]

a couple years old at this point.

[Griffin Newman]

Credited as. It's listed as, like a 67 movie. But I think the final sort of round of shooting they do to add the boobs and the boom boom man maybe happens in 68.

[David Sims]

I'm not sure about that. It was released in American 68. But it was screened in Chicago in 67.

[Griffin Newman]

But I think what Ebert saw was a slightly earlier version that is possible.

[David Sims]

I don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

I saw someone interrogating that the this is the End comes out in 1967. And they were like, that's a really fast turnaround. But it seems like maybe the song was only added when the film got proper distribution in 68.

[David Sims]

Anyway. Come on, Baby, Light My Fire. And that's not the song.

[Ben Hosley]

But he walked down the hall of the ancient gallery. Just.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben, just take a step back and think of him being the first one to ever be like, hey, you hear the song from the Doors. I'm not saying you gotta give him this.

[David Sims]

No, no. This is the real question, right, Ben, it's 1967. You are Ben Hosley. Bloop. Even dropped in there. Someone puts on the Doors bell bottoms or whatever. Do you like it? Someone's like, if you've never met, I'm gonna spin a groovy tune.

[Griffin Newman]

You've never met a guy who likes the tours, right? You've never met a guy who's built his personality.

[David Sims]

You've never been in a college dorm room and seen a poster of Jim Morrison, Right?

[Griffin Newman]

You're a high schooler. Let's say 1967. You're walking around Greenwich Village. You walk into a record store. It's playing. No one even introduces it to you. No one recommends that. You're not associating it with a person. You're hearing it fresh. What's this I hear? I'm hearing this for the first time. Wow. What is there to say? Do you think you hate them that much? Just from the music alone, I will give you that.

[Ben Hosley]

I wouldn't hate them.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure. It wouldn't be your thing.

[Ben Hosley]

It wouldn't be. Yeah. But I would be at least interested because they have a unique thing going.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

This fucking drunk poet idiot and an organist.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. David.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Red alert. Oh, there's been an outbreak. Biohazard of a new Patreon series.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It's contagious.

[David Sims]

Oh, that's so true. It's. It's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure.

[Griffin Newman]

From the fine folks at the Umbrella Corporation, we are covering Resident Evil, the film franchise. Yes.

[David Sims]

We've got the first franchise. Six movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

That beautiful second franchise.

[Griffin Newman]

How many? Six? Seven.

[David Sims]

It's got the one movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, it's got the one.

[David Sims]

We'll be covering all of them on Patreon, doing commentaries on. Yes. The Resident Evil. Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife, Retribution, the Final chapter. Welcome to Raccoon Sydney.

[Griffin Newman]

This is an exciting time. Zach Kreger, friend of the podcast, has a new Resident Evil coming out, and we thought this was a good opportunity to revisit the history of Resident Evil movies.

[Ben Hosley]

Why not?

[Griffin Newman]

Why not?

[David Sims]

Why can't we?

[Griffin Newman]

Why can't we?

[David Sims]

We can check in for that August 1st, and it's going to be running all the way through November 1st, followed

[Griffin Newman]

by your March Madness winner, Dracula, Dr. Akula himself.

[David Sims]

That's so fun. So that's great.

[Griffin Newman]

That's great.

[David Sims]

Thank you.

[Griffin Newman]

Thank you so much.

[David Sims]

What do you think was number one in the box office when this.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, Jim Morrison was kind of an organist as well, if you know what I'm saying.

[David Sims]

When this quote unquote came out in famously.

[Griffin Newman]

What do I think was number one at the box office in 1960?

[David Sims]

September 18th, you know, 16th of September, 1968. I can give you a hint. It's a film that features an actor who liked this movie. He was also director. John Cassavetes.

[Griffin Newman]

The Dirty Dozen.

[Ben Hosley]

Nope.

[Griffin Newman]

Rosemary's Baby.

[David Sims]

Rosemary's Baby.

[Griffin Newman]

Interesting.

[David Sims]

Which was number one for a million weeks. Like, you know, like, it was such a big hit. Number two at the box office. A film we've covered on this podcast.

[Griffin Newman]

Number two is a film we've covered on this podcast.

[David Sims]

Something of a totemic film, huh?

[Griffin Newman]

Is it a 67 picture or 68?

[David Sims]

It's 68.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a 68. It's a totemic film. Is it a cubic?

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

It would be 2001.

[David Sims]

That's right.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Quite totemic. Do you agree?

[Griffin Newman]

You said it. Not high.

[David Sims]

Number three.

[Ben Hosley]

It's really crazy to think that this movie we just saw came out at the same time as that movie.

[David Sims]

That's why that.

[Griffin Newman]

In terms of film.

[David Sims]

Craziest thing in the world.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

It really is insane.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not just that that movie looks good for 1960.

[David Sims]

Like eight looks good for 3068.

[Griffin Newman]

And everything else, you know, was. Was just like on a different planet.

[David Sims]

Number three at the box office is a romantic comedy film. It stars Sidney Poitier. That's what I'm giving you.

[Griffin Newman]

To Sir With Love.

[David Sims]

No. Good guess.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's not Guess who's Coming to Dinner.

[David Sims]

No, Guess who. It's a lesser known.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a lesser known. But I mean, like, do you think I know it. Is it a known title?

[Ben Hosley]

I'm not sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

I'm not sure. I'll give you more hints. Directed by Daniel Mann. Okay. You know, Made a lot of movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Who's the leading lady of this picture?

[David Sims]

Abby Lincoln. But I can. Who's, you know, great African American singer.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

I can tell you that. Beau Bridges in this film. Carol o'. Connor. Oh. Did he have some opinions on a character in this? Yeah. I can tell you the score was composed by Quincy Jones. And he wrote the title theme song as well, which was nominated for best song at the Academy Awards.

[Griffin Newman]

And it is the title of the movie. It's not like fucking. Love is a Many Splendid.

[David Sims]

You're not that far off. I'm gonna give it to you. It's for Love of Ivy.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, sure.

[David Sims]

Here's another film. Number four at the box office. Let me look it up here.

[Griffin Newman]

Look it up here, please.

[David Sims]

Is a 1968 British film starring Oscar Werner.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay.

[David Sims]

Good actor. I love Oscar Werner and Barbara Faris.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

I can't say I've heard of this one.

[Griffin Newman]

Get.

[David Sims]

Directed by Kevin Billington. I don't think you've got this.

[Griffin Newman]

Does there seem to be a genre attached to this picture?

[David Sims]

Drama.

[Griffin Newman]

Drama. That's helpful.

[David Sims]

A famous male conductor gives an interview to an attractive female reporter he speaks to frankly and ends up being given an unwanted sabbatical from conducting. So far. This sounds like tar.

[Griffin Newman]

I was gonna say.

[David Sims]

He begins an affair with the reporter during his blank. Which is the title of the movie. Sabbatical Close Interlude. And the accumulation of difference in their ages and background begins to mount. I don't know. Sounds okay.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, he was like a. Like an orchestra. Yeah. Not a train.

[David Sims]

It would be funny if she's like the train.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Number five at the box office is a 67 film. Griffin. That's how successful it's been. It's been in the box office for 39 weeks. It is another totemic movie. It is a romantic comedy.

[Griffin Newman]

Graduate. It is the Graduate, the highest grossing film of 1967.

[David Sims]

Graduate. It.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, 1967 obviously is the. The pictures at Revolution Year.

[David Sims]

That's the. That's Bonnie and Clyde Graduate. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And then Dr. Dole, of course, the

[David Sims]

most revolutionary film of all.

[Griffin Newman]

But I. I was just looking at my. My 67 letterbox. It is insane how good that year is. 67, even just for international cinema. When you take away, like, sort of what was happening at the Oscars.

[David Sims]

Great movie.

[Griffin Newman]

It's.

[David Sims]

But you know what? Every movie, if you throw a, you know, dart at an old movie, you're like, God damn, like, it's the best. Playtime came out in 67.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Weekend came out. Lou Weekend.

[David Sims]

Yeah. That's a. That's a regular ass movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it is.

[David Sims]

My wife almost divorced me over that movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Really?

[David Sims]

No, no.

[Griffin Newman]

You took her to see it.

[David Sims]

I took her to see. And she was like the. I was like, sorry. I remember this being a little. A little more narrative than.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, no, it's just what if.

[David Sims]

Just people. Well, though, that's the first part, but then it's just people talking about communism while they. Sandwiches.

[Griffin Newman]

He loved doing it.

[David Sims]

He did love. Well, it's really the start of him being like, what if this is lot of the movie. Anyway, some of the other films in the top 10 are the odd Couple. Fun. Rachel. Rachel.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. The Paul Newman directed. I've never seen it neither. By. Yep.

[David Sims]

Hang Em High, which is. Which is a Clint Eastwood film that he didn't direct, but like Ted Post, it's kind of like, you know, in the Eastwood sort of.

[Griffin Newman]

I think that universe just announced they're putting it out on 4K.

[David Sims]

Probably did.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Those.

[David Sims]

I Probably a film called Prudence in the Pill, which is a British comedy, a Ronald Neem film. It's a really good title that I assume is kind of like your classic, like British kitchen sinky kind of comedy. Like, where they're like, well, it's like, oh, the Pill is new.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And it's about the contraception.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And then a movie, a Lee Van Cleef cult movie called the Big Gun Down.

[Griffin Newman]

Now can I turn about as fair play. Can I throw a Little game at you.

[David Sims]

Yeah, sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you think.

[David Sims]

You think like a spaghetti western?

[Griffin Newman]

Guess. The top five highest grossing films of the year. 1968.

[David Sims]

1968 in film.

[Griffin Newman]

And I will say two of the films that were just in the top five.

[David Sims]

I was about to say 2001's in there.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Where do you think it is?

[David Sims]

One or two?

[Griffin Newman]

Two. What do you think would have beaten it in 68?

[David Sims]

Is the Odd Couple in there?

[Griffin Newman]

Odd Couples number three. There you go. Odd Couple made a robust $20 million. 2001 did 21. And one film beat them both with 24. It is a film that won one of the major acting categories this year. It's the arrival of a giant star and a star we're very familiar with on this podcast.

[David Sims]

Oh, Funny Girl.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

That was the number one movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. It's funny that a local New York act like that could somehow be the highest grossing film.

[David Sims]

Well, it's funny that there was a girl premise of the film.

[Griffin Newman]

People were laughing just when they saw the mark.

[David Sims]

This is a Funny Girl.

[Griffin Newman]

Even see the poster?

[David Sims]

Is Rosemary's Baby in the top five?

[Griffin Newman]

Rosemary's Baby is number seven.

[David Sims]

Okay. But it was a big hit.

[Griffin Newman]

It was always a very big hit.

[David Sims]

Is Planet of the Apes in the top?

[Griffin Newman]

And of the apes is number six.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Both of those did 15.

[David Sims]

Okay, give me a hint.

[Griffin Newman]

Can you guess? Four and five. Four is. I don't want to use the word, but it's. It is a. It is a giant action film classic. It weirdly did not become a franchise, but has often been threatened with a remake.

[David Sims]

Oh, Bullet.

[Ben Hosley]

Correct.

[Griffin Newman]

And number five.

[David Sims]

Fun. Not my favorite number five, but very sexy.

[Griffin Newman]

Is a musical.

[David Sims]

It's a musical. I don't want Funny Girl.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't want to give you the obvious hint, but It's a musical.

[David Sims]

68. Oh, well, is it Oliver?

[Griffin Newman]

Correct. Oliver is the fifth highest grossing film of the year.

[David Sims]

Because that's the whole thing with the Biskin book where he's like, wow, you know, Hollywood's. And then it's like, yeah, well, don't forget the next year, they're like, oliver, bring them all.

[Griffin Newman]

And Funny Girl for best actress. And they're right. Right.

[David Sims]

It was at least Funny Girls a little more like.

[Griffin Newman]

But the next year, Fresh was more classical. Yeah, you have Rosemary's baby there at seven. You have 2001 at two. But then, you know, Funny Girl, Odd Couple. Planet of the Apes is the beginning of something new. Number eight was the Zephyr. Ellie. Romeo and Juliet. Normal film. No legal problems. There. Number nine, of course, was yours. Mine and ours.

[David Sims]

I have heard of it.

[Griffin Newman]

The Peter Fonda Lucille Ball movie that's basically riffed on in licorice pizza and was remade with Dennis Quaid and Renee Russo.

[David Sims]

Right. That's my favorite movie of all time, the remake.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. But it's. The movie itself was a cheaper by the dozen ripoff that then got remade as a ripoff of the cheaper by the dozen reading of the sequel. And then number 10 was Lion Winter,

[David Sims]

which is also a Best Picture contender, I guess. Yeah. But not the winner. Right, Right. I always forget. I always. Man For All Seasons is the one that won Best Picture line. And Winter just wins, like, acting awards. Right. Because Hepburn wins. She ties with.

[Griffin Newman]

With strands. Strands. Yes.

[David Sims]

Let's talk about Boxcar Bertha.

[Griffin Newman]

Let's talk about.

[David Sims]

Now, I have also only seen this film once before. I watched it for today's podcast.

[Griffin Newman]

Saw it in high school out of

[David Sims]

a sense of completionism again. Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

It is a film directed by Martin Scorsese. He did in 1972. Now, I will tell you that after. Who's that Knocking? He was hired to film, to direct a film called the Honeymoon Killers. It was brought to him by an agent, his agent, Harry Uffland. His script was very long. He couldn't connect with the material. And he said he wanted to try

[Griffin Newman]

to make it in the style of a Carl Theodore Dreier film to ensure the producers loved hearing.

[David Sims]

Interesting news is that he was fired one week into shooting. Yep. Essentially because he was, like, shooting master shots with no coverage. He was an artiste. He was not going to make, you know, whatever the people wanted him.

[Griffin Newman]

Hey, this is a business, kid. This is when they're starting to say, we don't got time for your fancy stuff.

[David Sims]

So he picks up some odd jobs, write some dialogue for a Dutch thriller called Obsessions. He does some editing work, street scenes,

[Griffin Newman]

does camera work for Woodstock.

[David Sims]

We're gonna get to that.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

We're gonna get there because that's a big one, a huge one. He was the artist in residence of the Film Society Lincoln center. Did some instruction at nyu. And Oliver Stone, one of his. One of his students, Michael Wadley, who photographed who's that Knocking, comes to. And Thelma Shoes Schoonmaker. Right. Wadley is the director of Woodstock. So he brings him and Thelma in, Right. To work on that movie. It's a significant American film, I would say Woodstock. Right. Like, it's like. Yeah, it's like, again, one of those things where you're like, well, sure. This is the Woodstock movie with like the movie with this. But you're like, yeah, but like this kind of concert movie didn't exist.

[Griffin Newman]

The movie itself is major. It's not just that it was a like a pro shot of a famous concert.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Have you seen the Woodstock movie, Ben? Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, because it's. It's got really experimental abrasive editing style and it has like, you know, it's fucking like Scorsese and George Lucas operating cameras and shit. Like, there is this sort of weird thing of. Right. Because it was made by an NYU professor. It's got the, like the future of movies working in all the crew positions, influencing the language and everything. And then it also sort of works as like a cultural moment document documentary of the phenomenon of what's happening there. Like, all of the sort of talking head interviews of the concert goers are fascinating.

[David Sims]

Would you have gone to Woodstock? Oh, yeah. Sounds like a pain though.

[Griffin Newman]

It does, yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

But it was just so worth it.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

Like, I know my dad, he regrets not going.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben, I know you feel like, oh, man, the concert must have been the exciting part. Like going there, seeing it, watching it. But. But what if I told you the closeted gay man who rented out his parents backyard for the festival has a story of his own that might be interesting enough to fill an entire film?

[Ben Hosley]

What are you talking about?

[Griffin Newman]

Well, in order to take Woodstock, Dimitri Martin had to offer it.

[David Sims]

Might. Is the strong might be enough to fill?

[Ben Hosley]

Sure.

[David Sims]

I.

[Griffin Newman]

You couldn't just take it. He had to give it to you first.

[Ben Hosley]

I really did forget all about that.

[David Sims]

How could you forget?

[Griffin Newman]

That was the most interesting part of Woodstock. We all wanted to see the movie about Woodstock.

[David Sims]

Who owned the field where the guy

[Griffin Newman]

doesn't watch any of the performances.

[David Sims]

Scorsese ends up out in la. Who's that knocking's being shown there under the title of JR Roger Corman sees it. So Roger Corman, obviously at this point is already a very established figure.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. He had already directed tens of movies by the 70s. You're getting to the point where he focuses more on producing and running his own studio.

[David Sims]

The 60s is the height of Little Shop of Horrors and man with the X Ray Eyes.

[Griffin Newman]

When he's personally directing four movies a

[David Sims]

year and he sees it and says, I like this. Would you want to direct a sequel to my film Bloody Mama?

[Griffin Newman]

Have you ever seen that film?

[David Sims]

Never. Shelly Winters. I know I have.

[Griffin Newman]

Because one of the two demi Roger Corman films is only available on a double feature Blu ray with it, I Think crazy. Crazy. I think crazy mama and bloody mama maybe funny because.

[David Sims]

Yeah, two mamas.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Am I right?

[David Sims]

He's like, it's got guns, it's got costumes. Scorsese's like, I'll do it. Corman says, I'll see you in six months. I'll have a script. And I was like, oh, geez, okay.

[Griffin Newman]

You know what? I'm wrong about that. But I've seen the movie anyway. It's interesting. Mama goes bad, you know, whatever.

[David Sims]

Instead, you know. So like six months, forget it. And instead he does some post production on documentary called Medicine Ball Caravan which is about 154 person bus and truck tour. Bus and truck. Rex Reed. What did. I can't remember.

[Griffin Newman]

You know what it. He referred to something as a bus and truck.

[David Sims]

It's a Spider man thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Did he refer to Spider man as a bus and truck? Superman. Is that what it is?

[David Sims]

I can't remember.

[Griffin Newman]

I think that's what it is. I think it's his review of the first Spider man movie.

[David Sims]

Yes. Batman, Bus and Truck. I considered Spider Man a bus and truck version of Batman.

[Griffin Newman]

We probably spent seven minutes on that in that episode. I just remember boggling our minds. And we couldn't rest until we figured

[David Sims]

out what Bus and Truck Rex is the best. He's an insane person.

[Griffin Newman]

Which it basically means second tier touring performance of a previously Broadway show, isn't it?

[David Sims]

Right. It's like you take it out but like. Right, right.

[Griffin Newman]

But you're like shitty enough you can fit the entire.

[David Sims]

Put it on a bus, in a truck. Guys. Go in the bus set goes in the truck. Here we go.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, Bus and truck Batman. That's my take on Batman, by the way, if James Gun is accepting pitches.

[David Sims]

Anyway, Medicine Ball Kevin. There's a Boston truck tour spreading the gospel of flower power out in the 60s. You know, it's another kind of like hippie is documentary. He says working on that was a huge pain in the ass. Almost kills him. Big gets up back to California. He meets Georgie Lucas. He's making THX113 or he already knows him. But like, you know, George is. Hangs out with George. Francis Coppola is there. Okay. Brian De Palma. He'd already kind of worked with in New York a little bit or known

[Griffin Newman]

like a group of brats.

[David Sims]

Seriously. We also got to know Steven Spielberg who is making television shows for Universal. Okay. He's doing a little bit of Helping Cassavetes do some sound effects for Minnie and Moskovitz.

[Griffin Newman]

Hell yeah. That movie. It does rule that movie's a little out of circulation. Am I wrong? Is it? I feel like there's been like, five years of a certain corner of the Internet that's like, people just aren't talking about it. No, I feel like it's not available.

[David Sims]

Maybe it's not.

[Griffin Newman]

And people are constantly crossing their fingers and hoping Criterion's about to announce it.

[David Sims]

I watched it not that long ago, but I guess it's kind of like. Must have been on Criterion or something, right? I don't know. At one point, he needed sound effects for a fight, so Score says he just holds Cassavetes while someone punches him and then record it.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, that sounds like some real.

[David Sims]

Anyway.

[Griffin Newman]

Stuff. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Then Roger Corman calls. It's been a few months, and says, I have a script. Bloody Mama two, which is then basically, is Boxcar Brother.

[Griffin Newman]

His wife. First there's a demand for Bloody Mama too, because Bloody Mama has performed well. They start Marty developing that, and then his wife locates a book.

[David Sims]

The book is called Sister of the

[Griffin Newman]

Road, and basically sort of Yankee swaps goes like, what if what we have pegged as untitled Bloody Mama project becomes Boxcar Bertha? This feels like a better way to service the same sort of niche.

[David Sims]

The script does end, as the movie does, with a crucifixion. I had nothing to do with that, says Martin Scorsese.

[Griffin Newman]

This is. This is actually a revelation.

[David Sims]

Yep. Because you figure, you watch it, you're like, was Marty just like. And he should get crucified again.

[Griffin Newman]

Right? Right.

[David Sims]

Like, Jesus, my favorite guy. He gets a budget of $600,000, and he's basically told, do what you want. Stand to that number. So he throws in some references to the Archers. He throws in some wizard of Oz, you know, winks.

[Griffin Newman]

The. The cinematograph release has. You can watch it with the TCM intros.

[David Sims]

Yes, it does.

[Griffin Newman]

As part of a Corman series where Corman was interviewed by Mankiewicz himself. And Corman said that Scorsese was literally the first filmmaker he ever worked with who had storyboards, had storyboarded them himself, and had done the entire movie. Not just all three of those things, but any of them. You know, Corman was like, we're running Gun. How do I approach a day? I got to get a close up of the main actor. Once I'm done with that, I should probably get the other person's close up. Maybe a shot of the two of them together. Moving on.

[Ben Hosley]

Right. All right, now take your bra off.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Don't spend over the budget. Make sure you have a Little bit of nudity, nothing crazy, but, you know, we need some boobs.

[Griffin Newman]

The fascinating thing about Corman, I don't know if you've ever seen him, Ben, because we use him a lot as, like, shorthand for stuff. He is the most kind of, like, square, patrician man. He's like a sitcom dad from, like, Leave it to Beaver and was just like, very much like, well, that's what the kids want to see, you know, like, he wasn't Russ Myers, where he. He felt animated by his love of the boobs or the blood or any of these sort of, like, things, but. But he was just, like, very open minded, you know, he was very like, you gotta chase the trans. And the whole classic thing with him was like, here's the exact amount of money you have. Here's, like, the locations. Here are the things that need to be in the movie. What I need on the poster, you know, the title. But, like, outside of that, I leave you. You know, he would sort of go like, you got 10 days and $4 to make whatever you want. And he would always say to people, and this is why there's sort of the shorthanded Roger Corman film school that so many people graduated from. He's like, if you make this movie well enough, you'll never have to work with me ever again. You know, you graduate off of me. But this is a way to, like, get the experience under your belt. And so many people rise out of his ranks.

[David Sims]

Scorsese says the movie's part of, like, a sort of exploitation genre that starts with Bonnie and Clyde.

[Griffin Newman]

I was gonna say.

[David Sims]

Applause. Very on the road kind of movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. The Young Lover.

[David Sims]

He's like, slasher movies are still four or five years off. This is the kind of gory exploitation movie of the moment. And indeed, he did have 500 storyboards. He did that because he didn't want to get fired again. He was afraid of a honeymoon killer situation. Then he shows up with the storyboards and Corman, like, see, like, takes a quick look. He's like, you want to see these? And he's like, no, that's fine. Like, whatever you want to do.

[Griffin Newman]

He did say in the Mankiewicz thing, he was like, it was the first time a filmmaker ever came to me and I could see the entire movie before it was made that he had so clearly worked it all out and it played. But I also imagine he was like, you're over prepared. Throw out 300 of these storyboards. You're not gonna have time to film them.

[David Sims]

That is true. They did not have a ton of. They shot in. In Arkansas. He said it still kind of looks like the depression back, you know, at that point. 24 days straight shooting. Now you fucking make, you know, an A24 movie with that. But back then, that wasn't a lot. Roger, at one point, Corman takes him aside at one point and says, like, you know, you don't have a chase scene. Like, audiences do, like those. Like, this is a kind of Bonnie and Clyde thing. And then. And so smarty's like, okay, can I have another day if you want me to shoot a chase scene. And he's like, no, no, no, no. Just figure it out. He's doing some camera movement stuff that I feel like is very proto. Marty.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep.

[David Sims]

He loves to move the camera, especially

[Griffin Newman]

the final shootout into the crucifixion, or I guess off of the crucifixion. Yeah. Feels like a real. A true Marty sequence. They pretty fully realized, in my opinion.

[David Sims]

Film previews at the Pantages Theater. The audience loves and applauds. Corman came out smiling. Sam Arkoff looks at him and says, I gotta tell you, it's almost good.

[Griffin Newman]

He's feeling good about himself. No one's going to be able to burst his balloon.

[David Sims]

And Scorsese says, that's pretty good. And he says, I don't get too excited. Almost good.

[Griffin Newman]

Almost good.

[David Sims]

But that's.

[Griffin Newman]

But that's what you want out of the Corman experience, right? Good job, kid. Oh, 100 your days. You delivered. It plays for an audience. You're. You're moving up the ladder.

[David Sims]

He shows. Now it's. To be fair, it is. Cassavetes is shown a rough cut, two hours. And Cassavetes says, marty, you just spent your whole life, whole year of your life making a piece of. It's a good picture, but you're better than the people who make this kind of movie.

[Griffin Newman]

That is the part that usually gets left.

[David Sims]

He's like, you have done a fine job with this. You are not going to be an exploitation director. You've got something else.

[Griffin Newman]

You're wasting your time. And this is clearly not a movie that matters to you. You know, like, so what do you want to be? A guy who can deliver for other people. And I think part of that is Scorsese's whole thing, or Casaba's whole thing. Excuse me. There's, like, the infamous radio show where he starts, like, ideating and comes up with the idea for Shadows in real time. And it's an extension of him complaining about everything. He found Frustrating about American filmmaking as an actor and how he felt like things were too dramatically safe, that they were not. They were limiting actors, you know, that the camera was dictating everything and stylization and sort of hollowness and a sentimentality and all of this. Right? And who's that knocking at my door? For all of its failings, its limitations, you know, it's. It's roughness has some of that quality. And, you know, it is a movie that is touching third rails. It is talking about things that aren't talked about. It is depicting unappealing characters, you know, with uncharismatic behavior, things like this, that you're just like a guy. Like Cassavetes is going to look at it and go, you actually have shit to say. You're not just here. Someone who's going to technically service whatever piece of material. There's clearly stuff you're working through. Imagine if this guy could refine what he's saying and then he sees this movie that's like, great job. Who gives a fuck? You took some assignment and you did okay. Are you really going to get stuck wasting your life for 20 years doing that?

[David Sims]

Obviously clearly resonate with Scorsese because he's telling the story 60 years later. The answer is that the movie is a pretty good exploitation movie. But my problem with it has always been, like, because I think Scorsese is not suited to making this kind of movie. Yeah, it's not fun.

[Griffin Newman]

I agree.

[David Sims]

Like, the really good Corman movies are, like, fun and, like, wacky. Like, you know, well, he have the shaggy energy you kind of want, right?

[Griffin Newman]

This kind of like, live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse. Like, right. You know, like wanton, sort of countercultural thing is so outside of his mil. He doesn't totally know how to dramatize people who would not be racked with guilt over every one of these decisions.

[David Sims]

And it's so early in his career. And he's right. He hasn't gotten to tell these stories properly yet. It's about Fox Garbertha, played by the great Barbara Hershey, who I love and of course he works with again in Lamentation of Christ. Do you work with any other times?

[Griffin Newman]

It's just that. But she gives him the book when they're filming this movie. That's what starts his obsession with, oh, I gotta make Last Temptation as a film someday. So putting her in that is a real kind of full circle moment. She rules. We talked about her a lot on Portrait of a Lady because that's her one Oscar nomination. But it is fascinating because we were sort of talking about where she was at in the 90s when she got that nom. When she had had this sort of like, second wave of her career relative to what her reputation was at this time, which is she hits the scene as part of this couple with David Carradine. They were like flower children. And everyone's like, is this person actually a good actor or is she just like some hippie who keeps giving weird interviews and press?

[David Sims]

There's a few actors like that I feel like in that era, but it

[Griffin Newman]

feels like she really got tagged with this.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And sort of became like the hippie version of like Sydney Sweeney or something, where they're like, why the fuck are we talking about her? There was like a real, like, anger and animosity towards her. You see, like, her interviews are like, very defensive. Some of the stories are her and David Carradine do a Playboy spread when this movie comes out, basically restaging their nude scenes from this film. That's people like, why are you showing us, like your private lives, you know, when the movie already exists? They have a child together. She breastfeeds that child. I believe on the Dick Havoc show, one of the movies she does after this, there's a sequence with a bird that she has to keep catching. And after like 10 takes, she realizes that she's accidentally broken the seagull's neck. And she is so affected by this emotionally that she changes her name professionally to Barbara Siegel and keeps being like, I must honor this seagull. We had an emotional connection.

[David Sims]

I like that.

[Griffin Newman]

And his spirit should be remembered. And would, like, get into arguments with producers where they're like, we're not putting Barbara Seagull on the poster. That sounds dumb. All this to say it's this era where it's like, she's compelling on screen, but is she just naturally kind of charismatic or is she actually a good actress? And also every time she says stuff, she annoys us. Why is she this hippie lady? It's just interesting to me that this moment is kind of like the ground zero of that, which then by the 80s, she like sort of wins back everyone to like, oh, has she become one of the better American actresses for a couple years?

[David Sims]

Entity. She's so good at that.

[Griffin Newman]

She wins back to back Best Actress awards at Con. Is that right? One of the major festivals. She won two consecutive Lead Actress awards.

[David Sims]

Here I go looking on her IMDb page. To answer your question, you are correct. It's Ken. Yeah. She won Best Actress for Shy people.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

The Konchalovsky.

[Griffin Newman]

That was the one where people went like, have we been sleeping on Barbara Hershey? Is she actually an interesting actress?

[David Sims]

And then she wins a sort of tie award for the. The film World Apart with the other women. Like the three leads of that film, Jody May and Linda Moosey, I think her name is. Never seen that film. I have seen Boxcar Brother.

[Ben Hosley]

Did either of you ever want to be a tramp?

[Griffin Newman]

No. Now, Ben, you brought some interesting. You did your own research for this episode.

[David Sims]

You talked in our Mosquito coast episode about living off the grid. It's not appealing to me. I love the grid.

[Griffin Newman]

I want to live on the Tron.

[David Sims]

Call me Clue.

[Griffin Newman]

And I'm sure we did that bit in that episode. I don't even remember a digital frontier. Right. Biodigital jazz.

[Ben Hosley]

Well, a young. A young Ben was quite thrilled by the idea of Venture.

[Griffin Newman]

You'd pack a bindle.

[Ben Hosley]

Pack a bindle. Because I had have gotten obsessed with Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and reading all about his escapades. There's just, there's. There's romance there. And yet, you know, thinking about taking a. In the woods, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

There you go.

[Ben Hosley]

You don't add that to the. The soup.

[Griffin Newman]

But no, that's the part that really scares me off.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, that seems rough.

[Griffin Newman]

Kind of a deal breaker for me for sure. Yeah. There's not enough AG1 in the world to make that a smooth process.

[Ben Hosley]

I. I think, you know, we're coming up on two hours. I don't want to spend too much time on this. I think I want to just maybe more shout it out. But I did in fact bring a hobo book, which it's called Mostly True, the West's most popular hobo graffiti magazine. It's published by Microcosm Publishing. It's available now on paperback. We'll put a link in the description. It's basically a book that spots spotlights beloved railroad artists. There is a whole kind of scene and community of people who would ride the rails and would, using chalk, draw these little cartoons as well as leave little messages to other writers.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

Here's a little diagram I'm holding up

[David Sims]

and showing that had like, different, you

[Ben Hosley]

know, messages and, you know, little secret hidden meanings to these symbols that they would leave for other writers to know.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm just realizing you've. You've invoked how important Dylan was to you growing up many times and people may not know that most times we try to throw a Ben's Choice on the schedule. You have thrown out don't look back.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

As an option. The Penny Baker. We're obviously not going to get to cover this, but we are going to get to do a Dylan Scorsese episode on Patreon. We're. We're gonna get. Let's let Ben go off on Bob.

[Ben Hosley]

I'm so excited.

[David Sims]

Gonna go off on Bob.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben's gonna talk about Bob.

[David Sims]

I'm a hobo. But the whole thing with Dylan, obviously is that Dylan had a relatively normal middle class upbringing in Minnesota. Then he appears and he's like, yeah, I joined the circus when I was a. Kept this way of playing from the cowboy.

[Griffin Newman]

Talk like this.

[David Sims]

It works.

[Griffin Newman]

Can I say it? Incredible bit.

[David Sims]

He was kind of a complete unknown if you think about it.

[Griffin Newman]

Ah. How would that feel though?

[David Sims]

So anyway, Box Barth, she's a girl. Her dad's plane crashes. Kind of an. An arresting start to the film.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it's a really good opening. And Bernie Casey, he doesn't actually crash, of course.

[David Sims]

He's abducted by aliens. Later, he will defeat the aliens at the Battle of Independence Day. We all know that.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, sure.

[David Sims]

Because Randy Qu. Duster.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep, yep, yep. Took a second. Got it.

[David Sims]

You know that's. That's in that movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

I remember when I walked out of Independence Day when I was 10. You know, because, you know, they defeat the mothership.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It's very satisfying.

[David Sims]

And they.

[Griffin Newman]

And they say that's the reason you're still free. Exactly.

[David Sims]

And they say, like, now send the message to the other ones. And I saying to my dad, like, what? They said, like, make sure you have like a spare crop duster weirdo to fly into the fucking ship. Like, what's the message? They said like. They said like, you won't believe it. It was kind of a deus ex machina. Right at the end there. We were out of missiles, but Randy Quaid, we didn't even want to give him a ship.

[Griffin Newman]

He's so crazy even meaning to fly into the ship. He was just trying to get away from the Hollywood Bushwhackers.

[David Sims]

The Bushwhackers were after.

[Griffin Newman]

The Bushwhackers were after him. I had like a Mandela effect last time I watched Independence Day sometime in the last 10 years.

[David Sims]

Recently rewatched, watched it, hence my bringing it up.

[Griffin Newman]

And I was like, ready for the satisfaction of the Randy Quaid moment. And I was like, what the. I vividly remember there being a shot of him in like an old timey.

[David Sims]

They filmed that and didn't use it, correct? Yes, they.

[Griffin Newman]

They filmed in my Mind, I had edited the deleted alternate ending. That was deemed too goofy. So then they put him in, like, a proper fighter jet, I think. Yeah.

[David Sims]

I think it was deemed basically, like, hat on hat on hat. You know, where it's kind of like, don't tell me that, like, we've already got all this going on. And then he's like, by the way, I'm also in a crop.

[Griffin Newman]

And his plane's like. He's spitting, like, ever clear into the gas tank.

[David Sims]

Oh, my God. Yeah, oh, my God. Anyway, her dad dies, her dad dies, the depression hits and she starts freight hopping, which I guess is like a cooler version of hitchhiking. It's just freight car comes by, I get in. Can we call it going.

[Griffin Newman]

The great Bernie Casey.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Who I feel.

[David Sims]

Football player.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

He played for the 49ers, I believe.

[Griffin Newman]

He. He often later becomes a very kind of stern, stoic figure gone this movie. He gets to sort of be the wild card. Sure. Which is fun to see.

[David Sims]

Young Bernie Casey Von Morton, who is like a bank robber who, I guess worked with her dad or whatever. Like, I can't remember, you know, like. And then she, like, hooks up with Big Bill Shelling, played by David Carradine. A striking man.

[Griffin Newman]

He has one of the most interesting faces.

[David Sims]

Slender sort of figure and.

[Ben Hosley]

Right.

[David Sims]

Yeah, his face. He's cool guy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Crazy acting. Dynasty. His father Ben appears in the movie as well.

[David Sims]

Right. Of course. John Carradine, he's Sartoris. I mean, John Carradine is like your classic. Like, he's in all those, like, monster movies and stuff.

[Griffin Newman]

John Carradine. I mean, this is the crazy thing. I believe Bella Mill guy only play Dracula one time.

[David Sims]

Maybe he played Dracula in three different movies.

[Griffin Newman]

Lugosi or Carradine.

[David Sims]

Carradine.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. That's what I was gonna say. I think Lugosi only ever does the original. And then Carradine does most of the, like, Dracula meets movies.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, meet Frankenstein. It's Carradine as Dracula. Yeah, he was. He spent more time playing Universal's Dracula.

[David Sims]

I'm excited to watch Dracula.

[Griffin Newman]

I am, too. That's why I'm making this connection point. But it's just funny that that guy takes over.

[David Sims]

We're going to do it on Patreon. We're doing it on Patreon. We're doing it on Patreon.

[Griffin Newman]

We are doing the commentaries.

[David Sims]

Don't forget, you must watch Dracula.

[Griffin Newman]

And when you watch the Dracula, you must do this with your.

[David Sims]

I am horny for you, B.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, he is very Horny come to my ca. So he wants to have the sex box card.

[David Sims]

Bera is a flawed film. Yeah, you got Barry. Barry Primus and Bernie Casey as the other members of a kind of. Kind of a train robbery crew that kind of knocks together Bill. Big Bill is a union organizer, but they. They start busting up trains.

[Griffin Newman]

I just want to connect the DOT stuff for Ben. Ben, my favorite Bernie Casey role. And the thing that he looms largest in my mind for doing is he is, of course, the teacher in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, who warns them that they will not get a passing grade on the class unless they do the greatest history presentation of all time.

[Ben Hosley]

Haven't you brought this up before?

[Griffin Newman]

I brought up that Napoleon. That's true in Bill and Ted was of course, Ricky Calamari.

[David Sims]

He's also, I believe he's Felix Leiter in the Never Seen Ever Again, the sort of off brand bond. He's in Spies Like Us.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, he's a great actor. But Bernie Casey basically is like the inciting incident in Bill and Ted. He has the stakes, and he has a couple of my favorite line deliveries of all time because he's reading off to them how insufficient their essay was or their paper was.

[David Sims]

Oh, yeah, that is funny. He is funny in that, right?

[Griffin Newman]

And he said. So, Bill, what you're telling me essentially is that Napoleon. Napoleon was a short, dead dude.

[David Sims]

Pretty funny.

[Griffin Newman]

And then he also has. It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a, quote, salad dressing dude.

[David Sims]

That's pretty funny, too.

[Griffin Newman]

Some of the funniest shit of all time.

[Ben Hosley]

Also, the Caesar salad dressing was invented in Mexico.

[David Sims]

Thank you for saying. Well, this is the bit.

[Griffin Newman]

Bill and Ted don't know what they're talking about.

[David Sims]

Did you think it was invented by Julius Caesar originally? Be funny if it was. He was like, vinny, Vinny Vici. We should cross the Rubicon. Also, like, I'm thinking like, mayo vinegar, maybe some anchovies while I'm at it.

[Ben Hosley]

But you gotta match the anchovies up

[Griffin Newman]

really fine because they.

[David Sims]

But they. They dissolve when you mash them up. And that's so nice.

[Griffin Newman]

But, yes, this movie basically becomes, you know, a ragtag gang couple.

[David Sims]

Right? Isn't it so funny that it's called Boxcar Bertha? Before? I saw this movie when I was a teen and I heard that Martin Scorsese had, like, a sort of bad movie called Boxcar Bertha, I was like, is it about, like a. A big old lady who, like, drives a train like Boxcar Bertha? Sounds like a sort of six year

[Griffin Newman]

old with like a.

[David Sims]

Right, yeah, exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Not like the sexiest, you know, hoochie gangster he ever did see. Right. Like, which is what she is. She's is beguiling.

[Griffin Newman]

She is very appealing in this film.

[David Sims]

Yeah. She's a. She's a hottie.

[Griffin Newman]

She's a handsome lady.

[David Sims]

She's a. Handsomely.

[Griffin Newman]

She's a handsome hippie lady.

[David Sims]

I say, is it hippie before hippie?

[Ben Hosley]

Right.

[David Sims]

Because it's like the 30s or whatever,

[Ben Hosley]

but it has the time. Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Is bringing. Yes. Much like Bonnie and Clyde, it's a period film that's bringing the vibes and the feelings of the era in which.

[Ben Hosley]

Because it's nice to see that they're. They're not passing judgment on her character.

[Griffin Newman]

No, no. I mean, that's what they thought the kids wanted.

[David Sims]

They're like. Right, yeah. And the Bonnie and Clyde ripoffs are like. Yeah, they're free spirits. I was gonna say the bank.

[Griffin Newman]

I find the 70s Corman films, and especially, like the ones of this stripe just. They are weirdly comfort food watches for me. There is something too. And I was trying to crack why I find them so appealing and relaxing to watch. There was something to the kind of like post BBS and Bonnie and Clyde, like, okay, fuck. Like Easy Riders.

[Ben Hosley]

A hit.

[Griffin Newman]

Bonnie and Clyde's a hit. These kids want weird shit. They don't want morals and ethics in their movies. Right. Is everything sort of like a political statement, or is it just about, like a vibe and a feeling? And so a guy like Horman, whose job is just deliver things into, like, proven genres, the genre that he's trying to emulate now is like, I don't know, like actors having interesting moments, you know, like energy bouncing off each other, doing some shit, you know, like, it doesn't have to lean too hard into genre plot mechanics. And you have these filmmakers who most of whom, like, rose into becoming their own people who had a solid understanding of craft, and then they're just kind of like accidentally. Very interesting vibe hangout movies.

[David Sims]

Yeah. This has some. This has some vibes.

[Griffin Newman]

I. I find the air of these films very, very comforting.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Yeah, I do.

[Griffin Newman]

This is what I'm saying. It's like a weird, like.

[David Sims]

Yeah. I don't find discomforting.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not that I find the story of the film or the emotions. I like. I like the. The style of filmmaking.

[Ben Hosley]

I like hobos.

[David Sims]

Yeah, well, we know you like hobos, and you would want to be a hobo and follow the hobo code.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Make the symbols.

[David Sims]

I love rail culture, but they are mostly bank robbers.

[Ben Hosley]

Well, that's the thing, right?

[David Sims]

They're not really just like, hey, wherever I lay my hat, that's my home. They're more like, give me your money, I have a gun.

[Ben Hosley]

But they start out with good intentions. Sure. They're trying to go against the right.

[Griffin Newman]

This means something. Railroad.

[David Sims]

Yeah. You got H. Buckram Sartoris, played by John Carradine.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the John Carradine character.

[David Sims]

The mean railway boss.

[Griffin Newman]

A phenomenon I love when close relatives are in the same movie. Not playing relatives.

[David Sims]

Sure. But they are playing, you know, opposite figures.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

Which is exciting.

[Griffin Newman]

But not father and son.

[David Sims]

No. He's, you know, he's got a tie and a big beard, a mustache or whatever. And he's mean.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. He's a grumpy old man.

[Ben Hosley]

And.

[David Sims]

Yeah. I mean, what happens in this movie? He ends up in a chain gang.

[Griffin Newman]

They get arrested.

[David Sims]

Yeah. They get arrested. And Bill. Bill and Vaughn go to the chain gang.

[Griffin Newman]

Bertha becomes a woman of the night, lured into.

[David Sims]

Yes. Into being a.

[Griffin Newman]

And in fact, a character refers to her as a.

[David Sims]

This is true. Yes, this is true. And it kind of goes on for a bit, and I'm kind of like, you know, watch.

[Griffin Newman]

But I'm just like, I'm down with this hangout.

[David Sims]

And then she runs into Vaugh at a bar, and he's like, bill has broken out of jail and don't go. A Bill. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, that ends in him being crucified against Bill.

[Griffin Newman]

Seems pretty broken. He's aged a lot.

[David Sims]

They a lot as well. In, like, the hay.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, yeah. I was gonna ask you guys a lot of. First time you had sex.

[Griffin Newman]

Hey.

[Ben Hosley]

On a bale. Hey.

[David Sims]

Yeah, I. I just wasn't ready for him.

[Griffin Newman]

I rented a hotel room. Then I said, hold on, I'll be back in one second. Went around the box of bodega, said, where's your hay?

[Ben Hosley]

Do you have straw?

[Griffin Newman]

Aisle 3. Laid it out gingerly on the bed.

[David Sims]

I have obviously been to, like, events where you sit on a bale of hay, some candles.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

You know, like, have you gotten too close to the.

[Griffin Newman]

You know.

[David Sims]

You ever been to, like, an event where, like, you're sitting on a bale of hay?

[Griffin Newman]

Like a hoot nanny.

[David Sims]

Yeah, yeah. Your classic hoot haunted hay. I went to, like, a couple weddings that were, like, kind of outdoor, kind of farmy weddings where it's like, hey, we just putting down some bales, you know, like. And every time you sit in the Bale of hay. You're like, you know, chairs rock.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. One of the better inventions.

[Ben Hosley]

A little itchy.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

You know what? Just because this is a square doesn't really mean it should be sat up.

[Griffin Newman]

We just ordered new chairs for the office. Office. And I'm so excited.

[David Sims]

When are they coming?

[Ben Hosley]

Soon.

[Griffin Newman]

All right.

[David Sims]

Yeah, fine.

[Griffin Newman]

We've had the same chairs for years, which we've inherited, and we just suddenly were like, what if we got new chairs?

[David Sims]

We got like nice chairs. Now, of course, Griffin briefly suggested we get like the emperor.

[Griffin Newman]

I want to be really.

[David Sims]

I'm so mad that I brought this up. He's mad. He's mad. He's mad.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm not mad. I just don't like the framing of the story. Which is after we all agree agreed on getting chairs that are actually comfortable and won't hurt our backs.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

I as a self owned said, I want you all to know that I considered recommending these. It was after agreeing it wasn't made

[David Sims]

by some company that's called like Bob's ripoff of nerds.

[Griffin Newman]

It's called Regal Robot and they have an official license with Lucasfilm. This is a high quality product. And I at no point tried to sway the vote. I had already signed off on the grown ups.

[David Sims]

Now I'm looking at the other. I'm pretty sure that, yes, I think

[Ben Hosley]

said something like, how about we get three nice chairs in one stupid chair for Griffin. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And this is what I don't like is acting like I'm the one who

[David Sims]

put it in the chat as a cell phone.

[Griffin Newman]

I said I was going to.

[David Sims]

You're self voting. And you're like, oh, no, I'm being owned.

[Griffin Newman]

I just, I want credit for being. For framing myself as the joke rather than acting like I did something earnestly.

[David Sims]

It's just funny that you showed us

[Griffin Newman]

that because I'd done the sixteen hundred dollars. Real crafts people have to work on that. You think the emperor's sitting on. It's a high quality chair.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay. Anything else about boxcar birth that we want to discuss?

[David Sims]

It's just crazy that she's like, anyway, what's up with you? And he's like, I don't know. And then they're like, crucify this man.

[Ben Hosley]

Well, I would say, and this is something that you see with stories from this era. It's crazy how Americans were so anti communist that like, essentially if you were an Amtrak employee, you could just merc

[David Sims]

people and get away with it.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a wild time.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah. It's Crazy to me.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. No, I. I mean, I just like. I. I like these movies. I felt the same way watching the. The Demi Cormans. And when Corman sort of swings later this decade, more in the 80s into more creature features and Star wars ripoffs, I find those movies compelling in a different way. But this. No, this moment of him trying to figure out how to replicate the youth picture and the rebel picture, the new Hollywood shit, I. I just find the weird, like, middle ground of Corman doing that with a limitation on budget and developing filmmakers, and I think there's just some weird energy that comes out of this movie. So I. I find this compelling to watch. It's not a great movie as. As Caspe said, like, he. He did the job well. He sort of delivered a movie that cuts together.

[David Sims]

That is true. I mean, there's no question that. Right. Like, it's. It's a functional movie, and, like, it's

[Griffin Newman]

a functional movie, Stu. But you can feel the lack of understanding of the characters and personal investment,

[David Sims]

and I just feel like Junkier might be better. Like, it's. It's just one of those things you're like, Right. The artiness almost gets in the way of.

[Griffin Newman]

Says he can go junkie, but it. This isn't the type of. Yeah. He doesn't know how to push this to the more expressionistic limits, if that makes sense.

[David Sims]

It's the debate over Shutter island all those years later. I feel like where some people are kind of like, this is kind of junkie. And to, you know, it's like, well, that's the point. And some of the stuff he's inspired by, but, like, he has such a prestige sheen at that point, and, like, he's so. Such a gifted filmmaker that people are like, I can't see past that. Like, so the junkie, like, clashes with. It doesn't work. That. That's not a problem I have there. But I remember that coming up.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Or even, like, Wolf, Wall street or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, also, I think there's some stuff in Shutter Island. Well, we'll talk about it.

[Ben Hosley]

We'll talk.

[Griffin Newman]

I'll save those thoughts for four and a half months from now.

[David Sims]

Can't wait for that.

[Griffin Newman]

So it's not to repeat myself. Yeah, that's one of your favorites.

[David Sims]

I love that one.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

I love all his movies except for Box Car Bertha, which is just. Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you put it dead last?

[David Sims]

No, I put. Yes, I put it dead last. I mean, not to spoil my list, but I do have a dead last.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Because.

[David Sims]

Sorry.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. I. I'M more engaged by. Who's that knocking?

[David Sims]

Yes. I would have dudes that. Knocking above it just as right. A little bit more like, this is the real Scorsese here, even if it's primal clay or whatever. So the box office, though. This film comes out in June, middle of June, 1972. Number one at the box office.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

It was that disclosure day spot. Number one. The box office is the film that's going to win best picture of 1972.

[Griffin Newman]

French Connection.

[David Sims]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

Is that the year before?

[David Sims]

I believe so.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay. 72 would be the Godfather.

[David Sims]

That's the one.

[Griffin Newman]

Interesting that these are coming out the same time. So Francis is with.

[David Sims]

He's Francis, obviously. Francis Wright got started making movies earlier.

[Griffin Newman]

Francis.

[David Sims]

But imagine being like, hey, Francis, what'd you think of Box Kabirtha? He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, not bad. What do you think of the Godfather?

[Griffin Newman]

I'm too busy literally making the Godfather.

[David Sims]

Yeah, I get.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. And also, it's not like the Godfather, which was, like, well respected at the time, financially successful. It was right out the gate, the widest theatrical release of all time, and it immediately exploded at the box office.

[Ben Hosley]

And yet look at where they're at

[David Sims]

now comparatively, compared to making films of equal quality.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Pillage of the Flower Moon and Megalopolis.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben, you sound like someone who hasn't lopped it off yet when you make a comment like that. Oh, I've loved. You've lapped.

[Ben Hosley]

I certainly have.

[Griffin Newman]

But you haven't seen the new. What. What is. He keeps calling it?

[David Sims]

Impression of Dustin.

[Griffin Newman]

He's like, I'm working on a new Wilder cut. I feel like what I released theatrically was a little. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Jim's dad's in it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Unrated and out of control. He said he's working on a new cut. I hope there's so much more Megalon in it.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Ben Hosley]

They need more.

[David Sims]

I need more explanations there. Absolutely. Or what if he was just like, I. I got an MGM original series greenlit. I don't know. They'll. They'll greenlight anything. Like, you know what I mean? Megalopolis the show.

[Ben Hosley]

What's the reporter's name?

[David Sims]

I don't remember the names. The only ones I remember.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh. Oh, yeah. Well, Platinum. Oh, well, actually, it's really funny.

[David Sims]

That was pretty close.

[Griffin Newman]

No, but it's funny that you bring that up, Ben. Right. Because the character's name is. Wow. Platinum. And on the Doughboys podcast. We're friends with the Doughboys. Right. The great podcast. On their podcast, they say the word Wow. A lot. That's one of their most frequently uttered words. And also the Platinum Play club is their highest honor that they bestow upon chains. And so when I was watching the movie and they keep saying, wow, platinum, I was asking myself, is Coppola actually secretly a Doughboys fan? Which would actually. It would make sense because there are Coppola goofballs.

[David Sims]

You almost lost it there. I could feel you kind of like.

[Griffin Newman]

I didn't. I had it. Okay. I was so focused.

[David Sims]

Number two at the box office is an animated film. That's for grown ups.

[Ben Hosley]

It's.

[Griffin Newman]

Is it Fritz the Cat again? Didn't that just come up in a box office game?

[David Sims]

I don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it did.

[David Sims]

I think a different back she did, but we've definitely talked about it.

[Griffin Newman]

But I think it was a Fritz the Cat double feature.

[David Sims]

That might be true.

[Griffin Newman]

True.

[David Sims]

That might be true. Yes. Number three at the box. Have you seen Fritz the Cat?

[Ben Hosley]

No.

[David Sims]

It's kind of a Benny movie.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it was still in the box office for Mean Streets, rereleased with something else.

[David Sims]

I think you're right.

[Griffin Newman]

We'll see if that happens next week.

[David Sims]

Spoiler.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Number three at the box office is, I assume, what had to be a filmed version. Yes. A theatrical release of a very famously risque theatrical review.

[Griffin Newman]

It's. It's a.

[David Sims]

What it was. You may not know what this is, but it was like a British theater review. Okay. Review like Rev u e that had sketches on sex related topics that was like kind of a Broadway sensation in the late 60s because it had total

[Griffin Newman]

nudity and jokes and.

[David Sims]

Can you believe it? Jokes.

[Griffin Newman]

That sounds pretty good.

[David Sims]

And a filmed version of it was shown in theaters 1972. But many cities banned the screen.

[Griffin Newman]

Like the police all. But it's like something like that.

[David Sims]

But that's an arty movie, right?

[Griffin Newman]

It's more. What. What. What is this called?

[David Sims]

It's called O Calcutta.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, I know the name. I did not know that's what it was.

[David Sims]

It's still the 8th longest running Broadway show ever.

[Griffin Newman]

I actually.

[David Sims]

And it's been just, you know, there's stuff like Chicago.

[Griffin Newman]

I think that's awesome.

[David Sims]

It ran for 6,000 shows, you know, for like 15 years.

[Griffin Newman]

Bring it back.

[David Sims]

Yeah, maybe bring it back. In Britain, there was a thing called puppetry of the penis.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, yeah.

[David Sims]

Where it was one of those things where it was like, at a certain point, you know, ran for years.

[Griffin Newman]

That crossed over, my friend.

[David Sims]

I know. But it never took on here like it did in Britain.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like it didn't set the world on fire. It was big here. And they did an HBO special. Yes. Betray the penis. Do you know what that show was about, Ben?

[Ben Hosley]

Yes, they do.

[Griffin Newman]

Two gentlemen walked on stage.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah. Explain it to the listeners who may not.

[Griffin Newman]

And they would puppeteer their penis. It's not like a play that has a clever title. It was two guys being like, here's how you make your penis and balls look like a burger.

[David Sims]

Would they speak number?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, they'd explain. They'd be like. And here a goose.

[Ben Hosley]

Characters don't like.

[Griffin Newman]

They're not characters. The guys come out, the goose doesn't talk. No, I don't think so. I don't think. David, does the. Does the penis have any dialogue?

[David Sims]

I never saw puppetry.

[Griffin Newman]

I didn't either.

[David Sims]

Never saw it. I did see like there was like the fuck. It was like the Shakespeare one, not the improvised one, but there was like, you know, another Britain would just have these long running things where it was called like. No, there was no Dicks, but like the Ridiculous Shakespeare Company or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, sure.

[David Sims]

And it would just be like in some little theater, I guess it would just run for 20 years of people just doing puns and shit.

[Griffin Newman]

They had it figured out.

[David Sims]

Yeah, they had it figured out. Number four at the box office is a disaster film. It's plane centered.

[Griffin Newman]

It's plane. Is it airport? No, it's prior to that.

[David Sims]

Maybe it is.

[Griffin Newman]

It's planes.

[David Sims]

No, the first airport is 1970. So this is two years later.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's not an airport sequel. So it's an airport rip off.

[David Sims]

Well, it's a set on a plane, I think, rather than on in an airport.

[Griffin Newman]

Interesting.

[David Sims]

It stars Charlton Heston.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not Earthquake, is it?

[David Sims]

No, it's a lesser known one. I don't really know this movie, I can tell you that. It was directed by John Gillerman. Gillerman, yeah. Who directed King Kong. The King Kong movie.

[Griffin Newman]

And didn't he direct one of the Planet of the Apes sequel or. No, he directed Shaft in Africa.

[David Sims]

Not seeing that one. Don't.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

No, he did.

[Griffin Newman]

There we go.

[David Sims]

There it is.

[Griffin Newman]

This isn't what?

[David Sims]

Charleston, Heston, James Brolin. The film is Skyjacked. It's a good title. Pretty good title.

[Griffin Newman]

Pretty good title.

[David Sims]

And number five at the box office is a film directed by and starring Sidney Poitier.

[Griffin Newman]

Directed by and starring. And starring.

[David Sims]

It is a western.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

Oh, oh, what's it called?

[Griffin Newman]

What's this movie?

[David Sims]

Harry Belafonte is the star.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Is it. Is the title their Names? Yes. You got to just tell me. I'm not going to pull it.

[David Sims]

And the preacher.

[Griffin Newman]

There we go.

[David Sims]

Ruby D is also in this film.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep.

[David Sims]

I think kind of a.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, I've always wanted.

[David Sims]

It's not like a masterpiece, but like it has an important movie in both faultiers kind of like emerging like, you know, it's like his first, like, kind of good movie that he directed. It's his first movie that he directed. There you go.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And like a revisionist western black character is very interesting.

[Griffin Newman]

David, I now ask you, can you guess the top five highest grossing films of 1972?

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Number one, you already called the God. Of course. $86 million in domestic rentals that year. It was the highest grossing film of all time. Of course, until jaws broke 100.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Just on initial.

[David Sims]

A couple years later. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Number two, cabaret. Cabaret is down at number six. Made a robust 20. But this is Godfather 86. This number two movie. 42. Right.

[David Sims]

Godfather.

[Griffin Newman]

But I mean, yeah, thank God I made 42 million. It's a big, big disaster movie.

[David Sims]

Disaster movie. Okay. Is it Earthquake?

[Griffin Newman]

It's one of the biggest ones.

[David Sims]

Okay. Poseidon Adventure.

[Griffin Newman]

Correct.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Number three. It is a comedy, and it's a comedy starring kind of a local New York act. It's weird they sold this many tickets in New York alone. Correct. How was that big movie? $28 million.

[David Sims]

Okay. All right.

[Griffin Newman]

The next great movie. Yeah, very fun. Number three, four and five are all films from the fine folks at Warner Brothers. So number four is a Warner Brothers. It is. It's a very new Hollywood version of a revenge film. It's a real movie of its moment, movie of its time. I wonder if this movie, it was such a reference point, and I wonder if it's a thing that's a little bit lost now, but it's a big movie.

[David Sims]

It's not like rolling.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a shorthand movie. It's a. Oh, Deliverance. Correct.

[David Sims]

That movie's a masterpiece. I love that one.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. But I do agree with me that it feels a little.

[David Sims]

Ah, sure, yeah, Yeah. I mean, whatever. The scan, like the scandalousness of it is, is a little lesser now, but Deliverance rocks.

[Griffin Newman]

I love Deliverance, but basically created like 30 years of punch lines and bad jokes. The number five movie of 1972 is a Western picture. It's not bucking the preacher.

[David Sims]

Western in 72.

[Griffin Newman]

Yep.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Bit of a Clint.

[David Sims]

Have a movie then.

[Griffin Newman]

Revisionist, you could say. A Neo, maybe. Certainly.

[David Sims]

Neo.

[Griffin Newman]

A new Hollywood Western. It was a Film that famously the studio did not believe in. I believe it had sat on a shelf for two years and then became a very big hit.

[David Sims]

It's okay. It's not like Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid.

[Griffin Newman]

No.

[David Sims]

And it's not like High Plains Drifter. It's not a. Clint.

[Griffin Newman]

No. It's revisionist. The right way to put it. It definitely doesn't feel like a conventional western. It's a big director and a big star who will work together many, many times. And I believe this isn't even their first film together, but it's. It's a milestone film for both of them. I think it helps kind of make their careers.

[David Sims]

It's a big. Yeah. Oh, it's the gift movie. Jeremiah Johnson.

[Griffin Newman]

Jeremiah Johnson. The king of the nod himself.

[David Sims]

Right, right.

[Griffin Newman]

Cabaret is number six.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Deep Throat is number seven. Hey, open wide.

[David Sims]

She. She's got Deep Throat.

[Griffin Newman]

The Getaway is number eight.

[David Sims]

Good movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Number nine is Brother of the Wind.

[David Sims]

Never heard of it.

[Griffin Newman]

It's an independent film. A mountain man saves four wolf cubs after their mother dies.

[David Sims]

We took some pictures of animals for you.

[Griffin Newman]

Truly?

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It's Wikipedia entry is two sentences long. There's like, nothing about this movie was released by sun International. Number 10 was Lady Sings the Blues.

[David Sims]

Oh, you know, I've never seen that.

[Griffin Newman]

I never have either.

[David Sims]

I remember my mom just talking about that movie, though, where she was like, we all thought Diana Ross couldn't pull it off. And then she did.

[Ben Hosley]

Okay, I have a. I have a game for you. Do you guys want to guess the most popular drugs of 1972?

[Griffin Newman]

Absolutely. Sure. So I got marriage coming in at number one. That's devil's lettuce.

[David Sims]

Where does a jazz cigarette pass acid? Is. Is getting pretty hot on there. Do you have a list? You're looking at his screams.

[Griffin Newman]

It's lsp. Are we counting? Section.

[David Sims]

Okay, what about.

[Ben Hosley]

What about like, over the counter drugs of.

[David Sims]

Oh, like LUDs. Ques.

[Ben Hosley]

Bingo.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

But they're not counting things like aspirin, right? We're talking like mind expanders. Yeah. Okay, Is cocaine. Has it cracked the 10 at this point? Or is it.

[David Sims]

Okay, cocaine's sort of. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, sort of.

[David Sims]

The doors of drugs, then it's. It's just entered the scene.

[Griffin Newman]

They've taken it out of soda. What about putting it into little baggies? And it's about to have a very successful rebirth.

[David Sims]

It's had a lot of names. You know, we smoked it in dens. We injected in our bloodstream. Okay. Heroin. Show me.

[Griffin Newman]

What number is heroin? Give Us the numbers on these, it

[Ben Hosley]

doesn't have like a top to bottom.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

How many Valium? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

How many of the ten have we gotten so far?

[Ben Hosley]

I didn't specify ten.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[David Sims]

Missing anything.

[Griffin Newman]

Looks so relaxed. He's loving this.

[Ben Hosley]

You're basically just missing one last one. You've hit all the magic mushrooms.

[Griffin Newman]

There's one big one.

[David Sims]

No, no, they're not kind of that.

[Ben Hosley]

What was, what was like a, a, a biker truck driver type.

[David Sims]

Oh, Speed.

[Ben Hosley]

Bingo. Okay.

[David Sims]

Straight up amphetamines.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe they didn't have power energy yet. You needed to just.

[Ben Hosley]

Just another thing you could just buy over the counter.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, well, right. Cuz cocaine used to be in Coca Cola, but Speed used to be in Sprite, isn't that right?

[David Sims]

I think that's made up.

[Griffin Newman]

That's me making bad. Attempted a job.

[David Sims]

That's good stuff. Love it. Yeah. So Boxcar Bertha, you know, and who's that knocking? The pieces are there. It's all very interesting, but next week we will talk about Mean Streets. And I would say it's just a bit of a jump.

[Griffin Newman]

I think it's a good movie.

[David Sims]

It's been, I mean it's also, it's just a bit of a jump up.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a bit of a jump up. I prefer it.

[David Sims]

Just funny how Scorsese, he's like, yeah, I'm working things out. And I'm like, you made Mean Streets? One year later.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the second first film thing where you're just like, where the fuck did this come from?

[David Sims]

And obviously watch, who's that knocking? You're like, okay, sure, I see the building block.

[Griffin Newman]

How long does it take him? 7 movies before he figures it out?

[David Sims]

And then it's like, no, I had it all actually in my. You know.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And that episode is out next week on Blank Check with Miriam Bale.

[Griffin Newman]

The great Miriam Bale returning after eight years. Eight years. Long years. Eight long years. Not since Basic Instinct, but tune in for that. And over on Patreon, we're investigating the Umbrella Corporation currently this.

[Ben Hosley]

I think we are. Yeah. Episode drops on August 9th.

[David Sims]

Yeah. And we started that August 1st. So yeah, we just just entered the Resident Evil. But we'll be doing our Scorsese shorts episode very soon.

[Ben Hosley]

And also you can always refer to our social media, check out our Instagram or subscribe to our newsletter on Stubstack, where we always have our release schedule listed and up to date.

[Griffin Newman]

But let's also just clarify this because we had, we had talked it out a little bit in the March Madness. Oh, that preview episodes. We are going to just do scores through. There is a concentration of. It seems like probably enough new releases towards the end of this year that that's gonna occupy the spot of where we previously had thrown out the idea of doing a palate cleanser little.

[David Sims]

We're not doing that shit.

[Griffin Newman]

We're not fucking doing it. So every narrative scripted film happening on main feed, other stuff on Patreon running chronologically, save for new releases and March

[David Sims]

Madness next year is probably gonna be a bunch of shorter shorties, guys.

[Griffin Newman]

It's gonna. Oh, I. Let's commit to it, right?

[David Sims]

Shorties.

[Griffin Newman]

Shorty.

[David Sims]

Shorties. Only Single digits under 10. Exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

Single digits. Walt Becker finally maybe is gonna have his chance.

[Ben Hosley]

DeVito, baby.

[Griffin Newman]

DeVito. I mean, the short King.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, literally.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. It's actually. Do we. Do we put Beatty up in front of the firing squad again for Shorties lose, or is that rude? He needed to be humbled a little bit. That guy's had a lot of success. Success.

[David Sims]

Exactly. So full of himself.

[Griffin Newman]

But yes. Tune in for many, many months of Marty both here and on our Patreon. We'll be covering a lot of things like the music docs and the shorts and such.

[David Sims]

I'm going to go to a Mets game now. I assume that by the time this post in August, the Mets have turned everything around and are doing so good.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I've heard things are bad.

[David Sims]

Yeah, we've lost 12 games in a row.

[Griffin Newman]

I put my brother and his friend Gabe on a group text with John Fantasy so they can commiserate her at the Mets together.

[David Sims]

I'm also on a group text with Sean Fantasy about the Mets.

[Griffin Newman]

I just asked that they not remove me. So even though I don't understand what they're talking about, I can see their emotional meltdowns and things have not been good in that text group.

[David Sims]

I would say that I have a very different relationship to sports fandom than that. But yes, we are objectively a bad baseball team currently. Maybe we'll be good someday.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you want to say here that by the time this episode comes out.

[David Sims]

Yeah, of course. Boba Shed is raking by this point, I assume. God, anything I say now, it's just like those guys will all, like, fall into pits like that Simpsons episode.

[Griffin Newman]

No, we're putting on the board. Boba Shet is raking. I definitely get what that means. Tune in next week for Mean Streets.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And as always, and as always, nine

[David Sims]

more months of this.

[Griffin Newman]

Nine more months of hearing people say Hooa.

[Ben Hosley]

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley, our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our Associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy, research by JJ Burch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell, artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social media subscribe to our weekly newsletter Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.

[David Sims]

Timberland Pro knows that NASCAR starts long before the green flag waves. Because behind every race are the doers, the people who show up to the track early and stay long after the race ends. And that's who Timberland Pro was built for. Durable, comfortable and professional, these boots perform as hard as you do on the job and often. Real work, real people, real craft. Visit timberlandpro.com and discover products that help workers perform at their best.